We Serve a Sovereign God

1 Chronicles 29:11 (ESV) ¹¹ Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

God was never elected to His office of God. He is not up for election. There is no term limit. He does not need to be told He is God. He is the "I Am."

This is not what I hear from people. They seem to think that they can take the circumstances they wish to see in the world and choose a god which fits the profile they have developed. Therefore, they pick and choose the things of the Bible they want to believe. They manipulate any scripture which does not fit within their system of belief. They create a god to whom they can relate as they want. They certainly don't want a sovereign who rules without the consideration of what others think. They want a popular god whom is created in their image.

Believers cannot go this route. We must understand that we serve an Almighty who has always been. He is creator and sustainer of the universe. He is the One to whom all knees will bow someday. He is the One before whom we will all stand in judgment. We will not be able to give our excuses for our sinfulness nor explain how we were just going along with the world to get along with the world.

The understanding of complete sovereignty yields a healthy fear of God. This is not the fear of someone who wants to harm us. It is the fear of Someone who loves us so much that He expects us to follow what He has said. He expects us to understand that the things He has guided us into are for our own good. His laws bring life. His Word is truth.

Yet, He is a dangerous God too. He will act within His holiness. He cannot do anything else. We must treat Him with the utmost respect in this matter. 

Please think of it this way: I have a table saw. It is a dangerous piece of equipment. I have met people whose fingers were severed by table saws. I, therefore, operate under the rules of safety when using this saw. I still have all my fingers because of this.

God is a sovereign God. I must operate under the Word of God so that I do not cause Him to discipline me. My failures in this area always caused me pain. My healing has always come through confession and repentance. I come back under His rule and I am restored. It is not just dangerous to operate outside of His rule. It is an assured disaster.

Thus, the dangerous nature of God comes from a failure to observe His word. We do not need to be afraid of Him for doing something malevolent for He acts in benevolence toward us. We fear what He said He will do when we walk outside His boundaries. We pray for grace and forgiveness and He is extremely patient with us. However, that does not mean that He will never exercise His sovereignty when we act contrary to His Word.

So, we believers obey and worship Him as the sovereign God who has the right to tell us what we should and shouldn't be doing. He has the right to determine each day we live and even the day we shall die. He has the right to tell us to do things we do not like. He has the right to bring us into His confidence and reveal Himself to us.

But never forget that He also loves us in His sovereignty. He chooses to do so. We have not done so much for Him that He could refuse to love us. He loves us first.

He can do that because He is sovereign.