Astounded | Omnipotent (June 13, 2021) Mike Armstrong

Amen.

Well, good morning.

Redemption.

It's great to see a bunch of you out today.

Honestly, it really, really is.

It's better than a much more empty room than this.

I know we're all looking to uh full room and praying for that.

And I am continuing to, I'm sure you are as well, but but man, it's good to see some people and chat with you beforehand and see the excitement on your faces, at least half of your face from eyes up or whatever.

Um, but hey, listen, good to be with the Lord, good to be with you.

And uh a couple of things before we get into the scriptures here today.

Uh first of all, we've got a church center app.

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Uh whether you're new with us or this has been your church since day one, we would love to have uh everybody fill out a connection card every single week so we can be praying for you and just tracking with you uh in that way.

Uh we have a special uh offering going on right now until the end of the month.

So a couple more weeks uh of this.

And uh, as you know, this has been uh we're looking to raise$14,000 uh to go towards um a couple of different things.

Uh Deo Gloria Church in Ployesh, Romania, looking forward to partnering with uh with them and seeing uh them continue to be established in uh in this uh in this great city.

Uh so your giving will go to that.

It will also go to uh the Life Center, Ministry in Town, uh working with young moms and prospective moms and uh showing the love of Christ and meeting practical needs and all of that.

We love uh what they're doing over there, and then we've got some capital needs in here as well with equipment and that kind of thing.

Uh and so again, we just appreciate you praying and taking the time to consider before the Lord how you could give above and beyond even your regular offering.

And so uh again, just very, very much appreciate your heart to give uh in these ways.

Every week we have been doing an online prayer time on Tuesdays, so 6 o'clock till 7.

Uh yes, it's early.

Yes, we're tired when we meet and pray at this time.

Um, but it's also just a massive blessing and a great way to start our day off in the early part of our week.

I know I've never once uh regretted being up to uh up for that, and we would invite you to join us for that this coming Tuesday.

You can jump on our website or on Church Center again uh on the app there and find the link and join us to that.

Sunday mornings uh from 9 uh 50 a.m.

or starting at 9:50 a.m.

So this would be right after our first service.

We have a prayer time as well.

So if you are uh at home, I want to welcome you, of course.

Uh, if you are at home as well watching and being a part of this, you're welcome to join us at that time uh on Zoom as well for a time of prayer together with uh with our leaders.

And so uh love uh love the opportunity that we have to uh to invest in prayer and to uphold that and seek the Lord in prayer.

So I invite you to join us in those different ways.

All right, well, you can get your Bibles open now to, well, we're gonna be in a couple of different places here.

Uh Ephesians 3 uh is a great spot for you to turn to first.

We're gonna be in Matthew 19 as well, those are kind of the two main areas, a couple more places we'll look at.

Uh but as you're uh finding your way uh to those spots, uh, if you are a parent, again, I know we got some parents here in the room and certainly watching, uh you have probably used bleach at some point, right?

On your kids' sub uh stubborn stains, right?

You've used bleach to try and get those out.

Okay, hospitals, okay, hospitals utilize morphine.

Why do they do that?

Well, to to help their patients deal with uh very serious pain.

Uh racing enthusiasts.

If you're a racing enthusiast, maybe uh you would be interested in outfitting your car with uh with nitrous, right, to give it that extra added oomph, that boost.

Okay, now you may be wondering what these things all have in common with each other.

Well, they're just a couple of examples of powerful or or potent um substances, if I can use that word.

Substances that we kind of see and use, some of us in um various areas of life.

Now, I use that word potent there uh because our God is omnipotent.

Okay, the proper pronunciation of that is omnipotent.

Okay, I do understand how to say that word, uh, but it just means all-powerful.

Okay, God is all-powerful.

Omni means all, potent means power, okay?

All powerful.

Okay, it's true.

He really truly is.

He possesses this immense strength and might.

And again, that word potency, that is, I mean, frankly, if you think about it and you and you read the scriptures, you see it displayed, it is it is astounding.

I mean, it really is.

That's the word for it.

The created world is just constantly displaying and signaling to you and I the, you know, that our creator is all-powerful.

He is omnipotent.

How?

Well, from things like meteor showers, right?

You ever stayed up late and watched something like that, or or hurricanes, right?

Hurricane season down south, to things like how ants are capable.

The number varies depending on who you talk to, but somewhere around like carrying 50 times their body weight.

Okay, or how a killer whale is capable and can use its tail to kick a seal like 80 feet up in the air.

