(Ver 1.1) This will be “Part 1” in a series, concerning one of the essential subjects in Understanding God’s “Sovereignty”. This is a Bible Basic topic that is needed to be understood so that we as Christians know what is happening to us and why. But this lesson will attempt to teach new Christians and continuing disciples of Jesus that desire to know God’s Word of Truth, the basic concepts of balancing God’s “sovereignty”, with His revealed, integrity, nature, and character written in His Holy Word.

Today’s lesson is specifically and entirely focused on introducing the controversial and massively misunderstood subject of God’s “Sovereignty”. The Bible has a substantial amount of information on this subject. We can find examples of God’s sovereignty from Genesis to Revelation. But many times, people take these concepts as the only truth, ignoring all other truths.

There are numerous beliefs to what this word “sovereignty” means, and many range from one extreme of error even continuing to the opposite realm of extreme error. In today’s lesson will learn a little bit of what God’s sovereignty represents, but mainly focus a lot on what God’s sovereignty is not. Here are two major extreme areas of certain error:

1. The first extreme area of error is that God is absolutely “sovereign” and is in control of everything that happens in the world down to the smallest detail. This belief states God plans even evil to achieve an ending good result for the goal to win the final game. It is like sacrificing your pawn in chess as a necessary evil, to later gain a more significant advantage over your enemy. This is commonly based upon the Book of Job and an incorrect interpretation of what is revealed to be happening.
2. The opposite extreme of error is an atheistic viewpoint that there is no God that is helping or doing anything to stop evil and therefore everything that happens is an accidental fate, or chance. Many call this Murphy’s Law, being based upon the humanistic “bad luck” theory of existence. This belief conforms to “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong” or even saying, “Whatever, will be, will be”, both not involving the existence of a God that created us, loved us, and wants to help us.

Both extremes are ignorant realms of belief that were intentionally designed by Satan, to potentially lead humans to their demise (Hosea 4:6). Too many Christian minds have been vastly influenced to be deceived into believing corrupted meanings of God’s definition of this word “sovereign”. These tricks of deception can cause some people, even the real saved Christians to believe that everything that happens to us in the world, whether it be something good, or evil, it must be a “sovereign” work of God’s powerful, forceful, and controlling hand. But is that what the Bible teaches us when we want to see God’s actual rightly divided and balanced TRUTH?

In this lesson we will be looking at a lot of Bible verses that may not normally be taught on this subject of the Sovereignty of God. Some of these things we will be looking for our answers to how we address the difficult questions asked by too many people in the church and in the world. For example:

1. Is God only good? Or is God only evil? Or is God both?
2. Is God’s Will Always Done?
   • If “no”, why not?
   • If “yes”, does anyone else have the free will to choose anything? Does God override the will of others?
3. Does God intentionally use evil to achieve and ending that is “good”?
4. Does God use evil to correct or train His creation?
5. If God is “good” and “sovereign”, why does He permit “evil”?
6. If Satan is the source of evil, why didn’t God throw him into hell instantly the moment evil was discovered?
7. Why does God warn us about people who call good evil and evil good, if His will is always done?

These are all great questions, and you may have others that need to be addressed. If this is true, please leave them in a comment.

Always know that there is a real God, who created everything, He is a God who is very concerned with saving people out of going to hell. This is a major fact of scripture. After all, for our God to come to the earth to become an intimate part of His own creation to personally die on a cross to shed His blood to save us, was the ultimate display of Love from anyone! We can also see that the choice to become a human to die is one of the greatest examples of the “sovereignty” of God. But even this choice must be balanced with the motivation of God’s “Love”, as being one of the primary reasons for this divine sovereign choice. Let us begin to go through the Bible to study this subject, to find if God is to blame for all “evil”.

Here are the topics that will be covered today:

1. Our Most Basic Question. Is God Sovereign?
2. Knowing and Balancing All of God’s Divine Characteristics
3. What God’s Sovereignty Is Not
4. Rightly Dividing God’s Word. Balancing Sovereignty in the Bible.
5. Human Ways are Not God’s Ways
6. Another Deception: Is Lucifer the Sovereign God’s Servant
7. Conclusion

Our Most Basic Question
Is God Sovereign?

No one should ever claim that GOD is not Sovereign. If this is done, this is the first indicator of deception taking place. For example, teaching evolution without the inclusion of God’s intelligent design and hands on involvement is a major extreme lie. Nothing comes into intelligent order as our universe is, without the involvement of a far superior designer.

Therefore, when God created the entire perceivable universe without obtaining our permission or advice to how it should be made, as we know He did (Ps 33:6), this clearly demonstrates His highest ability to do anything that He pleases.

Then for us to know that He adds humans one by one onto the earth today, in certain locations born to very specific parents without asking permission of any of us that are here, this again signifies the sovereign nature of God. We can clearly see that God did not ask any human if they wanted to participate in His creation, to be born into this combination of a good and very evil world.

Not even the first created human that God called Adam, was a willing participant (Gen 2:7). Nor was Adam’s wife called Eve, asked if she wanted to become the mother of all the living on the earth (Gen 2:18). Neither Adam nor Eve participated in how they were created. No human has ever been asked about their opinion if they desired to participate within creation or that they should have a say in God’s callings, giftings and talents that were given to each of us (1 Cor 2:11).

