The Sovereign God
We all know the formula of stories that begin, “Once upon a time…”
And every good “once upon a time,” ends with “and they lived happily ever after.”
Except they don’t always live happily ever after.
People struggle with temptations for self-murder and sometimes give in to those enticements.
Teenagers “innocently” experiment with street drugs and end up enslaved to those drugs with all the typical kinds of consequences.
Young women become pregnant out of wedlock and complicate that circumstance with an abortion and spend years in regret for both decisions.
Step-parents abuse children and even murder those beloved young ones.
Hard-working fathers lose their jobs and spend two years looking for a comparable job to provide for their families and end up with many financial hardships.
Now the question for many people in all these stories is, “Where is God?” Do these things happen because God is incompetent, or is He just uncaring, or even down right vindictive and mean? Is He ignorant about what to do?
We will have counselees come to us with situations just like the ones above and they will at times accuse God with these stated questions. But God is none of the above. Instead, He is competent, compassionate (loving), and wise—all of which makes Him sovereign over the affairs of men.
Now when we speak of sovereignty what we mean is “God’s providence is His constant care for and His absolute rule over all His creation for His own glory and the good of His people.” [Jerry Bridges]
That is, God’s sovereignty means that He has absolute dominion, authority, and rulership over all things, and He works all things in accordance with His infinite character and eternal purposes.
When we speak of God’s sovereignty in history, we are referring to the truth that God ordains, plans, directs, controls, and rules over all the events of human history. Nothing is a surprise to Him, and nothing happens apart from His direct control over it. And when we talk about God’s sovereignty over human history, we mean that He ordains, plans, directs, controls and rules over and through all the events of every person’s individual life.
When our counselees struggle with difficult personal circumstances, slowly walking them through the truths of God’s sovereignty will help to lead them to confident trust in God and an ability to honor Him despite their trials. What follows are some biblical truths to teach our counselees about God’s direct, sovereign authority over their lives.
God is Sovereign Over the Beginning of Life
God creates all human life; He ordains the arrival of the child (opening and closing womb); He ordains the family into which the child arrives, as David makes clear in Psalm 139:13ff. This was demonstrated in the creation of the first man and woman (Genesis 2:7, 18-25), in the birth of Abraham’s son Isaac (Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1ff), in the arrival of Leah’s children (Genesis 29:31), the lack of children for Elkanah and Hannah (1 Samuel 1:5) and then the subsequent birth of Samuel (1:19ff), the ordering and consecration of Jeremiah’s life (Jeremiah 1:5), and the birth of John the Baptist to Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:13). All these remind us that physical life is not accidental and random, but that God sovereignly gives life at His exact ordained time to all men.
God is Sovereign Over the End of Life
God sovereignly controls the length of all people’s lives; that is His own testimony: “See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand” (Deuteronomy 32:39). From our perspective, death inevitably is untimely, but that is not true of God. Every death is timed exactly according to His decree. So the psalmists say, “My times are in Your hand” (Psalm 31:15) and “behold, You have made my days as handbreadths, And my lifetime as nothing in Your sight; Surely every man at his best is a mere breath” (Psalm 39:5). God is the One who numbers every person’s days and they cannot be lengthened or shortened from His determined will (Job 14:5-6).
God is Sovereign Over Every Activity of Life
God is sovereign over both the “blessings” and “troubles” of life. He watches over and is sovereign over the most insignificant animals as well as the most trivial of details of our own lives—He knows and decrees the life of the common sparrow and orders the numbers of hairs on our heads (which means us older guys have no justifiable complaint when male pattern baldness begins; Matthew 10:29-31). Of far more significance, He is sovereign over the gracious salvation of His children (Ephesians 1:11; see also vv. 3-6).
And He is unafraid to take “credit” for being sovereign over the greatest troubles of life (e.g., Genesis 45:1-5; John 9:3). Whether it is over wicked rulers like Pharaoh (Exodus 9:16) or Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4), or over persecution (John 16:33), or the most evil act ever committed (Acts 2:23), God is sovereign over every sin. [Aside: John Piper’s Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ is an exceedingly helpful resource on this topic.]
Nothing in life ever “just happens” to us. Every event of life is directly from Him or through His hand as a gift to us to make us reliant on Him and to give Him great glory. Cancer and home runs, broken transmissions and sunny days, unbelieving, rebellious children and free cups of coffee are all given by God. Beware of the mindset in our counselees that God is strong enough to provide the good stuff and incapable of preventing the bad stuff. The One who sustains us through a car accident and while on life support could have prevented the accident. If He did not prevent the accident, He was and is still sovereign over it, accomplishing His good purposes for us.
