The Vision (3.13.14): Spurgeon and Farese on the Sovereignty of God

 

Last Sunday evening in Lynchburg, I preached on the “U” (“Unconditional Election”) in “TULIP” (forgot to record it!)  In so doing I necessarily addressed the related topics of God’s sovereignty, his decrees, and predestination.  I ended with this well known quote from Spurgeon (from his May 4, 1856 sermon titled Divine Sovereignty):

There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation—the kingship of God over all the works of his own hands—the throne of God, and his right to sit upon that throne. On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a foot-ball, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow him to be in his almonry to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties. They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends his throne, his creatures then gnash their teeth; and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and his right to do as he wills with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on his throne is not the God they love. They love him anywhere better than they do when he sits with his sceptre in his hand and his crown upon his head. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach.

Then, on Monday I heard word that Reformed Baptist brother Johnny Farese had passed from this life to the next (see this post).  Among the many legacies which Farese left behind was this powerful video on the Sovereignty of God.  This message seemed to be a good companion to Spurgeon’s quote.

 

 

May we see the trials that come to our lives from the same frame of reference as Farese did, and may we love to preach God’s sovereignty as Spurgeon did.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle