Sovereignty of God
ByBruce Ware
Part 1
V. Attributes of God
A. Methodology and the Doctrine of God
B. Incommunicable Attributes
C. Communicable Attributes
1. Intellectual Attributes
2. Moral Attributes
3. Attributes of God's Rulership
a. Freedom
b. Omnipotence
c. Sovereignty
I am including sovereignty here as an attribute, although I am really not convinced that it is an attribute per se. It is almost always discussed within the section on attributes of God in a theology text, and I've included it for that reason. But when you think about it sovereignty is not so much an attribute as it is the expression of attributes for a particular function. It is really a functional idea. Sovereignty is rulership, reigning, controlling, governing. So it brings together a whole collection of attributes in order for God to be the Sovereign, the Ruler over all. He has to be omnipotent. He has to have wisdom and knowledge. He has to have moral goodness. All of these things come to bear and focus on sovereignty as the God whose character is good, wise, powerful, holy. All of those things come to bear then in his ruling, leading, and governing over all that is.
Let me give you a definition of sovereignty, first of all. After that we will take a look at Scriptural teaching about Divine Sovereignty. I think you will see this is a teaching that is wide-spread through Scripture. It is not something that God wants us to be unclear about. Then I want to raise the issue of Divine Sovereignty, especially as it relates to human beings, moral creatures. Then we will talk together about possible positions that are taken in trying to deal with the question of sovereignty as it relates particularly to moral responsibility and human freedom.
The definition of sovereignty: God plans and carries out his perfect will, as he alone knows is best, over all that is in heaven and earth, and he does so without failure or defeat. So sovereignty is really a statement about God's control over all that is, his ruling over all that is, and his planning and executing of that plan. He plans and he carries out a perfect will. How wide is that plan and execution of plan? It is over everything in heaven and earth. Everything is encompassed in that. And how successful is he in doing that? He does it without failure or defeat. So it is his wisdom and his power brought to bear in planning and carrying out what he alone knows is best. He does that over every sphere of the universe of all that is in heaven and earth. And he succeeds in accomplishing his purposes. He doesn't fail and is not defeated in it.
1)Scriptural Teaching
'''Deuteronomy 32:39'''
This is in the summary statement of Moses (Moses' song to the children of Israel). In fact, God commanded, in the previous chapter, Moses to give this song to the people so that they would remember that he is God when they go after other gods (and he said they are going to). I want them to remember this song so they know who I am, who has called them, who they are; they are my people and so on. This is how it ends, this song of Moses at verse 39.
Deut 32:39 See now that I, I am he, and there is no god besides me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from my hand.
The remaining verses say that no matter what comes against him, he will defeat it. He will be victorious in accomplishing his purposes.
Notice in verse 39, a very interesting feature in relation to what God said concerning his own rulership that we find in a number of other passages as well. Notice, I call it "a spectrum", in fact I refer to these as spectrum texts. They are passages of Scripture where you see the two sides of the spectrum announced, and God is in control of both edges of it, both extremes, and obviously the point is everything in between. Sort of like when we say the Lord is the Alpha and the Omega. That doesn't mean that he existed in the first moment, and he will exist again in the very last moment. Rather, he exists in every moment, from the beginning to the end; the Alpha to the Omega. So these spectrum statements in the Bible are meant to encompass everything. So it is the case here. Look at Deuteronomy 32:39 again.
Deut 32:39a See now that I, I am he, and there is no god besides me; it is I who put to death and give life.
Do you see the spectrum? Death and life
Deut 32:39b I have wounded and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from my hand.
Interestingly, God's control is over, more than what we think of most readily life and healing. Who is going to quarrel with the fact that God is the one who is in control of life and healing? God does that. But the other side of it is stated in this text. Death. It is death and life. It is wounding as well as healing over which God has control. So we have this statement, and he wants the people to know that there is nothing in life that stands outside of his sovereign rulership, his will is done in both spheres of life.
A comment here. You know when I teach this in churches, so many of our people have just never been led to think in these ways from Scripture. And so be prepared to go slow to deal with questions as they come up. Allow your people time to think this through, and most importantly constantly direct them to the text.
While we are on this spectrum, this isn't the order I had plan to give them to you, but let me show you a couple of other passages with spectrum teachings.
