How Sovereign Is Your God? (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth.

Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Every pastor has a hobby horse. Every pastor has a few topics they like to talk about all the time.

And when I'm dead and gone, I hope that you say, you know, Mike always talked about the person and work of Christ Jesus, and he always talked about the sovereignty of God.

He just kept plugging away at those two topics. Jesus is Lord, and Jesus is this great sovereign king.

Turn your Bibles to the book of Jonah this morning, and we're going to see the sovereignty of God in the book of Jonah.

The ruler of all, still be my vision, O ruler of all. The sovereignty of God in the book of Jonah, one of my favorite topics.

R .C. Sproul said, if you were God, your favorite topic would be the sovereignty of God. And then he said,

God's favorite topic is the sovereignty of God. And so I love to talk about it. Why? Because life is difficult.

Issues happen in our lives. Sin and sickness and all kinds of things, and it's good to be reminded that God's sovereign.

You read Joseph in Genesis 37 to 50, and you'll say this, it is obvious that God's sovereign.

It is patently obvious. It is obviously obvious. It is so real that God's sovereign.

I see that. Why is it set up that way? Because when you look at your life, when you look at your lives, it's not so obvious.

It seems like everything could be messed up, and why did this decision happen? And why did that happen? And what about, and what about, and what about?

But here's a great thing. God is immutable. He doesn't change.

There's no mutation in God. He's always the same. And the God who's sovereign over Joseph, is sovereign over you.

And the God who's sovereign over Jonah, is sovereign over you. And the God who's sovereign over creation, is sovereign over you.

The God who's sovereign over your life and your death. The God who's sovereign over every molecule of the universe.

Is there any molecule in the universe, proton, neutron, electron, what else is small?

Some quark or something? Or is that some dessert you eat in Germany? I think it is. But whatever small thing, whatever

God, whatever big thing, it's all underneath the sovereignty of God. And as Kuyper said one time,

God looks at the universe and He says, mine. It's all mine.

I'm sovereign over it all. And that's why Pink said, in every pulpit it needs to be continually thundered forth that God reigns.

God's sovereign. And when you look at the book of Jonah, you're not going to be able to say, you know, God's sovereign, but.

I know God's sovereign, but. You know, you don't quite understand my situation, this unique trial that I'm in.

I think He's sovereign over everything, but you don't know my boss. He's sovereign over everything. You don't know my spouse.

He's sovereign over everything. You don't know my kids. He's sovereign over everything. But you don't know my parents. He's sovereign over everything, but you don't know my pastor.

God's sovereign over everything. Psalm 103. His sovereignty rules over what?

But here's the rub. Before we look at Jonah. while it so comforts us. It is the pillow that you lay your head down when you go through a massive trial, but it pushes up against us because if God is sovereign, that means

I'm not. It goes against our pride.

So today we're going to look at Jonah. Last week we did verses 1 -3. Today we're going to look at verses 4 -16 and you're going to see that God is so sovereign.

So I don't want you to ever think any idolatrous thoughts about God. And what's an idolatrous thought about God?

Thinking something about God that's not true. When you think of God, I want you to think He's the King of kings,

He's the Lord of lords, and He owns the earth and He owns heaven, and He does whatever He pleases, as often as He pleases, always as He pleases, and only as He pleases.

Now that's a God who... I want to worship that kind of God. I don't want just a God who's sovereign over West Boylston, but He's not sovereign over Worcester.

I want the God who's sovereign over the land and the sea. And when you look at this God, you're going to say, He deserves my worship.

He deserves my thanksgiving. God, why am I anxious? God, why am I worried?

Now some people automatically are thinking, what about free will? I don't want to be a robot.

Maybe if you're from England, I'm not a robot. I'm not some kind of puppet. Here's the best way to solve all your problems about the sovereignty of God.

Are you ready? Just read your Bibles. Because if you read your Bibles regularly and often,

God's sovereign. He sits on the throne. He does whatsoever He pleases. Psalm 50, if I were hungry, God said,

I wouldn't even tell you. He's just the King. He does whatever He wants. Sovereign. He reigns and He rules.

And He's not a president where we kick Him out every eight years. He's not a constitutional monarch that just does what

I don't know. He is the King. Take that out of the tape. A tape?

The kid goes, what's a tape? Take that out of the 8 -track. Actually, side note.

I talked to someone and they said, we have some reel -to -reel classes that S. Lewis Johnson taught at Dallas Seminary that aren't recorded anywhere else.

Do you want the reel -to -reels? I said, I sure do. There's nothing to cry about.

