In the sermon 'Fearless Girl - Stories of the Sovereignty of God,' Scott Brown emphasizes the profound impact of one's view of God on all aspects of life. He argues that understanding the sovereignty of God is crucial for navigating life's uncertainties, as it provides assurance that God has preordained every event, from personal life choices to global occurrences. The sermon draws on biblical examples, including the stories of Nebuchadnezzar and Ruth, to demonstrate how God's sovereign will shapes events for His glory. Brown urges believers, especially fathers and daughters, to cultivate a deep trust in God's omnipotence and omniscience, encouraging them to replace fears and doubts with confidence in God's unchangeable nature. The sermon also highlights the futility of asking 'why' in times of trial, suggesting instead that believers focus on what they should do in response to God's Word. Through the lens of God's sovereignty, Brown reassures listeners that all circumstances, even those that seem dire, are orchestrated by God for good.

Okay, let's pray. Father, I pray that you would take the words of your holy book and that you would burn them deep within our hearts, that we would never forget them, that they would guide us through this wilderness land that you put us in. We thank you that you've given us years in this world to glorify you until you take us home. But you've given us all we need for this time, this season, this era of our lives in preparation for all eternity. So Lord we thank you for your provision.

We recognize this great doctrine describing who you are is one of the greatest provisions we can be given. Amen. Okay, I wanna just begin as I begin to work through a definition by making something very clear, And that is this, your view of God will determine every single thing else in your life. Don't forget that. Your view of God is the chief driver and definer of everything you will ever be and everything you will ever experience.

And it'll affect your thoughts, it'll drive your emotions, it'll teach you how to relate with people. Yes, the doctrine of God teaches you even how to relate with people. Your doctrine of God will push you somewhere. So one of the most important things for you to do is have an accurate grasp of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, don't leave home without it. And you fathers, make sure your daughters do not leave home without this doctrine.

So this doctrine answers lots of questions. Is your life up in the air? Where are you going in this life? Will you get married? Will you be wealthy or just rich or just well off or Will you be struggling financially for the rest of your life?

God knows, God has already designed it. You should not fear it. When will you get married? When you get married, if you do get married, will everything go smoothly? God has designed all of these things already, now.

Will there be conflicts in your marriage? Will it be smooth sailing? God has ordained these things for you. What about your family? Will you experience problems in the family you're in as a daughter now?

Or your family later on? Will something bad happen to your mom or your dad or your brother or your sister? God knows all of these things. He has designed them. You know, will you be slandered?

Will your reputation be ruined? God is sovereign over all these things. Will you get a disease? Will you be in a terrible car wreck? Will you die young?

Will you live long? God has determined all these things. This is the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. It is perhaps the most practical, functional doctrine in the Bible in that sense. And your view of God determines absolutely everything.

The trouble with our fallen nature is that it leads us to believe that God is a powerless being, that the only power to change anything is us. We have a me, myself, and I heart. And as a result, we think that we can be whatever we want to be, but that's really not true. God does give us a will, and He gives us motivation, and things like that. We'll talk about that in detail as we go on.

But many people, they grow up and they live their whole life thinking the way that Arthur Pink described in his book, The Sovereignty of God. God is effeminate, helpless. God is disappointed in man. God the Father is disappointed. God the Son is dissatisfied.

And God the Holy Spirit is defeated. God is trying his best to save mankind, but the majority of men just won't let him save them. That's the view that so many people have, and they have that view of every area of life, and that God is somehow powerless, but that's not true. The doctrine of the sovereignty of God declares all these things. Here's the reality about most of us.

We normally think God is running a little late. He's running too late in our lives. But is God running late? Is He running late in your life right now? I really like the way Adrian Rogers said it.

He said, God is never in a hurry, but God is never late because God has marvelous plans for his people. My goal here in my message tonight really is to help to cultivate something, Help to grow something in the heart of every father and every daughter. For daughters, my greatest desire is to somehow be an influence for fearless daughters, confident women, women who are not frightened by any fear, like Sarah was not frightened by any fear. Now what what is the sovereignty of God? There's a really, really simple way to say it, although I'm going to explain it with a number of sub-points, ten of them actually.

