sovereignty of god

God is sovereign in all things and over all things

Sovereign Grace Bible Church of Ada, OK

Founding Pastor Rick Duncan joins us for the fifth week of "The Pursuit of Purpose", asking us "Are you approaching God like a skeptical, bitter, cynical, wounded employee or like a beloved child? Do you see God's hands as hands that punish, wound, or stiff-arm you or do you see His hands as hands that love, care, and guide you?"

Ahab tries to avoid the judgement of God, but without success.

Ahab tries to avoid the judgement of God, but without success.

He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. Acts 28:30,31

The Sovereignty of God is seen as He works out his purposes through Paul and his team in his second missionary journey. First, Paul’s plans to visit cities in the province of Asia were prevented by the Holy Spirit as were plans to move north to the province of Bithynia. Second, as a result of a dream/vision from the Lord, they headed to Macedonia. Third, we continue to see God’s hand in the work as they reach out in the city of Philippi. Luke focuses on three people in Philippi.

God is sovereign over all. Every detail, and His grace trumps the law.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Isaiah 31:1-9. The main subject of the sermon is why we should trust God's sovereignty over our man-made plans.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Isaiah 31:1-9. The main subject of the sermon is why we should trust God's sovereignty over our man-made plans.

             

- SERMON TRANSCRIPT -

So turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 31. And as you do, I just, I wanna ask a searching question of you, one of those interesting questions that you just kind of line yourself, your life up against, but here it is. If your house were burning and you had only a short time to get something out of the house, what would you get? Now, of course, immediately you're gonna ask, is everyone safe? Is everyone out of the house? And that's right, that's fine. Start with the people. They're irreplaceable. People are unique, and so we wanna be sure that everyone's safe, but in my little story, everyone's safe. Everyone's out, and you have a chance to get something out of the house. One thing that you can carry. What would you pick? What would it be? Would it be a photo album? Would it be some mementos that are irreplaceable? If they burn, it can never be replaced, can't buy them in a store or something like that... Maybe an heirloom, a family heirloom, maybe a box of silver that came from your grandmother, and you just could never get that back. Something precious like that. Doesn't matter what it is. You're just thinking about it right now, okay? And so that question causes your value system to rise up and be exposed, doesn't it? What it is you value among your possessions. It just does. Friends, that's exactly what happens when we're going through trials, and they're not so much the value system, but this one question. What are you trusting in? It just rises up to meet the trial. It exposes, it brings to the surface your trust structure, your savior, if I could be that bold.

So, for example, let's say you're going through a health crisis, let's say you're awaiting the results of some pretty serious diagnostic tests for perhaps a fatal illness and you haven't heard yet, and your mind is going through the various options. What if it is cancer of that type? What if it's leukemia? What if it is a rare liver disorder that is usually fatal? What then? What are you gonna think? Well, it's amazing what medical science can do these days. It's incredible what the pharmaceutical researchers can come up with. Surely they'll come up with something to save my life, or we live in a great city, the City of Medicine, there's got to be some skilled surgeons, some skilled medical people. You start having these thoughts. Friends, your trust structure is floating to the surface. And my question is not so much do you have these thoughts, but on what are you ultimately resting in that time? That's the question.

Or suppose it's an economic trial, maybe you're facing the loss of your job, or you already have lost your job. Maybe just dim economic times, difficult times. Maybe in your company, 30, 40% of the workforce has already been let go, and you know that this week there are more layoffs coming. And you're anticipating, you're looking ahead to the future and thinking, "Okay, how am I gonna face this trial? Well, it's okay, I have a year's worth of salary saved up." Trust structure starting to float to the surface. ‘I have a great resume, even if I lose this job, I've got some great contacts in the industry, I've got some friends I can call, they owe me some favors anyway, I don't know if they remember that, but I remember. And so I can make some phone calls, I can network, and I'll be employed soon.’ Your trust structure is rising up to meet the trial. And that goes for any trial that we face. Frankly, that is exactly why God brings those trials to begin with. Frequently called in Scripture, fiery trials. Peter calls them, ‘Don't be surprised at the fiery trial you're going through.’ At the end of our scripture here today, in verse nine, it says, “Declares the Lord whose fire is in Zion. Zion's, the city of God, where he dwells with his people. Whose furnaces in Jerusalem. He's bringing a fire on his people, and that fiery trial tests the people.” It shows them what the alloys are in their heart. It causes their trust structure to rise to the top. 

And here's the thing: our God is a jealous God, and he is very jealous over your trust structure, your trust mechanism, your heart. He's zealous over how it is, what it is you trust. He wants that. He yearns for that. He's jealous over that. He wants you to trust in him and in him alone, and in nothing else, so he's gonna bring trials in your life because frankly, you, like me, we're all the same, we're trusting in the Lord plus some other things. You know you are. And he wants to purify that, and as I said in my prayer, I alluded to it, it doesn't happen during the easy times. It doesn't happen during the times of prosperity. Those trust structures aren't exposed, and we're not caused to turn away from them during easy times. And as you know, I love the hymn, which has these words in it, "See the incarnate God ascended. Pleads the merit of his blood, venture on him, venture holy, let no other trust intrude." Those words, they're not scripture, but just powerful hymn, and they just weigh on me, each one. Any other trust than Jesus, who shed his blood for me is an intrusion between me and God, has no place there. And yet I know of my heart that other trusts are intruding all the time, and it's hard to keep them at bay. And so the Lord must bring, does bring significant, painful trials into our lives to expose, to strip away any deceptions and illusions and to show us what we are leaning on, what we are relying on, what we were trusting on. 'Cause he wants it for himself.

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"Our God is a jealous God, and he is very jealous over your trust structure, your trust mechanism, your heart. He's zealous over how it is, what it is you trust. He wants that. He yearns for that. He's jealous over that. He wants you to trust in him and in him alone, and in nothing else,"

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That's what Isaiah 31 is really ultimately about, Isaiah 31 is ultimately about that. It's a series of prophecies given at the end of the 20s of Isaiah on into the 30s, 28-35, a series of oracles, a series of prophecies made by the prophet Isaiah, the Old Testament scholars time them somewhere between 705 BC and 701 BC. By that time, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had already been exiled by the Assyrians for their wickedness and their sin, their idolatry. They're already gone. Southern Kingdom of Judah is still threatened, significantly threatened by Assyria. They're facing, as far as they're concerned, imminent invasion. We've said before the Assyrians were the Nazis of the ancient world. They were a vicious tyrannical empire-building people. They used psychological warfare, they used cruelty, and they were adding kingdom to kingdom, and they were seeking to advance their own empire. That's who they were. They were intimidating, they were terrifying, and they were coming. That's a fiery trial, and it was exposing the Jews of Judah, that Southern Kingdom, exposing their trust structure. Now during that time, godly King Hezekiah was doing some works of reform in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, finally getting rid of those offensive high places and causing the Jews to worship in Jerusalem as they had been commanded to do by the law of Moses. Those high places were stubborn errors in the lives of the people that Hezekiah finally saw through to the removal of them. But he was also surrounded by some, it seems, faithless counselors who were giving him advice and pushing him to do something more than just spiritual answers. They were reaching out to Egypt in particular, sending emissaries, ambassadors down to Egypt with gold and silver on camel backs and donkey backs, making their way across that Negev, that desert to Egypt to get some advice and counsel from the wise men of Egypt, and to seek military protection from the Egyptians. And that deeply offended God. He was deeply offended by that. 

I. Woe to Those Who Trust in Egypt Rather Than God (vs. 1-3)

It really bothered him, and so there's a series of oracles, one after the other about this very thing, so look at verse one, "Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots, and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or seek help from the Lord."

So we begin again with that prophetic word, "Woe" it's very common. It was used more by Isaiah the prophet than any other prophet. He said it about himself. You remember in Isaiah 6, "Woe is me. I'm ruined." It's a word of prophetic judgment really of spiritual danger from the Holy God. Now, an impending judgment was coming. God in his grace would send a prophet like Isaiah to speak a warning, and he might introduce that warning with the word "Woe.” God was offended. He was offended by their overtures to Egypt. It's angering him that they are reaching out to Egypt and they're not relying on him, that they're putting their faith in Egypt's cavalry. And they're forgetting God And so he speaks this word of warning, this word "Woe." Woe to you for doing this. Woe to you. So they were terrified of Assyria, and they're making provisions and plans. They had stratagems for what to do with the impending Assyrian invasion. That was their strategy, but they were forgetting the real danger. The real danger was not Assyria. The real danger was God. The real danger was God. He had said this earlier in Isaiah 8:12-13. There he commanded the prophet himself. Isaiah said, "Do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The Lord Almighty is the one you are to fear. He is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread." So in effect, Judah, you're afraid of the Assyrians, and you are missing the whole point. They wouldn't even be coming if your relationship with me were right. They wouldn't even be coming. 

God is the issue. God is always the issue, not the trials or whatever you're going through. It's always about your relationship with God. God and God alone. Simply put, from Romans 8:31, "If God is for us, who could be against us?" Right? Well, let's turn it around. I think the corollary is true. If God is against you, then who cares who's for you. How terrifying is it if God has you in his crosshairs for judgment?

So, the key question coming to us as we look in the mirror of the Word, as we look down in the mirror of Isaiah 31, the key question just rising up off these nine verses is, in what are you trusting? What are you trusting in today? What are you relying on? Are you relying on your own version of Egypt's cavalry and chariots and all that? The word rely means to stay or support. Something you can lean your weight on. What are you leaning your weight on spiritually? Now, the leaders in Judah, they had it all figured out. They said, ‘Now listen, we've got a great infantry. We're really good on the ground, but we don't have any horses. We don't have any cavalry. So it'd be really, really good if we could get some horses. Egypt's got plenty of horses.’ And so they thought about that, thought about Egypt. And ESV has a little bit different translation of verse one, "Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses," listen, "Who trust in chariots because they are many, and rely on horsemen because they are strong." You see the quantity of Egypt's horsemen and the quality, the strength, and power of their chariots, that stimulated faith in the hearts of the Jews, that stimulated trust, their trust was rising up to their thoughts of, ‘Hey, they've got a lot of horses. They get a lot of... Hey, I think that might be something we can do.’ So that's the ground. It's the reason for their trust.

But they were giving no thought to the Lord's might or to his wisdom. And as I said, even deeper, to God's role in bringing the Assyrians, they, at the end of that verse, it says, "But do not look to the Holy One of Israel or seek help from the Lord." In all their plans and schemes, they gave no thought to the Lord, they did not consider the fact that God has infinitely more power than the Egyptians or Assyrians, or all the nations of earth combined, and even worse... And we'll get to it later, they neglected the fact of their own idolatries, their own sins that were causing God to act in this way anyway, bringing the Assyrians. They weren't thinking about that.

Now, this whole thing, as I've mentioned before, was directly forbidden, was foreseen, and directly forbidden by God in the book of Deuteronomy. Before they even entered the Promised Land. God spoke to Israel through Moses. They had already been delivered from Egypt by God's mighty hand and outstretched arm. They had sadly had to wander in the desert for 40 years because of their own sinful unbelief, but now the time had come to enter the Promised Land. They're there, and the plains of Moab across the Jordan River, and God gave them the law a second time, Deuteronomy. And he added to it, he foresaw the day when Israel would have a king. They didn't have one at that point, they had Moses as a prophet and leader, but they had no human king. But he foresaw the day when they would have a king. Deuteronomy 17 gives restrictions and commands about the king, and he says in Deuteronomy 17:16, "The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, you are never to go back that way again." It's already told them. This is the very thing you must not do. Friends, as Jesus put it very plainly: no one can serve two masters, and you can't trust in two saviors. It's gonna be one or the other. And they had already made their decision. They were trusting Egypt and not looking to the Lord and relying on God. They made their decision. And in the scripture, you see again and again in the Old Testament, the arithmetic of God doesn't add up to man, you know what I'm saying? God just does things mathematically differently than we would do. 

I mean take the case of Gideon, for example. Gideon, you have too many men to fight this battle. That's weird. Too many men? God, I was praying that you had actually helped me with the mustering here. We're not getting a great turnout here. They're afraid of the Midianites. As well, they should be. No, no, still you have too many men. You remember, little by little, he whittles the troop's down to just a small number of men, 300. And they go into battle with no weapons in their hands at all, I mean, that's just... God's ways are not our ways. But he's very plain about why it must be this way, so that you will not boast against me, that it was by your own strength you defeated the Midianites. He does this again and again. God's arithmetic just doesn't add up. Take the case of Asa in 2 Chronicles 14, when the Kushites come with a million men, a million men, myriad of myriads. NIV just gives us a vast army, but I like a million men. What do you think? Especially since Asa's troops number 300,000. Outnumbered three to one. Who's gonna win? Whoever God wants to win. It's really that simple. Whoever God wants to win. In that case, he wanted Asa and his 300,000 men to win. Or take the case of Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20, when the Moabites and Ammonites came out again with a vast army, and Jehoshaphat didn't even go out and fight. They just went out and worshipped and waited, and the Moabites and Ammonites killed each other to a man. And then Jehoshaphat collected the booty. What a powerful, mighty army we have. It's like, yeah, you're good at collecting booty for a battle you didn't even fight. God does this again and again.

Now, this passage is not, I think, reject military preparations out of hand as though somehow they're wrong. It's not saying that. There are ample evidences of godly people in the Bible making military preparations. Jesus even talked about that, about you see an invading army and too many men, and you sit down and calculate, and you send out emissaries to win peace. Jesus even talked about that. But the issue is trusting in that. Thinking that because you have a mighty army, a big army, you're definitely gonna win all the battles, and forgetting God in all of that. So a military preparation, fine, as long as it's a subset of openly trusting in God to deliver. 

