THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

                “Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walks to direct his steps.” Jer. 10:23

                There are things that I fear in this world. I worry that much of the church has wandered away from the purity and fullness of the Gospel. I worry that many are falling away from the faith giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. I worry that the Bible seems to be coming less and less relevant in our culture. I don’t like it that so many Christians seem oblivious to the rise of the antichrist kingdom that is wrapping around our reality like the tentacles of a giant octopus. Even as we adapt to our new technologies, they are becoming an inescapable prison.

                Bible prophecy is being fulfilled today with unprecedented speed and yet most of us remain complacent simply because we no longer know or understand Bible prophecy. And yet as we try to warn of these things, we sense as did Jeremiah and the prophets that all of our efforts will lead us to the chopping block and the world seems pre-programmed in some way that those who believe and those who do not believe can’t escape. It is like a giant whirlpool that is sucking the world into oblivion and so very few are able to escape its pull.

                For those of us who love the Lord and who believe implicitly in His Word, we can take a certain amount of comfort in the fact that even though the world seems out of control, it is nevertheless following God’s prophetic outline to a “T” and that means that in some overriding sense, God is still very much in control. Everything is going precisely as He said it would.

                Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that we believe at some level in the sovereignty of God we can’t see His will being followed in the world and so we tend to think that God is up there somewhere wringing His hands and wishing that everyone would come to Him so that He can gain control of this mess once again.

                We tend to operate under an unknowing assumption that God has failed in some of His experiments. For instance we often treat the Old Testament as a failed experiment and that the Law couldn’t save anyone after all, so God had to come down here and rescue us from the Law and to establish a new system.

                To match our belief in God’s failure we like to preach that the Law was done away, when in fact we continue to keep it. If we weren’t keeping it we would be in jail, because it is still wrong to kill, steal, lie, cheat, commit adultery, or to worship idols or to take God’s name in vain… and even though some would say that we disobey the Sabbath command, we do in spirit keep it because as we have trusted in the merits of Jesus Christ we have rested from our own works as He did from His. Hebrews 4:10. And the Law is also being fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit, (Romans 8:1-4) for we are no longer living by the letter of the Law which kills, but by the Spirit of the Law which brings life. (2 Cor. 3:6) So the Law is not really done away with at all, but has been written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

                In truth, if we are to understand life as it is, then we must understand God’s sovereignty much differently than we do and there are two Greek words that often get used interchangeably when in fact they each mean something very different. The Greek word that Paul uses that is translated “Will” is BOULEMA, but in general the word for “will” in the New Testament is the word “THELEMA” which is also translated as God’s will.

                Thelema does mean God’s will as we commonly understand it, but the word “Boulema” is really different and means God’s plan. Let’s explore the difference then between God’s will and God’s plan.

                It was God’s will to deliver Israel from slavery in Egypt, but God Himself set up Pharaoh to resist His will and to not let His people go. God’s will was to set His people free, but His plan called for ransacking Egypt, securing back payment for their years of slavery, to devastate the gods of Egypt and to destroy the army of Pharaoh that would surely continue to hunt them down and to dog their steps. In forcing Pharaoh to resist His Will, but fulfilled His plan so that wherever Israel went the nations, having heard of god’s mighty acts, began shaking in their boots, thus clearing the way to the Promised Land.

                It was God’s will that Israel would go directly from Egypt to Mt. Sinai, where they would listen to His voice and He would write His law on their hearts and fill them with His Spirit so that they could walk into the Promised land as a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. But God’s plan was that they would refuse to hear His voice and so they would also fail in crossing into the Promised Land for 40 years until the crossed Jorden under the leadership, not of Moses, but of Joshua.

                We need to remember that with Israel, God was creating templates of His plan. Everything that God did with Israel was in physical types and shadows that would establish God’s Truth without a shadow of a doubt. Remember if you will that Jesus, after His resurrection  taught the disciples, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, the things concerning Himself in all of Scripture. God was using Israel to set the identity of their Messiah in cement. There could be no mistake. Jesus was written into every sacrifice and temple service and in every step of their lives. And why, for instance, did God not allow faithful Moses to lead the people into the Promised Land? It is because the Law could only bring us to Jordon, to the cross. It could not save us, or take us over into the Promised Land. There had to be a new ministry to do that… the Joshua ministry, a type of Christ. So the Law can only bring us to the foot of the Christ, but only Jesus can save us and that fact was written into the very history of Israel.

                Can you begin to see the difference between god’s “Will” and His “Plan?”