'''1 Samuel 2'''
This is Hannah's song at the birth of Samuel. You remember Hannah was barren, and she prayed to the Lord to give her a son, and she promised she would give him back to Lord. And the LORD did honor her prayers and she in fact, gave him back to the Lord. Samuel was a great prophet and a very godly man in many ways. Here in I Samuel 2 is her prayer, her song of praise to the Lord in which Mary, the Virgin Mary, echoes in her song of thanksgiving to the Lord.
1 Sam 2:1 Then Hannah prayed and said, "My heart exults in the Lord; my horn is exalted in the Lord, my mouth speaks boldly against my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation. 1 Samuel 2:2 "There is no one holy like the Lord, indeed, there is no one besides you, nor is there any rock like our God.
Notice that in Deuteronomy 32:39 he says, "There is no god besides me." Here we have that same thing echoed; there is no god besides God. One of the things God wants us to know is this distinguishes him as God. One of the things that trouble me greatly about theological views that diminish divine sovereignty is that God himself has indicated that this is what constitutes him as God. Who are we to pull away from God because we don't like the implications of it? We are not quite sure what to do about it, so we construct a different system that seems to works better, and yet God wants to go on record, yes this who I am.
We will move on down to verse 6; this is where the spectrum is shown.
1 Sam 2:6 "The Lord kills and makes alive; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. 1 Sam 2:7 The Lord makes poor and rich; he brings low, he also exalts."
This is similar to the spectrum recorded in Deut 32. The Lord kills (death), and the Lord makes alive (life). He brings down to Sheol. This is synonymous parallelism in Hebrew. He is just saying the same thing again. He takes people to the grave, but then interestingly, he raises them up. I think that is indicating something along the lines of resurrection or perhaps life giving anyway. "The LORD makes poor and rich;" That is both sides. We're comfortable saying God provides; he gives to the poor. Well he is in control of the poor being poor as well. This is so obviously true to anyone who has a conception of God's power. What poor person is out there that God could not, at a moment, provide something for them? Even in the commonest sense of God that we would have in our broad Christian circle, isn't it true that we believe that God purposely chooses not to give what he could give to poor people so that they would not be poor?
Even with the most basic understanding of God that all of would share, it clearly is true that God could provide for this poor person something that he or she doesn't have, and he chooses not to, evidently because nothing is given. So isn't God in control of who is poor and who isn't? The same thing could be said of death and life. Every person who dies, every single death that occurs is ordained by God. How can you say that is so?
We are talking about God here. Of any person who died at this moment, couldn't God sustain their life a moment longer, a day longer, a year longer? Couldn't God do that? Absolutely. So if by nothing else, at lease by permission he allows people to die who he could sustain in life longer; he chooses not to for whatever reason. So God is in control of life and death. For any person who is killed, couldn't God intervene and stop the sniper from shooting the bullets or stop the bomb from going off? I was in Vietnam on my way to Madagascar when I was 15 years old for this trip around the world where I visited 20 some countries and spent a week in Vietnam during the war in 1969. I stood with a Vietnamese man, a mountain village man who told this story of a Viet Cong soldier who came into the village about 2 weeks earlier and had pointed a gun to his head and told him either you deny Christ or I am going to kill you. And he said, "I will not deny Christ, I will not." He pulled the trigger, and it didn't fire. He worked on the gun a bit and got it ready again and he said, "You got lucky; deny Christ or I'll kill you," and he pointed the gun to his head. Again he said, "I will not deny Christ." He pulled the trigger, and the hammer broke, so he couldn't even fix the gun to try it again. So here is one example, and the miracles I heard from these people in this village are just astonishing. Couldn't God do that in other cases too? Yes, of course he could. A person who dies of cancer, couldn't he bring healing? You name it, couldn't God do something? Yes, he is omnipotent, he is omniscient, he is in control of both life and death. Every person who is conceived, who is given life, God governed that. Every person who dies, God governs that. Wounding, healing, poor, rich, God governs it.
'''Isaiah 45:5-7'''
Here is another passage, a spectrum text in Isaiah 45. It is one of the strongest statements.
