Acts: Sovereignty and Human Responsibility

About 10 years ago, Christy and I uh attended a concert in Atlanta for the band Coldplay.

I mean at the time Coldplay just hit mainstream, super popular, and we were into it.

We were way into it.

You know, the song Scientist and Yellow had come out, and we were playing those at our house all the time.

We had pretty good seats.

We were at Phillips Arena, and we were about 40 yards back along the floor, like toward the back of the floor, but up 10 rows, kind of had a good view.

And Chris Martin, who's their lead singer, he he would like this is what he does every concert.

He just kind of like twirls around the stage completely free the entire time.

And then when he sits down in front of his piano, he kind of he's like a special stool where he can rock back and forth.

And I I was I was in, man.

I mean, I was into this thing, and somewhere along the line I got a migraine, so I took a pain pill, which I think helped with the kind of like religious experience along the way.

Um at the end of the concert, they sang the song Yellow, and they dropped all these yellow balls uh from the ceiling.

I think that combined with the music and the pain pill.

I mean, I was having uh a wonderful time.

And I was in after then, I was even more in like to this band.

I mean, I was so in.

I mean, I I if I could figure out something about them, I wanted to know.

Like if there was something on TV about them, like their creative process, or you know, how they toured or where they were at, I mean, any of this information, I wanted to know it.

And then just a few years after that, uh, they were back in town on another tour, and Christy and I, we we weren't going, but we knew they were in town, and we had been at Piedmont Park that day with our girls, and we were on Piedmont Road at the red light at Cheshire Bridge, and we were first at the red light.

And these two black suburbans turned right in front of us.

I'm talking like 10 feet in front of us, and we saw straight in the windows, and we saw the band.

And then it was like two teenage girls, me and my grown wife, seeing Justin Bieber, like at your birthday party or something.

I mean, we went nuts.

Like, oh, it was it, you know, and then just right after that, right after that, we keep driving, but we're we're so excited about this sighting.

I mean, you couldn't believe it, right?

We were so excited about this, and we start talking about, you know, like, oh, well, they must be staying at the St.

Regents because they were coming from Buckhead, and you know, the Ritz is downtown, and the four seasons is over, kind of more midtown, so they must be at Central, oh, it's three o'clock, you know.

So the the I don't think the concert starts till seven, so it's three.

They must must like to get there about four hours, you know, early, do their sound chat.

Like we're figuring all this out.

Like, so you know, so important, so important.

And we did all this, like all this conversation, all this trying to figure out this mystery of the unknown just off of a glimpse.

Just off of a glimpse.

And that's that's my point here is by catching a glimpse of something, by catching a glimpse of something, we can learn something.

We won't learn everything.

But we start to learn something.

And that's what our text is this morning.

Our text from Acts 4 this morning, it's a glimpse of something we want to know so much more about.

And I'll go ahead and confess to you that the passage in the bulletin, I printed the wrong one, so you're gonna have to listen to me read it.

I think in the bulletin's Acts 2.

But this is Acts 4, 24 through 30.

Sovereign Lord.

So that means, by the way, sovereign means like God who is in control.

Okay, who's in control of all things.

Sovereign Lord, God who's in control, everything, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.

For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant, Jesus.

So if you remember the story of the last two weeks, Peter and John, like the church is starting, Jesus had died, he had resurrected.

Peter and John come out of that, they're transformed, they become very bold people, and they start to proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah.

All these people are very religious, they're making all these sacrifices.

This life sort of has a merit system to it.

They come and say, no, no, no, no, like Jesus is the last sacrifice.

You don't have to keep sacrificing.

You don't have to keep sacrificing yourself.

By the grace of God, this Jesus dies for all of your sin is put upon him, and his righteousness is given to you, and you are securely beloved before God.

This is such good news.

And they're telling this to the religious elite who don't care.

And they don't care because the system works for their benefit.

The system works for them and their family and their friends.

It gives them a lot of wealth, it gives them a lot of power.

And so Jesus is a threat.

This message of the grace of God is a threat to their system.

And so Peter and John are arrested, they come out of being arrested, they get freed, and immediately the people pray this prayer.

And this prayer is sort of a mystery because you have this statement, sovereign Lord, God your sovereign, and your economy, all the good and all the bad of this world all work together in the economy of God, not outside of it.

And then on top of that, they're praying they would be brave.

So we get this mix of like sovereignty and human responsibility, because you would think, well, if they're proclaiming God to be sovereign, well then I don't need to be brave.

I don't need to be anything.

God's predestined at all.

It doesn't even matter what I do.

So they believe this idea of sovereignty, and then also they believe they need to keep doing something.

So a few points this morning to solve all your questions you've ever had about God's sovereignty and your responsibility in this world.

Point number one God's sovereignty both frustrates us and humbles us.

God's sovereignty both frustrates us and humbles us.

So on Tuesday morning, I received a phone call.

I was standing at Health Place, working out at Health Place Tuesday morning.

