Chapter Four: God’s Sovereignty over People
GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY OVER PEOPLE
The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD;
he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.
PROVERBS 21:1
Picture yourself in this situation: You’ve been working for someone all of your life, your boss has been extremely cruel, your wages have been barely at subsistence level, and you feel very downtrodden and oppressed. For all practical purposes, you are nothing more than a slave. Suddenly you are freed from that almost unbearable situation. You are free to leave and start life all over again. There is only one problem—you have no financial resources, no way to make the trip, no funds to start anew someplace else, no way to take advantage of this incredible opportunity.
So you go to your boss and ask him for money for the trip and for getting started after you reach your new location. As farfetched as it may sound, your boss gives you the money. He doesn’t just give you a little, he gives you a lot; in fact, he gives you so much he impoverishes himself.
Sounds like make-believe, doesn’t it; like a childhood happily-ever-after story, the kind that never happens in real life. Only this one did; not in the exact details I have used, but in principle. This story actually happened. It’s recorded for us in the Bible in the book of Exodus. You know the story: The Israelites were the cruelly oppressed people, forced to “make bricks without straw.” Suddenly God intervenes in their lives and Pharaoh says, “Get out!” But the Israelites had no resources for making the journey, for starting over again; they were poverty-stricken. God had foreseen this problem, however, and had made plans to overcome it. He had said to Moses:
And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.
EXODUS 3:21-22
What God promised did indeed come to pass. Exodus 12:35-36 says,
The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. The LORD had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians.
GOD PROMPTS PEOPLE
The Egyptians did something completely contrary to normal human behavior. They voluntarily and freely gave these hitherto downtrodden slaves what they asked for, so much so that the account says the Israelites “plundered” the Egyptians. The usual meaning of plunder is to rob or seize or take by force; yet the Egyptians actually plundered themselves. They did this because God had made them favorably disposed toward the Israelites.
How did God do this? We don’t know. We only know what the text tells us. It is obvious that the Egyptians acted freely and voluntarily of their own wills. Yet they acted that way because as the text says, “the LORD had made [them] favorably disposed toward [the Israelites].” God in some mysterious way moved in their hearts so that they, of their own free choice, did exactly what He planned for them to do. God sovereignly intervened in the hearts—the desires and wills—of the Egyptians to accomplish His purpose for the Israelites.
All of us at times find ourselves and our futures seemingly in the hands of other people. Their decisions or their actions determine whether we get a good grade or a poor one, whether we are promoted or fired, whether our careers blossom or fold. I am not overlooking our own responsibility in these situations, but all of us know that even when we have, so to speak, done our best, we are still dependent upon the favor or frown of that teacher or boss or commanding officer. We are, from a human point of view, often at the mercy of other people and their decisions or actions.
Sometimes those decisions or actions are benevolent and good; sometimes they are wicked or careless. Either way they do affect us, often in a significant way. How are we to respond when we find ourselves seemingly in the hands of someone else, when we desperately need a favorable decision or a favorable action on that person’s part? Can we trust God that He can and will work in the heart of that individual to bring about His plan for us?
Or consider the instance when someone is out to harm us, to ruin our reputation, or jeopardize our career: Can we trust God to intervene in the heart of that person so that he does not carry out his evil intent? According to the Bible, the answer in both instances is yes. We can trust God. He does sovereignly intervene in the hearts of people so that they make decisions and carry out actions that accomplish His purpose for our lives. Yet God does this in such a way that these people make their decisions and carry out their plans by their own free and voluntary choices.
I realize that such a bold statement about the sovereignty of God within the minds of people gets me into a theological sand trap. Many people are prepared to grant God’s sovereignty over nature and impersonal circumstances such as, for example, a mechanical failure in an airplane. After all, nature does not have a will of its own. God is free to operate through His physical laws as He pleases. But we balk at the sovereignty of God over the decisions and actions of people. Such a concept of God’s sovereignty seems to many people to destroy the free will of man and make him only a puppet on God’s stage.
Christians have discussed and debated this subject down through the ages. I have no illusions of adding any new knowledge or insight to the subject, but we cannot ignore it. The subject of other people’s controlling influence over our lives is simply too pervasive to omit it in a book on trusting God. If God is not sovereign in the decisions and actions of other people as they affect us, then there is a whole major area of our lives where we cannot trust God; where we are left, so to speak, to fend for ourselves.
