Ligonier Ministries presents
this message from the 1996 National Conference entitled The Sovereignty
of God. I am just one of a very large
number of Christian people in Scotland and England and Wales
who owe an immense debt to God for the ministry of Pastor Al
Martin. We are thankful that he has been
a frequent visitor to the British Isles and I am deeply grateful
for the privilege that we all have of sitting under the ministry
of God's Word through him today. He has for three decades been
the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Montville in New Jersey. There he has also established
a ministerial academy for the training of pastors and his tape
ministry has been an immense blessing to so many people. I
take him with me on journeys all over the United Kingdom and
God has blessed me greatly through him. It is a great privilege
to welcome in your name Pastor Al Martin. Now may I encourage you to turn
with me in your Bibles to the fourth chapter of the gospel
according to Mark, the gospel of Mark chapter 4. I shall read
in your hearing beginning with verse 35 to the end of the chapter. Mark chapter 4 and verse 35. And on that day, when evening
was come, he said to them, Let us go over unto the other side. And leaving the multitude, they
take him with them, even as he was in the boat. And other boats
were with him. And there ariseth a great storm
of wind, and the waves beat into the boat, insomuch that the boat
was now filling. And he himself was in the stern,
asleep on the cushion. And they awoke him and said unto
him, Teacher, do you not care that we perish? And he awoke,
and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there
was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are
you fearful? Have you not yet faith? And they feared exceedingly and
said one to another, who then is this that even the wind and
the sea obey him? Now, as you are aware, the subject
assigned and announced for this hour is peace be still, God's
sovereignty over nature. And this incident from the Gospel
of Mark read in your hearing constitutes both the basis for
the language chosen to identify the subject of this hour and
also a vivid illustration of the subject itself. Here in this
incident, nature, that is the elements of the turbulent sea
and the boisterous winds, are found captive to the word and
authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. By his word, our Lord subdues
these turbulent waves in the boisterous winds into that which
the Spirit of God describes as a great calm. hereby manifesting
that the winds and the waves recognize the authoritative voice
of their creator and their present master, even our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, in the sessions last night,
it has already been established that God acted like himself in
bringing all things into existence out of nothing by the word of
his own power. And you were also instructed
from Mark chapter 5 that the same unfettered sovereignty manifested
in creation was manifested in the ministry of our Lord Jesus
Christ even over those real spiritual entities that are in a state
of fixed malevolence and opposition to God and to His rule, and that
when Jesus speaks even to these evil spirits, they must obey
Him. We learn from the general teaching
of Scripture that outside of his own glorious triune being,
everything that exists in the universe exists as created reality,
and therefore reality that is subject to its creator. From the macrocosm that encompasses
the farthest galaxy yet to be discovered by man, to the microcosm
of that world of sub-nuclear particles to which they give
names such as hadrons and quarks. From the macrocosm to the microcosm,
all creative reality, according to John 1, 3 and Colossians 1,
16 and 17, exists by the creative power of our Lord Jesus, and
in Him it adheres or holds together. Now when we turn from such statements
as these found in Colossians 1 and in John's Gospel in the
first chapter, the burning question presses in upon us in terms of
our world of reality. Does the God who brought these
things into being exercise a real, a constant and unrelenting and
unremitting control over them. If nature be defined for our
purposes this morning as the sum total of all things in time
and space, the entire physical universe, who rules and who governs
every part of that universe? And my goal in the time allotted
to me this morning is to seek to demonstrate that the incident
of our Lord's sovereignty over the winds and the waves is but
a specimen of the pervasive teaching of all of scripture that God
is indeed sovereign over nature. And I'm going to attempt to do
this by citing and referring to many scriptures collated under
three basic headings. First of all, we shall consider
God's sovereignty over nature explicitly affirmed. And then secondly, God's sovereignty
over nature vividly or concretely illustrated. And then thirdly,
God's sovereignty over nature practically applied. First of all, then, God's sovereignty
over nature explicitly affirmed. From the opening words of Genesis
1, which were set before you last night, all the way through
to the closing chapters of the book of the Revelation, There
are literally scores of explicit assertions made by inspired historians,
prophets, poets, evangelists, and apostles concerning God's
absolute sovereignty over nature. As we consider those tremendous
statements found scattered throughout the Word of God, all I can hope
to do in the brief time that we have to consider this first
heading of God's sovereignty over nature explicitly asserted
