Stabilizing Truths, Part 2

Turn Your Bibles to Deuteronomy 32:3-4

Title: Stabilizing Truths, Part 2

Theme: The Greatness of God

Listen as I read Deuteronomy 32:3-4: “I will proclaim the name of the LORD. Oh, praise the greatness of our God! He is the Rock, His works are perfect, and all His ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He. (Deuteronomy 32:3-4) Let us Pray!

Introduction: This passage of Scripture is found in the “Song of Moses” with the opening verse saying, “Listen, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.” (Deuteronomy 32:1)

Proposition: I would propose to you that there are four different truths that the Holy Spirit wants you to grasp about the “Greatness of God.” When the Lord is allowed to illuminate these truths into the child of God, He will declare the greatness of God, announcing Him as strong and stable, as one who can be relied upon.

Interrogative Sentence: Just what does the Bible say about the “Greatness of God?”

Transitional Sentence: The first truth to grasping and enjoying the greatness of God is to rest in the Sovereignty of God. In the New Testament we read three times of God being addressed in prayer and the people crying out to God praying, “O Sovereign Lord.” (Luke 2:29; Act 4:24; Revelations 6:10; International Dictionary of the Bible Encyclopedia)

The application of the Greek word for “Sovereign Lord” (despotes) has been used by slaves in referring to their masters, slaves who are totally subjected to their master’s control over them. God being addressed as “Sovereign Lord,” projects the idea that the people petitioning Him consider themselves as slaves purchased and owned by Jesus Christ, people subjected to His absolute control over everything. (Practical Word Studies in the New Testament) The term means that He alone is God and no person, no being, nor ruling power, visible or invisible, physical or spiritual is outside of His hand to be blessed or cursed. He is above all and has authority over all things. (Romans 8:38-39; Colossians 1:16-17)

In saying “Sovereign Lord” Christians become like Paul, getting revelation and illumination of what God told Moses at the time he interceded on behalf of the Israelites when they had Aaron make the Golden Calf and they worshiped it. (Exodus 32-33) This is what God told Moses about His dealing with a stiff necked people, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” (Exodus 33:19; Romans 9:15)

If the Lord God would have acted solely on His Justice He would have killed all the Israelites for their turning away from Him instead of letting many of them live. In regards to God’s Sovereignty working in the free will of mankind, the Holy Spirit moved the Apostle Paul to write, “It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ (Romans 9:16-17) Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden… What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath--prepared for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory –“ (Romans 9:18-23)

The inscrutable sovereignty of God is manifested, not so much in the punishment of the reprobate, but in His gracious ability to draw sinful mankind to Himself. Those who enjoy the sovereignty of God are those who can rest with the fact that there are people out there who have no longing to respond to the Holy Spirit’s drawing to Christ and to the ways of God. Yet, God can still work through them to accomplish His will and bring glory unto Himself and His Son. The Lord is fully able as He chooses to work through those who oppose Him as well as through those who trust and obey Him.

In His sovereignty God gave Pharaoh just what He wanted, a hard heart. In Exodus chapter 8 verses 15 and 32 we read of Pharaoh hardening his own heart. In Exodus 9:34-35 we read of Pharaoh and his officials hardening their own hearts against what God was doing in some of the plagues through which the Lord was showing Himself as the all powerful God. In six other passages of Scripture we read of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. (Exodus 4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:20.27; 11:10)

On the basis of the whole of Scripture, this does not mean God caused Pharaoh to sin and to be unyielding to the will of God. God never tempts mankind to sin, James 1:13-14 says this about man’s sinfulness, “When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”