In considering the sovereignty of God we must look at it in the context of how the people of the Old Testament understood it; how the first century Christians understood it; and how we in the twenty-first century would define our acceptance and understanding of the omnipotent, omniscient and omni-present God.
Old Testament Perceptions:
God chooses an interesting people who live in an interesting place. Located in what is known as the Fertile Crescent, the people whom we will come to know as Hebrews reside at what is a crossroads of culture, power, and trade between Egypt on the one hand, and what we today know as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, together with the southeastern region of Turkey and the western fringes of Iran on the other. Syriac, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, and other languages would have formed the basis for trade, and communications in general to those who lived there, while a variety of Polytheistic religions would have surrounded God’s chosen people.
As we consider the two thousand year span of the Hebrew people, post the creation stories of Genesis 1-6, it is in the first, roughly five hundred years that God intervenes through His dialogue with, and preparation of Abram, who will become known as Abraham, to be the leader of these Hebrews. God shares His desire for the style of living he wants for them, and the land He will prepare for them that forms His covenant promise to Abraham. Abraham and his descendants Isaac, Jacob become the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Later, Joseph the great Old Testament prophet will play a key role in rescuing them from the Egyptians, as well as from themselves!
They will come to understand His sovereignty through His declared word, as passed down by the patriarchs and the prophets, as well as by the ways he will come to demonstrate His power to them, as well as to the peoples surrounding them who, with God’s help, they will overcome and rout out in brutal and permanent ways. While I will illustrate both word and action later, I think that it is also necessary to understand the Old Testament for the manner in which He spoke and inspired the early writers through visions and dreams. This is the context in which we, today, must understand early scripture if we are to make sense of it, and be able to effectively communicate its meaning to others. Today’s younger generations are not only eschewing any notion of God or salvation through his Son, they find the stories and language of the Old Testament to be sophomoric fairytales, and the God of the time to be brutal and uncaring in the context of what they are sadly being taught in the halls of higher education. We cannot turn their minds to thinking differently by refutation of their opinions, we must demonstrate a different way of considering the subject.
First and foremost, we must disabuse ourselves of the scientific knowledge which we have gained over the past century, in which we find our knowledge growing at an amazing pace. The Old Testament Hebrews had no such experience, and other than the awe they would feel, as earliest man had felt, they could not put into any rational context the world around them. They would never have understood if God had said that the universe did not exist, until He (God) created a singularity from which all energy and matter would burst forth during a period of inflation that occurred before time as we know it began! Or, that the world as they experienced it was but a tiny fraction of a globe circling the sun that He formed out of gases and cosmic dust that resulted from this cataclysmic event. Thus, we find God communicating in ‘simple’ terms that people of that place and time could comprehend.
God Speaks:
As we look at the Old Testament God, we find him making declarative statements about himself, and their world as He had brought it, and them into being. By example, and in the first instance we find that God both creates and makes; Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” As for us, we know from science that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only converted from one form to another ergo, God creates something out of nothing. Only a supreme being can do that, and since we know that God is not of this world, but rather must exist outside of it in order to be able to create it, we are led to the logical conclusion that He, God was always there before the universe was created, and thus we can accept the terms “was, is now, and ever shall be!”. He makes the earth habitable with form, light and dark, creatures of the sea, and the plants and animals of the land. Alpha and Omega!
We also find further indications in His form of language that illustrates a supreme power. For example, in His Hebrew name, Elohim, we have the plural form suggesting three entities, although that does not become realized until Christ and our understanding of the Triune God. In Genesis 1:2, God also speaks of “the Spirit of God” hovering over the surface. In contrast, He “makes” the expanse and separates the waters above from the waters below. He calls into being, i.e. creates all manner of plants, vegetation creatures in the sea, animals on the land, birds in the air. Thus, we have a Creator God.
When it comes to Man, God says “Let us make man in our own image, assertions to the nature of God that we must conclude to mean Jesus who was and is and ever will be, and the Holy Spirit that is eternal. God blesses his creation and declares it to be good. So, again from the very beginning, we encounter a Creator God who must reside outside His created universe, who in creating Man has also provided all things necessary for Man and the created world to prosper and grow. Supreme indeed!
