In his sermon 'The Sovereign God of Free Agents,' Peter Allison explores the complex doctrine of God's sovereignty, as highlighted in Proverbs 21:1-2. He stresses that God, in His supreme authority, governs all aspects of existence, including the hearts of kings and the actions of individuals, while maintaining human free will. Allison references the Westminster Confession of Faith to assert that God's will is unchangeable and independent, yet it does not make Him the author of sin. He illustrates this with biblical examples, such as Joseph's story and Christ's crucifixion, to demonstrate that God's plans are fulfilled through human actions, whether righteous or sinful. The sermon contrasts God's sovereignty with fatalism, emphasizing that God's governance is personal, loving, and just, unlike the impersonal force of fatalism. Furthermore, Allison highlights the importance of prayer, which, while not altering God's eternal decrees, influences outcomes by God’s design. He concludes by affirming that understanding God's sovereignty should inspire confidence, encourage prayer, and provide comfort, knowing that God is orchestrating all things for good.

Proverbs chapter 21. We're going to look at just verses 1 and 2, but I would like to read the first 8 verses. The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. Like the rivers of water, he turns it wherever he wishes. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the hearts.

To do Righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. A haughty look and a proud heart and the plowing of the wicked are sin. The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty surely to poverty. Getting treasures by a lying tongue is the fleeting fantasy of those who seek death. The violence of the wicked will destroy them because they refuse to do justice.

The way of a guilty man is perverse, but as for the pure, his work is right. May we speak of his testimonies before kings and not be ashamed. Almighty Heavenly Father, as we come to look at your Word, we acknowledge our inability to discern the spiritual things unless you open our eyes, unless you give us a spiritual understanding of them. So we ask that you would do this, that your Holy Spirit might be our teacher this morning, that your Holy Spirit might prepare the soil of our hearts to receive with meekness this engrafted word as you bring it to us. In Jesus' name, amen.

The heart of the King is in the hand of the Lord and he turns it wherever he wishes. This is a hard, hard doctrine. It is because of this doctrine that many of Jesus' disciples no longer followed Him. And it continues to be a hard doctrine today. This strikes right at the root of the sinful heart of man that wants to be His own God.

This says no God, and God alone is sovereign. This is a hard doctrine for a number of reasons and we'll look at some of them this morning. But I would set this context of our time this morning in the Word in the supremacy of the Scripture. That the Word of God is the source of all truth. Now we need to submit our logic to the one who is the author of logic.

We need to submit our understanding of what can be and what can't be to the one who gives existence to all things that have being and who holds all things in existence. And we need to submit our understanding of what is true and what is not true to the one who is the truth. Jesus said, I am the truth. And so this morning as we look at this heart doctrine as it is stated to us here in this opening verse that the King's heart is in the hand of the Lord, and like rivers of water, he turns it whithersoever he wishes. We just need to remember that what Scripture says is true, and that we need to bend our thinking and our understanding, and our concept of what can be and what can't be, of what is logical and what is illogical, we need to conform that to what the Scriptures tell us.

So this doctrine is sometimes called the sovereignty of God. The Westminster Confession of Faith defines the sovereignty of God in providence this way. And we just, I think, read this very recently. God from all eternity, Did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably, ordain whatsoever comes to pass, Yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. God has ordained whatsoever comes to pass.

Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet He has not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or is that which would come to pass upon such conditions?" In other words, God doesn't look down, it's saying the corridor of time and see what the free will of humans will cause them to choose, and then say, ah, that's what I am foreknowing. No, God, It's saying God ordains everything that comes to pass and that's how He knows everything that comes to pass. Those two stand or fall together. God couldn't know it if it was not already determined. The purpose of God is absolute and unconditional.

It's independent, entirely independent of anything in creation. It's independent of everything that He has created. And it originates, God's purpose originates solely in the eternal counsel of His will. And everything outside of God, including all that He has made, is included in this all-encompassing decree. God knows the hairs that fall from our head because He has ordained the hairs that fall from our heads.