No human was asked how tall they wanted to be. No human was asked what color hair, what shade of skin, what eye color, what sexual gender, etc. These are all visible signposts of God’s sovereign works. These can be easily found everywhere, and in everyone.

Let us go back before humans were created and enquire were any of the angels asked about their participation before they were created to serve God? Were any of the angels of God asked what role they would play in the Kingdom of Heaven? Were they also created without asking for their approval to cooperate or obey their Creator? If you can find a verse in the Bible that says God needed to check with anyone before they were created, please share it with everyone.

All these facts demonstrate that God is sovereign, and He has far superior abilities and knowledge over any of us. Therefore, if everything came from Him, this logically makes Him greater than everything else that was made by His hands.

This would be analogous to a human creating a rocket ship. The created ship would be of no ability to create itself without the maker’s involvement. Therefore, the created rocket ship would be subject to its sovereign human creator because it had no say for its existence or purpose to be created without the creator’s participation to design it.

But there might be some difficulty or challenge for us to be in complete unity and agreement when we are trying to define the word “sovereign” in the created human relationship with our creator God. This is because humans are not inanimate objects like a rocket ship that is void of emotions, memories, mental reasoning abilities, freewill choice rights, strength, power, etc. Humans were created far differently than a rocket ship that is only capable of an artificial intellect.

Humans were made in the “image” and “likeness” of their creator God (Gen 1:26). This means humans are more like God than any other part of His creation. A human is not a monkey, nor a whale, nor a cow, nor a bird, nor an insect, etc., nor like any of those that cannot comprehend, understand, create, speak, love, or believe. Humans were even created on a higher level than angels (Ps 8:4-5). In these verses the word translated as “angels” should have been “God” (Elohim).

God made us to be and to act exactly like Him (Ephesians 5:1). Therefore, whatever God is, we were made to be of the same class and pattern of similarity with Him but on a slightly lower order (Psalm 8:5).

Knowing and Balancing
All of God’s Divine Characteristics

To define and understand God’s “sovereignty”, we must also know that God possesses other major qualities that are as strong and/or equal as being sovereign. Every one of His God revealed qualities must be balanced together with each of the other qualities. In other words, one God quality is not going to conflict, contradict or oppose any other of God’s personality characteristics. Here is a quick list of some of the major reveal characteristics describing God. He is:

1. Holy
2. Eternal
3. Immutable
4. Omnipotent
5. Omnipresent
6. Omniscient
7. God is LOVE
8. Reigns as Sovereign

This list represents the basis of absolute “truth” concerning God’s unchanging personality and characteristics. Each of these qualities could be a separate lesson series. Therefore, they will only be mentioned in a very short introduction of each sub-topic of our main subject of “sovereignty”.

First notice that God is said to be “Holy”. This is an essential topic to know about God. Revelation 4:8 describes 4 created beings that surround the throne of God and day and night, they cry “Holy, Holy, Holy” to the “Lord God Almighty”. This verse also says they are crying “to Him that was, is, and is to come”. This verse is amazing because it mentions 3 of God’s qualities at the same time. Did you see them? These were Him being “Holy”, Him being “Almighty”, and Him being “Eternal”.

Notice that these creatures are declaring with the emphasis of saying it three times, God is exceptionally Holy. Holiness appears to be one of God’s most awesome qualities of needed focus and emphasis. Therefore, this word and description can never be omitted when discussing any other divine characteristic like the concept of what is “sovereignty”.

To be “Holy” must include at the minimum, that God is “Pure”, “Sinless” (Morally Blameless), and it certainly implies that God is of the Highest order of “Perfection” apart from “sin”. This simply means God would never desire to do evil, be evil, or be judged as evil. He is clearly so “Pure” that there is no possibility of evil intents or desires to be in Him.

Next, God is eternal with no beginning and no end (Ps 90:2). Placing this together with God’s Holiness that teaches us there is no existence of “sin” or “evil” in Him, in the past, present, or future. This is more important than you know when defining the word “sovereign”. This simply means there are possible “evil” sovereign rulers that people try to imagine God to be like, and this is impossible based upon His Supreme Holiness.

Next, most agree that God is not shifting, variable or ever changing, and this is called being “immutable” (Mal 3:6, James 1:17). This quality of being unchangeable, combined with God’s quality of Holiness means we can depend upon and trust in what God promises us. If God promised us anything in His Word, it is a violation of divine moral character for God to change His mind. This makes it impossible for God to break a promise unlike humans. We confirm this by reading Hebrews 6:18 where it is clearly stated that it is “Impossible for God to Lie”.

Therefore, we just learned another “limitation” to what it means to be “sovereign” when applied to “God”. We have discovered that God will never “Change”, “Sin” or “Lie” even if He could, because it would violate His true unchanging character and moral values.

Next, God is said to be “omnipotent”, meaning He has supreme power (Col 1:16, Ps 19:1-4, Heb 1:3). This simply teaches that with ultimate power, God is certainly capable of doing anything. Again, this supreme power must be confined to the self-imposed limitations that God has placed upon Himself by His sovereign will. This reveals another quality that God possesses. It is called “self-control”. This means God has enough power to not get angry and say and do things that He would regret later.

