“…Each chapter deals with a major misconception about God’s sovereignty that is common to many Christians from all backgrounds. … this book is very persuasive because of his careful handling of the texts of scripture and because of the construction of his argumentation.”

Coming To Grips With God’s Amazing Love For You
“…what we need more than anything is to be drenched with the reality of the character, nature, and intimacy there is to be found in our relationship with God — Robert Bernecker has written a God-drenched book…”

an excerpt from

Who’s Your Father?
Returning to the Love of the Biblical God
by Robert Bernecker

CHAPTER 1

            Learning from the Sparrows

Today, vast stress is laid on the fact that God is personal, but this truth is so stated as to leave the impression that God is a person of the same sort as we are—weak, inadequate, ineffective, a little pathetic. But that is not the God of the Bible!
— J. I. Packer, Knowing God1

Our concept of God can be formed at a young age, and many of our understandings and perceptions are thereafter colored and shaped by these early foundational concepts. For me, one distinct example was the notion that God was an all-knowing and attentive God, but his involvement in any given event could not be taken for granted. Indeed, much of the world was presumed to be allowed to function on its own without any intervention from God. For example, rain is formed from moisture in the air that has evaporated from the surface of the ocean, and this process ostensibly could and would take place without God’s control or direction. It was understood that the earth rotates on its axis and thereby causes the sun to rise each morning. It was observable that a man may jump off a cliff if he so desires, and he will certainly plunge downward and not accelerate upward. After all, God created nature, set the world in motion, and defined the law of gravity.

During this early period of my life, the church often sang a popular, old hymn that included these lyrics: “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” This admittedly comforting phrase paints God as an attentive observer who constantly sees the activities of both sparrows and humans. We are taught that he may even be a potential benefactor if our choices and actions are pleasing to him. But is this really our God? Is he just a watchful, magnanimous old gentleman who sometimes chooses to extend kindness in our direction but most of the time allows evil to run its course? Is he either unable or unwilling to make circumstances or individuals different by interjecting his supposedly unlimited power and unlimited resources, even though he may be said to wish or desire they were different? Is a god that desires things to be different but is unwilling or unable to make them different really God at all?

In more recent years, during the pleasure of reading the Bible completely through many times in multiple translations, God began to form within me a completely different picture of himself. It turns out that the truth of the sparrows is much deeper than just God’s awareness of when or where they may fall for any arbitrary reason. What Jesus himself actually said in Matthew was this:

Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. (Matthew 10:29 NKJV)

Jesus’ words point us to a dramatically different reality than the incomplete, erroneous concept that had been formed in my earlier years. God is not merely observing the sparrows; he is in control of their circumstances, and he is exercising his sovereignty and his will over those circumstances! Not just one particular sparrow, Jesus taught, but rather, God is in control of all of the sparrows’ situations. How many billions of sparrows must this be? Yet, our God’s providence guides each daily!

This may have come as a new realization to me, but it is by no means my own newly concocted understanding of this passage. One very popular old-time commentator, Albert Barnes, wrote the following concise, yet elucidating, statement about the sparrow we see in this verse: “That is, God, your Father, guides and directs its fall. It falls only with his permission, and where he chooses.”2 Barnes’ view of this passage is neither unique nor novel; John Gill similarly expounded that “not one of them [the sparrows] is taken in a snare, or killed with a stone, or shot flying, or sitting, but by the will of God: from whence it may be strongly concluded, that nothing comes by chance; that there is no such thing as contingency with respect to God.”3 Adam Clarke also concurred with these views concerning Jesus’ words in this passage, stating, “All things are ordered by the counsel of God.” He adds, “The providence of God extends to the minutest things; everything is continually under the government and care of God, and nothing occurs without his will or permission; if then he regards sparrows, how much more man, and how much more still the soul that trusts in him.”4 Finally, John Wesley likewise noted that God’s control and direction extend to the smallest of creatures, and this fact provides us the great assurance that he will do the same for us.5

