Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living

I will come and proclaim your mighty acts, O Sovereign LORD; I will proclaim your righteousness, yours alone.  Psalm 71:16

Question:  Is God a divine accommodation, something or someone we have invented to make us feel good about ourselves, particularly when we know we have done wrong?  Can God be manipulated to get what we want, a kind of divine sugar daddy of the sky?  One to whom we can turn when we need a good cry, or someone to tell us, “What you have done is OK.  You’re not nearly as bad as some”?

Guy Duffield wrote:  “To many, God is simply a divine accommodation.  He exists just for them. He is the great Santa Claus of mankind.  Many will only believe Him if He pleases them.  The moment He asks them to do something contrary to their wishes they part company with Him.  There seems to be, on the part of so many, little sense of any personal responsibility to Him, or realization that all men must give account to Him as the Judge of all the earth.”

God, to many, is defined only in terms of what they chose to believe or to disbelieve.  This, of course, doesn’t change who God really is.  Much like those who belong to the Flat Earth Society—and, believe it or not, there is a group today who still believe that the world has four corners—what they believe doesn’t change who God really is.

In reality, many today fashion their own gods intellectually.  Please understand, they worship in established churches, buy family Bibles and identify with the kingdom of God, but their God isn’t the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, nor is it the God of the martyrs of the early church, or the reformers who brought the family of God into confrontation with the righteousness of God.  They fashion a new god with their minds, not their hearts, but in so doing they ignore the first and greatest of the commandments:  “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me” (Exodus 20:4-5).

Is it possible, friend, that you have formulated a cafeteria concept of God, taking qualities that you choose, and rejecting those that you disdain?  If so, are you not just as guilty of fashioning your own god as those who brought down His wrath when Moses came down the mountain and discovered His people were worshipping a golden calf?

Why are you afraid to embrace what the Bible says about God’s being sovereign?  Fear, right?  You are afraid that God may impose His will on you in such a way that it is distasteful to you?  It’s the age-old battle of who is in control.  Whether or not you acknowledge it, there are very few factors which you really control.  Obviously, you don’t control your health.  A heart attack, a stroke, an automobile accident, even a fall on a slippery pavement can radically change your future.  The weather, the economy, the changes of government are all factors which you cannot control.

What God wills is right, not because He wills it; He wills it because it is right.  He works all things after the counsel of His will, contends Paul.  Furthermore, what God wills stems from His love nature and is an extension of His loving hand in the world in which we live.

Want to have your eyes opened?  Look up the phrase, O Sovereign Lord, in the Bible and notice that hundreds of times it appears in the prayers of God’s people.  Then ask yourself, “Why haven’t I had my eyes opened to this great truth?”   As Jesus put it, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

Resource reading: Ephesians 2:1-22.