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How Sovereign Is God?

Charles Spurgeon:

I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes—

that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens—

that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses.

The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence—

the fall of sere leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.

Does Scripture really teach this? I believe the answer is yes. Here is just a tiny sampling:

God Is Sovereign Over . . .

Seemingly random things:

The lot is cast into the lap,

but its every decision is from the LORD.

(Proverbs 16:33)

The heart of the most powerful person in the land:



The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD;

he turns it wherever he will.

(Proverbs 21:1)

Our daily lives and plans:

A man’s steps are from the LORD;

how then can man understand his way?

(Proverbs 20:24)

Many are the plans in the mind of a man,

but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.

(Proverbs 19:21)

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. . . .  Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

(James 4:13-15)

Salvation:

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

(Romans 9:15-16)

As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

(Acts 13:48)

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

(Romans 8:29-30)

Life and death:

See now that I, even I, am he,

and there is no god beside me;

I kill and I make alive;

I wound and I heal;

and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

(Deuteronomy 32:39)

The LORD kills and brings to life;

he brings down to Sheol and raises up.

(1 Samuel 12:6)

Disabilities:

Then the LORD said to [Moses], “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?”

(Exodus 4:11)

The death of God’s Son:

Jesus, [who was] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

(Acts 2:23)

For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

(Acts 4:27-28)

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;

he has put him to grief. . . .

(Isaiah 53:10)

Evil things:

Is a trumpet blown in a city,

and the people are not afraid?

Does disaster come to a city,

unless the LORD has done it?

(Amos 3:6)

I form light and create darkness,

I make well-being and create calamity,

I am the LORD, who does all these things.

(Isaiah 45:7)

“The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. . . . “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

(Job 1:21-22; 2:10)

[God] sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave. . . . As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

(Psalm 105:17; Genesis 50:21)

All things:

[God] works all things according to the counsel of his will.

(Ephesians 1:11)

Our God is in the heavens;

he does all that he pleases.

(Psalm 115:3)

I know that you can do all things,

and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

(Job 42:2)

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,

and he does according to his will among the host of heaven

and among the inhabitants of the earth;

and none can stay his hand

or say to him, “What have you done?”

(Daniel 4:35)

And since compatiblism is true, none of this contradicts the equally biblical teaching that Satan is “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4) and that human choices are genuine and significant.

A Conversation on Biblical Theology

Steve Wellum and Peter Gentry (co-authors of Kingdom through Covenant) and Jim Hamilton (author of God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment and the forthcoming What Is Biblical Theology?) talk with Denny Burk in an hour and a half panel session for Southern Seminary’s Alumni Academy:

Listen to This Weak Man’s Testimony

Please listen carefully to this weak man—J. I. Packer—who displays the strength of God:

His book Weakness Is the Way: Life with Christ Our Strength (Crossway) releases in a few weeks.

Why We Shouldn’t Settle for God’s “Unconditional Love”

In his essay-turned-booklet, God’s Love: Better Than Unconditional, David Powlison suggests that people who use the term often have good intentions, wanting to affirm four interrelated truths:

“Conditional love” is bad—unconditional is shorthand for the opposite of manipulation, demand, judgmentalism.
God’s love is patient—unconditional is shorthand for hanging on for the long haul, rather than bailing out when the going gets rough.
True love is God’s gift—unconditional is shorthand for unearned blessings, rather than legalism.
God receives you just as you are: sinful, suffering, confused—unconditional is shorthand for God’s invitation to rough, dirty, broken people.

These are true—and precious. But Powlison offers several responses.

First, “there are more biblical and vivid ways to capture each of the four truths just stated.” “People currently employ a somewhat vague, abstract word—unconditional—when the Bible gives us more vivid and specific words, metaphors, and stories.”

Second, it’s not true that unmerited grace is strictly unconditional. Jesus Christ opened a way for us to experience the biblical love of God by fulfilling two conditions: a life of perfect obedience to the moral will of God, and a perfect substitutionary death on our behalf. Powlison writes: “Unconditional love? No, something much better. People who now use the word unconditional often communicate an acceptance neutered of this detailed, Christ-specific truth.”