This is, I think, a good warning to our nation, in particular. To the United States of America. America has an astonishing military budget. Maybe you haven't looked it up. It's absolutely astonishing how much money we spend in military. How much is it, pastor? Okay, well, all the nations on earth together spend, it's estimated last year, spent 1.7 trillion dollars on military, all the nations together. America spent 711 billion of that. Billion is just one thing over from trillion. That's 700 billion that heading toward a trillion. Simply 42% of the world's military expenditures are spent by the United States of America, 42%. And as a matter of fact, if you look at the next 14 nations combined, I don't have it memorized so I'll read it, “China, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Brazil, Italy, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and Turkey.” Add all of them up. That equals the US, roughly. The next 14 nations combined. What's my point? Well, the point is, it's easy to think that because of all that money, we are safe from attack. You see what I'm saying? We're going to win every battle. The really scary part about that expenditure is, it's coming at a time when we are becoming increasingly secular and increasingly allergic to public displays of faith and God language in the public square, that is a dangerous combination, so be warned, O people who trust in military strength, but do not look to the Lord, it comes right up off of verse one, look at it. Ecclesiastes 9:11, "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong." That's strange. It's in Bible, or this one, Psalm 33:16-17, "No king is saved by the size of his army. No warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all of its great strength, it cannot save." That's a partner verse to the thing being dealt with here in Isaiah 31. Don't trust in the horse. It can't save you. 

So that's where secularism and our pride and wealth come to threaten our very existence. Secularism, keeping God out of the public square, making God irrelevant to everything, keeping God language out. That's secularism. Pride. America's determination to have the best stuff. Always the best that money can buy. Wealth, having the economic means to buy a lot of that best stuff, for example, the ability to afford a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at 4.5 billion dollars each, and that's without the airplanes. The total cost of the 10 Nimitz-class carriers we have, close to 100 billion dollars just for the carriers and the airplanes. So, now we Christians based, instructed, by text like Isaiah 31, we should know better. And what we have to do is be light in a dark place and we need to be salt in a corrupt world and say, ‘None of that will deliver us if we are alienated from God.’ And so therefore, let's not be alienated from God. I'm not saying anything about therefore, let's spend less money. I'm not even saying that, I'm saying what is the trust structure? That's what I'm asking.

Ultimately, the issue here is God, and in verses two through five, we see the greatness of God's power, both to destroy and to deliver. God here lays out some of his credentials as Savior. He does it in a marvelous way, it's amazing how they forgot what God had done in the past. Now, Egypt was known for a number of things, known for its wisdom, its wise counselors, known for its economic bounty because of the constantly flowing Nile and the abundant harvest, known for its military strength. Let's take wisdom, for example. The pyramids, as a whole, but especially the great pyramid of Giza, is it just a display of human ingenuity and engineering and just intellectual prowess, it's just staggering. Do you realize that the great pyramid of Giza was the tallest human structure for 38 centuries. For 3,800 years, the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made thing on earth. Finally, a cathedral in London passed it by in 1525. And then after that, it was an average of 50 to 75 years to till whatever was number one, and then it would be bypassed by the next building, now it's down to like months, I think. You get that honor for about 18 months and the next high rise takes it from you. No one's ever gonna break the Great Pyramids record of 38 centuries as number one. So basically, that's a testimony to incredible wisdom and skill, intellectual prowess. So, the Egyptians are wise. Look at verse two, speaking of God, “Yet he, too, is wise and can bring disaster, he does not take back his words.” I meditated for a long time on the word too, it's just one of the most beautiful under statements here in the Bible, this is Almighty God saying, ‘Alright, I grant that the Egyptians are wise, but I'm wise too. I can do wisdom, I'm good at wisdom. Look to me, look to me. I've got some wisdom for you, how much wisdom do you have? Well, tell you what, let's just do some comparison, they built the pyramid, I built the earth it sits on. And I built their brains too, as they thought about how to do the architecture.’

II. The Greatness of God’s Power Both to Destroy and Deliver

Oh how great, how infinitely vast is the wisdom of God, meditate with me on the wisdom of God now. Psalm 104:24, "How many are your works, O Lord? In wisdom you have made them all." Do you sense in Scripture God's proud of the things he's made? I do. Proud of the ostrich, how fast it can run, proud of the eagle, how high it can soar, proud of the stars, the fact that each one of them is there named by him, and none of them is missing because of his mighty power. he's proud of the things he's made and rightly so. He created heaven and earth. He made the seasons, everything that passes through them, he made the skies and all that soars through them, he made the dry ground and all of the things that grow and flourish, he made the seeds, the genetic code for those plants. Mighty cypress trees and oak trees, little grass down low on the ground, spreading vines. God created all of these things. He, too, is wise, he can do wisdom. He's vast in understanding, and as a matter of fact, no human being can ever be God's counselor. You can't teach him anything. He can teach you a lot of things, but you can't teach him anything, there's never been a new thought in God's mind, he's omniscient. So why in the world would you go down to the counselors of Egypt and neglect to ask me for wisdom? And actually, when it comes to trials, I think it's good to keep a cluster, a triad of attributes of God together, three of them together, keep them in mind: God's wisdom, God's power and God's love. Those three things together are everything you'll need to understand dark providences that come in your life. God is wise in bringing the trials that you need into your life, he's very wise in that, he does not bring you more than you can handle, but he will not bring you less than you need. He will bring less than you want, I can testify to that. 

He'll bring less. He'll bring more pain than you want, we want less. We were are like, ‘God, this pain is too much, I would dial it down a bit.’ Don't forget the wisdom of God, God knows exactly what you need. So God is wise in making a plan, what do we mean by the wisdom of God? J.I. Packer in Knowing God puts it this way, “the wisdom of God... Wisdom in general, means to identify the highest and best and most glorious end plus the best route or means to get to that end. So that both the ends and the means are justified completely by the wisdom of God.” He knows what he's getting at, and he knows how to get there. It's the wisdom of God. So he has an incredible plan, and he has the power to bring his plan out. If God were wise but not powerful, then he'd be like some kind of wizened old wise man on some mountain somewhere having great ideas, but having no power to influence the world at all. If he were powerful and not wise, he would be like any one of a number of human tyrants that we've seen in the last number of centuries that had great power, but were wicked and corrupt. And add to that the love of God, the fact that God loves you like an adopted son or daughter, he's not going to use his power and wisdom and trample you, but everything is done out of love for you, for your brothers and sisters. That's how you understand these trials.

So, God is wise and he has the power to bring disaster. God says, ‘I can do wisdom and I can do disaster too.’ And he does not take back his words. So unlike human counselors who may say something and later say, ‘Well, I have a better idea now, or a better insight,’ etcetera. God doesn't ever have to do that. Numbers 23:19, "God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?" God never has to take back his words, ever. And God has decreed destruction for his enemies, look at verse two, "He will rise up against the house of the wicked, he will rise up against those who help evildoers." God's not merely a theory, he's not the God of the deists or the stoics that just stays out of human affairs. God interferes and meddles, by the perspective of those who don't want him to do that, God runs the universe by the perspective of those who love what he's doing, he is actively involved in human history, directly involved. And so God has made a plan, that plan was fashioned, it was created before the foundation of the world, nothing has been added to it since, nothing has been taken away from it, since he does not take back his words. Everything right on schedule.

Isaiah 14:24, "The Lord Almighty has sworn surely as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will stand." Isaiah 14:26-27, "This is the plan determined for the whole world; this is the hand stretched out over all nations, for the Lord Almighty has purposed and who can thwart him, his hand is stretched out and who is able to turn it back?" So as I was teaching the men's Bible study a few weeks ago, just those two words, God's plan, God's hand, God's plan, God's hand. Wise plan, omnipotent hand. Couple that with God's tremendous love, God is love, and you see the beauty of everything God is doing in this world. By contrast, however, the Egyptians are men and not God. Look at verse three, "That the Egyptians are men and not God; their horses are flesh and not spirit. When the Lord stretches out his hand, he who helps will stumble and he who has helped with fall; both will perish together." Now, the contrast here is not flesh versus spirit in a dualistic sort of sense, it's just human, mortal and all that, versus God. "God is spirit," Jesus says, "those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." God's help is infinitely more powerful than man's help, because they're just offering horse flesh, basically, they're just offering horse flesh, and wouldn't you much rather have the infinite power of the Spirit of God on your side? Now, that's part of the problem, isn't it? God is spirit, he's therefore invisible. He's like a wind. We can't see him, we don't know that he's even there. Therefore, most people don't even believe that he exists, “They say in their hearts, there is no God.” God's existence, his activity must be taken by faith, must be discerned by faith, and he declares that it is his will that both those who help wrongly and those who receive the wrong help, both of them will perish together. Remember, he spoke of a wall at the beginning of this chapter on that. So you go out, you get your Egyptian cavalry, you go get your Egyptian counselors, both the Egyptian calvary and counselors and those who hire them will fall together. He's decreed this. 

God is mighty and powerful, and he is undaunted by human power and prowess. He's not intimidated by it at all, he gives us two beautiful images in verses four and five. The first image is God as a mighty lion. Don't you love this? I don't know if this is where C.S. Lewis got it, got his image of Aslan as Jesus, a lion, maybe a lion of the tribe of Judah, I don't know. But I love this verse, look what he says in verse four, "This is what the Lord says to me as a lion growls, a great lion over his prey, and though a whole band of shepherds is called together against him, he's not frightened by their shouts, or disturbed by their clamor—so the Lord Almighty will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and on its heights." It's a great image. So you have this, I get a picture of a lion coming in and grabbing some sheep, let's say, and dragging it off from the flock and kind of settling down to consume it under a tree. A shepherd sees it happen and thinks I better go get some reinforcements. So he gets all of his shepherd friends, like 18 of 'em, let's say, and they kind of keep a distance from this lion who is feeding on this carcass, now this mangled thing, and they're trying to shout and yell and make banging noises and all that, and you get that feeling, the lion is just eating and looks up, and he's just not in any way moved or intimidated, he's not going to move at all, there's nothing they can do to scare him. God is like that, that's what the text says. There is nothing that we can do as a human race, all seven billion of us, there's nothing we can do to scare God. There's nothing we can do to intimidate him or move him off his purpose. Psalm two is the best photo of this in the Bible, the best image of this, "Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain, the kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Christ, his anointed one. The one enthroned in heaven laughs, the Lord scoffs at them, then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath." What do you think would happen to those 18 shepherds if the lion leaves the carcass and starts running right at 'em? They're gonna scatter like the chaff before the whirlwind. It is very, very important for us to meditate on the greatness of God compared to human beings. We fear man too much, God's not afraid of us at all.

So that's the first image. The second image is of a bird kind of hovering protectively over a nest, think an eagle here over a bunch of little eaglets. Verse five, "Like birds hovering overhead, the Lord Almighty will shield Jerusalem; he will shield it and deliver it, he will ‘pass over’ it and rescue it." So it's kind of two different images; the first is an image of God devouring a carcass and nothing can move him from finishing his devouring, and the second image is of, maybe a mother eagle sheltering and protecting her young and nothing can get in there to hurt them. And God does both to Jerusalem, interestingly. Now here we have, I think, a clear reference to the Passover. It's in quotations in NIV, maybe also in the ESV, “He will shield it, he will ‘pass over’ it.” Do you see? 'Cause it's the same Hebrew word for the Passover. It's pretty much the same thing that God did in Egypt to begin with, where he told them to take the blood of a lamb and painted over the door posts and the sides and the angel of death would see that blood and pass over and not bring death on the firstborn of anyone in that house, but he brought the misery of judgment on all of the first born of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on the throne down to the firstborn of the slave woman at the well, all of them lost if they were not protected by the blood.

And so God is gonna do that again, he's going to send out an angel and that angel is gonna pass over the city of Jerusalem, and he's gonna come down after his enemies, but this time it's not gonna be just household, household, household, one, one, one, it's gonna be the entire Assyrian army that's going to perish that night. 185,000 dying in one night. This is very much like what God says as not just the mother eagle, but Jesus gives us the same idea, but different imagery when he says in John chapter 10, “I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me is greater than all; and no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” We are completely safe in the protection of our Savior, and he will hover over us and shield us and protect us from any enemy so that we may not be harmed.

III. A Call to Repentance: Turn from Idols to the Living God (vs. 6-7)

Well, God having given this warning, ‘Woe to you who go down to Egypt,’ and giving a promise that he is going to shield Jerusalem and defend it and deliver it, now gives them a calling to repentance. He calls on them to repent in verse six and seven, "Return to him you have so greatly revolted against, O Israelites. For in that day every one of you will reject the idols of silver and idols of gold your hands have made." So here is this call to repentance and to return, to return to him, turn back to him, and look what it says in verse six, "To him you have so greatly revolted against." These people have wandered away and they are to return to the one they have greatly revolted against. This is a profound statement. 

True repentance means seeing the greatness of your sin, dealing with it honestly. The revolt, the rebellion of our hearts is deeper than we think it is, it's a deeper issue than we think it is. Proverbs 20:5, "The purposes of a man's heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding will draw them out." Okay? So our rebellion against God is deeper than we thought it was, but the love of God in Christ is deeper. Praise God for that song, "Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus." And your estimation of how deep God's love for you in Christ, it is directly proportional to the conviction you have over your own deep rebellion against him. If your sins were light small things and you have a light, small savior and a light, small salvation. And you're no true prophet or no true pastor if you tell the people that their sins are light, small things. Jeremiah 6:14, "The false prophets have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, peace, peace when there is no peace." That's not real healing, friends. You don't put Band-Aids over things that need surgery. And so for us, we have to deal honestly, we have to say verse six is about me, return to him you have so greatly revolted against, don't make light of your rebellions and don't make light of your idolatries. Verse seven, "For in that day, every one of you will reject the idols of silver and gold your sinful hands have made." You know what this is? Look at it just grammatically, this is a prophecy. Isn't that marvelous? Not you ought to, or you should, or you better. No, no, no, you will. You will most certainly reject all your idols, you'll hate them all, you'll throw them away to the rodents and bats, he says in Isaiah 2:20. You'll throw them away like a menstrual cloth, he says in Isaiah 30. You're gonna throw 'em away. You'll hate them and you'll throw them away. So I just say, ‘Lord, do that. Let me hate it now. The sooner I can throw them away, the better.’ Amen, hallelujah. And this is a prediction of revival, not some of you will throw away some of your idols, all of you will throw away all of them. Every one of you will throw away all of your idols that your sinful hands have made. This is genuine repentance, you'll hate them, those idols, and turn away from them, and turn to the God you have revolted against, and you'll love him, and you will follow him.

