In his sermon, 'Difficulties and Objections,' Paul Carrington addresses the challenges and doubts surrounding the sovereignty of God. Drawing from A.W. Pink's work and personal anecdotes, he explores common objections such as God's role in the existence of evil and the suffering of believers. The sermon highlights the internal struggle believers face, not from external critics, but from their own hearts. Carrington uses Psalm 73 and the story of Asaph to illustrate how personal reflection and faith can help believers navigate these doubts. He emphasizes the importance of seeking God's presence and guidance, especially during trials, to gain a clearer perspective on life's challenges. The sermon concludes with a call to trust in God's sovereignty and find strength in His presence, encouraging believers to visit with God regularly to overcome their internal battles.

We've come to the final session, as Scott mentioned, before we do a Q&A. And my task here in this short time that we have is really to deal with difficulties and objections as it pertains to the sovereignty of God. And you know, I struggled around this for some time here especially yesterday. A.W. Pink in his book The Sovereignty of God does an amazing job.

He goes through apologetically a series of objections and then provides really, really good answers. Some of them are excellent and they're specific to people that would deny the sovereignty of God. And in many ways, a lot of these talks have been apologetic and wonderful in terms of giving us an answer to some of these things both for ourselves and for those that might oppose the sovereignty of God. You could ask certain questions like A.W. Pink does in his book.

If God is sovereign, why does it say that he repented that he made man? And that's a legitimate question. Didn't he know that man would fall? So why did he need to repent and so on? And he gives an amazing answer to that.

And is God ultimately responsible for sin? That would be another good question that we could dive into. Why does evil exist in the world? Does God love everyone? What about John 3.16?

And then how come some end up being banished to an eternity in hell? Or when the Bible speaks about God having ears and eyes and a mouth, hands and breath, well how can he have these things when he's a spirit? And A.W. Pinky, again, he does a good job of going into all of these things, and they're all very, very good questions, but much more than I could handle in maybe 20 to 30 minutes. But what I'd like to do, instead of talking to us about those that would oppose the sovereignty of God in terms of objections and difficulties, especially to you young ladies, but also to us as fathers.

I want to talk to your greatest opponent. And that isn't the foaming at the mouth atheist, or the feminist, or even the liberal Christian. But your greatest opponent as it comes to the sovereignty of God is really yourself. That voice in your head that when you know all there is to know, that there still forms difficulties and objections to the sovereignty of God. And I think a lot of us dads as well could likely relate to some of this as well.

So I've chosen an apologetic more so for ourselves than it is for anybody else out in the world when it comes to these difficulties and objections that really arise coming from our hearts. And you know, it was a little while ago, I can't remember exactly when, but months ago when I was in a Costco parking lot, we had finished doing our groceries and I saw a man loading some groceries in his car and I just walked over to him and began a little conversation and gave him something and talked to him about God. And this man explained to me how his son died recently, not too long ago. And because his son died, there could be no God. Because if there was a God, why would he let his son die?

And if God is good, then why would he bring such a situation upon him? And so this man had come to the conclusion that based on his personal experience, that there could be no God. And if there was a God, he definitely wasn't good, and therefore definitely not worthy to be worshiped or to be praised. And then just yesterday I was speaking to a man, gave me a call and we were talking about some serious trial and a disappointment that he had gone through. And he's a believer and so it was amazing.

He started off by quoting after reflecting a few months on this trial and this disappointment and he says to me, he says, it was good for me to be afflicted. That's how he concluded. So you see one man on the one side concludes there can be no God and if there is a God he's not good. And on the other side a man who trusts in God and concludes that it was good for me to be afflicted. See his attitude had been affected by the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

How do we account for this difference, this wide difference on the one side and the other side, well it's all comes back to God alone and faith in the God that we're talking about here this morning. But even we oftentimes, we can be those who doubt and go through difficulty, we can go through all that we've gone through and say, I know, but did God really say? I oftentimes I could say, well, you know, I feel like I'm groping in the darkness. I know it's true, but I can't feel my way. I'm looking for just a route to hang onto in this life.