What is the sovereignty of God? The sovereignty of God is this. God is God. He is absolutely God. So I'd like to say a few things about what that means.

And number one, if you're taking notes, God is in control. To say that God is God and that God is sovereign is to say that his control is absolute. It is irresistible. It is infinite because God being God possesses all power and he does whatever he pleases. Psalm 115 verse three says that, but our God is in heaven.

He does whatever he pleases. The Apostle Paul instructed Timothy along the same lines, the pastor of the church in Ephesus, that God is the only potentate, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. That's 1 Timothy 6, 15. The Bible teaches that God orders absolutely everything for His own glory. Psalm 76, 10 makes this very clear.

Even the wrath of man will praise you. God doesn't just use nice people and obedient people to glorify himself, he uses wrathful and wicked people to glorify himself. He's no respecter of persons and we can find great comfort in that. This is the God who ordered and created everything that there is. This is the God in Genesis who flooded the world and saved a family.

This is the God in Exodus who destroyed the Egyptian army by drowning them in the Red Sea. This is the God who, in the book of Joshua, caused the sun to stand still. In the gospels, he calms storms, he turns water into wine, he feeds thousands of people, he casts out demons, and, You know, are you concerned about what people might say about you? Well here's something. God initiates and He spreads all rumors.

In Isaiah 37 verse 7, we read that that great king Sennacherib who came to destroy the people of God heard a rumor. He heard a rumor which caused him to go home and he was murdered there. He heard a rumor, God was the one who initiated the rumor. Jesus said, you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. But you know what he said right after that?

Therefore do not be afraid, Don't be afraid. The rumors are God's rumors. There's a remarkable moment in the story of Isaiah where the people are running around saying, there's a conspiracy, there's a conspiracy going on. The Assyrians have a conspiracy. God says to them, stop saying it's a conspiracy.

In fact, he said it like this. Stop saying, it's a conspiracy, it's a conspiracy. He repeated it. And the message was, it isn't a conspiracy, it's me, I'm doing this, okay? God is in absolute control, even of rumors.

In John chapter three, verse 27, We read the words of John the Baptist, who said something that you should never forget for the rest of your life. I have thought of this so many times in my life. It's helped me hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. I read it probably when I was in my mid-teens, mid-late teens. Are you ready for it?

A man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. In fact, I think I was probably 14 years old and our family was reading the Gospel of John with a family and we read that verse, a man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. I've never forgotten it all my life long and it's helped me all my life long. God made you. Your hair, color, texture, how many hairs you have, the shape of your face, the length of your arms, everything about you was ordained by God.

It was God who did this. And the truth about all these things is we can never know why God has done anything. We might think we do, we might see connections and say, oh, I see why he did that. There's nothing wrong with that. But the reality is we don't really know why he has done anything.

We don't know why one person is five feet tall and the other person is six foot five feet tall. We just don't know. But God does. And that's why it's so important that we recognize the words of David in Psalm 46 verse 10. Be still and know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations. And In Job chapter 11, Job finds himself in the height of his pain. He's pleading with his friends to remember that God's ways are not their ways and they should remember how majestic and beyond Him they are. And he says to them, can you search out the deep things of God? Well, the answer is no, they can't.

He says, can you find out the limits of the Almighty? Well, the answer is no, you can't. He says in answer to that, they are higher than heaven. What can you do? What can you know?

As we go through this life, it's very important that we do not fall into the trap of constantly going to that three-letter word which is so unprofitable in a time of trial. You know what that word is. Why? Why? Here's my advice.

Stop asking why. You can never know why. Stop asking why. It doesn't get you anywhere. The most important question is what ought I do based on the Word of God.

That's the most important question. I'll never forget there was a man many years ago who had a child who died very, very difficult. It's always heartbreaking. He could never get over it year after year after year. And the same question would come to me.

Why? Why? And I began to say, that is a question you should banish from your thinking. Stop asking why, because you never really can know. God does, God does know.

