Behold No.7 Sovereign Lord

Act chapter four and verse twenty-three, written to verse thirty-one. On the day they were released, St. John went back to their own people and reported it all. Chief priests and elders had said to them.

When they heard this, they raised their voices together and prayed, Lord, they said, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of a servant, our father David. Why do the nations reign and the peoples plod in vain? Kings in the earth take their stand, and the rulers gather together against the Lord, against his anointed one.

Indeed, he, Pontius Pilate, met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to confide against your holy servant, Benjus, whom you anointed. They did what your father had decided beforehand should happen. Now Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.

Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant, Jesus. They prayed. The place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

I'm going to turn to Acts chapter 17, verse 24. Acts chapter 17, reading verse 24. The God who ruled the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth, and does not live in temples by hands.

And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth. And he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.

God did this so men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from us. For him we live and move our being. Some of your own poets have said we are his offspring.

Therefore, since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by man's design and so on. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, for he has a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of all this to all men by raising him from the dead.

May God bless that word. And then please have your walls open at the Acts of the Apostles and then the fourth chapter. I will be making reference to 7th and also other scriptures as I bring this word to you.

Look at verse 24 again. When they heard this they raised their voices together in prayer to God. Sovereign Lord, they said, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.

You spoke by the Holy Spirit. Listen to this. Without doubt the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God.

And the weightiest word in any language is its word for God. It is impossible to keep our moral practice sound and our inward attitude right while our ideas of God are oblivious or inadequate. And even more, this is another quotation from Tosa.

If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as he is. Did you hear that? If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as he is. And that's the reason.

With no apology whatsoever, I will bring this series of address to you entitled Behold Your God. Because it is so vital you and I have a near and accurate understanding of God and who he is as we possibly, with our finite minds, can grasp. A mystic from yesteryear says, only sit and think of God.

Oh, what a joy it is to think the thought to breathe in the name. Earth has no higher bliss. I ask you this question.

Now, I'll switch off as far as everyone else is concerned. Just my voice will hopefully be with the voice of God prompting it. And you, when did you last think about God, your own? Religion, as one man, is what a man does in his solitariness.

Well, that's the truth, isn't it? I want this congregation as individual people to know God for himself. I'm glad that to some degree we're interdependent on one another. But my concern is this.

Strip away all Christian fellowship. Strip away every God bitch. But for a moment, allow every devotional help that you could possibly have.

There's just you alone with the possibility of continuing because of your relationship to God. You see what I mean? We in Protestantism believe in the priesthood of all Christians, which means to say that we have as a right to be able to minister to ourselves and to enter into an experience of God on our own. And so it's right, it's bound and duty to quote the Book of Common Prayer, to consider the doctrine of God, and to consider the doctrine of God this morning in terms of his sovereignty.

One of our men focused a ring which wears on his little finger somewhat like mine, but big and encased in it is a sovereign. The sovereign was the coin that was used as a means of exchange in our country going back a hundred or so years ago. And on the sovereign there would be some depiction of the government or of the king or of the queen.

The word sovereign itself would indicate power, authority. Classically defined, it is total power. It is total authority.

Some of you are old enough to remember Bob Barker, whose maxim was, I am the greatest. Until I laid him out, it seemed as though it was not true. There have been men in the Old Testament and in the course of human history who have in effect said, I am the greatest, Nebuchadnezzar, this mighty Babylon that I built.

And he is reduced, you remember those of you who are aware of the Book of Daniel, he is reduced to the level of a beast eating grass. And in the New Testament you do get this obnoxious fellow Herod. And he doesn't view Nebuchadnezzar, quote unquote.

And he is reduced to the ground and ultimately we are told that the worms devour his corpse. I don't know what you thought of Robert Maxwell of the Dalai Lama empire. Certainly his death, though misogynistic, was also in one way very tragic.

Somebody said of him, he was all life. His closest colleague said he was larger than life. And yet when Maxwell was just 30 years of age, he needed his wife to hold his hand.

She secreted herself into the hospital because, well, he was afraid of death. It looked as though the tumor, which turned out to be benign, would take him to his grave prematurely. And even at the end of his life he has endeavored to ensure that he gets one of the best book vaults in the world.

According to Orthodox Judaism, when Messiah comes, he will come to the Mount of Olives and the first people to be raised will be those who have been entombed there. And in late Convergent Judaism, Maxwell ensured that that's where his body was put. An indication of the fact that he himself, as with all other mortals, are not larger than life.

We are all utterly dependent, dependent upon this God who gives us love in the first instance. Only God is sovereign. What does sovereign mean? Basically it breaks into three component parts.

