Sovereignty

When you drive north toward Ordos City in China’s Inner Mongolia province, you can’t miss the Mausoleum of Genghis Khan. The massive complex, rebuilt in the 1950s in the traditional Mongol style, houses genuine relics and is an important sanctuary for the shamanic worship of the legendary Mongol leader. But the Khan’s tomb is properly called a cenotaph—a monument to someone buried elsewhere—because it is empty.

While we can be certain his mortal remains are not there, we’re completely uncertain as to where they might be. And that’s odd. In life, he was the most powerful person on Earth. He was the Universal Ruler (“Genghis Khan”) of an empire that would eventually stretch from the Pacific Ocean into Eastern Europe, encompassing large swaths of present-day China, Russia, and the Middle East. Yet his grave is unmarked and remains undiscovered.

This is by design. Despite his exalted status, Genghis Khan retained the frugal, itinerant lifestyle of his youth, and indeed of most Mongols. So, it makes sense that he would want a humble, anonymous burial in his homeland. “Let my body die, but let my nation live,” he is supposed to have said.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1. Christ, Lordship of; King Jesus; Lordship of Christ – Many powerful kings have ruled over large parts of the earth. Many came from humble backgrounds and rose to greatness. Jesus, the true “universal ruler” also had a humble childhood and became the most powerful person on earth. He was also buried in a grave whose exact location is debated today. But the defining difference is that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords rose from the dead and reigns forever seated at the right hand of God.
2. Moses – The burial place of Moses is also unknown, but he was buried by God himself. (Deut. 34:5-6; Jude 1:9)
3. Final Judgment; Resurrection – Although the grave of Genghis Khan is unknown, hidden in the mists of history, God will still raise him up to stand at the final judgment. (Rev. 20:13)

In her book, Aging Faithfully, Alice Fryling writes about what she learned from insomnia:

Sleep has always been difficult for me, but about the time I turned sixty, insomnia came banging at my door. I lay awake every night for hours. Sometimes in anxiety, sometimes in boredom. I prayed every night that God would help me sleep. That didn't work. It only made my insomnia worse because then I would lie awake trying to solve the theological issues around unanswered prayer.

One tired morning as I sat in quiet, I began to wonder why God created us to sleep in the first place. If I were God, I would want people to stay awake to help take care of the world. But for about eight hours out of every twenty-four, God designed us to be asleep.

I realized that when I sleep, I am out of control. When I experience insomnia, I am also out of control. I certainly cannot make myself go to sleep. Perhaps insomnia and sleep accomplish the same purpose. In other words, insomnia was a reminder, like sleep, that we do not control our own lives, let alone the world. God is our Creator and is the one in charge.

My ‘theology of sleep’ is my own personal reminder that God is God and I am not. God is in control of my life, my waking and sleeping hours, in loving, creative, grace-filled ways. Apparently, my being out of control is part of God's design.

In CT magazine, Brad East reflects on Olympic athletes sharing their Christian testimony:

The opening ceremonies of the Olympics are extravagant celebrations of national glories and global unity. But if you watch past the opener to the 2024 Games themselves, you’ll notice an unusual pattern: Athletes are always talking about God. Athletes of every kind continuously gave God the credit, often in explicitly Christian terms.

For my money, US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won. After breaking the world record (again) for women’s 400-meter hurdles, she answered a reporter’s question this way: “Honestly—praise God. I was not expecting that, but he can do anything. Anything is possible in Christ. I’m just amazed, baffled, and in shock.” The reporter laughed nervously and moved on to the next qualifier.

It’s not news that athletes thank the Lord for their success. But watching these public displays of piety made me wonder: Why is this still normal? Unlike other events, like the Oscars, sporting events appear to be the last refuge of “acceptable” public faith in our secular culture. In a time when belief is belittled, ignored, or relegated to one’s private life, athletes are unapologetically faithful in public. But why?