He has ordained all things that come to pass, even the hearts of kings are in His hands. And He turns them with us, whoever He desires. This river is really a canal, it's a word for a canal, an irrigation ditch. And we build irrigation ditches wherever we want to direct the course of the water. And the water follows that course that we dig for that irrigation channel.

God is saying He turns the hearts of kings just like we turn the course of water in an irrigation canal. Paul says, God's sovereignty though is personal. God is not an impersonal entity. Paul says that in God we live and we move and we have our being. There's a personal God that we are in relationship with, either a relationship of rebellion or a relationship of submission.

But all the same it is God in whom we live, in whom we move, in whom we have our being, our very existence. God personally upholds all that He has created. And were He to cease that, everything would cease to exist. The psalmist tells us that all the creatures wait upon God for their sustenance, and that when He takes away their breath, they die. See, that's not an impersonal force that has mechanistically set everything in motion.

This is a God who sees all things, who is actively governing his creation, moment by moment. The lions eat, not because they are so mighty, but because God feeds them. We read in Psalm 135 verse 6 that it is God that causes evaporation to occur. It is God that sustains the hydrological cycle which we have experienced this week. Tons and immeasurable weight of water has been lifted up from around the earth and brought to our place and dumped upon us and that water will disperse throughout the earth and it will repeat it will be again collected up into the earth, an immeasurable mass weight of water that is lifted up into the air.

It exceeds our ability to just imagine the weight of water that is lifted up continuously. This cycle of evaporation, cloud formation, the return of precipitation to the earth, the psalmist says that is God's personal work. We read that God brings forth the wind from His treasury. We read that it's God that provides the prey for the lion. That's God that deprives the ostrich of understanding.

So she lays her eggs unprotected in the sand. It is God that causes it to rain. And it's the hand of God that produces lightning. The hand of God. It does all these things.

God is a personal God. He is somebody that is known, that can be known. He is someone who has revealed Himself to us. Someone that speaks to us. You can read all this in Job chapter 38, 39, and 40 as God instructs Job in all the things that he does.

You can read this in Psalm 104, you can read this in Psalm 135. These are lengthy discourses. In Job It's several chapters. God instructs Job in all the things that he does, the stars and the heavens. God says he binds these constellations together.

Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, he asked, that an abundance of water may cover you? Can you send out lightnings, he asked Job. Can you say, here we are? Can you hunt the prey for the lion? God is saying that's what He does.

God hunts the prey for the lion. Can you satisfy the appetite of young lions? Can you provide food? Who provides food for the raven? God asked Job.

When it's young ones cry to God. Do you know the time when the mountain goats bear young? Psalm 29 says it's the voice of God that causes the deer to give birth. God's sovereignty is personal and it extends over all people. God's sovereignty, his sovereign control extends to the very actions of people, even the greatest and mightiest of people.

In Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged this after God demonstrated his power to him. Nebuchadnezzar said, all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. This is the man who looks out over the city of Babylon and says, look at what my hand has done. Look, and Babylon was one of the great wonders of the ancient world. The wall around Babylon was reported to be so wide they could run multiple chariots of rest on it.

It was a magnificent structure. The hanging gardens. This is the Nebuchadnezzar that ruled over this nation. He says all The inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. He, Jehovah, does according to His will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

And none can restrain His hand or say to Him, What are you doing? What have you done? Jesus said, all authority in heaven and earth is given to me. And Paul told the Ephesians, in him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things. All things.

Not some things, not most things. All things. According to the counsel of His will. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him His head over all things to the church. Isaiah proclaimed In Isaiah 14, the Lord of hosts has sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so it shall come to pass.

And as I have purposed, so it shall stand. For the Lord has purposed and Who will annul it? His hand is stretched out. Who will turn it back? He says in Isaiah 46, God says, For I am God and there is none other.

I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure. Indeed I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it, I will also do it." How could God say of Cyrus several hundred years beforehand that that he Through Cyrus would return his people and he through Cyrus would rebuild the temple Because God saw the end from the beginning. God in His sovereign purpose and decree has ordained the actions of all people. He's sovereign over them.

He's determined them. Psalm 115 says, but our God is in heaven, He does whatever He pleases. Jehovah turned the heart of the Egyptians such that they would give away their gold and silver. Now, what person do you know that would give away their gold and their silver? Have you ever met anybody like that?

