Whatever the Lord Pleases, He Does!

The message is about the sovereignty of God and how everything that pleases Him, He does. The pastor reads from Psalm 135 and emphasizes that God's sovereignty cannot be undermined by human philosophies or ideologies. He discusses the story of Jonah and how even when Jonah tried to flee from God's presence, God's sovereignty prevailed. The pastor also talks about societal challenges to traditional values and emphasizes the importance of holding onto God's truth. The following message is brought to you by the people of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. For more information, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org. And now, here's Pastor Jason Booth with the message. Turn your Bibles, if you would, to Psalm 135. Thank you all for braving the cold and coming out for service. And we want to welcome everyone else from your neck of the woods. Thank you for joining us via video today. The passage of Scripture that we're going to read for this morning's message is found in Psalm 135. The Word of the Lord, beginning in verse 1, and we're going to read down through verse 6. So, 1 through 6. The title of the message this morning is, Whatever the Lord Pleases, He Does. Whatever the Lord Pleases, He Does. And now, we read the Word of the Living God. Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Give thanks, O servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good. Sing to His name, for it is pleasant. For the Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself. Israel has His own possession. For I know that the Lord is great, and that our God is above all gods. Whatever the Lord Pleases, He Does. In heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deep. And we trust that the Lord will add His own blessing to the public reading of His Word, for our good and for His glory. Amen. It is no secret that we preach and proclaim unashamedly the sovereignty of God. But even that phrase needs a clear and proper definition, if we're going to understand what we mean when we say sovereignty. And so today, I read a definition straight from the text of Scripture. The definition of God's sovereignty need not take hours to expound, although you could plumb the depths of God's sovereignty for the rest of your lives, and never come to the end, never come to the full apprehension and comprehension of His dread sovereignty and power. But the Scripture simply gives us this definition, and I believe it will suffice. Whatever the Lord Pleases, He Does. Whatever the Lord Pleases, He Does. I am thankful today that the Lord is pleased in the salvation of His people. I'm thankful that the Gospel will always be profitable when it is sent forth. For just like any other part of God's revelation, when His Word goes forth, it does not return void. It's so strange to me to hear people quote that passage of Scripture, and then in the next breath say something so asinine, like, I hope that sinner chooses God, or he lets God save him. God's Word doesn't return void. And what does the Scripture tell us in the sixth verse of chapter 135 here in Psalms? Whatever the Lord Pleases, He Does. Beloved, I want you to understand that not everything that is pleasing to the eye for us is pleasing to God. Likewise, not everything that is pleasing to God is necessarily pleasing to us. Let me give you one stark example. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. Jesus Christ died at the pleasure of Almighty God and His sovereign decree and will. Now, He died at the hands of sinful man, but He did not die outside of the will or purpose of the Father. And so even the darkest of times, I would say the darkest of all times, this moment happened only because ultimately it pleased the Lord. The Scripture tells us in another passage, And for thy pleasure they are created, for thou hast created all things. His pleasure, His prerogative, His purpose, ultimately to the praise of His glorious grace. Whatever the Lord Pleases, He Does. Full stop! God is sovereign in the heavens. Men can think their thoughts. Men can assume philosophies that are contrary to this Word. Men and women can think they know better than God. But at the end of the day, the hills themselves melt like wax in the presence of the Lord. Every man-centered theology that has ever reared its ugly head in the face of the Gospel will go by the wayside and fall into the dumpster bin of sinful man's carnal ideas. But the Gospel will endure. The Lord of Glory will save His people. And He will do all that He pleases. And where is it that He will do all that He pleases? The Scripture says in heaven and on earth. There is no place where you can flee His presence. Think of this. We learn from the Scriptures that we cannot flee from the presence of God. Jonah attempted to flee from the presence of God when he was given the task to go and preach to his people's ancestral enemies in Nineveh. Those wicked Nineveh folks. Boy, they were wicked. So wicked that even after they repented in Jonah's day, not so many years later, they were still destroyed for their wickedness. These were a wicked sort. But Jonah thought he knew more than God. Jonah denied the sovereignty of God when he said, I'll go to a far off country and hide. Surely God's presence won't find me there. And yet God was on Jonah's tail from the moment he tried to walk in the opposite direction. The great storm arose. You can read it there in the book of Jonah. The pagans on board didn't know what to do. And finally, they threw Jonah overboard when he told them all about it. And Jonah spent some quality time in the belly of a great fish, the Bible says. Well, I don't believe any of it. Well, really, your feet are being held fast to a giant molten lava ball covered in dirt, flying thousands of miles an hour in a cosmos that is so infinite that your speck of an existence doesn't even matter. There is a miracle, a second happening in this very room that our molecules are being held together and that we are sentient enough to even have this discussion. And you're going to tell me that God Almighty, the Grand Creator and Designer of all that is, can't devise a fish that can swallow a man. Really? Wow. I think it's not that big of a stretch to trust that the Scripture is the Scripture, that God is on His throne, and that God gave Jonah some quality time to reflect. The Bible says, Out of the belly of hell, cried