If we give this passage a bit of thought, it becomes readily apparent that we can know with great certainty that Jesus did not mean to merely teach us that God is ever attentive—that a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God noticing the event—because the thrust of Jesus’ teaching in the surrounding verses is that we should not worry or fear about circumstances, events, or even what others may do to us since God is sovereign over all, including the sparrows. This teaching would completely fail to provide us with any reason to “fear not” (v. 31) if Jesus was instructing us merely that the sparrow may fall for any haphazard reason, and while God will surely notice such an event, it is not at all certain he will involve himself or impose his own will in the situation. Rather, the only credible reason we could have to “fear not” is that Jesus was teaching us plainly that nothing happens outside of God’s sovereignty; if God involves himself in and controls the circumstances and details of the sparrow’s lives, not to mention numbering the hairs on our head as well (v. 30), then he is most certainly controlling the circumstances and details of the lives of we whom he values much more than the sparrows.

As critically important as this realization may be, there is additional truth that we can learn from these sparrows to which Jesus referred. Jesus could have claimed his own sovereignty over the sparrows by saying that they could not fall to the ground apart from his will. However, he did not do so. Instead, as always, Jesus pointed us to the Father who is ultimately sovereign over all, which in this instance includes even the tiny sparrows (cf. John 8:28–29; 12:49; 14:10; 15:15; 17:7). Moreover, I believe there is a concept which is all the more marvelous that Jesus was trying to get us to see—a truth that I think we miss very easily in today’s church because of the manner in which we have allowed our concept of God to become skewed. In my opinion, the greatest truth of this verse is that Jesus did not say that “his Father” is sovereign over the sparrows, even though he could have easily and correctly so asserted. Rather, he deliberately chose to assure each of us individually that it is “your Father” who is sovereign over the sparrows (cf. John 20:17).

This is amazing! Jesus is telling us that the ultimately perfect, all-knowing, completely sovereign over everything that exists, and all-powerful ruler of the universe is our own Father, not merely “the” Father! As a direct result of this great truth and, if one truly weighs and considers the matter, only as a result of this great truth, we should not worry because we are worth much more than many sparrows to him, and we know even the details of the sparrows’ lives are included in his purpose and ultimate plan. We must never miss the vital connection between God’s love for us and God’s purpose for us! A full comprehension of this truth compels us to trust our Father audaciously, and it sets before us a feast of God’s grace, goodness, and peace for our souls that cannot be otherwise experienced or understood.

Until we come to comprehend the infinite extents and depths to which this wonderful truth reaches, we may well refer to God as “our Father,” but we fail to live and believe as if he is actually a loving Father that will always give us good gifts and not bad (Matthew 7:11), who loves us so much that he chooses us to be his own (Ephesians 1:4), who has the unlimited power and authority to back up his unlimited love (Psalm 136:12), and who is involved in everything that surrounds us every day, even the sparrows over our heads. It is God’s power that enables him to subject all things to himself (Philippians 3:21), and it is the steadfastness of his love that gives us an unshakeable confidence in his purpose for each of us (Psalm 138:8; Ephesians 2:4–5). This, then, is our true Father; he is certainly not the detached ruler of the universe who will bring himself to tolerate us for Jesus’ sake, nor is he a dispassionate benefactor who will even give us eternal life if someone happens to help him out by “pointing us to Christ” or manages to convince us that the Gospel is a good thing for us to “accept.” Jesus’ words eliminate any possibility of the truth of this latter assessment and instead direct us to be completely confident in both our Father’s total sovereignty and his overwhelming love!

There is little confidence or faith that we can place in a God who is totally sovereign and infinitely powerful but who does not love or value us, a God who is not our own Father. Likewise, there is little confidence or faith we can place in a heavenly Father who either does not have the power and sovereignty to back up his love or who is not consistently willing to use his power and sovereignty on behalf of those he is said to love and value. Jesus, however, showed us that our God gives to us the perfect combination of unlimited love and unbounded sovereignty. We can, therefore, have a real and living faith, only because we can know that our loving Father exercises his sovereign purpose (his will) over all of the details in our lives!

