Sunday School | The Sovereignty of God

Alright. So, as you might recall, we're in a series on the doctrines of Christianity that's going to take a couple years to do. We're beginning with the doctrine of God, the theology proper. When we say theology proper, we don't just mean all of theology but the study of the first person of God, the doctrine of the Father. And we're doing this by walking through what we would call the attributes of God.

Same disclaimers I give you every week. God's all that he is at all times, right? He's not just sometimes this and sometimes that. He doesn't trade hats. He's all that he is at all times. But we're not that smart, and so we think about things one thing at a time. And we kind of tend to group them into different subcategories to help us keep track of what we're talking about.

Normally I would like to do this in a little bit of a different sequence, but we've had some weeks that we had to do other things, and I was traveling, and so it's kind of gotten a little bit scrambled. But go back in your mind a few weeks to when we were doing the omnis. What are the three omnis of God that we tend to say? Omnipresent. He's in all places. He knows all things. What's the last one? Omnipotent. He's omnipotent, okay.

When we're talking about God's omnipotence, there's another term that I want to throw out here for you. This would pair most nicely with the three omnis. He's omnipresent. He's omniscient. He's omnipotent, and he is something else. He is sovereign. God is sovereign.

Omnipotence vs. Sovereignty

So God is omnipotent. Now, we talk about God's sovereignty. We talk about God's omnipotence and we can kind of just blend these together as if they're saying the same thing, but omnipotent and sovereign are not actually synonyms. We often, in a human context especially, might use them interchangeably, but what's the difference do you think between the omnipotence of God and the sovereignty of God? They're related, but they're not the same.

Sovereign would be reign. Very good. The root—this is an interesting observation—the root word of sovereign is reign, okay? This is good. So let's pull on this thread. Omnipotent and sovereign. What's the difference here?

God has the capability to do all things, but that doesn't mean that he's going to exercise that power in every way, shape, and form that could be possible. That's exactly right. When we say that God is omnipotent, potency is power. We're talking raw capacity, right? God has the ability to say, "Let there be light," and light springs into existence, right? So his omnipotence is what we're talking about—ontological ability. He, in his very nature, can, and he can't be restrained. He is all powerful.

And then sovereignty—let's get another definition of what sovereignty is. We heard the word reign, rule, very good. It might be helpful just to distinguish a little bit to say authority. So omnipotence is capacity. It's raw power. Sovereignty is his right to rule. It is his authority. It's why he reigns, okay?

Now, in our context, we will often use these things interchangeably, and it's not really the same. But if I were to say to you that the president of the United States has the power to pardon, what I really mean is that he has the authority to pardon. Not that he has the ontological ability to exude pardon from his very being, but rather he has an authority granted by the Constitution that he can do that, right?

So we will sometimes use the word power when we really mean authority, because we don't have frankly very much power at all in our being. Maybe you have the power to tie your shoes. You have the power to bench press 135 pounds. You have limited raw capacity. Whatever you're able to accomplish is probably because of some sort of delegated authority, right? So we will use power in exchange for authority.

So here—omnipotence is power and he's got all power, and sovereignty is authority and he has all authority. He has both of these things. He has the right to do it and the ability to do it because he's God. So far so good?

Now, it's going to be a little bit hard to pull these things apart, but when we say that God is sovereign, what's the biblical basis for that claim?

Where would you go to demonstrate the sovereignty of God? Are any passages of scripture come to mind on this? Stuart?

In the beginning, God. I mean, just really the Genesis, you know.

Okay. Just from an example standpoint. Now, so but what—let's think about this. You say "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Would you say that's more omnipotence or more sovereignty?

I mean, ultimately, if it forms in the beginning, it could be both. I think we would see in the act of creation that's really a demonstration of his power, his raw ability. But then subsequent to that, he made it, so it's his, so he can do whatever he wants with it. He has the authority. Does this make sense? If you have the power to build a business, once you've built it, you make the rules because it's yours. Right? So we see in creation the exercise of his omnipotence, which results in his right to do whatever he wants with the world that he has made. Does that make sense?

Okay. Gil?

There would be—I forget where it is—there would be... could go a little louder, Gil. Remember, there's people behind you can't hear you when you're talking soft.