I know you're thinking, man, you just made that last one up, but it's it's true.

It's out there.

There's a video, I encourage you to go watch it.

It's pretty crazy.

Okay, but all of these things, and and many more that we could uh certainly list and go through, they give us very certain glimpses into the awesome and again astounding nature of our incredible God.

Okay, and so as we get going here and we we kind of list out the kind of the main thought that we're going for today, here it is, I am I'm astounded as I consider that God is omnipotent.

Okay, now before we get into Ephesians 3 and Matthew 19 here, uh in Genesis, in Genesis and um in Jeremiah actually, first in Genesis 18, verse 14, the rhetorical question is asked, is presented, is anything too hard for the Lord?

Genesis 18:14

It's a rhetorical question.

The answer is obvious.

In Jeremiah, again, 32, verse 17, it's simply stated, okay, nothing is too hard for the Lord.

Okay, that there is no challenge, there's no difficulty, there's no circumstance too tough or conundrum that we could face that that is too great for the Lord.

Right?

That's too, uh nothing is too much for him to handle.

And to handle with great ease, mind you.

Okay, the Lord, think about it this way.

He is, you know, some people are in good shape and and and and and they, you know, got muscles and and all of that, but but to get there, they had to sweat it out, right?

They had to put in the effort and the blood, sweat, and tears.

For God, it is not that way.

He never tires.

Okay, he never breaks the sweat when he moves and he works in our lives or in the world.

As God springs into action on behalf of his church, he never comes at it from the angle of, well, you know, I'm just gonna give this the old the old college try here and see if this works out, as though, you know, as though failure is a possibility.

Right?

Not that way at all.

No.

His power is is total.

Okay, his power is complete, it is perfect.

There is simply no category when it comes to God for weakness, for for coming up short or defeat.

Okay, so with that said, Ephesians 3, uh, verse 20 now.

If you're there, take a look at it with me.

It says, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all, not some, but all that we ask or think.

Yeah, I know we've looked at that verse before.

It's one of my favorites, certainly, but you know, as we've kind of discussed this topic and can really consider the topic of power as we've done before, we we can't do so without also kind of inherently recognizing the various limitations involved with power.

So for example, powerful, the most powerful two-way radios, okay, that they can only transmit so far.

You get to the point where one person is too far away from the other person and they just don't work.

You know, I was thinking about Michael Phelps this week, and he is the you know the most decorated Olympian swimmer of all time.

I think he has like 10 gold medals.

You can correct me later if I'm wrong on that, but he wa is, as a swimmer, as you can imagine, uh pretty quick.

Right?

He's he's fast.

Okay, but that being said, he swam his fastest 100-meter freestyle at an average speed of 4.76 miles an hour.

You might think about that, and like you're like, that's not that fast.

I think I can walk faster than that.

But it is.

For a swimmer, that's fast.

But you also notice, like, man, he he he couldn't quite get it to an average of five miles an hour.

Again, there's there's limits, even to the greatest of all time.

There are limits.

Right?

And we recognize those, we see these, we think of these limits to power.

But but what this verse is telling us here, Ephesians 3.20, it's it's telling us that God can do far more abundantly than all that we ask or even think.

Okay, what this verse is is written, is intended to do, is to be a category-shattering verse for you and I.

Where we think about God and we understand his power in a way that cannot really relate to anything at all when we consider power and all the different earthly examples of all of that.

Okay, you try and picture, I don't know who it would be, but the most godly person who's ever lived.

Okay, the most mature person, the person with the deepest, richest faith, who has the greatest vision of who God is and can dream and imagine has prayed and thought about all the incredible things that God could do if he wanted to.

Even that person, their vision is limited.

God can do far more abundantly than even that.

Right?

You and I could spend the rest of our days, never eat or sleep, thinking about God's power, imagining all the ways that he could work, he blows it to smooth and he can do way more.

That's how amazing he is.

Our understanding of power is to be shattered when we consider this verse and who our God is.

But then you look at Matthew 19, right?

And maybe you're there in verse 26, Jesus says this.

He says, With man, this is impossible, but you know the rest of it.

But with God, all things are possible.

When we look at a verse like that, though, you know, we kind of need to understand some things.

We need to be a little bit careful here.

The context is that Jesus is showing his disciples here uh just how impossible it is for humanity to save themselves by their own morality.

Right?

It'd be more possible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, he says, than uh, than a rich person to get into heaven.

He's just saying, but on our own, in our own strength, it's impossible for us to get saved.

