In 'Our Sovereign God,' Peter Allison explores the theme of God's sovereignty as illustrated in Acts, focusing on the events involving Paul and Barnabas. The sermon begins with the account of Paul and Barnabas preaching in the synagogue and being met with envy and opposition from the Jews, leading them to turn to the Gentiles. The Gentiles received the message with gladness, and those appointed to eternal life believed. Allison emphasizes that God's sovereign providence orchestrates all events, from major historical occurrences to the minutiae of daily life, including what we perceive as chance events. He explains that this sovereignty extends to salvation, where believers are those appointed to eternal life by God. The sermon addresses the tension between God's sovereignty and human accountability, asserting that while God is sovereign, humans are still responsible for their rejection of the Gospel. Allison concludes with a call for Christians to evangelize, driven by the understanding that God has appointed people to believe, and this knowledge should embolden their efforts.

Acts We begin reading at verse 44. So Paul and Barnabas had gone into the synagogue and preached the previous week. And this begins with the next week. On the next Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and contradicting and blaspheming.

They opposed the things spoken by Paul. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said it was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first. But since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold we turn to the Gentiles, for so the Lord has commanded us. I have set you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth. Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

And the word of the Lord was being spread throughout all the region. But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and the chief men of the city, raised up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. But they shook off the dust from their feet against them, and came to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Spirit. Now it happened in Iconium that they went together to the synagogue of the Jews, and so spoke that a great multitude, both of the Jews and the Greeks, believed.

May Jehovah's merciful kindness comfort us according to His word to His servants. Heavenly Father, Please sanctify us by Your Word. Your Word is truth. I ask that You would sanctify my lips, that they might proclaim the riches of Your grace. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, a lady on a recent and well-known podcast was relating her first time reading through the Bible from cover to cover, asking questions of her pastor as she went through the Bible along the way. But when she finished, she said that she was heartbroken. She believed that the Bible was true. She believed the Bible was the Word of God. But she realized she didn't like God.

She didn't like the God that she read about in the Bible. He didn't fit her idea of what God should be. He didn't fit her standard of fairness or of goodness. And she was disappointed. Her pastor, having had the benefit of all of her questions over the year, perceptively diagnosed her problem as arising from reading the Bible thinking it was about her.

And he suggested, recommended, that she read the Bible again from the perspective that the Bible is about God and not her. What does God love? What does God hate? Who is God? And so the second time through, she says that before she got halfway through the Old Testament, she, in her exact words, fell in love with God.

We know that we love Him because He first loved us. But what's not to love about God? God is merciful. God is gracious, extending His favor to those who don't deserve it. He is patient.

He forgives our temper tantrums and pays the penalty for them. He delivers us from our predicaments, even when they are the result of our rebellious choices. He provides all of our needs. He feeds us good things. He invites us to enjoy the fullness of joy in His presence.

And He invites us to enjoy the eternal pleasures that are at His right hand. And many, Many people gladly receive such gifts. But the one thing that they can't accept is His absolute sovereignty. But though some protest against the sovereignty of God, all Christians actually believe in the sovereignty of God. But as J.I.

Packer says, some of them are not aware that they do, and they mistakenly imagine and insist that they reject it. So how can we say that all Christians believe in the sovereignty of God? Well, all Christians thank the Lord for saving them. They thank Him for their food. They ask Him to keep them safe and forgive their sins.

And no Christian would ever say that it was their own wisdom, their own skill or power that enabled them to repent. They would never tell God that they have themselves to thank for responding to His call, His offer of salvation. All Christians believe that they were sinners and under God's wrath. And they believe that God saves them and that God preserves them. Even non-Christians like Trump, President Trump, acknowledged that it was the grace of God that preserved his life in the recent assassination attempt.