It is not difficult for our finite, limited abilities and understandings to be overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite details of the circumstances and events of our lives. And yet, as I watch the many sparrows in my yard flit about, it staggers me to ponder that God, my Father, is directing each one of their situations every moment. They go up, and they go down, countless little birds making countless moves—and this just in my yard. Jesus said that all of these moves by these tiny creatures are God’s will. If someone were to take up a rifle and freely choose to shoot one of these little creatures, making it fall to the ground permanently, that would have to be God’s will. I certainly would not understand the purpose for such a senseless killing to be a part of God’s providence, but Jesus’ words would have to stand nonetheless. If it were not included in God’s purpose for the sparrow to be killed, he would most certainly act by giving the individual a desire to not shoot the sparrow or perhaps by causing the shooter to miss the shot. It is an absolutely magnificent thing to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God, my loving Father, is involved and in control of these minute details of life here on the earth! Our God is not a mere observer-god, but rather the sovereign, all-seeing, all-powerful, holy ruler of the earth who “subjects all things to himself” (Philippians 3:21). The apostle Paul summed up this incredibly wonderful truth in Ephesians 1:11, where he declared that God “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” This sweeping and particularly unambiguous statement bestows to us no less than the most solid foundation imaginable upon which an enduring, unshakable faith can be built.

The fact that our own loving Father is not an observer-god at all should constantly flood our hearts with joy and peace. With Paul, we can rely upon the certainty that he is the omnipotent and omniscient God who is intrinsically involved in everything that happens here on this earth. All things are from him, through him, and to him (Romans 11:36); it is Christ who holds all things together (Colossians 1:17), and our loving Father indeed “makes everything to work out according to his plan” (Ephesians 1:11 NLT). We must ponder and absorb the magnitude of the powerful words found in Psalm 135:6, which makes this unconditional, all-encompassing declaration:

Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.

Assuming that God cares about us and about the sparrows as much as he says he does, this verse completely excludes the notion of a detached, hands-off observer-god. The natural and inevitable result of God’s great love for us must be that what he pleases will also always be for our good (Romans 8:28; Matthew 7:11), and, just like the fall of the sparrow, his presence in everything that happens in our lives is thereby guaranteed. In fact, God says of himself in Jeremiah 23:23–24 that he is a God who is both near at hand and everywhere all at the same time—a fact of which David was fully cognizant as he exalted in Psalm 139 that there is absolutely no place where we can flee from God’s constant presence, even if we should so desire. God said in Job 38:12 that it is he who commands the sun to rise each morning, and, according to Amos 4:13 and 5:8, it is God who turns daylight into darkness each evening. Our Father said in Job 38 that it is he who satisfies the young lions’ appetites and that it is he who provides the prey for the young ravens. It is even God’s command that causes the eagle to mount up and make its nest on high, a behavior that most today would wrongly ascribe instead to “Mother Nature” (Job 39:27).

Such an inconceivably intricate level of involvement and control is not only problematic for us to comprehend, it is also difficult for many of us to accept. By human standards, such behavior might even be negatively labeled “micromanagement.” Nevertheless, God’s Word provides us more than ample clarity, and we must realize that we too often unknowingly allow our perceptions of our infinitely capable Father to be shaped by the limitations of our own finiteness. Just as fish live their lives perpetually surrounded by water, so we as humans are constantly immersed in our own finiteness. For example, knowing that we have very limited abilities to give our attention to many things at once, we naturally try to automate as much as possible rather than attempting to control a multitude of details simultaneously. We would rather have a timer or photocell to turn on our outside lights every evening instead of trying to remember to do so ourselves, and we prefer to have a thermostat keep our house at a certain temperature instead of having to constantly pay attention to managing the temperature manually. We prefer not to control such things directly because we correctly discern that the fewer small details we have to manage, the more effective we can be in matters we judge to be of greater importance.

This is all well and good until we unintentionally transfer this same perspective to our understanding of our Father, and we thereby unconsciously dismiss the reality that God actually directly manages the smallest details of the universe. Because such a capacity is far beyond our comprehension and is precluded by our very frame of reference, we wrongly judge that God could not possibly actually actively manage all the sparrows in the universe while still maintaining full and undistracted control of the things that seem to us to be much more important. However, unlike us, God is infinite in his capabilities, and we unfortunately often fail to even attempt to understand the ramifications of this fact. When we do pause to contemplate this staggering concept, we still fall short of fully comprehending the ability to manage billions of intricate details simultaneously without having any less power or attention to devote to any other single detail. More importantly, our Father never has any less power or attention to devote to any of his chosen children, including all of our needs and prayers.