But but for God, it is it is more than possible to save.

Right?

Nothing, or it says all things are possible.

Okay, so we always need to understand the context whenever we look at a verse or a word or a concept, a thought.

Okay, but on top of that, when when we say these things, or when the scriptures say that God can do anything, that, you know, with God all things are possible, it's to say this: to say that God can do anything that is in line with his character or his nature and moral perfection.

Okay, I'll repeat that again for you.

It says, God can do anything that is in line with his character and moral perfection.

That's what we mean when we say that that all things are possible.

Okay, in other words, it is actually okay to say that there are things that God cannot do.

Now you may be like, hold on a second, that sounds like heresy a little bit, Pastor.

That seems to go completely against the verse that you literally just read and against everything that you have just talked about.

What about all things are possible?

No, it's true.

There are things that God cannot do.

For example, God can't sin.

Can he?

He can't lie, he can't cheat, he can't steal, right?

He can't, on top of that, he can't be, he can't be tempted with evil from within himself.

Right?

He doesn't have a sin nature like we do.

He was tempted from from Satan.

You remember Jesus in the wilderness?

Satan tempted him, that was from outside.

And he he rejected that temptation uh perfectly.

Neither can God deny himself.

Right?

These are the things that would contradict his nature or his character, and again, that moral perfection that he possesses within himself.

Okay, and I think as we think about all this, it shows just kind of a little bit of the potential danger for us, I think, that can happen when we when we isolate one of his attributes without it being qualified by some of his other ones.

Right?

We know that God is all-powerful, but that is qualified by the fact that he's also holy.

He's not gonna sin.

He can't sin.

He's also just, he will always do what is right, he will always do what is good.

So I think a good way of putting this is that God can do anything that he decides to do.

He can do anything that he decides to do.

His power to do what is good and right is endless.

It's endless.

It's not just that he has like some endless power supply somewhere that he like plugs into, like you plug your phone in or plug an electric vehicle into.

It's not like that.

It's it's that he himself is actually endless power.

Right?

That is that is within him.

Now, maybe one of the most obvious displays of God's omnipotence, of his power, that you think of when you consider these things is what we see in creation, right?

In Genesis.

You think about how God spoke the universe into existence.

I don't know if you've ever like sat on a dock or on a park bench by a lake or traveled through the mountains or or something in creation and be and realized like God just said the word and these things were here.

Right?

That is the kind of power that we're talking about here.

I think we think about creation, and that's an obvious example of his power, an important one.

I mean the scriptures show us all kinds of evidence of it, right?

How he parted the Red Sea, he just like heaped up, mounted up these piles of water on either side so that that like tons of people horde could just travel through on dry land.

That's that's incredible power.

Think about how Jesus turned water into wine, right?

That was his first miracle, how he how he calmed the wind and the waves again by just saying, peace be still.

It all it all obeyed him.

We saw Christ cast out demons out of people that were really struggling, and we saw him heal the sick, and of course we saw him raise the dead, including himself, right?

Raised himself from the dead, forever defeating the power of sin and death.

Sin and death were all under that power, not him, right?

He crushed it, he defeated it, he thwarted it.

That power is is powerful, but that doesn't hold a candle to the kind of power that our God has.

His omnipotence is extraordinary.

When you even just begin to scratch the surface, right, and the appropriate response for you and for myself is just to be astounded by it.

Right, to have our minds kind of blown away as we've been using that kind of phrase throughout this series.

And so what I want to do and leave you with before we go to prayer here is just like what a life looks like when we're astounded by God's omnipotence.

Okay, so five quick things here.

It's on the screen.

First one, fear of God.

Fear of God.

You're gonna have that in your life when you are shaken by God's omnipotence.

Right?

Earlier on, I mentioned things like bleach and and morphine and nitris.

Right?

You you you you know, we have, I think, if you're if you have any wisdom, you have some fear of those things.

Right?

You know that you don't want to take too much morphine in the hospital, or it can cause serious addiction problems in your life.

And so there's there's a fear there.

Right?

And likewise, when we when we see God's power, there's a fear, there's an awe, there's a respect of him, or we recognize what he is capable of, what he could do, should he choose.

Right?

I've been reading uh Isaiah 40 for the last uh little while here, and just going through this and and and trying to just understand what is being said here, and in this, God likens humanity to grass, okay, to grass and flowers.

And in verse 7, he says, the grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows on it.

And he says, Surely the people are grass.

Right?

And you let that sink in a little bit.

