Sovereignty Belongs To God

Man’s will has never determined one single event in the world’s history and never will. God’s will alone determines events and brings them to pass. It is true that men do act according to their choice, will, intellect and reason, but this is not the whole truth. The whole truth is that every event, circumstance, opportunity, happening and thought, whether good or bad, that influences and motivated man’s choice is foreordained of God. Sovereignty is the prerogative of God alone. Man is God’s creature. All created things are totally dependent upon and absolutely subject to their Creator’s will. If God is the Creator of this universe, He is sovereign over it; and if He is not sovereign over the universe, He is not its Creator.

This truth is self-evident to all honest minds. To deny God as sovereign is to deny Him as Father. To deny Him as Father is to deny Him as Saviour. The denial of God’s sovereignty is in essence and fact the complete denial of God. To deny God is to proclaim the utterly unbelievable and absolutely impossible absurdity that man made himself; and that he came from nowhere and goes nowhere; that he lives and dies without purpose or reason; and, that his thoughts and actions have no meaning whatsoever. To deny God is to proclaim the theory that the universe is without cause, reason, purpose, meaning, destiny or hope.

The sovereignty of God is absolute. To acknowledge this truth is at once to acknowledge that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass; that nothing else can come to pass; that predestination is a fact; that God does rule in the kingdoms of men; that all human ties, bonds and relationships are divinely appointed and formed; that salvation rests solely, fully and only in God’s election; that salvation is by God’s grace and His grace alone; and that no part of man’s salvation is of himself either in origin or execution. Where men get the idea that man’s will is the all-determining factor or moving cause of his salvation is hard to see. Certainly they do not get it from the Bible. “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:11-13). Any sermon that does not have Christ in the beginning, the middle, and the end is a mistake in conception and crime in execution.

-Scott Richardson