Lesson 4: God’s Sovereignty over People

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welcome back to our Sunday school series on trust in God where we have been closely following this book by Jerry Bridges and over the past three lessons we’ve covered the first three chapters of this book and in the last two weeks we looked uh at how God is in control of every single aspect of the Universe from the little atoms to the expans of the cosmos every single little detail is controlled by God sovereignly and in last week’s lesson hosway unpacked for us the doctrine of the sovereignty of God this amazing doctrine of how God is in fact Sovereign and in control of everything and we also looked at how this should impact our life how we ought to live our life how we ought to trust God more and in today’s lesson uh before that for those who don’t know me my name is Ian and I’ve been coming to Calvary for a couple of years now and in today’s lesson we’ll be looking at chapter 4 of the book trusting God where we would be focusing on how this doctrine of the sovereignty of God applies specifically to people so in particular we’ll be looking at how the sovereignty sovereignty of God applies to the will of man the decisions that we make the choices that we make and hopefully this would impact the way we live out our lives the way we view our circumstances and the way we trust God all right so just as uh introduction here are two quotes from the book that uh we have and speci specifically on page 47 and I’ll read them for you in case you you can see them all of us at times find ourselves and our futes seemingly in the hands of other people and the second quote is um we are from a human point of view often at the mercy of other people and their decisions or actions so just a raise of hands how many of us have at some point in our lives felt something like that is this relatable exactly right so I’m not the only one this clear that this experiences are something that happens very frequently in our lives and I think that the reason for that is because the actions and decisions of people that we come into contact with in our day-to-day have real consequences in the different circumstances of our lives right it’s true that for example if your coworker your boss acts in a favorable way towards you then you get blessed by it but if they choose to act in a way that seeks to harm you then you suffer the consequences of that as well but since this is true then the question that we would now raise is can we still trust God even though difficult and sometimes favorable circumstances happen in our life and the overwhelming answer in scripture is absolutely yes right so the point of today’s lesson would be to try to unpack how the sovereignty of God in the will of man and their decisions their choices help us to would help us to trust God more even in the different circumstances in life where people act in very unpredictable ways at times right so before we dive to the lesson proper let me pray for us father thank you for this time that you have blessed us with uh help us to understand more deeply the doctrine of your sovereignty and how it impacts the will of man um the their choices the decisions and help me to teach your word accurately and clearly and may we hear all that you have to say to us through your word in Christ’s name I pray amen all right so let’s start uh I want to begin with an example so uh this is the story of Elizabeth Al I’m sure that many of you are familiar with this uh so for those who don’t know Elizabeth was a missionary to a tribe in Ecuador with her together with her first husband and a couple of other missionaries and what happen later during the mission what mission world was quite tragic so they were ministering to tribesmen in this tribe in Ecuador and at some point uh her husband and some of the other missionaries were killed by the tribesmen so this is one example example of when we would need to trust God right so I guess if some of us if we were in her shoes we would be like so now what would happen to the mission that so many of our workers are now killed and you have to manage that along with all the emotional um trauma that you that you have to go through because of such experiences so I’ll leave that as it is for now but later on in the lesson we’ll come back to this story and see how she responded I’m sure some of you are familiar with how the story ended and this is going to be intimately connected with our lesson today and the second example is George Müller so uh he was a Christian evangelist who started an orphanage in Bristol in the UK and here I have included a short anecdote excerpt which talks about how Abigail who a little girl who is a daughter of someone who worked with Müller in this orphanage known as Ashley down and what happened one morning is that uh Abigail was with George Muller in the breakfast room and lo and behold there was no food in the room right so the whole orphanage had no food for that day at least not at that point in time and so I left the story at a cliffhanger but we will come back to that shortly once we talk about other points in today’s lesson but yes you can see in both examples there is like like a immediate need to trust God to provide or to act in a certain way in the hearts of of man and that’s exactly what God can do and let’s look at it all right so this is a verse that repeatedly comes up in our lessons um Proverbs 21 verse1 uh Mark talked about it as well so and I’ll read it so the king’s heart is like channels of water in the hands of of the Lord he turns it wherever he wishes amazing right so I I guess most of us have not experience being in a monarchy we don’t know what it’s like to live on in a land where the ruler is complete Sovereign and whatever he commands is done by the subjects right but if you were to live in such a place then you would know that this argument is trying to move from the greater to the Lesser as Mark uh walked us through into doing his lesson as well so the point here is