I think it's one of the songs where it says the heavens declare the glory... Psalm 19?

Would that be, yeah, would that be? Well, showing his power.

Interesting. So Psalm—Gil is quoting Psalm 19, which says:

The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. — Psalm 19

And I would say that's more again about his omnipotence and less about his authority. Okay? Now, you're gonna—there are lots of sovereign things, but I wouldn't be surprised if when you think "sovereign," your mind goes to the power passages. Yeah. Evan?

I would say when he wrestles with Job, when Job's wrestling with God and God just flat out tells him he has the authority to do anything to you.

Excellent. The authority to do anything to you. I have the authority. Absolutely. So those last chapters—what is it, 39, 40, 41—where God kinda dresses Job down. That's all a description. He's like, "Have the right, Job? You don't like the way I run my universe?" And frankly, has anybody in this room ever not thought, "I don't like the way you run your universe"? Right? This is a common thought. But God's response to Job is, "Well, yeah, but it's mine." I mean, it's essentially his answer.

Job is a great big defense of the sovereignty of God in the midst of human suffering, which is tough because it's not always the answer that we are looking for when we are suffering. But he basically walks through all of these things and says, "You know, listen, I'm way, way, way smarter than you and it's mine. And so you can trust me the way that I rule it." Right? Which can be hard for sure.

Okay. Another one, Michael.

Daniel four. Daniel is a great text for this.

Yes. The Most High rules in the kingdom of men and does whatever he wants.

Yes. I got that one queued up. I'm gonna read this to you. Daniel four—and remember who is saying it? Whose mouth is speaking in Daniel four?

Nebuchadnezzar, but also...

Notes back and forth of the prophet, the vision that he saw.

Yes. This happened. So ultimately, Nebuchadnezzar is a pagan king. He's the king of Babylon who frankly knows something about sovereignty. He had probably more authority to rule than any other living person on the globe, and he gets turned into a dribbling cow and comes back. And it says all these kinds of things happen, and at the end of it, his—this is Nebuchadnezzar's description about the authority of Daniel's God, not his god, but somebody else's.

At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my sanity was restored, then I praised the Most High. I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion, his authority, is an eternal dominion. His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, "What have you done?" — Daniel 4

Now, that "no one can hold back his hand"—that's probably more power. You're not—I mean, you get in a contest with God. It's not likely that you're gonna prevail, right? But "no one can say to him"—it's like, it's his. It's his. He has the authority. Daniel four is a great, great passage on this.

Yeah. DFP?

Romans nine.

Okay. Great. And it's not super—it doesn't directly say "God is sovereign." But the whole thing is about "I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. I have chosen the people that I have chosen." It is just God's word stepping into a place of absolute authority.

That's right. You get to make the choice how you're gonna respond. So Dan is mentioning Romans nine, which is a description of God's sovereignty specifically in the category of salvation.

And when it's all said and done and you're left scratching your head, most people would read Romans 9 and be like, "Yeah, but really?" And then Paul's response to it is: "Who are you, oh man, to talk back to God? Does he not have the right to...?" So it's his right. It's his authority. He can lead his universe however he chooses. Romans 9 is a very clear passage on this.

Great. Scotty?

The entire book of Exodus. That's broad. This is gonna take a little while. What is there a particular thing?

He leads them out of Israel and gives them a nation from being enslaved. He did. And I would say we see his omnipotence in the way that he handles all this, but at the end of the day, you can look at Exodus through the lens of him trumping the power of Pharaoh. Pharaoh has sovereignty—there's no checks and balances in the Egyptian Pharaoh system. And so God says, "Okay, I will spend my power bringing in frogs and locusts and blood and darkness and death to check yours because I have the right to do it because it's my universe."

Here's a good one: First Chronicles 29. David has been promised that he would have a descendant who would rule on the throne of Israel forever. And he's marveling at this, that God has granted, is delegating to him and his family authority. And the reason God can delegate authority is because he has authority. So here's First Chronicles 29:11:

Yours, oh Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, oh Lord, is the kingdom. You are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you. You are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. — 1 Chronicles 29:11

You hear the braiding there of his omnipotence and his sovereignty. These things are not unrelated, but they are nevertheless distinct. I'll give you a couple more.

