Sermon quotes on God’s Sovereignty
Augustine of Hippo
There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn’t dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.”
Confessions
Jerry Bridges
That which should distinguish the suffering of believers from unbelievers is the confidence that our suffering is under the control of an all-powerful and all-loving God. Our suffering has meaning and purpose in God’s eternal plan, and He brings or allows to come into our lives only that which is for His glory and our good.”
Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts
Calcidius
God knows all things. . . . The things he knows are partly divine and immortal, partly perishable and temporal. . . . His knowledge of uncertain things . . . cannot be different from their nature. . . . They are . . . possible in both directions rather than subject to necessity. . . . So contingent things are not inflexibly arranged and determined from the beginning with the sole exception of the very fact, that they must be uncertain.
On Fate
William Cowper
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never ending skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.
Taken from the Hymn God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform, Methodist Publishing House.
Abraham Kuyper
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!
qtd. in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Eerdmans, 1998)
Max Lucado
God’s sovereignty doesn’t negate our responsibility. Just the opposite. It empowers it. When we trust God, we think more clearly and react more decisively. Like Nehemiah, who said, “We prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat” (Nehemiah 4:9 NIV). We prayed . . . and posted. We trusted and acted. Trust God to do what you can’t. Obey God and do what you can.
God Will Carry You Through, Thomas Nelson, 2013, pp.78-179.
Erwin W. Lutzer
If there is one single reason why good people turn evil, it is because they fail to recognize God’s ownership over their kingdom, their vocation, their resources, their abilities, and above all their lives.”
When You’ve Been Wronged: Moving From Bitterness to Forgiveness
Martin Luther
Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.
J. Vernon McGee
This is God’s universe, and God does things his way. You may have a better way, but you don’t have a universe.
John Milton
Immediate are the acts of God, more swift than time or motion.”
Paradise Lost
John Piper
James warns against the pride of presumption in speaking of
the simplest plans in life without a due submission to the overarching
sovereignty of God over the day’s agenda. Man’s plans might be interrupted by God’s decision to take the life he gave.
Does God Desire All to Be Saved?
R.C. Sproul
Most Christians salute the sovereignty of God but believe in the sovereignty of man.
R.C. Sproul
Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority.”
The Holiness of God
Thomas Watson
If the worst things work for good to a believer, what shall the best things?” “Nothing hurts the godly . . . all things . . . shall co-operate for their good, that their crosses shall be turned into blessings.
A Divine Cordial; the Saint’s Spiritual Delight; the Holy Eucharist; and Other Treatises (The Religious Tract Society, 1846), 68.
N.T. Wright
The point is this. If you want to know what it means to talk about God being ‘in charge of’ the world, or being ‘in control’, or being ‘sovereign’, then Jesus himself instructs you to rethink the notion of ‘kingdom’, ‘control’ and ‘sovereignty’ themselves, around his death on the cross.
God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath, Zondervan, 2020.
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