God is Sovereign

Sovereignty. It wasn’t until recently that I really started hearing this word a lot. It wasn’t until even more recently till I’ve only begun to understand it. God has been showing me little by little.

First, it was through really grasping election, then it was through explaining it to children (that God is the Boss), and then just today I opened Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (by J. Piper & J. Taylor) and I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be thinking about this for awhile.

Why is sovereignty such a big deal anyways? Well, I think it has to do with God’s glory (see John 9:3 below). When we ask questions like: Did God let/cause the Holocaust (to) happen? Or why did this little child get raped? Where was God? (These are questions about God’s sovereignty.) Can we really say, “Well God didn’t know that would happen” or “He has to let it happen because if He didn’t He’d be impeding on our freewill”? Often times those are the easy answers, but are they right? Does that thinking really match up with scripture? Consider God’s Word:

Proverbs 16: 4

The Lord has made everything for it’s own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.

Exodus 4:11

Then the Lord said to Him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?”

Job 2: 10

Even when Job’s wife told him to “Curse God and die!” he told her, “Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil?”

Isaiah 45: 7

I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and [I] create calamity, I am the Lord who does all these things.

Amos 3:6

Is a trumpet blown in a city, and are the people not afraid? Does a disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?”

Eccl. 7:14

In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day adversity consider; the Lord has made one as well as the other.

[And one of the most beautiful to me is…]

John 9:3

When someone asked Jesus why a man was disabled “Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him”

Check out this video that a friend showed me:

So I’m learning God lets, causes and allows evil things to happen. But they are for the purpose of Him getting glory and also for His people’s good (James 1:2-4, Heb 12: 3-11). Of course there are difficult questions that come along with this. May they cause us to know Christ more and give Him glory.