And if you're gonna be alive for any distance of time going into your third and fourth decade in life, you're gonna have circumstances in your life where sometimes you can't see. I remember just six years ago going through a circumstance where I, I wrote in my journal, Lord, I feel like I'm in a black room with no window and no door. I can't see what you're doing and I don't know what's going on at all. And you might have circumstances like that come up in your life. I know he's sovereign, but I know he parted the Red Sea.

I know he keeps the earth orbiting around the sun at 67, 000 miles per hour. I know he did stuff back then and he's even doing stuff around the world today. I know he takes care of his people but does he... What about... And this question mark kind of looms over.

These are the difficulties and objections that come not from the atheist or from the feminist or from the liberal Christian, but from ourselves. What happens when there's a crook in the lot? Thomas Watson wrote an entire book dealing with this because it's such a commonality among those who believe in God. A crook in the lot means that your lot in life doesn't go the way that you hoped. And there's a crook in it, there's a corner, there's something that was not thought about earlier on.

Well, how do we deal with the bombardment of emotions and struggles that cause us to doubt God when these things happen. Well, I want to spend a little time dealing with that this morning here with a young psalmist, a beautiful believer in God, a strong saint. He wrote a number of psalms. In fact, he wrote about ten different Psalms that we have recorded for us. It's a young man by the name of Asaph.

And he's writing at a very acute time of crisis and a point of difficulty in his life. And he might have been even smiling on the outside you know he would go to the temple regularly and he might even go through the motions of serving and all of these different things doing his duty but but inwardly there was there was a lot of conflict And there was a lot of difficulty and objections from within. And so he writes this beautiful Psalm, Psalm 73, and it's one that is so worth going through and even committing to memory or considering deeply. Because you will need it. If you haven't needed it, I've leaned on this many times and I'm sure I'll lean on it many times going forward.

But what it provides is a window into a man's soul as he goes through one of the most intense battles in his life. And he prays his emotions. He prays his fears. He prays even his doubts. And so this Psalm, it mentions the word heart six times.

It's really the theme of this Psalm, heart, heart, heart, and all the things that can come up. And I would say this, I would just posit this to us today, that people who never doubt have never thought deeply. If you've never come across yourself doubting, you've probably never thought deeply about the words of God and the course and path of life. And that's not to exalt doubt, which is so common in our day, but it's to say that it's a reality that we're oftentimes, we succumb to and we fight with difficulties and objections. They're not incompatible with being a Christian.

And yet look at how this young man does war. And so I want to just turn us to Psalm 73 and we'll just walk through this Psalm. There's 28 verses here and I wanna just go through section by section. So if you could just follow along with me. He starts off in Psalm 73 in verse 1, and he says this, truly God is good to Israel, to such as are pure in heart.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped, For I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." And he starts off with a conviction, with a declaration that's true, which is that God is good. He's good to those that are clean in heart. He's not denigrating true religion of the heart and that God is good to some. At least he says God is good to those that might be purer than me in my heart. But he says this, but as for me, when I considered the path of my life, where I've come to at this point, and maybe the outlook going forward, when I considered all of these things, it's as though he makes a very, very negative, He almost makes this narrow escape, just barely gets by this contemplation of his own lot, kind of drove him to the edge and he almost fell over the cliff.

You know a few, number of years ago, this might have been 10 years ago, I was in California and I was I was hiking in Yosemite, which is a national park and you climb up the the top of this Mountain and and the last mile or so of this mountain with this waterfall. It's beautiful It's stunning and this waterfall is blowing your hiking you feel the mist coming off of this waterfall. And the last part of this hike is a narrow pathway, maybe about two and a half feet wide, so something like that. And then It's cut into the stone, so someone's gone and somehow they chiseled this path into the stone, the face of the cliff. And you look down and it's about 2, 000 feet to the bottom.

And the steps are slick because you've got the waterfall blowing mist onto the steps. And so you're there hiking, you come to that point, you've got a decision to make. Do I turn around or do I continue going? Well thankfully, someone has anchored cables into the side of the cliff, thank God for that. And you continue along, but as you're continuing along on this, all sorts of thoughts are going through your mind, and you're holding these cables like nothing.