And it was one of those phone calls that was it was the wrong time for the phone call.

Like, you know, you know, you looked at your phone, you're like, there's no reason this person should be calling me right now.

Like as soon as you see it.

And it was one of my best friends, my best friend John, and I look at him like he doesn't call me.

He didn't call me in the morning.

Like that's that's not when he calls me.

And so right away you're like, um, this is off, and I answer it, and and he says immediately, he just says, I have I have sad news.

And I I you know, I was kind of prepared for that as soon as I saw his name on my phone.

And he said, uh, our friend Kim, who we went to college with, had died on Monday in a paragliding accident in Kenya's Western Valley.

And we talked a little bit about it more.

Um, but she had passed away.

And she lived over there in Kenya, and she had started a camp in Kenya for kids, and she was single her whole life, but she had this huge family of friends in Kenya, huge family here, and family of friends here.

And this is where I struggle with sovereignty.

Because she was 39, 40, somewhere in there.

And no matter how much I study or how much I learn or how much I read, my struggle is never with what is true.

And my struggle is not with the philosophy behind or the argument behind God's sovereignty, not my struggle.

My struggle is with I only get a glimpse.

I only get a glimpse of how things are working out in this world, and it feels really painful.

And I want to see it all.

I want to know why my friend died on Monday.

And while I don't understand, in my ignorance and my limitations, right, there's the humility side of sovereignty.

I'm frustrated and I'm humbled, I'm limited, I'm ignorant, I'm resistant, and yet in all of that, in all of that, God's promises still stand.

Nothing is for waste, even the worst of evils, the saddest of things, in time somehow God comes into that pain and creates life.

He's been doing this from the beginning.

He's been doing that, he did this in the garden, he did it at the cross.

This week I'm watching Grey's Anatomy.

Anybody still watch Grey's Anatomy?

Christy and I are.

We'll admit it.

Anybody else just want to admit that?

Thanks, Mark.

Mark will be honest.

We're watching Gray's Anatomy and a monster of a guy, just a horrible human being.

I mean, the kind of, you know, the kind of TV you want to watch where you feel so much better about yourself, right?

I mean, that's why some of you watch Bachelor, you just leave and go, I'm such a great person.

I mean, this is what this guy does for me.

Like, you're watching it, you're like, well, at least I'm not him.

You know, and this guy finally dies, and you're so happy about his death.

And they use his organs, they use his organs to bring life to other people.

Right?

Like, even out of suffering and death comes life.

It was like this from the beginning.

It's it is in our world, and that is frustrating, and it is humbling.

Point number two.

God's sovereignty, while frustrating, is also rescuing.

So follow me with this.

So there's an interesting story later in Acts chapter 27, and Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, this guy is a prisoner on a ship.

Acts 27 · chapter mention

And a storm comes up on this ship, and it's not looking good.

Everybody's freaking out.

They think they're gonna go down, they think this is going the wrong way, and uh they decide to take the ship, let the storm take the ship, and they they get kind of on the lee side of an island, a little bit protected.

They start building supports under the ship, they're tossing cargo, I mean, they're doing anything they can.

And Paul, who's a prisoner, he comes before everybody says, Hey, I've heard from an angel from the Lord.

And that could just be a fancy way of saying, like, hey, I heard from God.

Like, in this distress, I heard from God, none of us are gonna die.

So he makes this statement, hey, take heart.

You're not gonna die, take heart.

And then he says in verse 26, we must run aground on some island.

All right, so that's interesting, right?

Like, because you have like, all right, so God is sovereign, none of you are gonna die.

He's saying it before anything's happened, so it's been predestined.

Yet, let's, we have to do something, yet we have to run the ship aground.

Okay, so right away we see God's sovereignty, human responsibility.

Somehow, mysteriously, these things are working together.

Then later on, some of the sailors they're getting afraid.

I mean, they are about to jump ship, and Paul comes up in verse 31 and he says, Hey, unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.

Okay, so twice, there's a second time.

Something sovereignly has been spoken over them, and yet human responsibility is not removed.

So we like to pit these two ideas against each other.

Right?

And this is what it looks like usually.

If God is in charge and he's in control of all things, well then I don't have to do anything.

Or if God's not in charge.

Or like I can sort of like bend his will with my prayers, like if I pray hard enough, so everything relies on me.

See, no matter how things are, God is always in charge, and yet what you do still matters.

Author and Pastor Tim Keller says that this concept makes no logical sense, but it is wonderfully practical.

Meaning, if you really believe your actions and prayers could change God, if you really meant that, you have way too high a view of your own wisdom of what should happen in this world, or for you, or your family, or your loved ones, and you will exhaust yourself in this life.

Because everything would rely on you.

Yet, if you believed everything is faded and there's no human responsibility, well then it'd be easy to go like, I don't need to do anything.

Then you could easily waste your life, and you could cause a lot of harm to yourself and to other people.

See, there's a great freedom in the mystery of God's sovereignty and our responsibility.

Because you're not in control of everything.

