God's Sovereignty

There are some things in the Bible that are impossible for finite mind to understand and a real understanding of the Sovereignty of God is one of those things. Over the years, I have tried to balance the facts of God’s overriding choice in the light of commands that I am to obey and quite frankly, I have not been able to always balance them.
This past week, I studied Matthew 3, the ministry of John the Baptist, as I prepared for my message on Sunday. Of course, you can’t really study the ministry of John the Baptist without taking a brief look at his life, beginning with the fact that he was called to the ministry before he was born. Notice Luke 1:
15 For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. 16 And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. 17 And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
Here we see that his ministry was specifically foretold before he was born. Somehow, he didn’t have a lot of choices as he was growing up. John did what God called him to do. And we see this principle in many different places in the scripture.
Isaac – Genesis 12
Samson – Judges 13
Samuel – I Samuel 1
These are just a few of the people whose lives, whole or in part, were foretold before they were born and the prophecies came to pass.
There are also people who, from a negative sense, had their lives directed by God.
God hardened the heart of Pharaoh – Exodus 7
God raised up the various nations to come against Israel – Judges
God raised up the Babylonians – Habakuk 1
And then too, we have the whole matter of prophecy, where God tells us, sometimes hundred of years in advance, what is going to happen and who is going to do it.
The picture that begins to form here is that God, in His sovereignty, not only knows the future, he ordains the future and that men do what they do because God ordains their actions, something that is repugnant to the natural man. The idea that it is God and not man who is autonomous, is unthinkable to the lost man. Even to many who name the name of Christ, this thought is unpalatable. I heard a young preacher boy say some time ago, that it was heresy.
At the same time we have equally as many cases in scripture where the decision of men seem to have changed the course of history. For example, in the Book of Jonah, Jonah was told to go to Nineveh and pronounce God’s judgment upon that great city and after his little dance with the whale, Jonah did exactly what God commanded him to do. However the people of Nineveh repented of their wickedness and God lifted his hand of judgment from them for a time. I once read an author who gloated over this claiming that this was proof of a mutable God but nothing could be further from the truth. Far from being the proof that God changes, here is proof that everything happens within the divine Providence of God. He had chosen the Assyrians to be the chastening rod with which He would chasten Israel for their sins and although Jonah didn’t understand his own ministry, their repentance put them in a position to be used of God for His purpose. When God was through with them, they were defeated at the battle of Carshemish.
I think one of the best ways to understand the matter of Divine Providence is to go to the account of Moses before the Pharaoh. When Moses came to Egypt after his 40 year exile in the wilderness, he was to lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt and take them to the Promised Land. The rub was that the Pharaoh was not about to let them go and the they really didn’t want to go. In fact, Moses began by only asking that they be allowed to go and worship because neither side was ready for the ultimate demand.
But God was in the process of changing the hearts of His people and he did that by hardening the heart of the Pharaoh. All of the miracles of God in the plagues only made Pharaoh more resolute in his determination that he would never let the people go and ultimately, he never did. He died trying to keep them from going even after he lost his son. At the same time, those things changed the hearts of the God’s people and made them willing to at least leave Egypt even though it was their children who would ultimately inherit the Promised Land.
That which God does acts upon the hearts of men in a manner consistent with the nature of the heart. When the truth of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ comes to the man in whom God has done nothing to his heart, nothing happens. However, if God has begun a work of conviction in the heart of that man, the same message will bring conviction and salvation.
For the Child of God, the truth that God is indeed sovereign is a wonderful and blessed truth and we praise God for His Grace. No saved person ever says, “I was saved over my objection and against my will. If I had my choice I would still be lost.” He rejoices in the fact that “All things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose.” The fact that God chose me is a testimony to His mercy and grace and everything along the way is just more testament to God’s grace.
The lost person however, is greatly disturbed by the same preaching and it only makes him angry. He hates God and he hates the fact that God is in control. Things are not working to his good as the common grace of God only serves as a witness against him and the hardness of his heart.
The bottom line is that as God is the sovereign and for the believer, that is a wonderful and blessed truth. For the unsaved man, it is awful.