GOD-SOVEREIGNTY

Either God is totally sovereign, ordaining, ruling, and disposing of all things as He will, or He has no control over anything and faith in Him is an utter absurdity.

Author Unknown

If I did not believe in the absolute sovereignty of God:

1. I would despair of my eternal destiny. I would have no assurance of salvation. Knowing the depravity of my soul, I would most certainly apostatize were it not for God’s sovereign preservation of me (cf. Rom. 8).

2. I would be terrified of all suffering, with no confidence that God can turn evil for good and bring me safely through (cf. Rom. 8:28 and relation to vv. 29-30).

3. I would become manipulative and pragmatic in evangelism, believing that conversion is altogether a matter of my will/skill vs. will/skill of unbeliever.

4. I would cease praying for God to convert and save the lost. If the ultimate causal factor in human conversion is the self-determined human will, not the divine will, it is futile and useless to ask God to work or touch or move upon the human will so as to assuredly bring them to faith.

5. I would despair of the political process and live in fear/anxiety/resentment of those elected officials who oppose the kingdom of God. See Daniel 2:21; 4:17,25,32; 5:18-31.

6. I would live in fear of nature: tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, wind and hail and rain (cf. Psm. 147-148).

7. I would despair of ever doing anything of a spiritual nature that God requires and commands of me. Phil. 2:12-13.

Sam Storms
Excepted from: If I did not believe in the absolute sovereignty of God, Nov. 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission

We must be careful that our trust in God is not simply [an excuse for] irresponsible behavior.

Sam Storms
Birth Control, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

As the Reformers put it, saving faith is the instrument by which we subjectively appropriate Christ's objective, finished work. It is an opening of our empty hands to receive what God is offering. But we shall never give God all the glory for our salvation unless we remember that even the opening of our hands depends on what God has already done in the hiddennes of our hearts.

Mark Talbot

The Signs of True Conversion, Crossway Books, 2000, p. 29.

There has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, in respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty, from that day to this… God's absolute sovereignty… is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of anything that I see with my eyes… The doctrine has very often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God… God's sovereignty has ever appeared to me, [a] great part of His glory. It has often been my delight to approach God, and adore him as a sovereign God.

Jonathan Edwards

The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Selections, p. 59, 67, Published by the Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA 17013.

He not only is sovereign, and has a sovereign right to dispose and order in that affair; and He not only might proceed in a sovereign way, if He would, and nobody could charge Him with exceeding His right; but He actually does so; He exercises the right which He has.

Jonathan Edwards

The evil Satan causes is only by the permission of God… It would be unbiblical and irrelevant to attribute to Satan (or sinful man) the power to frustrate the designs of God.

John Piper

Desiring God, Bethlehem Baptist Church, p. 36, used by permission, www.DesiringGod.org.

The Bible says Judas delivered Him over (Mark 3:19), and Pilate delivered Him over (Mark 15:15), and Herod and the Jewish people and the Gentiles delivered Him over (Acts 4:27-28), and we delivered Him over (1 Corinthians 15:3; Galatians 1:4; 1 Peter 2:24). It even says Jesus delivered Himself over (John 10:17; 19:30). But Paul said the ultimate thing (in Romans 8:32a). In and behind and beneath and through all these human deliverings, God was delivering His Son to death. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.” In Judas and Pilate and Herod and Jewish crowds and Gentile soldiers and our sin and Jesus’ lamblike submission, God delivered over His Son (for our salvation). Nothing greater has ever happened.

John Piper

You are perplexed by the doctrine of God’s sovereignty and election. I wonder that any man believing in a God should be perplexed by these. For if there be a God, a King, eternal, immortal, and invisible, He cannot but be sovereign – and He cannot but do according to His own will and choose according to His own purpose. You may dislike these doctrines, but you can only get quit of them by denying altogether the existence of an infinitely wise, glorious, and powerful Being. God would not be God were He not thus absolutely sovereign in His present doings and His eternal pre-arrangements.

Horatius Bonar

God’s Way of Peace, 1862.

The sovereignty of God is often questioned because man does not understand what God is doing. Because He does not act as we think He should, we conclude He cannot act as we think He would.

Jerry Bridges

This is the essence of God’s sovereignty; His absolute independence to do as He pleases and His absolute control over the actions of all His creatures. No creature, person, or empire can either thwart His will or act outside the bounds of His will.

