The sermon titled 'What's a Thwarted Girl to Do? Stories of the Sovereignty of God' by Scott Brown explores the concept of God's sovereignty over people and events in life. It highlights that many human disappointments stem from interactions with others, emphasizing that God is in control of these situations. The sermon references A.W. Pink's writings and biblical examples, such as Joseph's story, to illustrate how God governs all actions and outcomes. It discusses how Robert Murray McShane viewed divine thwarting as an opportunity to find glory in disappointments. The sermon encourages forgiveness by recognizing God's control over circumstances, leading to a release from bitterness. It also recounts personal stories, including a helicopter crash survivor, to underscore the belief in divine sovereignty. The message calls for trust in God's governance over all situations and people, urging believers to forgive those who have wronged them, understanding that God uses both good and bad for a greater purpose.

Lord, we want to praise You that You're the one who's leading. We thank You that it's You governing all things so that we might find ourselves in everlasting arms. Amen. Well, the session that I have here, its focus really is what A.W. Pink calls in his book, you know, God is sovereign over operation.

Well, what does that mean? He means by that that God is sovereign over the people in your life. He is sovereign over the people in your life. And one of the things that is true about us is that most of the disappointments that we experience involve other people. Our sorrows are not mainly from the external forces of nature, some of them are, but most of them come through people.

They have names. These people do things. And our heartaches almost always have names hanging on them. And that's what the sovereignty of God in operation addresses. What about people?

You know, it's very easy to have high hopes for a new friend. But if you get to know somebody long enough, you realize that some of those hopes are going to tarnish. This happens in churches. This actually is a problem in churches where people actually know each other. They're just so excited to be together and then they get to know each other and then they have to love one another.

And it's a huge problem in churches where you get to know people. In churches where you don't get to know people, it's not really such a problem. But if you are around long enough and see people eyeball to eyeball long enough, you'll have fine reason not to love them. And Here's a piece of advice for you girls and you dads. Don't be a girl, don't be a father with too high expectations for people in this world because God is in control of these people.

And people will not measure up to your expectations. There will be people who will neglect you. There will be people in your life who will think the worst of you, not the best. There will be people in your life who will wage war against you. They'll actually think wrong thoughts about you.

They will stand in your way. They might speak unkindly to you, but most of the time they'll speak unkindly about you. That's the real world. And they may hold you back. They may block you your way.

They may push you off. They may thwart you. This is a reality. But we have to recognize that God is the governor of all these things. If you don't understand that, you're always going to be languishing in unhappiness about people.

And your disappointments are always going to have names hanging on them. But the name you should hang on them is God, God alone. Robert Murray McShane was going through a time of deep trial. He died at age 29. He had tremendous physical problems and other kinds of trials.

At age 22, he wrote a poem, and here's how he ends the poem. How kindly has God thwarted me so that I might learn to glory in disappointments. Glory in disappointments? Glory in the names that are hanging on your sorrows? Yes, absolutely.

That's what McShane is saying. He says, how kindly God has thwarted me. And there's a tremendous change of mind that Christians must go through about everyone in their life. In fact, this happens. When people come to Jesus Christ, they start forgiving one.

They're forgiving people that have wronged them. It's the most beautiful thing. There's this relief that takes place. And, you know, this is the truth of God. Now, is it ever appropriate to be angry with God?

Is it ever appropriate to be angry with God? Well, we have no cause to be angry with God. The only way you could possibly really be angry with God is that you don't know who he is. You haven't washed your mind in the doctrine of God, and particularly, you haven't filled your mind with the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. If you're angry with God, then it means that you really haven't grasped the sovereignty of God.

So if you are angry with God, get to know God. That's the solution to the whole problem. God has foreordained everything that comes to pass. I'm quoting A.W. Pink in his book The Sovereignty of God.

He says he has decreed that what is is what He has decreed what is. Is God now governing the world and everything and everyone in it? And the answer to that is yes. So, Pink goes through A number of points. I'm going to go over them very very quickly here that just Explain this matter of how God is in control of people God is sovereign in Operation meaning that God is in control of all the people in your life.

