God's sovereignty in Christian preaching emphasizes His supreme authority and control over all creation, including life’s joys and sorrows, evil, and human opposition (Psalm 115:3, Romans 8:28). Illustrations often depict natural forces like storms or the sun to symbolize His irresistible power and perfect design that sustains and guides all events toward His divine purposes.
God sovereignly controls all times and seasons, including youth and old age.
Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I planned. Youth shows but half; Trust God, See all, nor be afraid!" For age is opportunity, no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
God governs the world continuously, so we can trust Him with our concerns.
One night when an ambassador and his valet were obliged to sleep in the same room in a hotel, the valet noticed his master tossing and turning in bed. "Sir, what bothers you?" he asked. "Oh, I have so many things on my mind. The burden of my responsibility is hard to bear." "Forgive me, sir, but do you think God has been governing the world up till now?" "Of course." "And do you think He'll manage even after you've left this world?" "Undoubtedly." "Then don't you think it's possible for you to trust Him to do it even during your lifetime?" The ambassador got the point and was soon fast asleep.
We must recognize God as the ultimate cause behind all blessings and trials.
"As children will thank the tailor, and think they owe their new clothes to him rather than to their parent's bounty, so we look to the next hand, and set up that instead of God." Second causes must never be made to stand before the first cause. Friends and helpers are all very well as servants of our Father, but our Father must have all our praise. There is a like evil in the matter of trouble. We are apt to be angry with the instrument of our affliction, instead of seeing the hand of God over all, and meekly bowing before it. It was a great help to David in bearing with railing Shimei, when he saw that God had appointed this provocation as a chastisement. He would not suffer his hasty captains to take the scoffer's head, but meekly said, "Let him alone and let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him." A dog when he is struck will bite the stick; if he were wise, he would observe that the stick only moves as the hand directs it. When we discern God in our tribulations we are helped to be quiet and endure with patience. Let us not act like silly children, but trace matters to their fountain-head, and act accordingly. May the Spirit of wisdom make us men in understanding.
God takes a child to lead parents to heaven, showing His sovereign loving design.
Two prayerless parents became angry at the Almighty for taking their only child, and demanded of their minister how God, if he were love, could do this. He answered thus: "You ask of me why God has taken away your child. Listen: he wills to have at least one member out of your family in heaven. Ye parents cared not to enter heaven; and, had your child remained with you, ye would not have suffered it to enter therein. Hear now a parable: There was once a shepherd who prepared choice food in a fold for his sheep; he opened the door wide; but the sheep would not enter therein. Long did he weary himself to induce them to enter; but farther and farther they turned from the open door. At length he takes a little lamb from the flock, and carries it in; and, lo! the parents follow after. That good shepherd is Christ; the open fold, heaven; your child, the lamb. If you have the heart of parents, run after it. The Lord bears away the little lamb, that ye parents may follow after it."
What seems like chance is actually God's sovereign providence working perfectly.
The case of the painter, who, unable to express the foam at the mouth of the horse he had painted, threw his sponge in despair at the piece, and by chance did that which he could not do before by design, is an eminent instance of what is called chance. Yet it is obvious all we here mean by chance is, that the painter was not aware of the effect, or that he did not throw the sponge with such a view; not but that he actually did every thing necessary to produce the effect; insomuch that, considering the direction wherein he threw the sponge, together with its form and specific gravity, the colors wherewith it was smeared, and the distance of the hand from the piece, it was impossible, on the present system of things, that the effect should not follow. A. W. Chambers.
God will ultimately reveal solutions to difficulties beyond our present understanding.
Some one said to Copernicus, "If the world were constituted as you say, Venus would have phases like the moon: she has none, however. What have you to say to that?" Copernicus answered, "I have no reply to give; but God will be so good as that an answer to this difficulty will be found." In fact, God was so good, that Galileo invented the telescope, with which these phases of Venus were discovered; but Copernicus was dead. God will be so good that we shall see the prodigies of his power; but we shall then be living an eternal life, and shall only wonder at one thing, — our own former difficulties, when we could depend upon the great God of heaven for their solution.
Madame de Gasparin.
God’s sovereign power holds and guides us perfectly like the sun controls the stars.
When stars, first created, start forth upon their vast circuits, not knowing their way, if they were conscious and sentient, they might feel hopeless of maintaining their revolutions and orbits, and despair in the face of coming ages. But, without hands or arms, the sun holds them. Without cords or hands, the solar king drives them, unharnessed, on their mighty rounds without a single misstep, and will bring them, in the end, to their bound, without a wanderer. Now, if the sun can do this, the sun, which is but a thing itself, driven and held, shall not lie who created the heavens, and gave the sun his power, be able to hold us by the attraction of his heart, the strength of his hands, and the omnipotence of his affectionate will? Beecher.
Natural evils serve merciful purposes in God's sustaining and renewing creation.
The thunderstorm, that wields the bolt of death, refreshes the parched earth, and purifies the air. The force of gravitation, which causes concussions, and renders a fall often fatal, serves to keep all movable things stable on the surface of the earth: otherwise, every living thing might be thrown off by its rotations. The winds that, sometimes, concentrating their forces, produce storms and hurricanes, or lash the sea into foam, and carry down our floating castles to destruction, bear on their bosom the moistening vapors which render earth fertile, and air soft and balmy. They disperse, too, the pestilential exhalations that arise from fetid and decaying matter; thus shedding from their wings the dews of life, and carrying away vapors of death to be purified and rendered harmless by fresh chemical combinations. Yea, even those convulsive movements which arise from unseen workings of Nature's dark laboratory,—earthquakes and upheavings—that sometimes spread destruction in their course, are merciful provisions against the wear and tear of ages, which, by their disintegrating process would level the earth into a plain, and cover it with ocean. T. Rugg.
God uses even His enemies to accomplish His divine purposes and build His kingdom.
As Solomon, in Jewish legend, compelled the wicked spirits to assist in the temple which he was building, so does God compel even his enemies, and them when they are striving most fiercely against him, to do his work, though they mean not so, and to contribute their stones to that temple of which he is the Builder and the Maker. Abp. Trench.
God's purposes are unstoppable like a storm or lightning, beyond human control.
As you stood some stormy day upon a sea-cliff, and marked the giant billow rise from the deep to rush on with foaming crest, and throw itself thundering on the trembling shore, did you ever fancy that you could stay its course, and hurl it back to the depths of ocean? Did you ever stand beneath the leaden, lowering cloud, and mark the lightning's leap, as it shot and flashed, dazzling athwart the gloom, and think that you could grasp the bolt, and change its path? Still more foolish and vain his thought, who fancies that he can arrest or turn aside the purpose of God, saying, "What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? Let us break his bands asunder, and cast away his cords from us." Break his bands asunder! How He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh! Dr. Guthrie.
God weaves joy and sorrow into a life’s pattern unseen by us but perfect in His design.
A Christian man's life is laid in the loom of time to a pattern which he does not see, but God does; and his heart is a shuttle. On one side of the loom is sorrow, and on the other is joy; and the shuttle, struck alternately by each, flies back and forth, carrying the thread, which is white or black as the pattern needs. And in the end, when God shall lift up the finished garment, and all its changing hues shall glance out, it will then appear that the deep and dark colors were as needful to beauty as the bright and high colors. Bercher.
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