Next, most agree that God is “omnipresent”, meaning there is no place where we can be, that He is not already there.  Proverbs 15:3 says, “God’s eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good”. This simply means there is no location whether the created natural realm or the spiritual eternal realm, where God is not, which brings us to the next quality omniscient.

The next quality is about God being called “omniscient”. This word means there is nothing that God does not already know (Ps 139:1-6). This means, He sees all, hears all, knows all and is the only one that can always judge righteously in all matters. This literally means that God knows all the internal thoughts and intents of the human mind and heart, even if they are not spoken. Wow!

Next, let us consider what 1 John 4:8 teaches us. In this verse of scripture, God claims Himself to be LOVE. This does not say He has Love; it is more direct to be used as a noun and not a verb. Love as a verb denotes a potential emotional state of varying degrees and potential to shift to the opposite extreme of “hate”. But this would contradict with the immutability of God.

Therefore, every other characteristic of God must be defined in relationship to what Love is as defined by God. We can learn this type of divine love by reading 1 Corinthians 13:1-8. These verses describe a supernatural experience of a type of LOVE that few if any humans have fully attained. This type of LOVE is always patient, always kind and that causes most people to fall short immediately.

This type of LOVE only thinks good God thoughts towards every human, again what human has attained to this? But word descriptions like this give us a picture of a much different type of God than most know or understand. Therefore, we must apply all these words in this verse to our definition of the concept of God’s sovereignty.

Finally, God is considered “sovereign”. Meaning He does not answer to any higher authority. But as we have discovered God has implemented self-imposed limitations upon His desires, thoughts, choices, and actions, that will reduce the scope of God’s choices that He is willing to make. Let us talk about this subject more next.

What God’s Sovereignty Is Not

We are about to discover one variation of a wrong type of sovereignty that is being cast upon God to violate His character and nature that we have just learned. Remember whatever our understanding of “sovereignty” is, it cannot corrupt God’s Good character or standards of moral values.

What does it mean to you, for God to be sovereign? How exactly would you define this word? Does this word mean to you that God is making everything that happens to you whether good or evil to happen? Does God’s sovereignty mean that He is making the angels do everything that they do? Does God’s sovereignty mean that He is controlling every moment of your day, your thoughts, your actions, what you say, what you eat, when you sleep, etc., and that He has made you to be an unwilling participant to not be able to choose anything for yourself?

We could not agree with that type of definition of “sovereignty” in any way. That would make God the creator, a maker of mechanical angels and humans that were only made to be game pieces in a complex game for God to sovereignly move around and control. This would further cause us to believe that we were only made to be like mindless robots, and God was the string-pulling puppet master and our programmer, controlling us all through methods of divine robotic programming.

However, this is what many preachers preach. We have heard preachers say something like, “God has everything under control”. This phrase can be heard on many popular Christian television networks and ministry teachings. But is this a true statement as it is believed? Does God have complete control over the thoughts, motives and acts of every human, angel, devil, or demon within His creation? If He does, then God has a severe problem for us to understand His true nature, characteristics, and moral values based upon what we see all His creation doing to each other.

If God has everything under His full powerful control, and He causes everything on the earth that people claim to happen, our God comes across to us as looking to have a shifting an ever-changing set of values based upon favoritism to be good to some and evil to others. Wouldn’t this cause our God to appear to be double minded or to have a schizophrenic personality? The word schizophrenic comes from two Greek words meaning “split” and “mind”. This sounds like the word “double-minded” we have read about in the Bible.

Would God tell us to not be double-minded (James 1:8) and it would be fine for Him to be this way? If this is correct, then this belief contradicts with being made in His image. No scripture when correctly interpreted is in contradiction with any other.  James 1:8 informs us that a human that is double minded is unstable in all their ways. Then take what God says in James 2:1 and learn that if we have any respect of one person over another, we are committing sin.

Apply what God says to us (His creation made in His image) back to Himself as our Creator. Being made in His image and after His likeness, it is logical to conclude that as He is, we should be the same. Therefore, God must not be double minded or show favoritism, since this is what He instructs us to do. If God is double minded, He also would be unstable, unreliable, and we could not depend upon anything that He would ever say or do. If God has one respect for one person over any other, He too would be guilty of the sin that He told us not to do.

Therefore, to kill some people and then to save others clearly is both double minded and a respect of some people over others. This is very troubling to see that this is how some people believe God is. Consequently, if being made in His image, we are instructed to be single minded and no respecter of persons, that must be how God is also.

But this wrong definition of sovereignty to mean controlling everything, is exactly what people claim God is doing, without realizing it, when they say God creates earthquakes, tornados, cyclones, tsunamis, floods, rockslides, avalanches, etc., that can potentially kill thousands of people instantly. What about plane crashes, automobile wrecks, buses going off a bridge into a river, boats being capsized by a storm, trains that derailed, wildfires started by a man or lightning, terrorist bombs, etc. What about wars between nations where there are many deaths of the populations?

