The sovereignty of God has been on my mind recently because of what Linda (my wife) and I have been reading. We are using Robert Murray M'Cheyne's plan this year to read through the Bible. (See here.) Over the last couple of weeks, that plan has resulted in us reading the final quarter of Genesis about Joseph's suffering and exaltation, the first portion of Job and the letter to the Romans.
Here are some thoughts from these passages that came to my mind regarding the sovereignty of God:
-- God is not obligated to explain His sovereign decisions to His people.
God not only permits but even prompts Satan's actions against Job while limiting those actions. But God never provides an explanation to Job recorded in Scripture for why this happened under His sovereign rule.
In Rom. 9, Paul writes of God, "So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires" (v. 17). To this, the apostle says, "You will say to me then,'Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?'" (v. 18).
Paul offers no explanations for the "why" of God's sovereignty. Instead, he writes:
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles (Rom. 9:20-24).-- God's people may view their suffering through the lens of His sovereignty.
Joseph sees beyond the hatred of his brothers and the evil they did against him by selling him into slavery. He understands his humilitiation before his exaltation in Egypt as part of God's sovereign purpose. He tells his brothers:
Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. . . . God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance. Now, therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God (Gen. 45:5-8a).In the final chapter after their father has died, Joseph assures his brothers he will care for them: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive" (Gen. 50:20).
-- Knowing God is more important for His people than knowing the reasons for His sovereign decisions.
Though God does not explain to Job the reasons for his great suffering, He does reveal Himself to Job in a fresh and powerful way (Job 38-41). Job responds not with more questions but with confession of God's greatness and his own sin:
I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. "Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?" Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. "Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me." I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.-- God's people can rest in His sovereign decisions.
In an important paragraph about God's sovereignty, Paul provides this reassurance that God is committed to the benefit of His people: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" (Rom. 8:28).
From just these truths about the absolute sovereignty of God, may we -- as His people by His grace -- rest in the recognition that all His sovereign rule brings into our lives is for our good and a great blessing of those sovereign acts can be a fuller knowledge of Him.
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