No accident. No chance. No luck. No serendipity. No fortune.

No fate. And what we're going to see in Jonah, contrary to the view of Allah, the

Islamic view of God, who runs everything, who rules everything, what about the personal nature of God?

What about the human touch of God? What about the Incarnation? What about God? Does He love or is

He sovereign only? So you're going to see both today. Let's go to Jonah 1, verses 1 -3 as a review.

And then we're going to move into verses 4 -16 with the desire to see what is said here and the desire to remember that God is sovereign no matter what so that you walk by faith and not by sight.

And it starts with a bang, remember? We've only got 48 verses in English, so there's not a whole lot of time for character development.

Now, the word of Yahweh came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, when you see all capitals, it means

Yahweh. It means a covenant -keeping God, a personal God. It should remind you, I am the

Lord your God that brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It's the God who makes promises, a

God who saves. It's the triune God. We read the Old Testament and the New from this perspective that the

Lord Yahweh, He is a triune God. The only way you can think about God is a triune

God. One God, three persons. The Father, Son, and the Spirit. And this triune

God reveals Himself. And He said to Jonah, as we saw last week, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach.

Call out against it, for their evil has come up before me. And as you would all know, that these

Ninevites are accountable to God. It doesn't matter that they're not Israelites. They're still accountable to God.

Every person that's ever been born is accountable to God. You're accountable to God. I'm accountable to God.

One day we'll stand before God, the Creator and Judge. But thankfully, wonderfully, He's a

Savior too. And how does God save sinners? Faith comes by hearing a message about Christ.

God could just save people. You're saved. Or He could say, I have a different way. I save people through preaching.

And so Jonah, there's some people there that need to be saved. You go and you preach. They're accountable before me.

And every person who's ever lived is going to stand before God.

And then there's going to be judgment. We know that from Acts chapter 17. The times of ignorance

God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. Because He has fixed a day, judgment day, in which

He will judge the world in righteousness by a man, Jesus, whom He has appointed. And of this

He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead. Jonah's accountable.

Nineveh's accountable. Israel's accountable. We're accountable. And God didn't owe it to Nineveh to send anybody there.

The wages of sin is death. They earned it. They earned justice. But God doesn't leave the fallen human race to perish alone without salvation, without a remedy.

What did Jonah do? I call this Jonah's stiff arm. Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish.

Instead of going over that way, east, northeast, to Iraq, what we call

Iraq, now past the Euphrates up big city on the Tigris, I'll go the other way and I'll go to Spain.

I'll go down to Gibraltar, a couple thousand miles away. From the presence of the

Lord, he went down to Joppa. You can just feel these verbs make you want to just kind of cascadingly go faster and you can feel the haste.

He says in chapter 4, I was hastening to flee. I got to run. Down to Joppa, found a ship.

He paid the fare, went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. I want to say his favorite hymn included the words, prone to wander,

Lord, I feel it. Except it wasn't wandering, it was rushing. I got to rush as fast as I can.

And as I said last week, from the presence of the Lord, what do you mean he doesn't know that God is omnipresent? Of course he knows that.

But here's what presence of the Lord means. A king calls someone, one of his priests, or one of those who works for him, come into my presence,

I'm going to give you some marching orders. I'd like you to do thus and such. And then the person says, yes sir,

I'll go do it. And off he goes to do what the king wishes. And so that's exactly what's going on here.

The prophet stands before the word of the Lord that comes to him, Jonah, son of Amittai, go preach.

I don't want to preach, I quit. He's not saying I'm trying to get away from the presence of the Lord. He knows

God makes the land and the sea and the moon. He's a good prophet. But I quit, I resign. If I do what you say,

God, I'm going to go to Nineveh. They're going to repent because I know you're gracious. I know you're slow to anger.

I know chapter 4, what I say about you later. It's all true about you. And they're going to repent.

They'll be stronger, their army will be stronger. You're going to bless them. And they're going to be stronger to punish

Israel. In 1 Kings 19, when you're going to use Assyria to punish us, they'll be stronger.

I don't want that. No. Stiff arm. God just goes, okay, whatever you want.

Do whatever you'd like. But this is the

God you can't ignore. This is the God you can't ignore. They couldn't ignore

Him. You can't ignore Him. Everybody loves well -behaved kids, don't they?

At least I do. I've been around kids sometimes that obey and some kids that don't.

And when I'm around kids that obey, I'm very happy and thankful. And when I'm around kids that don't obey, I think, shame on you.

