The Omnipotence of God - Holy One of Israel Part 3

You know, if I were to ask you what is the most powerful force in the universe today in our world. I wonder what you would say I would think most people would say it was nuclear weapons.

I mean the power of these weapons is almost beyond description. For example, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima 1945 destroyed everything within a 1 mile radius of where it detonated. But did you know that today we have some modern hydrogen bombs that are 4000 times more powerful than that weapon.

That first atomic bomb. What this means is if you were to take a map of the Washington area, and you were to put a string with the center right here in our church and then stretch it out to Camden yards up in Baltimore and may use that is the radius for making a circle. One of these more powerful weapons would kill every living thing inside that circle that you would just wrong. Thanks, Albert Einstein, and E equals MC squared mankind now has more power at its fingertips did in all of human history combined and yet when we open the pages of the Bible, my friends, we find a being inside of ear who is so powerful that he makes our thermonuclear weapons look like sparklers and that sort of talk about today were going to talk about God and his awesome power because we're in a series of messages entitled the holy one of Israel were going through the attributes of God wanted a time and so far we cover to cover the fact that God first of all, is eternal.

And then last week we talked about the fact that God is holy and if you miss either one of those two messages. I urge you to buy the CD to buy the tape to podcast it to keep up with this and as were doing the study, but today we want to go on. We want to talk about the third attribute of God in our list and that is the omnipotence of God. The fact that God is omnipotent, not what exactly does it mean to be omnipotent. While the word omnipotent comes from two Latin words.

The word on this. Which means all and the word potent, which means powerful, therefore, to be omnipotent means simply to be all powerful to have unlimited power unlimited strength unlimited. My to be all mighty as the Bible says of God, a being who is omnipotent to do whatever he wants whenever he wants. However, he wants to whomever he wants. And for why every reason he wants not know there's no such word is why ever, but I needed to get Y in their you know so that's it.

What we did not in the Bible, God declares that he and he alone is the omnipotent being in this universe. Genesis 17 one God said to Abraham, I am God Almighty that is on the God that's omnipotent in Jeremiah 32 then the Lord said to Jeremiah, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh is anything too hard for me when Sarah laughed at the prospect of having a child at the age of 90 years old, God's response to her was very simple. Genesis 18 he said is anything too hard for the Lord.

After getting a crash course in the omnipotence of God, King Nebuchadnezzar said Daniel chapter 4 he said this is what I've learned, I've learned that God is the one who does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth, and no one can hold back his hand when Mary reacted with shock at the announcement by the angel Gabriel that she was going to have the virgin birth, Gabriel was unfazed.

He simply said to her. Luke chapter 1 nothing is impossible with God.

Jesus said in Luke 18. What is impossible with men is possible with God.

And finally, I suppose. Revelation 19 sums it up, as well as any with these words that handle put to music. Of course when the Angels scream out in Revelation 19 a hallelujah they scream for the Lord God omnipotent readiness.

Now, as followers of Christ we live in a tough world we live in a lock and load world every day and I believe in order for us to be able to face this world successfully. The most important truth about God that we need to remember is that God is omnipotent, you say, what about all the other attributes of God are they important yeah but think about it for a moment. Okay, so God is eternal. But what good is this. If he lacks the power to direct eternity. Okay, so God is holy. But what good is this.

If he lacks the power to provide a solution to our sin problem. Okay, so God is merciful, but how what good is that if there's some disease that's too hard for him to heal or some obstacle that's too big for him to solve and what good or any of the promises of God.

My friend, if there is no omnipotence to back them up.

If God is not omnipotent.

It means that he may be a God who means well but without omnipotence.

He's laying these helpless and is of no real assistance to anybody. Now there are a lot of people in our world who have this view of God, namely that he's a nice person but he's not omnipotent, and therefore he really can help us some time. One person that comes to mind immediately as Rabbi Harold Kushner who wrote the famous book when bad things happen to good people in a chapter entitled God can't do everything here is what Rabbi Kushner says and I quote, he said. God wants people to live peaceful, happy lives, but he cannot always arrange God does not want you to be sick or crippled. He didn't make you have this problem and he doesn't want you to go on having it but he can't make it go away. That is something which is too hard, even for God.

Later Kushner says that what his book proves is that quoting now we have a good God, but one who is not totally powerful."

Now I like to respectfully differ with Rabbi Kushner about what his book proves my mind what his book proves is that you can sell almost any kind of theological trash. If you just come up with a catchy title.

That's what I think his book proves his Avalon yeah, but wait a minute, wait a minute.

I mean maybe the rabbis right I mean I mean what proof do we really have that God is as omnipotent as he says he is in the Bible. I mean, is there any proof that all well yes there is. And I'm just going to give you three proves there are more three proofs of God's omnipotence.