The place to start, I think, is the nature of sports itself. Athletic discipline is rigorously controlled because, when the whistle blows, nothing is under control. It’s chaos, contingency, and chance all the way down. The skies fill with rain clouds; the court is slick with sweat; the track is spongy; your opponents are strategically unpredictable.

With good reason, therefore, athletes turn to God. None but God is sovereign. I can’t control the weather, but he can. I can’t stop my body from failing, but he can. Even the wind and the waves obey him (Matt. 8:27). Shouldn’t footballs and softballs obey him too?

For athletes, God isn’t just in charge of the moment. He’s the governor of history. This is true for all of us, at all times, but elite athletes are viscerally reminded of it with a frequency few of us experience.

It should come as no surprise, then, that a victorious athlete will speak of more than God answering a prayer. Sure, they may be caught up in the moment. Deep down, though, they’re expressing faith in divine providence. It’s one more way to be clear about control. None of us has it, because only God does, and the sooner one recognizes that, the sooner peace is possible when losing and real joy available when winning.

The Lion King tells the story of a king's ascent. From the moment the movie begins, Simba is branded as the heir to the throne. He is designated to the office at the start of the movie by the baboon Rafiki, who lifts up Simba before the animals of the kingdom as they bow before him. He is the future king.

The rest of the story describes Simba's exile and his homecoming to Pride Rock. When Simba returns to Pride Rock, he must battle for the throne, which has been seized by his uncle Scar. Simba conquers Scar and the hyenas, but even though he has been designated, appointed, and even conquered, the forces of darkness, his work remains incomplete.

At the end of the movie, immediately after the battle, an important scene occurs that is sometimes overlooked. The camera suddenly shifts to Rafiki, bringing the story full circle. Rafiki takes his staff and points Simba to Pride Rock. An old era has ended; a new one is about to begin. In order for Simba to claim his kingdom and be installed as the king, he must ascend Pride Rock, the rightful place of the ruler, to ritually demonstrate he has conquered.

Simba dramatically ascends the rock and roars. When he does, the other lions acknowledge his victory, dominion, and authority. Though Simba has been designated as the king from the start of the movie, though he has conquered in battle, he still is not installed as king until he ascends Pride Rock.

In a better way, Jesus is designated as king and Lord from the beginning of the Gospels and from all creation really. But Jesus had to be installed as king; he had to be enthroned; he had to be recognized as king; he had to ascend to the right hand of the father, sit on the throne, and receive from God the Father all dominion and authority. The Ascension is about the triumph of Jesus the king.

In Oprah Winfrey’s lifetime achievement award acceptance speech at the 2018 Golden Globes, she said, "What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have."

“Your truth.” Those two words are so entrenched in our lexicon today that we hardly recognize them for the incoherent nightmare that they are. Among other things, the philosophy of "your truth" destroys families when a dad suddenly decides "his truth" is calling him to a new lover, a new family, or maybe even a new gender. It's a philosophy that can destroy entire societies, because invariably one person's truth will go to battle with another person's truth, and devoid of reason, only power decides the victor.

"Your truth" also puts an incredible, self-justifying burden on the individual. If we are all self-made projects whose destinies are wholly ours to discover and implement, life becomes a rat race of performative individuality. "Live your truth" autonomy is as exhausting as it is incoherent. Depression is the inevitable result and “the inexorable counterpart of the human being who is her/his own sovereign.”

It would be tempting, as the calendar (changes to) 2021, to view 2020 as a nightmare that will soon pass and quickly be forgotten. Take a mulligan year and try again as if the 2020 hellscape never happened. Writing for 1517, Chad Bird has other plans altogether: this year has been a great year for the church to rediscover some of its central beliefs about sin, repentance, and redemption.

He writes:

Neither this global pandemic, the gross injustices, the racial tensions, the mad riots, the macabre political theatre, not even Tiger King should have shocked anyone, especially those schooled in the Torah and the prophets. All human history, from Cain and Abel onward, has amply demonstrated that destruction and stupidity, navel-gazing and bloodshed, the ubiquity of fools, and the thin veneer between civilization and anarchy is the norm, not the exception.