You're making sure that your one hand is solid on there before you take the other hand off, and you're going as slow as you can because that's a sheer drop to the very bottom. And so this is kind of the situation this man is in. He's no cables and he's feeling like I'm looking over and when I do so my feet nearly slipped. He almost fell over the edge. He says, I know that you're good, but what I'm seeing doesn't line up.

Life seems so unfair. It's so hard to reconcile what I know and what I'm seeing. There's such a distance between these two things. And so in verse three, he says, for I was envious, here's the root of him almost falling over the edge. He says, for I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." No doubt he was on a social media account.

He pulled up Instagram and he looked at Facebook and he's looking and he's saying, how come these people seem, everything seems to be going so good, everyone's smiling in their pictures, they just got back from vacation, everything looks so good. And he began to kind of weigh all of these things. There's so little going on in my life, and everything's going on in other people's lives. Have you ever gone through that experience? Our current day, it literally festers, and it grows based on discontent.

And that's so often a case of depression and difficulty. Well, that's what this man is going through. And then it says in verse four, when he considers the wicked, he says, for there are no pangs in their death, but their strength is firm. They're not in trouble as other men, nor are they plagued like other men. Therefore, pride serves as their necklace.

Violence covers them like a garment. Their eyes bulge out with abundance. They have more than heart could wish. They scoff and speak wickedly concerning oppression. They speak loftily.

They set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walks through the earth. Therefore his people return, and waters of a full cup are drained by them. And they say, how does God know? And is there knowledge in the Most High? And so you see these people, these ungodly people, And Asaph is looking at this and he's saying, if God is in control, then shouldn't the schemes and all of the plans of the wicked come to nothing?

Shouldn't they blow up in his face? But when I try to do something, it doesn't go quite as planned or as I thought it should go. And when I go to the funeral of the ungodly, he says even at their funeral, you know, the comment is made, he fell asleep like a child. You know, he just kind of drifted off into death. There was no pangs in his death, his friends say.

Others say he was so happy that he must be a saint. Things went so well for him. They hardly even feel themselves to die. How is this just when I weigh all of these things in the balance? He says instead what happens to the utterly degenerate?

Instead of sickness and poverty and everything else, they seem to get richer, is what he says. Blasphemy seems to continue without any opposition, without any consequence. Look what they say. How does God know? They're sitting, you can just imagine these guys sitting around the table plotting and scheming.

How does God know? Is there any knowledge in the Most High? You know, this kind of mocking of God and it seems to go totally unchecked. This is what Asaph is wrestling with as he's going through this in his own mind. And he goes on, he says, Behold, these are the ungodly who are always at ease.

They increase in riches. They're living the good life. You know, if you're a dad, you can liken this to investments. You know, they get in at the right time, and they also exit the investment before things go south. It just seems like they were able to capitalize on things, and things seem to go well.

Meanwhile, a saint loses his job, or perhaps he has to work two jobs to provide for his family. This is the struggle Asaph is going through as he looks at the sovereignty of God and the earth. This window he's giving you into his soul and the battle that's taking place within. He goes on in verse 13, he says, surely, when he looks at his own life, he says, surely, I've cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocence. For All day long I have been plagued and chastened every morning.

If I had said, I will speak thus, behold, I would have been untrue to the generation of your children. When I thought how to understand this, it was too painful for me. Until I went into the sanctuary of God. Then I understood their end." You see, he had this overwhelming temptation to jettison or to throw overboard his religion. Surely I've cleansed my heart in vain." You know, he was a man that was trying to go on with God.

He was taking things seriously. He looked at things as though this was wicked and I should have no part with it. And then not only his heart, he washed his hands, it seems like. He didn't want to defile himself with the wicked things of this world. But to what end?

Like why am I doing all of this when it's not bringing any benefit? For all day long I have been plagued and chastened every morning. You know we get the word tribulation. Have you heard of that word, tribulation? It means intense trial and difficulty.

And it comes from a Latin word called tribulum. And tribulum is actually a farming implement in Latin that is used to separate the wheat from the chaff. In the Greek, when Paul speaks about tribulation, he uses a word called, thalipsis, and what that word means is heavy pressure. And that's what Asaph is describing his life as there in verse 14. I've been kind of put in the blender to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I've been afflicted with a heavy pressure that's been crushing me. Why am I going through all of these difficulties? Well, God is not only sovereign over trials, but we need to always remember that He's sovereign also through them as well. And a lot of times what trials are brought to us for is really to push us to abandon hope in self, How often we hope in self. Oftentimes we find our ultimate hope in this life.

If I could just get married, or if I could just have this kind of family, or if I could just... And we end up lowering our gaze from the prize of meeting Christ to just being satisfied with just having things the way I want them in this life. And tribulation and affliction will come to lift our gaze from just being so easily satisfied from these things. Oftentimes trial will come to teach us humility, to teach us to be weary of sin, to prevent sin in our lives, or to bring correction. And Oftentimes what we find going through difficulty, going through tribulation, or that heavy pressure, is that it reveals the truth about our own character.

And when we find who we really are, it causes us to apply to God for help, doesn't it, when you're going through these things. And this is again Asaph giving you just a little window into his soul. Everything might have looked good on the outside, but he's allowing you to see this inner battle as he's fighting, not the atheist, not the liberal feminist, not some other person who claims to be a Christian, but this own thing going on inside of him. And so in verse 17 we see something beautiful though. He says, until I went to the sanctuary or into the sanctuary of God, then I understood their end.

Somehow this young man, he took it upon himself to not just stop at verse 14, but He went on to verse 17. And whether he went into the temple or he just found a quiet place, you know, oftentimes you would see the Lord Jesus just separate himself into going to a quiet place early in the morning. Whatever it was, he got away from the noise of the world, the distraction of social media, whatever it was, and he decided to spend time with the Lord in his word and in prayer. That's what it means, he entered into the holy place, the sanctuary, this peaceful place with God. And this is the best resort for the tempted soul, for someone that's tempted to just respond like Asaph has up until this time in this scripture.

And he goes on in verse 18, he says, surely Something happened when he visited with the Lord. And all of a sudden, verse 18 is like a hinge, and it takes him into seeing things differently. It's almost like Lamentations chapter three. If you've ever read Lamentations chapter three, it's Jeremiah the prophet, the weeping prophet, and Jeremiah is going through all the things that God has done to him. He says, you put a target on my back and you've shot arrows at me.

You've been like a bear chasing me. He says that you've made the heavens, like it's like a ceiling of iron, so that when I pray, my prayers just go up and they bounce back. He says you filled my mouth with gravel. All of these things he sensed and felt. But then Jeremiah, something happens.

He says, but this I recall to my mind. Therefore I have hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. It is because your compassion fails not." And then he goes on to say, great is your faithfulness. And he goes on to say how it is good for a young man to bear the yoke in his youth.

And nothing changed in Jeremiah's circumstance. There's nothing that changes in Lamentations chapter three, verse one to 21. But something happens. He says, but this I recall to my mind, something that I've been taught, maybe as I was a child, or something about the sovereignty of God, somehow pierces through the darkness and light begins to come in. And it's the same thing with this young man Asaph.

He goes to the sanctuary of God, and something happens to him that's so beautiful. And I would just commend to all of us, fathers and daughters, that we would resort here often, but especially in difficulty, in that private difficulty when no one knows what's going on, hey, how you doing? Oh, it's good. And the weather and all the things you talk about. But the window into your soul is maybe shut out to everyone else.

But you can go to God and apply to God and find God the remedy and the resource for you. And that's what happens to this young man. And so all of a sudden this young man gets a proper focus. It's as though the mist clears. Have you ever seen that where it's mist, maybe even out here on these lakes, and then the sun comes up and the mist just clears.

That's something of what happened to this young man. And he saw that all that these men were trusting in was but an illusion. Surely you have set them in slippery places." Remember he said my feet almost slipped? Well the reality is that these people's feet were set in slippery places. You cast them down to destruction.

Oh how they are brought to desolation as in a moment they are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awakes, so Lord when you awake, you shall despise their image." It's as though they're sliding towards destruction. That's the picture that he's painting. And he's almost asking himself, is this what I was coveting? Is this what I was concerned about?