that this man who is who gets whatever he wants done by his subject even his will is subject to The Sovereign control of our God right so and since the king who is completely Sovereign over all other men of the land has his will subject to God then what more our Wills right people who are ins subject to to the king so the the point is that all men are subject to The Sovereign control of God and if you are in Christ then this should bring you comfort and rest in God and we will look more into that as we proceed in this lesson okay so now I’ll just want to briefly talk about the outline of today’s lesson the first part of the lesson will be will be covering the sovereignty of God and how it uh applies to the human will how the to different U human actions and how specifically in some cases God chooses to act and then the second subo would be looking at what is God’s purpose what’s his ultimate purpose in acting in these kind kinds of ways because when we look at the purpose of God in his Sovereign decree then this is the the point that would bring us a lot of comfort and then in the second half of the lesson I hope to look at some implications of this amazing Doctrine so once we have established the fact that God is completely Sovereign over the human will what other implications uh would this have and then lastly we will look at some application questions to help you to reflect on what we’ve learned today and hopefully apply that in your life as well by the grace of God okay so let’s go into the lesson proper so um the first point we’re going to look at the God’s sovereignty over the human will and specifically if you read the chapter then our author brought up this point where God can bring about unexpected favor from people whom we least expected from right so this is one way in which God can choose to act in his Sovereign will and let’s look at some scripture that backs this up so the first comes from Exodus chapter 3 um some of the men here have been part of The Exodus study in Iron Man and we are familiar with this uh passage but I’ll read it for you I will grant this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians and it shall be that when you go you will not go empty-handed but every woman shall ask of a neighbor and the woman who lives in her house articles of silver and articles of gold and clothing and you will put them on your sons and daughters thus you will plunder the Egyptians so I’m sure many of us know that um Israel was uh were slaves in Egypt during that time right so and God using Moses managed to bring his people out of Egypt so out of slavery but the point here is that not only did God bring Israel out of Egypt empty-handed but these people Egyptians who were the slave masters of of the Israelites chose to give of the uh precious possessions such as gold clothing to the people who were once slaves of them right so this is such a weird set of circumstances that occurred but this is exactly what God can do God can bring about unexpected favor from people whom we least expected from and if if you were hyp to think hypothetically that God wasn’t Sovereign over the human heart then how would you explain something like that right and the second example that I want to talk about is from The Book of Daniel and specifically chapter 1 verse 9 so um here it says now God granted Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the commander of the officials so the context here is that that Daniel and his friends were in Babylon and they were serving King Nebuchadnezzar and so the king W wanted to give give the people who served under him very good food and precisely food from the king’s table and part of it is served to Idols to Pagan Idols so because Daniel wanted to please God and to honor God he chose not to eat from the king’s table and instead wanted to a request to eat only vegetables and drink only water and this was something that was very tricky for the officials of the land to Grant because they thought that if they didn’t eat this supposedly good food then they would not be healthy and they wanted the people who serve the king to be healthy but in this instance God granted favor to Daniel and the officials uh accepted his request they they gave gave him his request and this is yet another example where God acted in a supernatural way in the hearts of the officials to do something special like that okay so now back to our example about George Müller so previously I only showed half of the excerpt and here I showed the rest of this paragraph and so what happened previously was that uh Josh Müller start started an orphanage and there wasn’t enough food in the orphanage no food in the breakfast room and what happens next is that um jorh Müller was seen praying to God for provision and lo and behold the next moment there was a baker that showed up at the door with uh bread that he has baked for the people there and then the next thing that happened there was a Milkman that just appeared at the door as well and providing milk for the people at the orphanage so this is one example of how God chose to act in this specific uh situation to provide for the people uh at George müller’s orphanage so this is similar to what we’ve seen in the scriptural passages in the previous slide where someone prayed and trusted God for provision and then God acted in a very unexpected way to unexpected means to meet their needs so this is and one one reason why we can trust God right because God know exactly what we need and we are called to pray to him and ask for his provision but many times as well we don’t know exactly what we need right and sometimes we think that oh I need this thing and you ask God for it and you might not get it but maybe you don’t really need this thing so but the point here is that if you trust God to provide he will provide in a way that which meets your your need as exactly and you can trust him with that okay so and then the second way in which uh our author talks about how God acts sovereignly in the will of man is that he can