as is to call out but a specimen of such passages. And the first
is found in Psalm 103 and verse 19. in a psalm I am sure familiar
to many of us, in which the psalmist seeks to stir himself up to the
praise of his God and focuses the initial part of his praise
upon God's redemptive mercies in the pardon and forgiveness
of his sins, God's providential care over his physical well-being,
He states in verse 19, the Lord has established his throne in
the heavens and his kingdom rules over all. He has established
his throne and from that throne he exercises a rule that extends
over all. And since one of the very fundamental
axioms that we learned as schoolboys and schoolgirls, that the whole
includes all of its parts, surely if his kingdom rules over all,
his kingdom rules over that which we call nature. There is nothing
in the realm of what we call nature over which God does not
extend a present and all-pervasive rule. We turn to the book of
Job for another of those explicit affirmations of God's sovereignty
over nature. Job's three friends have ceased
their speaking. Elihu, the younger man, is now
speaking, and he comes closer to the truth than Job's three
friends as he presses upon Job to consider the unsearchable
greatness of God. And in the midst of this train
of thought, in Job 37 and verse 5, we read as follows, God thunders
marvelously with His voice. great things he does which we
cannot comprehend and then he moves from that generic statement
to the specific and how meaningful this has been to some of us living
in the northeast during this past winter for he says to the
snow fall on the earth now if this statement is to be
taken at face value We are to understand that there was not
one of the billions of snowflakes that fell upon us in the Northeast
and buried us again and again, but that every one of those snowflakes
came at the direct command and under the sovereign disposition
of our great God. He says to the snow, fall on
the earth. Likewise, to the shower of rain
and to the showers of His mighty rain, He sends the gentle shower,
He sends the deluge that causes the floods. Further on in verse
11 of this chapter, He lays the thick cloud with moisture, He
spreads abroad the cloud of His lightning, and it is turned round
about by His guidance that they may do whatsoever He commands
them upon the face of the habitable world. whether it be for correction
or for his land or for loving-kindness that he causes it to come. And here is an explicit affirmation
of the absolute sovereignty of God over what we call the forces
of nature. And those who give us our weather
reports put up on their charts where the jet stream is flowing
and where this front meets another front, but behind all of the
movements of all of the fronts that create all of our weather
systems is the imminent, direct, personal activity of our great
and our sovereign God. Here is an explicit affirmation
of God's sovereignty over nature. this similar perspective is celebrated
by Nahum the prophet when he said in chapter 1 in verse 3
of his prophecy he has his way in the whirlwind and the storm
and the clouds are the dust of his feet or in Psalm 148 and
verse 8 another parallel passage Psalm 148 and verse 8 fire and hail, snow and vapor,
stormy wind fulfilling His Word. What could be more explicit than
these statements of the psalmist, the statements of Elihu, that
these things that we call the natural forces operative around
us are under the direct and the sovereign control of our God? And then we have that amazing
statement in the book of Proverbs, a book which we generally associate
with practical wisdom, what it is to live every facet of life
in the fear of God. But there is some profound theology
scattered throughout the book of Proverbs. And here in Proverbs
16, in verse 33, we read, the lot is cast into the lap But
the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. Now think of someone
casting lots, whether the lot was cast by taking old pieces
of a broken clay pot and inscribing names or other items upon those
pieces of potsherd. or upon some worn out instrument
on which men wrote or a parchment on which they wrote and they
are all shaken up randomly and randomly let loose to the forces
of nature and they turn up randomly indicating one thing or another
and yet we are told that though the lot is cast into the lap
The whole disposing thereof is of the Lord, is of Jehovah. And without going into the moot
question as to whether or not we in this present age ought
to use the casting of lots in any way as a legitimate form
of discerning the will of God, that's not the concern this morning. The concern is that in a setting
where the lot was used, And there are many incidents recorded,
particularly in the Old Testament and several in the New, where
the lot was used to determine the will of God. It is clear,
according to this statement, that the disposing of that so-called
fortuitous and random act was under the direct and sovereign
control of our God. Bridges, in his most helpful
commentary on the Book of Proverbs, writing on this text, says, The
lot is cast into the lap or into the bottom of an urn, often determined
important matters. Officers were thus chosen, and
he cites the scriptural incidents, work determined, sites incidents,
dwellings fixed, discoveries made, contentions caused to cease,
yet the Lord's disposal was manifestly shown. Canaan was thus divided
as to accord fully with Jacob's prophecies. The offender was
brought to justice. You remember, Achan was discovered
as God sovereignly disposed in the casting of the lots that
