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God settled the question of His sovereignty with Job in the last chapters of that marvelous book, and the Psalms are rich with the glory and power of a sovereign God. Furthermore, you cannot read the Gospels and the sayings of the Lord Jesus without acknowledging that the Son of God teaches without compromise the sovereignty of His holy Father. Such understanding also runs through all of the Apostle Paul's writings.

     For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion."
     So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.
     For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "Even for this same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My power in you, and that My name might be declared in all the earth."
     Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
     You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?"
     But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?"
     Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
     What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
      and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory,
     even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? (Romans 9:15-24)

     In giving thought to it, we can understand the necessity of God not releasing one iota of His sovereignty in any part of His creation. As we have said, in any place where God was not sovereign—no matter how small or slight the lack of sovereignty—He would not be in control, and so in that place He would not be God. And where He was not God, someone else would be.

     Considering, also, that all created matter is contained within the infinitude of God, any area in which God gave up His sovereignty would be part of Himself. Obviously such a thing is not only ludicrous in its basic concept, it is also a sheer impossibility, for it would mean that there would be an area of God that someone else controlled: a God within God.

     In addition, other facets of God depend upon His sovereignty. If God is almighty, omnipotent, has all-power, which the Scriptures declare continually that He does, then He cannot relinquish an iota of that omnipotence anywhere. And it stands to reason that in any area in which God was not sovereign, He would not be omnipotent. Therefore, to maintain omnipotence, He must maintain sovereignty.

     God determines all that is to be done, where it is to be done, how, and when. And He has all power needed to do that which He determines. It is because God maintains both omnipotence and sovereignty that the Scriptures declare, as the Amplified Bible puts it,

     God . . . gives life to the dead and speaks of the nonexistent things that [He has foretold and promised] as if they [already] existed. (Romans 4:17, AMP)

     Simply put, this means that what God has said will happen is so certain of happening, that God talks about it as if it already had.

     Consider also this Scripture: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). If all things work together for our good, then God must be in all things, and He must there be sovereign and omnipotent in order to work them together for our good.

     God is God, and He retains all power and control and gives up none of it to anyone. Where there is power and control of sorts by others, it is always contained within the omnipotence and sovereignty of God. He always keeps for Himself a "thus far and no further" option (Job 1:12, 2:6). For those of us who are in Christ—and especially for those who have truly made Him Lord of their hearts (Ephesians 3:17) and have abandoned themselves fully into the keeping of God (Philippians 4:6-7), such knowledge should be of great comfort! "For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).

     In what greater place of safety could we be than hidden with Christ in our omnipotent and sovereign God?

     God declares the beginning from the end, and in the annals of eternity the eternal purpose that He has declared in Christ has already been accomplished. We who are followers of the Son of our sovereign God will see and be part of its manifested glory in the ages to come.