He didn't say, I'm alive. He didn't stand up in front of the thousands of people before him and say, I'm alive because I had the foresight to know the bullet was coming at my head and to turn my head away. He stood up and said, I'm here because of the grace of Almighty God. See, those like the Pharisee that Jesus described who thanked God that He was not like other men are simply not saved. It was the publican who cried out, God be merciful to me, a sinner, that Jesus says went away justified.

Not the Pharisee who stood up and proclaimed and gave thanks that he was not like other men, that he had all these great things going for him. He did not go away justified. So all Christians thank the Lord for saving them. It's an acknowledgement that God is sovereign in that. And secondly, Christians, Even the ones who think they mistakenly imagine that they reject the sovereignty of God, they pray for the conversion of others because they know that it is God that sovereignly saves people, not the people for whom they are praying.

It wouldn't make any sense to pray to God if it was up to the people. So let's look this morning at Luke's account of God's sovereign working in the salvation of sinners in this church at Antioch of Poseida. The first thing that Luke tells us about the sovereignty of God is God's sovereignty in providential ordering of circumstances. Notice in Verse 44, on the next Sabbath, the whole city came together to hear the Word of God. And in the first verse of chapter 14, it says, now it happened in Iconium.

You see, all the people coming together at Antioch on the next Sabbath followed a sequence of events that was all ordained by God. The previous week, Paul and Barnabas had come to the synagogue to worship as it was their practice each week. And being rabbis from Jerusalem, they were offered a chance to speak after the regular service was over. They'd have read from the Law and the Prophets. And Paul stood up and proclaimed the mighty God who ordered the details of 4, 000 years of history to send his Son to conquer death and remove the sting of sin.

And He proclaimed that Christ's body never saw corruption, but God raised Him from the dead. And that through this man, Paul proclaimed, through this man Jesus is both the forgiveness of sins to all who repent and justification being declared righteous by the Judge of all the world, to those who believe." And it was after this message about the mighty God who conquered death and who offers life to all those who believe, the Gentiles begged that such wonderful and marvelous news should be preached to them again. You see, God is ordaining, orchestrating, sovereignly all the details that are going to set up this message on the following Sabbath. And so it is on the next Sabbath then that in God's providence, in God's sovereign providence, all of the city comes together to hear the Word of God. And in chapter 14 verse 1, we see a very similar circumstance.

It happened in Iconium, when they went into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spoke a great multitude. It happened that when they went into the synagogue, God had ordained and orchestrated what appears to be to us mere coincidence or mere circumstance. God is ordering these affairs. You see, God's providence extends to every facet of our lives, doesn't it? It extends to the minutiae of life.

In Matthew 10 30, Jesus says that the very hairs of our head are numbered. How many hairs are on your head, do you know? I don't. But God does. He's numbered them all.

How many Hairs fall from your head without you ever noticing it unless you clean out the shower drain. But God knows exactly how many. God knows exactly how many hairs are growing on our heads, even though we rarely if ever have counted them or even tried. Because it's completely insignificant to us how many hairs are on our head. It's probably the one number that none of us know, because to us it's insignificant.

And yet the Bible says God knows that number All the time About every hair every seemingly insignificant trivial hair that falls from her head God knows that Because God is sovereign over the minutiae of our lives, of the whole creation. Chance events. God is sovereign over them. Chance events are events that we didn't plan. We know that there's nothing that happens by accident because God controls the outcome of these things that we don't plan.

Some things we plan, but other things we don't. Like Proverbs 16, 33 says, the lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord. The Lord is ordaining, sovereignly controlling what numbers come up on the dice when we cast them. He's sovereignly controlling all of the things that we think we call chance, that just happened. Or in Exodus 21 describes an accident where somebody gets killed accidentally.

If somebody strikes somebody so they die, like say they're chopping wood and the axe head comes off and kills somebody. If he didn't lie in wait, it says, but what? But God delivered him into his hand. That chance event that the manslayer didn't plan, he wasn't intending to do, it was an accident, it was chance, The Bible says that God did it. Then you could provide a place for that man-slayer to go because he wasn't guilty of murder.