The first is creation as human beings, you know, for us to create anything we need something to start with would steal concrete silicon. But the amazing thing about God in Genesis chapter 1 is that six times God said, let there be, and he spoke it to nothing and that nothing became something Isaiah chapter 40 God says lift up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who do you think created all these things (guess what not you and me.

We then created neither did evolution or chance for the Big Bang or the little bank God goes on to say it is. I who made the earth and created man upon it. My own hand stretched out the heavens, I marshaled up the stars of the sky. I am God and there is none other.

I am God and there is no one, no one like me creation alone. My friend should be enough to prove to any thinking person that there must be an omnipotent God somewhere who did all of this.

In fact, in Romans chapter 1, Paul says that he says that creation. Verse 20 demonstrates God's eternal power, which is why Romans one goes on to say there is no excuse for any human being in the world not to look around creation and immediately know there's got to be an omnipotent God. Now the second proof of God's omnipotence is all the omnipotent deeds that he's gone on our earth over the thousands of years that the earth is existed. You say like what well like Noah's flood in the parting of the Red Sea in providing manna from heaven for the Israelites, like shutting the mouths of lions for Daniel and making ax head float for Elijah like sending down fire from heaven for Elijah and Jonah and the fish like the virgin birth of Jesus healing the sick and raising the dead and walking on water and turning water to wine and feeding 5000 people, with five loaves and two fish.

Not to mention his own rising from the dead, God's miraculous deeds through the ages demonstrate that he has an omnipotent power that is unmatched anywhere in the cosmos. You remember what the disciples said after Jesus stilled the storm with just a word on the Sea of Galilee. They said who is this man that even the winds and the waves obey him while he wasn't a man he was God in the flesh, but that omnipotent God of the universe who runs this whole creation and commands it, and it listen. Finally, one of proof of God's omnipotence preferred through friends as our human bodies.

These things we live in. Psalm 139 verse 14 David writes and says I am fearfully and wonderfully made you want proof there's an omnipotent creator God in our universe friend and all you what I have to do is just take a good look at the complexity of these bodies that we live in. You know and love the summer 1965 I was between my junior and senior year in high school and I had the privilege of going to a summer seminar sponsored by the National Science Foundation of Virginia Tech for six weeks and we spent every afternoon working on the individual research projects, but in the morning we all studied the subject and it just so happened that year. The subject was enzymes now in case you don't know an enzyme is a protein molecule in your body that speeds up the chemical reactions in your body you say will how important are enzymes will friends there really important you know that big Mac you had last Thursday with it wasn't for enzymes you'd be still trying to digest it this morning is a lot what is biology 101 Army. What's the point friends.

The point is that there are literally thousands of enzymes in your body and the most amazing thing is each one of them is code specific meaning.

Each one of them was a will only do one job and if there's an enzyme missing. No other enzyme will take over and do the job that that missing enzyme was supposed to do these things have a union contract. You understand what I'm saying.

For more serious than that. If you're missing an enzyme rich broken and there's some reaction. Therefore, the doesn't get done, you and I will be very sick people, or we may be very dead people. Now without these enzymes flying around in our bodies and doing their jobs. You and I couldn't breathe.

We couldn't see we could move we couldn't digest food. In short life on this earth would be impossible without the enzyme system that operates in your body and that whole system is so complex and so specifically organized that it defies imagination and I'll never forget one morning walking out of class there in Blacksburg.

Bright sunny day and I walked outside and I stood still and I remember saying out loud based upon learning everything I just shared with you. I said you know what, there hasn't got to be a God know what convinced me was not some theological lecture, I just walked out of or some sermon I just heard I was a scientist.

What convinced me was just taking a good hard look as an honest scientist at the complexity of the human body, and I was only looking at one system in the human body.

That's all.

But it was so complex I said there's no way this could happen by chance it's impossible. There's got to be a God. Now it was seven years later before I met this God by a street preacher in Chapel Hill, but I knew there had to be a God because the complexity of our human body just couldn't happen and you know what, let me say if you're here today and you never trusted Christ in a real and personal way. I'm telling you go outside and look at the creation. I'm telling you, you read about all God's done in our world. I'm telling you, you look at the complexity of the human body that defies imagination and there is no other place to land. If you're an honest broker than that there must be an omnipotent God running this whole show. This couldn't happen by evolution. This couldn't happen by chance.

I love what one man said about evolution is a doctor who taught it to Oxford and in the England. He's not a believer but is a scientist and here's what he said. He said, believing that evolution is responsible for all of this is like believing that a tornado blew through a junkyard and when it left the result was a Boeing 747@impossible. This is so if you've never trusted this God in a real and personal way. I urge you to acknowledge his presence and then to embrace what he did on the cross for you so that you can come into personal relationship with him something to think about what let's summarize.