So let’s set aside the theological problem for the moment and examine the Scriptures. Do they give us a warrant for believing that God does in fact sovereignly intervene in the minds of people so that they decide or act in a certain way to accomplish His plan for us? Does God cause people to make decisions that favor us, and does God restrain people from making decisions that would harm us?
Perhaps the clearest biblical statement that God does sovereignly influence the decisions of people is found in Proverbs 21:1, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.” Charles Bridges, in his exposition of Proverbs, states, “The general truth [of God’s sovereignty over the hearts of all people] is taught by the strongest illustration—his uncontrollable sway upon the most absolute of all wills—the king’s heart.”[1]
In our day of limited monarchies in which kings and queens are largely figureheads, it may be difficult for us to appreciate fully the force of what Charles Bridges is saying when he speaks of the king’s heart as the most absolute of all wills. But in Solomon’s time the king was an absolute monarch. There was no separate legislative body to make laws he wouldn’t like or a Supreme Court to restrain him. The king’s word was law. His authority over his realm was unconditional and unrestrained.
Yet God controls the king’s heart. The stubborn will of the most powerful monarch on earth is directed by God as easily as the farmer directs the flow of water in his irrigation canals. The argument, then, is from the greater to the lesser—if God controls the king’s heart, surely He controls everyone else’s. All must move before His sovereign influence.
We have already seen this demonstrated in the actions of the Egyptians toward the Israelites. We see it also in the account of Cyrus, king of Persia, when he issued a proclamation to allow the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. Ezra 1:1 says,
In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing. (emphasis added)
The text clearly says that King Cyrus issued the proclamation because God moved his heart. The destiny of God’s people was, humanly speaking, in the hands of the most powerful monarch of that day. In reality, though, their destiny was completely in God’s hand because He had the ability to sovereignly control the decisions of that monarch.
God, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, gives us another helpful insight into His working in Cyrus’s heart:
For the sake of Jacob my servant,
of Israel my chosen,
I summon you by name
and bestow on you a title of honor,
though you do not acknowledge me. . . .
I will strengthen you,
though you have not acknowledged me.
ISAIAH 45:4-5, EMPHASIS ADDED
It is not necessary for a person to acknowledge God’s sovereign control in his heart or to even acknowledge the existence of God. Neither the Egyptians nor Cyrus intended to obey any revealed will of God. They simply acted as their hearts directed them, but their hearts were directed by God.
While we are looking at Cyrus, we see another instance of God’s moving in people’s hearts in the response of the Jews to Cyrus’s proclamation. Ezra 1:5 says, “Then the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites—everyone whose heart God had moved—prepared to go up and build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem.” Cyrus could issue a proclamation, but there must still be a response of the Jews. Some of them must decide to leave the comforts of their established surroundings—they had been there seventy years, about two generations—and undertake the arduous and hazardous journey back to Jerusalem and commence the long and difficult task of rebuilding the Temple. How did God ensure that would happen? He moved in the hearts of some of the people. Some years later we find these people rejoicing because God “[changed] the attitude of the king of Assyria, so that he assisted them in the work on the house of God” (Ezra 6:22). This was a later king, King Darius. So God moved in the hearts of two kings, one to start the project and another to keep it going, and He moved in the hearts of some of the Jewish people to respond. God does move people to accomplish His purpose.
Still another illustration of God’s influence in the heart of a heathen official is found in the life of Daniel. When Daniel had resolved not to defile himself with food from the king’s table—food spiritually contaminated by being offered first to idols, and perhaps even prepared from animals the Jews were not to eat—he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself that way. The Scripture then comments, “Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel” (Daniel 1:9).
Daniel’s request to the chief official was a difficult one—so difficult that the chief official’s first concern was for his own life if he granted Daniel’s request (see verse 10). Nevertheless, he granted the request. He granted it because God had first moved in his heart to show favor and sympathy to Daniel. He granted it because his heart was indeed in God’s hand, who directed it as He pleased.
One final instance from Scripture will suffice to show that God moves sovereignly in the lives of both Christians and non-Christians. Paul said of his colaborer Titus, “I thank God, who put into the heart of Titus the same concern I have for you. For Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but he is coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own initiative” (2 Corinthians 8:16-17). Titus’s actions are attributed by Paul to both God, who put a concern for the Corinthians into Titus’s heart, and to Titus, who acted with enthusiasm and on his own initiative. Titus acted freely, yet under the mysterious sovereign impulse of God.