Because our Father is unlimited in perception, unlimited in power, unlimited in ability, unlimited in resources, and unlimited in wisdom, a billion sparrows can be micromanaged, a billion stars can be steered, uncounted eagles can be commanded to soar, and innumerable creatures and beasts governed and fed, and still it is as if he is not occupied with anything else at all as he relates to each of his children. If we can even begin to grasp this magnificent reality, such a realization can yield nothing less than unmitigated worship and adoration for our Father, who is sovereign over every detail in the universe and still chooses us to be his very own. We need to study and work diligently to develop this higher view of our God and make this high view an integral part of all that we think and do, indeed, an essential component of our very beings.

Daniel must have understood this concept as much as is humanly possible, and we can see his high view of God in his words describing the overarching preeminence of the Lord, which are found in Daniel 2:21 (NIV): “He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them.” It is vitally important that we understand that these are action verbs in this passage. God “changes,” God “sets up,” and God “deposes”; these verbs demand active participation and causation, not mere observation. This is well illustrated in 2 Samuel 7, where God told King David that it was he who had raised David up from tending sheep and caused David to ascend to the throne of Israel (v. 8). We should note well that this transformation of David’s life was solely because of God’s choice and the active hand of God, and it was not at all because of any other factor such as noble birth, David’s skill as a warrior, or even blind luck. God was also clear when he told David that it had been God that had caused David’s triumphs over his enemies (v. 9).

Our marvelous God next proceeded to give David a glimpse of the future, and in so doing God made it irrefutable that it was he who was going to divinely control this future and actively bring it to pass—once again we see action verbs used as God described the future. God would “give” David rest from his enemies (v. 11). God would “make” David’s name great (v. 9). God would “make” him a house (v. 11). God would “raise up” Solomon (v. 12), and he would “establish” Solomon’s throne forever (v 13). God would “make” David’s house and throne sure forever (v. 16).

Our response to the loving, active, controlling hand of our Father in accomplishing his purpose in our lives should be the same as David’s, who first humbly expressed his awe at being chosen by the God of the universe: “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?” (v. 18). Moreover, David responded further with earnest praise for his glorious, preeminent God: “Therefore you are great, O Lord God. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you” (v. 22). David also acknowledged that God had brought these things into being according to God’s own perfect desires (v. 21). Finally, David walked in a confidence born of knowing that his destiny would unfold exactly as his loving Father had purposed and spoken: “For you, O Lord God, have spoken, and with your blessing shall the house of your servant be blessed forever” (v. 29). When we realize that the God of the universe chooses us just as he chose David (Ephesians 1:4-5) and promises to fulfill his purpose for us as well (Psalm 57:2; Philippians 1:6), we should follow in this same pattern of humble awe, earnest worship, and a confident walk. All three of these responses are rooted firmly in the glorious realization that our loving Father controls all of the details of his creation.

Indeed, there is nothing that is not under the umbrella of his sovereignty. Even the rain that I supposed was formed without divine supervision is created by God and under his direction and control (Zechariah 10:1; Psalm 147:8). It is God who causes it to rain on both the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45; Acts 14:17), and according to Amos 5:8, even the evaporation of water from the ocean in order to form rain over land happens expressly at his direct command. At times, he directly sends rain to one city, while specifically withholding rain from another (Amos 4:7; 2 Chronicles 7:13). If our Father directly controls even the rain, should not we relish his control over everything else as well? Paul said in Acts 17 that God made every nation of men and that God (not humans) “determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live” (v. 26 NIV). Every detail is included! Psalm 104:14 shows us that God “causes” even the grass to grow. The incredible breadth of this glorious truth is magnificently encapsulated in Psalm 119:91, which declares that “all things are his servants.” Indeed, we should join with Paul in exalting our God who “works all things according to the counsel of his will!”

Because God’s providence is consistent and reliable, the normal dependability of the natural order of things often causes us to fail to ascertain that our God is actually in control of all these details. God tells us that he makes the sun rise each morning (Job 38:12; Amos 5:8), but this particular providence is so predictable that we usually fail to offer him either credit or thanksgiving for this daily event. However, when what we perceive as the natural, expected order of nature is altered, we have little difficulty attributing what we term a miracle to the hand of God. When Jesus walked on the water, healed lepers, and changed ordinary water into superior wine, such actions defied the normal and are correctly recognized as miracles from the hand of God. Likewise, we also recognize the hand of God in miracles that we experience today. When sparrows fly overhead, however, we must know that this is no less from the hand of our God!