Jeremiah 10:23:

I know, oh Lord, that a man's life is not his own. It is not for man to direct his steps. — Jeremiah 10:23

Meaning, you think you have authority over this? You don't even have authority over this. We are subjects. That's tough news. "Correct me, Lord, but only with justice, not in your anger, lest you reduce me to nothing."

Romans 8, right before the text we looked at:

We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28

How about Ephesians 1:

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan—that's important language—the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. — Ephesians 1:11

And maybe my favorite New Testament example is Colossians 1. This is such an exalted passage. It's about Christ, which we're cheating a little bit because we're trying to talk about the Father, but they're close:

By him, all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things have been created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. — Colossians 1:16-17

Colossians 1 is a great text on his sovereignty.

Yeah. What would you add?

Another way we think about it is authority. He has the right to proclaim life or death. In John 3:16, he said, "Yes, give life and judge that you would not die and live forever." Yes, the authority over life and death. He absolutely has the authority over life and death. God can justly take life, and in fact, if you consider this: in the very beginning, when Adam and Eve sinned, the penalty was death. And the fact that they did not die was a mercy. The wages of sin is death. We walk under a death sentence, and he has graciously extended our lives. And not only does he extend our lives to a little extent, but he even grants eternal life, completely abrogating the punishment of sin, which is crazy.

Zach?

In John, when Jesus says he's not here by his own authority but by he who sent him. Yes, for demonstration of sovereignty or omnipotence?

So that's interesting. We'll get—when we get to the Son and his submission to the Father, we'll unpack this. But yes, Jesus is not coming on his own authority but on the Father's authority. So we're definitely talking about sovereignty. God has sovereignly granted to the Son authority, and he's functioning within that is what he's saying. We'll get into the Trinity eventually and try to untangle some of that, but yeah, that would be a great example of God's sovereignty.

Now, if you look up in your Bible, if you have a digital Bible, you'll see the word sovereign shows up about 300 times. Mostly in the Old Testament, but it's a little bit funny the way the Bible uses the word sovereign. Anybody happen to know offhand the Hebrew word for sovereign? The word that the Old Testament scriptures use for sovereign hundreds and hundreds of times is Adonai, and that might be strange to you because when the word Adonai is used alone, do you know how we translate it? Lord.

So if you ever read your Bible, you'll see the word "Lord" in the Old Testament in two different ways. Either capital L, little o, r, d—that is the word Adonai. And what it means is master, king, ruler. Like "lord," not in the sense of God, but lord in the sense of imagine you live in some feudal realm and you've got a lord—the guy that owns the land and to whom you report. That's what Adonai means. It means the ruler, the king, the one who's in charge.

And then all caps—capital L, O, R, D. What's that in Hebrew? Yahweh. That is Yahweh. That is God's covenant name, YHWH. That's the word that when God says, "I am." When He's having that conversation with Moses, He says, "Well, who should I tell them sent me?" And He says, "You tell them that I am sent you." That's Yahweh.

So God's name is Yahweh. He is the I Am. And the Jews were really circumspect about using that word because they don't want to use it badly, so they wouldn't use it. They would never say Yahweh. If you ever read like Orthodox Jews, they'll write G_D. They don't want to write God because they don't want to write it wrong. So their version of that used to be to replace Yahweh with capital O, R, D—"LORD."

Sometimes the Bible will talk about Yahweh, the Lord. Sometimes it'll talk about Adonai, the ruler, lord. But whenever it talks about Adonai Yahweh, the Lord God, it'll translate it as "Lord God," and sometimes it'll translate it as "sovereign Lord."

So whenever you see "sovereign Lord" in the Bible, that is Adonai Yahweh. And that's what that word means. It means Adonai—sovereign, lord, king, ruler, authoritative one. Those are all synonyms stacked on top of each other.

And then if you go to the New Testament and you look up the word sovereign, the word behind that is essentially despot—despotēs. It's the despot. Alright? So in real life, in human life, what's a despot? Total authority. And that's what Jesus is. That's what God is. He is the despot. It's all His. He is the sovereign one. He is the Adonai. He's in charge.

How are we doing? Here's where it starts to get weird. We can stand here and affirm the beauty and the goodness of God's sovereignty, but how far does it go? What about the bad stuff? This is the problem in the world. God is in charge, praise His name. But I don't like the way you run your universe because a lot of stuff goes down, right?