this man should be identified as the one who had taken the
accursed thing contrary to the clear command of God. And then
he goes on in the paragraph to cite another seven or eight incidents
culminating in the incident in the life of Jonah when lots were
cast and Jonah was identified as the cause of the turbulent
storm upon that sea. And so in these texts God explicitly
affirms his absolute sovereignty over what we call the forces
of nature. and the classic New Testament
text reference was made to it yesterday in Acts chapter 17
where Paul is declaring to these pagan Athenian philosophers the
God who is This God who is creator of heaven and earth, of Him,
He says in verse 24, the God that made the world and all things
therein, He being Lord of heaven and earth and of everything within
the heavens and the earth, dwells not in temples made with hands,
neither is served by men's hands, as though he himself needed anything. Seeing, he himself gives a present
participle. He is continually giving to all
life and breath and all things. And as He gives in His providential
dispensations, He gives as a sovereign who is in absolute control over
all that He has created. If you have not recently read
through the 104th Psalm, I urge you to read it through until
your heart sings with joy with the psalmist as he celebrates
this very fundamental truth explicitly affirming over and over again
the absolute sovereignty of God over all of nature, stating that
even the grass that grows upon the hill grows because of God's
sovereign will and purpose. But then we move from these explicit
affirmations of the absolute sovereignty of God over nature
to consider what I would call a scriptural collage of God's
sovereignty over nature vividly illustrated. God's sovereignty
over nature vividly illustrated. And here one is embarrassed by
the richness of the biblical materials. I struggled with how
to collate and organize even a sampling of those materials
under some headings that would help us to retain them in our
own minds. And let me suggest that as you
think through biblical history, Think in terms of God's sovereignty
over nature vividly illustrated, first of all, in God's great
acts of judgment in Old Testament history. The first of those acts
was in the Garden of Eden. And when God came to deal with
the serpent, with Adam, and with Eve, Have you noticed how many
of his dealings in judgment touched what we call the natural order
of things? Whatever the serpent's form of
existence was prior to his tempting our first parents, or more precisely,
tempting Eve, God said to him from henceforth, you will go
upon your belly and eat of the dust of the earth. Here was a
radical change in the natural order of the serpent's existence
brought about by the direct intervention of Almighty God in what we would
call the natural processes of conception. and gestation and
the act of birthing, it is in that area that God says there
will be a multiplication of Eve's conception and pain and everything
connected with her function as a bearer of children, What would
we call a more natural element of life? It is in that area that
God says there will be peculiar manifestations of His judgment
upon Eve for her part in that sin. And then with respect to
Adam, as one who was placed in the garden to dress it and to
keep it, to be a pillar of the ground for one to subdue the
earth. God now says there will be an
unyieldingness. The earth will bring forth thorns
and thistles, and where once work would have been sheer delight
in just another dimension of pure abandonment in worship,
now God says, in the sweat of your brow, things that we would
call such vital elements of the natural order, God says the conditions
that now obtain are such because of his own intervention. God's sovereignty over nature
vividly illustrated in the first judgments of God upon our sinning
parents, then in the great judgment of the flood, Genesis 6, 11 and
12, and then 19 and 20, and then the amazing statements in chapter
7, verses 14 and following, where in connection with the flood,
and Kyle and Dalish are careful to underscore this, you have
this unusual description that the animals go in two by two. We normally think of Noah marking
them out and driving them in, but the language of the text
is clear, that they went in by the power of an unseen hand that
guided them, not in great hordes, but a male and a female in specific
numbers. And then when God shuts in Noah
and his family, The scriptures tell us that God was there in
control of the atmospheric conditions above, and the hydrostatic conditions
and pressures beneath, and the fountains of the great deep are
broken up, and the heavens are opened up. until the flood inundates
the then existing world, God demonstrating that these so-called
forces of nature are but the tools of His own hands to accomplish
His sovereign purposes. Then think of the judgment upon
the cities of the plains as recorded in Genesis 19, when we have God,
as one old preacher stated it, reigning hell, down out of heaven
upon the cities of the plains, fire and brimstone coming down,
God manifesting that the so-called forces of nature are at his control. And when Lot's wife turns and
looks back, contrary to God's clear directive, she from a living,
breathing, soft, woman was turned into a pillar of salt in an instant. In the events surrounding the
Exodus, how can one read of the activities of flies and frogs
and lice and locusts and read the biblical record without recognizing
God's sovereign control over all of these forces of nature?