Third, God’s love is more than conditional, for it is intended to change those who receive it. “Unconditional” often connotes “you’re okay.” But there is something wrong with you. The word “unconditional” may well express the welcome of God, but it does not well express the point of his welcome.

Fourth, “unconditional love” carries a load of cultural baggage, wedded to words like “tolerance, acceptance, affirmation, benign, okay,” and a philosophy that says love should not impose values, expectations, or beliefs on another. In fact, humanist psychology even has a term for it: “unconditional positive regard” (Carl Rogers).

Powlison says, “We can do better”:

Saying “God’s love is unconditional love” is a bit like saying “The sun’s light at high noon is a flashlight in a blackout.”

Come again?

A dim bulb sustains certain analogies to the sun.

Unconditional love does sustain certain analogies to God’s love.

But why not start with the blazing sun rather than the flashlight?

When you look closely, God’s love is very different from “unconditional positive regard,” the seedbed of contemporary notions of unconditional love.

God does not accept me just as I am;

He loves me despite how I am;

He loves me just as Jesus is;

He loves me enough to devote my life to renewing me in the image of Jesus.

This love is much, much, much better than unconditional! Perhaps we could call it “contraconditional” love.

Contrary to the conditions for knowing God’s blessing, He has blessed me because His Son fulfilled the conditions.

Contrary to my due, He loves me.

And now I can begin to change, not to earn love but because of love.

. . . You need something better than unconditional love.

You need the crown of thorns.

You need the touch of life to the dead son of the widow of Nain.

You need the promise to the repentant thief.

You need to know, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

You need forgiveness.

You need a Vinedresser, a Shepherd, a Father, a Savior.

You need to become like the one who loves you.

You need the better love of Jesus.

For a complementary perspective, see John Piper’s answer, “Is God’s Love Unconditional?“

Why Slippery Slope Arguments Can Be Too Slippery

John Frame:

A true and valid reductio must be distinguished from its fallacious imitators, one of which is the ‘slippery slope’ argument. A slippery slope argument goes like this.

‘If you take position A, you run the risk of taking position B;

position B is wrong,

therefore A is also wrong.’

Thus it is sometimes said that once one abandons belief in a pretribulational rapture, he runs the risk of denying the bodily return of Christ altogether, thus opening himself up to a thoroughgoing liberalism.

Or it is sometimes argued that if one accepts the textual criticism of Westcott and Hort, he runs the risk of denying biblical authority altogether.

Thus the slippery slope argument appeals to fear—to our fear of taking undue risks and to our fear of being linked with people (such as liberals), disapproved of in our circles, lest we incur guilt by association.

Often slippery slope arguments are buttressed by historical examples.

Such-and-such a theologian began by denying, say, total abstinence from alcoholic beverages, and five years later he abandoned the Christian faith.

Or such-and-such a denomination rejected the exclusive use of Psalms as hymns in worship, and twenty-five years later it capitulated to liberalism. . . .

In general, they prove nothing.

Usually, they do not rest on a sufficient statistical sample to establish even probable conclusions.

And they ignore the complexities of historical causation.

A denomination becomes liberal for many reasons, never just one. On the one hand, it may well be that rejection of exclusive Psalmody is in some cases at least a symptom of advancing liberalism. (I say that as an opponent of exclusive Psalmody, who nevertheless recognizes that people sometimes reject exclusive Psalmody for very bad reasons.) On the other hand, the denomination may be rejecting exclusive Psalmody for good reasons. This development may be quite independent of any trend toward liberalism, or it may bear a paradoxical relation to that trend. For example, the liberal trend may, for a time, help the church to break free of unbiblical traditions—God’s bringing a good result out of an overall evil development. (It could be argued that the development toward liberalism in the Presbyterian Church U.S., for example, enabled that denomination to take a strong stand against dispensationalism, a stand that to many nonliberals was a good thing.)

Thus not very much can be deduced from historical examples. They ought to make us think twice about what we are doing. They suggest possibilities, but they are never normative in themselves.

—John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1987), 274-275.

A Dialogue between a Believer and His Soul

The words to “The Grieved Soul,” by Joseph Hart (1712-1768):

Believer:

1. Come, my soul and let us try

For a little season,

Ev’ry burden to lay by;

Come and let us reason.