This is the omnipotence of God. God's unlimited power to do what ever he pleases.

Always, everywhere, and forever. Nothing could stop him. No one can for Tim no force on earth can withstand him. God is omnipotent. His word declares it and focus his actions prove now that's as far as we want to go in the passage theologically because now we want to stop and we want to ask our most important question so everybody ready yes yes here we go nice and loud. 123. You had to use a lawn. So what say this is great. I mean really, it is but what is really mean for me. I mean, you know, put some handles on it for me.

Make it practical. Okay, I'd love to.

What this really means my friends is that you and I can trust God with any issue that there is no problem, you and I will ever face the God cannot handle you and I will never come across a problem that God is incapable of dealing with because God is omnipotent and there is nothing I don't care how impossible the situation looks nothing he can't deal with. I mean how many times have we seen improvement right here at McLean Bible church for us.

If you been around for a while. You know how many times we run into situations where somebody said this will never happen.

You'll never get this past this will never go through and what it we do. We said don't tell us what an omnipotent God can't do and we got on our face and we prayed and we trusted God and you know what God removed every obstacle and is going to remove the rest of them were facing with these campuses. It doesn't matter friends. Greater is he who is in us that he was in the world but I believe God did those things for us as a church corporate because he wants to encourage us as individual believers in Jesus to remember that he's the same omnipotent God for us personally, not just for the church at large, but the things we seen him do we need to extrapolate that back and say now, if God can do that for the church.

He can do it for me. He wants to make a personal and it's when we get to the place that we really believe this, not just in our heads, but we believe in our hearts and our souls in the deepest part of our being. That's when we begin to see God's power unleashed in our lives. In fact, is a follower of Christ here today. If you are one I want to challenge you with this question. My question is what are you believing God for right now that no one else can do so that when he does it. You can give him the glory and give him the credit. Listen as followers of Christ.

We should always have something on this list something where trusting God for that looks impossible.

We believe God has led us to trust him for it anyway whether he deals with work or with school or with our family with our children, our grandchildren doesn't matter. Something ought to be on this list. If we don't have something on this list.

We are insulting the omnipotence of God. We are dishonoring God and we are robbing him of the chance to display his omnipotence in our lives so that he can get glory. But I want to go on and tell you something else I discovered 37 years of being in the ministry are discovered that most followers of Christ do a much better job of trusting God in the crises of life. They do a much better job of trusting God in the big impossible looking things.

Then we do in trusting God in the little things in the everyday things. It's like we rally to the crises, but then we live our everyday lives as though there were no omnipotent God in the universe.

The average Christian doesn't limit God in the crises of life nearly as much, as I found they do in life's everyday affairs in a recently Brenda and I were up in Boston visiting my oldest son Jamie was up there in my wonderful daughter-in-law Julie and our two grandchildren and one day Jamie was at work at the hospital so was a beautiful day and we said let's go somewhere with the grandkids and there was a Nordstrom that it just opened in Boston just couple days before, maybe a week before and so we said let's just countered drive over there will kill some time walking around a Nordstrom so we put the grandkids in the car and we drove over know what I didn't know is that this was the hottest thing to open in Boston and who knows how long.

I mean, the place was absolutely mopped. I've never seen so much traffic. It was ridiculous. Well, that was a big parking deck, way off on the side were we could've tried to park but it was a long walk with two small children and then there was this itsy-bitsy little parking lot right up next to the store. Most of it was handicap parking there were few non-handicap spot.

So I pulled in there and we started cruising around with about 10,000 other people looking for spot and so I turned to Joey and Brandon I said you know what we need to pray, we need to pray as I said let's praise will Tyler my grandson put his hands together like this and I said, here's what I prayed us in the Lord Jesus, you are the omnipotent God of every single parking space in this parking lot and Lord you know how much easier it would be for us if we didn't have to go over and parked in the parking deck somewhere.

So right now, Lord, I am asking you by your divine omnipotent power to open up a parking space just for us and will be careful to make sure every time we tell the story you get the credit. Amen my little grandson goes amen. That's right will use a long way to Midway you you you what makes you think that God is interested in trivial stuff like parking spaces at Nordstrom's. What makes you think he isn't.

I mean, I gotta tell you I love my children if something is important to them. I don't care how trivial it may look. It's important to me. We are God's children by faith in Jesus Christ, so why wouldn't he be the same well all I can tell you is about 30 seconds later we come around the corner and immediately right smack dab in front of us. This car is back up lights go on, I'm sitting in the perfect spot. I put my blinker on this lady back down, I pulled into her sweet little old parking space and then put the car in park. I turned off the car, raise my hands and I said thank you Jesus for this parking space right you say lawn. I can't believe you do this, I can't believe you do this with friend I can't believe you don't know it. That's why you don't get parking spaces. I mean, if we've got an omnipotent God, why is it we only trusting with the big stuff in life. Why can't we trusting with the little things in life and letting show his power. I trusted God for parking spaces on trusted God to help me find lost keys. I trusted God to Adobe sale items in my size when I go to the store and I have I trusted God for base hits. When the boys needed one badly after I trust lesson.

