God's Sovereignty and the Happiness of His People | Psalm 115
OT scholars consider Ps. 115 to have been composed for and addressed to the people whom God had delivered from their helpless enslavement to Pharoah, and brought out of the land of Egypt. But they are not yet situated in the promised land. Rather, they are wandering in the wilderness without a clear timetable. And without meaningful structure for productivity. Life seems to be on hold. They’re apparently stuck in between what once was and what is yet to be.
Experts in the field of transition emotions call this “the neutral zone.” And it is a remarkably common experience. Some change takes place. And with that change, something that once was, is no more. Something has come to an end. With the ending there is loss. And that loss naturally engenders some degree of the feeling of grief. And then there is this “in between” time when the new normal is not yet. And it can be an uncomfortable experience. Depending on the degree of change, it can be a disorienting experience. And it is especially disorienting, and disequilibrating, it seems, for God-fearing people. And that’s because it feels like God is far off. He seems absent. And it’s perplexing because His apparent aloofness is inconsistent with what one has experienced of God before. Situations like this can have an eroding effect on one’s assurance that God is good. Seasons of transition can tempt us to doubt that we remain the object of God’s favor. The wilderness-like land in between has a way of provoking guilt and shame, and all manner of unsettling emotions.
At any given time, there are many among us who find ourselves in the place or time or season “in between.” Perhaps a chapter of your life has come to an end. It might be the end of a relationship. Maybe you have experienced the death of a loved one, or a divorce, or a break-up. It might be the end of a job. You’ve experienced the termination of meaningful employment. It might be the end of a place. You’ve relocated – from another city or part of the country – and it’s taking time to re-settle, and get re-situated. Perhaps you are in-between churches. Familiar relationships have changed. Identity that came with serving in certain capacities has ended. Or maybe you are a new parent, and you’re experiencing a very real ending to certain freedoms and discretion with your time. Perhaps you are empty-nesters, and that son or daughter are no longer intersecting your daily life. Or maybe you’re a recent college graduate but have yet to find your particular place of deployment. Transition emotions happen for children as well. There are little ones going to school for the first time. Your day is no longer mainly about free time and play. Your day is now mainly about order and structure and discipline.
The purpose of Ps. 115 is to anchor God’s people – to stabilize, and orient God’s people – for as long as they remain in the “land in between.” So, turn to Ps. 115.
Change is a daily experience. Therefore, the complex emotions that accompany change are a daily experience. And, therefore, sincere, religious cliché’s are not enough to sustain us. We need a deeper and stronger anchor. We need God and His active and dynamic presence. If we end up factoring Him out of the equation, we strip ourselves bare before the blast of life’s unceasing waves of change. But if we factor God in as our hope, as our help, as our shield, we can endure anything. And the deepest and strongest anchor point in all that God has revealed Himself to be is His sovereignty – summarized in one brief, but poignant verse.
“Our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases.”
—Psalm 115:3
That means that everything God takes pleasure in doing, He does and cannot be hindered from doing. Or to say it another way – all that God does he takes pleasure in. And He cannot be kept back from doing what He delights most to do. Is. 46:9-10 says, “I am God and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, Saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my pleasure.”
God’s sovereignty is what makes God God. God’s sovereignty is what sets God apart from everyone else. Now the outline of my sermon has three main headings: The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is an obvious doctrine. God’s sovereignty is a resisted doctrine. And God’s sovereignty is a functional doctrine. It gets things done. And in the context of Ps. 115, it gets things done for God’s people who find themselves in the land in between.
The Sovereignty of God: An Obvious Doctrine
The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is obvious, even if you are minimally aware of its basis in Scripture. God’s sovereignty means that He is in control. All goes exactly as He intends it to go. Ps. 115:3 again,
“Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases.”
—Psalm 115:3
“He is in the heavens,” doesn’t mean He’s far off. It means He is over all. God’s sovereignty is His glorious throne from which He governs all things in un-frustrated supremacy. I say “un-frustrated” because, He does whatever He pleases. Now, just pause and consider how many things have impacted the formation of your life over which you exercised no real determination, no ultimate desire – over which you exerted no discernible control.