This year just happens to be a rather colorful sampling of our commonly shared low anthropology. Welcome to Humanity 101. And don’t worry: it won’t get better. […]

And yet …

[W]e are not the Church of Chicken Little but the Church of Jesus Christ. We do not run around screaming that “the sky is falling.” There is no panic in heaven. Over the chaos of this world reigns the King of kings, Jesus the Resurrected, before whom every knee will eventually bow, whether they like it or not. Every governmental authority now — presidents, kings, prime ministers, you name it — are in lame-duck administrations. Their time is ending. Put not your trust in politicians or parties or ballot boxes. Christ and his kingdom are everlasting. And into that kingdom he calls us all to find forgiveness, life, and peace.

The expression “on the right side of history” is an important tool today used by the progressive elite to silence biblically faithful Christians. Never mind that it rests on significant religious assumptions. After all, no one can prove that history is inexorably going somewhere. Large segments of the world's population reject this idea. The majority of the non-Christian world believes that history is circular. Since it can't be proved that history is going somewhere, it is de facto a religious assumption. By doing so the progressives are acting contrary to their own secular presuppositions.

Whenever someone says "I am on the right side of history" they are presuming that their understanding of right and wrong is the same as whoever or whatever is in control of history. Since a large number of those who have adopted this phrase are self-avowed atheists, agnostics, or religious liberals their use of this phrase is fundamental hypocrisy. If there is no personal God, history is going nowhere, or at best it is moving randomly. And even if it is going somewhere, on the basis of the left's confessed worldview, they should have no way of knowing where it is going.

In 1882 the artist and architect Antoni Gaudi started work on his masterpiece, The El Templo de la Sagrada Familia (or The Church of the Holy Family), in Barcelona, Spain. For Gaudi La Sagrada Familia was the unfinished summation of his life's work. For several years he actually lived on the building site, breathing the dust, and drawing his ultimate inspiration from the organic symmetry of creation as well as the teachings of the church. As the building rose skyward from its foundations, Gaudi's fame also soared. Kings and queens came to see the building site, imagining what it would one day become.

But then, in old age, Gaudi was run over by a tram. Because of his ragged attire and empty pockets, taxi drivers refused to pick him up, thinking he was a tramp, and he was eventually taken to a pauper's hospital. Nobody recognized the great man until his friends eventually tracked him down the next day. They tried to move him into a nicer hospital, but Gaudi refused, reportedly saying, "I belong here among the poor." He died of his injuries two days later and was buried in the midst of his unfinished masterpiece.

Gaudi had begun planning La Sagrada Familia in the 1880s and was still working on it the day he died, some 40 years later. When Gaudí died in 1926, the basilica was between 15 and 25 percent complete. Other architects have since continued to apply and interpret his designs, but the towers and most of the church's structure are to be completed in 2026, the centennial of Gaudí's death; decorative elements should be complete by 2030 or 2032. Gaudi's vast project reminds us that we are all called to pour our lives into something bigger than ourselves. "My client," joked Gaudi on one occasion, "is not in a hurry."

Possible Preaching Angles: Life is not a short story and I am not the star. And so, like Gaudi the apparent tramp giving his life to the construction of an edifice that outshone and outlasted him, we too contribute what we can to the epic story of God, a tale with many characters, vast battle scenes, a million interweaving sub-plots and many perplexing twists and turns.

A young man from an impoverished background dreamed of a better life for himself and his family than the hardscrabble existence he had known growing up. He saved all he could and went deeply into debt to launch a grocery startup in a town called New Salem. His partner had an alcohol problem, and he ended up so far in the hole that he referred to his financial obligations as "the national debt." He gave up on ever being a successful businessman, and it took him more than a decade to pay off his failed dream.

