The backwards, inside-out, upside-down Antioch church we investigated last week is a beautiful picture of Isaiah
55:8, 9: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
That church was “God’s way,” of thinking and living (natural, spontaneous, unconscious – NSU), writ large in the lives of genuine, experiential believers.
We are called to live this same way. Paul tells us in Romans 12:2 to “…not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
So, we are to live with a mind that is being transformed by being renewed to THINK GOD’S WAY (like the genesis of the Antioch church—backward, inside-out and upside-down) and not “man’s way” (the way of thinking of the people in the world all around us).
e will discover, as this renewal occurs, that “God’s way” is absorbed as we see how Jesus lived on the earth. Jesus is called “the brightness of His (God’s) glory and the express image of His person” Hebrews 3;1), and we have eye-witness accounts of that happening—Jesus’ thoughts, words and actions in the Bible for us to study. They corroborate this fact; to see Jesus is to see God, who laid aside His prerogative to act from that Diety while living here on the earth as a man (Philippians 2:5-8)!
I want to use our four-point “Theology for Dummies” (the summary, outline “course” in theology we have proposed before) as a venue to investigate the life of Jesus—the characteristics that will appear in our lives as we are learning to “live God’s way.” These biblical ideas will be the NSU foundation stones for us as we live this way ourselves, right now, every day! Today, we will look at the first of these theological truths:
Theological Idea #1 – God is absolutely sovereign. I believe all Christians would agree that “God is sovereign.” It is almost a theological shibboleth that we all know and believe, just like another rote statement: “We all have free-will.” We consider that “fact” as certain as “The sun rises in the East every morning.”
I am sure most Christians believe both statements, even though they are mutually exclusive and it is impossible for both to be true. However, since we are descendants of Adam and have eaten of the forbidden fruit, we are addicted to thinking that we have the free-will to decide for ourselves what we will do; i.e., what is “good” for us. Here are several verses, indicative of many others, that tell us that God alone, HIMSELF, makes all final decisions, just as HE wills:
.“Our God is in heaven; he does whatever He wishes” (Psalm 115:3).
. “Whatever the LORD pleases He does, In heaven and in earth, In the seas and in all deep places” (Psalm 135:6).
“I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create evil, I am the LORD, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:6,7).
“My plans will never fail, I will do everything I intend to do. I have spoken, and it will be done” (Isaiah 46:10, 11).
I cannot understand this. How can a holy, righteous God ordain all that happens in this sinful world? How can He even decree sin?
Because of our addiction to good and evil, it is our unconscious, innate desire to want to know answers to these questions. As God reveals truth to us over time, we will discover and know much truth. But much will always remain unknown. “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33).
Why am I not satisfied with that? God alone is omniscient. He alone is God and we are not. Satan, the father of lies, lied to Adam and Eve in the Garden when he promised them that, yes, they would be like God if they ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When they did eat of it, they DID become aware of good and evil for the very first time, but they DID NOT acquire omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence (the characteristics of God)—only the desire to acquire them.
And that is where we are today. Our insistence on our own “free will” is indicative of the fact that we too are no longer satisfied to live by simply trusting Daddy because He knows what is best, but like Adam, we want to know all that He knows.
This desire drives us to perennially ask, “Why, God, why? Why is this happening?,” rather than responding to His inscrutable ways with, “Yes, God, yes! In spite of all the impossible-to-understand events happening around me, I trust that You know what you are doing. You know how to run your world, including my life, without my help!”
Thus, as our first statement in our “Theology for Dummies” tells us,”God is absolutely sovereign.” Next week we will look at foundation stone #2, “Man is absolutely sinful.”