The apostle Paul said that for of him and through him and of him are all things to whom be glory forever. So God is in control. Now, it's very important that we detect the condition of our hearts and we discern the meditations of our hearts, and ask ourselves, am I murmuring about any matter of God's sovereignty? And I pray that everything that we say here in the next in the next hours ahead of our gathering is that these things would be used of the Lord to root out any murmuring in your heart and to get rid of it and to set your life on a course without murmuring. It is such a trap.

Murmuring is the worst investment you can make in your heart of your meditations, particularly when you think about your fears and things like that. And my greatest prayer is that we would all see together, and I think this is something that we are always having to learn as human beings, that in the face of God, our fears give way to fearlessness, our pains, they give way to praises. This is the will of God for His people. So, you know, fill your heart with the praises of God That fears of your impotence would give way to your confidence in God's omnipotence. That your fears over your discouragements, over your lack of intellect, would give way to praise to God for his omniscience.

That your fears of your regrets from your lack of wisdom would turn your heart to God's infinite wisdom. That your fears of your flaws would give way to trusting in God's goodness. That your fears from your smallness would give way to his immeasurable infinity. That your fears of being destroyed would give way to your confidence that he is absolutely unconquerable, his will is unalterable, his personality is unchangeable, which should cause us to be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. You know, there is an illustration of how a man changed from being self-sufficient and independent.

And God really changed him. This happened to Nebuchadnezzar, that great king. Nebuchadnezzar was a self-congratulatory, independent, self-reliant man. And he really did believe that what he did was the master of his fate. But God dealt with him.

One day he was walking around his palace and He looked around at all that he had done and he said is this not great Babylon which I have built and in a moment God took it all away from him and made him into a beast and for years he was like a wild beast in the rain growing his claws and his hair like a wild man He was deranged and he lost absolutely everything because God God desired to humble him. The kingdom has departed from you says God and they shall drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make you eat grass like oxen. Seven times, or seven years, will pass over you until you know that the most high rules in the kingdom of men and he gives it to whomever he chooses. So there he was for years wet with dew and rain eating like an animal and God reduced him.

And then God brought his reason back to him. You can read about this in Daniel chapter 4, 34. And here's what Nebuchadnezzar says, and this is what I pray every daughter and every father says, For his dominion is an everlasting dominion and his kingdom is from from generation to generation All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. He does according to his will in the army of heaven. And among the inhabitants of the earth, no one can restrain his hand or say to him, What have you done?

His reason returned, and that's really where we need to be. So, the first point that I wanted to make, I know it was a long time ago when I said this was the first point, God is in control. Number two, the rest of these will go a little faster. Number two, God delegates his power to others however he wishes. This is why Methuselah lived longer than anybody else in the world and other people never lived as long as he did.

Samson was stronger than anyone. Solomon was wiser than anyone. God is the one who delegates his power to others. Deuteronomy 8.18 says that God is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he swore to your fathers. It is God who delegates his power to others in whatever way he pleases.

Whatever power or powerlessness you have as a human being was given to you by God, it's a gift of God for his own purposes. Everybody has a different measure of everything. Next, God is sovereign in the exercise of his love and his mercy to whomever he wishes. Mike will elaborate on this point. Romans 9 makes this very, very clear where God says, I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.

God imparts grace to whom he wills. Next, God controls all speech. Lamentations chapter three, verse 37. The prophet says, Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass? Who is that?

When the Lord has not commanded it, Is it not from the mouth of the most high that woe and wellbeing proceed? In other words, God controls all speech. The most unprofitable speech or harsh speech toward you, you can always know that God was the one that meant for you to have that, hear that kind of speech directed towards you. It was God who did that. It's so important that we grow up.

You know, girls, grow up early. Just recognize that. Don't be offended when people try to offend you. God is the one who is speaking. Next, God is sovereign over life and death.

This is very clear in 1 Samuel chapter two, verses six through 10. The Lord kills and makes alive. He brings down to the grave and brings up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and lifts up.