He went into law, and then politics, and in 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected president. He was an avid Shakespeare fan, and his favorite quote came from Hamlet: "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, roughhew them as we may." He came to believe this deeply about his own life, but also about the nation he led. His entire second inaugural address is an amazingly profound reflection on how God was at work in the Civil War in ways more mysterious and profound than any human being could fathom. What a loss it would have been—not just to him but to a whole nation—if the doors of that little grocery he started in New Salem hadn't closed.

To illustrate the point that God does actually prevent a lot of terrible things from happening that we're not aware only to get no credit for it, retired minister Bob Russell wrote the following:

J. Wallace Hamilton (a famous preacher from the mid-20th century) used to tell about a mother cat, with a baby kitten in her mouth, trying unsuccessfully to get across a busy New York City intersection. She would meander timidly out into the traffic and then dart back to the curb when nearly hit by a passing car. A traffic policeman in the center of the intersection, seeing her plight, thrust up his hands to stop traffic in both directions. The anxious cat scampered across to the other side and disappeared down an alley.

Hamilton pointed out that the cat had no idea that the authority of the New York City Police Department had been called upon to enable her to get safely across the street. Then he added, "I wonder how many times the mighty hand of God goes up to get us safely to where he wants us to be and we're not even aware of it."

How free am I? How does God's sovereignty interact with our free will? Do we even have free will or is our life's course determined by God or by other forces beyond our control?

If you're a film-goer, you may be able to think of a number of big-screen characters who've struggled with these questions. First, there was Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey. The Truman Show told the story of his dawning realization that his entire life—including his job, house, marriage, neighborhood, friends—was constructed and orchestrated by TV producers who had turned his entire existence into a reality TV show viewed by millions of people around the world. When the penny finally drops, his mind is sent into turmoil and he becomes desperate to try to escape his phony existence.

Then there was Neo, in The Matrix, famously swallowing the red pill and having his eyes opened to the reality that all human experience was just simulated reality. The truth was that human beings were simply an energy source for the machines which held them in slavery. Neo made it his quest to fight for freedom against these machines.

A third film, The Adjustment Bureau saw Congressman David Norris (played by Matt Damon) bristling at the idea that his relationship with the only woman he has ever really loved must be ended because it's not part of the predetermined "plan" for his life. He won't stand for it and promptly decides to fight this destiny using nothing but the brute force of his own love-struck willpower.

These are just a few of the films that explore issues of human freedom and determination. That it is such a common subject only serves to underline how deeply such themes resonate with us. The thought of being mere puppets in someone else's show, or pawns being moved around some great chessboard, is an outrage to us.

Editor's Note: Use the following analogy to illustrate how God has a much larger and wiser plan (that we may not understand) for the way he rules the world and guides our lives:

Think of it this way: A basketball coach could call a time-out for any number of reasons at any different point in a ball game. He might see a flaw in the opponent's defense, for example, that he thinks his team could exploit with a hastily designed play. He might want to stop a flurry of momentum or a hot hand by one of the opposing players. He might use it to try icing a free-throw shooter. He might use it to stop the clock near the end of the half or regulation. He might use it to force an instant-replay review of a questionable call by the officials.

That's six different options right there. And they're all determined not by fixed logarithms but by the flow of the game, the nature of the opponent, the time left on the shot clock or the game clock—any of these factors and many others could dictate his purpose in asking for a stoppage in play. Plus it's all dictated by the coach's unique, personal knowledge of his players, his awareness of what each of them can do, what makes them perform best, what puts them in the best position to win the game.

Why must God's decisions for our lives be any different?

Possible Preaching Angles: God, Sovereignty of; Sovereignty—Real life is much more complex than a basketball game, but this illustration can show how a wise "coach" can make good decisions that we may or may not understand. Of course there is one crucial difference: basketball coaches make mistakes; God doesn't.