That's the issue Number one, I'm going to give you 10, 10 things. God makes you spiritually alive. He causes you to be born again. He imparts His own nature. God exerts His power on you and causes you to be born again.

His sovereignty starts with you. Secondly, God exerts his power in your life. He influences you, he works in the inner man as the Apostle Paul speaks of to the Ephesian Church in Ephesians 3 16 2nd Peter chapter 1 verse 3 according as his divine power has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of Him that has called us to glory and virtue. It's the knowledge of Him that has the ability to unleash divine power through us. He exerts his power upon us.

Thirdly, God directs your life. He is the directing influence in your life. Everything about your life right now is ordained by God. Where you're sitting right now is ordained by God. The town you're living in, the house you live in, the father and mother you have, all these things are ordained by God.

Don't despise the moment because God is directing your life. The sovereignty of God begins with you, but it does move out. Number four, God preserves your life. He exerts power on his own elect with a preserving influence. Psalm 97 10 says, he preserves the souls of his saints and he delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.

Psalm 145 20, the Lord preserves them that love him but the wicked he will destroy. God preserves your life. Doesn't mean that the wicked won't negatively affect you. It means that ultimately you're preserved, you're safe. Number five, God governs the behavior of the wicked.

Yeah, he governs the behavior of the wicked. He exerts a restraining influence on the wicked. The wicked can't do whatever they want to do. They are constrained. They really can't say whatever they want to say and they cannot do whatever they want to do.

You know, there are so many examples of this in scripture. You know, we've been going through the Gospel of John. You know, men pick up stones, all of a sudden, where are the stones? You know, in the book of Acts, there are 40 assassins that make a vow that they're not going to eat until they kill the apostle Paul. Where did they go?

What happened? Paul stayed on the assassins. We don't know them. Because God constrains the activities of the wicked. And we see this all throughout scripture.

He constrained Abimelech. He constrained the prophet Balaam, who was hired by Balak. God constrained the keeper of the prison when Joseph was in prison and promoted him. God was constraining all these people for his own glory. There are many, many examples of this where God constrains The wicked.

The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. God constrains rulers. He constrains those who are insensible to him. You know, this verse in Proverbs 21, one, the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of water. He turns wherever he will.

That's a remarkable verse to me now, more remarkable than ever. And because there was something that happened last year that many of you are aware of. One of my dear friends was killed in a helicopter crash in Glacier Bay last year. And they were, my friend was with his two sons and another pilot, and they were headed toward the beach to land in Glacier Bay just to stretch their legs and walk around a little bit. Well it didn't work out so well and the helicopter crashed into the ocean And everybody died except one boy, 14 years old.

His name is Aidan Peppered. And when the helicopter hit the water, it just blew apart. All the parts went in every direction. But this 14-year-old boy was somehow ejected, still strapped into his seat in Glacier Bay. And he had a cooler when he wrapped around his arm in the wreck somehow.

And when he woke up, he was unconscious, and he wakes up, you know, icebergs floating around, this is Glacier Bay, And he wakes up and his head is resting on a piece of the broken propeller, holding his head out of the water. And so he swims to shore, probably in 40 degree water. He gets to shore and it's very cold, of course, this is Alaska, and he, after several hours, no rescue, no rescue, no rescue, And he begins to go into hypothermia and night starts to fall. And the night, it's now dark and a helicopter, a search helicopter goes overhead and with its searchlights scanning the beach. And he was out there.

He had written on the beach, S-O-S. He did everything he could to try to attract attention. They went right by him. And when it was way off in the distance, he prayed this Psalm, or this proverb. He said, Lord, you said, you said the King's heart is in your hand, and you can turn their hearts wherever you wish.

Please turn them." And that helicopter turned around and picked him up. And he was ejected out of that helicopter without a scratch on his body. He had a little bit of internal bleeding that was not a big deal. A remarkable manifestation of God's sovereign choice of life. God controls every person.