But shame on the parents. Because that's what Solomon would say in the book of Proverbs. I've been in airports and kids are trying to dump over my coffee.

And it's really a sin if it's Pete's coffee. But they're trying to do stuff to me. And I try to be patient.

I try to be grandfatherly. One time

I finally just had to say in Denver, Would you please control your children? I didn't want to say it.

I was leading up to it. I know you can't ever imagine me saying that. But, see, I think I'm the pastor of the

Denver Airport as well as BBC. Denver Airport Bible Church. Then later

I heard Chuck Swindoll say on the radio. And he was talking about disobedient kids. And he said, once I was at an airport and I even heard a man say to some parents,

Would you please control your children? I'm like, Chuck Swindoll's quoting me.

It probably wasn't me. But, see, God, even though He's sovereign, when you pray the disciples' prayer, it starts off what way?

How does it start? Our Father. He's a kind Father.

And He's a good Father. And He's not going to let the kids disobey. Because it's not good for them.

And Jonah's on the run. And God could say, you know what? I'll get a different prophet.

And He could. I'll make the rocks cry out to Nineveh. And He could. I'll send an angel to Nineveh.

And He could. But you know what? Jonah, I love you. I care for you. You're one of mine.

You're redeemed. You're regenerated. You're a believer. And here's the Father's kindness to discipline the

Son. Aggressively pursuing. Here's the

God you can't ignore, verse 4. But Yahweh, this triune God, hurled a great wind upon the sea.

That's the language of throwing something really hard. Standing on the pitcher's mound and throwing a baseball across home plate.

I didn't know how fast it was in the first service, but somebody told me, Nolan Ryan, 108 .1

miles per hour. Fastest recorded pitch. Winding up and throwing the pitch right down the alley.

Target Jonah. He hurled a great wind.

Look at the sovereignty of God. Is God sovereign over the weather? Why is it that Scripture almost always says,

God sent rain instead of it rained? God sent the rain. Why? Because He's sovereign over it.

And here comes a storm. A perfectly devised storm. There's a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up.

Now, in English I would say, God hurled a great wind. Often in Hebrew you'll say, hurled

God the great wind. Just be a little change. But this is opposite of the normal Hebrew to try to put the focus on, it doesn't matter what

Jonah does, God's in charge and God will do as He pleases. Can't ignore

God. There's a mighty tempest on the sea. It's a supernatural tempest.

I think what we have here coming, brewing, is what we call a teachable moment. And Jonah loves to use the word great.

Great wind, great city, great storm, greatly feared, great fish, greatly displeased, greatly happy in chapters 1 through 4.

Here we have the great wind sent by the great savior Yahweh. Jonah's like, no way.

There's a big thing going around evangelicalism now. There's a brand new book out about it even. It's called Be the

Message. Don't preach to people so much. Be the message. I wonder how that would work with Jonah.

Jonah, be the message. Not so well, I think. But God saves people in spite of sinful messengers.

Aren't you glad? He hurled the wind. This is language of 1

Samuel 18. Saul hurled the spear at David to try to pin him against the wall.

Supernatural storm comes up. And look at the ship. It threatened to break up. The language of the

Hebrew is the ship is personified. The ship is like a person. And Jonah is determined not to go.

But the ship is determined to obey God and break up. Because that's what the sovereign is implying.

Jonah disobeys. The wind obeys. The ship obeys.

The fish is going to obey. Then, verse 5, the mariners.

And he says the sailors. The original language is the old salts. Why do you call them an old salt?

Because they're the crusty old salts. They're the sailors. Pagan sailors, by the way. They were afraid.

They're out in the boat all the time. Out in the ship all the time. And now it's not just a storm. It's a great storm. It's a supernatural storm.

It's the perfect storm. And they're afraid. And what do you do? When Jonah didn't like something, he should have said,

God help me. God give me wisdom. God give me repentance. God give me faith.

Jonah doesn't pray. The pagans pray. And there's time for more hurling.

And they hurled the cargo. It's just a general word. They hurled a bunch of stuff that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.

But Jonah went down in the inner part of the ship and laid down and was fast asleep.

Oh, Poseidon, help. Oh, Neptune, help. Oh, Baal, help. I've never done that before in the pulpit.

Just made that sound. That's the first time. Job security.

Don't do that again. Once every 17 years. I feel sorry for these guys.

That's exactly what the narrator wants you to do, to feel sorry for them. It's all because of Jonah. They didn't do it.

They didn't earn it. And Jonah's fast asleep. Notice the text. He's gone down below in the hold of the ship, laying down, falling fast asleep.