If God is creating situations to kill people today, after He personally came to the earth 2000 years ago, to save all these people (Jn 3:16) that are claimed to have died by an act of God, this is the type of behavior of a split personality like a Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of God. This type of God would cause us all to ask, “Whose personality will manifest today?” If you do not know the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde it is based upon a fictional story about a single man that takes the appearance as being two kinds of men. One appeared evil and the other was good.

Are we not living in the church age of divine Grace and favor? Most educated Bible scholars agree that we are in the “Dispensation of Grace”. If so, can we trust in and depend upon a loving and caring covenant God to continue in this covenant until the end? Or do we need to fear the hand of God to kill us and throw us into hell suddenly and unexpectantly because we have had a bad day or have made a mistake and lack His perfection? Or maybe we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, where an evil was happening? Were these God’s doings?

In insurance policies and on news programs, they claim many types of natural disasters are “Acts of God” implying sovereign control and intentions. In church funerals some claim that a premature death of a child was for God’s unknown purpose and plan, and it was known by God’s will and purpose to be for good, and it will work out all for our good also eventually. Therefore, God gets the blame for killing innocent children.

Too many preachers claim God’s ways are mysterious and beyond our ability to comprehend so that we are unable to know or understand why our spouse died young. But they claim after we die and go to heaven, we will suddenly be able to understand it. Other preachers just say, “it was just their time to go”. These types of statements imply to us that every death that has occurred on our planet was a “God” designed, planned, and timed event.

We have only begun to see that none of these types of works should be found in the definition of God’s sovereignty. We are only beginning to see what a one sided and perverted definition of “sovereignty” is. Now let us begin to learn what the Bible says about how to rightly divide God’s word.

Rightly Dividing God’s Word
Balancing Sovereignty in the Bible

We have just briefly discussed one area of extreme “sovereignty” where God is accused of doing every evil type of work against His creation. But “Extremism” is just one potential way to bring error into understanding God’s Word. There is a second major popular source for “error” and “misunderstanding” of the Bible called “exalting one truth to be the only truth” of scripture.

Do you know how many truths are given to us by God in the Bible? There are more truths given to us by God than we can know or understand completely. This knowledge teaches us that what we know about a subject is far less than what we need to learn about the subject. It is pride to believe that any of us are experts on any subject. Only God understands it all.

What does it mean to “exalt” one truth. This simply occurs when a person takes a single verse of scripture to be the only truth, in exclusion to every other verse of scripture truth. This practice of “making a truth” the highest “truth”, promotes one limited amount of truth to be the only truth that is needed to understand the subject fully. But this is a major cause of wrong interpretations and understandings.

God’s book of truth is comprised of limitless threads of precisely chosen words containing specifically selected alphabet letters where each word is very exactly placed in what many people would describe as being in random order. But that belief of randomness is wrong. Every single letter, word, sentence, paragraph, and book has infinite wisdom hidden in its design. This book was written by the “All Knowing” God. He knows exactly why every word was chosen and why it was placed at its location in the Bible.

But we still know that any Bible subject can be found anywhere in the Bible, from the beginning to the end. Any word and subject can be defined, explained, and commented upon by God anywhere else in the Bible He chooses. God can describe ending future events in the first chapter of Genesis. God can describe pre-creation events before humans, in Ezekiel and Isiah or anywhere else He selects. Therefore, not everything in the Bible is in “chronological” order. In fact, most things are not in exact timed order.

Also, God can teach a subject, by providing just a living example of it, without ever mentioning the subject being described or taught. For example, Hebrews chapter 11 is what many call the “Hall of Faith”. In this chapter God describes that each of these mentioned people exhibited significant levels of faith yet reading the stories in the Old Testament in isolation, you would never know this was one of the key subjects being taught.

But one of the most essential elements of understanding scriptures is to understand they are “ALL” about Jesus Christ in some way, even if it is hidden from plain view (Jn 5:39, Rev 1:8). These are just some of the examples of God’s “sovereignty” to how He chooses to lay out truth in the Bible. Not everything is obviously stated, God has sovereignly chosen to hide many truths (Prov 25:2).

This simply means when we look at one verse of scripture, in one book of the Bible, and we are not seeing the other threads on the same subject we are omitting some potentially valuable information to understand our desired subject.

However, each thread of truth overlaps other threads of truth to bring even more revelations of truth connections. Always remember that the ultimate big picture of the Bible will reveal and lead us to Jesus, including every alphabet letter, word, sentence, scripture, chapter, and book, will only guide us to the masterfully designed big-picture image of the knowledge of Jesus (Eph 1:17).

The Bible is like an intricate woven fabric of Truths with many of them placed in what appears to be random order of diversely scattered patterns. God can even in one single verse cause an overlap of multiple threads of truth subjects to be discussed and revealed. These threads can tell a natural story on the surface and a hidden prophetical spiritual story in the same words. This is why we need the Author of the Bible to live in us, to help us and guide us into what He wants to teach us about any given subject.

2Ti 2:15  Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 

Why is it necessary for us to rightly “divide” God’s Word? This is a great question. It first teaches us that there are many potential ways to wrongly divide it. We can hear many conflicting viewpoints on scriptures concerning the subject of “sovereignty”, but we must realize that only God’s viewpoint will prevail if we accept it.