God's Sovereignty Over All Things

So here's this—Isaiah 45, verses 7-10:

I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things. You, heavens above, rain down righteousness. Let the clouds shower it down. Let the earth open wide. Let salvation spring up. Let righteousness grow with it. I, the Lord, have created it. Woe to him who quarrels with his maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. — Isaiah 45:7-9

You're going to hear Romans 9. Does the clay say to the potter, "What are you making?" Does your work say, "He has no hands?" The sovereignty of God—that passage that Paul cites in Romans 9 is a passage in which God explicitly says, "I form light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster." Okay?

Here's the same thing in Lamentations 3:

Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? — Lamentations 3:37-38

You hear me? When we embrace the sovereignty of God, we have to be mindful. What exactly are we embracing? How far does this go? And this is where life becomes difficult. You might face a choice and say, "Well, I don't like the idea." Now, of course, it doesn't matter what you think. All that matters is what's real. But if we want to conform our thoughts to reality, there are implications if you conclude that God is not in charge when calamity comes. Right? And there are implications if you conclude that God is in charge when calamities come.

Either way, either way, there is a fraught path. You feel the weight of this?

Was God in charge of that hurricane? And if he was, then what in the world—how do we make sense of all the suffering? But if God is not in charge of that hurricane, then what in the world, and how impotent is he? You with me?

Okay. Now let's go. In case that's not entirely perfectly uncomfortable, let's go one click higher. What about sin? How do we make sense of a God who is sovereign in a world that just has hurricanes, but a world that has sin? These are the thorny, thorny issues.

I'm gonna read you a little bit. Some of you guys might recognize this. You may recall when Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery, but that selling into slavery ends up leading to the salvation of the nation. Right? Because he comes into a particular position of authority where he is able to reign and to rule for his people. And his brothers find out that he's in charge, that he has a certain measure of sovereignty himself, and they tremble. For they know that they are evil, and they expect that their brother is gonna have their heads.

And he says this:

But Joseph said to them, "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me. You're evil. You're sinful. You were malicious. You lied. You wounded me. And in fact, they did harm me. You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don't be afraid. I will provide for you and your children." — Genesis 50

Or if the Joseph example isn't strident enough, let's look at the cross of Christ. Was the crucifixion of Jesus an evil act? Without question. It was the most unjust thing that has ever happened. It was the most vile punishment inflicted upon the most innocent man, and it was sin. And yet—and yet—it happened according to the foreknowledge and the plan of the same sovereign God that we are describing.

Okay? So here's Acts 4:

Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. — Acts 4

That's complicated, is it not? How do we get our heads around this?

Here's what I want to share with you. I want to make this a little bit more personal. I want to share an exchange that I had with a friend of mine—a friend of mine who goes to this church. He sent me an email in which he almost offhandedly quoted me, or claims to have quoted me. We had a very open exchange. But the words that he quoted—that he believes he believes, or at least he used to believe, I don't know if he still believes—but he says that I said something that I don't think I have ever said or ever thought, okay?

I'm just gonna read you this email exchange because it brings to a head this question that we're wrestling through. It is thorny. Acts 4, Genesis 50—we're like, okay, how do we get our head around all of this? The reformers would say that God hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, and yet is not the author of sin. And we must affirm both sides of that equation, okay?

Here's what my friend says that I said. We had a Sunday school in the sanctuary—this would have been years ago—and you addressed a point you made in a previous Sunday school class about, I won't get this exactly right, does God allow evil, does he use it, does he cause it, etcetera. The crux of the issue was: Does God cause evil destructive things to happen? Just how much sovereignty are we talking about?

Okay, so far so good? This is exactly what we just did.

And then he says this: To fully hammer home your point of view, you said something like, "Do I believe that God sends the father into the girl's room at night to abuse her? Yes, I do." And the congregation staggered around drunk afterward.

Now, I don't think I have ever said anything remotely like that. I don't think I have ever thought anything like that. Nor has anyone several years ago approached me to say, "So what was that all about in Sunday school?" Nor did I get like 500 emails that you would think that such a comment would have elicited.

