Alrighty, we start a new chapter in the book that Don wrote, titled Basic Bible Doctrines. And the doctrine we want to look at this morning, Don takes his thoughts from Psalms 135, verse 6, where it says, Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in heaven and in earth, in the sea, in all deep places.

The title is The Sovereignty of God. Don writes this, he says to open this, he says, with those words, the one we just read from Psalms 135 verse 6, whatsoever the Lord please, that did He in heaven and in earth and in the seas and all deep places. With those words in mind, the psalmist David both declares God's absolute universal sovereignty and calls upon us to trust, worship, and praise Him because He is the sovereign God of the universe. The very foundation of our confidence and faith in our God is His sovereignty. Were He not sovereign, writes God, absolutely universally sovereign, we could not trust Him at all. Don uses the word implicitly. Believe this promise. We could not believe his promises. We could not depend upon him to fulfill his word even. Only an absolute sovereign God can be trusted absolutely. We can and should trust our God implicitly, as Don said, because he is sovereign.

Nothing is more delightful to the hearts of God's children than the fact that his great and glorious sovereignty rules all things by the power of his own will, under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe troubles, and when enduring the most heavy trials, we rejoice to know that our God has sovereignly ordained our afflictions, that he has sovereignly overruled them, and that he sovereignly sanctifies them His glory.

The sovereignty of God is a matter of great joy to God's people. Every believer rejoices in the sovereignty of God. God's saints rejoice to hear Him say these words, as said in Matthew 20, verse 15, is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? We rejoice in that, don't we? Nothing in this world is more comforting to a believer's heart than the knowledge of the fact that our God is in the heavens. He hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.

Psalm 115 verse 3. Yet in this day of religious darkness and confusion, there's no truth of holy scripture for which we must more earnestly contend than God's dominion over all creation, His sovereignty over all the works of His hands, the supremacy of His throne, and His right to sit upon it. We rejoice in that sovereignty, yet there is nothing revealed in the Bible that is more despised by self-righteous religionists than God's rule over all that is. Natural, unregenerate, unbelieving men and women are happy enough to have God everywhere except upon the throne, the throne of total universal sovereignty.

They're happy to have God in his workshop, creating the world and naming the stars. They're glad to have God in the hospital to heal the sick. They're pleased to have God in trouble to calm the raging seas of life. And they are delighted to have God in the funeral parlor to cause them, to ease them of the pain and sorrow.

I mentioned this when I was speaking last Wednesday in Danville. How many times have you heard anyone at a funeral say, oh, that person's in hell? More times than we can count, we've heard these words, haven't we? they're in a better place. Doesn't matter what they did in life, doesn't matter what they believed, we ease our consciousness in this world by being glad that God is on his throne when people go through that doormark death. Oh, they're in a better place with him.

But God upon his throne to the unregenerate man the most contemptible thing in the world. And any man who dares to preach that it is God's right to do whatever he will with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he sees fit, to save whom he will, will be hissed at, despised, and cursed by this religious generation. Still, it is God upon the throne that we love, trust, and worship, isn't it? and it is God upon the throne that we preach.

Sovereignty or idolatry. God's sovereignty is so basic and fundamental that it is impossible to understand any teaching taught in the Bible until we recognize and have some understanding of the fact of God's sovereignty in all things. A God who is not sovereign is as much a contradiction as a God who is not holy, who is not eternal, who is not immutable. A God who is not sovereign is no God at all. If the God you worship is not totally sovereign, you are a pagan and your religion is idolatry. You would be just as well off worshiping a statue of Mary, a totem pole, a spider, or even the devil himself as to worship a God who lacks total sovereignty over all that is.

In one of his letters to the learned and scholarly Erasmus, Martin Luther said this to him. He said, your thoughts of God are too human. No doubt Rasmus resented that remark, but it exposed his heart. It exposed his heretical theology. And it exposes the heart of all false religion. God says, I lay this to charge against the preachers and the theologians of our day and against the people who hear them, follow them, and support them.

Their thoughts of God are too human. I know the seriousness of what I've written, writes Don, but it must be stated with emphatic clarity. The God of the Bible is utterly unknown in this religious generation. And I would go on to say in all the religious generations before us as well.

God's charge against the apostate Israel was this. This is from Psalms 50 verse 21, thou thoughtest. that I was altogether such as one as thyself. Did you catch that? That's God speaking to his people. He's speaking to the people of Israel, and he tells them flat out, you think I'm too much like you.

That's our problem. We want to make a God who's just like us, one that we can manipulate. Kind of says a little something about ourselves, doesn't it? We can be manipulated pretty easily, can't we? That's the Lord's indictment against the religious world of our day as well.