We make a great mistake when we attribute what we call miracles to God but deny his involvement in everything else in our lives. Our God is the author of both the miraculous and the mundane, and this is a realization that will revolutionize our walk with our Father. In fact, as far as it concerns God, there is little difference between the simple and the spectacular since he is in equal control of one as well as the other, both are integral parts of his purpose, and neither taxes his infinite abilities any more than the other. We rob ourselves of the security of our Father’s love when go through life waiting and hoping for God to intervene with the supernatural yet fail to appreciate his hand in the details of our daily existence. It is common for people of our day to label an unusual event that they perceive to be a good thing as “a God thing.” Doubtless there are indeed many “God things” in our lives. Our error is to attempt to compartmentalize those things that we will choose to allow to be “God things” while refusing to acknowledge God’s involvement in those things we perceive as less than spectacular.

Too often do we hear people quote James 1:17 and claim that because “every good and perfect gift comes from above,” we can therefore know that anything we humans consider or label “good” comes from God, and likewise anything we humans consider or label “bad” comes from Satan. Or, it may be suggested that the “bad” happened because God was either absent or uninvolved. However appealing it may seem at first glance, such reasoning is illusory for several reasons. Firstly, as C. S. Lewis masterfully and poignantly portrayed through the actions, attitudes, and words of the Green Lady character in his novel Perelandra, we humans actually have a tremendously flawed concept of what is “good” and what is “bad.”6 Indeed, we often may perceive a gift from our Father’s hand as “bad” when it is actually his sovereign method of lovingly working for our own good.

Secondly, this is a shallow, ineffectual theology that strips God of his sovereignty and thereby robs us unnecessarily of our comfort and faith in troubled times. God refuted this poor theology directly in Isaiah 45:7, where he said, “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things.” The psalmist exalted in the fact that our Father turns deserts into pools of water and at other times turns flowing springs into deserts (Psalms 107:33, 35). It is God who makes people to be mute, deaf, seeing, or blind, according to what he told Moses in Exodus 4:12, and it is he who both opens and closes women’s wombs, thereby either creating life or not, according to his own purpose and timetable (Genesis 20:18; 29:31; 30:22; 1 Samuel 1:5–6). Moreover, in 2 Chronicles 15:6, God is said to “trouble them [the Israelites] with every kind of distress” or to “vex them with all adversity” (KJV), and he actually says that he may “send pestilence among his people” (2 Chronicles 7:13). This same concept is also clearly seen in Ecclesiastes 7:14, Micah 1:12, Job 42:11, Jeremiah 44:2 and 42:10, Hosea 5:14–15, and Isaiah 31:2 and 47:11. In fact, Amos 3:6 teaches us that calamity cannot come apart from the Lord’s command: “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” Jeremiah summarized this principle poetically in Lamentations 3:38 (NIV) with the following words: “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?”

We must not, therefore, attempt to remove from God his rightful glory and throne by suggesting that he must not be actively involved in governing our lives and circumstances merely because we feel that something that is happening to us is “bad” as judged by our limited, flawed perception. We can learn from Psalm 71:20, in which the psalmist pronounced: “You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again.” This is a firm declaration that God is sovereign over our circumstances, and while he may well make us see trials for his purpose and our good, he nevertheless will certainly revive us. Here again, we must recognize that God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” and find great contentment and rest in this profound realization.

