The Foundation Stone: God is the Sovereign
Foundations of the Kingdom
As we seek to understand the Kingdom of God, Jesus’ great mission and obsession, we have to have some foundation stones to our thinking. Foundation stones allow for a firm structure that will stand firm and provide stability and strength for anything and everything built upon it. In these first few blogs on the Kingdom of God, I want to lay some of these foundation stones to our hearts and minds that we can examine Jesus’ life, His teachings, His death, Resurrection and the birth of the Church in the Book of Acts through. These ‘stones’ of truth build one upon another and should be seen in that way. I sincerely hope that you enjoy these short blogs but above all, that truth will set you free and establish a river of thought that lead to far more than thought – that lead to a seeing and an entering in to the reality of Christ and His Kingdom which is AT HAND!
I owe a great debt to Jack Hayford and His notes on the Kingdom in the Spirit Filled Life Study Bible. The beginning of many of these thoughts have come out of my study of Dr. Hayford’s notes.
'God is the Sovereign'
Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
In Genesis 1:1, we find the beginning place of seeing the Kingdom of God and knowing that He is the great King. God is Sovereign; He, and He alone, has absolute right to rule; He and He alone is the grand Potentate of the Cosmos. God is Sovereign – this is the beginning truth of the Kingdom of God and this is WHY we have a Kingdom and not just salvation! From this opening line of the Bible, we have deep revelation of why He truly is sovereign over all.
Why does He have absolute right and rule?
- He is Eternal within Himself. He is before the beginning. This doesn’t mean He will live forever, it means He lives completely outside of and beyond time and space. What was it like amongst the Godhead pre-beginning. There was nothing but God! He was the great Eternal All. He was the All in All before the creation. He was all. There was nothing else! He had no beginning but is rather the source of what WE call the beginning. He was before it; He is outside of it; He will be long after. He alone is worthy of all praise, worship, obedience as the absolute King and Lord over all, for He alone is eternal, uncreated, un-began. HE IS and therefore He is worthy to be Sovereign over all.
- He is the Eternal Source of all things. By His will and by His will alone all things exist. As the Father, the Source, the Creator of all things, He has the right to be its Sovereign and Ruler. As Creator and Source of all things, He has the right to rule over all that He has made. As Creator, He is also the Owner of all that He has made. Do owners not have full rights over what they own? While owning something, does not the owner have the right to command it, position it, bless it, curse it, change it and send it where he wills? As the great Owner over all things made, God has inherent right to be the Sovereign over that which He owns. All should bow and bend to His will and good pleasure because He is the Creator, Source, and Owner over all.
- He is Sovereign because He is morally good. All that He created was ultimately good and nothing in all of His creating was not-good. His goodness, His benevolence toward His creation, His perfection in utter goodness toward all He has created gives Him the moral right to be the great Sovereign over all. Is there another with perfect goodness and benevolence in this universe? Is there another who is the fountain of all that is good? If so, perhaps he or it has some claim on sovereignty, but I think not! He is perfect in His moral goodness therefore is sovereign and King over all!
- He is Sovereign because He is all powerful. Who else could have been the Source of all that is? Who else could have created and that so perfectly? He is Almighty, all-powerful, and completely able. Because of His great Might, He is Sovereign. He needed no one to give it to Him, to bequeath it upon Him. Nothing was ever delegated to God. He IS and He HAS all things in Himself. There is no one to challenge His power and might. There are no rivals. Many see God and speak of the Devil as if they are somehow near equals and rivals. It is not so. He, the Great Father, is El Shaddai, the Almighty, and there are no challengers or rivals to His power, glory or might. Because of this, He has every right to have complete dominion over His creation and sit as King over all. That is why we have the Kingdom of God. It could be no other way!
- He has perfect wisdom, knowledge and understanding therefore has the right to rule over all. Scripture’s record of our God is that He is perfect in wisdom, knowledge and understanding. He never learns, never has a good idea, He is complete, total, full of all wisdom and knowledge and understanding in all things. Nothing surprises Him or takes Him by surprise. Because of His complete and perfect wisdom, He deserves to rule.
There is no other whom should have the ‘natural,’ inherent right to rule but God and God alone. Does Man, any man, deserve this place? Do the angels or any angel? Satan, Lucifer, the Devil of Old? Does Man even have the right to rule over himself before a God who is his source, has his absolute good in mind, has absolute power, and perfect wisdom?
The beginning place of the Kingdom of God and learning its ways and movements is this ~ God is Sovereign and has full right and power to rule in all things. That includes you and me. All that I have and all that I am are under His great rule.
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