Four Lessons from God’s Sovereignty
We alluded above to the story of Nebuchadnezzar and God’s sovereign taking of his thinking and rule and then sovereign restoration of his mind and kingdom (Daniel 4). That story provides us with (at least) four lessons that are helpful for our counselees as we lead them through harsh trials.
Teach your counselee to honor God for His sovereignty. Daniel 4 repeatedly emphasizes God’s sovereignty over Nebuchadnezzar (vv. 24, 25, 26, 28, 31, 32, 34). The whole eight-year event is designed by God to compel Nebuchadnezzar and Israel and us to see that God is ordering all the affairs of those days to accomplish His purposes. And just as the first thing Noah did when getting off the ark was to build an altar, the first thing Nebuchadnezzar did when coming to His senses was to acknowledge God’s supremacy and authority (4:34). In fact, the verbs in verse 37 indicate continued action—Nebuchadnezzar repeatedly praised, exalted, and honored God as the sovereign King. God humbled him for seven (!!) years and his response was to respect, honor, admire, and worship. What an important lesson this was for the readers of this book who were in captivity to Nebuchadnezzar: a pagan king worshipped and thanked God for an intense and bizarre humiliation. Likewise our counselees must learn to honor God for His sovereign actions in their lives. That honoring is more than just affirming His authority; it is to bless and glorify and praise Him for what He has done. As Jeremiah Burroughs said, “…if a man is to be free from discontent and worry it is not enough merely not to murmur but you must be active in sanctifying God’s name in the affliction.”
Teach your counselee to honor God for His eternal sovereignty. In verse 34, Nebuchadnezzar affirmed that God’s “dominion is an everlasting dominion.” God is eternally sovereign. That is, He is always sovereign over every event and He is always right and good in what He does. We want to teach our counselees to learn to honor God for all His activity in their lives (consider Psalm 115:3; Genesis 50:20; Proverbs 16:33; Lamentations 3:37; Isaiah 45:6; Jeremiah 32:27). We may not always be able to determine the difference between judgment and gift—but we can be sure that every act of God is an act of grace designed to compel our counselees (and us) to love and trust Him more. When one does or doesn’t have cancer, God is sovereign and good. When one’s children walk or don’t walk with Christ, God is sovereign and good.
Teach your counselee to be humble before God’s sovereignty. Because God is sovereign, Nebuchadnezzar reminds himself and his readers that no one on earth has any power to be considered of any account before God; everywhere there is any form of life—in heaven and on earth—God fully accomplishes all His purposes. No one can stop Him. His sovereign will is infinitely irresistible. And even more (and this is Nebuchadnezzar’s point), no one can accuse Him of inappropriate actions. No one can rightly question God (Job 33:12b-13; Isaiah 29:16; 45:9; Romans 9:19-20). God will not share His throne of authority with anyone. If our counselees attempt to “reign with Him” by questioning His actions and judgment or complaining about what He has done, we can warn that He will humble that counselee because He is fundamentally opposed to the proud, as Nebuchadnezzar knew so very well (v. 37; see also 1 Peter 5:5-6). When a counselee is suffering, we want to lead them to humble submission to God and away from discontented questioning of God.
Teach your counselee to be dependent on God’s sovereignty. Good kings will be deposed; bad kings will rule. Gracious gifts will be received and gracious gifts will be lost (“the Lord gives and the Lord takes away,” Job 1:21). In all circumstances God is still ruling, controlling, and guiding to accomplish His purposes. Nebuchadnezzar was right—all His works are true and all His ways are just (righteous, v. 37). Whatever He does is in accord with His truth and His righteousness—even if Nebuchadnezzar eats grass for seven years (or our counselees endure some unexpected hardship). God is righteous and will at the end finally make all things right: trust will be rewarded and unbelief will be condemned. Our focus is to help our counselees glorify God by depending on Him when His sovereign purposes for them are different from what they think might be best.
In April 2000, Pastor James Montgomery Boice was diagnosed with liver cancer. Within about eight weeks he would be in the presence of his Savior. The last time he addressed his beloved congregation, Tenth Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia), was about two weeks after his diagnosis. He said this as he prepared to read the call to worship:
It’s possible, isn’t it, to conceive of God as sovereign and yet indifferent? God’s in charge, but he doesn’t care. But it’s not that. God is not only the one who is in charge; God is also good. Everything he does is good.… If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good. So that’s the way we want to accept it and move forward, and who knows what God will do?
God is sovereign over all our personal affairs. And in all our life events, He is good. We and our counselees can and must trust Him and flee to Him as our safe refuge.