And in Psalm 105, verses 26 and following, the psalmist picks
up those events and relates them directly as expressions of the
sovereignty of God vividly illustrated in the exodus of His people. But then the second major category
in which God's sovereignty over nature is vividly illustrated
is in what I'm calling God's constant care for Israel in the
wilderness. God's constant care for Israel
in the wilderness. As one reads the account of the
wilderness wanderings again and again and again, God is saying
to his covenant people, I am the Lord of all that exists. He commands them to gather manna
every morning. Someone who wants to sleep in
late on Tuesday and gather double amount on Monday, wakes up Tuesday
morning and has nothing but a smelling, rotting pot of manna. But lo
and behold, when he gathers double measure before the Sabbath, he
wakes up Sabbath morning and finds manna as fresh as manna
can be. What process is at work? The
manna has all of the same chemical ingredients. As far as we know,
the atmospheric conditions and all of the surrounding environmental
factors are utterly unchanged. But God Himself preserves the
manna He provided to demonstrate, among other things, that He is
indeed the Lord, the Sovereign Lord, over nature. and the natural forces which
worked to cause the manna to putrefy on Tuesday morning, Almighty
God suspends them by sovereign power on the day before the Sabbath. And then there is that amazing
statement in Deuteronomy 29 in verse 5, that throughout all
of their wilderness wanderings, Their clothing did not wear out,
their sandals did not wear out. The natural laws of friction
upon the materials of their clothing and their sandals, God suspended
the natural results of those things so that their clothing
did not wear out nor their sandals wear thin. Again, God causes
a rock to emit water. When it comes time to cross over
into the promised land at flood tide, God parts the river Jordan. And then they confront Jericho
with its massive walls. And what does God do? Contrary
to, quote, nature, that would demand tremendous physical force
against those walls to even dislodge one of the stones in them, God
says, walk about the walls. And on the seventh day, go about
seven times. And at the appointed season,
blow the trumpets and shout. And God causes the walls to fall
to demonstrate that those physical laws that are normally operative
in order to dismantle massive protective walls that Almighty
God is not dependent upon those forces but he is Lord over those
forces and Joshua's long day in battle however we understand
it there was a lengthening of the day so that God's people
would understand that the ordinary course of a day with so many
hours of sunlight and so many hours of dusk and of darkness,
these were not forces simply operating out there somehow,
in some way, under control of something, but it was their God
who had entered in to a gracious covenant with them. and had promised
to be with them in their conquest of the land of Canaan. And if
it were necessary to extend the daylight of that day of battle
to accomplish his purposes, daylight and night are under the control
of the God who made them. And so in God's constant care
for Israel in the wilderness, we see God's sovereignty over
nature vividly illustrated. vividly illustrated in God's
judgments, vividly illustrated in His care for Israel in the
wilderness, but thirdly, vividly illustrated in the manifold striking
examples scattered throughout Old Testament history in general. The account in 1 Samuel 6 of
those dumb animals, the two milk cows, that will become the means
of discerning the will of God. God is sovereign over the disposition
of cows who hear their little calves bleating for their mamas.
