After the tragedy of September 11th, there was a camera crew that walked the streets in New York and asked people spiritual questions at random. I’ll never forget what one man said when asked where God was when those horrible attacks took place. He said, “I used to believe in God, but not anymore. Not now. Because if there was a God, how could something like this take place?”
I want to ask you a challenging question: “Who’s really in control?” When you look at the headlines of the newspaper and see corruption among our leaders, it makes you want to ask, “Who’s really in control?” When there is murder and crime, when known criminals are allowed to walk free, it makes you want to ask, “Who’s really in control?” Today we are going to look at the sovereignty of God. When we talk about the sovereignty of God, what we’re basically saying is “God is in control.” And even though it seems that no one is in control, or Satan is in control, or this world is in control, in spite of what we see, we believe that God is still in control.
Today, we see in the Word of God one of the most powerful examples of the fact that even in the difficult times of life, God is in control. As Jesus was approaching the end of his earthly ministry, a special meeting was held by the Sanhedrin, or the Jewish religious leaders of his day. These enemies of Jesus decided to get together and have a meeting. By the way, it’s interesting that those who opposed Jesus the most were not atheists or pagans, but they were very religious people. They were people who substituted empty rituals for a real relationship with God. They watered down the gospel until salvation was nothing more than going through the motions and keeping the tedious religious rules which, conveniently, they made up! Well if you recall, earlier in this chapter we read of how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Some saw this miracle and got saved. However, some saw this miracle and got mad. They got mad because they didn’t like the fact that many were becoming believers of Jesus Christ. And they complained about this Jesus to the priests and the Pharisees. Finally, things got so bad, they decided they needed to have “one of those meetings”. This Jesus had to be stopped at all costs. These were powerful, educated and highly influential people. They were determined to stop Jesus.
We see through this meeting that even though these men intended evil, God was in control all along. In fact, I believe that there are two examples of God’s sovereignty, or control, in this passage. First we see that...
1) God is in control of the PLANS which men would DEVISE.
In verse forty-eight, we read that the Jews opposed Jesus because they feared a riot by his followers. Most of the Jews were looking for a political Savior. One who would save them from the Romans. Instead, God sent a spiritual savior, one who will save us from our sins. They were afraid that if enough people began to follow Jesus, some of them might be crazy enough to believe that they could topple Rome. So in their minds, they had to stop Jesus in order to save the nation of Israel from destruction.
In the middle of this meeting, a man named Caiphas stood up to speak. Caiphas had a specially intense hatred of Jesus. Later we read that before Jesus was crucified, he had Jesus blind folded and beaten and he mocked Jesus, saying, “If you’re a prophet, tell us who it is that is hitting you!” This same Caiphas says, “Listen you dummies, don’t you all know there is only one solution here?” (Look again at verse fifty.) “It is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish.” When Caiphas stood up and spoke at that meeting, he thought he had an original idea. His idea was to kill Jesus so the people might be saved. But little did he know that the plan which he spoke on that day was already God’s plan. In Revelation, Jesus is called the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Hundreds of years before, the prophet Isaiah said that Jesus would be “wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities”. Jesus himself told his disciples that when he arrived in Jerusalem, he would be betrayed, arrested, tried crucified, and on the third day, rise again. God’s plan all along was that Jesus die on a cross in Golgotha to pay the penalty for your sins and for mine. Here is a man who absolutely hated Jesus. Yet God took his own evil intentions and twisted them to do exactly what he intended to do. God took his very words and turned them into a prophesy. Look at verse 51, “He did not speak of his own initiative.” This doesn’t mean that God put words in his mouth, but God took Caiphas’ plan and turned it around for his own purpose. God took the evil mind of a sinful man and placed in his mind the idea of the cross! Yes, Jesus would die to save the nation, but not from the Romans and not just the nation of Israel, but everyone who would place their faith in Christ.
When the Sanhedrin said, “Let’s get together and decide what to do with Jesus,” God said, “I’ll get them together and tell them what to do with Jesus.” When they said, “Let’s put Jesus on trial,” God said, “I’m going to put sin on trial.” When they said, “By eliminating Jesus, we save the people from the Romans,” God said, “By sacrificing Jesus, we’ll save the people from their sins.” When they said, “Let’s build a cross and crucify the Son of Man,” God said, “I’ll build a cross to reconcile God and man.”
No one at the meeting knew it. No one understood it. But God took the words of those evil men and the plans of those evil men and used them to do what He wanted to do! This is what we mean when we say God is in control of the plans which men would devise.
Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he wishes.” I pray that God would give us godly leaders in government. But I believe that if every elected official rejected God’s Son, God’s Word and God’s standards today, our sovereign God would still move and work, even through godless politicians, to do exactly what He intends to accomplish. Psalm 2:2-4 says that “Kings...and rulers of this world counsel against the Lord...but He who sits in the heavens laughs.” Proverbs 19:21 says that “Many plans are in a man’s heart. But the counsel of the Lord will stand.” And of course, Romans 8:28 says that “All things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”
AW Tozier once said that the sovereignty of God is like a ship that leaves New York and is headed for Liverpool. That ship has a predetermined course and a predetermined destination. The people who are on board that ship may rise when they choose to rise. They may sleep when they choose to sleep. They may eat what they choose, and when they choose. They may walk about and make any number of decisions. They have free will. Yet all the while, that ship is still headed for its destination. It is still following that predetermined course. Likewise, even though people in this world may plan and devise evil things, even though people may hurt one another, even though there is suffering, this world is also following a predetermined course. One day this world is going to arrive at the port called judgment. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Some will do so in this life while there is time. Others will wait until they stand before God when it will be too late. But history will run its course just as God has determined. If there are a hundred more September 11ths in this nation, God is still in control.