He raises the poor from the dust. He lifts the beggar from the ash heap to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory. God is the one who is sovereign over life and death and over all position. Next, God creates or constructs the strengths and the weaknesses of your body. That's Exodus four, verse 11.

Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Next, God causes peace and turmoil in the world.

You read the news and there's so much turmoil in the world, guess what? Don't fret. You know you can read the news and say, why do I have, why do I keep reading this? It's so depressing. Well, God is in control of it.

Isaiah 45 verse 7, I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things. You know, whenever you're in the middle of calamity, know this, not only did God cause it, He causes you to have wisdom in the midst of it. There's always a way through these things when you recognize God's hand.

Next, God hardens hearts and He moves our hearts in whatever direction He pleases. Isaiah 63, Verse 17 makes this very clear. Oh Lord, why have you made us stray from your ways and hardened our heart from your fear? Return for your servants' sake the tribes of your inheritance. Next, God hides His face.

Isaiah 64 verse 7 reads like this, And there is no one who calls on your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of you. For you have hidden your face from us and have consumed us because of our iniquities. There are times when you have a sense that God has hidden His face. Don't worry about it. God does this from time to time to strengthen His people, to cause them to cry out to Him, to turn to Him.

You may go through periods where you don't really Have a sense of which end is up. Don't worry about it. It is a season God will bring you through it this the Sun will come out again next God is the potter and we are the clay This is Isaiah 64 verse 8 But now oh Lord you are our father. We are the clay and you are our potter, and we are all the work of your hand. God is the one who's shaping everything, even your own life.

Let me give you an illustration. Ruth. You're familiar with the book of Ruth. Interestingly, I was reading the book of Ruth just in my natural morning reading a while back. And I was just very taken by the whole story of the book of Ruth.

Every girl needs to understand the book of Ruth. You know, the story begins with just a terrible tragedy. It whacks you right upside the face in the first five verses of the book. But the book of Ruth reminds me of something that Elizabeth Elliott said, who lost her husband when she was in her twenties. Her husband was murdered by Alka Indians.

She says this, the will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, But in the end, it's going to be a lot better and a lot bigger. I wholeheartedly agree with that. But this story of Ruth demonstrates how God takes something that is hopelessly broken, just seemingly absolutely beyond repair, and he makes it into something that never could have been designed by man. And you know this this whole story happens in the worst time in Israel's history, the period of the judges.

Read the book of judges and you can just see how messed up literally everybody in the story is, okay? Every man's doing what's right in his own eyes. People think things are difficult in America, not so. Nothing like the Book of Judges. It was a terrible season to be alive in history, perhaps one of the worst.

And not only that, the two primary characters in the story, Elimelech, the husband, and Naomi, his wife, they lived in Bethlehem, but because there was no bread in Bethlehem, they left and they went to Moab of all places. Moab, a place with a really bad history, And really, they were legendary for their immorality and their rejection of God there in Moab. And so there, Elimelech and Naomi are now in Moab and they have two daughters, Ruth and Orpah, and they all get married, and her husband, Elimelech, dies, and then both husbands die. And there they are, they're left homeless. I mean, in that society, they could own no property, they really could do nothing.

And there they were, three women, three single women in a Moabite chaotic land with no one to take care of them. That's where the story begins. And this remarkable story, you know, even Naomi's not thinking right. She's saying things she shouldn't say, things that really aren't consistent with the character of God. She says, it grieves me for your sakes that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.

That's what she says. Well, it's understandable if she would say that, but she makes various propositions that really are harmful and ungodly. That's the scene that's there. And so these three women are alone with no social or economic status. They're homeless.

And, you know, it's like the person who thinks, there's no hope for me, I'll never get married. There's nobody around here. What can we do? We have nothing. Now, I don't know if there are any young girls who have ever felt like that.

Where are the men? Where are they? We're hopeless. We're helpless. There just isn't anybody around.

Well, That's really what they were thinking and seeing, actually. And the big question that Ruth caused us to ask is, you know, how do you think about your life when you can't see hope beyond the clouds? What do you do in times like that in your darkest days? And you know, this book begins with the death of husbands and tragedy upon tragedy, impossibility upon impossibility. And the story concludes with a marriage and a baby and a grandmother, and a redeemer.

