04/06/2020
By Pastor Joe Romeo
"Trust in the Sovereign God"
The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth (Psalm 104:8–9).
The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will (Prov. 21:1).
The verses above testify to the sovereign authority of God. And if you’re anything like me, this is a reminder you can’t hear enough these days. Which is why I was so comforted yesterday reading an article by the great Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield (1851–1902). As he expounds the sovereignty of God on display in the Old Testament, he concludes with this statement:
The ultimate end in view in the Divine plan is ever represented as found in God alone: all that He has made He has made for Himself, to set forth His praise; the heavens themselves with all their splendid furniture exist but to illustrate His glory; the earth and all that is in it, and all that happens in it, to declare His majesty; the whole course of history is but the theatre of His self-manifestation, and the events of every individual life indicate His nature and perfections. Men may be unable to understand the place which the incidents, as they unroll themselves before their eyes, take in the developing plot of the great drama: they may, nay, must, therefore stand astonished and confounded before this or that which befalls them or befalls the world. Hence arise to them problems—the problem of the petty, the problem of the inexplicable, the problem of suffering, the problem of sin. But, in the infinite wisdom of the Lord of all the earth, each event falls with exact precision into its proper place in the unfolding of His eternal plan; nothing, however small, however strange, occurs without His ordering, or without its peculiar fitness for its place in the working out of His purpose; and the end of all shall be the manifestation of His glory, and the accumulation of His praise. This is the Old Testament . . . world-view which attains concrete unity in an absolute Divine teleology [purpose], in the compactness of an eternal decree, or purpose, or plan, of which all that comes to pass is the development in time.
And thus we sing with the hymn writer: “Lord, I would place thine hand in mine/Nor ever murmur, nor repine/Content, whatever lot I see/Since ‘tis thine hand that leadeth me.”
Prayer: Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen (Book of Common Prayer)