That word's not just a regular word for sleep. It's hypnotic sleep. It's deep sleep.

It's the sleep in Genesis 2 .21 where God says, Adam, time to be under anesthesia, divine anesthesia, and you're going to go to sleep.

I'm going to do some surgery on you and your rib and you're going to wake up married. How does that work?

Divine anesthesia. That's what it's like. I mean, he is really out of it. So indifferent.

So the captain came and said to him, I would imagine there's a lot of wind. I would imagine it's loud.

I would imagine he'd have to raise his voice. What do you mean, you sleeper? Now think very carefully here.

Doesn't this sound familiar? Arise, call out to your God. Wasn't this told to Jonah just earlier?

Arise, go, and call out. This is like a nightmare for Jonah. He wakes to the words from a pagan sailor that are so similar, if not exactly the same as what

God told him. Call out to your God. Perhaps the God will give us a thought or give a thought to us that we might not perish.

This is like somebody at work that you work with who's a druid, who's a moon worshiper, who's a

Satanist, and they come to you and say, you know, this is really a bad situation. Would you pray?

The pagans are going to the prophet to say, it's time for you to pray. They knew something's going on.

There's somebody sinning in the boat. They said to one another, verse 7, come let us cast lots.

We may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. Let us cast lots.

Now what would they do? Well, one of the ways that they would put lots together to determine something,

I mean, what do our kids end up doing? I don't know what kids do these days anymore. I remember going to South Africa and I wanted to shake hands like the cool guys.

And it's, when I used to shake hands, and we had a certain thing we'd do and playing basketball and shaking, and then I got to South Africa and it was shake this way, then that way, then this way, then do all this kind of stuff, and I'm like,

Luke, you just be my vicar. I can't figure this out. I'm not cool, but I want to be. There's certain ways to do things, and for our kids it's like rock, paper, scissor, shoot.

Who is it? Well, they would get little rocks and they would put like on one side of the rock a light color, on the other side a dark color.

And if you wanted to have a yes or no question answered, you'd take those two rocks, light on one side, dark on the other, and you'd throw them two light side up, answer is yes, two dark sides down, answer is no, a light and a dark, or a dark and a light, the answer is shoot again.

But here we don't know exactly what they did. Maybe there's 20 guys on the ship and there's 20 rocks, and everyone, the purple one equals

Jonah, and whatever comes out, but the lot came on Jonah. That's what the text says.

The lot fell on Jonah. As one man proclaimed, man throws the dice, but God makes the spots come up.

Proverbs 16 .33 talks about casting lots for decisions. Land is divided this way in Numbers 26.

A king is chosen this way in 1 Samuel 10. Achan was found out in Joshua 7.

Apostles are determined by this in Acts 1. God's sovereign over everything.

He's sovereign in salvation. I want to save Ninevites. I ask you the question, when were you saved if you're a

Christian? I love it when somebody says, Mike, when were you saved? Because then you just get a launch into preaching.

Well, in eternity past, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit got together for a divine counsel.

And according to Titus 1, there was a promise that was made before the world began. To whom were the promises made?

It had to be within the triune nature of God to go rescue a bride. The Father said, I'm going to arrange a marriage for you.

Here's your bride. And then, Mike, when were you saved? Well, I was saved in eternity past. I was saved at Calvary when the

Son went. He cloaked Himself with humanity. He lived a perfect life. He died as a substitutory atoning sacrifice on Calvary.

He was raised from the dead. I was saved then. I was saved in eternity past. I was saved at Calvary in 1989.

I'm running the opposite way of God. And God intervenes. And God brings people into my life to preach the gospel to me.

Their names are John MacArthur and Kim Avendroth. No wonder I love those two so much, but not in that order.

And I got saved in 1989. And by the way, I was saved in eternity past at Calvary in 1989.

I'm being saved now. That is, sanctified. And I will be saved when God takes me home to glory.

What salvation are you talking about? And here's this God who plans everything out and He's sovereign over the

Ninevite salvation. He's sovereign over the preacher to get there. He's sovereign over the wind. And He's sovereign over the lots.

And you ought to ask yourself this question. So why would I act in any other way than recognizing

God's sovereign in my life too? Shouldn't I just, for once and for all, say that the sin of anxiety is replaced by trusting in this

Yahweh with all my heart? And the more I can see the sovereign hand of God in the life of people in Scripture, the better it's going to be for me.

I'm telling you, the most difficult times in your life will be helped by the pillow of divine sovereignty.

I'm telling you, the most difficult times in your life will be helped by the pillow of divine sovereignty.