What a thorny subject this has been! What acrimonious discussions have ranged around it during the centuries of the Christian era! And yet there is no subject more fraught with blessing to those who whole-heartedly receive it on the testimony of Scripture.
It depends upon the character of a person, who has uncontrolled powers, as to whether those powers will be used beneficially. For instance, if any evil person were possessed of unlimited powers, those powers would be used for evil purposes. Or if a good person without good judgment were to be in this position his lack of judgment would assuredly cause disaster in the long run.
But when we know God, how happy to realize that
“He sits as sovereign on the throne
And ruleth all things well.”
“God is love.” What a character! Not only so, but perfect wisdom and omnipotent power are the servants of Divine love. What a combination!
No wonder we are rejoiced as we know God and that He is Sovereign.
It seems as if God would assert His sovereignty by His acts from earliest times, not by words so much as by actions, though words are not wanting.
The following instances will confirm the previous remark. “And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground” (Gen. 4:2). Here the younger is mentioned before the elder. One would naturally have thought that in the case of the first two children born into the world the law of primogeniture would have been supreme, and the name of the elder mentioned first, but it is not so.
This is followed up in Genesis 5, where the genealogy of Adam is traced through Seth, the third son, given in place of the murdered Abel, and Cain, the eldest, is heard of no more.
In Genesis 6:10, we find the names of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and turning to Genesis 10:1 and 1 Chronicles 1:4, we find in each chapter the same names in the same order; yet in the light of Genesis 9:24 and 10:21, we gather that the actual order of their birth was Japheth, Shem and Ham. Shem being, however, the one specially chosen in the sovereignty of God, his name is placed first.
The sovereignty of God was next seen in the call of Abram, and the miraculous birth of Isaac, spite of the deadness of his own body and that of Sarah’s womb. Why should God have called Abram? The only answer that can be given is that God chose to do so in His sovereign will.
Next Isaac is chosen and not Ishmael, the younger again; and Jacob and not Esau, the younger again.
When we come to Jacob’s sons, we find Reuben, the eldest, set aside, Judah, the lawgiver, not chosen, but Joseph is chosen for the birthright; and when this is seen in the “double” portion of two tribes—Ephraim and Manasseh—it is that Ephraim, the younger, gets a superior blessing to Manasseh, the eider, and Jacob’s crossed hands proclaimed the sovereignty of God.
We find Moses was younger than Aaron, and David was the youngest son of Jesse’s long family of sons, whilst the children of Israel were chosen as a nation out of all the families of the earth by God’s sovereign choice.
In the New Testament the Apostle Paul signally illustrates sovereignty. The Lord did not choose one of the twelve apostles to bring out the great truths of the church, but the Apostle Paul, “as one born out of due time” one “less than the least of all saints,” and yet “not one whit behind the chiefest of the apostles.”
Romans 9, 10 and 11 are the chapters that assert in argument the sovereignty of God. So we get the magnificent assertion—
“I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (chap. 9:15).
In truth, God’s sovereignty is ever on the side of mercy. The hyper-Calvinists, who allow one side of the truth to engage them so wholly as to make them blind to and deny another truth just as much asserted in the Scriptures, viz., the responsibility of man to God, sometimes go so far as to fall into the error of saying that God elects the lost to be damned. Never was there a greater mistake.
Lower down in chapter 9 we read of the power of the potter over the clay to make vessels to honour and dishonour; but while it speaks of God’s long-suffering with vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction, it never says God fitted them for destruction, but that He endured them with much long-suffering; but in the next verse, where it speaks of vessels of mercy, it distinctly says that God afore prepared them for glory.
Paul argues the case out in a most masterly way, finishing by saying—
“For God has concluded them [Jew and Gentile] all in unbelief, that He might have mercy on all” (chap. 11:32), and then bursts forth, as the theme fills his swelling soul—
“O the depth and the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out: for who has known the mind of the Lord? or who has been His counsellor?” (vv. 33-34).
We are verily indebted to God’s sovereignty and may well exclaim—
“For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (v. 36).
Only thus can blessing to man come.