And what looked so horrible was actually being orchestrated by God in order to preserve the line of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. The worst things that happened in the worst place for a Christian to live, God was orchestrating for his own glory. Nobody knew that that's what this was all about, when these husbands died. As God wanted to get those girls back to Bethlehem. And so at the very end of the book we read there is a son born to Naomi, interesting, born to the grandmother, and they called his name Obed.

He is the father of Jesse, the father of David. And you have the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Who would have thought in the darkest moment in your life in Moab that God was doing something so far beyond anything you couldn't even dream it up, what he was doing. That is the sovereignty of God. What a marvelous, marvelous illustration.

Well, let's just give you another illustration. Ruth's grandson, David, was in probably one of the darkest moments of his life. Open your Bibles to Psalm 139. I want you to see these words, Psalm 139. Psalm 139 was written by David during a time of threat.

Wicked people were opposing him. People are, they hate God and they hate David. They want David dead. And what does he do? How does David grapple with this threat?

Well, you can see how he grappled with this threat in Psalm 139. And it really is a psalm of God's sovereignty. The psalm is broken into four paragraphs. Each paragraph is six verses long. So it's actually very orderly and it deals with particular issues that are related to the sovereignty of God.

So with your Bible open, I just want you to see these first six verses. Here's what we learned from the first six verses. That God is sovereign over every movement and every thought, and God knows everything about David. That's what he confesses. You have searched me and known me.

In other words, God knows his desires and his activities and his thoughts and his footsteps. God knows it all. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought from afar. You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.

There is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, you know it together. You have hedged me behind and before, and laid your hand upon me." And then in the next six verses you can see God's sovereign hand and His ever-presence wherever you are. Where can I go from your spirit? Verse 7. Where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me." Well, this is God's presence in every moment. In one way, it would be right to say it doesn't really matter where I go, it only matters who's holding my hand. And that's what David speaks about.

And then in the next section, God speaks of how he sovereignly designed your body and everything about you. God created your body. Don't loathe your body. Don't be discouraged about it at all verse 13 for you formed my inward parts You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made Marvelous are your works And my soul knows it very well." This is the story of your existence, your creation.

God is the one. Praise Him, worship Him, like David did in the midst of his trials. So all of these things that we've covered in the Word of God should grow our estimation of God, to expand our view of God, and to help us not to prejudge anything in this world, particularly do not prejudge disasters. You know, what if your trials were really God's mercies and disguise? What if your difficulties were really just nothing but God's expression of His infinite wisdom and His foreknowledge of everything?

You know what foreknowledge means? Foreloving. Foreknowing is foreloving. Loving beforehand. I want to give you an illustration that really comes out of the story of my father and where God sent him during the Second World War.

And my dad's best friend on Iwo Jima, They were flying airplanes over Japan from the island of Iwo Jima. But they, my dad's best friend Arthur Burry was involved in a particular day on Iwo Jima that everybody called Black Friday. It was the biggest aviation disaster of the 7th Air Force in the Pacific War. And what happened was there were 25 Mustangs that left Iwo Jima, and 24 of those planes never came back. And 23 of the 25 pilots were killed.

Two of the pilots came back. One of them was my father's best friend, and another one was another very dear friend of his as well, Eddie Bates, who's still alive, living up in the Northeast. And we know these men today. But Nobody knows really how these planes went down, except that maybe they all flew into a massive storm and all the planes were mangled together and they just went down. But just before all these planes went down, my dad's best friend, Arthur Burry's plane, his engine failed, so he pulled away from the group and he couldn't bring it back.

So he bailed out and parachuted into the Pacific Ocean, 275 miles from the mainland. And when he landed, he did what every good airman would do when he lands in the Pacific. You know, he got his rubber life raft out and pulled the cord. And so he was sitting in a four foot long life raft, just a little bit longer than your feet you know there he is floating out in the pacific ocean what he didn't know was bearing down on him and the entire pacific fleet was a typhoon and it was a legendary typhoon I love I I love the name of this typhoon, Typhoon Nana. Typhoon Nana.