And so directs the activity of those cows that his will will
be made known to his people. He takes a dumbass to block the
way of the mad prophet Balaam And though we think a dumb donkey
or a dumb ass can only pray, God can open its mouth to frame
vocables that can be understood by a prophet. Think of the incident
in the life of Elijah when God determines to feed him by the
brook Kirith from Ahab's table. And what kind of bird does he
choose? He chooses a raven, a flesh-eating
bird. and so sovereignly disposes the
nature of that bird that he picks up the food day by day and does
not consume it in his flight to the man of God but deposits
it at his feet or in his hand according to the will and purpose
of God. This is the God who keeps a man
by the name of Ahasuerus awake one night And so disposes his
mind that for midnight reading he wants to read chronicles of
the history of his nation. What is God doing? He's keeping
the man awake, disposing him to have what to us would appear
to be a very unlikely interest for nighttime reading. And there
he discovers that Mordecai had been an instrument of kindness
in the past, whose kindness had been overlooked. And in that
book of Esther that is a marvelous tapestry of God's divine providence,
we see God using a sleepless night and the reading of the
chronicles of the history of that nation to be the very instrument
to bring about the deliverance of his people. You see, if the
absolute sovereignty of God over nature be denied, one would have
to rewrite the whole of biblical history. Because again and again
and again, in that history, God is manifesting His absolute sovereignty
over nature. But then the fourth category
in which we see this vividly illustrated, concretely manifested,
is in the life history of our Lord Jesus Christ. A virgin shall
conceive, and in time the angel Gabriel comes to Mary, And she
is filled with a mingled sense of awe and fear. And the word
of God comes to her that the power of the Most High shall
overshadow her. And that which is conceived in
her will be of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth one
who shall be called the Son of God. the virgin conception of
our Lord Jesus, bypassing all of the known laws of conception,
God is sovereign over nature? He decrees in his own sovereign
will and then by his present providential dealings a decree
goes forth from a heathen leader. Caesar Augustus is determined
to give everyone a social security number. And so he says you must
go to the town of your birth and there register, get your
social security number. Because he was determined that
there should be a new level of general taxation, well, who was
it that moved him in what we would call such natural desires
of heathen leaders in controlling their kingdoms, that the timing
should be such that when Joseph and Mary make their way to Bethlehem,
God's ancient promise concerning the coming forth of Messiah should
be fulfilled. And then in the life history
of our Lord Jesus, nothing short of a plethora of miracles in
the realm of what we would call nature. Atrophied limbs that
spring into virility and strength at the word and the touch of
the Son of God, overcoming all of the so-called natural forces. Dead optic nerves spring to life. barren trees are cursed and they
wither. We find so many of our Lord's
miracles operative as in the opening passage in the realm
of what men call nature. And so from Genesis to Revelation,
in judgment, in kindness and in mercy to his own people, in
singular events and ultimately climatically revealed in the
life history of our Lord Jesus, the sovereignty of God over nature
is not only explicitly asserted, but is vividly and concretely
illustrated But then I want to spend a few moments in closing
considering with you in the third place the sovereignty of God
over nature practically applied. One of the things I tell the
men that we seek to help in preparing for the work of the ministry
is to always put themselves in the place of those whom they
are instructing and try to think back through the message with
them, and having laid out the what of God's Word, then to seek
to answer for them the question, so what? Now the what that I
have sought to establish from this collage of many portions
of the Word of God is that God is indeed sovereign over nature. He explicitly affirms it and
again and again he vividly illustrates it. But now the question that
you ask is, so what? What does this say to me? Well, surely we could spend all
of the remaining time and emphasize in response to the question,
so what? that it demands of you and of
me to think biblically about what we call nature. We live in an age that has ruled
God out of His world. And we are told, as we were reminded
yesterday, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind. And we must not allow the total
secularization of that realm that we call nature to infiltrate
our thought processes, our thinking about God, about life, about
reality. But we must have this biblical,
this God-centered, this theocratic perspective percolating through
all of our perception of reality as it is manifested in what we
call nature. That in turn would then lead
us to an element of worship that would make us far more at home
in such psalms as Psalm 104. We would not simply, those of
us who live in the four seasons, we would not simply rejoice when
we see the first breaking forth of the signs of spring. The little
buds beginning to appear in the trees and the little bit of the
greenness of the grass beginning to manifest itself. We would
say with the psalmist, he is causing his grass to grow. He is making his trees to bud. He is causing His snow to melt
away. He is causing His sun to shine
with an intensified warmth that will cause the earth to bud and
to bring forth, ultimately, in a season of harvest. But with
that as the baseline assumed, let me just seek to identify
two or three areas in which the sovereignty of God over nature
practically applied ought to have its impact upon us. First
of all, a present conviction of this reality lies at the basis
of fulfilling the mandate of Philippians 4, 6, and 7. I'm sure many of you could quote
from memory Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Be anxious for nothing. In nothing be marked by sinful,
fretful anxiety, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God and The
