Welcome to a firm foundation presented by Princeton ministries with Dr. Ken Smith. This is Carol Smith, Ken’s wife. Please enjoy.

A subject of the church which is not very popular is the subject of the sovereignty of God. Now, what does it mean that God is sovereign? The word sovereign simply means self sufficient, needing nothing outside of itself. Totally able, totally capable, totally complete. It is my observation and the observation of the church through the centuries that when there is a clear understanding of how able, how capable God is, that produces not a false settling on God, that becomes a weakened form of Christianity. But when we see that the God who has called you and me to new life in Christ and that he did that out of a sovereign will, totally complete in himself, needing no input from any other source, that from the beginning of time, this sovereign God knew you by name. And he called you according to his purposes.

That when that God is declared the God of the scriptures, that produces a muscle in the Christian life, a backbone that brings great strength, great encouragement, that we follow not a God who is human, but we follow a God who is God.

A firm foundation. We invite you to stay tuned for this next half hour as our speaker, Ken Smith, deals with subjects that will strengthen your foundation in the word of God. Here now is Ken Smith to tell you more about this most interesting topic introduced at the beginning of today’s broadcast.

Most of my life, God was imagined in my mind as a gentleman who rocked on his porch, looked benevolently on the world, but really did not have much personal contact with that world. And that there was a day that I would appear before him and like appearing before some senile old grandfather, that I’d be able to talk my way into heaven. There are others who have an understanding of God that sees him simply as an absentee landlord. Maybe he created all of this, but he certainly has no input now. And I think those two views are very common amongst people today. But the God who is sovereign, the God who has a will, who has a purpose, who has a plan, which from before the beginning of time he began to work on.

That God is not all too often heard of in the church and very seldom understood by the person in the street. Just even a casual reading of the Bible will show that God, as he is revealed to us in the scripture, is a powerful, mighty, creative, self sustaining, complete God. And we use words like omnipotent, which I’m afraid when we hear that, it just simply knocks off our consciousness and we cannot understand it. But think of God as totally, completely capable. And that there is no sphere of living that you and I are part of, that he is not intimately concerned with. The Bible was written to us with revelational knowledge. Meaning what? That there is recorded in this book, information that you and I could never learn about God from our own reason.

We see in the scripture that our sovereign God is a God who controls all aspects of his creation. There is no area that is too small for him to be concerned with. And even in realms that we might not normally think of God’s relationship, specifically politics, governments, is God at all involved there? We read in proverbs from chapter 21 that the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of water. He turns that heart wherever he will. That it is God who raises up one nation and causes another to fall. It is God who, sovereignly, in total control, watches over all of the affairs of the world, even in the sphere of politics, even to the point where Jesus was able to say to peter three times, you will deny me a rather insignificant event.

And yet, no sooner was it said than three times, Peter denies the Lord. Who but a sovereign God who totally understood all of the inside workings in the life of that man, could have made such a claim? We find that the Lord is in control even of things that we consider to be luck. Chance. We read in proverbs that the lot is cast into the lap, but it is the decision that comes only from the Lord. Meaning what? Flip a coin? We say it’s chance. 50 50, heads or tails? The scripture says that even the landing of that coin has been sovereignly decreed by a living God who works his purposes, even in the drawing of a lot. And we say chance from a human perspective. But God says, no, that even that small, seemingly insignificant event is under my control.

Many of us look at our days. We say, how long shall I live? And we forget that it is recorded in the scripture that the Lord says, seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee. Thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass. And so, in human terms, we say, when someone dies, his number was up. And what do we mean? That he came to the limits of his time. That it was God alone who controls the number of days that you and I will live, because he is totally, absolutely, completely in control of every aspect of his creation. What about the free acts of man, where I just simply make a decision, I think.

But we see in the scripture, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to do his good pleasure. Meaning that as a Christian, a follower of Christ, whatever we do from our own decision process, it is God who is the initiator of that thought. It is God who is the initiator of that energy. It is God who drives us to make these decisions, and that we, as creatures of his, should give him thanks for giving us and energizing us in a way that’s going to work according to his good purposes. In the book of Isaiah, we read in chapter 46 the words of the Lord who said, remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me.

Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man who executes my counsel from a far country. Indeed, says the Lord, I have spoken it. I says, the Lord will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it. I will also do it. The context of these verses is that Isaiah, who had prophesied for four kings, had seen the nation of the Jews begin to follow the idol worship that began in the nation of Babylon. Babylon, which was known for its great desire to follow after anything other than the lord. And those idols began to come into the life of the Jewish people. Isaiah saw this.

And receiving a prophecy from the lord, Isaiah declared that the lord had a will that he was going totally bring to completion. And he makes reference to a bird of prey from the east who would come and execute his counsel. Now, this was written many years before a man named Cyrus came on the scene. Cyrus was a Persian king. While all of the difficulties of the nation of the Jews was happening, and as they had been taken away in captivity in the land of Babylon, it was Cyrus, a heathen king, whom the lord raised up to go into the land of Babylon and to free the Jews so that a remnant could return back to Jerusalem. And years before that prophecy, when the name of Sam Cyrus was unknown, Isaiah declared, the Lord has a plan.

He’s going to bring it to completion, and he is going to bring a man from the east who is going to set you free. And that is one of the reasons that the book of Isaiah has become one of the most beloved books of the church, because he spoke of things that could not have been known of a sovereign God who had a plan for his people. And he even brought Cyrus a bird from the east to accomplish his plan. Notice in verse nine that we are told to remember the former things of old. Isaiah wanted the people to remember that they had a great history, that they had been set free by the Lord from the oppressor Egypt and that they had been given the new land. And he said, remember that. Don’t ever forget it.

I remember talking with a friend of mine who while I was in the middle of seminary, he pointed me to this verse of remember the things of the Lord and what he’s done for you. And I asked him, I said, doctor Sherman, how do you remember those things? How do you bring them back to mind? He said, you know at every point that the Lord does something for me, whether it is answered prayer or to remind me of being saved from a wicked life, whatever it is in my mind, I take a big tent peg and I drive it into the ground and then I label it in my mind.

And then when the days come that I begin to forget the things of the Lord in my mind, I go back to that tent peg and I remember what the Lord has done for me. And in the same way you and I should remember the things that the Lord has already done for us. And never forget them, but always be quick to bring them to mind. Secondly, notice that it is God alone who is a sovereign God. We are told I am God. There is none like me. I have spoken it; I will bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it. And I think at times we become preoccupied on our doing as though God could not exist, that God were not capable of accomplishing his will without us.

I think one thing that needs to be said very clearly is that God is totally capable of accomplishing his will with or without us. God is totally sovereign. Now, of course, we are called to do good works. But are those good works dependent for God to be sovereign? In Madrid, Spain, at the Escorial, one of the greatest cathedrals ever built, the architect of that great church for his day built a rotunda that was so expansive that when the king walked into the new church, he cowered underneath this massive ceiling because it was rounded. And at the very top, rather than continuing the curvature, it was flat. And the king looked on that and said, there is no way that is going to stay up. And there certainly is going to come a day when that is all going to cave in on us.

The architect said, absolutely not. That will stay forever. I vouch my reputation on it. The king worshiped, looked up, and then finally gave the instruction, I want a large column built in the center of the church. That column is to go up to the center of that roof. And it is to support that ceiling. The architecture was tremendously angered, but the king had his way. And so this great column was built in the center of the church, holding up the ceiling. The king died. The architect called several friends together, and he told them as he climbed to the top of this column that he had left a quarter of an inch between the ceiling and the top of that column.

To this day, hundreds of years later, tour guides delight in taking a quarter inch beam and placing it at the top to show that even in hundreds of years, that ceiling has not settled so much as a quarter of an inch. And I think that is similar to our understanding of our good works in the great canopy of a sovereign God. And we think that we must support God, that if he did not have us, he would cave in. Friends, the scripture knows no such thing. Of that God. The scriptures speak only of a God who is totally sovereign, totally capable, totally self sustaining. And when he says, I have planned it, he means, I will do it and I will see it to completion. But also, the question is often asked about how practical is the understanding of the sovereignty of God.