choose to protect us by restraining the will of others and let’s now look at some scripture that backs this up as well so so the first comes from Exodus once again but this time from chapter 34 three times a year all your ma males are to appear before the Lord God the god of Israel I will drive out Nations before you and enlarge your borders and no man shall cover your land when you go up three times a year to appear before the Lord your God so here God commands the men of Israel to appear before him three times a year so during that time there is no man in the land to to protect it right and yet you can see here that God protects his land that that he has given to his people by acting in the will the wills and the choices and decisions of the enemies of Israel such that they do not even covet the land that they do not have a desire to even want the land that is possessed by Israel right and if you think about it coveting is a sin that many people struggle with right we have desires for the wrong things at the wrong time but here even the enemies of Israel are not out of God God’s control in that sense right God has Supreme control even over their their desire to cover the land of Israel and he used this particular means to prevent Israel from being invaded while they obey him and appear him appear before him three times a year and then the second example comes from uh Genesis verse uh chapter 20: 6 uh it says then God said to him uh him being abim uh so this is the story of Abraham Sarah and ABC where uh Abraham lied to ABC that uh Sarah was not his wife and instead was his sister this was like a half truth and um because of that ABI MC took Sarah as his wife but uh God did not allow ABC to have any physical relationship with uh her despite Abraham sin and so I’ll continue reading the rest of this uh verse so and God said to him in a dream yes I know that in the Integrity of your heart you have done this and I also kept you from s sinning against me therefore I did not let you touch her so you see that abim Malik who was most probably not uh a believer in God he didn’t didn’t know God but yet God can work in his will and his decisions to prevent him from doing something that would be harmful to Sarah so this is yet another example of how God could use his restraining power and his Sovereign will over the hearts of men to act in this specific way and yeah back to our story once again so the story of Elizabeth Elliott and we heard about how um during the mission work her husband was was killed by the tribesman right to what would happen to the mission work but what happens here is that two years after the death of her first husband Jim Elliott she returned to the tribe um to continue the work that they had started and by the grace of God many in that tribe turned to Christ in faith so I think in order to do that requires a lot of faith that God can and will work in the hearts of men even those who you would think naturally would be hostile towards you be aggressive and naturally violent towards you God doesn’t have to restrain their Wills but he can and I am sure that Elizabeth Elliot trusted in that but if this was all that um all that God can do in the wills of man then many of you would object and say that this is not an accurate reflection of reality right because there are times where God choose chooses to ordain seemingly bad circumstances when things do not go as plan or things go in a way that you have to suffer through um the different circumstances in life and which is why I chose to include this as well and the author does as well right so there are times where God can ordain and allow bad circumstances to happen in our life and then we have to think when these things happen can we still trust God and the answer is yes and let’s look at some um examples in scripture which talks about how God is Sovereign even in these bad circumstances even when humans choose to act in ways that are sinful that are harmful God is still Sovereign so the first example that I want to talk about is from the book of Ezra chap 4 so uh specifically from U verses 6 to 24 so in this example um the the Jews were trying to rebuild the the temple and the enemies of the Jews were successful in stopping the temple building project so if we were a Jew at the time you’ll be think we’ll be thinking to ourselves right isn’t God’s will for his Temple to be built wouldn’t want God want the temple to be built isn’t aren’t we doing something that good and trying to honor God and yes but God in his Sovereign will chose to allow the success of the stopping of this temple building project for his own reasons and uh the second example come from Genesis 37 which is the story of Joseph where Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his very own brothers so these are two examples in scripture and there are many more where there are bad circumstances that occur and but we know from scripture that it’s very clear that even in these bad circumstances God is still in control and one one um clarification that we get from scripture and is from Genesis 50 verse 20 um so this is referring to the end of the of the Joseph story where um Joseph is now in Egypt and he uh got successful in Egypt and eventually um there was a that went on in the land and because of his success in Egypt he was able to counsel pharaoh to be able to provide for for the land to have enough food for the land during the time of famine and because uh the land of Canaan was still under famine his brothers had to go over to Egypt to try to get more food and during this time Joseph had this interaction with his brothers and this is why he said as for you you meant evil against me but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result to preserve many people alive right so the brothers so Joseph into slavery because of jealousy they meant it to harm him and not for ultimate good but the but what God intended through the wills of the evil intentions of his brothers is to use this to ultimately bring about good for his