Jonah. Some theologians argue that Jonah might even have died. I don't happen to espouse that notion. I believe that he was in the belly of a great fish and that metaphorically he cried out from the belly of hell. And he said in this moment, he said, Lord, I'll do what you called me to do. He said, salvation belongs to the Lord. Jonah tried to run, tried to flee, but the sovereign God had other plans. The Scripture says it like this to you and I, For ye are not your own. You have been bought with a price. We live in a world that pulls our attentions in all sorts of ways. We have political philosophies that try to undermine the Scriptures. We have social philosophies that attempt to undermine the Scriptures. The family is under attack. Traditional Judeo-Christian values are under attack, seemingly all the time by some scientist or some sociologist or some psychiatrist or some other type of, you know, lab coat wearing priest of our day. And they'll come on television or radio or on the news media or social media and they'll say things like, I know we've done it this way for thousands of years, but this is the better way. And they seem to want to turn orthodoxy on its head every chance they get. It's as though if God says up, the world says down. God says left, the world says, yeah, we're going to go right. God says, don't sleep around on your wife. The world says, ah, you old fuddy duddies. You do what you want. The world says that divorce isn't harmful or traumatic. And we know from Scripture that divorce is a death. It's a tear and a thunder. It's a trauma. The world says free love and then can't even tell you what love is. The world says that you can be whatever you want and right now, they need it. Reality has no bearing. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is destruction, says the Word of the Lord. And God is sovereign. So even in our stupor as a society, when people are raising up for themselves idols of every sort, of size, of shape, it could be the idol of selfishness. Jonah worshipped at that altar for a minute or two, didn't he? He went his way thinking he knew better than God. Men and women today think they know better than God. We have our science. We sure do. And we're very lucky to have so many technological advancements. But boy, what hubris it is to think that the only thing that exists is that which you can see and smell and taste and touch and hear. And yet we live every day knowing full well that that's not truth. That's not all that truth can be. Truth is also qualitative. It exists outside of the physical into the metaphysical. That's what we talk about every Sunday here in church. This idea that the spiritual reality is more real than what you can see, touch, taste, feel or hear. And people say, I don't believe any of that. And I think to myself, do you love your mom? Well, of course I do. What is love? I don't know. You see, we deal in the metaphysical and the physical all of the time. But our blinded old sinner hearts want to constantly erect idols to ourselves, to our own self-promotion, to our own desires. And we hate, as a matter of course, this old flesh hates, the sovereignty of God. We hate that God is on the throne. That's why when the Lord saves us, He doesn't just come with ideas to convince us, although the Word of God is preached to us. But how is it that we can even hear? We have to be given a new heart. We have to be given the God-given gift of faith to believe this. Why? Otherwise, we will hate the Gospel. Those of you who do not know Christ and the full pardon of your sins, you'll find this Gospel offensive. You will hate Jesus. You'll hate what He stands for. We have those in the church world today that want to cherry pick through the Scriptures and believe the parts that they want to believe. I want to be a very welcoming place. Everyone is welcome to come and hear the Gospel here. Everyone is welcome. But I want you to understand that the Lord God has ordained marriage for a man and a woman. Full stop. The Lord God has given us male and female. Male and female He created them. That's what the Scriptures teach. Now, far be it for me to ever go against what the clear teaching of Scripture is, because if I start to cherry pick the parts of the Bible that I find convenient and leave the rest out into the wolves, what am I doing but setting myself up as divine arbiter of truth? I am now the arbiter of what parts of the book we believe as a church. God is sovereign and He's given us His word. He's given us His plan. Now, are we to love everyone regardless of what they believe? You better believe we should. And frankly, Christian people shouldn't be mean one to the other. You know, if someone comes around here that they don't necessarily hold to our beliefs, we want to be welcoming to them. We want to be friendly and cordial. There's no reason for you to be prideful. After all, you're only saved because of the good graces of God. Nothing about you merited your salvation. So what right do you have to boast? Where is boasting then, the Bible says? It is excluded. And so if God be God, if He is the Savior of His people through Jesus Christ, by His own hand, not by our so-called good works, we need to hold to the truth. But we need to hold this truth in love. The Lord does whatever He pleases in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. Is there any place that the Lord's sovereign hand isn't at full work and at full authority to do whatever He pleases to do? Of course not. He's in complete control. And so what are we to do with this knowledge? First of all, we're to rejoice that the Lord has this. You've seen the old slogan, I've got this, people will say that. Well, the Lord truly has this. We're in His hands. Oh, to be in His hands. And not in the hands of His judgment. Oh no, we don't want to be in those hands. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But beloved, I'm talking about this, the hands that will not let you go in saving advocacy. Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice, you know the passage, and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. Neither shall they be removed from my hands. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one shall be able to snatch them out of the Father's hands. Hallelujah. There is a grip of grace that holds us fast. And how is it that we can trust the Lord? He's sovereign. He does what He wants. If He desires something, it happens. The Lord is not in a position to be in want of anything. When I hear someone say, God wants you to be saved. Do you know what want is? Want is the experiencing of lack. A lot of TV preachers talk about how we shouldn't experience lack. But they don't seem to mind God experiencing lack because they're constantly calling God their butler in heaven doing their bidding, right? But the Lord is not in want of your salvation. If the Lord has decreed your salvation, you will be saved on that final day, period. You'll lose none. You'll lose none. Why? Whatever the Lord pleases, He does. I hate to sound so pedantic, so simplistic. But beloved, sometimes the most profound truths are best explained in the most simplistic of ways. He does whatever He wants. When you're sick in body and you cry out for healing and you ask the Lord, Lord, if it be your will, would you heal my body? Trust that if the Lord desires to heal you miraculously, you will be healed miraculously. But also trust that if the Lord has other plans for you, maybe you're going to be healed by therapeutics, by medicine, by time itself, as this whole body is a miracle working machine that can heal itself over time. Then God be praised. It was His will that you were healed in that fashion. Likewise, if you are experiencing the final sickness on the death, know this. It pleases the Lord to see that you are taken by that final sickness. For whatever my God ordains is right and He does whatever He pleases. So what can we do with this? Let's apply some of these principles. Number one, God is sovereign. I don't have to fear. What can man do to me? God is sovereign. If I be stood up in front of an executioner's line and I'm ready to be shot to death for the gospel's sake, then God gives me strength. God is in control. God be pleased. If that's how He wants to take us home, then that's okay. Likewise, if we live to a ripe old age and we catch a flu bug and next thing you know we're laying on our deathbed, then God be praised. He's going to hold us fast. He's going to hold us fast, beloved. So in sickness and in health, in all ways of life in this world, God is in control. Your family, pray for your family. Pray that God's will avail. And I guarantee you this, not one person in your family whom the Lord our God shall call will be lost. They won't be. So we pray for God's will to be done. We pray earnestly for our family members because we don't know who will be saved and who won't. Our job is to evangelize, preach the gospel to every creature. The Lord of glory will reap His own harvest and we will praise His name forever. So we need not fear man. We need not fear death. He swallowed those things up in the work of Jesus Christ. We need not fear the ramblings and rantings of whatever philosophy might be popular in today's culture or tomorrow's culture. They'll always have a new idea to sell new books and to stir the pot. But ultimately, truth is truth because God is the Spirit of truth. And our job is to be faithful over these few things. And He has already promised. Why? Because He's sovereign. He can do this. That He will make us ruler over many. Whatever the Lord pleases, He does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all the deeps. Think about it. A sovereign God is the only God worthy of worship. For if He wasn't sovereign, if His will could be thwarted by the wills of men, beloved, what kind of God would He be? It'd be a mess, wouldn't it? You'd pray to Him. Lord, You have all the power of it. We give You permission to have. Save Uncle Billy. But don't violate his free will and autonomy. Lord, gently convince Uncle Billy to maybe choose You. I mean, what is that? Nobody prays that way. When you love your family members and you desire their soul's salvation, you seek the Lord's faith for them like God could actually do something about it. Sometimes our prayer life betrays our faulty theology. Thank God you can have both, beloved. You can believe in the sovereignty of God and still go to Him in prayer, thankful with a heart that's grateful, knowing that He's going to have His will, His will and His way performed in this world. And we can praise Him for it. We can praise Him in the good times and the bad times, in the sunshine and rain. Why? He is the Lord. He does as He pleases. And our job is to rest in Christ, submit to the will of God and thank Him for His sustaining hand. Verse 7 says, He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from His storehouses. And then He goes on to a wonderful litany of all of the glorious things God did for the people of Israel. But let's look at verse 13. Your name, O Lord, endures forever. You're renowned, O Lord, throughout all ages. For the Lord will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants. Thank the good Lord. He is an oath-keeping God. He is a covenant-keeping God. And He has promised to preserve His people, to protect His people. And why can we trust Him? Because He does whatever He pleases. No one can stop the hand of God. He does what He pleases and we thank the Lord for that. So no man's philosophy will ever thwart the purposes of God. No political ideology, no earthly scenario exists. No heavenly scenario exists wherein God's will will not prevail. Thanks be to God for His sovereign mercy and power. Lord, we thank You. We ask, Father, that You bless Your Word. Help us to ponder on these thoughts today, Lord, that You are sovereign, that You do as You please. We thank You, Lord, and we submit to Your dread sovereignty even now, thanking You for the love You've bestowed upon us through Christ our Lord. Father, we pray for our lost loved ones. We pray for our nation. We pray for our neighbors. Help us to be loving, to be patient. Lord God, to be a welcoming people. Help us not to be a judgmental people or a condescending people. But I pray, Father, that as we see that our salvation is by the sheer mercy and grace of God, that we, Lord God, would reach out to those who are not like us so that they can hear the gospel and that You would be pleased to save the lost. We ask for these things and we thank You for Your sovereignty and Your sovereign grace, through Christ our Lord. Amen. Amen. You have just heard a message from Pastor Jason Booth of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. To learn more about the good news of Jesus, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org.