This is the omnipotent God of the universe and I tried to teach my boys never to limit God just to the big crises of life. I tried to teach them to understand that there is no crisis too big and no price is too small that we can't trust God and his omnipotence for and that when we do this we please God, and we honor God and we exalt God because we give them a platform to show his power trusting for parking spaces, and you watch what happened. They say will lawn I gotta ask you this this mean that.

Are you saying that God will do everything I warning to try just asking because he's omnipotent because he can do it. No, I'm not saying that all know know I'm not saying that all your my little girl Jill, who is of course as you know, disabled and mentally retarded. She loves to go out on a walk. She loves to be outside and she was to pick up sticks. By the time were done walking around the neighborhood. She's got handfuls of sticks. The problem is that when Jill overheats she has seizures and right now she's wearing a plastic body brace that helps correct some scoliosis in her backward, hoping and praying that this will help us avoid back surgery for her and this brace is solid plastic. So in the summer time in the heat. It causes her body temperature to really rise rapidly.

So Jill often go and standard to the at the front door and begged to get out so I hope you understand what I'm saying here friends. I am omnipotent enough at that moment that I'm capable of opening the door and let Morel but I'm also loving enough to tell her no. When it's 95° out at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on an August day because I know if she goes out walking right then she's going to have a seizure and she's really get hurt friends. The same is true with God. God is omnipotent enough to do anything but he's also loving enough to tell us know when he knows if something were asking for is not good for us so will God automatically do everything we asking to do just the way we wanting to do it no but God will solve every issue you bring to him and trust him for annual solve it.

Sometimes, the way you and I ask and sometimes better than the way you and I ask, but he is the omnipotent God, he will never leave us hanging my friends. So let's conclude knowing that I have an omnipotent God gives me quiet confidence my friends with which I can face every obstacle in life with utter peace and without fear, it should give you that same confidence. You know over 60 times in the Bible God uses a phrase he says fear not fear not fear not, why not because Jeremiah 3226 I am the Lord, the God of all flesh is anything too hard for me, fear not, and I have a quote that I keep in my Bible.

I like to share with you. It says it is impossible for that man to despair.

Who remembers that his helper is omnipotent.

I look at that quote at least once a day almost. And when I find myself despairing with. Sometimes I can do when I find myself a little discouraged with sometimes can happen when I find myself feeling intimidated by the obstacles facing us as a church are facing me as a person. I always go back to that quote and I read it, it is impossible for that man to despair. Who remembers his helper is omnipotent and if I'm despairing you know what that means. It means I have forgotten who my helper is I have forgotten who my God is at once. I remind myself of who my God is that despair just melts away. My friend, you cannot remember that your helper is omnipotence and have despair at the same time, for many of you here who have a lot of trouble and a lot of difficulty in your life challenges in your life. I'm here to say to you, the solution to the despair and the worry and the anxiety is very simple. It's to remember who your God is to remember who your helper is.

He is the omnipotent creator God of this universe. There is nothing impossible with him and he will answer every prayer.

You pray and he'll answer it with his power and if he's got to change the laws of nature. To answer your prayer you'll do it you'll do it and so maybe you ought to write this quote down and you are to keep it in your Bible maybe you want to keep it on your refrigerator. The important thing is we need to keep it in our hearts and our minds and our souls. It is impossible for that man or woman to despair, who reminds themselves every day that there helper is omnipotence friends. I pray that what we talked about today will change the very way you face the crises of life.

You plus an omnipotent God is a majority no matter where you go so I hope that's how you learn to see your world that's pretty were Jesus, I thank you for what you said the things that are impossible with man are possible with God. I thank you Lord that you told Abraham. There is nothing too hard for the Lord I thank you Lord Jesus that everything in this world from parking spaces to zoning officials or in the hand of Almighty God and that you are omnipotence in every area of this universe.

Lord Jesus, help us to remind ourselves of this great truth.

Each and every day, every moment of every day and Lord Jesus. May our hope in life be the omnipotence of Almighty God. Teach us Lord that when we are focused on the omnipotence of God is impossible for us to despair or have anxiety. So change our focus.

Lord off of our problems off of our challenges and onto the omnipotent power of Almighty God in May that give us the strength and the confidence in the call that we need to face everything this world throws at us. Thank you Lord Jesus that you are the omnipotent God of the universe and thank you for those of us who are in Christ you are our helper. We thank you and praise you. In Jesus name God's people said Amen