people so this is one example of how God can use seemingly bad circumstances and the reason why I say seemingly bad is because we cannot see the ultimate outcome the ultimate plan of God but we can see that we can trust that even in this um seemingly bad circumstances God has an ultimate plan and which brings us to our next point so we’ve established the fact that God can sovereignly work in the wills of men and we’ve looked at some examples of how he can work but do we know why he Works in this ways do we know what’s the ultimate goal and purpose of the way God acts and he volunteers Tony for his glory exactly yeah for his glory and yeah good yeah so that’s exactly what points I have here but let’s let’s look at some verses that talks about this all right so yeah the first thing as Tony mentioned all things work together for the glory of God right so we might not know what specific um circumstances um what’s the purpose of specific circumstances but we know that all that together work together for God’s glory so the first verse is Philippians 213 for it’s God who is at work in you both to Will and to work for his good pleasure so we know that God does all things every single little tiny minute detail that happens in the universe is orchestrated perfectly for the ultimate glory of God and Romans 12 verse 8 for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be the glory forever amen so yeah this this is making a very similar point where everything comes together everything is orchestrated even though you don’t see how everything works together in Perfect Harmony but all things work together because God is completely omnipotent Almighty and omnicient he can do all things um and have them work together for his glory and as uh it’s mentioned as well all things work together for our good and there’s no conflict between the glory of of God and the good of his people for this very reason so Romans 8:28 and 29 says and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God to those who are called according to his purpose for Those whom he forew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son so that he would would be the firstborn among many Brethren so we can see here that God indeed causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him and those who love him are the people of God we have been given a new heart to be able to love God we are enable by his Spirit to do that and It also says here that to those who are called according to his purpose and his purpose for his people is to be conformed to the image of his son right which is why it makes perfect sense that the glory of God is is the good of his people because the good of his people is to be conformed to the image of Christ and he works all things even the wills of people who do not know him for ultimately for his glory and the good of his people so if we have confidence that this is the word of God this is true then this should really affect effect the way we view our circumstances right you might not know exactly the intentions and the and the Heart of people that you come into contact with on a daily basis but you can have full confidence that whatever that is is working out for your good and for the glory of God and that should give us a lot of comfort so yes we can trust God because of whatever is mentioned before uh yeah so before I move on to the second half of the lesson there any questions any comments I can take some now yeah Mark so it’s somewhat of a rhetorical question because it’s challenging so yes God can move in in the hearts of Kings but can he move in the hearts of presidents Congress Senators yeah MH yeah I mean absolutely because all all men all men means all men right so the president and whoever yeah are all subject to The Sovereign will of God so if we yeah when we get anxious about the political situation in the land we have to I I yeah it’s not wrong to think about these things but at the same time we have to rest in the fact that whatever happens as as you mentioned in your lesson Mark whatever happens is the best thing that could possibly happen at least if you are in Christ right because we know that all things work together for the glory of God and our good so let’s rest in that okay oh glender what Jesus in he said without meinking things that we we take for granted Jesus said amen that’s amen yeah so Glenda mentioned for those who are live live stream uh John 7 John 15 where it’s mentioned that without Christ we can do nothing and this ties in very nicely with the the idea the doctrine of God’s sovereignty where we are completely powerless apart from God and everything that we can do anything we good we can do it comes from the power of God in our lives thanks all right so yeah I think it’s time to move on to the next half of the lesson implications so now that we have established that God is indeed Sovereign over every single aspect of the human will and we’ve seen how because of that we can trust God what other implications do does this have so some people may object and have find fault with this and says and and they may say because God is in complete control of the human will and people commit uh sinful acts then is God then the author of sin they may charge God as being the author of sin but we know that in scripture this the the answer to this question is absolutely not but let’s look at why not right so let’s look at uh scripture that um backs up this answer but before that let’s look at uh what our author says uh in in the book so he tries to answer this uh in this way so he says God is able to to God is able and does move upon the hearts and minds of people to accomplish his purposes yet it also seems equally clear from these passages that God does this without violating or coing their Wills but rather he works in them in his mysterious way through their Wills to accomplish his purposes so it’s not um revealed to us in scripture the mechanism that God uses to move in the hearts of men such that they do things according to his Sovereign plan and yet