“Whatever Yahweh pleases, He does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all deeps.” (Psalm 135:6, LSB)
Whether it is the terrifying storms in the skies (v. 7), the crushing plagues He brought to Egypt (vv. 8-9), the conquests that left the nations decimated as the Lord handed Israel their lands as His gift (vv. 10-12), Psalm 135 speaks loudly about the overwhelming power and plan of God to do whatever He pleases within all of creation. He made it all and He rules it as the sovereign and only Potentate.
For some Christians, the doctrine of God’s sovereignty is a hard pill to swallow. They accept that He is all powerful, but they often will mitigate this truth with additional disclaimers and rebuttals. “God’s sovereign, but He gives up some of His rule and authority over us so that humanity can be free to choose.” But in saying this, they had neutered what the Bible says and inserted something it very clearly doesn’t say. In fact, they have taken the Sovereign God and made Him a little more like the powerless idols spoken of in verses 15-18:
The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
The work of man’s hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak;
They have eyes, but they do not see;
They have ears, but they do not hear,
Surely, there is not any breath in their mouths.
Those who make them will be like them,
All who trust in them. (Psalm 135:15–18, LSB)
The God who rules Israel also rules the other nations and the world. In contrast, the gods of the nations were deaf, dumb, and blind. They were not sovereign over anything. And don’t miss the results of such ideas—you become like what you worship.
For those who reject the biblical doctrine of God’s sovereignty, in attempting to protect man’s free will (thus exalting man) they lower God (just a little, they reply). After all, they reason, God wants us to worship Him freely. He doesn’t want worship from robots.
Ah! But the psalmist doesn’t see a contradiction between his praise of this sovereign God who does what He pleases and the open worship of His people. The psalm opens with a command to “Praise Yah! (vv. 1-3) and then closes the psalm with more calls to worship (vv. 19-21). Yahweh is sovereign and thus we must worship. We are not forced to do so, but we cannot contain our exuberance for our God.
Far from squashing genuine worship, the biblical truth that God is unfettered in his power and sovereignty impels worship to greater heights. We are not robots! The sovereignty of God does not teach that a mindless fatalism is at work in the universe. It inspires praise.
In fact, we can attribute the grand and glorious works of God totally to Him because “whatever Yahweh pleases, He does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all deeps.” (Psalm 135:6, LSB)
