Sovereign - having supreme rank, power or authority; being above all others; independent of outside authority (dictionary.com)
God, who made the heavens and the earth, is sovereign. He reigns over everything that has been created. And what has been created? Everything but Him. God reigns over everything. Nothing is outside of His rule.
For us as humans to employ truth, revelation and reason to render a thing down to its origin is a healthy and sobering exercise. At the beginning of every thing is that thing's first cause. It is there, prior to the existence of anything, that we are left with nothing but God. God is the originator. Acknowledgment of this fact is crucial and is precisely what the heathens in Romans 1:18-32 did not do.
But not only is God originator, He is also sustainer. This means that He did not "set it and forget it" like you would Ron Popeil's Showtime Rotisserie. Instead, He is involved and active. He is "hands on". In fact, He has a definite plan and a purpose for what He has made. He has instituted times and seasons which bring a flow and a pattern that carries throughout His creation (Genesis 8:22).
However, God's involvement does not end there. You see, just as God determined the beginning and brought it all into being (Alpha), He will also determine the end and bring it all to nothing (Omega). He is first...and last! When He wants (Ephesians 1:11), He will bring an end to what He has made (II Peter 3:7). He will finish it.
While God has declared the end and will bring it about, He has also declared that, following the end, there will be a new beginning. God will remake what He destroyed. We get a glimpse into what this "New Heaven and New Earth" will look like in Revelation 21:1-22:5.
These things have happened, are happening and will happen. Without doubt. Without fail. What God, the sovereign says, goes. No created being can thwart the plan of God (Job 42:2).
Finally, since God is the sole Creator, Sustainer and Finisher, and evil exists, does this mean that He created evil? In short, no. God cannot do evil, and He did not create evil. God is good. Good is defined by what God does and demands. There is no evil in Him, thus, evil cannot flow out from Him.
But here is a marvelous reality, the reason that evil exists is not because God made it, but because God made beings and endowed those beings with an ability to defy His good commands should they so choose. And they chose to. Angels defied Him (II Peter 2:4) and men defied Him (Genesis 3:1-24). Evil came, not by God's hand, but by the hands of those He made and enabled to obey or disobey.
This is the simple explanation for the evil that exists. Evil is not here by the hand of God, but it is here under the sovereignty of God. Evil does not reign. God reigns.
These truths, and many more, are fundamental truths. And by God's grace we have been given glorious insight into these truths. However, these truths, clearly, are beyond us to grasp in fullness. We can grow in our understanding of them, but we cannot, given the limitations that we currently experience, understand them fully.
But this should not trouble us. We operate under this premise every day. For example, we know that gravity exists. It is indisputable. But what we do not know is what gravity is. We cannot explain it. Ultimately, we embrace it because it is undeniably true. Both objectively true and subjectively true.
And these things that we have asserted about God today are true. Both objectively and subjectively.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." - I Peter 1:3-5
Pastor Jeremy