God’s Power:
It is into this backdrop of a marvelous world that the Hebrew people will build a relationship with this one and only God. None of the other gods of the peoples surrounding them can claim the creator role AND demonstrate the power by which that creation can possibly come into existence. God’s power will also be forcefully demonstrated throughout the history of the Hebrews, but His laws will require strict adherence, and this is where the conflict arises. They are a disobedient people who repeatedly fall away from God’s plan for them so that just as he demonstrates His power in overwhelming, militarily significant ways to the Canaanite peoples around them, he also shows them what happens when He withdraws His powerful protection from them when they disobey. Some excellent examples of this power can be found in Joshua when together with the armies of Israel, Jericho is captured and destroyed, as is Ai. These events occur with for-telling of them, and as they come to pass all the Israelites see, and know that it is the supreme God that is on their side.
In the story of Isaiah, we find God demonstrating His power over the god of king Ahab and the prophets of Baal. Later as God directs and assists Moses in bringing the Hebrews out of Egypt despite the protests and deceptions of Pharaoh. Can there be any larger-than-life experience of His power than that which the people live through, from the guiding dust clouds by day, and nightly columns of fire, to the parting of the Red Sea and the vanquishing of Pharaoh’s army that is chasing them? Let us not forget the provision of food and water on the long journey they would have to endure.
Perhaps what should have been the ultimate experience of God’s supreme nature was Moses communing with God atop Mount Horeb, and bringing them the Ten Commandments, the very foundation of the moral and ethical framework which, if followed, would lead them and us to a life of fulfillment with God, and the experience of Peace that is unknowable without Him.
Others Attest:
Throughout the sixty-six books of the bible there are multiple of scriptural references to Gods sovereignty. I wont list them all here, but the following are those which I feel express this very well:
Isaiah 43:13 “Even from eternity I am He, and there is none who can deliver out of My hand;
I act and who can reverse it?”
Deuteronomy 4:39 Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.
Psalm 135:6 Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.
Job 42:2 “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
1 Chronicles 16:31 Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; And let them say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.”
Matthew 19:26 And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Most compellingly,
MATTHEW 28:18-20 And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.
God in Action:
In looking at how God’s sovereignty is exercised in the Old Testament, we need to look at His actions in accordance with the promises He made, to Abraham and his descendants. While many look at these events as the work of a bloodthirsty God who cannot possible be considered loving, we must conclude the exact opposite to be the case. If you do not like the way the world has become today with all the violence, crime, dishonesty, deceit and more, imagine what it would be like if God had never intervened before now? Hell, on earth might be a term of literal meaning, and I fear that we might just be moving rapidly towards another corrective.
God’s creation was broken, Man was broken in much the same way the world of Noah was corrupted, such was the world in which we find the early Hebrews. By contrast to today little has been learned, and even after God comes to us in the form of the Son, we still cannot grasp that He truly wants the very best for us, but that does not involve us turning from him to the desires of our earthly existence. We are to move beyond our physical, temporal selves and look to maturing our spiritual selves.
There is a clear purpose to God’s actions of the Old Testament times, and that was to create a space, a place where His people might rest, reflect, and focus on the life He intends for them. That cannot be accomplished amid the clamor of pagan kings and their beliefs and actions which are anathema to the life that is only possible through God. So, He acts in the interest of the outcome He desires: -
Joshua 11:23 So Joshua took the entire land, just as the LORD had directed Moses, and he gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal divisions. Then the land had rest from war.
Of course, we find the carnage that results to be abominable to our modern sensibilities, but in contrast to the tens of millions who will perish in the holocaust, the brutality of Stalin’s Russia, or two world wars, was our defense of the cause of freedom from tyranny any less brutal? As the saying goes, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it!” It would seem that we and the early Hebrews have a lot in common. God did not create us, and the world to become an iniquitous people who refuse to accept Him and the manner in which He expects us to live. That is tough because like the Hebrews, we are “stiff-necked” and desirous of things the way we want them! As we find in Revelation, that is ultimately not going to happen. We do not simply get our way.
Conclusion:
So, the question remains, can we prove God is the Sovereign, one all-powerful God who created everything, and everything exists by His will and at His pleasure? As we find in Easton's Bible Dictionary where he defines God's Sovereignty as His "absolute right to do all things according to his own good pleasure." We cannot prove this Sovereignty by any scientific method, any more than we can prove that Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and resurrected. In both cases we must use what is known to us, and by a series of investigations and fact-finding, arrive at rational conclusions based on the collected data before us.
· There are more extant copies of bible texts than of anything every written by Man.
· There is coherence between the stories and prophesies of the Old and New Testaments.
· There is coherence between the Creation story and what we are learning through science.
· The three monotheistic religions comprise nearly 60% of the world’s 2020 population.
· Christian’s well-founded belief in the resurrected Christ adds the first instance claim to there being One God that we experience in three entities.
One could argue against the above, but taken together we would have to ask; On what basis?