I’m Not God

Ernest Kurtz wrote in a book about the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, it was titled Not God,

because he says the fundamental problem that alcoholics have is that way down deep,

and that's not just alcoholics, but any dependent.

They refuse to acknowledge limitation, weakness, being finite, and being fallen.

They tend to live under the delusion that they are in control of everything,

when the truth is they can't even control themselves and their own urges.

Thus, to say, I am not God, is to say, I have weaknesses and limitations.

I am not in control of everything in my universe. I need help from a power far greater than myself.

And as obvious as that sounds, this I am God delusion is not limited to alcoholics.

It's a spiritual problem that all modern and post-modern, in fact, even in America, mankind shares this.

It first showed up in the Bible in the Garden of Eden when the spiritual forces of evil

embodied in that snake told Eve, when you eat of this fruit, your eyes will be opened

and you'll be like God.

This was the first temptation. You will be master of your own universe.

You don't have to submit to somebody else's ideas.

You can make up your own rules, and that makes you like God.

You see, this you'll-be-like-God temptation has been around a long time, and it's at the

heart of all sin and spiritual confrontation.

By contrast, it defines what we mean by humility and its opposite character trait, pride.

Pride is not so much bragging as it is this delusion that I'm at the center of everyone

else's focus, and I can manage everything on my own without help.

Bragging may be a symptom of pride, but pride itself is much deeper.

Even very insecure people who would never be caught dead bragging can demonstrate an

amazing amount of pride.

Humility, on the other hand, is the opposite of the attitude of pride.

It is not a self-deprecating sort of thing. Humility is just simply living in the truth about ourselves, and the truth is, I'm not.

And all God's people said, Amen, you're not. And I'm not at the center.

I have needs and things I can't control. I'm totally dependent on God.

At AA recovery meetings, the first thing people say when they talk is, when they get up in front to talk,

they say, my name is Tim, I'm an alcoholic.

Of course, they use their own name.

And that's a statement of recognition of who they are and the fact that they are

uncontrolled, they cannot control their own problems. They're recognizing

and placing the ownership on their disease. And that is to say, let's get something real clear right up here. I'm not God, but I believe there is a

higher power. For the alcoholics, it's a reality check. It's a way of getting

centered in the truth to keep your spiritual sanity.

So let's all practice, and I want us to practice in a community group exercise right now, okay?

So here's what I want you to do.

I want you to turn to somebody next to you, face to face, and then I want you to say to

them as loud as you can, your name is blank and you're not God.

Go!

Wasn't that refreshing?

It's kind of fun to do it to somebody else, isn't it? But it will be us to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, you joker, you're not

God.

But you know, sometimes it's a good thing to do. of us, sometimes someone once said, the biggest difference between you and God is that God

doesn't have to think he's you.

You see, pretending we're God is at the core of pride, and pride can destroy your life,

and your relationship with God.

So today we're going to study about a man who's about to learn this very painful lesson.

Not God, though he thinks he is." Then we're going to look at a guy who exhibited humility

at the hands of God. And I must tell you that many of the thoughts today are shared from

a message by John Ortberg, who was a former pastor at Willow Creek in the Chicago area.

But the first guy we look at is a guy named Pharaoh. He is the king of Egypt about 3,500

ago, and he was the current pharaoh, the current king of Egypt at that time.

Egypt was the world's most powerful government. So Pharaoh was the absolute dictator of an empire that reigned with unchallenged authority over the entire world.

He had strength, wealth, fame, and power unparalleled in this world.

He was the most secure person on the face of the earth, or at least we think he was, or he thought he was.

Everyone served him, he is God, or that's what is expressed. At least that's how he

thinks of himself and how others thought of him. They were brought up thinking

that the Pharaoh was God, as I said before. But he's a God with a problem. Now we think of our God, Big G, and we think, does our God have problems?

Well, if he does, he could overcome them just like that. But here is a god with a little g with a problem.

His empire has enslaved the race of Hebrews for their massive building projects for hundreds of years.

They've come in with their very handy building monuments to the king's vanities, but the

problem is that they're reproducing as fast as rabbits, and they're becoming a threat

to Egypt's security. Pharaoh and his officials asked themselves in the Scripture, they says

this, what if Egypt has to go to war? These Hebrews might join the enemy and revolt. There,

are so many of them that even armed with only sticks and clubs, they could be a real nuisance

and free themselves from our labor. So for the very first time we meet this Pharaoh,

We find him giving orders to kill babies.

The midwives were to kill all of the male children born to the Hebrew slaves.

There's an interesting transition point in the Bible here, it says,

the very next verse after that says, but the Hebrew midwives refused to obey the king.

Pharaoh, God, the God, their God, because they feared the God.

