Trusting God: The Sovereignty of God (week 4 reading)

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Our church-wide reading this week focused on the Sovereignty of God. (pages 28-36)

https://pastorjonbeck.com/reading-list/ (for more info about the book and how to order one for yourself)

Central Idea

God is in control. He has a purpose and a plan for you, and He has the power to carry out that plan.

The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling. The circumstances surrounding our lives are no accident: they may be the work of evil, but that evil is held firmly within the mighty hand of our sovereign God. … All evil is subject to Him, and evil cannot touch His children unless He permits it. God is the Lord of human history and of the personal history of every member of His redeemed family.

Jerry Bridges, Trusting God (NavPres, 2023), 28.

Proverbs 21:30 – No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the LORD. (ESV)

GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY IS NOT ALWAYS APPARENT
One of our problems with the sovereignty of God is that it frequently does not appear that God is in control of the circumstances of our lives. We see unjust or uncaring or even clearly wicked people doing things that adversely affect us. We experience the consequences of other people’s mistakes and failures. We even do foolish and sinful things ourselves and suffer the often bitter fruit of our actions. It is difficult to see God working through secondary causes and frail, sinful human beings. But it is the ability of God to so arrange diverse human actions to fulfill His purpose that makes His sovereignty marvelous and yet mysterious.

Jerry Bridges, Trusting God (NavPres, 2023), 30.

Psalm 121:3–4 – He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. (ESV)

GOD DOES AS HE PLEASES
So no one can act and no circumstances can occur outside the bounds of God’s sovereign will. But this is only one side of His sovereignty. The other side, which is just as important to our trusting Him, is that no plan of God’s can be thwarted. God does as He pleases, and only as He pleases, and no one can frustrate His plans or hinder His purposes.

Jerry Bridges, Trusting God (NavPres, 2023), 33–34.

Psalm 115:3 – Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (ESV)

Isaiah 14:27 – For the LORD of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? (ESV)

Ephesians 1:11 – In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, (ESV)

God does have a purpose and a plan for you, and God has the power to carry out that plan. It is one thing to know that no person or circumstance can touch us outside of God’s sovereign control; it is still another to realize that no person or circumstances can frustrate God’s purpose for our lives.

Jerry Bridges, Trusting God (NavPres, 2023), 35.

Again it is difficult for us to appreciate the reality of God sovereignly doing as He pleases in our lives because we do not see God doing anything. Instead we see ourselves or other people acting and events occurring, and we evaluate those actions and events according to our own preferences and plans. We see ourselves influencing or perhaps even controlling or being controlled by the actions of other people, but we do not see God at work. But over all the actions and events of our lives, God is in control doing as He pleases—not apart from those events, or in spite of them, but through them.

Jerry Bridges, Trusting God (NavPres, 2023), 36.

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