Ownership, authority, and control. Listen to Psalm 24 if you want to know who really owns this world. Psalm 24, or the first verse, will stake out the claims.

For it says the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. The psalmist will repeat himself as most good preachers do quite frequently. In the fifth verse of the psalm, for example, You desist the mighty war.

God the Lord speaks and summons the earth from the rise of the sun to the place where it sets. Hear, O Israel, verse 7, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify against you. I am God, your God.

Verse 9, I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens. For every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle of the hills. I know every bird of the mountain and the creatures of the field are mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you. The big man is toppled. God stakes out ownership in this world.

Not just does he claim the world for himself, he claims one's own authority. Another of my hymns, which I couldn't smuggle in this morning because there is a limit to the number that you can impose on the congregation to sing, is Crown Him with Many Crowns. And it says of our Lord Jesus that he is the potentate of time.

That word, old-fashioned though it be potent, it has the idea of authority. This is our God. He's the one who's in control.

God is working his purposes out as year succeeds year. Nearer and nearer dawns the time, the time that shall one day be when the earth's filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. This God, our God, is sovereign.

And there are three or four ways in which I can open up the subject. He's sovereign in creed. In other words, he makes.

That's precisely what these disciples are saying when they're released from prison, Peter and John. And they address the Lord, and they use the Greek term despotis, which means the slave owner, the ruler of unchallengeable power. And before these disciples pray against the edicts of the heathen, they remember who this great God is.

As they bring together that adjectival noun, sovereign, and they so address him. Sovereign creation. Which is the first book of the Bible? Genesis.

Which should be the first book of the Bible? It should be Job. I think that's a consensus of opinion by most scholars, that Job predates Genesis. You often think of Job as living sort of in between the halfway through, so to speak, of Old Testament times.

Not so. He probably predates Abraham, which is an outstanding fellow, when you think of some of the revelation that he gained. So why do they put Genesis first? It's not there first chronologically.

Well, it needs to be there first, simply because of its opening chapter, or its opening two chapters. I would argue, simply because of its opening verse. Do you remember my comment from Lloyd-Jones the other day, that it's our father who is a heathen? Properly.

You don't really need to go any further, because you've encapsulated the Christian gospel in those terms. Our father. I would like to suggest, with respect to Lloyd-Jones, if you can say the first three or four words of the Bible, and fully understand what they mean, then you need go no further.

In the beginning, God. Before there was a before, there was God. Nobody predates him.

No one will antedate him. Think away England. Think away the continent.

Think away the land. Think away the sea. Think away the earth.

Think away the sun, the stars, the planets. Think away the Milky Way. Think away the universe.

Think away the thousands of universes. And you've got God. Alone in his glory, and in his splendor.

Ever-sufficient. Dependent on nothing. Dependent on no one.

This is our God. The God behind creation. Lloyd-Jones, I think I can prove the existence of God.

From the human eye. The wonders of God in nature. The wonders of God in the Bible.

How pompous and proud man is. Some of our famous politicians. Who dare to question the existence of this God.

They show their own foolishness. For it's the idiot who says. There is no God.

He sends the rain. The dust. The unjust.

You cannot tell the God what to do. This was the dilemma of some of the Jews in the New Testament times. So Rome, Paul writes as he's writing to the Christians at Rome.

In the 9th chapter and the 21st verse. Split the clay and the potter. Can the clay save the potter? Don't form me like this.

Of course not. It's absurd. Neither can humanity speak to this God and say why.

Or suggest that God should do things in a different fashion. Rather when you don't understand this God. You accept what he's about.

And you grant to him. Because it's his. A recognition of the totality of all knowledge.

With the possibility that it understood as he understood. You would do. As he did.

Jesus. He's sovereign. In creation.

It's more. He's sovereign in revelation. Creation he makes.

In revelation he discloses. Sovereign Lord they said. You made the heavy earth and the sea and everything in them.

Verse 20. You spoke by the Holy Spirit. Christianity proclaims the involvement of God.

Jewish rabbi brought out a book which was. Fated by Time magazine. About three years ago.

And he suggested that God was in control. But the world has spun of his control. And now God is in difficulty.

I understood where the Jewish rabbi was coming from. Because his son had an awful disease. That creates age much more quickly than.

Than an age should be expressed. So he got a child of just about four or five. Who was looking like an old wizened man.

I understand someone with problem. Tinkering with their. Understanding of God.

But actually. God not got the world out of control. Involved in our world.

There are some philosophers. Who said that God's relationship to the world is like. The relationship by Hong Kong.

What maker presumably is made in Hong Kong. Maybe China. It's only ten pounds.