You see, Pharaoh thinks that he is God and all the powers of life and death

belong to him. He's firmly under the spell of the I am God delusion. The

Hebrews, on the other hand, who worship the one true God, are not under that same

delusion. This horrible edict to kill babies reveals something profound about

Pharaoh, and we see it today in a lot of regular people. He's just one problem

away from doing something stupid and crazy, because he'll go to any lengths to,

prop up the notion that he's in control, that no one dares to resist his will,

that the world revolves around him, in fact, that he is God. I mean, this is Hitler.

He comes to this notion that he wants to be so much control that he brings this

this delusion out that only the Aryan people deserve to live, and everybody who

is not blonde-haired and blue-eyed deserves to die, and especially First, the Jews.

And if a child is born with a defect, they had to sterilize the parents and sterilize that child so that child

would not have a child of its own that's defective.

Because they wanted this perfect, pure race of Aryans. You know, Pharaoh was trying to prop up

his own powers and his own control.

It's interesting, there's a story told about Lyndon Johnson when he was president.

He had a cabinet meeting and told his press secretary to open the meeting in prayer.

Now Bill Moyer, not the guy that spoke here last week, but Bill Moyer was his press secretary

at that time, and he was also an ordained minister.

So Mr. Moyer began to pray, but he was praying very quietly at the other end of the table.

President Johnson interrupted him in the middle of the prayer and said,

Speak up, Moyer, I can't hear you!",

Moyer responded, Sorry, sir,

I wasn't talking to you.

You see, kind of like the president, Pharaoh has this world revolves around me

sort of thing going on. Notice what Pharaoh does in response to this little problem.

Before he had just wanted the midwives to quietly kill the male babies after that they were born.

That would be discreet and wouldn't create a stir since infant mortality at that time,

especially among boys, was probably 30 to 40% anyway.

But he didn't get his way, the midwives didn't obey, and so Pharaoh became enraged and he threw a tantrum.

That's what happens when some people don't get their way, isn't it?

He declared an edict, a new one. throw all of the newborn Hebrew boys into the Nile River where they will either be drowned

or they will be eaten by the crocodiles. So much for being discreet. Shows us another aspect of,

the king's character and the I am God syndrome. People who study human behaviors and human

development speak of frustration tolerance. There's a paranoia that seems to set in when you

when you don't get what you want, you have a frustration that develops when you can't do things the way you thought that you should.

They say that people who are mature in character exhibit a high frustration tolerance,

which means that they're able to exercise patience and delayed gratification.

We've heard that phrase before, right?

Immaturity, on the other hand, is marked by low frustration tolerance.

It's the, I-can't-stand-it-if-I-don't-get-my-way-immediately mentality, right?

So, what do you think Pharaoh's little infanticide and genocidal edicts indicate?

A high frustration tolerance or a low frustration tolerance?

On the side note, what do you think the current attitude and laws we have in America about

killing the unborn reveals about our level of selfishness in this world?

Another aspect of Pharaoh's character is paranoia, as I said.

A feeling of, everybody's out to get me. Conspiracy theories abound about people

who are wrestling through the I am God delusion because everything is about them. It's kind of like the man who refused to go to any football

games because he was absolutely sure that when the teams were out there in their huddles they were talking about him.

Paranoia. What if Pharaoh was born in America in our modern times and is somewhere around

40 years old? He might even look like an average guy. He would probably have no dictatorial

authority to perform genocide, but that doesn't mean that he wouldn't still be thinking about

that other people only exist to make him happy.

He might still have the mentality that the world revolves around him, that the world is here to fulfill his joy and pleasure.

He might be deluded enough to think that only he can solve the world's problems.

We would say that somebody like that has a Messiah complex, right?

Maybe our pride doesn't take on such huge proportions, but ask yourself if the same root of self-reliance and self-seeking

and doesn't somehow live a little bit in all of us?

If something has to be done, we can do it ourselves, right? Is there any anger that stirs in our heart

when things don't go our way?

That's low frustration tolerance. Do we exhibit any paranoia or self-consciousness

driven by our self-centeredness? I know that each of us desires to have a godly character.

We desire to be like God and to live like God, and I know that each one of us desires to be like Jesus.

But when situations come along that make us angry or frustrated because they aren't what we expected,

or thought should happen, when we are afraid of even our own shadow,

that's a general reminder from God that we're not at the center of the world.

We're not God.

So tomorrow, when you're frustrated, when you're stuck in traffic, or the dog messes

on the carpet, or the neighbor plays his rap music too loud, or a task takes longer than

you'd planned, instead of getting bent out of shape, just look in the mirror and say,

I'm not God.

The world doesn't revolve around me.

And it doesn't exist for the purpose of sparing me frustration.

Here's my chance to learn a little dignity, a little humility, and a little

patience. Proverbs chapter 11 verse 2 says,

Proverbs 11:2

when pride comes, then comes disgrace,

but with humility comes wisdom.

Another proverb says pride comes before the fall.

You might think that proud people are untroubled in their illusion of power, but only for short spurts.