I did not plan to be born. I did not plan to be born in 1955. I did not plan to be born in a Minneapolis hospital to a rural couple from the small town of Long Prairie, MN. I did not plan to be the special child born to a woman who had lost her two previous children to death during childbirth. I didn’t plan my physical stature. I didn’t plan my personal talents, or strengths, or aptitudes, or temperament. I didn’t plan for the spiritual awakening that took place in my heart and soul during my Junior Year in High School. I did not plan for a chronic knee condition that would end my athletic dreams, while opening a door to a short-term mission experience where I would be captured by the exhilaration of gospel ministry. I didn’t plan to meet and fall in love with a young woman born and raised on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I didn’t plan on fathering three sons.
It is a humbling and obvious thing to acknowledge that virtually none of themost shaping influences in my life were the result of me doing what I pleased. There is simply no way I could have ever anticipated all the necessary and inter-woven events, and locations, and people, and conversations, and transitions, and problems, and turning points going on in my world, much less in the larger world, that all had to come together for the reality of my life to be what it is today. When you stop to consider all the things that had to come together for any one piece of your story to unfold the way it did, does it not almost melt your brain? Of course, there are those who chalk it up to mere fate and deny the notion someone has been in charge. But the Bible says someone has been, is in charge. And that someone is not us. Psalm 139:16 says, “In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
“We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
—Ephesians 2:10
The longer we live, and the more honest we are, the more we realize we could not have made this up. God did. God is in control. And for many, it’s obvious. But,
The Sovereignty of God: A Resisted Doctrine
Since God’s sovereignty means that He is in control of everything, over everything, uncontested in everything, un-frustrated by anything, the sovereignty of God is not only an obvious doctrine, it is also a hard doctrine.
“I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the LORD, who does all these things.”
—Isaiah 45:7
“Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?”
—Lamentations 3:37
It may be obvious there are lots of things in life over which we do not exert much in the way of control. But you don’t have to push the doctrine of God’s sovereignty very far and we feel it pushing back - hard. Control is not something any of us, by nature, is comfortable giving up. Paul Tripp writes,
“One of the most dangerous delusions for each of us is the delusion of our own sovereignty. And one of our most dangerous idols is the idol of control.”
Whenever we find ourselves seemingly stuck in the “land in between,” frustration emerges from our recognition that life has not worked out as we had hoped and planned. And when the un-hoped for and unplanned for happens, and we get even a small taste of the bitterness of loss, we are tempted to anger. And in our disappointment, we are tempted to some measure of depression. And in those times when God seems far off, or absent, or unconcerned, or inattentive, we are especially vulnerable to turning and entrusting ourselves to idols, in particular the idol of control.
Is it not obvious that we are all, by nature, passionately and unwaveringly devoted to our own personal autonomy and lordship?
Here is an example - taken strictly from the realms of the theoretical. You happen to be running late (real late) and so you’re in a hurry, and it just happens to be the morning after “someone” in your household chose to go on a “let’s get tidy binge” and puts the car keys where you can’t find them. It also just happens to be the morning after “someone” assumed, “I can fill up with gas tank tomorrow.” This is strictly theoretical. It also just happens to be the morning, of all mornings, the one morning in months, that there’s an accident and traffic is in gridlock. The sovereignty of God is, in that moment, a resisted doctrine. Oh but it goes way beyond the relatively trivial. It gets much harder.
“The LORD kills and brings to life. He brings down to Sheol and raises up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and he exalts.”
—1 Samuel 2:6-7
Isn’t this the reason the 65-year-old who loses all of his retirement in one devastating economic down-turn, or the wife whose husband abandoned her for another woman, or the parents whose kindergartener was randomly shot and killed by a mental patient who missed his meds, might, understandably, express their heart-wrenching resentment, “And God is in control of that?”
The sovereignty of God is an obvious doctrine. The sovereignty of God, to some degree – more or less, is a resisted doctrine. But for those who love God and are called according to His purpose, God’s sovereignty is also, most profoundly, a functional doctrine.