So it couldn't be made. Anywhere. Labor is not very cheap.

The relationship of God to the world. Is a relationship of watchmakers. To the watch.

He makes it. And then he is off. But no.

Christianity says. God is involved. In the warp and the woof.

Of this world. Biblical history. Is a history of God's promotions.

And a history of God's permissions. I've tried to teach you this before. Let me recap on what I mean.

Have you ever noticed. How uneven the Old Testament is. I mean by that.

Well. We'll give you about ten. Nineteen chapters.

On the life of Joseph. We'll give you four chapters. On the life of Abraham.

You go into. The rest of the Old Testament. When it comes.

We say to David. And it'll give you many. Many chapters on David.

And yet you come to Kerry. Who was a great king. As far as historians are concerned.

And there's hardly. A whisper. Of his name.

You see. Biblical history is not. Not even.

Biblical history. Surround. Promotions.

Of God. He is considered. To bring.

About. Now there will be great. Periods.

When God will permit. Certain things to happen. And biblical history.

Hardly makes any. Come. About.

Those events at all. I mean. The great man in the Old.

Old Testament. Presumably. Historically speaking.

Politically speaking. Was. Was Alexander the Great.

Yet. There's only one reference. To Alexander the Great.

It's. In the. Whole.

Of the Old Testament. And it's not particularly. A verbal.

Reference. It's called in the book of Daniel. The Hebrew.

Man. Calls. Him.

The greatest. Civilization. He was a great.

Military. Soldier. And he controlled.

A great amount. Of power. But.

God. Rethinks. And God.

Refers to him as. The. Pea.

Goat. You. See my point.

I'm. I'm. I'm.

I'm. I'm. I'm.

I'm. I'm. I'm.

I'm. I'm. I'm.

I'm. I'm. I'm.

I'm. I'm. I'm.

I'm. I'm. I'm.

I'm. I'm. I'm.

You spoke through your son, what's more, he's sovereign not just in creation which he makes, in revelation which he disposes, he's sovereign in redemption, he decides. You spoke through the mouth of your servant of father David, and you spoke in terms of your whole servant Jesus whom you anointed. Our Lord God is disconcerned about your eternal well-being.

See if you don't disclose self in terms of creation, then there are certain conclusions that you could have drawn about God but you wouldn't know that he was giving, would you? You don't know about his power, but you know about his personality. And so he has all history in his control, and having sent these great revelations through Abraham, through the prophets and so forth, he sends his eternal revelation through Lord Jesus Christ, and it's through our saviour that he understands something of the character of this sovereign God, for our Lord Jesus is of the same essence as the father, to the extent that he can say, if you see, you've seen the father. What's God like? He's like Jesus.

Who is Jesus? Let me put that question to you, not from the New Testament context, but from the Old Testament. The book of Job has a great statement on the sovereignty of God, but it's not only the book of Job that speaks of God who creates the heavens and the earth. You should read the book of Job more.

Tremendous, exciting, thrilling, graphic descriptions of the omnipotent God, how he sets up the boundaries of nations, behind the flood, tide, the wind, and so forth. Absolutely marvellous, particularly the last chapters. But it's not just exclusively within Job that you read of the sovereignty of God, you come to the book of Isaiah.

Now, Isaiah's got sixty and more chapters. The thirty-nine chapters are exceedingly interesting as they tell us a little bit about God's concerns for his people in Jerusalem. And if I were to ask you, which is the pivotal chapter of the first thirty-nine, those of you who are knowledgeable in the Bible would say the eighth chapter.

The one in which Isaiah sees the Lord of Hosts, high and exalted, you remember I preached on this when dealing with Israel El Kavosh, Jehovah the Holy One, Isaiah sees this great God lifted up, and Isaiah who has brought down judgment upon the people of Jerusalem simply because of the way that they fastened loose with God, he then points the finger of judgment himself, because he says, woe is me, for I have seen the Lord of Hosts. Alright. Who is the Lord of Hosts? Our Lord Jesus Christ in the twelfth chapter of John's Gospel speaks of Isaiah's vision.

And he says that Isaiah spoke of me, Isaiah says, in all my glory. We'll look at that in a moment. We'll look at that through Isaiah.

The first thirty-nine chapters constitute the own section of Isaiah. Then from chapter forty to the end, you get the second movement of the book. Scholars have tried to make out that it's a double authorship.

I don't believe that at all. If you check that the preaching of a man is earlier in the years than the preaching of a man in the later years, you'll discover obviously that there is some difference. He matures.