We have seen that God can and does move in the hearts of people to show favor to us when that favor will accomplish His purpose. But there is still another important dimension to His sovereignty in the hearts of people; when necessary, God restrains people from decisions or actions that would harm us. An incident from the life of Abraham illustrates this.
In fear of his own life, Abraham lied about his wife, Sarah, saying she was his sister. As a result Abimelech moved to take Sarah as his wife. God, however, kept Abimelech from carrying out his plan. He said to Abimelech, “So I have kept you from sinning against me. That is why I did not let you touch her” (Genesis 20:6). God did not physically or circumstantially restrain Abimelech. He restrained him through his mind. For some reason, which probably Abimelech himself didn’t understand, he simply did not proceed to consummate a physical relationship with Sarah. God sovereignly intervened and protected the moral purity of Sarah, who was to be the mother of the promised son of Abraham. God could have intervened circumstantially to preserve Sarah’s purity, but He chose to do so through moving in some way upon Abimelech’s mind. He restrained Abimelech through moving upon his will.
Was Abimelech conscious that God was restraining him? No, the Scripture simply says that he had not gone near her (see verse 4). Abimelech chose of his own free will not to be with Sarah, but his choosing was under the sovereign control of God. This incident is even more amazing when we consider that Abraham had put Sarah in this difficult position through his own unbelief and sin. God did not excuse Abraham’s sin, but He did not let that stop Him from intervening in Abimelech’s mind to prevent the serious consequences of the sin.
On another occasion Abraham’s grandson Jacob set out with his family to move from Shechem to Bethel. Two of Jacob’s sons had just committed a heinous act against the people of the land, and it would be expected the people would have sought revenge. But Genesis 35:5 says, “Then they set out, and the terror of God fell upon the towns all around them so that no one pursued them.”
Terror or fear is a state of the mind usually induced by some external circumstances. In this case there do not appear to be any external circumstances to cause such terror. In fact, just the opposite was true. Just a few verses prior to Genesis 35:5, Jacob himself had said, “We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed” (Genesis 34:30). There was no reason why the Canaanites should not have swooped down upon Jacob and his family to avenge the crime of Jacob’s sons except that God restrained them through a fear that could not be rationally explained.
Returning again to the Temple builders we looked at previously in the book of Ezra, we find still another instance of God’s restraining hand. Before King Darius issued his decree that the rebuilding of the Temple was not to be stopped but even assisted from the royal treasury (see Ezra 6:6-10), the territorial governor and other officials had questioned the authority of the Jews to rebuild the Temple. They could have stopped the rebuilding progress until word was received from the king, but they did not. Why? The Scripture says, “But the eye of their God was watching over the elders of the Jews, and they were not stopped until a report could go to Darius and his written reply be received” (Ezra 5:5).
One of the strongest illustrations of God’s restraint of people is given to us in an almost passing comment in Exodus 34:23-24. God says in that passage:
Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel. I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the LORD your God. (emphasis added)
God commanded all the men to drop their normal activities three times a year to appear before Him. To appreciate the significance of this command, that would be equivalent today to our nation shutting down all its commerce, all its educational activities, and most crucial of all, furloughing all its military personnel simultaneously, and gathering all those people into one giant assembly three times a year. We can easily see how totally vulnerable and defenseless our nation would be before hostile powers on those three occasions each year.
Yet that is what God commanded Israel to do. But along with the command He promised them that no one would covet their land during those times when they were utterly defenseless. Not only would no other nations attack them, they would not even desire to do so. Covetousness—the evil desire for something belonging to another—is one of the most deeply rooted emotions in the human heart. The apostle Paul, who as a Pharisee could speak of his faultless outward observance of God’s Law (see Philippians 3:6), is finally exposed as a sinner by the command, “You shall not covet” (see Romans 7:7-8). He could refrain from stealing, but he could not of himself refrain from coveting.
Yet God said that no other nation would covet the land of the Israelites, even during their vulnerable and defenseless times. God can restrain not only people’s actions, but even their most deeply rooted desires. No part of the human heart is impervious to God’s sovereign but mysterious control.