It was an act of God. Or in 1 Kings 22, Micaiah told Ahab, who was about to go to war, that he would be killed at the war. He said, if you ever return in peace, the Lord hasn't spoken by me. And of course, you know what happened. Ahab went to battle.

He disguised himself as an ordinary soldier so that they wouldn't try and kill him as the king. And some soldier at random, it says, shot an arrow into the air, and it hit the exact place in his armor where there was a joint, and he died. God sovereignly ordained that because He prophesied that's what would happen through Micaiah. Even the choices and decisions of people are under the sovereign control of God. James 4 reminds us not to presumptuously declare what we are going to do or where we're going to go.

Instead, it says, James tells us, we ought to say, if the Lord wills, We will do this and we will do that. Because even our decisions, what we intend to do, are sovereignly controlled by God. The things that we don't control, the accidents, the chance events, as well as our conscious decisions are sovereignly controlled by God. Our choices are sovereignly controlled by God. Even The ability to thresh grain.

That threshing grain is separating the hull around the grain from the grain, what we call the chaff, separating it out. That's threshing it. Even the ability to thresh grain and to grind it into flour. Isaiah 28 says that this comes from the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance. We think that we're doing this and that we know how to do it, and thank you very much, We can do it just fine.

And the Bible says, no, it's God that taught us how to do that and guides us in that. President Trump, along with many others, called his being preserved from the assassin's bullet divine intervention. He was saved, he said, by divine intervention. But it wasn't divine intervention. God did not intervene in history.

It was simply a time when God's continual ordering and governing of all the affairs of men was simply more apparent than it is at other times. Remember, God is ordering and governing all the minutiae of our life, all the time. He doesn't intervene in history in some special way. He is always bringing history to pass. He is always present, sovereignly ordering everything that comes to pass.

Sometimes that's more visible than in other times. It was a special act of grace, yes. It was an overt display of favor where God acted without man's foresight or planning. Yes, we can say that. But even when we are acting in accordance with our foresight and our planning, it is just as true that God is ordaining everything that comes to pass.

Even when we are grinding flour. Something we think we know how to do. Something we think we can figure out on our own. God says He is sovereignly governing that, teaching us how to do it. You see, God ordains the circumstances around your salvation and my salvation as well.

Even if you were born into a Christian home and you never remember a day estranged from Christ or outside the covenant, God has ordered, providentially ordered the circumstances of your salvation. You were born into a Christian home and raised in the fear and admonition of the Lord. That's God's providential ordering of circumstances. You weren't born into a Jewish home that rejects the Messiah. You weren't born into a Buddhist home or an irrational home of an atheist who uses logic but denies the source of the logic.

You were born into a Christian home, or maybe you weren't born into a Christian home, but God ordained and orchestrated the circumstances providentially, sovereignly, through which the Gospel came to you and you believed. See, God divinely ordains the timing as well. And God's work is irresistible. Psalm 135 says, whatever the Lord pleases, He does. Whatever the Lord pleases, He does.

In heaven and in earth, in the seas, and in the deep places. In the heaven, in the earth, in the seas, in the deep places. Well, heaven and earth kind of covers everything, right? Heaven extends out to the limits of the created universe. The earth, which is what God placed at the center.

The sea, and all the deep places. The places that we can't go, even today. People will readily acknowledge that we know very, very little about the deep places of the sea. The Bible says that God does whatever He pleases in all of these places, and nobody is resisting Him. In Isaiah 46, 10, He declares the end from the beginning.

And from ancient times, things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all of My Pleasure. There is no one that can resist God's sovereign, providential governing in the affairs of men. But God is also sovereign, we see, in holding men accountable for their choices. Notice in the next two verses, verse 45, But when the Jews saw the multitude, they were filled with envy, and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed a thing spoken by Paul. This is a rejection of the Gospel, unlike the Gentiles who believed.