Do you ever expect to meet anybody who's just going to give away all their gold? Here, take this, take this, here, here's my gold, take it. The Bible says that God turned the heart of the Egyptians so that they gave their gold and silver away. Jehovah had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians so they granted them what they requested, thus they plundered the Egyptians. God said that He would do that.

God told Moses that He would do that. Ezra 7 says, Artic Xerxes, King of Persia, granted Ezra all his requests according to the hand of the Lord his God upon him. Even the acts of sinful men are ordained by God. Even the acts of sinful kings, God controls. Psalm 76 says, Surely the wrath of men will praise you.

And in Exodus 14, 17, God said, and indeed I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians and they shall follow them. They would follow them right across the Red Sea as Israel was escaping into Arabia. And so God said, I will gain honor over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots and his horsemen. God said he would do that. He would harden the hearts of the Egyptians.

He would harden Pharaoh's heart so that he might display his glory. Speaking of Christ's crucifixion, Peter says the same thing of Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Jews, that they were gathered together to do what they wanted to do. Well that's true, they were gathered together to do what they wanted to do, but in this case Peter said that they were gathered together, these rulers, these leaders and this nation was gathered together to do whatever God's hand and His counsel had foreordained to come to pass. God is sovereign over the actions of people, of you and I. God has ordained all that we do from before the foundation of the world.

When David numbered the Israelites, remember near the end of his life he told Joab to go out and number the Israelites and Joab said, no, no, may God greatly multiply the land of Israel but don't do a sin and number them." And David prevailed in Job, and so Job went and did it. And David's sin brought God's judgment on the land. That was David's voluntary, unconstrained choice. David made that choice voluntarily. There was nobody holding a gun to it.

In fact, there was somebody who was even trying to persuade him to do the opposite and not do it. And David of his own voluntary unconstrained choice did it, of his own will. David himself acknowledged that he had sinned And David's heart condemned him after he numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly. I have sinned greatly.

I have done this. But now I pray, O Jehovah, take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly. And yet, at the same time, if you look in 2 Samuel 24 verse 1, it says that God moved David to number the people. Because God was angry with Israel and he moved David to number them in order that he might judge them. Both are true at the same time.

The philosophical term for this is compatibilism. But it's even more interesting than this because 1 Chronicles 21 Verse 1 says something else that's also true. It says that Satan stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel. So we have David acknowledging His free, unconstrained, His voluntary unconstrained choice. We have the Word of God saying that God moved David to do this.

And we have the Word of God saying that Satan moved David to do this. You can look there, 1 Chronicles 21.1, 2 Samuel 24.1, and 2 Samuel 24.10 where David acknowledges it. You see, all three of these statements are true. They are compatible with each other. They are not incompatible.

Many philosophers today would say, well, those are incompatible. Those can't both be true. But we know that God's Word is true. God's Word is true. God is the author of logic.

When we are exercising, when we are trying to think logically, we are seeking to think God's thoughts after Him. We are thinking to, trying to think the way God thinks, and the way God has commanded us to think and the way God has revealed in His word we are to think and we ought to think that way but we need to remember that God is the author of logic and we cannot use what God has authored to turn around and say that God is wrong and that what God says is compatible is somehow not compatible. We have to submit our mind and our idea of what is possible to the Word of God, And that God define what is logical, what is illogical, what is true, and what is not true. And God says that David voluntarily chose to number Israel. That God moved David to number Israel, and that Satan moved David to number Israel.

All are true. God is sovereign over the voluntary choices of you and I, and over the actions of even Satan. As Job tells us, God has ordained everything that comes to pass. And God's sovereign control over the heart of the king extends also to all that God has placed under the king. God's sovereignty extends over the natural world.

We study the laws of nature like gravity, electromagnetism, and the chemistry of cooking. Try and get everybody in this morning. And the science of Many of the things that you do, there are skills. From threshing grain to quilting and sewing, we study these things. And we talk about the laws of nature.