So I don't think that anything like that ever happened. But he thinks that it did, or he thought that it did. And we went around, and I'm like, "Dude, find the tape. We record this class every week. What in the world are you talking about?"

Okay? I don't think anything like that ever happened. But if you ever heard me say something and you thought that's what I was saying, please tell me so we can figure out what in the world happened. It is possible that I said something crazy, but I do not think that. I cannot envision a context in which I would say that.

So here's my response. We had a back and forth and back and forth, but I said this.

At the root of this distress lies the thorniest question in all theology. How do we account for the existence of evil in a world that is ruled by an all-powerful, all-loving God? Numerous solutions have been proffered, and I think there are some reasonable boundaries that have been set. But if I'm being honest, I have found no truly satisfying solution. I expect when all is finally revealed, we will be able to say with a full heart, "All your ways are just and true." But in candor, I am too stupid to say that right now without some pretty big asterisks. There is so much in this world that is practically impossible for me to make sense of.

But I think we can and should affirm two things. Number one: God rules over all. His perfect will is clearly thwarted constantly and much happens that he hates. But he has a broader permissive will and nothing happens outside of this. Doctrinally, we call this the decree of God, and we tend to hang a lot of weight on Ephesians 1:11 in support of this idea.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. — Ephesians 1:11

I believe that Paul was correct in saying this, and that despite all the pain and the misery that sin has unleashed on the world, God remains sovereign. He is the great boundary setter. I would invite you to affirm that, and it will come with complexities because look around—it's a complicated world and a lot of stuff goes down.

But as you grab that, as you hold that, there is a second point that we must not let go of. And this is essentially what my friend was claiming I had let go of. Point number two is: God is not the author of evil.

This is the message we've heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. — 1 John 1:5

This is what you are claiming I have explicitly denied, which frankly I cannot imagine doing. I suspect that I may have argued point one with some strength that distressed you, or maybe I got distracted and never got to point two. That can happen in a class environment. I'm desperately curious to know. But whatever it was that I did say, I hope it is some comfort to know that I affirm both of the above, even if it leaves us deeply confused about all the wretched horrors that he permits but could prevent.

Now, perhaps point one distresses you regardless of point two. We may disagree about that. If that is the case, we can discuss that if you like. I fully affirm that it is troubling to affirm it, but not as troubling as it is to deny it. If God is not ultimately in charge, we are screwed. Deeply, truly, madly screwed.

Not only because we have no assurance that his good purposes will ultimately prevail, but more foundationally because the scriptures would be wrong in affirming his providential rule over all things. Something would be stronger than God. I will categorically state that if I have ever said, "Do I believe that God sends the father into the girl's room at night to abuse her? Yes, I do," then I was in the active throes of an aneurysm. That is not what the scriptures teach. He is sovereign. He is king, and he reigns over the universe, and he is good. And we just have to live in this broken world that is wracked by sin and try to get our head around that full range and that full stretch, which is not easy.

But I would invite you: do not let go of either of these two things. He is good. He is in charge. And this is our world. And the day is coming when these things will make more sense perhaps than they do right now.

I would guess that literally every person in this room is thinking of a different pinch point—a different thing where you're like, "Yeah, but this thing." He was sovereign in that moment and he was good in that moment, and we all have different things. And these are what he invites. The scriptures wrestle with this. You don't have a Pollyanna book. The more that you read this book, the more that you see that the very authors of these words were wrestling through this in the same way. And their conclusion is the conclusion that I would invite you to embrace.

The Call to Submit

And I'll give you guys a chance to interact. And it's simply this: if he really is sovereign, he really has the authority, and he really is good—which we'll unpack probably next week—we can joyfully submit to his will. And that's really where the rubber meets the road. If he is in charge, are we going to kick against the goads or will we accept whatever he puts in our path?

Sovereignty of God is the great ballast in our hearts that can enable us to say even in this, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, and he has the right to do as he pleases. And I will bend my knee before him for he is in fact the king of kings and the lord of lords. Amen. And there will be days where that is incredibly difficult, but not as difficult as refusing to acknowledge his reign.

That was a lot. Anybody need to process something out loud?