Men today imagine that God is moved by sentiment. rather than by the determination of his sovereign will. They walk and they talk about omnipotence, but imagine that it is such like an idle fiction that Satan can thwart. They think that if God has a plan, it must be like the plans of men. It must be subject to constant change. They tell us that whatever power God does possess must be limited, lest he violate man's free will and make him a machine.

The grace of God is thought by most people to be nothing but a helpless, frustrated desire of God to save men. The precious sin-atoning blood of Christ is thought by most to be a waste, shed in vain for many, saving none, and the invincible saving power of the Holy Spirit is reduced by most to a gentle offer of grace, which men may easily resist at their own will. All such thoughts about God are blasphemous and idolatrous. The God of this generation no more resembles the sovereign Lord of all heaven and earth than a flickering candle resembles the noonday sun.

The god of modern religion is nothing but an idol, the invention by men, a figment of man's imagination. Pagans in dark ages used to carve their gods out of wood and stone and overlay them with silver and gold. Today, in these much darker days, pagans inside the church carve their god out of their own depraved imaginations. In reality, the religionist of our day is really an atheist.

They don't believe in the true God at all. For there is no possible alternative between a God who is absolutely sovereign and no God at all. A God whose will can be resisted, whose purpose can be frustrated, whose power can be thwarted, whose grace can be nullified, whose work can be overturned, has no little deity, no title to deity at all. Such a God is not even fit of worship. Such a puny, pygmy God merits nothing but contempt.

When I say that God is sovereign, writes Don, he's simply saying this, declaring that God is God. He is the Most High. He's the Lord of Heaven and Earth. He's Lord over all. He's blessed forever. He is the subject of none, and He is influenced by none. God is absolutely independent of and sovereign over all of His creation. He does as He pleases, only as He pleases, and always as He pleases. None can thwart Him. None can resist Him. can stop him, none can hinder him.

He declares this in Isaiah 46.10, my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure.

He declares this in Daniel 4.35, he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand or say unto him, what doest thou?

Divine sovereignty means that God sits upon the throne of universal dominion, directing all things, ruling all things, and working all things after the counsel of his own will, as we read in Ephesians 1 verse 11. This subject, about which hundreds of books have been written, and yet the half have not been told, Divine sovereignty is not some isolated doctrine taught in a few verses of Scripture. It is revealed literally upon every page of inspiration. In this study, we will consider just five things which manifestly and irrefutably reveal the sovereignty of God. The first one is predestination, and we look deeply into this in the previous two weeks over the subject of predestination. But we're going to take a brief look at it this morning, and God's sovereignty in predestination. And next week we'll come back and we'll look at God's sovereignty in creation, God's sovereignty in providence, God's sovereignty in salvation, and God's sovereignty in spiritual gifts. So, the first thing this morning is predestination. God's sovereignty is irrefutable. That means it's inarguable. You can't argue it. It's revealed in the eternal predestination of all things.

Does the Bible teach predestination? Of course it does. Anyone who attempts to deny it, to deny that it does, is either totally ignorant of the Word of God or they are a liar. God chose some men and women in eternity to be the objects of His saving grace, and predestinated those elect ones to be conformed to the image of His dear Son, as we read in Romans 8, verse 28 and 29. Before the world began, God sovereignly determined that He would save some, who they would be, when He would save them. Having predetermined these things, our great God infallibly secured his eternal purpose of grace by sovereign predestination. Now, yes, God predestinated from eternity everything that comes to pass in time to secure the salvation of his elect. That's plainly stated in the doctrine of Holy Scripture.

Look over in Ephesians chapter one. Turn over to Ephesians chapter one. Look at how our Lord determined to work things out here in this letter to the Ephesians, beginning at verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us, see, all blessings, all blessings, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Now look how he has done that. Verse four, according, that means by this way, This is the way it's going to be.

He's blessing us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places by this direction, as He hath chosen us, His elect, those that He had loved before the world was in Him, in His Son, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy. So we've been chosen in His Son, and this is all according to the blessings that God has given us through His Son. We've been chosen in His Son before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him.

Verse five, in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the pleasure of His good works, according to the pleasure of His will. to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein, because of all that, because of what being found in Christ, according to the good pleasure of His blood, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.

Turn over to Romans 11. Go back to the left of Romans 11. Let's look at one more verse there, shall we? We're talking about God's sovereign predestination. His rule over predestination, His purpose in predestination, in bringing a people unto Himself. Look here at Romans 11, verse 36. For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, whom be glory forever. Amen.

So we see here, it is written that all things are of God, as we read in 2 Corinthians 5.18.

Or how about Proverbs 16.4, the Lord hath made all things for himself. Folks, eternal election marked the house into which God's saving grace must come. Eternal predestination marked the path upon which grace must come, and sovereign providence led grace down the path to the house at the appointed time of love. Amen.