TEXT: Psalm 24

SUBJECT: Sovereignty of God #2: Nature

Today, with the Lord’s help, we’ll continue the study we began last week; it’s called The Sovereignty of God. The term itself means God rules all things at all times. And because it is God who exercises the rule, it is holy, wise, just, and merciful. We ought to know about the sovereignty of God, but there’s something better than knowing about it. And that is celebrating it!

Reformed Christians are great at arguing. If someone denies the sovereignty of God, affirms the free will of man, or even says chance or luck, we’ve got a dozen Bible verses to refute him. But we’re not so good at rejoicing. I once heard a preacher say "Adam and Eve were the first Calvinists". If they were—I thought—the forbidden fruit must have been a…lemon! Knowledge is good, but remember heaven is not a library, it’s a party!

The sovereignty of God, therefore, must not only be studied, preached, and defended—but more than these things, it must be celebrated!

There’s no better way of advancing or defending the Reformed Faith than by showing people it makes you happy!

The topic for today is The Sovereignty of God Over Nature.

The word, "nature" is used in different ways, of course, but here’s what I mean by it: Created things that are not humans or angels. Human and angels are no less under God’s rule, but that’s not what I’m talking about today. For now, I’m thinking about everything else in creation—from the dirt you stand on to the stars you gaze at; water, land, fire; algae, redwoods; goldfish, blue whales; amebas, elephants and everything else.

All of these things are under the absolute control of God.

Most of the time, He controls nature in the way you’d expect Him to. The sun rises in the morning, it sets in the evening. Deer eat grass and lions eat deer. Trees bloom in the spring and lose their leaves in the fall. It’s all very predictable. Not because God is boring and uncreative. It’s because He is wise and loving. What would you think of Him if every day the sun rose from a different direction at a different time or maybe with a different color or heat? You’d say He was playing a cruel joke on us! The rhythms of nature is just another way of saying Providence. Just after the Flood, it was the LORD who said,

By saying God’s works this way most of the time, I’m not limiting His sovereignty. Natural laws may govern nature, but they do not rule God! He is at liberty to disregard things—or to reverse them at any time! And, once in a while, He does it.

In the days of Joshua, God made the sun and moon stand still for a whole day (cf. Joshua 10:13). Can you imagine the coverage that would have gotten in today’s media? I suspect the New York Times and Washington Post would have denied it, while The National Enquirer would have attributed it to The power of Elvis risen from the dead!

In the New Testament era, God did every amazing thing you could think of. He made men walk on water; he restored a man’s eyesight with saliva; He cured fevers with a touch; He healed leprosy with a word; He fed 5,000 with a boy’s lunch, He raised men from the dead, and He soared through the air and space without wings or rockets or anything else scientists say He had to have.

How could these things occur? Because God is in control of nature. Speaking of nature, the hymn says,

The sovereignty of God was first seen in the Beginning. If I asked you to sum up Genesis 1 in a single word, what word would you choose? Most people would say creation. I wouldn’t quarrel with them, but a better word is sovereignty. Creation is finished in v.1,

The universe was created all at once, but it was a big mess! It was a lump, without any particular shape or function. But from vv.2ff., we see God putting things in order—and doing it in a sovereign way.

He says—in effect—Light this way, darkness that way; sun rules the day, moon rules the night; firmament up, oceans down; land out, waters back; fish in the water, birds in the air, cattle on the land, and so on. There’s no consultation; there’s no dispute; there’s no resistance!

From the first, God puts His power and wisdom on display!

God’s Word prevails!

And not only then. To this day, God has kept a firm grip on nature. He maintains absolute control over the tides, storms, rainfall, drought, the growth of trees, the breeding of animals, and more. Job 38ff., make this clear. Here’s a short sample. Job had challenged God, but the Lord answered him,

The list is far from complete. But in it, you have God controlling space and the sea, the weather, animals, all things. And notice the present tense of the verbs. It’s not that God made them long ago and let them work according to His programming. No! But even now, He rules every part of nature.

When asked why He worked on the Sabbath, our Lord did not wimp out by saying, "Well, I don’t think God ever forbade us from doing good on His holy day", but something far more radical! Why does Jesus Christ work on the Sabbath? Here’s why,

In other words, He works every day because God works every day—exercising His rule in the world.

God not only controlled things in the past and the present, but His grip on the future is no less firm. Isaiah 46:9-10 could not be clearer,

From ancient times, God has said what will happen in the distant future. How can He be so sure? In only one way: By controlling the future—in detail.

Some think He controls the big things, but not the little. But that cannot be true because the big things depend on a million little things. Think of American history. What if on the morning of November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald would have had an allergy in his eye? He wouldn’t have been able to aim his rifle and President Kennedy wouldn’t have been assassinated. What if the hijackers of last week would have been caught in traffic? Or, in a more positive vein, what if Rembrandt had caught his fingers in a door? Or what if Isaac Newton had been sitting under an oak tree? The great things of history have depended on the little things. If God controls any of them, He controls them all.

And that’s exactly what the Bible teaches, reminding us that He knows about dying sparrows and has your every hair numbered.