God controls the hearts and the minds of a helicopter pilot who does not know God. God controls all of the people in your life. But that verse, The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. It's such a remarkable verse to me. The sixth thing is that God takes the evil done and he makes good to come of it.

This is so clear in the Bible. We know one of the most famous verses on the sovereignty of God, you know, is Romans 8.28. God causes all things to work together for good, for the called, according to His purpose. Well, God is making good out of everything that looks bad to you and me. And, you know, we look around, there are seemingly bad things.

God's making good out of them. This is his plan. This is why Joseph, after his brothers had sold him into slavery and really harmed him, said, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Because God controls people. God controls.

He's ordering everything for good. Number seven, God hardens hearts and blinds eyes. God hardens hearts and blinds eyes. You know, there's really no need for us to be angry with people. We need to recognize that God is doing something.

God is hardening their heart, he's blinding their eyes. This is what he's doing. He's doing it all. And we waste our lives fretting over what people do and what people say. Believe me, I've had my I've experienced that.

I've had my share of fretting over things that people have said and done. I'm not standing here speaking of this in some kind of antiseptic environment, You know, I have to grapple with this myself. I'm grappling with it today. Well, if I don't understand that God is the governor of all the people in my life, I will be the most bitter, the most depressed person, and so will you. If you don't understand that it's God who hardens hearts, you will always struggle with bitterness.

It's the worst thing that can happen to you in this world. Bitterness will suck your energy, it'll destroy your joy, it'll wreck your relationships, and guess what? It'll make you no fun to be around. Here's what bitter people do. They make other people bitter.

So there's a chain reaction. But God hardens hearts and he blinds eyes. We just read about this with Pharaoh. God hardened his heart. And he hardened his own heart.

Well, who hardened his heart? Both. I can't reconcile it. I have no interest in trying to reconcile it. This is how God works.

Mike said, we're not in the kiddie pool. We're in something so deep we can't even understand how it works out perfectly. We can understand some of it, but not all of it. Number eight. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm only going to give you seven, not ten.

So that's what God does. You know, one of the most dramatic examples in the entire Bible of this is the story of Joseph and what God did with Joseph. I want you to open your Bibles to Genesis 37. Genesis 37. I'm going to just bounce us through this in summary form.

But as we go through this, I want you to notice how all this stuff happened to Joseph. Because it was all about people. Joseph's life was controlled by people, sort of. God is sovereign over all the people in your life, and you'll see this in the life of Joseph. You're going to see sinful behavior, you're going to see terrible things, mistakes, and you're going to see financial drivers of people's decisions that harmfully affected somebody else.

You're going to see that in your life. The first thing we find in Genesis 37 verse 3 is a father's favoritism. A father actually is showing favoritism to one of his children. This is really bad to do this and in verse 37 verse 4 the brothers see it. By the way, you don't hide this.

Children get it if they think there's favoritism going on. And in verse 4, the brothers saw that their father loved him more than all the other brothers, and they hated them, and they couldn't speak peaceably to him. This is bad. You know, sin begets sin. Favoritism begets bitterness in this situation.

And then in chapter 37 verses 5 through 9, Joseph, well you decide, we don't know whether he was being boastful and forward or not, but it kind of sounds like he was. He was rubbing it in their face, you're going to bow down to me. I had a dream, you're going to bow down. Well, he already knew that his brothers hated him. And it's like he was, he may have just been driving the knife in.

The truth is he was actually telling them the truth. He was telling them something that God actually revealed. And then in verse 11, his brothers envy him. Do you see that? And his brothers envied him.

And then in verses 18 through 20, his brothers conspire to kill him. You know, how much sin have we passed over so far? How many bad things have happened to people by people? You know, bitterness always has names hanging on it. Disappointments always have names hanging on it.