um this is not something that they that’s against their own desires so here I think the author explains it pretty clearly Bri just explains it in this way that it the way God acts he does so without violating or coercing or manipulating that will if you will right so it’s not that they are doing something apart from their own natural Desires in fact they’re doing exactly according to their natural and sinful desires but God in his power and his wisdom is able to use that to accomplish his ultimate glory and our ultimate good and that’s even more spectacular right if you think about it if if we were mere puppet that are under that kind of control of God then yeah it’s not as amazing as the way God chose to act right so he chose to use this even the sinful actions of men and in spite of all those sinful actions and we we ourselves know how sinful we can be sometimes and he can use that to accomplish his ultimate glory and that’s uh amazing and let’s look at scripture which respect this up so in James 1:3 it says let no one say when he’s tempted I am being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted by evil and and he himself does not tempt anyone so it’s absolutely clear from this passage that God is never the author of sin and we are responsible for our own sinful actions so man is the one who is sinful uh even though God is completely Sovereign over every single aspect of the human will and this brings us to our next point on man man’s responsibility so some may say that since God is absolutely in control of our Wills our actions our decisions then there’s nothing left for us to do right that we can be completely passive just wait around and wait for God to do things so is that the right way to think about life no right yeah so uh does this mean that we can be callous when interacting with others no because God’s um sovereignty is not an excuse for paity and there are many reasons why this is true right for one God still judges our decisions and actions and one example comes from Isaiah 10 verse uh 5-6 can I have a volunteer to read that Passage oh yeah Pastor Dave Isaiah 10 5-16 things yeah woe to Assyria the rod of my anger and the staff in whose hands is my indignation I send it against the Godless nation and commission it against the people of my Fury to capture booty and to seize plunder and to trample them down like mud in the streets yet it does not so intend nor does it so heart but rather it is its purpose to destroy and to cut off many nations for it says are not my princes all Kings is not Koo like charish or HTH like arpad or Samaria like Damascus as my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols whose graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images just as I have done to Samaria and her Idols so it will be that when the Lord has completed all his work on Mount Zion and on J he will say I will punish the fruit of the Arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pp of his hotess for he has said by the power of my hand and by my wisdom I did this for I have understanding and I remove the boundaries of the peoples and plunder their treasures and like a mighty man I brought down their inhabitants and my hand reached to The Riches of the peoples like a nest and as one gathers abandoned eggs I gathered all the Earth and there was not one that flapped its wing or opened it be or is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it that would be like a club wielding those who lift it or like a rod lifting him who is not wood therefore the Lord the god of hosts will send a wasting disease among his Stout Warriors and under his glory a fire will be kindled like a Burning Flame thank you Pastor DAV yes so as we’ve heard God used Assyria as a as his tool to bring about judgment on Israel and yet even in his Sovereign Act of doing so he chose to judge Assyria after that for the evil Deeds that they brought about on Israel so as you can see here this is a perfect example where God exercises his sovereignty over the will of evil man to accomplish his purposes and yet the evil actions of Assyria was judged by God so this is uh proof that we still have responsibility as as agents in uh our world to um think about our responsibilities carefully and trust God in his sovereignty yet you know that there are things that you ought to do and if you don’t do them there are consequences for that yeah so one of the things I noticed is that some of you might have heard the phrase the divine right of kings which appli to European monarchies which reflected some of what was read in that passage that the idea that because God had set up kings that everything they do by definition has to be right and that they’re really not accountable to God which we know is not true yeah that’s yeah exactly yeah thanks thanks Mar yeah good and then the second reason that I have here why we ought to be responsible for our actions is that we are called as Christians to do all things for the glory of God right 1 Corinthians 10:31 whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do do all for the glory of God so there is a responsibility uh to obey God and to trust God and to realize that in order to obey God you have to first rely on God like as as Glenda mentioned right without Christ you can do absolutely nothing and that’s tied in with the sovereignty of God right but that still emphasizes the point that we do have a responsibility even when God is completely Sovereign um yeah so the next implication that I want to talk about is personal mistakes or failures so I have a question here um do we ever get anxious or worried when about how others view Us in light of our failures or mistakes is that something that we have experienced at any point in our lives I think this is a common experience right but I think the doctrine of God’s sovereignty in the will and the decisions actions of men the people who we interact with should give us uh Comfort even when we feel this way it would help us not feel this way because we know that God’s Sovereign