Jerry Bridges

It seems we will allow God to anywhere except upon His throne ruling His universe according to His good pleasure and His Sovereign will.

Jerry Bridges

Confidence in the sovereignty of God in all that affects us is crucial to our trusting Him. If there is a single event in all of the universe that can occur outside of God’s sovereign control then we cannot trust Him. His love may be infinite, but if His power is limited and His purpose can be thwarted, we cannot trust Him.

Jerry Bridges

No plan of God’s can be thwarted; when He acts, no one can reverse it; no one can hold back His hand or bring Him to account for His actions. God does as He pleases, only as He pleases, and works out every event to bring about the accomplishment of His will. Such a bare unqualified statement of the sovereignty of God would terrify us if that were all we knew about God. But God is not only sovereign, He is perfect in love and infinite in wisdom.

Jerry Bridges

If God is not sovereign in the decisions and actions of other people as they affect us, then there is a whole major area of our lives where we cannot trust God; where we are left, so to speak, to fend for ourselves.

Jerry Bridges

God can restrain not only people’s actions, but even their most deeply rooted desires. No part of the human heart is impervious to God’s sovereign but mysterious control.

Jerry Bridges

So while the Bible asserts both God’s sovereignty and people’s freedom and moral responsibility, it never attempts to explain their relationship.

Jerry Bridges

We must not misconstrue God’s sovereignty so as to make people mere puppets, so we must not press man’s freedom to the point of limiting God’s sovereignty.

Jerry Bridges

Just as the rails of a train (track), which run parallel to each other, appear to merge in the distance, so the doctrines of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, which seem separate from each other in this life will merge in eternity. Our task is not to force their merging in this life but to keep them in balance and to live accordingly.

Joel R. Beeke

Feed My Sheep, ed. Don Kistler, Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, 2002, p. 124.

The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling. The circumstances surrounding our lives are no accident; they may be the work of evil, but that evil is held firmly within the mighty hand of our sovereign God… All evil is subject to Him, and evil cannot touch His children unless He permits it. God is the Lord of human history and of the personal history of every member of His redeemed family.

Margaret Clarkson

Grace Grows Best in Winter, Eerdmans, 1984, p. 40, 41.

Divine sovereignty is not the sovereignty of a tyrannical Despot, but the exercised pleasure of One who is infinitely wise and good! Because God is infinitely wise He cannot err, and because He is infinitely righteous He will not do wrong. Here then is the preciousness of this truth. The mere fact itself that God's will is irresistible and irreversible fills me with fear, but once I realize that God wills only that which is good, my heart is made to rejoice.

A.W. Pink

What is God's remedy for dejection at apparent failure in our labours? This – the assurance that God's purpose cannot fail, that God's plans cannot miscarry, that God's will must be done. Our labours are not intended to bring about that which God has not decreed.

A.W. Pink

A “god” whose will is resisted, whose designs are frustrated, whose purpose is checkmated, possesses no title to Deity, and so far from being a fit object of worship, merits nought but contempt.

A.W. Pink

The sovereignty of God may be defined as the exercise of His supremacy. Being infinitely elevated above the highest creature, He is the Most High, Lord of heaven and earth. Subject to none, influenced by none, absolutely independent; God does as He pleases, only as He pleases always as He pleases. None can thwart Him, none can hinder Him.

A.W. Pink

The Attributes of God, chapter 6.

How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none. Eternal years lie in His heart. For Him time does not pass, it remains; and those who are in Christ share with Him all the riches of limitless time and endless years. God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves. For those out of Christ, time is a devouring beast.

A.W. Tozer

The Word of God never returns empty handed, frustrated, and defeated. It always, and without exception, accomplishes the pleasure of the sovereign God because He has decreed that His divine plan shall prosper in each single detail (Isa. 55:11; Acts 13:48).

Duane Edward Spencer

TULIP, The Five Points of Calvinism in the Light of Scripture, Baker, 1979, p. 22.

If God rules only in those places or events where no sin is involved, God does not rule on this earth. If sin can thwart God, His sovereignty is a name and not a fact.

Tom Wells

A Vision for Missions, Permission by The Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA. p. 18.

Sin cannot dethrone God. That is what sin aims to do, but it misses its mark. Sin brings guilt to a man, but it does not bring him one ounce of sovereignty. God rules even when men imagine they are defying Him.