Does this mean this lesson on sovereignty is the only right one? Absolutely not, every Bible teacher is ignorant of the complete truth that only God knows. This lesson while not perfect will present how God has revealed the subject to one teacher. You are required to study to show yourself approved as we have just read, to verify everything that is taught here is what God shows you to also be true (Acts 17:11).

We have just explored some basics about one extreme position of authority, that many believe is in error, including us. This belief system discounts human responsibility and participation in the plan of God for our lives. There are too many people that are blaming God for something bad that has happened to them, and we are about to further see in this section that it was not God that was doing it. Let us begin to analyze how to rightly divide the subject of God’s sovereignty.

Are words spoken by people blaming God for evil, truthful? Does any of these types of words that are blaming God for evils and deaths, help us to be comforted in our times of grief? No, they do not. This is because they are not based upon the fuller balanced truth. These types of beliefs and descriptions of God committing evil to kill children, men, women, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, etc., conflict with the real Bible when discovered, rightly divided, balanced, and understood. Look at this Bible verse to learn a set of necessary new subjects that will help us begin to understand God’s truth on “sovereignty”:

Joh 10:10  The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Uh oh! The concept of “sovereignty” or being “sovereign” is never mentioned in this verse. Therefore, what does it have to do with our subject? This is just one example of how a subject can be hidden within words that never mention a study subject directly.

What we should first know is that this verse came from words spoken by Jesus Christ while on the earth. Therefore, this is the sovereign God manifested in the flesh who is speaking. Knowing this fact alone, it must have something to do with our subject even if it is not directly stated.

Let us begin by asking a basic question. If God is completely sovereign and His will is always done, why is there a thief on God’s created earth who is stealing, killing, and destroying His creation and his created people?  Why doesn’t God do something about this part of His creation while He is encountering him in person?

Based upon what some people believe about God they are claiming God is either the thief or He must be allowing the evil one to do these evil works. Is this “thief”, God’s manifested evil sided personality and mind? If so, this means He is committing evil. But did you ever see Jesus commit any evil acts while on the earth? Jesus very plainly stated, “When you have seen me, you have seen my Father”. Therefore, whatever Jesus did on the earth is a revelation of the true nature of God. Consequently, this teaches us that God is not doing evil from heaven to anyone.

Or is God who is described to be abundant in goodness just allowing evil to occur? If He is allowing evil to exist, why? Does this mean the omnipotent and omniscient God who certainly had the power, ability, and the knowledge to stop all evil has chosen intentionally to ignore evil and just allow it to go uncontrolled?

We also know that God is not this thief because Jesus (God in the flesh) is comparing Himself in John 10:10 to be the life giver, and this is described in direct contrast and opposition to this thief that kills. Therefore, they must be two separate “living beings”, one that is God/Good, and one that is the devil/evil.

It is interesting to see even the words are connected to show what each are. One adds another “o” to “God” to reveal Him as “good”, and the other removes the letter “d” from “devil” to reveal him as evil. Therefore, God “adds”, and the devil “subtracts” and takes away. This is very profound to see. If you apply this knowledge to understanding the book of “Job”, you will figure out who to blame for what.

We must also logically conclude that since God has not fully dealt with this being that is the source of all evil, there must be some reasons why God has not ended this wicked one’s involvement from human life completely. In fact, if you study this out in the Bible, this devil will not be permanently removed until over 1000 years from now. There will be a 1000-year period that he will be confined in the pit, but God releases him for a short time after this to deceive people again (Rev 20:7-8). Wow, there is something going on here that too many Christians are completely ignorant of.

We may get into these reasons later, but the basis of the answer is based upon God’s character that we learned about earlier. God is also the “Righteous Judge” of all His creation, and whatever He does must not violate His standards of “Holiness” or “Righteousness” (Gen 18:25, 2 Pet 2:23). Since many do not understand what this is, they assume incorrectly that God can do anything, anytime, in any way He desires. But as we have seen God has placed self-imposed restrictions based upon His nature and character that limit His “sovereign” involvement.

Let us look at another verse to confirm what we are learning in John 10:10:

Act 10:38  How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.

We also can know from reading here in Acts 10:38 that God anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and power so that He could go around doing “Good” to heal all those that were oppressed of the “devil”. This verse is the same contrast given to us in John 10:10 comparing two works of opposition. The one true God is described to be “good”, and the “other” created spirit called the devil is contrasted to be “evil”.

Acts 10:38 further confirms that Jesus the Son of God is “good”. Jesus did good because His heavenly Father anointed Him, with His own Holy Spirit who must also be the source for all “good” (James 1:17). This additionally teaches us a new overlapping truth to why Jesus was not able to do sovereign works as God on the earth. It would not be necessary for Jesus to be anointed if God was manifested in His Son Jesus in His full deity powers, and abilities on the earth.

We learn from reading the book of Philippians that God chose to be manifested on the earth as the man Jesus in the normal likeness of other humans. He was able to do supernatural wonders on the earth only because He was anointed by God to perform these miraculous signs (Acts 10:38).

Philippians 2:7 declares an essential truth to us, about this sovereign God decision. God in Heaven sovereignly chose to become a human on the earth and specifically selected to remove Himself from manifesting His Sovereign powers and abilities while here. He did this to specifically live a life like us, to show us what we would be capable of doing with His anointing upon us.