IV. Thus Says the Lord: Assyria Will Fall (vs. 8-9)

And, says the Lord, ‘I'm going to kill Assyria. You don't need to send to Egypt. I'm telling you what I'm going to do. I've told you again and again, I'll tell you again, I'm going to kill them.’ Look at verse eight and nine, Assyria will fall. I'm gonna kill them, ““Assyria will fall by a sword that is not of man, a sword not of mortals will devour them, they will flee before the sword, the young men will be put to forced labor. Their stronghold will fall because of terror; at the site of the battle standard their commanders will panic,” declares the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, whose furnace is in Jerusalem.” The mission to Egypt is worthless, you don't need it, don't send your gold and silver down there, they're not going to help you, their help is worthless, I'm going to act directly and a supernatural sword is gonna come on the Assyrian army, a sword not of many,he says it twice, "A sword not of mortals." Very plain, what he's going to do. And not only that, he goes beyond it. He says, ‘Their fortress, Nineveh, all their mighty fortress cities, they're gonna fall too.’ Actually, this is going to be effectively the end of the Assyrian empire; they're going to start running when they see the battle standard, they will lose their courage, they will lose their confidence, and they're going to get conquered by the Babylonians, that's coming up. God is a consuming fire, and the Assyrians will be consumed in his furnace. 

V. Applications

What applications can we take from this? Well, first, I always ask in Isaiah, how does this point to Christ? Well, let's go back to verse two, "He, too, is wise." How wise is God? Or let's ask this question, what is the greatest display of the wisdom of God there has ever been? Is it creation? No. No, it's not. I mean, it's true in Psalm 104:24, "How wise is God, how manifold his works and wisdom, he made them all," that's great, but there's a greater wisdom on display. What is the greatest display of the wisdom of God there has ever been? The cross of Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 1:23-24, "We preach Christ crucified to the Greek's foolishness, to the Jew's stumbling block, but to those whom God has chosen, Christ the power of God and Christ the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God,” so to speak, “Is wiser than man's wisdom."

So here's the wisdom of God for you. I think you know, the Assyrians aren't coming for you. Do you know that? It's like, ‘Great, Pastor. Now we're ready for the Assyrian invasion.’ Well, it's not going to come, the Assyrians are gone, they've been destroyed, but that doesn't mean you're out of danger. There is the same danger facing you as faced the people back then: the holiness of God, the law of God. Judgment day is coming. It is appointed to each one of us to die once and after that to face the judgment. Are you ready? There's only one defense for the holy inquiry of God on judgment day, and that's the shed blood of Jesus atoning for your sins and the covering of Jesus's righteousness given you as a free gift. Trust in him by faith. That is the wisdom of God for you. Do you Christians still need to hear those words? I do. Christ is for me, the power of God and the wisdom of God. I can't get tired of hearing that. So the gospel, I plead with you. Understand Jesus is the only savior, the only defense for that coming judgment, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given unto men by which we must be saved,” Acts 4:12.

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"There is the same danger facing you as faced the people back then: the holiness of God, the law of God. Judgment day is coming. It is appointed to each one of us to die once and after that to face the judgment. Are you ready?"

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Secondly, that same trust that justifies your soul, live it out with whatever trial you're going through now or the next one that God has planned for you. Live it out. Trust in him alone. Venture on him, venture holy, let no other trust intrude. Don't put your trust in the advances of medical science. Don't put your trust in a year's worth of salary saved up. Don't put your trust in anything but Jesus. You could say, ‘Now, God may use the doctors, he may use the pharmaceutical companies, he may use money that I have saved up, but it's still gonna be Jesus saving me.’ And I look to that. Follow these simple prescriptions when you're going through this trial or the next one, whatever it is, three simple commands. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Those three things: rejoice in Christ your Savior, trusting in him; ask God for what you want in the middle of your trial, and give him thanks in advance for what he's gonna do and presently what he is doing. 

Thirdly, pray for our nation that we would not trust in the military as a savior. Pray for that. I mean, it could be that there are some elect people haven't come to faith in Christ yet, who are trusting too much in the military, and there could be a Christian fellow soldier that can share the gospel so that they stop trusting in military and start trusting in Jesus. Pray for that, pray for that to happen. Not just soldiers and generals and all that, but elected officials and all that, that they would not trust in the size of the military. Isaiah 31 teaches to turn away from that and trust in God. It does not say make no military preparations, but it says do not trust in them as though they were a savior.

Fourth, hate idols more and more. This is the third time Isaiah has told us that we're gonna throw them away so let's throw away. What do you say? Say, ‘Lord, show me my idols and help me to throw them away.’ And fifth, understand deep repentance as it's taught in this passage. Feel the weight of verse six, "Return to him you have so greatly revolted against." Don't make light of your sins. Say, ‘I am a great sinner, but you are a great Savior, and your salvation's greater than my sins.’ Grace greater than my sins. 

Sixth, celebrate what this passage teaches about God. His power to judge his enemy, celebrate that. His foreknowledge to know the end from the beginning, his grace and warning people ahead of time what is to come, ‘Woe to you if you do this.’ His immutability in that he does not take back his words. His sovereign power in ruling over the nations. His ability to work genuine repentance in our hearts so that we hate idols. His utter fearlessness like a lion or like an eagle, to be unintimidated at all by other human beings. His faithfulness to protect his children from all of their enemies. That's eight different things to praise God for. What a great God we serve. Worship him, serve him. And then finally, meditate on God's fearlessness in reference to humans so that you fear man less, fear him less, don't worry what man thinks, don't worry what man can do to you. Be bold in evangelism, be courageous in your stance, your countercultural stance. Don't fear man. God's not afraid, why should you be? You're a child of the living God.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for Isaiah 31 and all it teaches us. Thank you for the truths that just flow from these words. But Lord, transform us by your word and make us powerful and strong children of God ready to serve you, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Focussing our world around God brings us peace, satisfaction, and joy.

Introduction

This morning, as we were driving into church, I looked up in the sky and I saw all these clouds and these wispy white things up in the sky, and four or five of them were going more or less in a straight line, right across the sky. Some of them were bigger and puffer, but they were tracing out a straight line. And then there were others that were like mares' tails or just kind of amorphous, just clouds. And I said, "Look at those clouds up there, those are amazing. They go in a straight line." And one of my kids said, "That's not a cloud. That's a contrail from an airplane." [laughter] I said, "Well, how do you know?" He said, "It's in a straight line." I said, "Exactly."

God’s Sovereignty over His Mysteries

God doesn't do straight lines. Can you find straight lines in nature? Alright, I've looked at lots of trees in my life, I've never seen any straight lines. We love straight lines. Look all around this sanctuary, you'll see them everywhere, everywhere. Look at the handrail right there, look at all those straight lines up and down. We like them. And if they're not straight, something's wrong, poor workmanship.

We live in a wonderful and wild world that we can't figure out. It's filled with what seems to us to be chaos, and we're not comfortable with that. We like straight lines, we like everything figured out, but there's a wildness and a vast unpredictability to the world that God has made, that has baffled human hearts from the beginning of history. You sit there, it's fall now, and you just watch a leaf be released from a topmost branch and it flutters down to the ground. Have you ever watched the entire journey? Sometimes I looked on it like a metaphor for life, birth and death, and all that kind of thing, but I won't go in there today. I'm just talking about just how it flutters, and how strange and unpredictable is the path, and who knows where it's going to end up with all the other neighbor leaves that have fallen before.

Who knows? God knows exactly where that leaf is gonna end up, but there's not a man on Earth that can tell you where it's going to end up. It's completely unpredictable. Clouds, as I've already mentioned, strange to us, I guess, random shapes, and some people like to find shapes in the clouds, and you do that, but they generally defy, really, that it looks kind of like such and such, but it's... And then these mysterious winds just blow them across the continent, and no one can really predict where they're going to go.

Even Jesus said the wind blows where it wishes, and you can't tell where it comes from or where it is going. You know, a waterfall goes over and there are twigs and leaves that have fallen in, and they just swirl, and there's this foam and it lands, and then there's this eddies and currents, and it goes off in some backwater and accumulates there for a while and then breaks free and flows down to the sea. And you just stand there and watch it for a while, and it just defies orderliness and organization and thinking. We can't figure it out, the turbulence, the swirly patterns.

Have you ever blown out a candle and then watched the smoke that just goes up from the candle, and it goes up in a straight line, but it doesn't stay in a straight line. It starts to do all of this dancing stuff, these swirling turbulent patterns. Physicists call it chaos. Actually, recent physicists have worked on theories of chaos, chaos theory, and they're trying to organize chaos for us. And one of these quantum theorists, Werner Heisenberg, as he lay on his deathbed, he said there were two things he wanted to talk to God about, ask him questions about. One was relativity, and the other was turbulence. And he thought God might be able to explain relativity, but not turbulence.

Now, I don't think he knows the God of the Bible. God can explain both. But turbulence, those forces on liquids and gases that make them do unpredictable things, chaos. Mathematicians call it probability, and they come up with rules of probability, whether the next coin flip is gonna come up heads or tails, or the next dice, but they can't tell you really what's gonna happen, just what's likely to happen. I'm not sure how to fit probability together with theology. I don't think they do fit.

God’s Sovereignty over Human Wills and Actions

Probability is really a human looking at the future, based on the past. Gamblers set odds, and they'll tell you the odds that something will happen, this team will beat that team, and all that. Nobody really knows. Probably most of sports talk radio is predictions about the immediate future. It's worthless, friends. No one knows what's going to happen in the big game. They can come up with their stone pipe lead cold locks, or whatever, and then nothing happens, like they said. They don't predict accurately 'cause no one really knows. Hindus speak of karma. Everyday language we use... We speak of luck. We wish people good luck.

Talk about that. One of the most common parting statements in daily life, "Good luck." Somebody's about to go for a job interview and we say, "Good luck." Hopefully, none of us says it, I'll get there in a moment, but good luck. Or somebody who's playing in a championship basketball game or giving a senior recital on an instrument, or going in for a big operation, good luck. Well, that's based, I think, on a concept that's foreign to the biblical worldview that I'm going to preach today.

What is luck? What is it? What is fortune? What is chance? This impersonal force flowing through the universe that affects outcomes in life. Good luck causes things to go well for you, as far as you're concerned. Bad luck is the opposite, causes things to go badly for you, as far as you're concerned. So, someone taking a college entrance exam, an SAT, doesn't know the answer and guesses. Gets it right. It's good luck. A lucky guess. A non-athlete picks up a basketball and just kinda throws it at the halfway from the length of the court, halfway into the other basket and it just goes swish, and we say, "That was a lucky shot."

People speak of leaving something to chance, that means just letting it happen. Your car breaks down in some highly-unusual way, you miss a flight or something happens as a result. It's just bad luck. We extend it to what we call chance encounters, like when you meet some old friend by chance in a crowded airport, or someone happens to leave the exact right amount of money to pay a bill when you didn't have your wallet, and that was just good luck that it worked out that way. Couple has been married for years, recounts how they, by chance, met one another at a college function. Some people go so far as to believe in lucky charms, good luck charms, like a four-leaf clover, or something like that. We all just survived Friday the 13th. Glad to see you made it through. [laughter] Were you worried? No? I wasn't either, barely noticed. It was just another day, another date, but others are troubled by these kinds of things, they're superstitious about this. Christians actually, knowing that they're not gonna go so far as to say, "Good luck," still use words like fortunate or misfortune. You know, it was my fortune to be standing on the curb when the cab went by on a rainy day and I got a shower on my new pants, and so it was just my misfortune.

This view of the universe that I've been describing is incredibly pervasive, it surrounds us all the time, and it is completely false. Friends, bottom line, there's either luck or there's God, the God of the Bible, one or the other, and you can't have both. Now, you may be in the habit of saying, "Good luck," to people, and all that. Change it, okay? Change the habit. Let's refer everything to God and to the goodness of God and the power of God and the plans of God, and not to some random force in the universe that swirls and moves, and no one has any idea. There's either luck or the sovereign plan of an infinite God whose purposes may be... I would say, are inscrutable to us, for no one can trace out the path of God. Who knows the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor? His ways are beyond tracing out, Romans 11 tells us, but still, there's a plan.

And his purposes are intelligent and wise and good and powerful. This is what the Bible teaches. Now, last time I preached on the Book of Proverbs, several weeks ago, we began to look at various verses and proverbs that teach God's absolute sovereignty. It's striking to me that some of the clearest verses on the sovereignty of God in everyday life are in the Book of Proverbs, but so they are. And so we started last time by looking at God's sovereignty over mysteries, over his mysteries.

Proverbs 25:2, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but to search out a matter is the glory of kings." God is able to hide things, and we are to search them out, and God sovereignly chooses these things. And so it's a good thing for us. It's a comforting doctrine. I don't know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future. That idea is very comforting to us. But we are troubled by it, as I mentioned in the last sermon, that people... Yes, that is comforting, but it's also troubling too, because we know very well that lots of bad things happen in this world. Does God ordain them? Does God sovereignly choose those things? Why do so many evil things happen?

And if God is so sovereign over human decisions, then why does he or how can he hold us accountable for any decision we ever make? And if God's sovereign over human hearts and he chooses people by his sovereign will, then why doesn't he save everybody? Why does he send anyone to hell?

So these are troubling questions, and they bother us, but it doesn't mean that God's absolute sovereignty isn't taught in the Bible, it is. And so it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but to search out a matter is the glory of kings. And so we, as children of the king, sons and daughters of the living God, it's to us to search out what God has revealed. But we need to know the whole time there's many things he has not revealed, and it's his sovereign will to hold those things back. We also saw last time that God is sovereign over human wills and actions.

Proverbs 16:1, which you heard Tom just read, "To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue." It is a good thing. It is in the image of God for human beings to make plans. We ought to make plans, but all of our plans are subject to the will of the sovereign God of the universe, even the reply on your tongue, even the reply on your tongue. In Proverbs 16:9, "In his heart, a man plans his course, but it's the Lord who determines his steps."