I have used a number of illustrations from Scripture to document that God does move in the hearts of people—either positively to cause them to do His will or negatively to restrain them from doing what is contrary to His will. Too often, however, we tend to read these accounts merely as biblical history without relating them to our lives and our situations. But, as we have seen previously, Paul said, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). The stories of God moving the Egyptians to provide for the Israelites and restraining the surrounding nations from invading Israel are meant to teach us and encourage us. These stories are meant to teach us that God is sovereign over people and to encourage us by the knowledge that God exercises His sovereignty for our good.
DOES GOD PERMIT EVIL?
Of course, God does not always restrain the wicked and harmful actions of others toward His people. We see this even in the account of the rebuilding of the Temple. There was a period of perhaps ten years when the project was stopped due to opposition from the enemies of the Jews (see Ezra 4:6-24). We do not know why God allowed the enemies of His people to prevail at one time and restrained them at another. It is enough to know that God can and does restrain the harmful acts of others toward us when that is His sovereign will. Furthermore, God, in His infinite wisdom and love, intends that good ultimately comes from those harmful acts.
The classic, oft-quoted story of Joseph illustrates this truth so well. When Joseph’s brothers decided to sell him into slavery, God did not restrain them. Neither did He restrain Potiphar’s wife when she maliciously and unjustly accused him. But in God’s time He turned those circumstances around. God was orchestrating the wicked acts of people exactly as He planned in order to accomplish His purpose through Joseph. In the end, Joseph could look back over all the difficult events and say to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).
Commenting on Joseph’s story, Professor Berkouwer said,
Joseph’s brothers devise and execute their plans; aroused by jealousy they gradually commit themselves irrevocably to their chosen course. . . . Their evil plan achieves historical realization, but the historical events are products of the Divine activity. God’s good intents follow the mischievous path of the brothers or, rather, the brothers unwittingly follow the path that God has blazed. They work in His service. The purpose of God lights up the horizon of evil, jealous, malicious activity.[2]
Commenting on the same events, Alexander Carson said,
From the history of Joseph we may see that the same thing may be from man, in one point of view, and from God, in another; and that what man may do sinfully to the injury of the people of God, God may effect through them for the good of his people. It is man’s work, yet it is, in another view, God’s work.[3]
Sometimes, according to the Bible, God even moves in the hearts of some people to act stubbornly. “But Sihon king of Heshbon refused to let us pass through. For the LORD your God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to give him into your hands, as he has now done” (Deuteronomy 2:30). And again, “For it was the LORD himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses” (Joshua 11:20).
There are admittedly some difficult things to understand in both of these passages. My purpose is not to attempt an explanation but rather to exhibit once again the Bible’s consistent teaching that God is able and does move upon the hearts and minds of people to accomplish His purposes. Yet it also seems equally clear from these passages that God does this without violating or coercing their wills, but rather that He works in His mysterious way through their wills to accomplish His purposes. There is no doubt that Sihon and the Canaanite kings wanted to do exactly what the Scriptures say God caused them to do.
God is never at a loss because He cannot find someone to cooperate with Him in carrying out His plan. He so moves in the hearts of people—either Christians or non-Christians, it makes no difference—that they willingly, of their own free will carry out His plans. Do you need the good favor of a certain professor in order to get a good recommendation for a job? If that job is God’s plan for you, God is able to and will move in the heart of that professor to give you a good recommendation.
Are you dependent upon your boss (or your commanding officer) for advancement in your career? God will move in the heart of your boss or commander one way or the other, depending on God’s plan for you.
No one from the east or the west
or from the desert can exalt a man.
But it is God who judges:
He brings one down, he exalts another.
PSALM 75:6-7
Your promotion, or lack of it, is in the hand of God. Your superiors are simply His agents to carry out His will. They are not conscious of doing His will and never intended to (unless, of course, they are Christians prayerfully seeking to do the will of God), but that does not alter the result in your life. You can trust God in all the areas of your life where you are dependent upon the favor or frown of another person. God will move in that person’s heart to carry out His will for you.
THE PROBLEM OF GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY
Earlier I asked you to set aside for the moment the problem that is raised by the assertion of God’s sovereignty over people. We will now look at it briefly. As we do so, it will be helpful to keep in mind that the biblical writers never seemed to be aware of the problem, except for one statement by Paul in Romans 9:19-21. And Paul’s statement seems to raise more problems for us than it solves. So while the Bible asserts both God’s sovereignty and people’s freedom and moral responsibility, it never attempts to explain their relationship. As we seek to examine this question, there are three truths we need to consider.