Catherine's Question on God's Sovereignty and Suffering

I have less problem with sin because he made man and he gave him freedom. But causing hurricanes and all that stuff—I've wrestled with it and I think the word keeps coming back to me: he allows because he is sovereign, and he does say that he causes all things. If the word "all" is correct, then he causes all things to work for good. He will take man's sin and then he will sovereignly cause it to be for good. And another thing that stood out to me was that he warned us. I mean, he told us way ahead of time in the Old Testament that Jesus was going to happen, and it had to happen. And we had all the examples of the sacrifice and what happened in the temple and everything.

So Catherine's observation here is that there are two categories. There's the category of sin—how does God's sovereignty interface with human wickedness? And then there's how does God's sovereignty interface with atmospheric conditions? They're not the same, but they both deeply impact our lives. You're saying it's a little easier to be like, yeah, wicked people do wicked things, noted. But then, how is he in charge of a hurricane? How is his power made manifest there?

These things—I don't really struggle with a hurricane because my home has never been destroyed by a hurricane. But if it was, that would probably be more troubling to me.

The Tension Between God's Goodness and Evil

One area that I've endlessly struggled with is the point that God can prevent evil and he chooses not to. And so this idea: when we choose to sin and not to do good, we are sinning. But somehow God can choose not to prevent evil and he's good. This is the tangle of it.

He is not the author of sin. He is light. In him there is no darkness at all. And not only does he not author sin—he does prevent sin. There's an enormous number of things that God does that restrains evil, but he doesn't always restrain it. And he didn't restrain Pontius Pilate. What we see on the cross is God standing to absorb the most wickedness the world could throw. And Jesus could have said, alright, angels come wipe it out. But he didn't. Joseph's brothers could have just been obliterated, but God used it for good.

So God will use the wickedness of wicked men to accomplish good things. Some people have said that God can write straight with a crooked stick, and that he will use—that he has used—the wickedness of men to accomplish his purposes. And if he wasn't capable of that, frankly, he wouldn't have that much to work with. He works with broken people all the time. But these are difficult, weighty questions.

Scripture's Own Wrestling

We see this in Romans chapter 9 and then it goes into chapter 10 where Paul wrestles with one of the deep griefs of his life:

Of great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. — Romans 9:2

His people have rejected the Messiah. How does that happen? Paul doesn't give us a really nice clean answer. And we ought not be flippant. We can be clear and dogmatic where Scripture is clear. But if these things don't trouble you, just wait.

The more that life takes the edge off you, the more you're like, I placed my hand over my mouth. Job finally, at the end of the day, is like:

I placed my hand over my mouth. — Job 40:4

I'm just going to shut up because I don't know what else to say.

Paul is the great articulator of all the authors of Scripture. No one makes a clearer case for the sovereignty of God in salvation than Paul. And then he weeps about it, trying to make it all make sense. And then he praises God about it. You can see the emotional storm in his heart as he affirms the things that he knows are true, but my goodness, this is difficult for sure.

I just wanted to commend the Bible Project video on Job—the very early version. It's the black and white video of the book of Job.

Oh, yeah. That is such a great resource. The last couple of minutes has helped me so much because the point is: bad, terrible things happen to Job. He and his buddies try to figure out why. Job defends his innocence. He wants an audience with God. You go through that display of God's power and sovereignty and all of that, and Job does cover his mouth. And the point is this: the universe wasn't designed to not have suffering. The universe as it is now has suffering in its DNA, and we're not going to escape it.

He doesn't have to answer us why. It's too complex. We may not like the way he runs his universe, but we can't do it, and it's way too complex to know everything he's holding together in the outworkings of his sovereign hand.

Excellent. So Kelly's commending to you the Bible Project study on Job. Just look up Bible Project Job. They do these posters—black and white, very simple. They've gotten more creative over the years, but they're very simple and filled with great theology.

The punch line of it is: the universe was not created to avoid suffering. That's our default assumption—that if you were good, you would spare me from grief. And that seems rather intuitively obvious, like, yeah, that's what I want. Everything's awesome all the time. But so many of you are shaking your heads right now because it's become obvious to you that's not the way the world works. There's more going on there.

So you might want to check out Bible Project on Job. It's a great exploration of suffering and sovereignty that could be a great resource for you.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we affirm that you are sovereign. And would you, in your mercy, give us the grace to gladly submit to your will. We love you. Amen.