So what you speak and where you walk, those things are sovereignly ordained by God in a mysterious way. Proverbs 19:21, "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it's the Lord's purpose that prevails." We spoke of big, grand, life-shaping plans, like going to college or your career, who you marry, children, all of those big things. You make plans, many of those plans, but it's the Lord's purpose that prevails.

And even down to the smallest detail level, what you're gonna do with your time on a random Tuesday afternoon? Those small details, should you go to Walmart first and then to Kroger? Vice versa? The Lord rules over all of those things for his own purposes.

God’s Sovereignty over the Hearts of Kings

We saw, thirdly, God's sovereignty over the hearts of kings. Very comforting doctrine, Proverbs 21:1, “the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. He directs it like a watercourse, whichever way he pleases.”

God is able to influence the minds of kings directly and effectively, to chart the course of human history. He is the mover and the shaker behind the movers and shakers in this world. He rules over them all, and we saw this in a number of biblical examples, Pharaoh, whom God hardened his heart so that he would chase the Israelites even into the Red Sea. Now, God hardened his heart to do that.

We saw the dramatic example of Nebuchadnezzar, who God changed his mind like that into the mind of an animal, and for seven years, he had the mind of an animal, and he ate grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven. And just like that, God changed his mind back and he was the sharpest, clearest-thinking, most powerful leader on the face of the Earth. God has that kind of power even over a human mind.

Clearly, the most significant and important example of all was concerning the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and how there were important movers and shakers. There were human leaders that made decisions about Jesus. The church assembled together after those same leaders began to persecute the church, and the church was genuinely threatened, even with death, by these same leaders. They assembled together for one of the great corporate prayer meetings ever, in Acts Chapter 4, and they gathered together and they started to quote scripture. And they were quoting scripture about God's sovereign control over human leaders. And this is what they said in their prayer, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant, Jesus. They did what your power and will had determined beforehand should happen. So God directed their hearts like a water course to kill Jesus.

You might say, "Why would God the Father do that?" Because it says in Isaiah 53:10, "It was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, so that he would be a guilt offering for us, that his blood would be shed for the forgiveness of our sins." And so he ordained the death of Jesus. He orchestrated the death of Jesus in the hearts of Annas and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate. Pilate did everything he could to set him free, wanted to set him free, but there were certain factors at work in Pilate's heart and in the situation, and Jesus was condemned.

We've seen it. We see it in secular history not so that we can say definitely this or that or the other, it's just too complex for that. I think sometimes what they call providential history can be a bit dangerous and a little simplistic, but I know this, that God sovereignly overrules the flow, the course of history, even after the end of the Book of Acts. Amen? And he's been ruling over that ever since, and I think it's just like the Book of Esther, where God never even appears, the name Lord or God doesn't even appear, but he is so clearly orchestrating the events of that book. There's no doubt about it.

The king just chanced to happen to read such and such a book about how Mordecai had saved his life, and it just... Look, I mean, we know that that was orchestrated by God, but he's never mentioned. And I think that's our stance toward history, we know that God is controlling it, but we don't know exactly how.

God’s Sovereignty over Seemingly Random Events

And so that's how it works. Alright. So I want to extend that today to talk about a few other areas, and I wanna go to this verse that supported the way that I began this message today, God's sovereign control over seemingly random events. Look at Proverbs 16:33. It's printed on the cover of your bulletin or you can look in your Bible, but there, it says, "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord."

Well, what does this mean? Well, the lot was the ancient way of rolling dice. It's a random event, a casual tossing of the lot into the lap was a way that whoever tossed it cut themselves free from direct influence over the outcome so that you can make a decision in a matter. So they throw it and just let the lot decide, that kind of thing, 'cause they couldn't control it, the human being can't control it. But this proverb says it may be that a human being isn't controlling it, but there is control over it. Every dice comes up the number God ordains.

It represents, I think, as all proverbs do, they go beyond just their language to go teach a principle about life, that there are no random events in life, that God's sovereignty, his plan, his purpose overrules all of it. There are no seeming... There are no chance events. They are seemingly chance to us, but God rules over everything.

We see it at work in the Book of Jonah, how Jonah is running away from God, and he's asleep under the deck, and God, in judgment on Jonah, brings a storm on that ship of pagans that are sailing to Tarshish. And so they, believing that some God is behind the storm, which it's true, some God is, the only true and living God has brought that storm, but they cast lots to find out whose fault it is that the storm and the lot just happened to come up on Jonah. So that is this proverb at work, right in the Bible. It identified Jonah, rightly so.

So there is no such thing as luck. Luck doesn't exist. There's no chance. There's no fortune. Las Vegas is a whole city devised and built on so-called games of chance. I have never been there. I hope to never go there, alright? But if the Lord wills and if the SBC is there some year, or something, who knows? I might end up in Vegas. [laughter] What will I do in Vegas? No idea. But the roulette wheel, I guess, rolling, the ball clatters around, and it ends up 19 red, and money exchanges hands. Somebody's happy, everybody else is sad, and that's kind of how it works, games of chance. According to this proverb, though, the ball just ends up in the right slot and color that God wills. And you might say, "Why would God care?"

Some have criticized Christian football coaches for their involvement in prayer as God... God bless our endeavor, and like... God really cares, like the Almighty really cares about the outcome of a football game. Stop right there, dear friends, he does, but not like you and I care.

God's not a fan. It's not like he's got your team's banners up on the wall. It doesn't work like that. If it worked like that, sports would be ruined, that team would win every game by the infinite perfect score. But God uses these things all the time. He uses a college football game or the Super Bowl to bring about changes. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, he's using that in people's lives. He's even using it in people's lives who are... Who don't even care about the outcome of the game, but the outcome of the game did affect their lives in certain ways that they couldn't have known about.

And you're telling me God doesn't care about the outcome of a football game? He cares whether a sparrow falls to the ground. If he cares whether a sparrow falls to the ground, then he cares about the outcome of every football game, frankly, of every game. How many games do you play depend on the roll of a dice? Many of them. I don't say all, but many of them. Some have other randomizing things that... Like have you ever played Candy Land? I bet I may be the only person. I don't know if there's other weird people, but I actually Googled on Candy Land strategy. [laughter] It's true. And there actually was a website that gave the following answer, "There is no strategy for Candy Land." [laughter] The next card comes up red and you go to the red square. The only thing you can do is cheat, friends [laughter] That's the only thing you can do. And maybe some of you parents have cheated to accelerate the game, but we won't tell our kids about that. I'm not saying I've done that, not saying whether I did or not, but the fact is, the next card comes up and you go to that square.

But what I'm saying is the next card comes up the color God ordained, and you might think again, why does God care about the order of a stack of Candy Land cards? Well, he does, I think, 'cause he cares about atoms that make up the universe, alright? But he cares about everything and he's ruling over everything, and so, therefore, stop getting frustrated when you lose a game. When the dice rolls up and it comes up, God ordained that for his own purposes. Be happy, as happy as if it'd come up for you. It's the truth. It's just a whole different way of looking at the world. There's an intentionality and a personality behind it, a good purpose, a loving purpose.

Now, that doesn't mean that we should cast lots to make decisions, as the early church did to replace Judas Iscariot, they cast lots and lot fell on Matthias. I think the Lord... I'm not saying whether they should or should not have done that, but I think the Lord has given us better ways of making decisions, searching his face in prayer, studying scripture, getting godly counsel. We can make wise decisions. You don't need to cast the lot.

Kevin DeYoung wrote a book on determining God's will called 'Just Do Something'. And I love the subtitle, 'How to Make Decisions Without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Impressions, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, Etc.' So, basically, we, I think, should seek the will of the Lord through more intelligent means than that, but still the proverb is true, that the Lord controls even seemingly random events.

God’s Sovereignty over Battles

We also see, in the Book of Proverbs, God's sovereign control over battles. Military conquests are controlled by the Lord, and I don't just mean the ones like Joshua conquering the Promised Land. God rules over all military battles for his own purposes, and therefore, he rules over history, to a large degree. Large degree, history is made up of military conflicts that define lines on the map, and who's gonna rule over what land. And so it says in Proverbs 21:31, "The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the Lord."

Well, what does this mean? Well, it is for men to prepare, it is for God to decide. The commander gets his mightiest weapons ready. The horse was the mightiest military weapon on the battlefield, really, for most of human history, really, up until the end of the 19th century, when mechanized and machine guns and other things started coming in, then the horse became obsolete, militarily, but it was a terrifying thing to see a bunch of horses stampeding towards you, very, very, very scary, very powerful.

So the horse symbolizes the best a man can do to get ready for battle, the most advanced technology. A general can get his army as ready as he wants, with the most overpowering technology available, but the victory does not depend on his weapons or his battle plan or his reserves or, ultimately, on anything but the will of the Lord. Now, that doesn't mean that our friends at West Point shouldn't study old battles and learn how commanders did this and that. They should, actually, but ultimately, it's the Lord that decides.

A parallel verse teaches Psalm 33 very clearly. Psalm 33:13 and following says, "From Heaven, the Lord looks down and sees all mankind. From his dwelling place, he watches all who live on the Earth. He who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. No king is saved by the size of his army. No warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance. Despite all of its great strength, it cannot save. But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. We wait and hope for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. In him, our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name." It all has to do with reliance and confidence.

God warned Israel not to trust in their military prowess. He said if they turned away from him, he would turn away from them on the battlefield, and he predicted this through Moses, the song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32, "How can one man chase a thousand? How can two men put ten thousand to flight unless their rock had sold them, unless their Lord had given them up?"

So what are the implications? Well, it doesn't mean that the army shouldn't train or prepare. Psalm 144:1 says, "Praise to the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war." David wrote that there was a training process. He even spoke about that when he was about to kill Goliath. He said, "I learned how to use the sling when I was a shepherd."

So there's a value to that. Even Jesus talked about it. He said, "Suppose the king is about to go to war against another king," Luke 14:31, "Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able, with 10,000 men, to oppose the one coming against him with 20,000 men?" And if he is not able, he will send a delegation to the other while the other is still far off and ask for terms of peace. But what this proverb does teach is that the final outcome of every battle in history that there has ever been depends on the plan and the will of God. That's what it means.

God controls the battlefield, and through it, God controls human history. The boundary lines for the world have been forged in battle, and Acts 17 shows the sovereign power of God over the battlefield. He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live, Acts 17:26. Therefore, America should not rely on the overwhelming technological superiority of our weapon systems, our advanced tactical fighters, nuclear subs, cruise missiles, smart bombs, aircraft carriers, M1A1 Abrams tanks with reactive armor and laser-guided missiles, because none of those things, which are the modern version of the horse, will avail at all if God turns away from the nation.

God can easily defeat all of that if he so chooses. Rather, a people's security, any people's security has always been this, we trust in the Lord, and in his name we go. 

God’s Sovereignty over His Enemies

And then, finally, God's sovereignty over his enemies. Listen to these two proverbs. Proverbs 21:30, "There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord." Wow. Let me read that again, "There is no wisdom, there is no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord."

Another one, Proverbs 16:4, "The Lord works out everything for his own ends, even the wicked for a day of disaster." So what do these proverbs mean? Well, it means that God is omnipotent. God rules over all. All power is really his, including Satan's power. Why? For, in him, we live and move and have our being. Romans 11:36, "For from him and through him and to him are all things."

If Satan and all of his demons and all of his people on Earth assembled in one place at one time to fight against the Lord, they would lose. You know what? I actually think that is gonna happen. It's called Armageddon. I think that's the final battle, that's exactly what he tries to do, the second coming of Christ. And Psalm 2 depicts this, why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain, the kings of the Earth take their stand, the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his anointed one. Let us break their chains, they say, and throw off their fetters. The one enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them, then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath.

I've often marveled at what Satan was thinking in taking on God. I mean, I've wondered about that. There is no plan, there's no purpose, there's no intentionality that can succeed against the Lord. I don't think he believes that, clearly, but I think the test case was always, Satan, what are you gonna do with the incarnate Christ? It's a test case on this very proverb.

What are you gonna do with Jesus? Now, through Peter, he spoke, at one point, concerning Jesus' crucifixion, "Never, Lord," he said, "This shall never happen to you." And Jesus said, "Get behind me, Satan, you're a stumbling block to me." There, Satan was tempting Jesus not to go to the cross, to not die. And yet, later, Judas Iscariot takes a certain piece of bread from Jesus, accepting his role as the betrayer, and Satan entered into Judas and he went out and betrayed Jesus to death.

What is going on with Satan? Satan doesn't know what to do with Jesus. He doesn't know whether to kill him or not to kill him. Do I kill him? Do I not kill him? What should I do? There is no plan. There's no purpose. There's no will or intentionality that can succeed against the Lord. You know what Satan does? He does what we always do. He reverted to his nature, and Jesus told us Satan's nature, he was a murderer from the beginning. And so what did he do to Jesus? He did his own nature, he murdered Jesus, and in so doing, he destroyed himself. Amen. There is no plan that can succeed against the Lord.

And so God sovereignly ordains the defeat and death of his own enemies. The Lord works out everything for his own ends, even the wicked for the day of disaster. This is kind of the mirror image verse of Romans 8:28, where it says “God causes all things to work together for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.”

Proverbs 16:4 and Romans 8:28 are just two sides of the same sovereign coin. God works out everything for good for his elect, and he works out sovereignly the day of disaster for his enemies. It's what God does. And so, therefore, what are the implications?

Do not fear the awesome power of the wicked. Fear God. And do not be one of Christ's enemies. Do not be against him. And here's the beauty of the Gospel, dear friends. This is the incredible beauty of the Gospel. The Gospel has the power to change enemies, Christ's enemies, into his friends. Saul of Tarsus can wake up in the morning, breathing out murderous threats against the Lord Jesus, and that evening, go to bed, go to sleep, praising Jesus for his own salvation. He can do that in a human heart.

A thief can be nailed to the cross and be hurling insults at Jesus at the beginning of the crucifixion, but by the end, he's saying, "Remember me, Lord, when you come in your kingdom," and hearing, "Today, you'll be with me in paradise." God is sovereign and he can change enemies into friends.