Is 45:5 "I am the Lord, and there is no other;
In this third spectrum passage what is the theme again introducing it? "I am God." Do you get the point? "I am God; this is what constitutes me as God."
Is 45:5 "I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known me;
When he says, "I will gird you," he is talking about Cyrus who doesn't even have a clue that YAHWEH is this. Cyrus hasn't even been born yet. Cyrus doesn't come for 200 years. But he is talking about Cyrus who will be used by God to accomplish all of these things and defeat Israel on his behalf and sustain Israel. It is just an incredible thing.
Is 45:5 "I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known me; Is 45:6 That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, Is 45:7 the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.
Here we have another image of light and darkness. Surely God is the one who gives light. Creating darkness, the word that is used there for the verb is ''bara'', if that means anything to you. If you have had Hebrew, ''bara'' is in Genesis. In the beginning ''bara reshith, bara elohim''. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. This what God alone can do. In Scripture the only one who can ''bara'', create in that sense is God. We can create in other ways; we can take things and work with them to make paintings or whatever. But only God is the subject of the verb ''bara'' in Scripture, and it comes another time as well.
"Creating darkness, Causing well-being" The word is ''shalom'', a great strong term for wholeness. When we think of everything as right and all is at peace that is shalom. He causes well-being.
And he creates (''bara'') calamity. Do you know what the word calamity is in Hebrew? It is the word ''ra'' which is the strongest Hebrew word for evil or disaster. For situations in the Hebrew Bible where things are completely destroyed, it is ''ra''. So here we have in verse 7, he ''bara ra''. He creates evil. Now this is the text my friends. Now if you think this is really problematic, it is. And this is really difficult to deal with. For goodness sake acknowledge this what the text says. This is what the Bible says. So let's not spin off on our own theories out there and leave the Bible behind. We cannot have a conception of divine sovereignty that does not account for passages like this. Everything on both sides of the spectrum are in God's hands, all is his jurisdiction.
'''Daniel 4'''
Daniel 4 is one of the strongest statements on sovereignty in all of the Bible. It is remarkable because these words are spoken by the pagan king Nebuchadnezzar at the end of Daniel 4.
Dan 4:34 But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored him who lives forever; for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation.
Look back at verse 29.
Dan 4:29 Twelve months later he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon.
This was after Babylon had been built and everything was at peace there.
Dan 4:30 The king reflected and said, "Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?"
I wonder if it was that last phrase that really got him in trouble: "the glory of my majesty?"
Dan 4:31 While the word was in the king's mouth, a voice came from heaven, saying, "King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: sovereignty has been removed from you, Dan 4:32 and you will be driven away from mankind, and your dwelling place will be with the beasts of the field. You will be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven periods of time will pass over you until you recognize that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever he wishes."
Do you get the point Nebuchadnezzar? You are king at this moment by my command. I gave you everything you used to build it. I enabled every stone, every building every aspect of this great city. I enabled it. Nebuchadnezzar is humbled. Can you imagine this? It really happened; seven years he went and grazed with the cattle. His finger nails grew really long. Can you imagine not trimming your finger nails for seven years? Living in the dirt? Not cutting your hair or trimming you beard for seven years? Think what this wild man looked like after seven years.
The end of the time came.
Dan 4:34 But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored him who lives forever; for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. Dan 4:35 All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off his hand or say to him, "What have you done?"
Get this. Let's not miss it. Nebuchadnezzar says his dominion is an everlasting dominion. What does that contrast with? In his own reign as king, at best he had 50 years or so. At best you have this little, tiny piece of time that is called your life that you reign over this little bit. And God's reign is everlasting; it always was and is now and always will be. His kingdom endures from generation to generation. Do you get the point? It is not exactly parallel. No matter who comes up, no matter who is king one after another, guess who is king over them? God is. No matter who gets elected to Congress or the Senate or the President or mayor or anything else, it doesn't matter who gets elected, God is king. It always was that way, and it always will be that way.
I think that is the point in Isaiah 6.
Is 6:1 In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of his robe filling the temple.
I don't think the main point was just a date like Jan 12. It is in the year of King Uzziah's death. The point is when Uzziah dies, who was a good king, guess who doesn't die? Guess who is still here on his throne? I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted.