God is in Total Control

• Today we’re going to catch just a glimpse of God’s supreme sovereign control over the entire universe. There is nothing in the universe that God does not control from the greatest to the smallest. We’ll just look at some statements in scripture that point this out to us. God controls the stars. In Psalm 147 verse 4 and 5, the psalmist says, “He, that is God, determines the number of the stars, and we know they are billions upon billions and calls them each by name.
• Great is our Lord and mighty in power. His understanding has no limit. No limit to God’s knowledge, to God’s understanding. There is nothing that escapes his attention. And then the prophet Isaiah says in Isaiah 40:26, “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens who created all these.” And he’s speaking primarily about the starry host.
• He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name. How that impresses me. God deals with every star individually. He calls each star by its name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. What keeps the stars in place? God, his power, his knowledge, his strength.
• In this connection, I’d like to read just some words from my book, Chords from David’s Heart, commenting on those verses in Psalm 147 4 and5. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power. His understanding has no limit. I write this, the psalmist gives us an objective scientific standard by which to measure the knowledge and power of the Lord.
• Human astronomers would not dare to calculate the number of stars in the universe. They do tell us, however, that it amounts to billions upon billions. Yet God knows the exact number of the stars. He is in direct contact with each one and he controls its movements. So totally accurate and reliable are the movements of the stars that astronomers can compute mathematically where each star was thousands of years ago or where it will be thousands of years from now.
• But let us never attribute this precision to some mindless impersonal force or law. Behind it all is the infinite wisdom of a creator whose concern extends to the remotest corner of his universe. Furthermore, the psalmist tells us how God controls the stars. He calls them each by name. In the Bible, a name expresses the essential individual character of the person or object named to God.
• Even the stars are not mere mindless confirmations of matter to be identified only by location or magnitude. Each has its own name. Each responds to that name when God calls it. God also controls the course of human history. There was a great gentile king, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who had a head-on encounter with the power and the wisdom of God.