I think that there is no more practical teaching related to the scripture than a clear understanding of the sovereignty of God. It shows practically first, as we read in the book of first Corinthians, chapter ten, verse 13, one of the great promises of scripture, no temptation has overtaken you, except such as is common to man. But God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. As Christians, this is one of the great promises that is ours as followers of Christ, that we know that God is never going to bring a temptation into our life that we are not able to bear at that point in our life as Christians.

And when that temptation is brought into our life, that God will have a way of escaping. Who but a sovereign God could set up all of the situation? That when I fall into temptation, he says that he has placed in that situation a way for freedom, a way of escape. Robert Lincoln was the friend of a man who was called into the civil war. Robert Lincoln was the son of Abraham Lincoln. When he learned that his friend was on the front line, Robert Lincoln wrote a letter to him. And he said, if you want to come out of the front lines, I will simply write a letter to my father and have you promoted? The friend of Robert Lincoln never requested that Lincoln would promote him. And he said in his diary, it was enough to know that there was a means of escape.

How comforting to know that the sovereign God who has set this world in motion. Has said, there’s a way of escape. Whatever temptation you find yourself under, there’s a way of escape. You need not succumb, but you can escape also. The sovereignty of God is very practical in that. It is a great comfort. It is a great comfort when we are under the great pressures. And the growing strains. That the Lord puts us under. To teach us his will in our life. And to know that a loving father is behind all of that. Who sovereignly is bringing each of us to completion in Christ. I remember in college, the first professor. Actually the first Christian. That I ever heard discuss the sovereignty of God. Was a godly professor named Dodd’s. I still can see him with his white hair, very large eyebrows.

And a spirit that just melted every heart that sat under his class teaching. We began every class with a hymn. His favorited hymn. And can it be? And I can still see him with his eyes closed. As he would then say in verse three. Long my imprisoned speech. Spirit lay fast, bound in sin and nature’s night thine eye diffused the quickening ray. I woke the dungeon flame with life. My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth and followed thee. Let’s all sing. Verse number four. No condemnation now I dread. I am my lord’s and he is mine. Alive in him my living head and clothed in righteousness. Divine, bold, I approach the eternal throne and claim the crown through Christ my own.

And he would end that hymn and tell us, there is a God who is accomplishing his purposes in ways that you and I never understand. He is a sovereign God. He is a loving God. He is a merciful God. That same God stretches his hand to you and me and says, I give you comfort. Know that I am sovereign. Know that I am working all things, even the little things. The toss of the coin. It’s not chance. It’s by my decree. The decision that you have made, not by chance. It is my decree. For I am a total God. I am a sovereign God. I am a God who says, let it be done, and it is done. I am a God who has shown my love to you with a perfect plan in Jesus Christ. Know of the comfort.

Know that you do not need to fear this world or the one to come. Why? Because I will bring to completion the work that I’ve begun in your life. That is the God that we worship. A God who is able, who is capable, who is sovereign in all of his decrees. What a God.

The incredible sovereignty of God. Thank you, Ken. I’m sure that has reminded us once again of God’s almighty power and our own insignificance. And I just trust that as we recognize that this great God who loved us so much that he sent his son Jesus Christ to die for our sins, I trust that recognition will bring us to surrender our lives to him. You’ve been listening to a message entitled the incredible Sovereignty of God, brought to us by the Reverend Ken Smith, minister of the Princeton Presbyterian Church. We invite you to attend our services each Sunday we meet in historic Princeton, New Jersey. And if you’d like more information about the time and place, we invite you to call Ken Smith at area code 609 nine to 110 20. We need to hear from you as we recognize the importance of this broadcast.

Thank you for listening. We’ve enjoyed this half hour with you and look forward to returning to you again next week at the same time and on the same station when Ken Smith deals with the question, if you knew my problem, tell your friends about the program and be sure to tune in again. This is Joe Springer on behalf of the Princeton Presbyterian Church and our pastor, Ken Smith, wishing for you God’s very richest blessing and trusting that he will help you as you seek to build a firm foundation.

Thank you for listening to a firm foundation presented by Princeton Ministries. This programming is supported by you, the listener. You may go to our website, princetonministries.org, or send your donation to Princeton Ministries Post Office box 2171, Princeton, New Jersey 08543. That’s Princeton Ministries Post Office box 2171, Princeton, New Jersey 08543. The Lord bless you, and Doctor Smith looks forward to hearing from you.