It says in Colossians 1:21-22, "Once you were alienated from God and you were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior, but now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation." You were once enemies, and now look at you, you're friends, friends of the living God. But I think not all of you, I think not all of you. I trust that actually God brought some of his enemies here today to hear this message of grace, that God is standing and holding out his arms to you and urging you to be reconciled to God, to come to faith in Jesus Christ and lay down your weapons of revolt against his sovereign power, and come, and take Jesus' kingly yoke upon you, and follow him because he's gentle and humble in heart.

And so I beseech you stop rebelling against Christ, stop fighting against him, stop kicking against him, stop sinning against him, and come to Jesus and just know his forgiveness and his mercy.

Friends, in two sermons, we've seen God's sovereignty over his mysteries, what he chooses to reveal and what he chooses to conceal, his sovereignty over the words and actions of human beings, his sovereignty over kings' hearts, directing them like a water course whatever way he chooses, his sovereignty over seemingly random events, even the roll of a dice, his sovereignty over the battlefield and even his sovereign power over his enemies. So what’s the application?

 First, rest confidently in God's power. Do not fret because it seems like the world is chaotic or out of control. It isn't. It isn't. It may seem like there's a madman in charge of Iran and another madman in charge of North Korea, and some may worry what if those madmen get nuclear weapons? Do not fret. Do not be anxious. Do not worry about those things, because God rules over all things. Yes, there are jihadists, terrorist cells plotting your demise right now, and mine. Al-Qaeda's still at work. There's still evil in the world. Do not fret or be anxious, for God rules over these things.

Secondly, pray for the sovereign power of God to be unleashed in the direction that the Bible says is its natural direction, the building of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. That's where the sovereignty of God heads or trends. "All authority in heaven and Earth has been given to me," said Jesus, "Go and build my kingdom." So pray, and that's the beauty of this doctrine of sovereignty, is it just unleashes your prayer life. You just pray to the sovereign God for the advance of the kingdom. Say, "Lord, I pray for this or that leader to open up that country, to open up North Korea, to open up Iran."

I actually had the joy and privilege this week of meeting an Iranian Christian who has been persecuted by the secret police. He and his wife, threatened with death, were out of the country. As he sat in my office, we prayed together. There are hundreds, if not thousands of Iranian Christians right now.

The church is growing and getting stronger in our end. Praise God, there's sovereignty at work for you, there's sovereignty at work, but just pray that God's power be unleashed and people's hearts would be open to accept this good news. God has power over human hearts. And when you pray, don't imagine that God would ever say to you, "I don't get involved in that kind of thing." That's below my pay grade, I don't do that kind of thing. No, God does everything. God is in charge of all things.

So go ahead and pray right before you roll the dice in the next chance game you play, "Lord, I pray. I need a seven right now, okay?" You can go ahead and pray, but let God be sovereign. Let him decide what he will do. And when it rolls up seven or it rolls up three, or whatever, the bottom line is, God was sovereign over that, whether you threw it or someone else did.

And when adverse things happen to you, bring them back to God in prayer. I've really been delighting in that song, 'What a Friend We Have in Jesus', and what it says there is it says take it to the Lord in prayer. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Bring it to Jesus. We should never be discouraged, take it to the Lord in prayer. Were you discouraged this week? Is there something discouraging you now? Take it to the sovereign God in prayer, and he will welcome you, and he will draw you into his power, into his plan, and he will answer your prayers.

Take it to the Lord in prayer, and when you are in trials and adverse circumstances, don't forget to ask, "Lord, is this coming to me because I've sinned in some way? Are you disciplining me, Lord?"

The Book of Job teaches that not every adverse circumstance comes directly as a result of the sins of the people that come on it. We know that, but the opposite isn't sure, that it never happens that way. Sometimes it does. It could be that you're sick or going through something because there's sin in your life. Bring it to God and say, "Lord, have I sinned?" James 5 says that, "If he has sinned, he'll be forgiven." Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other.

That's what it says. So go and say, "Lord, this thing is happening to me. Have I sinned?" And when blessings come, thank God for them. They're not random, accidental events. They're not. So we should be having a super-phenomenal Thanksgiving in a few weeks, should have one later today, have one right now. Thank God for the blessings of your life. You guys should be happy. I really think you should be happier than you are, so should I. We should be happy people.

People should see our happiness and our joy because we are abundantly blessed, and we have so much to thank God for, and they're not random, chance things. They have been given to us by an intelligent force that wanted us to have these things. And do not make too much nor too little of human decisions and human will.

Andy Winn came out to me right before I preached and said, "Are you gonna talk about just the whole complexity of free will decisions and all that? You know, like the Wool E. Bull thing." I said, "What do you mean the Wool E. Bull thing?" You say, "Well, you know how you go to the game?" Have you ever seen Wool E. Bull, and he races a little kid every game. And Wool E. Bull both starts out one direction, the little kid starts out the other direction, and they run, and Wool E. Bull always loses, always.

And many have thought, gee, wouldn't it be fun if he would just kinda, "I'm sick of this job. I'm gonna beat this kid"? [laughter] You know, I'm tired of this. I'm gonna beat this kid just once. I know it would be my last race as Wool E. Bull, but I'm gonna beat this kid, alright? Imagine the kid just sitting there, sitting down and crying, and momma coming and getting him. That Wool E. Bull is finished, we're getting a new Wool E. Bull.

But what Andy is asking is is there real freedom in life? Are we making real decisions or is it all just foreordained? Well, I believe it is foreordained, and I believe we make real decisions, and I believe I cannot figure that out. I can't. I could think about that the rest of my life, and I'll not be able to figure that out, but I'm not gonna shrink back from what God's revealed. He said these things and I believe them. And I think we have real freedom to make real choices and we're really, really, really accountable for those choices, and he will hold them to account... Hold every person accountable.

I think the beauty is that God... I think God teaches that we choose according to our nature, according to our heart, but God has the power to change evil hearts and make them sweet and good and loving. So pray for that.

Don't make too much of human free will. Don't make too little of human decisions. Don't be like the open theist, who say that God cannot even know what human beings choose in advance. He can't even know so he's just kind of flying by the seat of his pants. That's not the God of the Bible, he has willed and ordains things.

And then, finally, when you play board games, when next you play Candy Land, rejoice, no matter who wins [laughter] Even if you're right about to win and you get Mr. Plumpy, and you get sent back to the beginning, praise God for that. Close with me in prayer.

Introduction

Apostle John was exiled to the island of Patmos, and he had a vision of a door standing open in heaven. And the voice of Christ beckoned him to come up. "Come up here," it said. And at once he was in the spirit, and a good thing too, because you can't make that journey without some divine help through the Holy Spirit, and he went through the doorway and there in heaven, he saw a throne and someone seated on it. Dear friends, that heavenly throne is the central reality of the universe. It's the central reality of your life, it's the central reality of this church, the central reality of every nation on earth, whether they acknowledge him or not, that throne is the throne of God, and the God who sits on that throne is absolutely sovereign, rules over everything all the time.

And we need to know that because we live in uncertain times now, we're going through various trials and difficulties and people may wonder, "Is human history spiraling out of control? Are we facing trials that we cannot overcome? Is history unfolding according to plan? What is going on?"

So at the big scale level, there's economic uncertainty, people look at what's happened over the last year and a half with the New York Stock Exchange and with the gold and silver prices going up, and with all kinds of things, and they look at that and they say, "What's going to happen to the American economy over the next 30 years? Will the stock exchange experience another crash? What will happen in the future? What will happen to Social Security? Will it still be around when we reach retirement age?" So there's economic uncertainty.

What about political uncertainty? Who's gonna control the future of our country? What direction are we going? Are we going to a bigger and bigger federal government? Are we going to lose freedoms that we've cherished as American citizens? Will those with an unbiblical agenda push through wicked laws that force us in painful directions? What's gonna happen with that? How will this nation address massive issues like care and concern for the poor and needy or healthcare or other things? Political uncertainty. How about international uncertainty? What will become of radical Islam? We know that there are cells, terrorist cells around the world that are plotting the demise of the West, will they succeed? Will the terrorists be able to obtain or threaten to use a thermonuclear device?

What will happen if communist China becomes the most powerful nation on earth, militarily and economically in the 21st century? What will that be like for us as Americans in the West? So those are the big questions people wanna know about that. More personally and individually people ask questions as well.

If you're in college, you may be wondering if you're gonna be able to get a job in your field or a job at all. Maybe your time of graduation is nearing and you're thinking about that. If you're single, in your 20s, wondering if God will provide a spouse for you, wondering who he or she will be and how the circumstances could even work, is there someone out there for you? If you're elderly, you may wonder about your health, or your relationship with your grown kids or your grandkids. All of these things, these pondering and things like they go through your mind, don't they?

And all of them have the temptation toward anxiety, that you can start to be afraid of the future, be anxious about it, and that is precisely where the doctrine, a firm grasp on the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God is so vital for us. There are two great displays of God's sovereignty in the Bible, doctrinally. That doctrine of predestination by which God displays his absolute sovereignty over human salvation, and then there's the doctrine of providence, by which God displays His absolute sovereignty over daily life events in the ebbs and flows of history here on earth. Predestination and providence, these are two great doctrines, two great mysteries, two great displays of that throne of God that I began this sermon with in Revelation 4.

Now, the book of Proverbs, I believe, has some of the most memorable verses in the whole Bible on one of those two, and that's the doctrine of providence, how God rules over everyday life absolutely for His own glory, and you know that really makes perfect sense as we've learned studying the book of Proverbs, it's a nitty-gritty, rubber meets the road kind of book that looks at practical everyday life and describes those kinds of issues. And so we're gonna look this morning at the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God over daily life as seen in the book of Proverbs.

Now, this was gonna be one sermon, it cannot be. It's a mathematical impossibility. And as I looked at it, I was like, "Alright, we've got to go two weeks on this just because the verses are outstanding and what's the rush anyway." And you guys don't wanna be here till quarter to one now do you? Come on, be honest. So given where we're at as sermon listeners right now in America, maybe in the future, it'll be different, but right now we can handle only so much, so I'm thinking, we'll do this in two weeks, okay? Is that good with you? 'Cause it's what's gonna happen. So at any rate, we'll do that. So we'll just continue.

But I want to look at just how sovereign God is over everyday life, and I was talking to... Actually talking to Herbert, right before he came up, I said to Herbert, I said, "How sovereign is God?" He said, "Absolutely sovereign." And God is... And I said, "Do you think he's more sovereign than we think?" He said, "Absolutely, he is more severe than we think."

So my desire is to use this sermon and the next time I preach on this to ratchet up your sense of just how active God is in everyday life, so that you will lose your fear, that you will not be anxious, you'll be put on display by God, you'll go through trials and you'll go through it with absolute certainty that God is in it and his purposes are good, and people will be led to ask you, "What is the nature of this hope that you have?"

Jesus taught this absolute sovereignty very, very plainly in many places, perhaps the most memorably in Matthew 10:29-30, he said, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny and yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered." Absolute sovereignty over the death of a sparrow, fluttering to the ground.

The apostle Paul taught the same thing, Romans 8:28, a very familiar verse. “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” Or again, in Ephesians 1:11, he speaks of “the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” Not some things, everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.

And so King Solomon gives us some of the most memorable statements in the Bible in this great doctrine of providence and how God actively rules over seemingly tiny events or even over great ones to achieve his eternal mysterious purposes.

So we're gonna see the sovereignty of God pertaining to a variety of things. First in how God chooses to retain some secrets to himself and reveal some other things. How God has sovereignty over human actions, like the words of our mouths and the paths of our feet, how we may make many plans, but it's God's purpose that overrules all of that, and that's going to free us up I hope from that man-centered view of the universe that makes human free will and human decisions the hub of every wheel, and everything's revolving around our choices, which is just not biblical, and it's not helpful.

We're gonna also see God's sovereignty over the decision of kings, how God rules over the decisions of kings, an incredibly comforting and incredibly challenging and deep doctrine. The next time I think we're gonna talk about God's sovereignty over seemingly random events like the roll of a dice. We're gonna talk about God's sovereignty over the outcome of major events in history, like the outcome of a battle, and God's sovereignty even over his enemies, no matter how powerful they may seem, so that's for next time. Taken together, these six categories give us just a sampling of God's providential control over human history. My desire is to strengthen you, to give you a sense of confidence as you face everyday life based on these verses.

God’s Sovereignty over His Mysteries

Let's start with this first one. And that is God's sovereignty over his mysteries. I want you to go over to Proverbs 25:2, I'll start there. And in this doctrine, I have in mind the fact that God decides what he's gonna tell us and holds back from us what he won't tell us. He reveals some things and he conceals other things, and it's to His glory to do so. And those things that are revealed, we should study and search out, and those things that he has concealed, we may not know no matter how much we study. And so Proverbs 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter. To search out a matter is the glory of kings." So this is a good place to start. God's sovereignty over earthly life is both a comforting and a distressing or disturbing doctrine to most of us, it's comforting because it means that we can look forward to the future with confidence.

As someone once said, "I don't know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future." You've heard that kind of thing. What does it mean that he holds the future though? It certainly means more than he just knows the future. I think it means that he actually decrees and controls what that future will be, and that it's going to be a good future for you in Christ. That's very confidence-producing. It gives us strength. God has ordained it and he is sovereignly working it out. But the flip side is the doctrine is distressing to many. It brings up distressing questions that we have a hard time working through. If God is sovereign over all things, then why does such evil happen in the world? That's one question that comes up. Is God sovereignly responsible for a drive-by shooting of an innocent little girl who just happened to get caught in the crossfire? Is he sovereign over that? Could God have prevented that?

I was watching a movie about a wonderful African-American neurosurgeon named Dr. Ben Carson and his story is really very inspirational about how he came up from poverty and from very challenging circumstances to become a neurosurgeon. Amazing man. But at a key juncture in his life when he was a young teenager, he had a very bad temper and he pulled out, just in a moment, a flash of rage, pulled out a Swiss army knife and stabbed his friend in the stomach with it, just thrust it right into the man's... In the young man's stomach. And the man bent over, the young man bent over, and there were multiple people standing around watching, "What did you do?" But then this young man stood up unharmed and there at their feet was the knife blade broken in half, it had hit the man's belt buckle.

