Why Does God’s Sovereignty Make Some Ambitious and Others Apathetic?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, about a month ago in episode 1105, we talked about the absolute sovereignty of God.
00:00:10.000 | That God is finally and decisively in control of everything from the farthest galaxy to the smallest subatomic particle
00:00:18.000 | and to all the actions of human beings.
00:00:21.000 | And we talked about how this transforms our daily lives.
00:00:25.000 | That was in episode 1105.
00:00:28.000 | But what if all this same theology works in the other direction?
00:00:32.000 | While the absolute sovereignty of God over all things seems to make some believers more energetic, ambitious, and determined to reach the nations with the gospel,
00:00:39.000 | this same sovereignty also seems to make other believers more apathetic, withdrawn, and passive when it comes to gospel mission.
00:00:47.000 | So what explains this difference?
00:00:49.000 | It's a question today from a listener named Brian who seems to find himself more and more indifferent in his life.
00:00:54.000 | He writes this, "Pastor John, I need your help.
00:00:57.000 | The deeper I think I understand God's sovereignty, the more it seems to fuel my own personal apathy.
00:01:03.000 | What is wrong with me?"
00:01:06.000 | Brian, let me sketch four kinds of responses to the sovereignty of God, and you see where you might fit in.
00:01:18.000 | Then I'll tell you why I'm doing this.
00:01:21.000 | This might help answer the problem.
00:01:25.000 | I'm assuming here that when we talk about the sovereignty of God, we are referring to his total control of all things,
00:01:35.000 | like the roll of the dice in every human game, Proverbs 16.33,
00:01:40.000 | or like the fall of every bird from the branches in the forest in every jungle in the world, Matthew 10.29, as Jesus said.
00:01:51.000 | So that's my assumption about the definition of the sovereignty of God.
00:01:54.000 | Now, there are two ways to reject it and two ways to accept it, and that's what I mean by my four ways of responding.
00:02:01.000 | The two ways to reject this are, one, reject the sovereignty of God because deep down,
00:02:08.000 | the reality itself as it really exists in the world is ugly or abhorrent to you.
00:02:16.000 | This is real rebellion against God.
00:02:19.000 | So that's number one.
00:02:20.000 | The other way to reject the sovereignty of God is to have a conception of it that is distorted, unbiblical,
00:02:29.000 | and thus see it as genuinely antithetical to a true biblical picture of God.
00:02:40.000 | So you can see the first way of rejecting the sovereignty of God is rooted in a deep-seated rebellion against God,
00:02:49.000 | while the second way of rejecting the sovereignty of God may in fact coexist with a humble,
00:02:57.000 | regenerate heart that for various reasons doesn't see the true biblical nature of the sovereignty of God
00:03:08.000 | as it is taught in Scripture or perhaps has some distorted notions about other attributes that he's trying to make it fit with
00:03:16.000 | so that they can't see God's sovereignty any other way than being at odds with the picture of God they have in the Bible.
00:03:26.000 | I want to cut those people slack and say until they get their thoughts sorted out,
00:03:32.000 | they may be deeply humble and regenerate people.
00:03:39.000 | Then, here are the other two.
00:03:41.000 | There are two ways of embracing the total sovereignty of God.
00:03:46.000 | One is to see it for what it really is as taught in the Scriptures and to love it and see it as beautiful
00:03:55.000 | in proportion to all the other things taught in Scripture.
00:03:58.000 | Not that every question is answered or every mystery removed,
00:04:03.000 | but according to the limits of our own understanding, the sovereignty of God and his other attributes are not contradictory.
00:04:11.000 | Now, that in my judgment is the ideal way of embracing the sovereignty of God.
00:04:17.000 | But another way of embracing it is to see that it is taught in the Scripture
00:04:25.000 | and to see some of its implications and to admit that this is in fact the truth that the Bible teaches,
00:04:33.000 | but to embrace it with a heart that's not fully docile or teachable or submissive to the whole counsel of God in Scripture.
00:04:47.000 | In other words, a person may be riveted on the doctrine of sovereignty while either being neglectful of other important biblical teachings
00:04:57.000 | or maybe even indifferent to those other teachings or resistant to them.
00:05:04.000 | My human heart, your human heart, is very corrupt.
00:05:10.000 | All of us struggle with a kind of selective set of emphases in the Bible that we like more than others.
00:05:17.000 | And we must constantly be humbling ourselves before the whole counsel of God
00:05:23.000 | so that we are submissive to all that God teaches, not just some of it.
00:05:29.000 | Now, I don't know Brian well enough to pass any judgment on where he fits into these categories.
00:05:38.000 | And no doubt they're too simplistic to explain all the ways we relate to the sovereignty of God.