The first is that God is infinite in His ways as well as His being. A finite mind simply cannot comprehend an infinite being beyond what He has expressly revealed to us. Because of this, some things about God will forever remain a mystery to us. The relationship of the sovereign will of God to the freedom and moral responsibility of people is one of those mysteries.
Basil Manly, one of the founding fathers of the Southern Baptist Convention, while commenting on this difficult subject in one of his sermons, said, “The Scriptures do not undertake to explain mysteries. They leave them unexplained. There is a difference between difficulties, and mysteries:—difficulties may be removed;—mysteries cannot, without a new revelation, or the bestowment of a higher intellect.”[4]
I believe one of our problems in dealing with this subject is that we tend to view the interaction between God and man on the same level as the interaction between man and man. In Psalm 50:21 God says, “You thought I was altogether like you.” While the context of those words is completely different from our subject, the statement is appropriate to it. We tend to think of God as being like us. We tend to think that God can act upon the human mind only in the same way we can. We can argue, persuade, or even coerce, but we cannot move a person’s will. Yet the Scriptures teach that God does move a person’s will, but in such a way that the person acts freely and voluntarily. Furthermore, sovereignty on a human plane suggests force and coercion, people doing things against their wills as in the subjection of slaves to masters, but the Scriptures never portray God’s sovereignty in this manner.
The second truth we must keep in mind is that God is never the author of sin. Though people’s sinful intents and actions serve the sovereign purpose of God, we must never conclude that God has induced anyone to sin. “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed” (James 1:13-14). It is frequently asserted in the Scriptures that God uses the sinful actions of men to accomplish His purposes (see, for example, Genesis 50:20; Acts 4:27-28; Revelation 17:17). But the fact that people’s sinful intents and actions serve the sovereign purpose of God does not make God the author of their sin nor make them any less culpable for their actions. God judges people for the very sins that He uses to carry out His purpose. This truth is taught in such passages as Isaiah 10:5-16 (we will look at this passage in another chapter).
The third truth to keep before us is that the Bible consistently portrays people as making real choices of their own will. There is never any suggestion in Scripture of people being mindless puppets moved by divine strings. Furthermore, the choices people make are moral choices; that is, people are held accountable by God for the choices they make. The actions of Judas, Herod, and Pilate were wicked acts even though done under the sovereign appointment of God. The selling of Joseph into slavery was a malicious, wicked act by his brothers, even though the act accomplished the sovereign purpose of God.
The Bible teaches both the sovereignty of God and the free moral choices of men with equal emphasis. Richard Fuller, the third president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said, “It is impossible for us to reject either of these great truths, and it is equally impossible for our minds to reconcile them.”[5]
But just as we must not misconstrue God’s sovereignty so as to make people mere puppets, so we must not press man’s freedom to the point of limiting God’s sovereignty. Professor Berkouwer again helps us when he says:
He who does injustice to this freedom [of the creature] does injustice to the Word of God, which already in paradise places man at a crossroad and gives him the choice of which road he will take. But in the light of Scripture, it is decisive that this creaturely freedom poses no threat or limitation to the sovereign and almighty Divine enterprise. . . . We are forced to direct ourselves to the Divine revelation which reveals to us the almighty activity of God and, at the same time, teaches human responsibility. . . . And anyone who does not take both this Divine ruling and human responsibility seriously can never rightly understand history.[6]
How shall we respond to the fact that God is able to and does in fact move in the minds and hearts of people to accomplish His will? Our first response should be one of trust. Our careers and destinies are in His hands, not the hands of bosses, commanding officers, professors, coaches, and all other people who, humanly speaking, are in a position to affect our futures. No one can harm you or jeopardize your future apart from the sovereign will of God. Moreover, God is able to and will grant you favor in the eyes of people who are in a position to do you good. You can entrust your future to God.
We should then look to God in prayer in all those situations where some aspect of our futures lies in the hands of another individual. As Alexander Carson said, “If we need the protection of men, let us first ask it from God. If we prevail with him, the power of the most mighty and of the most wicked must minister to our relief.”[7] When Queen Esther was to go before King Xerxes without being summoned—an act that would normally result in her being put to death—she asked Mordecai to gather all of the Jews together to fast (and presumably to pray) that the king would grant her favor. Esther did not presume to know God’s will—she said, “If I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16)—but she certainly knew that God controlled the king’s heart. Obviously we do not always know how God will answer our prayers, or if He will move in the heart of another individual, but it is enough to know that our destiny is in His hands, not those of other people.