And then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, "...It was necessary that the Word of God should be spoken to you first, but since you reject it, man is being held accountable. They are being held accountable for their rejection of the Word of God. Because you reject it, and you judged yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, return to the Gentiles. The responsibility for the rejection of the Gospel lies squarely at the feet of those who reject it. As people created in God's image, we are responsible for our rejection of the gospel.

They were the ones who rejected it. Paul didn't say, well, God caused you to reject it. Now, that raises sort of the question, how is that fair? But Paul answers this in Romans 9. I'd like to take a moment to look at that and turn to Romans 9.

Paul deals with this very point. God's sovereignty in holding men accountable and responsible for their choices and their actions. And not only this, verse 10, but when Rebecca had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac, for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand not of works, but of him who calls." Paul is pointing out that this choice was made before they had done anything themselves. In other words, choice was not based on what they would do, or wouldn't do, or who they were. It was based solely on God's purpose, on God's choice.

Remember, God is the one who does as He pleases, everywhere in the heavens and the earth and the sea. God does as He pleases. And so Paul points out that children weren't born, they hadn't done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of whom it calls. It was said to her, the elder shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob I have loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then?

Is there unrighteousness with God certainly not For he says I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says of Pharaoh, For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show my power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills and whom he wills he hardens And then comes this objection that Paul anticipates. Well then, if it's God who hardens hearts, then how can he be just in holding men accountable? And Paul says, you will say then to me, why does he still find fault?

For who has resisted his will? But indeed, O man, this is Paul's reply. This is Paul's reply. He doesn't launch into a logical explanation. He simply says, who are you, O man, to reply against God?

That is a bald assertion of sovereignty. Who are you to reply against God? You're not allowed to even ask that question. That's because God is sovereign and we're not. And if you think that's unfair, then you don't understand the sovereignty of God and what it means for God to be sovereign.

See, when He holds us accountable, it's because he's sovereign. And that's his choice, and he does what he pleases. And that's what he's been pleased to do. Now, he says, who are you? Why does he find fault?

For who has resisted his will? But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? If you make a cutting board, can the cutting board say, why did you make me like this? No, we would think that's absurd, don't we?

We made the cutting board that way because that's the way we wanted to make it, and that's the end of it. And for God to be sovereign means that He does as He pleases. Will the thing say to Him who formed it, why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory.

Now, we also need to point out that God is not unjust in this. He does not condemn people to eternal judgment because they weren't elect. He condemns them to eternal judgment because they refuse to repent. You human, our responsibility and God's sovereignty are often two truths that are put in opposition to each other. But they're really not.

That's a false conundrum. We have been given the ability to make choices and we've been held accountable by a sovereign God for those choices. But He is also sovereign. He's the one who ordains those choices. And we're not robots.

We have life. Robots do not. God has breathed into us the breath of life. We have a soul. Robots do not.

The breath of life has never been breathed into a robot. We are moral agents. What we do is right or wrong, unlike a robot or animals. Animals can make choices, but there's no moral agency in their actions. Because they're not accountable for those morally.

Why? Because God is sovereign. He hasn't made them accountable like He's made us, like He's made us alive. So no, we're not robots. The next thing Luke tells us is in verse 48, The Gentiles heard the gospel, they were glad and glorified the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed." That sentence says a lot about the sovereignty of God in salvation.

The people rejoiced to hear this Gospel. And the people believed. Now which people believed? That verse says it was the appointed to eternal life people. The appointed to eternal life people believed.

Or the people who were appointed to eternal life believed. That's the subject of the sentence. The appointed to eternal life people. They're the ones who believed. Now, that word appoint is the word tasso, and it's not the word for...

Many people will point out that it's not the word for election, it's not the word for predestination, and so on. But that's what this verse is teaching, Because that word means to bring about an order of things by arranging or putting something in place. It means you are bringing about, you are ordering, you're putting something in place. Just look at a few other examples of this word in the New Testament. Matthew 28, the eleven disciples went away through Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them.