peace of God which passes all understanding shall act like
a garrison of soldiers around your hearts, keeping and guarding
them in Christ Jesus. Well, how can I fulfill that
directive to be anxious for nothing? but in everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving to let my request be made known
unto God and be brought into that place of unshakable peace,
when most of the things that cause our anxiety, or many of
them, arise from what we call the realm of nature. There is
a virus, a certain bacteria that invades our bodies and brings
us into a state of ill health. There is an abnormal activity
of certain cells and then the dread day comes when the biopsy
report comes back and that dread word is found on the report,
such and such carcinoma. A thing paralyzes with anxiety,
the earthquake that in a few moments takes away a man's possessions
in his house and loved ones. Well, you see, unless we are
convinced that our God is the sovereign Lord over nature, we
will find it impossible to take a text like Philippians 4, 6,
and 7 and to comply with it by the grace of God, committing
unto God everything that would be the occasion of sinful anxiety,
and so committing it to Him as the God who controls and sovereignly
disposes all things, that I can with peace leave it in His hands. But then secondly, a present
conviction of this reality lies at the basis of drawing comfort
from Romans 8.28. And we know that all things work
together for good. To them that love God, to those
who are the called according to his purpose, I have found
that this text, above many others, is most helpful in easing people
into a conscious acceptance of what every Christian believes
in his heart, if he's a true Christian, that God is indeed
utterly, absolutely sovereign over all things. And I asked
them, do you find comfort from Romans 8, 28, when dark providences
break in upon your life? Oh yes, that verse has been the
mainstay of my soul. Then I asked the question, how
can you draw comfort from that text, believing that all things
are working together for good? unless God is in absolute control
of every single thing. How do you know the devil is
not slipped in something that is not working towards your good,
but towards your ultimate evil? If there is something that is
not under the control of God, how can you as a believer find
comfort and rest in the knowledge that all things are working together
for good? I remember one of the first times
I preached on that text. was a Lord's Day morning some
years ago when I had to announce to the congregation that one
of our couples had just given birth to a Down syndrome child. All things there when conception
occurred and in the abnormality of the chromosomes was God there
in that woman's womb. Or had God for a moment said,
excuse me, I have to cough or sneeze? And while he sneezed,
when that sperm penetrated that egg and the mysterious processes
of selection were going on, did God for a millisecond lose control? Or was he there? And therefore, can we say all
things work together for good? You see, unless God is sovereign
over nature, since so many of the strange and pinching providences
come in the realm of nature, it is a present conviction of
this reality that He is indeed the sovereign Lord over nature
that forms the basis of drawing comfort from Romans 8, 28, and
then finally, and I do want to point us in that direction where
we ought always to be pointed, a present conviction of this
reality lies at the basis of hope in connection with the consummation
of our redemption. A present conviction of this
reality of God's sovereignty over nature lies at the basis
of our hope, our confident expectation in connection with the consummation
of redemption? Is this present world part of
what we call nature? Does it, as the Apostle says
in Romans 8, groan under the influence of sin that has come
through mankind? How much of the consummation
of our redemption touches upon the natural world? this present
world order renovated so that in the language of Peter it will
be a world in which there dwells nothing but righteousness. The raising of the dead, the
glorification of the bodies of all of God's people, the gathering
of their dust and the reconstituting of that glorified body that though
in many ways is different yet has continuity with the body
that now is. Well, you see, it is our confidence
that our God is Lord over nature that causes us to look forward
with hope to the consummation when all that our Lord Jesus
Christ died to accomplish, not only in the redemption of individual
sinners, but in the redemption of this world and bringing in
the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwells righteousness.
We can look forward with confidence when we stand, as some of us
have had to stand, by the graveside of a father, the graveside of
a mother, the graveside of a loved one and saints who have walked
with us in many years of our pilgrimage. And as we see them
lowered into the earth to say, I know not how long the earth
will hold them, whether the earth will hold them long enough for
the worms to totally consume them. whether God will allow
years to pass in which this very cemetery plot will be buried
under mounds of earth. But this I know, that that one
that goes into the ground At the coming of the Lord Jesus
shall come forth resplendent with a body that is after the
pattern of his own glorious body by the power wherewith he is
able to subdue all things unto himself. The sovereignty of God
over nature, explicitly asserted, vividly
illustrated, practically applied, may God grant that He will take
the truth of His Word and write it upon the tables of our hearts
and draw forth praise and worship from us and renewed measures
of subjection to this gracious God with joy and a life of confidence
and peace and rest and stability in the face of those things which
this side of the consummation seem to make no sense to us,
but we know are the unfolding of the wise and gracious purposes
of the God, who in Jesus Christ said to the turbulent waves and
the boisterous winds, peace, be still. And there was a great
calm. Amen. If you would like more information
about Ligonier Ministries, or if you would like to receive
a catalog of additional resources, please call Ligonier Ministries
at 1-800-435-4343 or write to Post Office Box 547500, Orlando,
Florida 32854.