Of Sovereigns and Servants...

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways,
and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

We humans were made in God’s image, not the other way around, though we often forget that great truth. As a result, we have a skewed view of God, of the world, of life, and of ourselves. The only way to make it right is to put God back in proper perspective. That means we can no longer examine Him under the microscope of our finite reasoning, but rather behold Him through the telescope of His Word.
Our pastor has been teaching on God’s sovereignty, including the fact that by virtue of His sovereignty we have only one choice if we are to live in proper perspective as those made in the Sovereign’s image—we must adopt a servant attitude. Because we live in a wonderful country that has allowed us to participate in government, we often lack the understanding of what it means to live under sovereign rule. Those who live under a king or dictator or some other form of sovereign leadership understand much better than we. The difference is that our Sovereign is not human and therefore not limited by human abilities or tainted by human sin. But our call to servanthood is no less a reality; rather, it is more so, as our relationship to the Sovereign of the Universe is eternal, rather than temporal.
True, Jesus said that He no longer calls those of us who follow Him “servants” but “friends.” And what a great privilege that is! But it does not negate the fact that we are still to walk in submission and obedience to the One who has numbered our days and ordered our steps.
America is a Republic, based on democratic rule that allows us a say in how we are governed. Not so in the Kingdom of God. We don’t get to vote on pending laws, protest existing ones, or elect a new ruler. God is in charge, period. He always has been and always will be, regardless of how humans may rant or rave, shake fists at heaven, or deny His existence.
God is beyond our understanding because He is perfect and we are not. He is beyond our comprehension because He is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent; we are not. He calls ALL the shots, not just some of them, and He has no need to consult us before He does so or apologize if we don’t like the outcome. And He was under no obligation to send His Son to pay for our sins so that we could once again have relationship with Him.
But He did. And that is the most stunning aspect of His personality to fathom. A perfect, all-powerful God, who needed nothing from us and owed us nothing, humbled Himself to come into our presence and reveal to us as much as we were able to understand about our Creator, as much as we needed to know to acknowledge Him as Sovereign Lord and willingly and joyfully give our lives over to His service. And because He did so, we are without excuse if we do not respond.
An old Dennis the Menace cartoon so aptly depicts our necessary stance before a sovereign God, as it shows the little guy kneeling at his bedside, cowboy hat askew and plastic gun still holstered around his waist as he folds his hands in supplication and says, “I’m here to turn myself in.”
We with our crooked cowboy hats and plastic guns may think we’re in charge of our lives, but it is only because we have not understood that it is we who are made in the image of God, not He in ours. Throw away that microscope that minimizes the Sovereign of the Universe to One who exists to serve our needs, and start studying God through the telescope of the Scriptures. I promise you that very soon your magnified view of God will give you a servant’s heart that wants nothing more than to fulfill the purpose for which He has created you.