Pride does not lead to calm, untroubled smugness in the long haul.

Here are some symptoms of pride that may be evident in people's lives.

Anxiety.

You're troubled about things that might upset your apple cart

about the way the unknown future will turn out.

Inadequacy, you're not able to keep all of your plates spinning.

You ever feel like there's just so much going on you can't you can't handle it all?

Live as a teacher sometimes, right?

Fear, the feeling that something bad is going to happen and you won't be able to handle it. Maybe that's you, maybe that's not,

maybe you know somebody around you that is kind of living in those times of inadequacy and fear.

We put on a face of bravado and machismo and it's this got-it-all attitude,

I've got it all together, I know what I'm doing. We sometimes do that because we don't want others

to think that we don't have it all together. I know I've told you this before about hitting the back end of a car with my bicycle and flying over the

top of the car, but the first thing that we do when something bad happens to us,

what do we do? We get up and we look around and make sure nobody else saw what just happened, right? We don't want anybody to know how stupid we are, how bad we have,

it. Later on in his life, God brought a man by the name of Moses to confront Pharaoh and

to let the Hebrews free. According to the Bible, Moses was to be like God to Pharaoh

and to confront Pharaoh's I am God delusion. So get this, here's an interesting altercation.

A man who thinks he's God talking to a man who is not God, but whom God wants to act

like God to teach the man who thinks he's God a lesson that he's not God. Get it?

Yet, Pharaoh is outwardly cool. Moses performs miracles in God's name in front of Pharaoh, and at first his outward

confidence isn't shaken at all.

Pharaoh's sorcerers can conjure up the same tricks, so why should they, or he, God, Pharaoh,

listen to an imposter?

The miracle plagues get more and more severe as God turns up the heat on Pharaoh's illusion

of godhood. What's interesting about the miracle plagues, as I think I've said before, is that

each plague is a direct confrontation with a god in the Egyptian pantheon of gods—the.

Nile River God, the Frog God, the Insect God, the Cow God, and even Ra, the Great Sun God,

was thought to be the source of life itself. Pharaoh was the supposed ruler of

all of these gods as the son of Ra himself, but each of these gods was overturned at the Lord's command. The Nile River turned to blood and life,

within it died. Frogs and gnats infested, and the cows were stricken with disease,

and yes, even Ra bowed to the Creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob as the sun was blotted out and the sky turned black. The lesson that God

was giving to Pharaoh is unmistakable. You shall have no other gods but me.

These gods that you think you control are absolutely controlled by, actually

controlled by, a greater power. The one true Creator God, Maker of heaven and earth,

the I am who I am God. Why did it take ten plagues?

Because the I Am God complex is very hard to defeat. It dwells in the heart of all men.

Whenever we are born, we begin to have this idea that we are God. If you don't think that even

babies are born with this I Am God, everything revolves around mean attitude,

I'm telling you this, take two young children, put them in one room with one toy and see if there isn't weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Isn't that true? I mean, we all have this selfish complex, this idea that everything must revolve around me.

And if a child or, oh boy, even a dog doesn't get the attention they want, they will yowl,

And that's just the dog, until they get the attention they need or they want.

Each time Pharaoh's outward veneer of confidence begins to wobble and he thinks, maybe I'm

not God, the prospect of losing control is so terrifying that he can't let go.

So he puts his entire country through untold grief rather than acknowledge the fact, God is God and I'm not.

He will not admit that.

He refuses to admit that.

In fact, at the beginning of this, God told Moses that he was going to harden Pharaoh's,

heart. Well, basically, Pharaoh hardened it himself.

But he was not going to admit that he was not God. God showed Pharaoh that he did not have the divine prerogative to say who lived or died

when his angel of death struck down every firstborn Egyptian male.

So friends, if you think that it's too steep a price of pride, realize that it's just a

small reflection of God's ultimate power over spiritual life and death.

When you get to the end of your day, when you're sitting out there at Dunkin' Donuts

and you're sitting at the table eating your donuts, or if you're at work in your cubicle,

Or maybe if you're teaching band at the school, I want you to just stop everything and shout

out as loud as you can. I'm not God!

I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. Your life is going to ease, and you're going to realize that I can have my faith and trust

in the one who really is God.

I can rest assured in Him, because I'm not God. What a relief it is to know, isn't it, that we're not God.

My wife tells me that all the time. You're not God. No, she really doesn't, but let's have a word of prayer.

Father, as we come to You at the end of this service and we think of the message that You,

have spoken, not just to Pharaoh, but to us and to all people, You said many times in

Scripture that You'll do something because You want the world to know that You are God.

So You are God, and we're not, and we're so grateful for that.

What a thanksgiving we can give in the fact that we don't have to be in control of everything.

We can simply trust You.

Whether we understand it or not, we can simply put our faith in You that You've got everything

in Your hands, and You'll take care of things.

In Jesus' name, amen.