There is no attribute of God more comforting to his children than the
doctrine of Divine Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the
most severe troubles, they believe that Sovereignty hath ordained their
afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify
them all. There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to
contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation—the kingship of God
over all the works of his own hands—the throne of God, and his right to sit upon
that throne. On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings,
no truth of which they have made such a foot-ball, as the great, stupendous, but
yet most certain doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will
allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They will allow him to be in
his workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow him to be in
his almonry to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties. They will allow him to
sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven,
or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends his throne, his
creatures then gnash their teeth; and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and his
right to do as he wills with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he thinks
well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and
execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on his throne
is not the God they love. They love him anywhere better than they do when he
sits with his sceptre in his hand and his crown upon his head.

From Divine Sovereignty, Sermon No. 77