It may be derogatory to say of people that “they are in the habit of getting whatever they desire,” but when this is said of the only holy, perfect, loving, omnipotent God of the universe—our Father—then it is no longer a detrimental attribute at all. Instead, it becomes a glorious tribute to the matchless power and unfailing faithfulness of our God. God gets what God wants! “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does!” This fundamental, basic truth about our Father from Psalm 135:6 could easily stand alone even if it were an isolated reference, but it is not; the Bible is filled with declarations of this powerful fact. If this maxim is given even a little serious thought, it quickly becomes evident that a god who does not get what he wants is not God at all. There would necessarily be some limitation to that supposed god’s power, knowledge, resources, or abilities—otherwise that god would, in fact, be able to get what he wanted and to do exactly as he pleased. “A ‘god’ whose will is resisted, whose designs are frustrated, whose purpose is checkmated, possesses no title to Deity,” said A. W. Pink, “and so far from being a fit object of worship, merits naught but contempt.” 7

But, our glorious God is not limited like this so-called god in any way at all. Praise, honor, and glory to him! Psalm 115:3 tells us that “our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” It is inescapable that what our God pleases is what our God desires, and what God desires is what God pleases—and that is exactly what he does. Not some of the time, but all of the time. God made this declaration of himself through the prophet Isaiah: “My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure” (Isaiah 46:10 NASB). What God says, that God will do (Numbers 23:19; 11:23; 1 Samuel 15:29; Ezekiel 39:8).

It is crucial to note that there is a huge difference between a God that simply foretells what he knows by seeing into the future (but supposedly does not control) and a God that brings to pass that which he wills and speaks. When God said to Abraham, in Genesis 17:5–7 (NASB), “I have made you the father of a multitude of nations, I will make you exceedingly fruitful,” and “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you,” and again about Ishmael: “I will surely bless him,” “I will make him fruitful,” and “I will make him into a great nation” (Genesis 17:20 NIV), he was not just predicting the future; rather, he was unambiguously stating exactly what he already knew he was going to do. In fact, the phrase “I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” in 17:5 is incredibly revealing and must not be passed over lightly. At that point in human time, Abraham was not the father of many nations; he only had a single teenage son, Ishmael, and yet God stated Abraham’s future in the present tense with as much certainly as if it had already come to pass.

This is indeed a powerful truth; our infinite, eternal God is outside of time, and to God the future is as if it is the present. What God knows he will do is in fact already done and not subject to being undone (Isaiah 45:23), and this knowledge is neither partial nor selective but is complete and all-encompassing. God said in Isaiah 46:11, “I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.” Here, and many other places (such as Isaiah 55:11 and Ezekiel 39:8), God told us directly that he will bring his purpose to pass. In another place, he said that he is “watching over his word to perform it” (Jeremiah 1:12). These many passages teach us emphatically that our magnificent God does not merely foresee the future; rather, he speaks of the future as it is included in his purpose, and then he acts and brings it to pass.

We can be certain his methods will vary; in this particular passage (Isaiah 46), he said that he may even call a bird of prey from the east or a man of counsel from a far country—but no matter what method he sovereignly chooses, we can know that God will bring to pass his purpose and his will. It is likely that God will most often use human choices, actions, and methods to accomplish his purpose rather than intervening with a lightning bolt from heaven or even a disembodied hand writing on a wall (cf. Daniel 5:5). It is up to us to properly recognize that God works his purpose through humans and not misattribute the work of his hand to others. Regardless of how God works, however, we may always be certain that “the Lord has both purposed and performed what He spoke” (Jeremiah 51:12 NASB).

If we are to properly know and worship our almighty Father, we must come to understand that he is not reacting to autonomous human choices as history unfolds and adapting his purpose accordingly. God’s proclamation in Isaiah 37:26 provides us with a delightful insight upon which we can build this faith: “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass.” It is altogether too easy to get the human cart before the divine horse, so to speak, and we are often guilty of this error in the teaching of our day. We would do well to realize, acknowledge, and meditate upon the fact that God’s words do not merely predict history, but rather the unfolding of history fulfills God’s words. If we have a proper view of God’s sovereignty, this statement should not strike us as any great revelation. For example, at the very end of 2 Chronicles, after God had sovereignly brought calamity upon Judah, the few remaining people that survived this sword of judgment were exiled into Babylon (36:15–21). The chapter is quite clear that all of these things happened at the Lord’s command, but the language of verse 21 is particularly revealing because there we are told very simply and directly why it all happened: “To fulfill the word of the Lord.” We can thereby understand that this was not merely a particularly accurate divine prediction of human events; rather the Babylonian exile happened at God’s specific command, in order to fulfill his own words.

