Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3284
“The LORD reigns; let the people tremble.” Psalm 99:1.
“The LORD reigns; let the earth rejoice.” Psalm 97:1.
No Doctrine in the whole Word of God has more excited the hatred of mankind than the truth of the absolute Sovereignty of God. [See Sermon #77, Volume 2—DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY.] The
fact that “the Lord reigns” is indisputable—and it is this fact that arises the utmost opposition in the unrenewed human heart. “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” We know what the Lord thinks of their rebellion against Him—“He that sits in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath and vex them in His sore displeasure.” Let us, Beloved, not be among those who refuse to believe this great Truth of God, but may we humbly bow before that dread Sovereign who does as He wills among the armies of Heaven and among the inhabitants of this lower world—
“God is a King of power unknown;
Firm are the orders of His Throne!
If He resolves, who dare oppose,
Or ask Him why, or what He does?’ God has the right to act thus, first, because He is the source of all created existence. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and everything else that exists is the product of His creative power! As the writer of the 100th Psalm says, “It is He that has made us, and not we ourselves.” So He has the absolute right to do with us whatever He pleases. It rested with Him to make us or not to make us. And when He determined to create, it was according to His own will that He made one creature a worm and another an eagle, one an ant crawling upon its little hill and another a leviathan making the deep to boil. It was by His decree that there were almost boundless variations among the great family of mankind. In constitution, disposition and temperament—in the very appearance of our bodies, in the strange diversities of our mental capacities, in our position upon the globe or our place and circumstances in any particular country and nation—we see traces of the Sovereign purpose and will of God. It is true that our ancestors, parents and surroundings have exerted certain influences upon us, but there are peculiarities about each one of us which can only be ascribed to the Sovereign good pleasure of God. That one should be a silent and unobtrusive traveler through life’s pilgrimage, and that another should be so eloquent as to speak in words that find an echo the wide world over—that one should sweat and toil all his days, and that another should be dandled upon the knee of luxury—we may say what we will about all this, but whether we agree with it or not, we cannot deny that it is according to Divine appointment and order and, therefore, we must submit to it—
“The Lord is King; who them shall dare Resist His will, distrust His care, Or murmur at His wise decrees, Or doubt His royal promises? The Lord is King, child of the dust, The Judge of all the earth is just—
Holy and true are all His ways, Let every creature speak His praise.”
Not only do we believe that God being the Creator, has the right to make His creatures according to His own will, but we also believe that He has another right over us acquired from our sinful nature. We may say, though we speak it with bated breath in the Presence of His awful Majesty, that even creatures have their rights at their Creator’s hand. For instance, every creature may claim from its Creator that it should not be punished if it does not offend—and that it should be made happy if it is obedient to His commands. Such rights Jehovah has always acknowledged and has never violated. But you and I, dear Friends, have lost all the rights of creatureship, for we have all sinned! A subject of this realm has the right of freedom to go where he pleases and do what he pleases as long as he does not offend against the law of the land. But if he commits high treason, or robbery, or some other crime and so is brought under the condemnation of the law, he immediately loses all right to his freedom and is put in prison with other criminals.
Now the Law of God’s universe, a most equitable and just Law, runs thus, “The soul that sins, it shall die.” And we have all sinned—the sentence of death is recorded against every soul born of woman—and that any of us are still permitted to live is due to the clemency of the great King! Some of us, blessed be His holy name, have been pardoned by Him. And having been pardoned, we shall never again be condemned—but others are put off during their Majesty’s pleasure and that respite is an act of Divine Sovereignty. Had He executed the sentence pronounced upon us as soon as we had sinned, we might have bewailed His severity, yet we could never have impeached His Justice, for we should have deserved the utmost penalty that could have been demanded by His righteous Law! So that, by virtue of our sinnership, God has the right to punish us if He pleases to do so. But if He can consistently, with the principles of Eternal Justice, pardon us, He has the right do so! You noticed that I said, “consistently with the principles of Eternal Justice,” for God will never violate those principles. He can always do as He wills, but He always wills to do what is right and, by the Atonement of His dear Son, He has made a way by which He can satisfy all the claims of His inflexible Justice and yet can take infinite delight in bestowing His mercy upon the guilty! Then surely, as mercy is not only God’s prerogative as King, but also had to be so dearly bought by the precious blood of His well-beloved Son, we ought not to be backward in confessing that He has the right to bestow that mercy whenever He pleases. At all events, whether we believe it or not, this declaration is still thundered forth from the Throne of the Eternal, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”