There's a difference in his language and so on and so forth. What do you find this in Old Testament books as well? Inspiration is there, but there's a change in the way that truth is presented. Now, what is the pivotal chapter of the last part of Isaiah? Who hath believed are important to whom is the arm of the Lord.

You remember the story of the suffering saint? You remember how you get this great disclosure of our Lord Jesus Christ, this holy servant of God who is yet to come, this Messiah? And Isaiah in languages just almost unsurpassed in the whole of Scripture tells us about him. He grew up before him like a tent shoot and like a root out of a dry ground. He was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. And by his wounds we are healed.

We're all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the equity of us all.

Whom does this prophet speak to? He speaks of none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. And so we go to the 12th chapter of John's Gospel where conveniently both those two references are twinned. And our Lord Jesus makes the point.

Isaiah, centuries before our Savior was on earth, saw something of his glory and saw something of his suffering. On chapter 12 and verse 37, verse 38. This is to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet.

Lord, who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Verse 41. Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus's glory and spoke about him. When did Isaiah see the glory of Jesus? In the 8th chapter of the prophecy.

He sees the Lord high and glorious. When did Isaiah see of the suffering of the Savior? In that 53rd letter. It's all there.

So here it is. The wholeness of God. And it will allow me to coin the word.

The humbleness of God. And they're brought together in one book in the Old Testament. And when our Lord Jesus Christ steps into time and space, he shows us that this prediction of who he is is fulfilled in himself.

He is the one who speaks of the world come to existence. He is the one in whom angels fear as though they have no rope to tread. He is the one who, when he comes on earth, shall hang on a cross.

This is your God. This is my God. The Lord of Redemption.

God who carried the whole universe on his shoulders with ease. But when he comes to Calvary, he staggers and falls. God who can carry the universe in one thing of his hand.

But when he comes and is born of humanity, he sweats drops of blood. And he staggers under the load of human sin. Our God is sovereign.

He's the sovereign Lord of Redemption. He's the sovereign Lord of the creation. He's the sovereign Lord of Revelation.

This is our God. Do you understand? He's the God who makes. He's the God who discloses.

He's the God who decides. As he brings to salvation those for whom our Lord Jesus has died. You see, there's nothing that takes God by surprise.

Follow me. You'll understand why I wrote all this truth out from this passage. You see, here in the 21st of Acts 4, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against them.

Well, to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what all power and will had decided beforehand should happen. See, point.

God who revealed himself to Isaiah as the holy holy God. Reveals himself as the Lord Jesus Christ. A humble God.

And he knows what will happen to his son when his son is born a woman and walks amongst men. Herod, Pontius Pilate, and all the crew, what they did to our Lord Jesus Christ, their God and Father is fully aware. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.

You may not understand it, but this is the teaching of Scripture throughout the length and breadth of the age. From Genesis to Relation. Our God is sovereign.

Finally, he's sovereign in termination. Sovereign in creation, he makes. Sovereign in revelation, he discloses.

Sovereign in redemption, he decides. Sovereign in termination, in bringing things to an end, he acts. You go to that 17th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which tells us again of the sovereignty of God.

That's why we had it read, verse 24, The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven, and does not live in temples built by human hands, etc. For by one man he made every nation of men, and that they should inhabit the whole earth. And he determined the times for them and the places where they should live.

And then he goes on, verse 30, In the past God overlooks ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. Sovereign in termination.

The world is not an accident. It did not start with an accident, it will not finish with an accident. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells you in the 28th chapter of Matthew's gospel that all power has been given to him.

In the 11 disciples, verse 60 of Matthew 28, Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go, when they saw him and shipped him, but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore follow me, disciples of all nations.

That's an Arish tense in the Greek. In other words, it's referring to a specific time. Then, all authority on earth has been given to me.

When? When did he receive this authority? The answer is, he was raised again from the dead in the power of an endless life. When he had made unto the sins of the world all authority, even him. And his disciples are sent into all the nations to preach the gospel.

The gospel of the risen resurrected Lord. There is a special word in Revelation which talks about our Lord Jesus Christ. It's often translated, almighty.

It's a word which they coined in the church to try to bring together the sovereignty of our Jesus. If I give you the Greek, it's perhaps not understandable. See what the NIV version of the Bible makes it.

Revelation in chapter 1 and verse 8 is the first instance of which there are at least more. Revelation chapter 1 and verse 8 is our Savior described there. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

That's a special word, as I say. Only used in the book of Revelation. I'll give you another example of it.

Chapter 4 and verse 8. To the four living creatures had six wings, was covered with eyes all around. Even under his wings they never sang. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

And so you can go through the whole book of Revelation. Underline the title and the word translated Almighty in the NIV occurred. What does it mean? Well, the Lord Jesus, who has received all authority, is now exercising this authority throughout all the centuries of time, up to the end of time, when he shall return and when he shall judge the world.