God had decreed other things than prison for Ben Carson. And he intervened there, though he clearly intended murder at that moment, he intervened and saved both that man's life, the young man's life, and Dr. Carson's life from going to prison. Now, okay, that's wonderful. In that case, what about when the knife blade doesn't break? What about when the bullet goes ahead and kills the little girl, what then? What do we say? It's troubling to some people, and they struggle with it. Some people go so far as to say God has nothing to do with those kinds of things. He either can't or won't intervene and just lets it happen. And so what really matters is the human choice in the matter, and that was just a lucky break for Dr. Carson. But that's not biblical, that's not what the Bible teaches.

The Shack takes that approach, okay? God didn't do that, when your young daughter was abducted by that pervert and tortured and killed, God didn't do that, and frankly couldn't really have intervened, it's not his way to intervene, etcetera, well, look, that may be quickly kind of, in a superficial way, comforting, but in the end, it's poison, dear friends, it's poison because then there's this random thing in the universe and even God can't do anything about it or won't do anything about it, and he just tries to pick up the pieces. That's not the God that I know in the Bible. So it is a distressing doctrine to many.

Other questions people ask, "If God's sovereign over all human decisions, then how does he hold sinners accountable for what they decide?" If they have no choice in the matter, if we're just robots, which the Bible doesn't teach at all, that kind of thing, I would have to say though I don't understand the statement, how you can reconcile that not only is God far more sovereign than we can possibly imagine, we are far more accountable than we can possibly imagine too. And in some sense, some mysterious ways, far freer than we can... We have the total freedom at any moment to act according to our heart nature, that shouldn't be comforting to you if you know anything about your heart, but we have the freedom to do what our heart dictates. We do have that freedom.

So why doesn't God intervene? He does intervene, all of us willing to go to hell, not directly, but indirectly, and God intervenes. Why doesn't he do that with everybody? Why doesn't he save everyone? If he can do this with anyone, why doesn't he save everyone? These are questions that come up in people's minds. Alright, what does the proverb mean, Proverb 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter. To search out a matter is the glory of kings." God retains to himself many significant secrets. For example, we talked about predestination a moment ago, he retains to himself who is predestined and who isn't. We don't know who they are, we have no idea. His sovereign plan for human beings, predestination and reprobation, applied to this or that person, we cannot know.

We also cannot know exactly how God uses human wickedness and sin for His own purposes, how he crafts that together for his own good, we don't know. We don't know how God can hold Judas accountable for the very thing that it was decreed he should do, even down to the 30 pieces of silver. We don't know how God can hold that. God alone knows and can explain that. We also don't know the question we wanna ask more than any other question. When we think about Job, Job went through terrible suffering, lost all of his children in one instant, lost all of his possessions, lost pretty much all of his health, terrible wave upon wave of trial.

And if there's just one thing that Job wanted to know, it was why. Why? Why did this happen to me? It's the one thing God does not tell him. At the end of the book, he just gives him himself in all of his greatness and His power and His glory and His Majesty as a powerful creator, and he doesn't answer why. And isn't it amazing that Job doesn't seem to need to know why at the end, he doesn't need an explanation, certainly doesn't feel that God owes him an explanation. So God holds these things to himself, he doesn't tell us why. He doesn't need to tell us why. He never will tell us why. I think we'll just have God and we'll know that God's wisdom ordains certain things.

Also we don't know the exact timetable, and many of the circumstances of Christ's return, the glory of God conceal that. Acts 1, Jesus in his resurrection body, instructing his apostles, getting them ready for a world-changing mission. And they say, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" And Jesus said, "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." So this is not for you, this is for you, that's what he says. He has the right to do that.

Deuteronomy 29:29 says it best, I think. “The secret things belong to the Lord, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.” So we have these two categories: The things concealed, the things revealed to the glory of God. Now, in the proverb, it's to the glory of God to conceal the matter, but the second half it's the glory of kings to search it out. So we can play to some degree the role of kings and queens, we can search out what God has revealed. Let's search it out. Let's try to find out. We must seek to go, dear friends, as far as God has revealed and not farther.

I fear that many Christians in this area of predestination and providence fall far short of what God has said about himself, they fear controversy, they fear that they're gonna get in a fight, probably even more, they fear that they will lose the fight, so they don't wanna get involved. And so they stay away from it. It's controversial. We don't wanna talk about it. Well, look, who made it controversial, God didn't, it was Satan that made it controversial and divisive and all that, these things are... This is our treasure, this is our inheritance. We get it all, all 66 books, all of it, and we get to treasure it, and we should search out what God has revealed, but not go beyond it.

Philipp Melanchthon, who was a good friend of John Calvin's, he was Martin Luther's right-hand man and a successor in the German Reformation, as far as we know, believed everything Calvin did about predestination, but Philipp Melanchthon said, wrote in a letter to Calvin saying it's best never to mention it or talk about it. It just causes division. Calvin disagreed. Now, Calvin, if you know anything about him, absolutely hated any kind of theological speculation, but he wanted to go as far as God had in fact revealed. And I think we ought to do the same. We ought to study ourselves, study scripture, we ought to study what God has revealed and go as far as he has ordained. Secondly, let's look at God's sovereignty over human wills and actions. Look at 16:1, go back to Proverbs 16:1. You heard Herbert read it for us in two languages. So you get it twice. Now, you get it a third time.

God’s Sovereignty over Human Wills and Actions

Proverb 16:1 says, "To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue." So what does this proverb actually say? Well, it's talking about the capability that human beings have to make plans. We make many plans. This is, I think of the essence of our status as created in the image of God. We have the ability to plan ahead. A plan is an intended course of action, you peer ahead into the future anticipates what's coming, and you make... Take certain steps, set certain precautions or whatever, it's a plan. And frankly, planning ahead is a good thing in the book of Proverbs; it's something we ought to do. Proverbs 22:3 says, "A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it."

The ultimate example of that, dear friends, has to do with the Gospel itself. If you're a Christian, you saw danger coming and you took refuge in Christ, amen? You saw it coming, you saw judgment day coming, you knew you weren't ready, you knew that you were a sinner and you could not face such a holy judge, and so you fled to Christ, in Jesus' blood shed on the cross as your refuge, and it is a sure and certain refuge.

Maybe you have never done that, maybe you're here today and you have never fled to Christ, you've never come to Him for forgiveness, I'm telling you, danger is coming, I'm urging you to flee the wrath to come, and you ought to plan ahead 'cause it's coming. And the best plan of all is flee to Jesus, run to Jesus. Let Jesus save you. Call on the name of the Lord and you will be saved. So I'm just saying, "Look, planning ahead is a good thing. However, all of our plans are subject to the final review of the sovereign king of the universe, and he'll decide yes or no." That's all.

You can go ahead and make your plans. You ought to, but he gets to decide finally, what will happen. It even comes down to your words, you plan a response and you end up saying this, many of the plans are of a man's heart, but the reply actually comes from the Lord. Wow, this actually goes beyond what Psalm 139:4 teaches, that says, "Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord."

Well, that's just the omniscience of God, his fore-knowledge, God knows what you're gonna say before you say it. This says God actually ordains in some mysterious way what you're gonna say. From the Lord is the reply of the tongue. You may plan to say this or that to a person, but the words you actually end up saying have been ordained by God, that's what the proverb is teaching.

There are supporting proverbs like Proverbs 16:9, just look a few verses down, 16:9. "In his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." Same kind of teaching, you make your plan, but the steps, the walking in the way represents all of life in the book of Proverbs. The way you live, your steps, and so you may make a plan, but God decides how you actually end up living. Look ahead to Proverbs 19:21, this kind of sums this whole thing up. Proverbs 19:21 says, "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails."

We may make many plans large and small to orchestrate the events and paths of our lives, but God decides in the end what's going to happen.

It's true of major life plans, when I plan to go to college, plan to get married, plan to have children, plan to have a certain career, plan to visit certain countries, plan to go on mission trips, plan to retire at the age of 55, you can make those plans, but all of those plans are subject to the overriding, overruling sovereign power of God, it's true on a daily level as well.

Daily life plans, you may plan to go to Walmart and buy a new set of towels for the guest bathroom, and actually sometimes it even happens that way. Has that ever happened to you? You actually planned and it actually worked out that way. But so many times it doesn't.

I may plan to go to The Streets at Southpoint to meet a friend for lunch. It may happen, it may not. I may plan to get to church early, have been doing that, planning for weeks, still waiting for that to happen, okay? That's a hard one. Doesn't seem to be the Lord's will for us to get here early. We'll talk about that another time, it's all very mysterious.

But all of those plans are subject to the overriding will of God. I think James really sums up our disposition, our proper attitude in all of this, James 4:13-16. “Now listen, you who say today or tomorrow, I'll go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."”

So first, you won't even be alive tomorrow if God doesn't will it. So when you wake up and it's another day, thank him for life, he gave it to you. But go beyond it. If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. Make your plans and say, "Lord, is it your will? Is this your will?" I will rest in this and you seek and you go and you live, alright? But it's ultimately up to God what you do. Okay?

God’s Sovereignty over the Hearts of Kings

Thirdly, we see God's sovereignty over the hearts of kings. Look over at Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases."

Now, what does this mean? Well, this is just the last proverb or doctrine applied to kings and rulers, that's all, the same thing, only it's applied, very helpful, I think, and significantly to the hearts of rulers. Now, the image here is of an irrigation system, let's say coming from the Nile river with channels like troughs of water and sluice gates that control the flow of it. That's the image I get, at least. The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord like a watercourse, he directs it whichever way he pleases.

So God Is like the gatekeeper and pulls up gates, puts other gates down, it's the best way that I can harmonize God's sovereignty over wicked things that he doesn't, in some way, decree to happen verbally. Like God gives us 10 commandments and then things happen contrary to his commands, how does that all work? Wicked things. How does God overrule that?

I think what it is, is that the heart of the king is to do evil, he just wants to do evil, God lifts up sluice gates to have a certain specific kind of evil flow down that accomplishes his purpose. That's the best I could come up with. But the evil is the king's and he's responsible for it, God just controls the direction of it. Very difficult to understand that, but God is able to shape the thought patterns of the king. He's able to put thoughts in the heart and the mind of the king so that he behaves a certain way.

Now, this is displayed all over the place in biblical history. Think about the time when David was fleeing for his life from his son, Absalom. Absalom had come to usurp the throne, to take the throne from David, David is running for his life, Absalom is succeeding in that revolt, he has taken over Jerusalem, David is running.

And all it would take is just a sharp blow on David, and he'll fall over like a rotten fence post. It's very fragile, David's throne, at that point. Now, at that time, the shrewdest counselor in Israel was a man named Ahithophel. It says in 2 Samuel 16:23, "Now in those days, the advice Ahithophel gave was like that of one who inquires of God. And that was how both David and Absalom regarded all of Ahithophel's advice." Now, as David flees for his life, he prays this prayer, "Oh Lord, turn Ahithophel's counsel into foolishness." Praise that prayer. It's recorded right there in 2 Samuel 15:31. Now, what did that mean? Either make Ahithophel give bad advice, or make Ahithophel's good advice seem like foolishness to Absalom, either way, to accomplish God's purpose, David hoped, of restoring David to the throne. Either way, frankly, it would be a display of our proverb.

As it turned out, just within the context of the success of Absalom's rebellion, Ahithophel gave excellent advice. He said, "David is exhausted, he is weary, he is worn out, pursue him tonight. Find him and kill just him, and there'll be no one left for Israel to turn to except you, it's done. Don't wait." But at that particular moment, at that key moment, suddenly for some reason, Ahithophel's advice didn't seem the best. Why? I'm talking to Absalom. Suddenly, it just didn't seem like great advice, so he asked for a second opinion. Remember at that time Ahithophel's advice was like that of God, they said. Just as like listening right to the mouth of God, except at this moment, at this key moment.

So he asked for a second opinion, and along comes this man, Hushai the Archite who's a plant from David. So Hushai is there and he gives this advice. He said, "Now David, he's a cagey, wild fighter, he's probably already dug in, he's waiting for you to come. He's won lots of battles. I think you ought to wait. Bide your time, get stronger and stronger, you'll get stronger and stronger, he'll get weaker and weaker, and eventually you'll win."

What happened? 2 Samuel 17:14, “Absalom and all the men of Israel said the advice of Hushai the Archite is better than that of Ahithophel. For the Lord had determined to frustrate the good advice of Ahithophel in order to bring destruction on Absalom.” Wow, he controlled Absalom's reaction to the two pieces of advice, which one seemed wise to him. The king's heart is like a watercourse in the hands of the Lord. He directs it whichever way he pleases. Oh, there's lots of examples.

You know, Pharaoh, God hardening Pharaoh's heart. That's a clear example. God didn't just want one or two plagues, he wanted all 10, including the 10th plague, the plague on the firstborn. And so the Passover, the blood of the lamb, the Angel of Death passes over, all of it, a picture of the sovereign power of God, God hardened Pharaoh's heart to bring it about.

But even that wasn't enough. God wanted the Red Sea crossing, so he hardens Pharaoh's heart again even after all the 10 plagues and out he goes so that God can show his might in the Red Sea crossing. But the king's heart is in the hand of God and he's directing it whichever way he pleases.

Then there's Nebuchadnezzar, plain example, a mighty potentate, one of the great, great emperors of the world, a brilliant man, capable man, an architect, scholar, military conqueror, brilliant man, a tyrant. God gives him a warning, and when he doesn't take that warning, a year later, God turns his mind into that of an animal.

So for seven years, he thought he was a cow eating grass, like that. And why did he do it? Well, it says in Daniel 4:15-17, "Let him the king be drenched with the dew of heaven. Let him live with the animals among the plants of the earth, let his mind be changed from that of a man, and let the mind of an animal be given to him till seven times pass by for him. The decision is announced by messengers, the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know that the most high is sovereign over the kingdoms of men, and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men." The lesson is, God is sovereign over the minds of kings, he can do anything he wants with their minds.