Is this what was causing me to lose hope? The fact that these people would find just a moment of pleasure and have their lot in this world in an exchange for an eternity of joy before the living God forever and ever world without end. This is the best that they will have. But this lot in this world for me is the worst. Even if you have a wonderful life here, it is the worst if you're a believer because the best is really yet to come.

And so he goes on in verse 21, he says, thus my heart was grieved. I couldn't believe I was even thinking like this. And I was vexed in my mind. I was so foolish and ignorant. I was like a beast before you.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold me by my right hand. You will guide me with your counsel and afterward receive me to glory." Well, praise be to God in verse 23. He's the God that He never leaves us, isn't He? He never forsakes us.

No one, we've heard this, can snatch us out of His hand. And so even when I feel like I'm falling and my feet are slipping, He's actually holding me up no matter what. He says that you hold me by my right hand and though my hand might lose its grip, God is the one that's preserving me and he's keeping me. He will bear my weight, He's there. And His thoughts toward me, always remember this, are more in number than the sand of the sea.

Can you count the sand of the sea? If you had a thousand lifespans, you would never yet be able to count all the sand of the sea. Well, so much is God's thoughts towards His beloved. And then He ends with these four verses. He says, Whom have I in heaven but you?

And there is none upon earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For indeed those who are far from you shall perish. You have destroyed all those who desert you for harlotry, But it is good for me to draw near to my God. I have put my trust in the Lord God that I may declare all your works." And so verse 25, you can get this picture of this young man.

All the more firmly does he cling in his heart to God, whom have I in heaven but you, and there is none on earth that I desire. He's saying, Lord, you're not only my hope here in this life, on this earth, but even for heaven you're all my hope praise your name thank you for your goodness and in verse 26 he says my flesh and my heart fail my eyes what I see causes me to sometimes be distracted and become weakened and even to doubt but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. I heard one one pastor say it like this he says doubt your doubts Take the word of God and instead of believing your doubts, which we're so apt to do, use the word of God to doubt your doubts. Don't trust your heart. Contrary to what this world says, believe in your heart, just trust your heart.

Don't trust your heart, but trust God and trust the Word of God. And in verse 27, in God's house he attained this eternal perspective. Indeed, those who are far from you shall perish." All of a sudden he realized that life doesn't just end as far as my nose, but life goes on and on into the ceaseless ages of eternity. And in verse 28 he ends with what a wonderful thing. Look what a visit with the Lord can do.

With all the distractions, noise, social media, whatever, texting, put aside for some time. Look What a visit with God can do. What wonderful benefits of drawing near to Him. And so all of His difficulties and objections are stifled. This man that everyone might have looked at and saw no ripple in the water is having a civil war.

You look past the curtain shooting, fighting, bombs going off inside of his own heart, but look at the distance that we've covered from verse 1 to verse 28. It's wonderful. All because he had this time with the Lord. And he ends with this, he says, I've put my trust in the Lord that I may declare all your works. And what happens in this young man's heart is that he becomes a herald of the goodness of God, that I may declare all your works.

God gets the glory and God gets the victory. So how do we fight against all of these battles and struggles that go on, not with the atheist or the people that we face on the outside, but that voice in your own soul sometimes and the struggles that you face as you look out on the world and then look back at yourself and look out in the world and look back on yourself. I think we've seen how we can war right here in Psalm 73 to handle the difficulties and the objections to the sovereignty of God. So may the Lord aid us and may He help us as we go through this life to constantly be found at his feet. Let's pray together.

Lord, we praise your name and thank you for your patience and your care. Lord, we see this young man complaining to you and finding himself almost slipping, almost casting overboard his religion. But then, Lord, you coming and meeting with him in that sanctuary and oh Lord, how often we need to visit with you and spend time like Mary just sitting at your feet and dwelling and thinking upon you, Lord, I pray that every father and every daughter would be found often like it says in the Proverbs waiting at your gates and Communion with you and Lord finding all the answers to the difficulties and objections that arise in our own hearts Oh Lord, may you attend us and help us and strengthen us as we go through this life. And may you be all our joy. May we come to the same place of victory.

Oh, Lord, even when our flesh and our heart fails, but we may come to the place where you are the strength of our heart and our portion forever Lord we we believe that and we ask you to make that more and more real to us in Christ's name amen