And we say that they govern the world that we live in and that's true but we should not forget who passed the law of gravity We shouldn't forget who enforces the law of gravity. It's not some abstract, impersonal force that causes gravity to work. But gravity is the personal, the personal work of Almighty God. And it reflects the nature of a personal Almighty God. Did you ever wake up in the middle of the night and find that gravity was not working at that moment.

You've probably gone to a gas station and found the gas pump not working. You probably turned on a light switch and found the power not working. You've probably gone to start your car and the car is not working. But have you ever woken up and found that gravity wasn't working? No, I dare say none of us ever have.

Because gravity is the personal work of an almighty God who never sleeps and who never slumbers and who never takes a vacation who is always ready to hear every Cry of his people is also the one who is personally At work in what we call gravity Gravity is simply our description of God's providence, of how God is governing His world. God is a God of order, so there is great order and great mathematical precision in how God works in gravity. You see, miracles are not God intervening to alter the course of the natural world. We sometimes say that. But we should catch ourselves.

Because they are simply God governing his world differently than he ordinarily does. And they don't represent God involving himself to a greater degree than at any other time in God's providence. When God made the iron float or God walled up the water of the Red Sea so Israel could walk into Arabia or God extended the daylight until Joshua had finished defeating the Canaanites, God wasn't involved in any greater degree in governing His world, His creation. His world, his creation, then he is right now as he holds the sun up in the sky, as he puts the planets in their orbits, or as he causes iron to sink. We are so used to seeing it that we think it is commonplace, that when we see iron float that is amazing, and it is amazing.

But we have to remember that both are equally the work of a personal sovereign God. All the phenomena that we observe in the world that God created is nothing more and nothing less than observations about the way that God governs and sustains the world that He created. Science is a study then of the means that God has ordained to bring about His purpose in the world, and the means by which He provides for His people. Simply put, we could say that science is a study of the sovereign God, who is working out his purposes in the world that he made. The more we learn, the longer and more detailed our explanations become.

But ultimately our explanation for gravity, the law of gravity, or anything else that we cannot see and we cannot account for apart from God's Word, which tells us that God upholds all things by the power of His Word. This is what we understand by faith. We accept this explanation of gravity, something we can't see or something we can't touch, but we certainly can see the effect of it and feel it. We accept it because God testifies to it through his creation. In Hebrews, he calls that faith.

Faith is the evidence of things not seen. See, science is based upon faith. This doesn't mean that scientific endeavors are useless or futile. We are in fact commanded to study and engage in the study of the world that God made in the light of the Word that God gave. And as we do our understanding grows and increases, But we still cannot escape our own limitation.

We cannot explain why the law of gravity exists or how it came into existence apart from God's statement that he is sovereign and that by faith, Hebrew says, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. You see, even those who deny God's existence acknowledge that science is based on faith. Stephen Hawking in his very famous book, A Brief History of Time, says this, and I quote, and I think you'll be amazed at this quote. Now if you believe that the universe is not arbitrary, which every scientist believes, otherwise you couldn't do science. If the universe was arbitrary, you could count five objects one minute, it would be five, and the next minute it would be some other number.

If you believe that the universe is not arbitrary but is governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the partial theories into a complete unified theory which will describe everything in the universe. But there is a fundamental paradox in the search for such a complete unified theory. And I would interject that scientists are still looking, this book was written a few years ago, Scientists are still looking for the unified theory of everything. As Hawking says, they must. The ideas about scientific theories assume we are rational beings who are free to observe the universe as we want and to draw logical deductions from what we see.

The idea about scientific theories assumes that we are rational beings and that we are free to observe the universe and to draw logical deductions from what we see. He goes on, In such a scheme it is reasonable to suppose that we might progress ever closer to the laws that govern our universe. Yet if there really is a complete unified theory, get this, it would presumably determine our actions. If, let me read that again, he just said there has to be a unified theory, but if there is, it would presumably determine our actions. Now he's not a believer.

He doesn't know God. He doesn't know that's what God does. And so he's looking for something because he's realized that has to be that way. If there is a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions. Because if it's a theory of everything, it's got to explain why we're doing what we're doing because what we're doing is part of everything and so a theory of everything has to explain our actions And so that he rightly realizes that this theory of everything We determine our actions.