Likewise, when God foretells the future, as he did in Amos 8:9–14, he is actually stating what it is that he will do in the future, not merely what will happen. In that particular passage in Amos, when God spoke of coming natural disaster, famine, mourning, and death to idolaters, he was stating what would certainly be brought to pass by his immutable (unchangeable) will, this enabled by his irresistible, infinite power. Logically, infinite power cannot be resisted or impeded by any finite resistance. Mount Everest is huge, but it is nevertheless finite and could therefore be flattened or removed by a single word from our infinite God if such a thing were ever his will (cf. Psalm 97:5). It is no different when finite human will or finite demonic power meets infinite divine will and infinite divine power—God’s purpose will invariably be done.

God spoke of the absolute certainty of the accomplishment of his own purpose in Isaiah 14 by making this declaration:

Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand. For the Lord of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back? (Isaiah14:24 and 27 NASB)

A striking example of this principle is seen in Ezekiel 21, where the Lord foretold the future of the Ammonites:

And I will pour out my indignation upon you; I will blow upon you with the fire of my wrath, and I will deliver you into the hands of brutish men, skillful to destroy. You shall be fuel for the fire. Your blood shall be in the midst of the land. You shall be no more remembered, for I the Lord have spoken. (Ezekiel 21:31–32)

Here, God spoke his word, and that word foretold the future of the Ammonites. This was plainly not just a foreseen future, but rather a future that God himself would be bringing to pass. This future included sovereignly bringing in “brutish men” who would destroy the Ammonites, destroyers who supposed that they were acting of their own free will without realizing that they were in fact instruments of God’s purpose. God stated very simply the reason why this prophecy would come to pass with utmost certainty: “For I the Lord have spoken.”

We know, then, by these many passages, that God’s word is always done, God always does what God desires, and God’s purpose will be established. God is always sovereign. God will most certainly accomplish his good pleasure, which is his will and purpose (Isaiah 46:10). Our Father declared in Isaiah 55:11 that the word that goes out from his mouth will not return to him empty, but that “it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Praise and glory to our Father! He will always accomplish his purpose and his desire. His word will invariably succeed in doing exactly what he intended it to do.

Even if God chooses not to do something, that lack of action is just as obviously what he desired. In other words, even if he did not do something, he still did exactly what pleased him most in that very act of doing nothing. We must additionally bear in mind that it is brashly presumptuous for us to ever assert God did “nothing” since such a judgment is only based on our flawed and limited human perception, and it is more likely than not incorrect. Moreover, although God certainly often does things in which it can be said he does not take pleasure, he nevertheless always maintains his sovereignty by doing exactly what he wills to do. For example, we know that God takes no pleasure in the death or punishment of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23, 32; 33:11; Lamentations 3:33; Jonah 4:11), and yet the Bible is filled with examples of God willfully imposing death and punishment directly upon the wicked. The same God who said that he does not delight in the death of the wicked also said that he would take delight in bringing ruin and destruction upon Israel should they turn to wickedness (Deuteronomy 28:63). It would be fallacious and illogical to even consider that God could ever act against his own will, even when such actions definitely do not bring him pleasure (a being that could act against its own will would certainly not be a god and perhaps not even sane). We can instead rejoice that God, our Father, is not callous or sadistic in any way at all; rather, he is the completely just, completely loving, completely powerful, completely wise, and completely sovereign God who always acts according to his perfect will.

Simply put, God would not be God if ever a situation arose in which he did not do exactly what he most desired, what he pleased, and what he willed. He is not a disappointed, frustrated, thwarted, ineffectual God—that is not a god at all. Our God sees all, and nothing escapes his attention (Hebrews 4:12–13) or happens outside of his sovereignty and without his involvement (Psalm 139:1–18). As Amos said, “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” God’s will is done! Indeed, there is no biblical support for the all-too-common notion that the world is spinning out of control, but we should not fear because one day God will rouse himself and reel it all back in, somehow managing to restore order at the last possible moment. God has not abdicated his throne, nor will he. Because we know he truly reigns and that his reign is completely unbounded, we can possess a persevering peace and an indomitable confidence that cannot otherwise be realized.