2 Chronicles 36, God sovereignly moved King Cyrus to allow Jews to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. And probably the key example in all history is this one, the Jewish leaders, high priests, Annas, Caiaphas, all of them, Sanhedrin plus Pontius Pilate together agreed to kill Jesus. Acts 4:27 and 28, "Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and all the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had determined beforehand should happen."

It was God's will to crush Jesus and cause him to suffer. Isaiah 53:10,  Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and ... the LORD makes his life a guilt offering”

Pilate did everything he could to let Jesus go.  Did you notice? He wanted to let him go, but in the end, pressures came on him, his wife's dream, all kinds of things, the Jewish leaders, and in the end, he made that decision, he's accountable.

And he is accountable too. This is part of the mystery, dear friends. You may say, "How can this be? If God's sovereign, how can he be accountable?" He is. Listen to what happened. You remember how Pilate, after scourging Jesus, scourging an innocent man, Jesus is standing there bleeding now, stands before Pilate, and Pilate asks him a question, Jesus will not answer. He said, "Do you refuse to speak to me? Don't you realize I have the power to crucify you and the power to set you free?"

And Jesus answered, "You would have no power over me if it were not given you from above. Therefore, the one who handed me over to you is guilty of the greater sin." That's accountability, friends. Greater than what? Greater than Pilate's sin. Pilate sinned, scourging at that point, but soon, scourging an innocent man, that's a sin, Annas and Caiaphas sinned more said Jesus, greater sin.

Well, there are so many examples of this, examples in secular history, like when Hitler left a third of a million British troops alive on the beaches of Dunkirk rather than wiping them out, so they're all rescued by all these ships that came across the English channel, what did he do that for? Why did he invade Russia? That was absolutely foolish. He had continental Europe by the throat, and some kind of a truce, a peace with the Russians. Why invade Russia? And if you're gonna invade, why go down and punish the Balkans first for a little uprising and then invade like in mid-June so that winter sets in before you reach your objectives, and most of those guys, those German soldiers died.

Why didn't he declare war on the United States the day after the Pearl Harbor attack? I'm talking about Nazi Germany now. That was stupid. Probably the US would have focused on Japan and done nothing with Germany, I don't know, but it's quite possible. That was a stupid move. Why did he make all of these stupid decisions?

Well, I don't know, I can't say ultimately, based on some scriptural statements, it was the Lord's will to frustrate him and cause him to fail, that's why. I know that none of those things were accidents, I just don't get the interpretation. God hasn't sent an angel down to say, "This is why Hitler did this or that." He didn't tell us, he just tells us in the Bible, God's sovereign over king's hearts, he turns them whichever way he chooses.

I think the key concept for this in me is the book of Esther, this whole book never once mentions God, never once mentions the Lord, you never see him, he just doesn't even appear. You might say, "Why would it make it into the Bible? I thought the Bible was a book about God. I mean, why would there be a book that never even mentions him?" You know why? The lesson of Esther is I am here whether I'm named or not, and I rule whether you see me doing it or not, and so just, the king chances to read a certain book and something happens to happen a certain way, and then everything changes as a result. There's no accidents, dear friend, God is sovereign over the hearts of kings.

So how can we apply this? Well, first of all, just be comforted. It's a scary thing to think it all depends on you. Isn't that scary? Sometimes I hold my kids and they got their little arms around my neck, I shouldn't even tell this story, this is a bad story, but anyway, at least I'm the one that looks bad, but anyway, and I just let them go and they hold on to my neck, but then they start to slip and they hold on tighter and they're filled with, yeah, their little heart's beating, it's all very exciting. [laughter]

God holds us firmly. It's not up to us to hold on to him, he's holding on to us and he's holding on to the world, he knows what he's doing. Be comforted. Be encouraged. It's not up to you and your grip. I'm not saying you shouldn't grip Jesus, grab hold of him, yes, you should. But be encouraged, God is ruling. Secondly, I would urge you to pray for kings and rulers, those in charge, because God is able to influence their decisions, even if they don't come to Christ, and he can make them come to Christ. Even if they don't, God can influence their decisions for the advance of the Gospel, pray for them that they would make decisions that would be helpful for the advance of the Gospel.

And finally, if I can just urge you as you face the trials of your life, trust in God, trust in what he's doing, don't be afraid, suffer well in front of the non-Christian world that doesn't have your kind of confidence and suffer well based on this doctrine of the absolute providence of God over daily life. Close with me in prayer.

Psalm 139 teaches us that God is all powerful and in control of all of the details of our lives from the way we look, our personality, to our abilities. In all things, God is Sovereign and we can trust Him even when things don't make sense.

10…The Countdown - What's in a Name?

10…The Countdown - What's in a Name?

Introduction: Groping in the Dark

I'd like to ask that you take your Bibles and look with me to Psalm 19. This morning, we're going to look at a majestic piece of scripture. As we continue in our series in the Psalms, we're looking at those Psalms, in particular, that deal with the written Word of God, and also those that deal with the living Word of God, Jesus Christ. And we're going to intersperse them, some of them dealing more directly with the written Word, and some are called messianic Psalms that deal more directly with Jesus Christ. And this morning, we're going to look at Psalm 19.

One of the things I liked to do when I was younger, and we'd like to continue doing if I have the time, is to go hiking and camp just below the tree line on a high mountain. I really like to do that. Now, I haven't cleared this yet, but my wife likes to camp in those campground areas. You know what I'm talking about, with those fixtures and all that. That's a different experience, but a good one. But I like to climb out just below the tree line on a high mountain and pitch a tent there. And then after the Sun has gone down, I did this when I was in college, did this frequently, just go out and just look up at the sky. Have you ever done that? Where it's clear and cold. And you can see stars you didn't know existed. Can you picture it? I didn't know what the Milky Way was until I got up on a mountain and looked up, and you see this white swathe of stars going across the sky, and in some places, it's so bright and so milky and white, you can't tell one star from another. And it's glorious. Isn't it? And the Heavens are speaking to us, aren’t they? They're communicating something. They're speaking to us. And if you know how to listen, you know what they're saying.

Now, modern scientists have invested billions and billions of dollars in the most advanced listening and looking devices that there are. There are readings recently near Socorro, New Mexico, from one of the very large array radio telescopes. It uses 27 huge dishes, and an adjustable movable antenna to get faint radio signals from the distant parts of the cosmos, and they put together pictures based on what they're hearing: the birth of stars, the collision of galaxies, even the existence of a suspected Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way, and they're listening all the time. And high atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, at an elevation of almost 14,000 feet are the two most advanced looking telescopes in the world, Keck 1 and Keck 2, they're called. Constantly looking up, and each one has 36 honeycombed adjustable reflectors, computer-controlled state-of-the-art computers, just to resolve the most distance features of the universe.

And recently, I don't know if you've read in the newspaper, they have begun to detect in 20 different places, planets that are orbiting stars similar to our own Sun. And so once again, our unique place in the universe is challenged in the newspapers and magazines like National Geographic. National Geographic wrote about these planets, “as our image of the universe has exploded, humanity has lost the ancient conviction that its role must be all-important. We now know that our planet is an insignificant speck, circling an ordinary, relatively small star, far out on a spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, which is an ordinary assembly of stars of only a few hundred billion in number, among at least 100 billion such galaxies.” Feel small now?

Continuing the quote, “And we're still the only intelligent life we know of anywhere, but now, humankind has taken a dramatic leap backward toward another possible demotion with the discovery of as many as 20 worlds detected in orbit around Sun-like stars outside our solar system.” Well, that whole quote is to give you a sense of insignificance, that you are insignificant. And it's funny that these scientists don't realize that the ancients had learned that lesson too. In Psalm 8, David put it this way, “When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have created” (verse 3). What was David’s thought? “Boy, am I great!” Was that his thought? No. His thought was, “What is man, that you are mindful of him, the son of man, that you care for him” (verse 4).

So, the ancients got that message too. But there is a second message that the heavens are proclaiming, and that's what we're going to focus on today. It's a message that science twists and perverts and will not listen to. For the heavens are declaring the glory of God. And that is our focus today. How does God speak to us of His nature? How does he speak to us of His glory? And here we have in the Psalm beautifully, the three ways that God communicates to us. He speaks to us through creation, He speaks to us through the scripture, and he speaks to us through His Son, the redeemer, Jesus Christ.

I want you to have a sense when we get done with the scripture today, that our God is what he is, a majestic, immense, incredibly unmeasurably powerful, glorious God. And that this God is sufficient for any problem you face in your life, sufficient to take you out of sin, right into heaven, and sufficient to dazzle you with his being for the rest of eternity. That's who our God is. Let's look at Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. And the heavens, he has pitched a tent for the Sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course, it rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other, and nothing is hidden from its heat. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold. They are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins. May they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

 We live amongst people who are groping in the dark, don't we? They're searching for something. They're searching for some spiritual reality in their lives. And to this, we can attribute the proliferation of cults and ways of thinking and philosophies that seemed to satisfy that spiritual need. But they wither and die as quickly as they spring up, some of them even lead to tragedy. We are groping in the dark. And yet in the midst of this darkness is the light of God's communication to us. God is speaking! He is speaking and He wants to be heard, and He is speaking to us through His Universe, through the creation. He's also speaking to us through scripture and through His son, Jesus Christ, most clearly.

Now, as we're groping in the dark trying to find our way spiritually, we will never find God that way. Never! God has ordained it that we not find God that way. For it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, “For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God. God was pleased to reveal Himself.” (verse 21). The point is it was wise for God to hide so that He must communicate about Himself to us or we will never know who He is. That was wise of God, and that's what He's done. And unless God speaks to us, we will never know who He is. We will be idolators, we will imagine him and make Him, perhaps even in our own image or after our own likeness. But God has spoken to us very clearly. And what's so beautiful about Psalm 19 is that all three are featured in one Psalm: creation first, then scripture, and then as a final word, Jesus Christ.

Creation: God Speaks Naturally to Glorify Himself

First, let's look at creation. God speaks naturally to glorify Himself. What's interesting about all three forms of communication is the priority of the Word, including creation. What comes first, the universe, or the word of power, which creates it? God says, “let there be” ... What? Light! The Word exists first, and then comes the reality. God says, “Let there be a Sun.” And there is a Sun. God says, “Let there be an Earth.” See, the Word comes first, and then the reality. The Word precedes all things, but God has created, as we learn in Genesis, this world, which one theologian called the theater of His glory. You all have seats in it. You look around and you see it every day with a majestic sunset or with the stars, the Sun and the Moon, which David extols. You see a theater of God's glory. So, creation is giving a speech every day. And what is the topic of that speech? It is the glory and the majesty of God. That's the topic. How great our God is.

Now, what's so tragic is that this form of communication is not heard clearly by the sinful heart. We talked about that in Romans. In Romans chapter 1, verse 20, it says, “For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” But they take that knowledge and they twist it, they do not receive it, but yet, it's there. Now, David could have focused on the intricacies of Biology and how the whole ecosystems fit together. He could have focused on geology and the stars, the rocks, and all the things that we have on the Earth or the oceans and their power, but instead, he focuses on the stars. He looks up and he focuses specifically on that star that we're closest to, the Sun. And as he looks, he sees the contours and the edges of God's glory. Not just God's glory, vaguely, but aspects of it.

What kind of glory is it? God is powerful. We see that in the Sun's constant heat. God is wise. We see that in the fact that the Sun is just the right distance from us, not too close, not too far, just perfect for life. God is immense, in that the Sun is just swallowed up by heaven, no matter how big it is, God is good, the sunlight comes through and just caresses the leaves and photosynthesis creates the possibility of your life and mind. God is good, and God is faithful. The sun constantly rises day after day. Day after day. You see aspects of the glory of God in physical creation. We also see it in the stars, and this communication is so powerful. It is first of all ample. Look at the words that David uses to describe here; in verse 1, it says, “The Heavens declare the glory of God.” What do you think of when you think of declare? It's a proclamation! The very next thing, it says, “The skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech.” You get the sense of a big picture and just speech is being poured out from the heavens. And then it says, “Night after night, they display knowledge.”

You get the sense that God is not in the business of hiding His glory, that God is in the business of displaying His glory. He wants you to know. He wants you to see his glory. Yes, God wants to be the foundation of your life, but how many of you discuss the foundation of your home? We have the most beautiful foundation. I want to tell you about it. Would you be interested in talking about the foundation? God is the whole house, and he displays his glory. Yes, let God be the foundation of your life. We'll talk about foundation later on, but let God also be the showy display, which is what he is. He does not hide his light under a bushel, but he shows and displays what he's like. The glory pours forth, he's not shy about it, and neither should we be in our communication, for we serve a majestic God. And we can go out in the name of that God and pour forth and display His glory as well.

Our God is not shy about who he is, but that the nations may know and the ends of the Earth may see he has displayed this. And what else does he say about this? The communication is constant. It happens all the time. The Sun rises and the Sun sets day after day. This communication comes. The communication is clear. It is non-verbal, it says there's no language where the speech isn't heard, so it's not a matter of this language or that language, but you can just look and see, and you know. The communication, therefore, is universal. In creation, therefore, God speaks universally for His own glory.

Scripture: God Speaks Supernaturally to Save Us

But now in verses 7 through 11, we look at a different form of communication, and this is scripture. Here where God spoke naturally to glorify Himself in creation, He speaks supernaturally in order to save us from our sins. Naturally, to glorify Himself in creation, supernaturally, to save us from our sins. Look at the titles of scripture, beginning in verse 7, we have the law of the Lord, and then again in verse 7, the statutes of the Lord. The precepts of the Lord, in verse 8. The commands of the lord, also in verse 8, and ultimately, the fear of the Lord, the judgments of the Lord. This is speaking of the written Word of God. The Bible, therefore, is God's spoken word, written. We believe in prophets. We believe that God has spoken to prophets. Prophets heard accurately the words of God and wrote them down. For all scripture is God-breathed. And as this Psalm and other places testify it is perfect, so God communicates to us.