Well, we know there is a sovereign God who does determine our actions the wisest man who ever lived said that the heart of the king Is in the hand of the Lord He determines our actions. He turns that heart whether so ever he will and Hawking goes on and so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it. He's on an epistemological dilemma here. Why Should this theory determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusions?

After all, if things are just determined by chance. Or might it not determine that we can't get any conclusion at all? Actually without The sovereign God of Scripture, you see, is realizing his science is impossible. He just doesn't know the God who makes it possible, even though he was staring the works of this God in his face all his life. He rightly understood that if there was a theory that explained everything, and there is not a theory, it's a sovereign God, then this theory would determine the actions of the very scientists who were seeking to discover the theory.

Such a theory that explains everything and therefore controls everything might cause them to come to the wrong conclusions. Well that's true if you have an impersonal force operating by chance. But you see, We have a personal God who is good, who loves the world that He made. He's not going to lead us to the wrong conclusions, but He has revealed the truth to us. Professor Hawking is so close to the truth and yet so far from it.

And ultimately he acknowledges that he really doesn't have a satisfactory answer. His only answer is a blind faith in natural selection that hopefully will pick the right scientists who happen to come to the right conclusions. That's all he has. And he's honest enough to admit it. But what if the theory that controls everything doesn't allow that to happen?

That's a possibility in his world. But brothers and sisters, it's not in the real world. That's not a possibility in the world that God made. Because God is sovereign. He controls the heart of the King and He is a good God who has revealed the truth to us in Jesus Christ.

How foolish, how foolish to put one's faith in a deaf, dumb, blind and personal law that has never loved anyone, that has never died for anyone, that is utterly incapable of revealing itself. You see, The scriptures reveal to us the one who Professor Hawking knew existed and so blindly sought but so stubbornly refused to acknowledge. And there, but for the grace of God, would be you and I. Now God's sovereignty is distinguished from fatalism. God's sovereign determination of all things is not fatalism.

Fatalism attributes all things to an impersonal, unknowable force by which all things happen. Fatalism has no place for mercy, for wisdom, for justice, or love, and thus leads to despair and hopeless resignation. Fatalism leaves no place for our choices. It doesn't see our choices as having any effect upon the future. Fatalism doesn't believe prayer changes things, and thus it leaves no room for prayer.

God's Word says that prayer does change things. Prayer doesn't change what God has decreed from before the foundation of the world, but prayer changes things from what they would have been if we hadn't prayed. Because the Bible says the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous avails much. The sovereign God is love. The sovereign God is merciful.

The sovereign God is good. The sovereign God speaks to us. He knows us. He cares for us. He feeds us.

He loves us. He chastens us in His love so that we are more conformed to His image. The Muslim God of fatalism is an impersonal, unchanging force that can't be known, that has certainly never loved the world or sent his only begotten son to die for us. Calvin says in his Institutes, For we do not with the Stoics imagine a necessity consisting of a perpetual chain of causes and a kind of involved series contained in nature, but we hold that God is the disposer and ruler of all things, and that from the remotest eternity according to his own wisdom he decreed what he was to do, and now by his power he executes what He decreed. Hence we maintain that by His providence not heaven and earth and inanimate creatures only, but also the counsel and wills of men are governed.

As to move in exactly this course that He has predestined. If a terrible car accident happens and someone is killed, Muslim fatalism says that was the will of Allah. Nothing could change it. A right understanding of God's sovereignty says, what can we learn so that it doesn't happen again? What can we learn about the way God governs His world, a way that is good, a way that is just so that this tragedy doesn't happen again?

Fatalism says that what's going to happen will happen And so what I do is completely irrelevant and won't change anything. The Bible says that people have subdued mountains, worked righteousness, stopped the mouth, subdued kingdoms, did I say that? Worked righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire. The people have done these things. Escaped the edge of the sword, put invading armies to flight, received dead to life again.

You see the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous avails much. It accomplishes much. So if this view of God's sovereignty leads you to inaction, to thinking that well God has ordained whatever is going to happen tomorrow so I'm not going to spend much time getting ready for it because it really doesn't matter how hard I study for this test. Because if God's determined to pass then I will. And if I'm ordained to fail then I will and there's not much I can do about it.