control also applies to the will and opinions of people that um we might be fearful of so for example um when preparing this lesson I was thinking about okay so this is a very weighty matter right and I’m not going to take this lightly and um I was thinking about how um people would be receptive of of this truth of scripture and this got me a little anxious but then at the end of the day I realized that God is Sovereign over all things he’s Sovereign over my will and all all of yours right so in order for this lesson to be applied well to each one of your lives God has to sovereignly act in his way in his in his timing to affect that change in your life even sanctifying change so then this G gave me a lot of peace and rest and trust and in God so this is one way we should apply today’s lesson and one thing to note as well as connected to our our previous slide is that we do not need to fear the opinions of men even when we fail or make mistakes but at the same time I want to emphasize that mistakes and sin have real consequences right so it’s it’s true that you can still trust God and you should still trust God even when you make mistakes and commit failures but sometimes we would still have to apologize if we committed a sinful act and repent for our sins so this does not excuse us from um coming to God and or coming to people who you sin against uh with uh repentant and uh contrite heart yet even in all these we can have full confidence that God’s plan and purpose to make us conform to the image of Christ will not be tarted so regardless of mistakes that you make or the unpredictable decisions or opinions of men that they have against you because maybe you truly made a huge mistake even then God’s plan to conform you to the image of Christ still stands it will not be torted your plans may be messed up but God’s plan will never be messed up and you can have confidence in that okay so then the next implication that I want to talk about is with regard to evangelism so how many of us have this experience where you stumble over words when trying to explain the gospel clearly to others right yeah this is a common thing and the opposite could be true as well have you presented the gospel very clearly to people and yet they don’t respond favorably this I’m sure it’s a common experience of all of us but considering how God is Sovereign over the human heart should give you comfort in both these cases right because we know that at the end of the day you are not the one who brings about salvation it’s the Lord who changes the heart you are just a mouthpiece that is is called to be faithful to the Great commission faithful to uh obey God in all that you do and that’s all you’re called to do and it’s the Lord who in his Sovereign power is able to regenerate the dead heart of men so here it says in Ezekiel 36:26 and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the Heart of Stone from your flesh and give you a heart of Flesh so this is the monistic regenerative power of God that works in the heart of man and this should take pressure of us when we do evangelism right so whether or not you you still have a responsibility to present the gospel as clearly as you can but even if you did it’s not in your power to change the heart of man and that should give us uh rest and comfort when we go about our um Ministries when we present the gospel to people that we talk to on a day today okay so um and that brings me to my last slide which I want to share some application questions that hopefully will help you to think about what we’ve talked about in today’s lesson um the first is how can you apply what you’ve learned in today’s lesson it’s just a broad question is I’m not asking for anyone to answer it now but something to think about but something interesting that I thought about when preparing this question was that remember that what we’ve covered in today’s class also applies to your sanctification even your heart is sovereignly controlled by God right so in order to apply anything that we’ve learn today we need to rely completely on God to enable us to do that so be prayerful when you are trying to do these things that we’ve talked about and trust that God would work in your own hearts to to do that and two other questions so do you struggle with trusting God’s sovereignty over people and if that’s the case what can you do better to grow in your trust in God and the last question what are some specific things you can pray for in your own life this week knowing that God can work in the hearts of people so you might have certain situations where you want someone to act in certain way way or you think you need something but we can trust God to move in people’s heart as we’ve heard about today right God can act in very unexpected ways things that you never dream of But ultimately he does all these for his glory and for our good so yeah that’s very comforting and yeah with that I’ll take questions thanks all comments yeah Mark so um there’s a lot I think we’re all processing um particularly I know he spoke in the book a lot about if if people mistreat us or treat us unjustly um just really processing God’s sovereignty over that like you have a particular goal a job promotion something like that um I know it’s just a real area of struggle something I think just to pray that’s just the area of conviction for me another one I kind of said kind of jokingly about about politicians just to just to pray that God would change their hearts you know I I don’t think it’s controversial to say that all of our um presidential nominees need Jesus yeah and it’s not clear that any of them really know him to be quite honest and so I I know I’ve had to as I talk to people people get wrapped up in the issues and how our lives will be affected I I have to go back to where is my heart what is God doing in my heart of love for them and Desiring their salvation right and I just say that as a word of conviction for myself and just admonition for us that’s we need to really be praying yes for the