We know these people's names. They're written in the Bible. And they see him coming and they say, here comes that dreamer, let's kill him. Well, then they saw some Midianite traders come, or some Ishmaelite traders, I'm sorry, and they were coming down the road and they said, let's sell him. They're going to Egypt.

You can sell people in Egypt. So they sold him. And then his brothers lie to their father about his death. You know the deception here is so proverbial. They take Joseph's tunic, coat of many colors, and they dip it in kids in the blood of goats, and they bring it to their father, and they say, we found this.

And you know what they say? Is this the coat you gave him? Wow. What? These were wicked men.

You know, what kind of sin do you have to have in your heart to do that to your dad and to try to manipulate him like that and to lie to him, say, oh, is this the coat? Unbelievable. Then the Midianite traders, they arrive in Egypt and I have a feeling that they have an idea they've got a really special person with them They get it and I think they sold him to Potiphar who understood that this was a really valuable man and so they sold him they sold him to an Egyptian ruler. And they probably made a nice margin on their purchase. And so now Joseph is there.

Then they got Potiphar's wife, who falsely accuses him. You know, this was the beginning of the Me Too movement right here. Only it was all fake. And then Potiphar throws him into prison, who knows Why? Family dynamics, who knows why he got thrown into prison?

Maybe just to keep peace with his wife. She was a liar, she was a manipulator, she was a schemer, she was immoral. You know, who knows why Potiphar ordered him in prison? Did he really believe it? We don't know.

Maybe he was just a sinful man who was trying to keep peace with his wicked wife. We don't know. But do you see the chain of sin and offense and lying and immorality and all these things that add up to what Joseph is exposed to in his life? And then he's thrown into prison, and then he asks the cup bearer to remember him when he gets out. He doesn't do it.

He forgets. A man forgot. And then Joseph is released from prison. And here's the end of the story. You would think that Joseph would demand some payment from these brothers.

I mean he spent he spent from age 16 to age 30 either as a prisoner Or as a slave And guess whose names were hanging on that trial? Those 11 brothers. It was their fault. They did this. Absolutely.

How do you pay a boy back for losing the best years of his energy? How about that? Let's have some reparations here. What do you owe me now? Well, that's not what Joseph does, because Joseph understands that God is in control of every person.

He knows that. And so he's not really demanding anything. And in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20 and 21 are two of the most instructive verses for anyone who's ever been hurt by another person. This is the way to walk right here. Joseph is with his brothers.

They're afraid. They think they are going to really catch it for what they did. But as for you, You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. Now therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones." And he comforted them, and he spoke kindly to them.

Isn't that amazing? He was like McShane. He was like McShane. How kindly God has thwarted me so that I might glory in my disappointments. And that is the sovereignty of God in operation, that God is in control of every person in your life.

Remember the story of Fanny Crosby? She's a baby, and a quack causes her to go blind. And she writes some of the most inspiring, thankful, filled hymns that have ever been written nine thousand of them and We've been singing some of her songs Was she bitter against that quack That put a poltis mustard poultice on her eyes that caused her to go blind almost immediately. We don't really hear of that. But what do we hear of?

We hear of the marvelous sovereign hand of God. The God who controls every person, even bad doctors. God might give you a bad doctor, and it might really hurt you, and you might get really bitter. But if you really trust God in His sovereign hand, you'll forgive them. And you'll say, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

So I don't know who's disappointed you. Everybody has a list of people who have hurt them, wronged them, slandered them, done things bad to them. Everybody has a list. When you're young, your list is really short. When you get older, the list can get really long.

So who's on the list? Forgive them. You know, The word in the New Testament for forgive is actually a word picture. It actually pictures somebody on a hook. And to forgive is to let somebody off the hook.

And let them go. That's forgiveness. And that I think is really only possible when you really believe in it with all your heart that God is sovereign in the operation of every person in your life. Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord, I pray that you would give us such a grasp of this, that you would give us the freedoms of knowing that you are in control in the operation of every heart, every tongue, everything that people might do to us or for us or with us in this life.

In Jesus' name, Amen.