You say, well, I don't seem much sure of his power in evidence. A preacher says one can be very deceptive. The fact that we cannot see what God is doing does not mean that he is doing nothing.

Another preacher says God can never be outmaneuvered, taken by surprise or caught at a disadvantage. He is a God who knows so perfectly what is happening that there is no emergency arises that he has not already made adequate and perfectly timed provision to meet. This world will come to its final point when our Lord Jesus turns.

He was there in its creation. He was there in the progressive act of Revelation. He was there at the point of redemption.

And he'll be there at the end of time. The termination of our world. That's my understanding of the sovereignty of God.

Then what are you to do with this doctrine? Allow me a moment to apply. Well, you should let it order your lives. Let it order your lives.

If God is sovereign, then I should live my life out as a person who is answering to the God who has given me life. What's more, I should rest in it. Says Lloyd-Jones, I was never worried for a frisken by a man like Hitler.

It was enough for me to read Psalm 37 verse 2, where I discovered a man whose power was like a spreading green tree. A colossus striding the whole earth. But the day came when someone wanted to find that man, but he's no longer present.

He vanished. God had blown on him. And he was no more.

You get worried about this world. And about affairs within your own body. Affairs within worthy.

Order your lives in the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Control your activities by belief in it. Speak about other people so that when people are telling you the world is in a sorry mess, you go on and say, Ah, but, but, did you not know? And then you give them a five minute pricey of my address.

Try the basis of it. Who are these two men? They've just been sunk from jail. And the Sanhedrin had put some edicts their way.

Prohibited them from proclaiming gospel. They were not intimidated. Nor should you and I be intimidated when we realize that we've been born into the family of God, and this God, our God, is the sovereign Lord of the universe.

It's the basis of this that we can pray. Ah, but you tell me, with the exception of certain churches, the majority of churches in the country are empty today. Nobody really wants to know about God.

The younger generation are 90% un-Banjized. These are the statistics of being bandied around. Is there any hope for this country? The answer is yes.

Because he's a society. And by the breath of his mouth, he can cause his power to permeate this land. He can come back.

A man with the same sort of vision and verve. And the farthest of spiritists had Charles and John Wesley, or George O'Neill. It was devastating then in the 17th century.

As we might argue, it is in the 20th century. It looked hopeless, but this God was their God. This God poured out blessing.

And this God, whose innate creation, whose innate revelation, who was its regeneration and redemption, was the God who moved in that century. And this God is our God. And we can pray on behalf of the sovereignty.

You said I found it weird. It is some fun viewing you in the part. Yes, of course you did.

Because as I was putting together one of these great, complicated, and yet wonderful arguments that show you something of the grandeur of this God. You don't understand God by flicking your fingers, or by actual reading of this Bible. You can study God for seven years, and in your own paddling in the stream of knowledge.

And of course you spend time. This is why it's absurd to go to church. All that the men or the women ever do is bring you a ten minute laugh.

You have to come to grips with this word because it's through this word that God discloses himself and makes himself known. And God asks for your attention as his word is preached. As people will give attention to television programs, and their papers, and so on and so forth.

Rest in this doctrine. Order your lives by this doctrine. Speak about this doctrine.

Pray on behalf of this doctrine. Rejoice in this doctrine. Sovereign Lord, they say.

We've got the Sanhedrin against us. We're only just a little group of people in Jerusalem. But you're there.

And you're with us. And we're on your side. And we can fell the enemy, as David felled Goliath.

Go out with this doctrine. You old hands of 70 or 80, take this doctrine home with you. He's the God of your old age, as he was the God of your infancy.

He was there with his angels when you came fresh from your mother's womb. He'll be there as your feet touch the clay, ground the Jordan, and he'll bring you through on the other side. Those of you with breaking marriages, those of you who are single parents, this God is your God.

He's adequate to every situation. Those of you who've lost your jobs, this God is still your God. Those of you who've lost your health, this God is still your God.

Run with this doctrine. Take this doctrine. If this is the last word you ever hear me preach, then take it with you and live by it.

Because this is the only doctrine that makes sense of this world. Because it's the doctrine that speaks of the great, sovereign God and Father, our Lord and Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pause for a moment.

I'll let you hear a familiar song being played on the piano, organ or both. And I will sing it. Not all of you will be able to see the overheads, but remember the words, God is still on the throne.

You'll be able to cope with the chorus. God is still on the throne. You'll be able to cope with the chorus.

You'll be able to cope with the chorus. God is still on the throne.