The Sovereignty of God: A Functional Doctrine
It serves us. It works for us. It helps us and comforts us and encourages us and sustains us. It produces, in us, peace and hope – at all times, but, in particular, in the “in between.” And according to Ps. 115, it is intended to drench us with profound assurance and enduring joy.
Five times the Psalmist uses the word “bless” - a word that we understand is also translated, “happy.”
“The LORD has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron.
He will bless those who fear the LORD, both small and great . . . May you be blessed by the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”
—Psalm 115:12-13, 15
The word translated blessed/blessing is family term. It’s about relational attachment. And it is in those “in between” times and places where the promise of God’s blessing, and keeping, and happy connecting functions most profoundly.
But how? How does God’s sovereignty do that? How does the doctrine of the sovereignty of God produce security and joy in the hearts and souls of the people of God? I believe it gets this work done because it is -
Rooted in the Purpose and Person of God
It may seem and sound counter-intuitive, but at those times when God seems strangely passive, our strongest assurance is that God’s commitment to our well-being is not ultimately based on our value, but on His value.
“Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases.”
—Psalm 115:1-3
What is it that moves the heart of God to act – to act for the good of His people – the people whom He has saved and redeemed? Is God moved by our upright character and worthy accomplishments? Is God moved to help us and shield us for the sake of how deserving we are? The Psalmist rightly answers, “not us.” God’s blessing on us is NOT motivated by anything about us. Rather God is driven to act for our good on the basis of His sovereign, unthwartable commitment to upholding His reputation. Our peace and joy in “the land in between” is rooted and grounded in the soil of God’s passion and un-frustrated pleasure to be known and praised in all the earth for His steadfast love and faithfulness.
This was and is the whole point of the Exodus. Why did God bring Israel out of Egypt, and deliver them from Pharoah’s house of slavery?
“For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”
—Exodus 9:16
And this is what God does throughout all of history - He does all He does so that the greatness of His infinite perfections – His steadfast love and faithfulness, are put on display – in such a way, and to such a degree that His people find joy in Him that spills over in praise to Him.
And how can we be so sure God’s purpose to reveal His steadfast love and faithfulness will not be frustrated? What IF I’m stuck where I’m stuck because of my sin?
If the basis of our assurance that God will act for our good because that is what we deserve, we would be on shaky ground. No. Our God is in the heavens, and He does all that He pleases. And what pleases Him most is the glory of His own steadfast love, and His own unwavering faithfulness. That is a sure foundation for our faith.
Ps. 115 is for people who find themselves in the land in between. Ps. 115 is for people who are asking themselves (and God), “Where am I? Is this it? Am I done? Is this my fault?” Ps. 115 is for people who are afraid that their lives are fast becoming a lost opportunity. Ps. 115 is for people who have discovered the unsettling reality of their own limitations and insufficiency to control anything. Ps. 115 is for people who wonder if they will ever enjoy the sweetness of God’s presence again. But most of all, Ps. 115 is an invitation for all of us to trust God more deeply than ever before. Notice the repeated welcome in vv. 9-11,
“O Israel, trust the LORD!
He is their help and their shield.”
“O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD!
He is their help and their shield.”
“You who fear the LORD, trust in the LORD!
He is their help and their shield.”
—Psalm 115:9-11
How can we know that the Lord will help us, and protect us, and provide for us, and do good to us, and bless us?
He is the only one who does all that He pleases. And it pleases Him to speak to us the words of life. He alone has the eyes to see the far and wide of every trajectory and oversees the fulfillment of every detail for our good. He alone has active and listening ears that hear our prayers and the cries of our hearts. And He has a nose that smells the sweet aroma of the atoning sacrifice purchased and paid for in full by the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Christ, He stretches out his hands to serve and bless and heal. In Christ, He humbled himself and lived a perfect life among us. And in Christ, it pleased Him to bear our griefs. He was crushed for our guilt. By His wounds, we are healed. And in Christ alone, we have one who daily presents and pleads His righteousness in our behalf. In Christ, the LORD has remembered us. Christ is our help and our shield.
Everything that God takes pleasure in doing, He does and cannot be hindered or frustrated from doing. And this is the ground of all our joy at all times, in all seasons, no matter where we are.