                It was God’s will that everyone keep the Law and yet Romans 3:23 tells us that all have sinned. So it is God’s will that we all keep the Law, but His plan was that He would send His only begotten Son into the world to perfectly fulfill the Law, so that the promises God made to Abraham will come to us through the one Seed, Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ then becomes our righteousness and not our own works of the Law. We receive our righteousness by receiving Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

                Once we have received Jesus and are born again, the Law of Moses has finished its work. We are now sons of God through faith in Jesus. We are now empowered to keep Jesus’ commandments which are based upon all of the instructions that He gave to His disciples. So the Ten Commandments are not broken, but we have nevertheless moved on to the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus which sets us free from the Law of sin and death. The Commandments of Jesus don’t break the Law, but they operate on a much higher plain and are manifested in godly love for God and for each other.

                Again in this matter of God’s will verses God’s plan, we are told that God is not willing than any should perish, but that all should come to salvation. That is His “Will”… but His plan is that salvation is through Christ alone so that all who receive Jesus Christ will not perish but have everlasting life, but those who reject Jesus Christ will be lost by their own choice. Salvation then is for “whosoever believes in Him.” (Jesus)

                We need to remember that Jesus brought to us a full revelation of the Father. He brought us a full revelation of His coming kingdom and then He sent His Holy Spirit to empower us to fulfill His plan. Jesus firmly stated that if we hate Him, we hate his Father also. John 15:23. So Jesus is the full plan of God and no one comes to the Father but by Him. God’s will is that all would be saved, but His plan is that all salvation will be based upon our acceptance of His Son and when we place our faith in Jesus we become Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise. (Gal. 3:29)

                In Jesus story of the Prodigal son, we see God’s will and His plan distinctly played out. It was the Father’s will for the son to come home. Now the father could have sent out a bunch of his servants and found the boy and brought him home, but what would have been the outcome? The son would have come home reluctantly and full of resentment not having learned a very important lesson. So while it was the father’s will that the son come home, it was his plan that in time and with difficulty, the son would come to his senses so that when he finally came home he would have a much deeper understanding and appreciation for what it meant to be a son and an in heritor of all that the father had built for him.

                We may be able to resist God’s will and in our stubbornness we often do resist His will… but we can never resist God’s plan. His plan is irrevocable, as Romans 11:29 tells us. So God made many promises that were contingent upon our obedience. These we call conditional promises, where God says, “If you do this then I will do that.” But the promises god made to Abraham, before the Law, are unconditional and irrevocable. If you receive Jesus as your Savior and Lord, then you become Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise.

                This is God’s plan so that everyone who comes to Him He will in nowise cast out. Salvation is through Jesus and not through Moses… so the New Testament wasn’t plan “B.” Jesus was in fact slain from the foundation of the world and all of history past and present and future finds its focus in the cross which stands at the center of time.

                There is yet one more point to be made about the sovereignty of God. That is that when we see the rapid formation of the antichrist kingdom and the falling away of large portions of the church. When we see Zionist bankers and power brokers and the Vatican collaborating to bring about the New World order and the Mark of the Beast, we need to understand that they have no choice but to follow God’s play book and to fulfill God’s patterns for bringing Satan’s kingdom to an end.

                In God’s plan, He has given us free will, to choose which side we will be on in this final conflagration. We need to understand that His Word spells it all out and that we are all empowered either by one spirit or the other. We will play the part that we have chosen to play in this great battle between to epic powers. Christ and Satan.

                The world may think that there are many grey areas in life, but in fact we are either in God’s plan or in Satan’s plan. We are either serving one or the other… and God is raising up a new Pharaoh to resist His “will” but in truth he can do nothing to change God’s “Plan.” All we have to do is to place our faith in and to stick with God’s plan and we are promised that we will share eternity with Jesus Christ.

                Psalm 147:20 says: “The Lord preserves all them that love Him; but all the wicked will he destroy.” No grey areas there are there? But we tend to fumble around in uncertainty when in fact God’s plan is cut and dried and we have a fundamental choice to make. Are we going to trust in God’s sovereignty or are we going to follow the world into Satan’s destiny? Choose wisely my friend.

                We need not live in fear and uncertainty. We need to remember that even though much of the world is fighting God’s WILL, they cannot in the least alter God’s PLAN. If you are firmly planted in Jesus Christ and in His Word and filled with His Holy Spirit, then there is nothing that can take you from God’s plan. God’s WILL for you may be breached from time to time, but His PLAN can never be breached. His plan is that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So stick with the plan and eternity belongs to you, because He who has the Son has the life… and you can take that to the bank. 1 John 5:12