So I might as well not study too hard. If that's your view of God's sovereignty, you have a fatalist view, not a biblical view of God. God's sovereignty is not fatalism, and God's sovereignty upholds free agency and moral responsibility. See, another error in understanding the sovereignty of God is that it precludes us from being free moral agents who have the ability to make choices and to be responsible for these choices. In this view, in this errant view, if God is truly sovereign and from all eternity has determined to do all things according to the counsel of His will, from the movement of subatomic particles to the actions of people, then what we do is predetermined and not a true choice.

If it's not a true choice, then how can God hold us responsible for what we do? How can God condemn us for what He has predetermined that we will do? Well, here again, we need to be governed by the Word of God. We need to be governed by the Word of God. And we cannot allow our logic to arrive at conclusions that are contrary to the scriptures when taken together.

As we said, proper logic is to think as God thinks. And so if we look at Romans 9, we read that Paul anticipates this very question. It's not a new question. Paul probably got it himself. And here in his letter to the Romans he deals with this very question in verse 14.

He has just said that Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated. So he asks the first question, a perpetually question, what shall we say? Is there unrighteousness with God? That God would love one and hate another? Certainly not, of course.

For he says to Moses, 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 to 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. You will say to me then, and here's the question, why does God still find fault? For who has resisted his will?

Who can resist the will of God? If everything I'm doing is ordained by God, then how can he find fault with me if I do something that he said not to do? God ordained it. Paul asks that question. And here's Paul's answer.

And here is Paul's answer, Indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? That's what he told Job, Who are you, O man, to reply against the sovereign God? Will the thing formed 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? In other words, God is saying, I am sovereign.

You cannot use the logic which I have taught you against me. You're wrong if you do that. We have to submit our logic to the Word of God. Will the thing form say to him who formed it, Why have you made me like this? Does not the potter have power over the clay to do as he wants.

He gives a suggestion here to begin to show how God is glorified in this process. 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." He's saying, he's supposing this. What if this is the case? He's suggesting that God has done this in order that his attributes might be exemplified, might be demonstrated, might be made known. In other words, if the whole earth is at the level of Mount Everest, there would be no mountains.

There would be no majestic mountains if the whole earth was at 29, 000 feet above sea level. We can only have the majesty of a mountain if we have a valley next to it. That's I think sort of an analogous or rough analogy of what Paul is saying. What if God, wanting to show his wrath and make his power known, endure with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles." In other words, God is doing this for his own glory. God is doing what he does so that his name is glorified, so that his excellencies are praised and demonstrated and proclaimed for all to see.

Paul told the Ephesians that it was through the church that the manifold wisdom of God was displayed to the hosts of heaven. Isaiah chapter 10 gives us another example here of God upholding the free agency and moral responsibility of those people whose actions he is directing. In verse 5, God says, Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger. This nation is God's rod, and the staff in whose hand is my indignation. I will send him against an ungodly nation and against the people of my wrath to give Him charge, to seize the spoiled, to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire in the streets.

God's saying, I'm sending Him. He's my rod in my hand to do my bidding, my will, for me to accomplish my purpose in the nations against which I send him. And yet, in verse 7, yet he does not mean so. The king of Assyria doesn't think that he's obeying God and this instrument in God's hands, nor in his heart does he think so, but it is in his heart to destroy. He's going out there to do what he thinks he wants to do.

He's made a choice. It's his choice. He voluntarily made it. He thinks that he made it completely on his own. It is in his heart to destroy and cut off not a few nations, for he said, Are not my princes kings?

Is not Samaria like Damascus? As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols whose carved images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, shall I also not do to Jerusalem and her idols." So he's saying in his heart, I'm making these choices all on my own. I'm not anybody's servant. I'm not doing anybody's bidding. Nobody has predetermined what I am doing.

Therefore God says it shall come to pass when Jehovah has performed all his work on Mount Zion in Jerusalem that he will say, I will punish the heart of the arrogant king of Assyria and the glory of his haughty looks. For he says, by the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent. Also I have removed the boundaries of the people and have robbed their treasuries. So I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man. I have plundered everybody." But God says, "...shall the ox boast against him who chops with it?