This was certainly a “Sovereign” right of God to do this, wasn’t it? Please do not try to tell anyone that the “sovereign” God can’t do this if He chooses to do so? No one was asked by God for their permission. No one was consulted about it being ok. Therefore, to try to say that God can’t or won’t do this would violate many people’s definition of what it is to be sovereign, or it would make the Bible a book of fiction to contradict Philippians 2:7. According to many, God can do anything he chooses at any time He chooses, right? If not, God is not sovereign.

What some of us have just discovered is that there are two opposing spiritual forces of; 1) God who is good, and 2) the devil that is evil. No Satan is not a match for the Creator God, but he appears to not know this. Nevertheless, Satan is here on the earth and Paul called him the “god of this world” even after Jesus died (2 Cor 4:4). We can then see that we have a lower case “g” “god” that is opposing the “upper Case “G” “God”. But technically there were no capital letters in the Greek language and the same Greek word G2316, is describing them both.

Therefore, we need to learn more about why the “god” Satan is legally here on the earth, and why God reveals to us that He can’t or won’t do anything about him until a certain time in the soon coming future. Most do not understand how God has sovereignly designed the concept of “time” to work. We may be able to touch on this more later. But for now, let us move to another way people incorrectly define God’s Sovereignty.

Human Ways are Not God’s Ways

God has chosen to sovereignly do some things that appear very foolish to the religiously wise of the earth. 1 Corinthians 1:27 plainly states that, “God has chosen the foolish things of our world in order to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of our world, to confound those that think they are mighty”.

Remember that Acts 10:38 additionally confirmed that Satan, aka the devil was the one and only source of the evil works that made all people on earth to be sick and diseased, which must have been intended to potentially kill these people. But Jesus came into the world to reverse this evil by healing them and restoring them to a life of health (Jn 10:10). But look at this verse and what God reveals about His ways that can appear “foolish” to some.

Isa 55:8  For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

Notice what God says about the differences between created humans and their creator God. He very plainly says that His thoughts and ways of thinking are not like our natural human ways. Neither are our ways of doing things close to how God chooses to do things. This simply means if we are applying our biased thoughts to the definition of His “sovereign” acts, we are probably very wrong.

We can see many examples, of God doing things in ways that are not normal according to how a human would do them. For God to offer His righteousness, salvation, grace, and mercy to us for free when we have not earned it, causes the religious mind to bend.  Religion wants to earn their salvation, deliverance, and healing, but this would give humans a right to brag and be proud (Eph 2:8-9). God is not going to allow that to happen.

This was only a reminder to not think carnally when attempting to understand how to define “sovereign”. God’s idea of being “sovereign” is very far from a religious mindset. If we attempt to define God’s sovereignty to be like human examples, using human governments standards or religious definitions, we are far from His perfection.

Another Deception: Is Lucifer the Sovereign God’s Servant
who Obeys Consistently?

There have been some Christians that have believed a slightly differing variation of potential deception. These mostly claim that the John 10:10 “thief”, and the “oppressor” of Acts 10:38, is the devil (aka Lucifer and Satan), but they believe that the devil only performs works “for” God as He sovereignly commands. This type of belief the acts were God initiated and Satan is performing works of evil because of God’s purpose and plan.

Others further believe that Satan desires to do evil to everyone but can only do these evil things to God’s creation, after he can obtain God’s directive, or permission to kill, steal and destroy humans. This type of belief is another variation of extreme “sovereign” control of God over everything that occurs in creation but shifts part of the blame to it being Satan’s desire to ask for permission and God’s agreement that it would work out something for good for His usage also.

However, this type of belief violates the basic laws of correct interpretation of all balanced truth. It has elements of partial truth that are being mixed with untruths, resulting in a drink of potential poisonous belief. Remember that we have already seen verses in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 that described the beginning of Lucifer. It is revealed plainly that Lucifer revolted by His own freewill choices to cause pride and sin to be formed inside of him. He was created with neither of these characteristics.

Now, let us just use some basic common sense to begin to understand how this belief is false. For example, no thief on earth would ever ask anyone for their permission to steal or rob from anyone. That just violates the known operandi of a thief. Thieves are lawless by nature and will ignore sovereign governments. They are normally self-centered and motivated by greed. They have no value system for the care of other’s lives or property. They love to work under the cover of darkness and God is only light (1 Jn 1:5).

Can you find a verse in the Bible that informs us about Satan asking for permission to revolt against the Kingdom of God? Can you find a verse of scripture in the Bible where God caused the sinful revolt of Satan against Him? This is the downfall of too many people’s belief about what it means that God is “sovereign”. People are ignoring the sovereign design of God to create beings that have their own “freewill” to make independent choices apart from His sovereign will and desires. Don’t believe this? Look at this verse:

Joh 4:23  But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

What does it mean to “seek”? This word represents an act of “searching” for something desired. Do we ignore this definition and word choice because God is sovereign and always makes happen what He wants to happen, when He wants it to happen? This logically does not make sense and directly contradicts this truth of the scripture.

