I invite you to open your Bible to Matthew chapter 27. We return to a text of Scripture which treats the amazing burial of Jesus Christ, the amazing burial of Jesus Christ. We’re looking at Matthew 27 verses 57 through 66, a section we began last Lord’s day and we’ll complete this morning.
Now before we approach the passage itself, I want to speak of a very important issue that I think will increase our understanding greatly. One of the greatest and one of the most essential attributes of God, one which we must understand as Christians is that God is above all things sovereign. The old theologians used to call about the…call it the supremacy of God. We like to use the term the sovereignty of God. That is to say that God rules over all things, that God controls all things. Now that is an essential understanding. The ramifications of that are beyond our ability to grasp. Some of them we can’t understand and perhaps even more of them we will understand when we’ve completed our lesson this morning. But the Bible teaches unequivocally that God is the supreme ruler in the universe. The one who created is the one who sustains. The one who ordained is the one who brings it to pass. The one who established the plan is the one who sees it to its fulfillment.
For example, listen to some of the testimony of the Scripture to the sovereignty of God. In 1 Chronicles chapter 29 verses 11 through 13 we read this, “Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as head above all, both riches and honor come of Thee and Thou reignest over all. In Thine hand is power and might and in Thine hand it is to make great and to give strength unto all. Now therefore, our God, we thank Thee and praise Thy glorious name.”
In 2 Chronicles and chapter 20 and verse 6 we read another example of the testimony of Scripture to the sovereignty of God. The writer says, “O Lord God of our fathers, art not Thou God in heaven and rulest not Thou over all the kingdoms of the nations and in Thine hand is there not power and might so that none is able to withstand Thee?”
And in Job chapter 23 verse 13 we read, “But He–speaking of God–is of one mind and who can turn Him? And what His soul desires He also does.” In other words, God never vacillates between opinions. He has one mind and no one can change it and no one can alter it.
In Psalm 115 and verse 3 it says, “But our God is in the heavens, He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased.” In Psalm 135:6, “Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that He did in heaven and in the earth in the seas and in all the deep places.”
In Proverbs 21:30 the Scripture says, “There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord.” And in Isaiah 46:10 God says, “My counsel shall stand and I will do all My good pleasure.”
And you might add to that a rather familiar word of Scripture from verse 35 in Daniel chapter 4 in which there it says, “God does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay His hand or say unto Him, What are You doing?” No one can alter it and no one really can even question it.
In Ephesians 1:11, “He works all things according to the purpose of His own will.”
Now all of these and a myriad more scriptures tell us that God is sovereign. Now this is a marvelous truth to understand. Somebody is in charge, is what it’s saying. The world and the universe and all that is going on with the millions and billions of isolated circumstances are not functioning at random. There is a design and a designer and a purpose and a goal and an objective and an intention in all of it.
Now to understand how God could take the almost infinite number of circumstances, attitudes and events that exist both in the natural and the demonic world and pull them all together to work out His own will is really beyond our comprehension. We cannot conceive of that. It’s enough for us to figure out how a computer with identifiable data can come rapidly to a conclusion but to understand how the infinite mind of eternal God can collect, collate and bring to perfect harmony every isolated bit of data that exists in the entire universe and make it all work for His will is really beyond our understanding.
In order to get a small grasp on the reality of this truth, we need to do this. We need to understand that God basically rules in the world through two things. The first one is miracle. In other words, in order to accomplish His purpose there are times when He interrupts the natural stream. There are times when He interrupts the natural course of the flow of history. He interrupts it supernaturally. He acts in violation of natural law. He overrules natural law. He sets it aside. He invades with supernatural power to accomplish His will. There are times when He does that. In order to accomplish His goal He simply sets aside the natural flow and does things that are naturally scientifically inexplicable. There is no scientific explanation for a miracle.
Now Scripture is full of this kind of thing. Creation itself obviously was the first interruption in the status quo when God in a matter of a few days, six days, created all that exists. And then there was the incredible and miraculous event we know as the flood when God drowned the entire world except for the saving of eight souls and two of each kind of animal. And then we read in Scripture about the plagues that came in Egypt and the death of the first born when God miraculously violated the course of nature, overruled the natural flow to get His people out of Egypt and into the promised land. And then we remember the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea for the people of Israel which sea then closed to drown the armies of Egypt. And then we remember that God brought water from a rock, miraculous, overruling the natural.
God provided manna from heaven and birds to eat when the people wanted flesh to eat. God on one occasion caused the sun to retreat and go backwards on a sundial. On another occasion He had the sun stand still, that is the earth stopped revolving and no one fell off. Supernaturally God controlled creation.
And then there was the time when the ground opened and swallowed all of those who rebelled against Him under the rebellion of Korah. The miracle was the ground opening and swallowing only those who had sinned and not the others.
Then there was the time when the walls of Jericho fell flat without any mechanical reason or physical phenomena to make that happen.
Then there was the time God made an axehead float and raised a dead boy and provided food for a widow. And a time when a donkey talked and a time when a chariot of fire caught in a whirlwind took a man to heaven without death, a man by the name of Elijah. And then there was the miracle of the divine handwriting on the wall in Belshazzar’s feast and the closing of the mouths of lions and three men in a fiery furnace who did not burn and were not even singed. And then there was the miracle of a man in the belly of a great fish for three days who lived. And it goes on and on to the healings of Jesus and the raising of the dead and the miracles of the Apostles. There have been times when God has to bring about His eternal purposes done miraculous things which interrupt the flow of natural history. That we call miracle. And God does that as a means of maintaining His sovereign control over the events that are taking their place in the world.
So we understand that. Most people understand that if they understand anything about the Scripture. But there is a second factor that many people do not think about that is equally significant. God not only takes the world and the universe to its destiny by the use of miracles, but secondly, by the use of providence…providence. Now the word providence is not in the Bible. It’s like the word trinity, trinity isn’t in the Bible but the trinity is. Providence as a term isn’t in the Bible but the providence of God is. It is a term to describe a very important way in which God controls things that are happening in the universe. Simply, it means this that God rather than overruling or interrupting or violating the natural course simply manipulates and uses all of the events that are happening to come to His own ends. On the one hand He interrupts those events, on the other hand He simply orchestrates them all, pulls them all together to bring His predetermined conclusion to pass.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