Tom Wells

A Vision for Missions, Permission by The Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA. p. 47.

No doctrine in the whole Word of God has more excited the hatred of mankind than the truth of the absolute sovereignty of God. The fact that “the Lord reigneth” is indisputable, and it is this fact that arouses the utmost opposition in the unrenewed human heart.

C.H. Spurgeon

It always seems inexplicable to me that those who claim free will so very boldly for man should not also allow some free will to God. Why should not Jesus Christ have the right to choose his own bride?

C.H. Spurgeon

There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God’s sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that sovereignty overrules them, and that sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children ought to more earnestly contend to than the doctrine of their Master over all creation – the Kingship of God over all the works of His own hands – the Throne of God and His right to sit upon that throne...for it is God upon the Throne whom we trust.

C.H. Spurgeon
Divine Sovereignty, 1856.

There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God's Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children ought more earnestly to contend than the doctrine of their Master over all creation – the Kingship of God over all the works of His own hands – the Throne of God and His right to sit upon that Throne. On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldings, no truth of which they have made such a football, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on His throne. They will allow Him to be in His workshop to fashion worlds and make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to dispense His alms and bestow His bounties. They will allow Him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends His throne, His creatures then gnash their teeth, and [when] we proclaim an enthroned God, and His right to do as He wills with His own, to dispose of His creatures as He thinks well, without consulting them in the matter; then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on His throne is not the God they love. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon His throne whom we trust.

C.H. Spurgeon

Sermon on Matthew 20:15.

Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him.

Oswald Chambers

Nothing is a surprise to God; nothing is a setback to His plans; nothing can thwart His purposes; and nothing is beyond His control. His sovereignty is absolute. Everything that happens is uniquely ordained by God. Sovereignty is a weighty thing to ascribe to the nature and character of God. Yet if He were not sovereign, He would not be God. The Bible is clear that God is in control of everything that happens.

Joni Eareckson Tada

Is God Really in Control, Joni and Friends, 1987, p. 1, Used by Permission, www.joniandfriends.org.

[In considering the conflict between the sovereignty of God and the human responsibility, J.I. Packer writes]: What is an antinomy? The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable or necessary.” For our purposes, however, this definition is not quite accurate; the opening words should read “an appearance of contradiction.” For the whole point of an antinomy – in theology, at any rate – is that it is not a real contradiction, though it looks like one. It is an apparent incompatibility between two apparent truths. An antinomy exists when a pair of principles stand side by side, seemingly irreconcilable, yet both undeniable.

J.I. Packer

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, InterVarsity Press p. 18.

So far from making evangelism pointless, the sovereignty of God in grace is the one thing that prevents evangelism from being pointless. For it creates the possibility – indeed, the certainty – that evangelism will be fruitful. Apart from it, there is not even a possibility of evangelism being fruitful. Were it not for the sovereign grace of God, evangelism would be the most futile and useless enterprise that the world has ever seen, and there would be no more complete waste of time under the sun than to preach the Christian gospel.

J.I. Packer

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, InterVarsity Press p. 106.

God’s sovereignty is always to His people in wisdom and in love. This is the difference between sovereignty in God and sovereignty in man. We dread the sovereignty of man, because we have no security of its being exercised in mercy, or even justice: we rejoice in the sovereignty of God, because we are sure it is always exercised for the good of his people.

Alexander Carson

The History of Providence, p. 313, 314.

It grieves me that so many believers view the doctrine of God's sovereignty as a deterrent to a healthy, vibrant prayer life. That kind of thinking demonstrates an inadequate, incomplete and unacceptable understanding, both of God's sovereignty and of prayer. In truth, we pray because God is sovereign – He alone has power over all human events. In praying, we don't run from His sovereignty, we run to it. It's absolutely true that God is sovereign over every detail of our lives. Job acknowledged that even the number of every person's days is determined (Job 14:5). Life and death are in His hands (Jas. 4:15). Yet we eat and breathe and sleep and take measures to avoid any kind of calamity that might end our lives prematurely. Why? That's the very same question as, "Why pray if God is sovereign?" Here's the answer to why we need to breathe, and why we need to pray: God ordains the means as well as the end. And our prayers are one of the important means by which He accomplishes His will and glorifies Himself in the process.

John MacArthur

Grace to You, Newsletter, April 17, 2007.