Shall the exalted itself against him who saws with it, as if a rod could wield itself against those who lift it up or a staff could lift it up as it were not wood therefore thus says the Lord see what God is saying here this King thinks he's doing his own will but God's saying no he's doing what I've determined him to do from before the foundation of the world. Man's choices, our choices are based upon our character. When we act, we act that way because that's how we desire to act. It reflects our character. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, Jesus said, nor a bad tree can a bad tree produce good fruit.

And so this idea that God wants people to love Him because they choose to do so of their own free will and not because He has ordained it and caused us to love Him. That's not what the scripture says. That's not God's idea of what it is for us to love Him. This is what the Bible says. Ezekiel 36, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them.

God says, I will put my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statutes. That's the love that God is pleased with, the love that He works in us. Or in the New Testament, Paul told the Philippians in 2.13 that it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. It's God who works in you to will and to do for His good pleasure. How do we understand this?

In one sense, We cannot fully comprehend how these two aspects of God's sovereignty and human responsibility go together, but let me just give you a little analogy. You remember that IBM computer, the computer IBM built, I think it was called Deep Blue. And I think they built another one later on to play Jeopardy, but Deep Blue was a computer that could play chess. And a team of really bright people from IBM worked on it. And they coded up this supercomputer to try and take on the grand master of chess in the world.

And you know they tried once and they didn't do very well, so they went back to the drawing board and continued working on their computer. And they tried again. And the second time they tried, I think it was the second time, they were successful. They beat, their computer beat the International Grandmaster at Chess. Now, that computer, nobody denies, was making choices, decisions about what piece to move where.

The men who programmed that computer didn't know where to move those pieces. They weren't sitting there telling that computer where to move and what to do. The computer was making choices that were beyond the ability of any of the people that programmed that computer to make. Because they couldn't beat the international grandmaster out members name might have been spaski or somebody or no carpov Kasparov I don't remember they couldn't be beat him Kasparov but the computer was So the computer is making choices that none of the programmers could make. Where is the computer getting the information from?

It's figuring out itself and making choices about where to move and doing it successfully and beating the best person in the world at chess several times. And yet, think about it, that computer is doing nothing except what it was ordained to do. Now, that's a rough analogy. But you can see that if us finite, limited humans can create that kind of a situation, how much greater is God who can create not computers, but people who have a soul. People who freely make choices, voluntarily make choices out of their own volition and out of their own character.

And yet God is sovereign in all of those choices. The sovereignty of God also does not make God the author of sin. There is nothing unjust on God's part in anything he does. And no one can ever say when he is tempted that I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil. To be tempted in the way James is using that word is a desire to sin.

To be tempted to sin is, James is using it in that case and it's used differently in other places, but in that case it's being used as a desire to sin God is Has no desire to do evil God has no desire to act contrary to his own character. And God does not tempt anyone. But each one, James says, is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires. That temptation is this desire, a desire to do wrong. Sin begins with a desire to break God's law.

And God never entices anybody to break his law. But I would like to look at, there are two examples in the Bible that maybe give us a little insight into how God is, ordains all things, even the actions of sinful men without himself being a sinner. The first one is Joseph being sold into Egypt. God ordained, shall we say, Joseph's relocation to Egypt. He ordained to accomplish Joseph's relocation to Egypt by the wicked designs of Joseph's brothers.

Joseph was sold as a slave. He was lied about and put in jail for a crime he didn't commit because of the sinful actions of his brothers and his master's wife. Now in all of these things that happened to Joseph, Let's ask, was God unjust to Joseph? Well, we'd have to say no, because Joseph is a sinner. And what does every sin deserve?

God's wrath and eternal condemnation, death. And the standard of punishment is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If every man has broken every one of God's laws and the standard of punishment is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, then no matter what happens to us, no man can ever accuse God of being unjust to us. Like Cain, we might think our punishment is too great to bear, but we can't accuse God of being unjust. When he takes the life of an unborn baby, we can't accuse God of being unjust, Because Adam's sin is imputed to all men descending from him, and it bears real guilt that deserves real punishment.