00:05:44.000 | But I mention them because it might help Brian if he asks whether he might be in this fourth category.
00:05:54.000 | That's my gut sense.
00:05:56.000 | In other words, he may be persuaded of the sovereignty of God as he sees it in the Bible,
00:06:02.000 | but his heart is not totally submitted to all of Scripture.
00:06:08.000 | And there are emotional hesitancies that keep him from rejoicing over certain teachings.
00:06:15.000 | I ask, why is it that some people hearing the news that God is sovereign over the battlefield
00:06:23.000 | plunge in with great abandon and risk their lives for the cause of God and truth
00:06:29.000 | precisely because he reigns, while others react with fatalism and lethargy and passively say,
00:06:37.000 | "Well, what will be will be and will be will be," and they don't go in.
00:06:43.000 | Why is that? Why do people respond differently like that?
00:06:46.000 | And my suggestion is that the passive, fatalistic, lethargic people have hearts
00:06:55.000 | that are resistant to what the Bible teaches on certain other matters,
00:07:02.000 | and this resistance keeps them from rejoicing over those teachings and being motivated by them.
00:07:10.000 | And what I have in mind specifically, though others may apply,
00:07:15.000 | what I have in mind specifically are passages that explicitly teach us not to be passive,
00:07:22.000 | but active and energetic and hardworking and resolved to do good,
00:07:27.000 | not in spite of the sovereignty of God over our lives, but because of it.
00:07:32.000 | For example, and Brian, my encouragement is that when I read these texts,
00:07:38.000 | that you and all the rest of us pray, be praying that you would be thrilled by them,
00:07:45.000 | thrilled by them. That's what's missing, a being thrilled by the text that I'm about to read.
00:07:51.000 | Philippians 2.12, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
00:07:57.000 | because it is God who is at work in you to will and to work His good pleasure."
00:08:04.000 | In other words, the sovereign work of God in us does not replace our working,
00:08:11.000 | it energizes our working. Do you love this truth, Brian?
00:08:16.000 | Does that thrill you? That's taught in the Bible. It's true.
00:08:20.000 | It's wonderful. 1 Corinthians 15.10, "By the grace of God, I am what I am.
00:08:26.000 | His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them,
00:08:32.000 | though it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me."
00:08:36.000 | In other words, the presence and sovereign power of God's grace working in me
00:08:44.000 | does not disincline me to work, but inspires me and empowers me to work.
00:08:52.000 | Brian, when you hear this, do you rejoice? You say, "Yes, yes, that's a glorious,
00:08:58.000 | God-revealed biblical truth. I love that truth."
00:09:03.000 | Colossians 1.29, "For this I toil, struggling with all the energy that He powerfully works within me."
00:09:15.000 | In other words, God's energy in Paul was experienced by him as a tremendous surge of his own energy.
00:09:28.000 | And finally, 1 Corinthians 3.6, "I planted, Apollos watered, God gave the growth."
00:09:35.000 | So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
00:09:44.000 | He who plants, he who waters are one, and each will receive—are you kidding me?
00:09:50.000 | Wages according to his labor, for we are God's fellow workers.
00:09:58.000 | You are God's field, God's building. In other words, God's decisive role in growing his church
00:10:06.000 | inflamed Paul and Apollos to be about the planting and watering.
00:10:12.000 | So, my suggestion is that one reason why embracing the sovereignty of God produces courage and energy
00:10:23.000 | and humble, risk-taking love, and some other people experience it as apathy,
00:10:32.000 | my suggestion is that this dimension of biblical truth that I just read hasn't sunk in yet.
00:10:41.000 | Either it hasn't been seen, which can't be said anymore, I just read it,
00:10:49.000 | or it has been seen and has not been thrilling for some reason.
00:10:56.000 | It's been resisted. And I would encourage Brian to pray over these texts until he is thrilled
00:11:06.000 | by the prospect that God Almighty with all his sovereignty is going to work with Brian,
00:11:15.000 | in Brian, as Brian works by faith in him.
00:11:20.000 | Yeah. Amen. May God's sovereignty thrill our souls and fill up our energy and ambition
00:11:26.000 | in serving the good news of our Savior.
00:11:29.000 | Brian, thank you for the honest question, and Pastor John, thank you for the response.
00:11:34.000 | And, listener, thank you for listening, making this podcast part of your day and your commute
00:11:38.000 | and part of your week. Three times a week we publish, and you can subscribe to our audio feeds
00:11:42.000 | and search our past episodes in our archive, and even reach us by email with a question you may have of your own.
00:11:47.000 | Do all of that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:53.000 | I am your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Friday.
00:11:58.000 | [Silence]