God rules nature from beginning to end and in exhaustive detail. Nothing gets past Him!

If what I’ve said is true, how do you explain natural disasters? Human crime is easy to explain—men are wicked. But what about acts of God? Things like earthquakes and tidal waves and droughts and floods and plagues and bugs and other things that kill people, wipe out crops, destroy property, and spread misery.

When these things occur, pastors are quick to say "God didn’t do it!"

But the Bible says He did. In the days of Noah, God sent the flood. In the days of Moses, God sent locusts, frogs, lice, flies, and other things to torture the people of Egypt. These were special events—of course they were. But what about other disasters? Is God behind them as well?

He is. Genesis 3 says God cursed the earth. Now, thankfully, this didn’t turn it into the moon or some other place man couldn’t survive, but it messed things up pretty badly! Romans 8 says the whole world was "Subjected to futility"—by God—and made to "Groan like a woman in childbirth".

Are these things the result of sin? Yes they are. But, having said that, we cannot say they’re the punishment of some particular sin. Was Managua worse than any other city because an earthquake leveled it in 1972? Are Filapinos more wicked than Swedes because monsoons hit the Philippines and never touch Sweden? Of course not!

Jesus Christ said so!

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle, Challenger, exploded in mid-air with millions watching in person and on TV. Well, wouldn’t you know it? The next Sunday a pastor I know—and a first-rate preacher I might add—called it a judgment of God and even guessed what for!

Breaking the Sabbath for the Super Bowl a few days before! When I heard that I thought, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar! The friends of Job explaining the mysteries of God! The man is from New England, I think, and I wondered if he had money on the Patriots!

Natural disasters come from God because men are wicked. But we cannot say a this catastrophe occurred because of that sin. Only God knows. And what we should do is to sympathize with the suffering and leave the mysteries to God.

I’ve spent more time than I wanted to on the dark side of Nature. Let me turn now to the sunnier side of God’s sovereignty. Because of God’s curse, the earth is no longer perfect but still, it’s incredibly good!

Think of its beauty. People think they have to go to Yosemite to see something beautiful. Baloney! The prettiest flower I ever saw was climbing a fence right next to a garbage dumpster. The color was something like violet—only more! The most glorious sunset I ever saw was from the sidewalk in front of my house—think red, orange, rust, purple, blue, yellow and other colors in a combination I can’t even describe. The best-looking tomatoes I saw last year, Marky grew in our back yard—big, fat, red, firm, perfect! They not only tasted good, but were a feast for the eyes!

All this was seen in the city. Go to the beach or the woods or the mountains or the desert—and look up into the sky away from the city lights and you’ll see the beauty of Creation. Which points to the beauty of the Creator.

Think of its generosity. Good land doesn’t produce one apple, two heads of lettuce, and a handful of grapes. No, the earth is bountiful. Think of trees loaded with fruit, think of fat cows and rich milk and all the rest. Nature is not stingy! Because its Lord is generous.

Think of its durability. The same land is farmed for generations, yet it keeps yielding a crop. Unlike men, the land does not grow old and become infertile with time.

Think of its patience. Nature has been abused by man. Think of strip mining the land or overcutting the forests or polluting the rivers and the other ways we wreak havoc on the natural world. But it hasn’t quit us yet. The world is forgiving. Because God is.

God gave us a perfect place to live. We messed it up by our sin, but the world is still beautiful, generous, durable, and patient. Why? Because

Nature is God’s Servant—not His master or His enemy or His rival.

If God is the Lord of nature, how should you respond to it? In several ways, of course.

The most obvious is to notice it. Did God paint the sky blue and the grass green and the moon white so you’d ignore His color scheme? What if He’d made everything gray? We’d all be living in Russia! Gray sky, gray ground, gray faces, gray food—yuck! Pay attention to nature. God put it there for His enjoyment—and yours too!

Next, you ought to be thankful for it. You could survive in a world a lot worse than the one you live in. Horses eat oats every day and like it. But what if all you had to eat was rice? Three times a day, every day, all your life long. God wouldn’t be cheating you, of course. But isn’t it wonderful that He’s given you more than that? Thank Him for it.

In the third place, don’t live in fear of it. When I was a boy, American Indians were portrayed as wicked savages who wanted nothing more than to scalp John Wayne. They weren’t that way. But neither were they what they’re made out to be today. Today, Indians are said to respect the earth and live in harmony with it! Watch the movie Dances with Wolves for proof. But that’s not how they felt at all. They didn’t love the earth, they feared it! Because they identified creation with the Creator—or really, the Spirits—good and evil.

Christians don’t buy that religion, of course, but we often live as though we did. We’re scared to death of nature—big things like earthquakes and tiny things like viruses, germs, and bacteria. Think of Howard Hughes—one of the richest men in the world a prisoner of his germ phobias!

Eventually, nature’s going to get the best of us!

All your vitamins and surgical masks, sun-tan lotions, and more won’t prevent it. But, in the meantime, you ought to enjoy life and face it without terror because God is the Lord of nature.