Sovereignty of God





The church and the world have never stood in greater need than today of the message of the sovereignty of God. The world is faced with impious proud claims that contradict the sovereignty of God, claims to the supremacy of race and people. Here is a godless philosophy that has brought upon us the awful cataclysm of bloodshed and tyranny witnessed in Europe and Asia. Before this avalanche many professing Christians have surrendered, and with fanatical zeal multitudes of men have joined in the onslaught on justice and truth and liberty. It is an unholy crusade, and knowingly or unknowingly they have taken “counsel together against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their banks asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:2, 3).
In such a situation the message of the divine sovereignty must be thrust into the foreground, principally for two reasons. First, we must be reminded that in this universe God’s sovereign government is the only totalitarian government and men must assume in it the place of humble submission and obedience. “The Lord reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved. The Lord is great in Sion; and he is high above all the people” (Ps. 99:1, 2). “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10). God’s supremacy demands subjection to His law and guarantees for every transgression judgment sure and inexorable. All history is under His control and is moving towards His final judgment where every infraction of truth and deviation from justice will receive its final adjustment and adjudication. “He cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity” (Ps. 98:9).
Secondly, we must be reminded that all events, great and small, are embraced in God’s sovereign providence. He has not resigned the reins of government. Present history is not moving towards chaos. It is moving in the grand drama of God’s plan to the accomplishment of His holy designs and to the vindication of His glory. “Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day” (Isa. 2:10, 11). The people of God must “suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock” and recognise, in the words of the great reformer, Calvin, “that while the turbulent state of the world deprives us of our judgment, God, by the pure light of his own righteousness and wisdom, regulates all these commotions in the most exact order, and directs them to their proper end” (Institutes, I, xvii. 1).

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