Confidence in God’s sovereignty in the lives of people should also keep us from becoming resentful and bitter when we are treated unjustly or maliciously by others. Bitterness usually stems not so much from the other person’s actions as from the effects of those actions on our lives. Consider the following scenario in your life.
You have just been unjustly fired from your job for some reason entirely unrelated to your performance. After a couple of months of fruitless job hunting, you find yourself standing in the unemployment line. As you stand there you brood over the injustice perpetrated on you by your former boss. You are resentful and bitter.
Now suppose on the day you are unjustly fired, as you walk out the door, you meet a man looking for someone with your skill and experience who offers you a better job at twice the salary. There is one additional qualification: You must have had the experience of being unjustly fired. You gladly accept the job and thoroughly enjoy your new position. Do you ever become bitter? No, you think something such as, “I’m sure glad old Jones fired me. If he hadn’t, I would never have gotten this great job.” You see, it is the effects of your being fired, not the act itself, that determines whether you are tempted to become bitter.
Now God sometimes allows people to treat us unjustly. Sometimes He even allows their actions to seriously affect our careers or our futures viewed on a human plane. But God never allows people to make decisions about us that undermine His plan for us. God is for us, we are His children, He delights in us (see Zephaniah 3:17). And the Scripture says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). We can put this down as a bedrock truth: God will never allow any action against you that is not in accord with His will for you. And His will is always directed to our good.
Why then do we suffer such disappointment when the hoped for favor that we needed from another person doesn’t materialize? Why do we struggle with resentment and bitterness when someone else’s decision or action adversely affects us? Is it not because it is our plans that have been dashed, or our pride that has been wounded?
I once attended a seminar on the subject of Christians and stress. One of the speaker’s main points was that if we want to live less stressful lives, we must learn to live with a single agenda: God’s agenda. He pointed out that we tend to live under two agendas, ours and God’s, and that the tension between them sets up stress.
I think his expression—a single agenda—aptly applies to our discussion of trusting God in the arena of other people’s decisions in our lives. God is sovereign over people. He will move their hearts to cause them to do His will, or He will restrain them from doing anything contrary to His will. But it is His will, His agenda for our lives that God will guard, protect, and advance. We must learn to live by His agenda if we are to trust Him.
WORDS OF CAUTION
Before leaving this subject, there are some words of caution we need to consider lest we wrongly use the doctrine of God’s sovereignty over people.
First, we should never use the doctrine as an excuse for our own shortcomings. If you failed to get the promotion you had hoped for, or worse yet, you are fired from your job or fail an important exam, you need to first examine your life to see if perhaps the reason lay in your own performance. Though God rescued Abraham and Sarah from the folly of Abraham’s sin, He had not obligated Himself to do so. God has not promised to work in the heart of another individual just to make up for our shortcomings.
Second, we should not allow the doctrine of God’s sovereignty to cause us to respond passively to the actions of other people that affect us. We should take all reasonable steps within the will of God to protect and advance our situation. I say within the will of God because there may be other reasons, for the sake of God’s kingdom, why we should not take those steps. But the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, considered by itself, should never be used to promote passivity.
Third, we must never use the doctrine of God’s sovereignty to excuse our own sinful actions or decisions that hurt another person. We must never say, “Well, I made a mistake, but it’s okay because God is sovereign.” God is indeed sovereign in that other person’s life, and He may choose to use our sinful actions to accomplish His will. But He will still hold us accountable for our harmful decisions and sinful actions.
A Scripture passage that can help us keep the doctrine of God’s sovereignty in perspective is Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” We do not know what God’s sovereign will is. We do not know how He will work in the heart of another individual, whether favorably or unfavorably from our viewpoint. That is in the realm of the “secret things” that are not revealed to us. We do know He will work to accomplish His purpose, which is ultimately for our good.
Our duty, then, is to obey the “things revealed,” that is, the will of God as revealed in Scripture for every area of life. Scripture teaches us to be prudent, conscientious, and responsible, and to do our jobs or our studies as best we can. If we find that, in spite of our best efforts, a superior or a teacher regards us unfavorably, we must then trust God for the eventual outcome of that relationship. Sometimes God will change the person’s attitude toward us. At other times, He may even allow it to grow worse. In either case, the person’s heart is in God’s hands. He will direct it according to His sovereign purpose for His glory and our good.