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Our Attitude
Towards The Sovereignty of God
Mt. 11:26 Even so, Father: for so it seemed good
in thy sight.
We have been looking at the doctrine
of the Sovereignty of God and I hope you have come – like me – to love this
great truth. When I was growing up I used to hear people talk about doctrine
in a derogatory manner as if it was something that was not worth our while
investigating. … But this doctrine of the Sovereignty of God ought to
be loved and cherished by every born-again, redeemed child of God.
Indeed, it is more than a doctrine … for it
is the foundation upon which our faith is firmly built. I cannot say I
understand every minute little detail but I can assure you, after spending
many years of Biblical study into this subject, that I am completely and
absolutely convinced of its truth. It is the most beautiful ‘treasure’ that
God should ever allow His creation to possess.
It is the focus of our study this evening …
what is your attitude towards this Biblical truth of the Sovereignty of
God? Surely, in order to recognise the Sovereignty of God we must make
every effort to gaze upon the Sovereign Himself. This is what happened with
Job; after he had travelled the long road of suffering he called out to God,
Job 42:5 I have heard of thee by the
hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.
What did Job, and every other faithful son and daughter of God learn, that
we need to learn also?
Godly Fear
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Let’s first of all analyse how many of the
unsaved consider God nowadays. |
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They can freely make jokes about Him ...
or they can make Him out to be someone with a long flowing beard sitting
on a throne on some remote cloud. |
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God and His Church are irrelevant and it
seems that both are ‘on their way out’. The subject of God does not
need to be taken seriously and the unsaved have no bother rejecting
the Biblical notion of God and making up their own notion of Him to tie in
with how they want to understand Him to be. |
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Then there are those within the church too
who have an image of God drawn from out of their imagination rather than
from out of the Bible. |
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I find I have less patience with
Christians who have an inadequate view of God because they have no excuse,
- since they have the Bible. |
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They see God as some pathetic deity
running round after them sorting out their problems and concerns. … In a
sick, pitiful way God follows them, instead of them following God. |
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But, you see, if we don’t have a proper
view of Who God is we undermine Him at every stage and refuse to extend to
Him the characteristics of His true nature as being the Sovereign Lord and
King of kings. |
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… And what happens is this: we reverse the
pattern and God becomes subservient to our will instead of us attending to
His. |
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What happens too is that there threatens
to become a familiarity that challenges His Godliness and Who He actually
is. |
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He is the God of Heaven and earth. He is
the Creator God. He is the God of history … Who guided the peoples of the
world through all the corridors of time that He had so meticulously
planned. He is the God of the present whose eternal decrees are being
worked out in our day. He is the God of the future and He plans and guides
and directs and orders all of our footsteps. |
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He is the God of awesome majesty. He has
no equal. He is high and lifted up. Heaven is filled with
His holiness … and it is His holiness that makes Heaven holy! |
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Before such a One then, how could we ever
hope to stand! When we consider the vastness of His authority and the
unequalness of His presence surely we must be filled with this Godly
fear. |
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When we approach Him in prayer our
language must not be that of the world or its sentiments but surely it
must contain the true respect that emanates from our hearts that He has
cleansed; if He had not cleansed us from sin we would have no right to
approach His Throne … and it is only through His gracious work of mercy
and Divine love that we are freely acceptable before Him. |
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When I hear of someone coming before God
in a way that neglects this Godly fear it makes me shudder. When I
hear them talking loosely to God it makes me wonder whether they know Him
or not because the true child of God would not dare to approach the Throne
with anything less than the highest measure of respect and reverence in
their voice …. |
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I don’t mean you’ve got to be all fancy
and be something you’re not, but what I do mean is that, as the King of
Heaven, God is not to be approached lightly, flippantly or in any way that
undermines His standing as the Almighty Sovereign Lord. |
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This Godly fear reminds me of Who He is
and – because of His grace – how He has made to be. I don’t take for
granted the privilege of coming before Him. |
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I would have no position before Him but
that of the sinner on his way to hell if he had not reached down and
lifted me up. |
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He is not my ‘pal’ or my ‘friend’ in the
ordinary sense of the word; He is my Lord, my Saviour, my God, my Master
and my King … and I know if He had not loved me first I would never have
loved Him. |
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I look at Him by faith with gratitude for
saving me and I am looking forward someday to standing immediately
before, - closer than I am to you, - and He will know my face, and He’ll
know my name … but He will have forgotten all about my sin because He
washed it all away at Calvary. … That’s what He sent His Son to do for me
… |
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And I understand it now when the Psalmist
wrote, 2:11 Serve the LORD with fear, and
rejoice with trembling. … Aye, it
doesn’t make sense, - service and fear, rejoicing and trembling, -
but only as a child of God can I now understand it … just as the psalmist
also says, 25:14 The secret of the LORD
is with them that fear him. |
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Godly fear
blossoms out to show itself in reverence and respect for the Name of our
Heavenly Father. He is the Focus of all our attention and Godly fear
demands that we do all things decently
and in order. |
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The world might think that what we do is
‘fuddy-duddy’ and old-fashioned; some even in the church think we need to
update our ideas and our worship; … but God demands
I Chron. 16:29 Give unto the
LORD the glory due unto his name …
Ps. 96:9 worship the LORD in the beauty of
holiness: fear before him, all the earth. |
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There is none of the ‘looseness’ in the
so-called worship some churches are involved in these days, - it is not
allowed for here; there is a Godly fear and nothing less permits
the child of God to enter His presence.
