God is sovereign

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions regarding our services and our sermons, or your questions in God or about God in general. This last week we talked about how a very common theme all throughout Scripture is that both God is sovereign and humans are responsible. We really can’t minimize either one of those. We can’t understand one only in the context of the other. Both of them need to stand on their own.

And even though they might appear contradictory, scripture consistently teaches us both God is sovereign and humans are responsible. So the question this week is do we need to believe that? Or what is the benefit of believing that? Or if we only believe one of those, what do we lose? How will it affect our life if we don’t simultaneously believe both?

This was actually one of the sermon questions in the message notes. And so I know some of our life groups use those message notes for their discussion times. And so the question comes back to us as pastors, what is the effect or what is the benefit of believing both? Or do we really need to or is anything lost if we don’t believe both? And I would say something is definitely lost if we don’t believe both first.

It’s what Scripture teaches, so it’s what we should believe. But practically in our lives, let’s just think about this. If we don’t believe that God is sovereign, maybe God is just within time with us and he’s waiting to find out what happens next, just like we are. God’s not really in charge. What does that mean for our lives?

It means absolute chaos. For our life, it means nobody’s at the helm of the ship. It means kind of we’re all at the helm of the ship and we’re all struggling to determine which way we’re going to go. And nobody really knows. Are we going to go off the cliff?

Are we going to sail into the sunset? Who knows, right? There’s no one in charge and we’re just flailing around not knowing what will happen.

We can ruin our lives. Other people can ruin our lives. We can ruin the plan for the Earth. There is no plan for the Earth, right? It’s absolute chaos.

And maybe even just me saying those sentences has raised our anxiety level. Some picturing a ship with no one at the helm and understanding that that is what our lives are collectively, individually, that is the future of the Earth, the future of the universe, right? It’s chaos. And if that’s what we think the situation is, I think I would be very anxious. On the other hand, of course, if we have no responsibility at all, if God just takes care of everything and it doesn’t matter whether we talked about Paul and the shipwreck.

It doesn’t matter if they jettison the cargo. It doesn’t matter if they run aground on some just they can just jump overboard and they don’t even know how to swim. And God will take care of everything. Right? Then that also leads to a world that is falling apart.

We don’t take responsibility for our actions. We’re not productive in our lives. Not only would that lead to chaos once again, but it would probably lead to depression in our own lives. Feeling like we don’t really matter, you could take us out of the equation, and the equation is exactly the same. You could take our effort out of the equation, and the result is exactly the same.

Right. It’s depressing to feel like you don’t matter. And so we really need functionally to believe both. And if we drop either one of them, life starts to spiral out of control. So it’s not just correct Biblical theology, it’s correct practical application in our lives.

And a question back to all of us is which one do you tend not to believe? If you can kind of picture those as two guardrails in your life, do you tend to believe, oh, God’s, really not in charge, and anxiety raises? Or do you tend to believe, oh, what I do doesn’t even matter, and probably depression raises. So whichever one you’re not holding on to, I would say grab onto it more tightly and you’ll probably notice a real practical improvement in your life. Well, hey, thanks again for sending in your sermon questions and we will see you next time.

Bye.