A Biblical Perspective - Sovereignty (Part 1 of 2)

Introduction to Biblical Perceptions

This series offers a biblical perspective on various aspects of life, particularly current events and personal issues. It employs a specific hermeneutic: approaching Scripture with a pro-God, anti-sin mindset. We are pro-what God wants, regardless of circumstances or excuses.

For example, in Matthew 19, is it a marriage text or a divorce text? Marriage vows include "till death do us part," with an exception for infidelity, but the passage emphasizes the unbreakableness of marriage. The disciples' response—"If that's the case, better not to marry"—highlights Jesus' teaching on its permanence. From the beginning, it was not so with divorce. This series approaches passages pro-God, not pro-self.

Another example: When Scripture describes God decreeing judgment, like an angel slaying women and children in Jerusalem, a biblical perception sees it as grievous that they sinned against a holy God, centering on how God receives glory and Christ is the theme. It's a pro-God, anti-self, anti-sin attitude, asking how God is glorified, not how the passage benefits us personally.

Over the next three Sundays, we'll examine biblical perceptions on the sovereignty of God (today), love and acceptance (next), and what to think when sinners seem to prevail.

Proper perceptions lead to proper reactions. If you perceive a book flying at you, dodging is the right reaction—even if it wasn't moving. Wrong perceptions lead to wrong behaviors, hard to correct without changing the perception.

For sovereignty specifically: If we don't perceive God as vengeful, wrathful, or hating sin righteously—while affirming God is love—we'll react poorly to sin. Or if we don't see God as a loving, disciplinary Father who doesn't tolerate ongoing sin in His people, we err. Proper perceptions lead to proper reactions.

1. Christians Should Luxuriate in the Sovereignty of God

Christians should luxuriate—self-indulgently delight—in God's sovereignty, basking in it like the Psalmist: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." God's sovereignty is the epitome of luxury: its beauty, glory, magnificence, majesty.

As a biblical counselor, nothing brings more hope to despair than: "Your God is on the throne, reigning in your life, working all things for good." That shifts the atmosphere from darkness to light.

But luxuriating requires examining God's sovereignty as revealed in Scripture, not our logical reasonings about man's will. Some aspects may seem scary, as intended biblically, to captivate us with His glory—like Paul glimpsing the heavens, but through Scripture.

We're finite; eternity won't exhaust knowing God. Let that encourage digging for treasures in Scripture, sharing them like a "gold party."

Psalm 115:3
Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.

Consider these passages revealing God's sovereignty:

Job 2:10
Shall we receive good from God, and not evil?

In Job, God permits Satan to afflict Job, yet Job confesses: "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away." Job didn't sin or charge God wrongly—he charged God with right. God decreed this as the right thing, foreknowing and determining it.

Luke 22:31-32
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.

Satan demanded, but Jesus' prayer limited it.

Lamentations 3:37
Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?

James 4:13-17
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit." Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring... Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." ... Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

James rebukes boasting plans without acknowledging God's will. Knowing what's right includes recognizing sovereignty—saying "if the Lord wills."

Isaiah 43:13
Also henceforth I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?

God does whatever pleases Him; none can thwart Him.

Seeing this fosters creatureliness: He dwells in boundless heaven (His throne), earth as His footstool (Isaiah 66). We feel small, humble before His magnificence.

2. Christians Should Listen to What the Sovereign Lord Says About Their Lives

James 4:14
What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Daniel 4:35
All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?"

We are as nothing compared to God, Whose existence defines existence.

Psalm 39:5
Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath.

Your life is a breath—inhale, exhale, gone.

John 3:36
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

Romans 3:12
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.

Perceiving God rightly requires perceiving humanity rightly: as mist, nothing, a breath, worthless without Him. We barely scratched the surface.

Proper Perception: Focus on What the Sovereign Lord Says About Christ

We've beheld the sovereignty of God. He is sovereign over good and over evil. When this God speaks about humanity, it's very negative: worthless, under the wrath of God, insignificant—your life is as nothing.

Then this God says in Matthew 3:16-17:

Immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

There are two reactions: you're significantly offended that God says that about Jesus and not about you, or you're blown away. That's who you love, that's whom your favor rests upon—this lowly human born in a manger. That's who you derive a significant degree of pleasure from.

What does it take for that to become mine? How does Jesus have all your love, all your affection? Can I stand in the way of that? Can I vicariously receive that somehow? How can I get that kind of affection from this sovereign God who creates prosperity and disaster?

If this is who he loves, then everything that happens to him is because of love, because of the will of his Father, and for the entirety of his glory—because this is the Son of God. He cannot be denied glory, praise, or honor. Everything that happens to him surrounds the principles of the glory of God and the pleasure of God. As Hebrews 12 says, Jesus endured with joy, knowing he was doing the will of his Father and bringing a host to worship and glorify him forever.

How do I get in on that?

Receiving the Sovereignty of God

1. Causes Us to Despair of Ourselves

Receiving the sovereignty of God should cause us to despair of ourselves. You've felt this when seeing what God says about humanity: I've got nothing to offer that grants me audience with this God, nothing to stay his wrathful hand. I come entirely empty-handed. That's exactly correct. It frees you up for the next step.

2. Causes Us to Be Desperate for Christ

Receiving the sovereignty of God should cause us to be desperate for Christ. If that's where your joy is, if that's where your pleasure rests, I want to be like him. I want everything about my life to permeate Christ.

This is revolutionary. It's not just my Sunday best. If everything in my life was like Christ—in marriage, workplace, suffering, even death—and God is thoroughly well pleased with me and everything I do.

The same God says nothing can thwart my plan, nothing can stay my purpose. Isaiah 14:27 and 46:10: God's purpose cannot be thwarted; it's set in stone, nobody can reverse it. Romans 8:28-30:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

That's God's purpose for you: to be conformed to the image of his Son.

I want to be in him, like Christ. Ephesians 1:4: He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. His purpose was to save. In the sovereignty of God, I had nothing, offered nothing, deserved nothing—he gave everything freely. I am entirely his, chosen in Christ before creation, where his pleasure and love exist.

Isaiah 43:13: No one can deliver out of my hand. John 10:28-29: I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

Hebrews 6:17-20: When God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us, which we have as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

God's goodness towards you is impossible to thwart. With that much sovereignty, everything that happens—even things that are evil (woe to those who call evil good and good evil)—God's purpose is always good.

3. Causes Us to Be Dead to Sin

As a logical consequence, perceiving the sovereignty of God should cause us to be dead to sin. Sin is what God hates: worthless, ruined, misery. Christ is the embodiment of what's good and pleasing to God. We don't want sin anymore—only Christ.

When we perceive God in his sovereignty, we see him well within his rights to decree what is good, what is evil, what we should experience. He can be the God of our peace or our storm. Finding he is pleased with Christ, we long for him. Sin is reprehensible because it doesn't bring pleasure to this infinitely sovereign God.