John Bunyan wrote, |
Is godly fear delightful unto thee,
That fear that God himself delights to see …?
That fear that of itself would rather choose
The rod, than to offend or to abuse …
I will love them, saith God, and not depart
From them, but put my fear within their heart,
That I to them may always lovely be,
And that they never may depart from me.
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You see, our attitude towards the
Sovereignty of God must be filled with a Godly fear … not created
for the moment in any false manufactured way … but a holy fear for the
Name of God and the sanctity of approaching His presence. |
Grateful Joy
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In the vocabulary of the world fear and
joy don’t go along together. They are in two separate ‘camps’. Fear and
joy don’t have anything to do with each other, - where you have fear you
don’t have joy, and where you have joy fear is absent. |
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But what we have here is something very
different to the fear the world talks about … and the joy is very
different to how the world understands it too. |
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We are using the vocabulary of Heaven here
and therefore it must mean something different! |
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Here is how
James 4:13
explains it,
Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we
will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and
get gain: 14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is
your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then
vanisheth away. 15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we
shall live, and do this, or that. |
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When you have a Godly fear it gives
you a grateful joy that takes away muttering and murmuring. You are
resigned – in the best possible meaning of the word - to His will
and to His plan. You know He knows best … |
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If He allows something to come your way
that causes you hurt and pain … remember He is the Sovereign God and even
though you don’t understand why it is happening you are content in the
fact He does! |
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There is nothing happens outside His will;
Jesus said, Mt. 11:26 Even so, Father:
for so it seemed good in thy sight. |
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He is not a hap-hazard God, or a
‘wait-and-see-how-it-pans-out’ God. He is Sovereign! … and ought that not
to fill you with joy?! |
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“God, why did You allow such and such to
happen to me?!” Don’t look at it like that …!
Gen. 18:25 Shall not the Judge of all the earth
do right? |
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He saved you! He chose you from before the
foundation of the world. He loved you with His eternal love and drew you
in His plan of election and His Son shed His blood for you! |
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He is holding you in the palm of His hand.
Nothing can harm you outside of His will and what He allows is according
to His Sovereign mercy and design. |
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Who can work it out! Who can understand
His ways? Ps. 49: 20 Man that … understandeth not, is like the beasts
that perish. |
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His ways are not our ways;
Hab. 3:6 He stood, and measured the earth: he
beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were
scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting. |
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And yet … one of the ways He took was
straight to my heart! Busy and all that He was He made the time to come to
where I was, to take the filthy rags of sin from me, and to clothe me in
the everlasting righteousness of Christ. |
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God in His Sovereignty found me when I was
looking in another direction; God in His Sovereignty defied my sin and
called me to His side. |
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I would not reject His voice because I
dare not and I could not … and today the more I look at Him and consider
Him the more grateful and joyful it causes me to be because I come to
understand something more of the beauty of His grace. |
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I am saved because of grace and I am saved
because of the Sovereignty of God and no theologically-perverted Arminian
can rob me of the grateful joy in knowing Christ as my Saviour and that my
salvation in Him is all because of the Sovereignty of God. |
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Tell me to stop preaching this Gospel …
and I can’t, because there is no other Gospel that extends throughout the
Bible and into eternity rather than this one. |
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… and when I grasp hold of its truth I
understand more clearly the writer to the Hebrews,
12:28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which
cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably
with reverence and godly fear. |
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It makes me adore Him in my worship. It
makes me privileged that “Jesus loves me” and that “this I know … for the
Bible tells me so”. |
Conclusion
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Is this your attitude to the Sovereignty
of God? I hope it is. I cannot understand a Christian who doesn’t love the
truth of this doctrine and hold it dear. |
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A gospel that excludes His Sovereignty in
its entirety is no gospel at all, - it’s only man’s weak attempt at
patronising God. |
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Godly fear
and grateful joy are the two ‘legs’ upon which each child of God
stand before the Throne, - anything less and you will topple, - you will
fall over; anything less and you don’t have the right to stand before the
Throne! |
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The Bible says,
Prov. 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning
of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
… there needs to be a return to this Godly fear among God’s people
because our actions show us we have strayed away from the reverence and
respect for His most holy Name. Paul wrote,
Rom. 3: 18 There is no fear of God before their
eyes, - we need to get that
Godly fear back! |
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… Then shall we be able to understand how
the Psalmist wrote, 16:8 I have set the
LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, … in thy presence
is fulness of joy. |
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Godly fear
and grateful joy, - surely that ought to be the attitude each of us
have towards the Sovereignty of God. |
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In conclusion, A.W. Pink sums it up most
beautifully, “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 realise that God wills only that which is good, my
heart is made to rejoice”. |
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