And that's very freeing to come to that kind of surrender.

I mean, my friend Kim's parents are dealing with this right now in their grief.

Maybe you're grieving.

Maybe you're still grieving something from 20 years ago.

And this is what we wrestle with.

Like, is God sovereign over not just life but also death?

Because if we can accept something like that, even though it's frustrating, if we can accept something like that, that puts us in a position of humility and surrender and stillness that allows us to live in a present moment and allows us to go through the process of grief better.

Every night I snuggle my girls into their bed, kiss them, dote on them, pray for them.

Man, it is so easy for me to think about the days ahead and all the possible harm that could be done to them that I can't control.

And that's just the thing.

Like, yet I'll still love them, I'll discipline them, like we got an alarm on the house, I have a gun, don't come over at night.

Like, like I'm gonna do whatever I can do within my human responsibility.

And yet I can't control it all.

And that's very, very difficult.

But if all of this, with my kids or marriage, or job or health, if it's all completely me holding it together, if it's all just me holding it together, I'll be crushed.

You'll be crushed.

You'll be exhausted.

You always think you need to pray a little harder, you'll always think you need to do something else, you always think you miss something, you always I mean at some point there has to be surrender.

Surrender within human responsibility.

See, God's sovereignty, even while mysterious and frustrating, can bring great relief to you.

So these people in Acts chapter 4, they're proclaimed God is sovereign, right?

Acts 4 · chapter mention

So they're saying that you're in control of all things.

Our buddies, Peter and John, were arrested, and immediately come out and we say, Sovereign Lord.

So they were arrested, things aren't good, we're being persecuted, and we're saying all of that in the economy of God is working together.

All of it.

You're sovereign, and yet their prayer is make us brave that we can keep doing something.

And I would just think my natural reaction is like, oh, well, if he's sovereign, then I pray less.

Doesn't matter.

Maybe I don't need to do as much.

He's got it anyways.

But see, this sort of resignation for prayer, this is built upon the idea that praying is about you coercing God, me coercing God to get him to do something in the future that you think is best.

When really it's built upon the truth that prayer is about you getting out all your expectations and finally becoming surrendered and still before the Lord, who holds all things together, and out of that you live your life.

And this gives us point number three, and this is it, because of God's sovereignty, you are free to pray.

Ultimately, we just need to get this stuff out.

Like, we need to get our concerns out, we need to get our plans out.

Like, here's my great plan for my kids and for my family, here's my great plan for my job.

Like, I need to get all this out, all this confession out.

I need to get all this out before the Lord so finally I can get to the place of be still and know that I am God.

You are free.

You are free of trying to coerce God constantly.

See, you're free to pray.

There's no freedom in prayer if it's all you coercing God to what you think is best.

And then we can go before God with whatever we're thinking and our plans and all these expectations, and we're just putting them out there, but we're putting them out there going like, yet your will be done.

Like, here it is, and I'm unloading all of this because I need to unload all of it, yet your will be done, and now can I move into a place of presence and stillness before God?

Surrender.

Many of us were just really given a load of baloney when it comes to prayer.

You know, the idea that prayer is primarily about us asking for things and you did this.

You did this and it didn't work.

Of course it didn't work.

Prayer is not primarily about you just asking for things and God goes, oh, that's a great idea.

I didn't think about that.

Like he's not sovereign.

Prayer is about us getting all of this out so we can put ourselves in a position before God where we're surrendered and rested and becoming a non-anxious presence, a loving presence to ourselves, our family, our neighbors.

See, he is sovereign and yet we still have our lives.

That is freedom.

His sovereignty brings us freedom, and yet the fact that there's still human responsibility makes sure that we don't move into apathy.

So, my brothers and sisters, it's all.

All of it is held within God's gracious sovereignty over your life.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your goodness and your sovereignty and your grace.

This topic and subject is so difficult, and yet we see this prayer of these people in Acts 4 proclaim you as sovereign, yet never budge from their responsibility.

Never move from asking for boldness and bravery.

They immediately come before you.

God, would you help us?

Would you help us in this mystery and frustration?

To live in a humility, to come before you and say, You are sovereign over all things.

Thank you for the freedom it brings, whatever your will be.

Would you give us the freedom to voice all of our concerns?

Just put it before you.

The freedom to pray, the freedom to ask, the freedom to live in your gracious sovereignty, that we might move toward stillness and surrender with you.

God, so many of us are just high-gripping our lives.

Unable to move on from something in the past that you are sovereign over, and it is hurtful and painful.

Help us to grieve it.

Help us to grieve it with you.

That you come straight into pain and you always have.

Thank you for the cross of Jesus, that even in all this resistance and ignorance of ours, as we try to act like we should be God and you shouldn't, that you are forgiving.

And Jesus is enough, and that all of our sin of pride when it comes to this has been taken care of.

And that you give to us your righteousness, that we are your beloved, that we are always your beloved.

We thank you for Jesus.

In his name we pray.

Amen.