This verse in John 4:23 is very clearly stating that God is looking for people (who have a freewill choice), to decide to come after Him with their whole heart (spirit). This is the heart’s desire of our Creator. At the time when Jesus spoke this, there were obviously few to none of these types of people on the earth. In fact, Jesus confirmed this when saying, “This people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips, but their heart (spirit) is far from me.” (Mat 15:8). We can very clearly see that God wants people that want Him and is not forcing us to do what He desires us to do. Let us look at another verse in the New Testament concerning the subject of human responsibility:

1Pe 5:8  Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

God is warning Christians of providing the devil a point of “access” like an unlocking or the “opening of a door”. This is exactly what 1 Peter 5:8 warns us about. In this verse God says, “Be sober and vigilant, for your adversary the devil, goes about seeking whom he may devour”. The fact that God warns Christians to be sober (not drunk) and awake (not asleep), indicates that we could be living today in a state of unawareness God calls “darkness”, that opens the door for Satan to gain an advantage over us (2 Cor 2:11).

Can we agree that 1 Peter 5:8 is about humans being awake because the devil who rules the darkness is trying to destroy us? Remember normal natural people only sleep in darkness. God appears to be alerting us (the saved spiritually awakened) not to fall back into Satan’s territory of evil within the kingdom of darkness. The Lord is saying that when we leave the Kingdom of God, to drift back into Satan’s domain, we are very easy to be devoured.

Col 1:12  Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:

Col 1:13  Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:

See what God confirms to Christians saying, God has made us able to become saints in the light. This is God’s New Covenant Kingdom in Jesus Christ. We can clearly see this in verse 13 where God says, He has sovereignly delivered us from the authority of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son.

Now we are learning something very essential for us to know. There are two spiritual kingdoms of authority upon the earth. We can see them described in these two verses of Colossians. There is the Kingdom of the dear Son of God which is called “Light” exclusively. Versus the kingdom of evil that has only those that are spiritually asleep or drunk in darkness.

Kingdom of Light heirs are the saved saints, that God has sovereignly translated and moved out of the authority of darkness (Rom 13;12). These are the believers in Jesus. Are you in God’s Kingdom of Light and Day (1 Ths 5:5)? If you are, remain there! Submit yourself to God daily and resist the devil and the devil will flee from you (Jas 4:7).

Did you notice in the last paragraph we had God’s sovereign choices to how we were saved taking place? But did you also notice there was an implied human participation to us being saved? This necessitates us balancing several scriptural truths to obtain a higher truth understanding. We saw this in a previous verse of John 4:23 where God desired true worshippers but needed humans to have the same desire for Him.

There is a very significant sovereign God side to human salvation, but He does not force us to be saved. This means humans are required to choose what they “hear”, and “believe”. We either believe in God and His Word, or we reject it and are lost (Mk 16:16).

But we know that once we choose to believe and receive His sovereign gift of Salvation, this clearly means God (Light) is not our enemy and is not working with or controlling Satan (darkness) to direct him how he is to come against us. Remember what God reveals about Himself in 1 John 1:5. Here God says, “God is Light, and Him is No darkness!”. This clearly states Light (God) does not associate or cooperate with darkness (evil).

Ask yourself, why would God warn His people in the kingdom of light, if He is the one that is sending this enemy of darkness to teach us a lesson? No, this verse 1 Peter 5:8, clearly reveals our adversary the devil, is not sent from God! Therefore, Satan is not working for God. And there can be “no” covenant, cooperation, or agreement between them.

These verses concretely confirm God is not in total “sovereign” control of humans or the devil, or the events that occur on the earth. We have freewill choices that must be made in obedience to determine our outcome of being devoured or not. God has very clearly written to Christians; to “Fight” (1 Tim 6:12), to “Resist” (Jas 4:7), to “Overcome” (Rev 21:7), to “Reign” (Rom 5:17), “Hold Fast” (1 Ths 5:21) and many other commands. Do you see how God is assigning humans responsibility to be saved? In other words, God still desires humans that want to know Him.

Wouldn’t this make sense that the sovereign God has made a sovereign choice to delegate authority and responsibilities to His creation, and if we choose to not do them, He won’t? God would not warn the people about the devil coming before He sent the devil. If He had sent the devil, we would be watching out for God to devour us.

Those that believe Satan works for God to do His evil, attempts to cause us to accept that Satan does this to fulfill God’s hidden evil purpose on the earth to achieve some kind of divinely designed ending “good”. This belief asserts that God created this “thief” and “oppressor” deliberately for His greater unknowable intentional plan and purpose to achieve a culmination of something positive.

It also teaches us another potential lie, that God’s plan of creation for a perfect Lucifer was only a ruse for the intended real plan to cause Lucifer to sin. But is this logical? Does this type of logic adhere to the known character of a good God? Would any human ever make all perfect new auto parts to first destroy them before they then attempt to build a new better car? This would be an example of someone doing something needlessly destructive so that they can construct a better car rather than using parts that were completely flawless to begin with.

What we are needed to ask, is 99% truth mixed with another element of 1% harmful substance, ok to swallow and believe as the whole truth? Not if the 1% is completely deadly poisonous being enough to kill you. A 100 % T-bone steak is what a canine would love to devour. But insert into it or dust it with poisonous strychnine and it is still enticing enough to deceive because it appears good, but ultimately it can be deadly. This is why we need to do our best to seek and know only what God determines is truth, and not a message of poison from any human or devil.