What is this that casts you down?

Who are those that grieve you?

Speak and let the worst be known;

Speaking may relieve thee.

Soul:

2. O, I sink beneath the load

Of my nature’s evil!

Full of enmity to God;

Captived by the devil!

Restless as the troubled seas,

Feeble, faint and fearful;

Plagued with ev’ry sore disease,

How can I be cheerful?

Believer:

3. Think on what thy Saviour bore

In the gloomy garden.

Sweating blood at every pore,

To procure thy pardon!

See him stretched upon the wood,

Bleeding, grieving, crying,

Suffering all the wrath of God,

Groaning, gasping, dying!

Soul:

4. This by faith I sometimes view,

And those views relieve me;

But my sins return anew;

These are they that grieve me.

O, I’m leprous, stinking, foul,

Quite throughout infected;

Have not I, if any soul,

Cause to be dejected?

Believer:

5. Think how loud thy dying Lord

Cried out, “It is finished!”

Treasure up that sacred word,

Whole and undiminished;

Doubt not he will carry on,

To its full perfection,

That good work he has begun;

Why, then, this dejection?

Soul:

6. Faith when void of works is dead;

This the Scriptures witness;

And what works have I to plead,

Who am all unfitness?

All my powers are depraved,

Blind, perverse, and filthy;

If from death I’m fully saved,

Why am I not healthy?

Believer:

7. Pore not on thyself too long,

Lest it sing thee lower;

Look to Jesus, kind as strong

Mercy joined with power;

Every work that thou must do,

Will thy gracious Saviour

For thee work, and in thee too,

Of his special favour.

Soul:

8. Jesus’ precious blood, once spilt,

I depend on solely,

To release and clear my guilt;

But I would be holy.

Believer:

He that bought thee on the cross

Can control thy nature;

Fully purge away thy dross;

Make thee a new creature.

Soul:

9. That he can I nothing doubt,

Be it but his pleasure.

Believer:

Though it be not done throughout,

May it not in measure?

Soul:

When that measure, far from great,

Still shall seem decreasing?

Believer:

Faint not then, but pray and wait,

Never, never ceasing.

Soul:

10. What when prayer meets no regard?

Believer:

Still repeat it often.

Soul:

But I feel myself so hard.

Believer:

Jesus will thee soften.

Soul:

But my enemies make head.

Believer:

Let them closer drive thee.

Soul:

But I’m cold, I’m dark, I’m dead.

Believer:

Jesus will revive thee.

You can hear a couple of verses sung here.

HT: Jeff Brewer, Aaron Youngren

If You Are in Christ, God Will Never Regret Saving You

Some of you need to stop and listen to this word from the Word from Matt Chandler:

HT: @justinholcomb

And here’s (A Book You’ll Actually Read) On the Grace of God.

What Does the President of the United States Believe about Infants Born Alive after a Botched Abortion?

As momentum builds for ending the media’s refusal to cover the facts about the horrific Kermit Gosnell abortion-mill case, I think it’s worth remembering that President Obama dealt for several years with the question of whether or not infants should be protected when born alive after a failed abortion. Here is one quote:

[I]f we’re placing a burden on the doctor that says you have to keep alive a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention as—as is necessary to try to keep that child alive, then we’re probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality.

—Senator Barack Obama, March 30, 2001, arguing against the the Born Alive Act before the Illinois General Assembly

Even though as a candidate for president Mr. Obama offered multiple explanations for his consistent votes against the Born Alive Act—explanations which don’t stand up to the historical reality—his record speaks for itself:

IL Senate 2001 (Senate Bill 1662, Born Alive Infant Protection Act)

Senator Obama voted “no” vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee (March 6, 2002)
Senator Obama argued against the bill on the IL Senate floor (April 4, 2002) (see pp. 28-35 of this PDF)
Senator Obama voted “no” for the bill (April 4, 2002)

IL Senate 2003 (clarification paragraph, which made the bills absolutely identical.

All of this is consistent with recent testimony from Planned Parenthood:

God Created Me to Worship Him

Thank you, Roger Flournoy Jr., for reminding us that we are all created in God’s image to worship him, and that Christ is all!

More Storyframe Collective videos here.

HT: @MatthewJHall