David possessed an intimate understanding of God’s supremacy over all his creation, as well as a keen awareness of God’s loving involvement in the details of David’s life, and he offered this astute exhortation in Psalm 27:14: “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” It should be self-evident that waiting is just plain silly if one does not know or believe that someone is coming. If we believe our Father to be a disengaged God—a God who is either unwilling or unable to consistently involve himself in and exert sovereign influence upon human events or human will—then it becomes a ludicrous exercise to actually wait on that God. Given much of the teaching heard in so many of our modern churches, is it any wonder that the practice of actually waiting confidently on God is something that is rarely seen in our day?

Likewise, Paul’s directives for us to give thanks “in all circumstances” and “for everything” (1 Thessalonians 5:18; Ephesians 5:20) are impossible admonitions if we have no confidence that God is in complete control or if we possess no certainty that our circumstances are ordered by our preeminent Father rather than by others. It is nearly irrational to suggest that we should, or could, give thanks to God for situations and things we believe to be outside his control and beyond the scope of his perfect purpose. We cannot realistically thank our God for all circumstances if we presume our circumstances to have possibly slipped past his only-occasional attention, authority, and administration—even if we believe that God may proceed to work as best as he can to help us in what we imagine to be circumstances that he failed to either foresee or prevent.

On the other hand, when we know that our sovereign Father is an involved God, a God that always hears, always works, always governs, and always fulfills his purpose, it then becomes much easier to wait, trust, and even give thanks for everything. We know that there are neither unforeseen nor uncontrolled circumstances for our God. This is a confidence from which true faith can spring up. We can joyfully identify with David’s praise for our reliable, dependable, involved God: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him” (Psalm 28:7). Indeed, when we come to realize our God is truly a sovereign God, we too can experience the understanding deep in our souls that the fruit of his righteousness is real peace and a quietness born of an abiding trust (Isaiah 32:17).

“No people ever rise higher than their idea of God.”8 This discerning observation by James Boice neatly encapsulates why developing a biblically correct understanding of the supremacy of our loving Father is such an imperative matter. If we do not believe our God to be perfectly and completely effective in his detailed, wise, and holy administration of all things within his entire creation, we have created a God of our making who is in truth not God at all. From within a whirlwind, God gave Job an extended and forcefully direct declaration of his effectual sovereignty over all things (Job 38–41). None of us today are likely to experience such a dramatic personal discourse from God, but we would do well to learn from the individual who heard these words directly from the mouth of God. After this extraordinary experience, Job’s words are both incredibly powerful and notably unambiguous: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). We must join Job in acknowledging God’s sovereignty and giving him the glory he properly deserves, rejoicing always that no purpose of our Father can ever be thwarted in any way. Indeed, if we do not completely believe this eminently scriptural truth about our great God, then our God is not God at all.

Charles Spurgeon, often affectionately referred to as the “Prince of Preachers,” perhaps summarized this best in a sermon in which he passionately asserted that we must totally believe that God’s providence guides our path and our choices. He proceeded to eloquently describe how God is sovereignly in control of everything from the particles of dust that dance in a sunbeam to the insects creeping on a rosebud—as much in control of each falling autumn leaf as the tumbling of an avalanche. Spurgeon wrapped up these thoughts with these incisive words:

He that believes in a God must believe this truth. There is no standing-point between this and atheism. There is no half way between a mighty God that worketh all things by the sovereign counsel of his will and no God at all. A God that can not do as he pleases—a God whose will is frustrated, is not a God, and can not be a God.9

Notes

Chapter 1: Learning from the Sparrows

1. J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 83.

2. Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, accessed January 22, 2012, http://biblecommenter.com/matthew/10-29.htm.

3. John Gill, John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible, accessed January 22, 2012, http://biblecommenter.com/matthew/10-29.htm.

4. Adam Clarke, Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible, accessed January 22, 2012, http://biblecommenter.com/matthew/10-29.htm.

5. John Wesley, Wesley’s Notes on the Bible, accessed January 22, 2012, http://biblecommenter.com/matthew/10-29.htm.

6. C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Scribner, 2003), ch. 5, pp. 51–61.

7. A. W. Pink, The Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006), p. 36.

8. James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2009), p. 151.

9. C. H. Spurgeon, Sermons of the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon of London, 2nd Series (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1859), Sermon #3114, “God’s Providence,”  p. 201.