We have already seen where God made angels and humans in a state of “perfection” and “very good”, and it was their bad choices that caused them to fall (fail). Therefore, this logic of using evil to achieve good sounds like a deceptive trick of this thief named Satan to shift the responsibility off himself to help steal the truth away from us to blame God for doing evil. Can you see this?

CONCLUSION

Why do people love the extreme sovereign God false message? When someone believes this way, (that God is causing all the evil in the world with occasional times of goodness), it completely absolves them and makes them not responsible for any participation to do what God has told them to do. Therefore, when the will of God is not done in their life, they can say it is not my fault, God must have had a hidden reason for the apparent evil to occur. However, that is a deception, and not the truth. Their belief that they will not be held responsible because of their ignorance, non-participation and full cooperation for obedience is the plan of the devil to possibly send them to hell. It also causes people to never fight against the devil and allows Satan another victory.

It is Satan’s plan to cause people to believe God is to blame for all the evil in the world. This belief shifts the truthful focus for all anger to be redirected away from him. Have you ever met people in the world like this? One man says, “I hate God, for killing my son”. Another lady says, “Why God did you allow me to be beaten up so badly?” Others say, “Why didn’t God stop that from happening to us?” These are classic thought types given to people by Satan. His words are usually “first person” accusation, like it is the person themselves having the thought about God. This is truly a tricky way to deceive people by playing on their emotions to cause them to have a thought to blame God. But they are so very effective thought strategies that come to place the blame upon God or His people, or anyone that is not their spiritual enemy that was working to cause it to happen.

If you have ever felt this way, hopefully you understand the reason why now. Realizing this was a deception from Satan, is one of the first steps to healing and reconciling with God. By repenting before God, a mind renewal occurs and this changing of thought then opens the door for God to help bring about more healing and help to you.

So why do bad things happen to good people? Who says there are any good people? In Matthew 19:16-17, Jesus is confronted with a rich man saying, “Good Master what must I do to have eternal life?”. But Jesus responded to Him saying, “Why do you call me good? There is none good but one, that is God!”  Jesus just taught us that every human is far from God’s perfection of good. Therefore, we all deserve to die and go to hell. But conversely Jesus also said very plainly that only God is fully and completely “Good”.

When we choose to blame God for evil, we are doing so because we are very ignorant to know who God really is. Remember Jesus also said, “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). We can never see Jesus ever doing anything but good to people because He was anointed with the Holy Ghost and power (Acts 10:38). Therefore, Jesus never killed anyone. Jesus never made anyone sick, weak, or ill. Jesus never made anyone poor. Jesus didn’t even condemn anyone for being a sinner. Jesus simply offered forgiveness, healing, and blessings to everyone that was willing to receive it.

If Jesus manifested the presence of God in heaven upon the earth as it says He did in Colossians 2:9, then humans for the first time were able to see the actual true character and nature of God personally face to face. This true nature of God was hated by Satan and the religious people of that day. Yet Jesus still offered to them “forgiveness” saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. What an amazing display of LOVE!

If you do not know God’s love personally, and the Son of God who was sent into the world to make God known, it is a great time to believe in Him and ask Him to be the LORD of your life. There is a link at the bottom of this page to receiving and beginning the salvation process. This will open up a new way for living and knowing God. You will be able to talk to Him personally, and He is more than happy to talk to his new child and help you to grow in spiritual maturity. Please do not let this opportunity pass you by. For those that are not in the Kingdom of God, there is no guarantee of any tomorrow. This could be your last invitation, please do not take it for granted.

Thank you for reading and studying this Bible Essential subject of knowing and understanding the “sovereignty” of God. It is very important to know that after we are saved, God desires us to grow up to be led by His Holy Spirit that is living on the inside of our human body (Rom 8:14). He has come to live inside of us for us to know that He will always be near to us to help us (Heb 13:5-6). Satan may try to attack you a fresh again, and again, but God is our ever-present help to always cause us to “overcome” our spiritual enemy (1 Jn 4:4).

Hopefully this has been a blessing to you and clarified some things taught to us in the Bible. We learned that:

1. “God is Only Good” (Mat 19:17).
2. “Satan” is only Evil and is a thief that has come to only kill, steal, and destroy people (Jn 10:10).
3. God is Sovereign (Ps 115:3).
4. However, God has sovereignly chosen to place character limitations upon Himself to restrict what and how He can do things.
5. Angels and humans were created good but were also sovereignly given a freewill by God’s sovereign design, to disobey and to choose to become evil (Eze 28:15, Gen 3:11).

Thank you again for taking the time to study God’s Word. May God continue to richly bless you, knowing that He adds no sorrow with any of His abundant blessings (Prov 10:22). The Lord be willing there will be more lessons coming soon. There is just so very much to learn from God’s Word. Thank you for sharing these lessons with those that you know that will be blessed by them as the Holy Spirit leads you. Thank you again for being led by the Holy Spirit to study with us.

If you would like to continue reading and studying in this series, please go to “Part 2“.

Are You Saved? Do you Know Jesus? Life is Short! Jesus wants to Know You! Please come and get to Know Him!