Well, our grandkids call my wife Nana, so Typhoon Nana is a great name for us. So these calm seas, they turned into 50 foot waves. And, you know, while Admiral Nimitz's battleships are being torn apart and planes are getting ripped off of aircraft carriers in one of the biggest disasters of the war from Typhoon Nana. Here was Arthur Burry floating around in a four-foot rubber wrap in 50-foot waves, getting, you know, washed over, over and over and over again, losing his food. He shot a flare, boom, losing everything.

And he floated for six days. He was delirious when he was finally rescued. But with all this devastation in the Pacific Fleet, you know Arthur Burry rode out the storm. I mean, 43 planes were destroyed, 33 planes were swept overboard. The decks were being ripped off of aircraft carriers in the storm.

It was a big storm. And so he was finally rescued, it was such a dramatic thing that the pictures went back to his hometown, Davenport, Iowa. And the Davenport paper published all these pictures of this airman that got rescued, Arthur Burry, my dad's best friend. And so he, well who was Arthur Burry? Well Arthur Burry came from a family of eight children And he was the youngest.

When Art was two and a half years old, his mother was killed in a tragic car accident. And they went into just really hard times, so hard that the psychologists who were counseling Art Burry's father said the best thing to do is to put the kids in an orphanage and see if you can adopt out the rest. So he did what every obedient father did in that era. He did what the psychiatrist told him to do. And so the family was separated.

The older ones went to an orphanage and the others were dispersed in different ways. So you had all kinds of forces going on in this guy's life. You had a terrible car wreck. You had a really bad decision of a father. You had a family separated.

You had a terrible war. You had a wicked nation. You had a violent storm. You had a broken airplane. That's the story of his life, right?

And two years after the war, there was a 32-year-old woman, Arthur Burry's oldest sister, and she was cleaning out the attic in her house. And she went up and took a stack of newspapers and brought them down to the street and then she went and got another stack of newspapers and took them down to the street to throw away. And then when she went up the third time she looked at us this stack of newspapers and right on the cover was a picture of an airman that had been rescued. And she looked at that picture and did a double take, and she thought, that boy looks a little bit like my brother. Not Arthur, but another brother.

He said, she thought, I wonder if that airman could be my baby brother. She hadn't seen him since he was two and a half years old. And so, you know, she started doing research, trying to find, she started, you know, She called the newspaper and tried to trace this thing down. She found that it really was her little brother that she hadn't seen since he was two and a half years old. And that newspaper led to the reunification of that entire family.

You know, God is in control. I don't know what else to say about that. Who would have thought that so many tragedies would be used of God to unite a family after they'd been separated? Because it's some bad decisions. A drunken driver on the one hand, a psychologist that was thinking who knows what about separating a family like that.

A terrible war, a horrible storm, and a poorly built airplane. God took all those things. That's what God does, by the way. The worst disaster you can imagine. Don't worry about it.

God is in control of all those things. Now, ladies, you're young now, and I pray that every year, your grasp of the sovereignty of God will grow, that It will consume every fear, every insecurity, every doubt, that it would destroy everything that contradicts the doctrine of God, that God is God. That you would never doubt the way that God made you, your intellect, your body, the family you were put in, the financial situation that you're in now, the place you live. God is sovereign. Give thanks to God.

Give thanks to God wherever you are, wherever you go for the rest of your life. There's a conversation that takes place in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. In the book Prince Caspian and Lucy, the little girl, she's speaking to Aslan and She says, Aslan, you are bigger. And Aslan says, that's because you are older, little one.

And he says, She says, not because you are bigger. And he says, I'm not bigger. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger. And I pray that happens, really to all of us, that we would find Him bigger, wiser, sovereign, that God is God. Because God is the one who takes everything and he wraps it up for his own glory.

That's why that great hymn says, every joy or trial falleth from above, traced upon the dial by the Son of love. So be still and know that he is God.