Who's In Charge? - J M Boice

Sovereignty is the most important attribute of God, and sovereignty bothers the unsaved immensely.

In a certain sense, people recognize that if there is a God, he must be sovereign because a God who does not rule his own universe is no God at all.  If he does not rule, something or someone else rules, and that other thing is the true God.

God must rule.

But the natural man does not like that, so he resists God's sovereignty.

That is one reason it so difficult to preach the gospel. Deep in his heart the unsaved individual knows that if God is God he is at least sovereign, and such a man hates God for his sovereignty.

That is why Adam rebelled against God. God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden and said, "You shall not eat of this tree, because the day in which you eat of it you will die."

Adam was offended by this. He was not fooled by Satan's arguments, as Eve was (1 Timothy 2:14). He disobeyed in full knowledge of what he was doing.

In essence, Adam shook his fist in God's face saying, God I hate the restriction you have placed upon me, because it means you are sovereign and I am not, and I want to be sovereign in my own life. I want to rule things myself. I want to do things my way. So, if you say, "Don't eat of that tree," that is the one thing I want to do. And I am going to eat of it and die -- whatever that may be.

Adam did eat of it, and that same spirit of rebellion (and death) passed onto the human race.

When Jesus Christ came, his contemporaries said the same thing: We will not have this man rule over us.

So they crucified him! 

Crucifixion is the response of the unsaved human heart to God's sovereignty: I want to do things the way I want to do them and I will not acknowledge God's right to interfere.

Yet, sovereignty is one of the first things we are taught in Scripture concerning God's character. He is the sovereign God, and he is sovereign whether we acknowledge it or not.


   -- From Standing on the Rock,
                by James Montgomery Boice, Chapter 6

God has highly exalted him and bestowed

on him the name that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus every knee

should bow, in heaven and on earth and

under the earth, and every tongue

confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:9-11