He had set it up and determined that they would go there. Or in Luke 7 the centurion says, For I am a man placed under authority. He was placed there. He didn't put himself there. He was placed under authority.

Wherefore, in Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas had no dissension and dispute with them over about John Mark, we'll get there, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and others should go to Jerusalem. Sorry, this is about the debate at Antioch over the, whether the Christians had to be Jews. They determined that Paul and Barnabas would go to Jerusalem. And in Acts 22, Paul recounts the Lord telling him, Arise, go to Damascus, and you will be told the things which are appointed for you to do. Somebody is setting things in order, Somebody is making arrangements and putting things into place.

I think one of the best places is Romans 13. There is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. God is the one who establishes them and ordains them. It's talking about a process of putting something into place. And so those who believe were those who had been appointed.

Those who had been appointed to eternal life. This is a comprehensive term referring to God's ordering of His entire plan of salvation. Electing from before the foundation of the world, in time effectually calling those people, Christ dying for their sins of those people, them coming to faith in Christ, and repenting and believing. That is the process that God has established and appointed. And so it is those who were appointed to eternal life that believe.

Notice it's passive. The people didn't appoint themselves. In all these places, they were appointed. It's passive. It's something that's done to us.

It's outside of us entirely. We are powerless in this. And notice the cause and effect relationship here. The appointing to eternal life is the prerequisite to believing. It doesn't say God appointed those who believed to eternal life.

It is those who were appointed to eternal life that believed. We have to be born again before we can believe. We need a new heart, we need faith, which is a gift of God, before we can believe. Because our wills are in bondage to sin, we can't, We are wholly unable to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ unless we are born again, first born again. And having been born again, born from above, we are unable to believe.

We are not born again because we believe. We believe because we have been born again. So those who have been appointed, who were appointed to eternal life are those who believe. Now, this sovereignty of God is the only hope that we have in evangelism. We can't change another heart.

If it was up to us to change somebody's mind, there would be no point to us evangelizing. We can't change other people's mind. But see, it's not. Those who believe are those whom God has appointed to eternal life. And this ought to be greatly freeing, greatly liberating, greatly encouraging to us to proclaim the Gospel because it's the power of God to salvation.

And those whom God has appointed will believe. And God has appointed a number to believe. You see, It's a gross misunderstanding and misapplication of the sovereignty of God to say, well, if they're saved by the power of God, then we don't have to do anything. It is only because we are saved by the power of God that we can evangelize with hope and with confidence and with zeal. And it should be because we love, we have a concern for the souls of lost people.

If we don't evangelize, it's one sign that we don't love. We don't love others as we have been loved. Jesus says, John says that God loved the world and sent his only begotten son. He loved the world, this world that he had made. And he doesn't take any pleasure in the death of the wicked.

There was a comment in a group I was in over when Sheila Jackson Lee died recently. And there was some that were trying to rejoice about that. And thankfully there were a number that said, no, this is not a cause for rejoicing. God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And if we don't have any pleasure in the death of the wicked, then we ought to be zealous to bring the gospel to all people that we can, that we are in contact with.

To evangelize, to gossip the gospel, as some have called it, to speak of Christ, to have a mouth that is filled with his praise and his glory all the day. May God grant us such love for His world, for God's world, as God has. Heavenly Father, we tremble at these great and awesome truths of Your Word. We want to rightly handle them, to rightly use them. Lord, your truth does set us free.

Your truth is pure and beautiful. Is pure and beautiful. Lord, may we not mangle it and obscure it. Lord, we ask for a zeal. A zeal for your kingdom, a zeal for your gospel.

May you awaken us out of our slumber, out of our being at ease in Zion, such that we can look upon the fields around us as Christ did that are white under harvest and earnestly desire the Lord to raise up more workers for the harvest. May we be as Isaiah who are ready to say here am I send me We ask this in Jesus name amen