We deserve to die for our sin. So God brought nothing to pass that was unjust on God's part. Do you see that? Now did Joseph's brothers stand against him in the very same actions? Absolutely.

Were they unjust? Absolutely. Doing what God ordained, they voluntarily broke God's law. Nobody constrained their choice. They based their choice on their own will, their own volition, coming out of their own character.

They hated their brother and they desired to do evil and they did. You see Joseph could say years later that what his brothers intended for evil, that very same action God intended for good to save many people alive. You see in the very same action God is just and the brothers are unjust and wicked, but God is good. God is through that saving many people alive. He is saving all of Egypt and all of Israel.

He is saving the line from which Christ would come and God who was good in that. But he was also perfectly just in everything that happened to Joseph. His brothers at the same time in those same actions were wicked. Or we can take the crucifixion of Christ. Peter says that this act was done by wicked men, and yet it was done by the determined counsel of God at the same time.

It was predetermined by God, carried out by wicked hands. Both are true. Both are true at the exact same time. But did God act unjustly toward His Son? Christ was not a sinner, but Christ voluntarily of His own free choice laid down His life for us so that we might live.

That we might live. And so no, God did not act unjustly toward his Son. See God's right understanding of God's sovereignty, far from discouraging action, should encourage prayer and evangelism. Because prayer changes things, Because God is sovereign, prayer changes things. It's because the heart of the king is in his hand that prayer can change things, as God changes the heart of the king according to the prayers of his people.

Prayer doesn't change what God has ordained, but prayer changes what would have happened if we didn't pray. Because God in ordaining the end has also ordained the means to that end. In ordaining what is going to come to pass, he's ordained the means through which it comes to pass. And God is ordained through the prayers of his people to accomplish his purposes. God is ordained through our labor to feed us.

And so this ought to be a great encouragement to prayer. That prayer does avail much. That the prayers of God's people he hears and he answers. And He's powerful. There's nothing too hard for Him.

So there's nothing too great for us to ask of God. There's nothing too little. There's nothing too hard. No matter how impossible it might be for us to imagine. God can do it.

God can do all His will. He calls us to pray, to ask Him. He wants us to pray. He wants us to come to Him, to have boldness, to seek from Him great things because He's a great God. God's sovereignty removes worry.

Because God is controlling everything, and God is good. And He's working all things together for good to those who love Him. And so we know that whatever He sends, He's working for good. There's a play right now in the 80 players on the Hiding Place and so they did a really good job a really good job it's a world premiere of this play they Jeanette Cliff George played Cory 10 boom about 50 years ago almost 50 years ago in the hiding in the movie adaption of The Hiding Place. And in her honor, the theater company that she started commissioned this play, and they did a really good job.

But they brought out how Betsy understood this, that there's a need to worry, that God was working his purposes in everything that was happening, that even the fleas and the lice in the prison that were so miserable. God sent a blessing through them and that it kept all the guards away. So they could have a Bible on God's Word in the middle of that camp Ravensbrough. God's sovereignty is a comfort in adversity because God is in control. God isn't standing helplessly by while our loved ones are dying.

God is in control. He's bringing to pass what is good, what is good for us. We can rest in that, we can take comfort in that. The world isn't spinning out of control. Whatever is happening in Washington, God is in control.

And we can look to his word to see what he's doing The fact that God is sovereign guarantees the success of his gospel God doesn't standing in front of people pleading and begging that they might become saved, but all those whom God has determined from before the foundation of the world, He will have. The sovereign God has purposed from before the foundation of the world to procure to Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. And he sent his son to die for these people. And his son will have all those for whom he died. God's sovereignty guarantees the success of the gospel.

And We can then come to people with the message of hope that God now commands all men everywhere to repent and that all who call on the name, all who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. There will be none that are turned away who call on the name of the Lord. The word of God that cannot be broken is that if you Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Amen. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a sovereign God.

As sovereign God. That you hold the world and all the hearts of every man in it. And And that you love us and that you died for us. Thank you for so great a love. Through Jesus We come to you.

Amen.