On any given night at a bowling alley in America, you might find someone who has bowled a 300, a perfect game. A good bowler on a hot streak can roll 12 consecutive strikes. For a competitive bowler, however, the "holy grail" night is a perfect series—three consecutive perfect games. A 900. In the history of bowling, there have only been 21 perfect series.

And Bill Fong was three rolls away from just that—perfection.

On a January 18, 2010, league night at the Plano Super Bowl, Bill Fong had rolled 33 consecutive strikes. The crowd of fellow league members stopped to watch, as on frame 34, Bill Fong gathered his ball, walked up, and rolled another strike.

And then he rolled another on frame 35, and the crowd went wild.

But something was wrong. Two frames back Bill had begun sweating profusely and feeling dizzy. But he was just one roll away from history. Bill pulled the ball to his chest, took his usual five steps, and released the ball perfectly.

People actually started applauding before the ball reached the pins. That's how perfect the roll was. It curved exactly where it was supposed to, made contact with the pins at precisely the right spot. Pins flew, the crowd cheered.

And the number 10 pin wobbled, but settled back onto its base. Standing.

899. One pin short of perfection.

Heartbroken, Bill headed home.

The dizziness that began on frame 34 had not improved. Bill staggered into his bathroom and threw up. The walls continued to spin.

Bill was having a stroke. Already struggling with high blood pressure, the events of that Monday evening turned a delicate situation into a deadly one.

But Bill never realized he had suffered a stroke until he had another one later. His doctor found scar tissue, and was told about the league night.

The only thing that saved Bill on the night of the 899? That number 10 pin staying up. Had that last pin fell, Bill's doctor feels certain that his body, already in the midst of a stroke, would have pushed his blood pressure even higher. That, most likely, would have killed Bill immediately on lane 28.

What felt like the worst thing that could have happened turned out to be the very thing that saved Bill's life.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Sovereignty of God—Although the article did not mention Bill's faith or lack thereof in Christ, we do know that believers can have confidence in God's good and sovereign plans for their lives despite disappointments, confusion, and failures. God may have a better purpose that we can't imagine with our limited perspective. (2) Success and Failure—Sometimes the success we think we must achieve can actually hurt us. And at times it's the apparent "failures" that actually save us from greater harm.

There is a story about an old man who lived in a small village:

He was the poorest man in the village, but he owned the most beautiful white stallion. And the king had offered him a small fortune for it. After a terribly harsh winter, during which the old man and his family nearly starved, the townspeople came to visit.

"Old man," they said, "you can hardly afford to feed your family. Sell the stallion, and you will be rich. If you do not, you are a fool."

"It's too early to tell," replied the old man. A few months later, the old man woke up to find that the white stallion had run away.

Once again the townspeople came, and they said to the old man, "See. If you had sold the king your horse, you would be rich. Now you have nothing! You are a fool!"

"It's too early to tell," replied the old man.

Two weeks later, the white stallion returned, and along with it came three other white stallions.

"Old man," the townspeople said, "we are the fools! Now you can sell the stallion to the king, and you will still have three stallions left. You are smart."

"It's too early to tell," said the old man.

The following week, the old man's son, his only son, was breaking in one of the stallions and was thrown, crushing both his legs.

The townspeople paid a visit to the old man, and they said, "Old man, if you had just sold the stallion to the king, you'd be rich, and your son would not be crippled. You are a fool."

"It is too early to tell," said the old man.

Well, the next month, war broke out with the neighboring village. All of the young men in the village were sent into the battle, and all were killed.

The townspeople came, and they cried to the old man, "We have lost our sons. You are the only one who has not. If you had sold your stallion to the king, your son, too, would be dead. You are so smart!"

"It's too early to tell," said the old man.

Possible Preaching Angles: The Sovereignty, Providence, or Wisdom of God / Suffering and Trials—In the midst of trials, sometimes well-meaning people try to offer explanations for why bad things happen. But usually we just don't know. Yet even when we don't have the answers, even when "It's too early to tell," God is still sovereign, and his purposes are for our good.