Imagine a football coach standing on the side lines. He calls the plays that he knows will be effective against the competition. But what if, somehow, that coach not only called his own plays, but the plays of the other team as well? And whatever play HE called, the other team had to run? If that person coached a thousand games, he would win every one! Likewise, we have a sovereign God who not only empowers us and guides us, but he directs every move our enemy would make. If we submit to his plan and His will for our lives, and if we are obedient to HIS word, HOW CAN WE LOSE? How can we ever fail? If God is sovereign, if God is in control, the only way we can ever fail is to step out of His will for our lives!
But our passage suggests another way we can see God’s sovereign hand. God is not only in control of the plans men would devise, but...
2) God is in control of the EVIL which men would CARRY OUT.
God not only took their plan and turned it around to accomplish His own agenda, but God also took their efforts and enlisted them to do His work! Verse fifty-three is one of the pinnacle verses in the gospels. “From that day on, they planned together to kill him.” Jesus became the supreme outlaw of history. If you were to look at the ten most wanted on the Sanhedrin web site, Jesus was number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10! Their first priority was to find and kill Jesus.
But God not only had a plan for Jesus, He also had a time table. Verse fifty-six says that the Passover of the Jews was at hand. The Passover was the biggest event on the Jewish calendar. When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, before the last and final plague, God gave the people instructions. They were to sacrifice a lamb, and the blood from that lamb was to be painted on the mantle of the door of their home. That night, an angel of death passed through the land. In every home, the first born son died. But where the blood was placed on the mantle, that family was “passed over”. Thus it was called the “Pass Over.” Every time a family painted that blood upon the mantle, that was a picture of what Jesus would do for you and me on the cross. When our days on this earth are done, if the blood of Jesus Christ has been placed on the mantle of our hearts, we are spared eternal separation from God in hell. It was not enough for the Israelites that the blood was spilled. That blood had to be applied to the mantle. Likewise, it is not enough for you that Jesus’ blood was shed upon the cross. It must be applied to your heart by receiving Jesus as your Savior and Lord.
Every year at the Passover, that sacrifice was repeated to remind hem of the lesson God taught them in Egypt. Each time it was a picture of Jesus. Jesus was to be that Passover Lamb for all the world. The one that never had to be repeated. It was God’s plan for Jesus to die upon the cross at the Passover. Not before. Not after. But during the Passover. But if the Pharisees and the priests could get their hands on Jesus, guess what? They weren’t going to wait until the Passover to kill him! That’s why verse fifty-four says that “Jesus no longer continued to walk publicly among the Jews, but went away from there to the country near the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim; and there he stayed with his disciples.” Ephraim was a whopping seven miles from Jerusalem!
So here we have the biggest manhunt in Jewish history. They are looking for an extremely popular and famous man who happens to be traveling with a large entourage of twelve disciples as well as other followers. All the while Jesus was staying practically right beneath their noses! Yet they still could not find Jesus! Why not? Because God would not allow them to! You see, it really didn’t matter how badly Caiphas wanted to get his hands on Jesus. It didn’t matter how many people he had looking for Jesus. It didn’t matter how big the reward was for the person who found Jesus. The Sovereign hand of God would NOT allow them to touch Jesus one minute before his arrest in the garden. They were following God’s time table, and they didn’t even know it.
The safest place in the world to be is the will of God. Because God is sovereign, He protects us from anything that would separate us from his love or his care. This doesn’t mean we don’t suffer, because we do. But it means that no evil can come upon us that has not first passed through the permissive hand of God. John 10:29 says no man can “snatch us out of the father’s hand.”
I can’t explain to you why every individual trial in your life has been permitted by God. But I can tell you if there were no trials in this life, if there was no suffering or pain or loss, we would never long for our heavenly home. God has something better for us, and I don’t believe he would have us be too content here.
God IS in control. He is in control over the plans that men would devise. He takes them and uses them for His own purpose. He is in control over the evil that men would carry out. Anyone and anything that would hurt us must first come through God. JI Packer calls this “infinite power controlled by infinite wisdom!”
Tozier made another statement about the sovereignty of God. he said, “Anything God has ever done, he can do now. Anything God has ever done anywhere, He can do here. Anything God has ever done for anyone, He can do for you.” Do you believe that is true for you today? I do.
There is a song written a few years back that summarizes what we have talked about today. It is called “God is in control.”
God is in control,
Though godless men conspire.
His will unfolds,
Though mortal minds are sometimes prone to doubt
His ways are higher than our ways,
So even through the fire
Take heart and know
God is in control.