Salvation of our leaders you know and that we would be more settled that God’s Sovereign over some there’s guys there’s craziness going on we know this right but God’s still working in it and I know I just say that in transparency that’s a really area of struggle um but hopefully it’s an area of encouragement to do that for us yeah thanks Mark uh Jody come gr unexpected and fath is I just coming through my’s Atlanta with you know you just have to walk have that that have you know sometimes the most merciful things people have said to me along this long journey truth CH all I just saw or how I dressed or how I was coming out of the world and I that was and I think sometimes en yeah thank you yeah thank you yeah so jod talked about and I’ll summarize how good doesn’t always look to us as good right and we talked about that earlier in this lesson as well that the good of the people of God is ultimately to be conformed to the image of Christ and many times that means that we have to go through suffering in order to grow Us in in that direction and help us to be Sanctified to um grow in Christ likeness and even in those times we are called to trust God and to have faith in God and yeah that’s what we ought to learn and grow in each day as we as we live as Christians uh yes Steve I think May I just for myself thir what aref your own work people’s hearts we have to understand that I Think Jesus of Amen we have to go outside of ourselves because yeah God do doesn’t answer our pray and then we kind of based what think so yes allower yep yeah yes Jud and that your out but God is in Ultimate control you don’t have to understand it yeah if you everything then you andon yeah yeah but I TR it yeah exactly have to yeah thank you yeah yeah Pastor one thing I’ve been thinking about this week connection with this lesson there other things going is how Understanding God’s sovereignty over people is a huge component of rescuing us from sinful anger because what where sinful anger comes from towards others is this idea that they have denied you something that you need and deserve therefore you have the right to judge them in your heart and even punish them with your words or your thoughts or your actions but when you recognize that God is Sovereign over people if they truly have denied you something well God is the one who ordained that he’s the one who committed that he’s the one that brought that about but if God is committed to your good he would never deny you something that you truly need so it’s really a humbling thing but it’s also a freeing thing to say I really thought I needed this from that person proper treatment or um coming through on the thing that they said that they would do but they didn’t but God is sovereign now if there’s sin to be addressed we know our responsibility there and we do want to help people but we don’t have the right to be angry because when we get angry with the other person what we really are doing is getting angry with God yeah because they’re saying you are ultimately in control and you met you made this person or you let this person do this and that that that failed me God says no no no I’m never going to fail you not even through other people so you can trust me you can um you can actually be forgiving and gentle understanding even when other people fail you because I’m in control and that’s not to say that those people aren’t accountable to God we have to do something you don’t act either no we do well like d you mentioned Daniel I think a great example right he Daniel had said would not defile himself with the King that a worship issue and so his appeal to his authorities was an Act of Faith an act of initiative that he needed to take to be faithful to God now that could have gone a couple different ways right he could have been killed he could not have received the favor of God we know later in Daniel’s life he had not received the favor of God he received well he he Reed punishment from the authorities which then showed God’s glory in a different way right that his his orientation was not toward I want favor from my authorities it’s from I want to be faithful to God and lead the results to him that makes sense that’s a real risk right yeah you will take it or do you say I have option to do something or to address that right I mean if I’m neglectful in a relationship right if I haven’t done something that I should do following through on something you know with with a brother or commitment that I made I need to be called out on that and be held accountable and as as a loving brother and sister needs to you know as as Christians we do that for each other I had that done to me and I benefited from that right it’s not that we shouldn’t do that you know what I mean but at the same time if if the result isn’t what we want you know ultimately trusting in Him does that if I may jump in one more time there’s a difference between sinful anger in response to someone failing or doing sin and there’s responding with righteous anger or even just responding with love when you trust the sovereignty of God even over people’s sins and failures then you’re freed up to love and to respond with Justice but when you respond with sinful anger even if something does deserve a response when you respond sinful anger you are never going to produce the righteousness of God right James anger man does not accomplish the right of God so you’re right sometimes we do need to act but we can only act in response to other people’s evil or failures in the right way if it is that TR thanks right afraid we have the word as our as belever to speak in that because that’s how we grow I love you actually my nephew gave preaching this and got us being a to him and looking at our marriages how does that reflect that’s how does that issues yeah yeah thank you for their very helpful and LIF lead discussion but I think we’re out of time for today and and next week’s lesson uh I think Mike Papas will be taking us through uh God’s sovereignty over Nations so stay tuned for that thank you