Now, as we compare the two forms of communication, we've got: nature, the stars, the Moon, the Sun, mountains, rivers, ecosystems, all of this. It communicates clearly, but scripture communicates far more clearly, with actual, perfect clarity. The reason I say that is that some see the stars and what do they do with them? They worship them. They make idols to them. This has been part of the groping in the dark of humanity. We do not get the message properly, because we twist and suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And so, therefore, God must speak more clearly to us: a word that is more clear, and he speaks that in scripture. In order to understand the mind and the glory of God, you must read the scriptures and you must saturate your mind in them daily. “For man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).

Perfection of Scripture

Now, the first thing that David talks about scripture is the perfection of scripture. Look at verses 7 through 9, the law of the Lord is what? It is perfect. The law of the Lord is perfect. There's nothing missing. There are no blemishes. It's totally complete and upright. It's absolutely flawless. Another Psalm, Psalm 12:6 puts it this way: “The words of the Lord are flawless. Purified seven times over like silver refined in a furnace of clay”. The psalmist David, in that case, Psalm 12, reaching for words, saying, I don't know anything that's like scripture- as pure and perfect as the scripture. Absolutely flawless. And so, we have here in verse 7, “The law of the Lord is perfect.”

And then it says “The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy.” This talks about the foundation I mentioned before. When you're building a house, you want something that's not going to move, don't you? You want a trustworthy foundation, something you can bank on that isn't going to be a fad. An intellectual, philosophical fad that was true when you were growing up, or true when you were in college, but it's not true anymore; you can't build your life on that. You need something that's going to stand the test of time; something that what David says is trustworthy. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy. They don't move.

When I was a student at MIT, I remember hearing day after day, the pounding of hydraulic hammers driving girders (supports) down into the muck that is the undersurface of Cambridge. And it's kind of like a landfill. It's muddy, and in order to build a solid foundation, they had to go as deep into the Earth as they plan to go above it. So, they had to pound and pound and pound until they could get a foundation that wouldn't move over the years. And that is a picture to me of the absolute trustworthiness of the scriptures. It's the very same thing that Jesus said in the sermon on the mount when He said “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” (Matt 7:24). What's the image? The image is of permanence. It doesn't move, whereas the sand sifts away, and then the house falls when the testing comes.

Total Truthfulness of Scripture

And then it speaks of the total truthfulness of scripture in verse 8, “the precepts of the Lord are right”. The Hebrew means righteous. It means they tell the truth. Scripture speaks the truth to you. Scripture doesn't flatter you. You need a friend like scripture. You need a friend like the word of God, a counselor that's going to tell you the truth. When you go to a doctor and when you get an analysis of your condition, do you want him to flatter you? Would you like him to say “Well, basically, you're fine. Just need to get a little more vitamin C in your diet.”? Is that what you want? You want him to tell the truth. Scripture does not flatter you. The scripture tells you the truth. And the reason it does that is that it speaks with incredible clarity. The commandments of the Lord, it says; Are pure, enlightening the eyes.

Now, any of you who have been married you went through the whole process of buying a diamond. Do you remember the four Cs of diamonds? Do you remember what they are? I guess they added a fifth recently. Color, cut, carat, and what's the last one? Clarity. The fifth one is cost, right? This is important for some people; usually, people who are buying an engagement ring. They're concerned about that. But what of clarity? You know recently they've invented something called clarity-enhanced diamonds. Have you heard of these things? Clarity enhanced. Now, a clarity enhanced diamond is a natural diamond; however, it's been altered to improve the clarity. For example, if there was a break or a little fracture in the diamond structure, which broke the surface of the diamond, it's possible to fill that break with a glassy substance, which improves the clarity and the look of the diamond. It makes it catch the light and transmit it to your eye with more radiance, more brilliance, and increases the clarity.

Does scripture need that kind of help? Absolutely not. There's no flaw. It's perfectly clear. And so, the commandment of the Lord is pure, giving light to the eyes. When you read the scripture, light comes in. And you know, light is a metaphor for knowledge, for truth, for understanding. You're not in the dark anymore, which is where we started. And it ultimately results in the fear of the Lord. Verse 9, “The fear of the Lord is...” What does it say? Pure. It is clean. It's a clean life that's lived in the fear of the Lord. Well, that is the nature of scripture. We've been describing what scripture is like. Well, the Psalmist also gives us a sense of the impact of scripture; the power of scripture on an individual. Verses 7-9, also. Every one of these phrases has a direct impact on David. You see, “The law of the Lord is perfect.” What does it say? “Reviving the soul”.

Have you ever felt in need of revival? Personal revival? You feel saggy in your walk with Jesus Christ, you feel like you've got no energy? You've got to get back to the Word. The Word, the Word! It revives you. This is what gives revival. “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” The next thing it says, “The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.” Do you need wisdom for your life? Do you need to know what to do? Go to scripture. Go to scripture. Making wise the simple. When David sees himself as simple or ignorant or un-tutored, he goes to the scripture. And it is, by the way, the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to make you feel that way. To make you feel like you're simple and ignorant. You should feel that way because you are. And so am I. And we need to come to scripture and be instructed. So, the Holy Spirit humbles us and says, “Read this, and then you will learn and then you will grow.”

“The precepts of the Lord are right.” Giving what? Joy to the heart. There is a tremendous amount of joy in the life of scripture. “The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.” We just talked about that. See how scripture has an impact? It doesn't leave you the way you were. And then finally, David discusses the preciousness and the pleasure of scripture. Verse 10, “the precepts of the Lord are more precious than gold. Yes, even than much fine gold. They are sweeter also than honey from the honeycomb.” Now, I don't own very much gold. As a matter of fact, I believe this is the only gold that I own. Very valuable to me, but not much gold here. Now, I don't know how much gold is worth, so I had to look it up. $275 a Troy ounce. Perhaps some of you investment-oriented people know that. What you didn't know perhaps is how much gold is available in the world? Do you know how much there is? Are you thinking of collecting it all?

Well, if so, you've got some competition, because other people are looking for it too. 33,000 tons is available in this world. So that makes a total of about $330 billion available in gold. And if you have $330 billion and you would like to invest in gold, that's what's available. And David says the scripture is worth more than that to me; the scripture is worth more than much fine gold to me. Could we connect it to something Jesus said: “what would it profit a man to gain the whole world” (Mark 8:36)? Not just gold, but all the platinum, all the diamonds, everything, the power, all of it. And yet what? Forfeit your soul. Your soul is worth more than anything you can find on the surface of this Earth. And so, the scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus is worth more than much fine gold. Also, it's pleasurable. It's sweeter than honey, the honey of a honeycomb.

So again, I looked up some information. Amazing what you can do on the internet these days. The value of honey. Do you know how many bee miles, how many miles of bee-flying it takes to make a pound of honey? Does anyone want to venture a guess? You'd be wrong. It's incredible. 55,000 miles per pound of honey. 55,000! One bee makes a 12th of an ounce of honey in its lifetime. So, to get a pound, you've got to have a lot of bees. They fly to over two million flowers to make a pound of honey. And for that reason, honey has always been valuable, even back to the ancients. The Egyptians used it for trade and even for currency. In Greece mead was an alcoholic drink made from mixing wine with honey, and it was called the nectar of the gods.

And what is the purpose of honey? Why did God create honey? Because our God is a pleasure God. He created a portion of your tongue to respond well to honey. And some of you may even use honey every day. I don't know, in your tea or something. It's sweet. It's pleasurable. It's delicious. And so is scripture to David. Is scripture delicious to you? I found that it tends to feed on itself. The more you read and meditate and learn, the better it gets. All the time. And therefore, if you can't relate to what David's saying here, I would urge you with all haste to get into the Word of God, because scripture is valuable and it is delicious.

Purpose of Scripture

Now, what is the purpose of scripture? Well, in Psalm 19, there are two-fold. To number one, warn of dangers, and number two, to produce reward. In verse 11, it says, “By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.” There are two great things available in Psalm 19, great transgression and great reward. Scripture is designed to help you avoid great transgression and to receive great reward. That's what scripture is for. Now, in terms of dangers, the danger is sin, and even that gets broken into two categories. Do you see them? What are the two categories of sin in Psalm 19? There are hidden faults and willful transgression. Doesn't that about cover it? The things you didn't know were wrong but you did them anyway, and they were wrong. And those things you knew what you were doing. You knew and did it anyway. Those are the two categories.

Now, in terms of hidden faults, those things that are offensive to God, but you didn't know it. They're still offensive to God. And so, David says in verse 12, “Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults.” We all have blind spots, don't we? And it is scripture that enlightens us as to what those blind spots are. Also, the loving strokes of a brother or sister in Christ can help too, but especially if they use scripture to show us those blind spots. But then there's the second category in verse 13, “Keep your servant also from willful sins. May they not rule over me.”

Now, this is the real danger. When you willfully give yourself to a pattern of sin and start getting sucked into a lifestyle or a habit of sin, it feels like slavery, doesn't it? How will you be free? What can break the bondage of that addiction? The scripture and the power of God through the Holy Spirit using scripture is the only hope you have. It's a great transgression when you're in bondage to a pattern or cycle of sin and you can't get out. The scripture holds out a warning against that. So, the scripture warns against sins you don't know about and warns even more against sins you do, that you may not go in for great transgression. But it also produces great reward, verse 11: “Keeping them there is great reward”. I believe as you follow the precepts of scripture, step by step obeying God, you will produce many good works by faith. And God has already promised graciously to reward you for them. It says in 1 Corinthians 4:4, “at that time, each will receive his praise from God.” That's grace, folks. But it is scripture that enables you to produce those good deeds.\

Human Response: A Prayer for the Pleasure of God.

Now, the final section of Psalm 19 is a human response, a prayer for the pleasure of God. Now, when God speaks to us, he speaks to elicit a response. He wants something back. He doesn't want to speak into emptiness and nothing results. When God speaks, there is light, there are worlds, there is conversion. Things happen when God speaks. His Word does not come back void or empty. And so, God has spoken to David, and David does what? He speaks back to God, and He does it in prayer. He says in verse 13, “Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me.” So that's a prayer for what? For his own holiness. He's praying to God and saying, God keep me from myself! Oh, God may I be free from sin! And then he prays in reference to his mouth and his heart. He says, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight.”

David has gone right to the heart of the matter here. Why did God create the universe? For His own glory and for his own pleasure. For his own pleasure. I love what the King James says in Revelation 4:11: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they have been and are created.” You are created, every one of you, created in the image of God for the pleasure of God. And not only that, but you're redeemed. You're saved for the pleasure of God. Listen to this in Luke 12:32, “Fear not little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Our God is pleased not just to create us, but to redeem us, and therefore, God's pleasure should be our goal every day. 2 Corinthians 5:9 says, “We make it our goal whether at home, in the body, or away from it, to please God.” We want to please Him. Ephesians 5 says, “We should find out what pleases the Lord” (verse 10).

Now, David says, I want my words and the meditation of my heart to be pleasing to you, God. I want them to be pleasing. I want them to be an aroma offered up to you. I want you to be pleased with what I say. And Oh God, you are a God who searches hearts and knows minds. I want you to be pleased with what I think. Can you pray that kind of prayer? It's hard to control the mouth, isn't it? It says in James if anyone is able to control the tongue, he's a perfect man and able to bridle the whole body as well. If you can control what you say and you're never at fault in what you say, you're a perfect man or woman able to control all of the lusts and tendencies in the body. And so, David says, put a bridle over this thing, that I may never say anything except what is pleasing to you, O God. But where do the words come from? Out of the overflow of the what? The heart. The mouth speaks.

And so, he goes back one step back and says, May the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you as well. What's your thought life like? There is a God who searches your mind and your heart, and David knew it. And so, he presented to him every aspect of himself. You can't sanctify yourself. You can't make yourself better. What you can do is like a spiritual beggar, go to God and say, God, make me different, make me different, make my words different, make my thoughts different by your word, transform me. And that's exactly what David does as a humble man.

One last thing about pleasure. You know I've noticed in the Christian life, if God is pleased with me, I'll be pleased with life. If God is displeased with me, I will be miserable. Have you noticed that? And do you know why? Because you're one with Jesus Christ, and if he's grieved, he's not going to let you be happy. He's going to make you as miserable as he is until you come out of the sin. Our pleasure and God's pleasure are connected. And so, I pray this prayer, “Oh, God, may my life be pleasing to you. Then I will be filled with joy.” Joy. Now, I've told you that there are three forms of communication that God has given us. Remember what they are. Number one, creation. Number two is what? Scripture. What's the third form of communication? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God's final word to us. Isn't he? It's also David's final word in the Psalm.

Do you see that? Who is David's redeemer? What is a redeemer? It's somebody who buys you back from slavery. And who bought David back from slavery to sin? Well, his descendant from his own body, Jesus Christ. His greater Son, who took on a human body, who died on the cross to redeem us from our sin. He is our redeemer. And isn't it beautiful how all three forms of communication are right here in Psalm 19? But he ends with God's final word. And that is Jesus Christ. And I guess for application, I just want to ask you, God is speaking. Are you listening? Are you hearing what he's saying? Do you realize what kind of a glorious God you walk under every day when you look up at the stars? Do you realize how glorious he is? What kind of power there is available for your holiness and your salvation?

That same power at work in Jesus who raised Him from the dead is at work in you, if you're a Christian. I'm going to bring you all the way to Heaven. You realize that. Praise God for it. The power of God. Are you listening to what he's saying? Are you reading scripture daily, taking in, so that your hidden faults are revealed to you and you can confess them and repent? Are you speaking the scripture back to God through prayer? And more than anything, have you come to your redeemer Jesus Christ? He's your only hope. Your only salvation. Let's close in prayer.

Prayer

Father, you have spoken to us. You have spoken to us in what your hands have made. You've spoken to us through the prophets, and now you have spoken to us the final word through your Son, Jesus Christ, who is the living Word. Father, I pray for all those here who do not know you as a redeemer, who do not know Jesus as Savior from sin, that they would even this day, not give sleep to their eyelids before they repent and come to you, for all those willful and hidden sins which your blood alone can atone for. And Father, for all of us who have come to you as redeemer, I pray that the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts may be pleasing to you. Oh God, our Lord, our rock, and our redeemer, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.