You're like, man, all the Lord needs to do is breathe, and we're gone.

Right?

That is that right there, properly applied, brings brings a certain fear of him.

Right?

I don't want to transgress against him, I don't want to treat him flippantly.

God is capable of whatever he wants to do, and I need to lower myself, humble myself underneath him.

Fear of God's the first thing.

Here's another thing.

Profound faith.

I think as we're impacted by God's omnipotence, our faith will grow to profound depths.

Right?

Where we're just like, I believe, like I know it.

I know that he can do anything that he decides to do.

I'm not doubting, I'm not wavering on that.

Nothing is impossible for him.

I will trust him with everything, with all things.

I will follow him wherever he goes.

Even if I don't understand what it's gonna look like, even if there are some some kind of you know hesitations on my part, at the end of the day, he is so powerful that I will trust him, my faith will be profound.

Here's the third one a gutsy prayer life.

That will start to happen as you uh in you as you are shaken by the Lord's power.

You ever realize how often we pray the lamest prayers ever?

How often we just want everything to be smooth in our lives.

We just want everything to be easy, we want everything to be comfortable.

And even as parents, again, we we often just want to protect our kids from everything, don't we?

And that's that's an honorable thing.

Like parents have that protective nature in them.

But sometimes do we pray away what God wants to do in them, even if it's tough?

When we're struck by by God's power, we will pray things for our kids like, Lord, Lord, do whatever it takes to capture my child's heart.

Even if that is a painful trial, even if that is something difficult, Lord, I I trust you.

I know you are good.

Lord, would you would you just do it?

Because that will ultimately be what's best for my child.

Gutsy prayer life.

That is something that we see when we're struck by God's power.

Here's another one fiery worship.

Hey, fiery worship, when we're floored by the omnipotence of our God, there will just simply be no stomach for like checked out singing, right?

There's gonna be no stomach for a lack of gratitude where we just kind of whine and complain about our lives and all of that.

You know, dull and dead hearts come alive, you know, in passionate worship when we are struck by how powerful our King is.

Okay, so you got fear of God, profound faith, gutsy prayer life, fiery worship, last thing here.

God's kingdom come.

That will be your mentality, okay, when you are astounded by God's omnipotence.

You will be all about whatever God wants to do.

You know, my mini kingdom of Mike, where I want to just prop myself self up as a small g God, and I want everything to go my way, and everything in this created order to exist to worship me and make me feel better, all of that starts to crumble and fade because I see how awesome God is, and I want his kingdom to come.

I want death to mine.

That's what happens when we're shaken by that.

It's all about bold evangelism.

I'll share my faith with that with that neighbor.

I don't care if they think I'm weird.

God is awesome and they need to they need to know it, they need to see it.

We get struck by the mission, the mission of Christ to make disciples.

It's everything.

Right?

It's about sacrificial service, it's about, you know, shelving my desires, my comfort, my kingdom.

It's about God's glory only.

When we have a vision for God's power, his omnipotence, when we are struck by that, when it's driving us, we will only want to be in for God's glory.

Because I know he's omnipotent.

I realize that he deserves all the glory.

I deserve none of it.

Now, again, we're gonna go to prayer here in just a moment.

But before we do, how unreal is it?

How incredible is it?

Is it that this God that we're talking about today and we're thinking about and describing and reading in the scriptures, this God cares about knowing little old you and I.

Isn't it amazing?

The God in whom all things are possible wants to invite you into a relationship with him.

And how do we know that?

Well, we know that through the gospel, right?

We know that through Christ dying on the cross and rising three days later.

We see the love of God for us in that.

Even though we've sinned against him, and again, he could and should, maybe you could say, breathe on us and turn us to dust.

He's like, no, I love them.

I want to rescue them from themselves, from my wrath, and pour out my love to them.

And I would just strongly urge anybody here, anybody watching this or listening to this, to really consider where do you stand with God?

Have you put your faith in him?

Have you confessed your sinfulness, that it is against your creator?

Have you recognized that Jesus accomplished everything that was required of you but you couldn't do?

He did it through living a morally perfect life.

You and I can't do that.

He did it by dying as the perfect sacrifice to appease God's wrath.

When you trust him, all of his perfection becomes yours.

You're forgiven.

You're invited into the family of God where you can grow for the rest of your days, coming to understand just how amazing He truly is.

So again, these are some of the things that we want to be praying about this morning.

And as we go to this here, I would just also say if you have questions about what it means to be saved, what it means to become a Christ follower, please track me down, send me an email, follow up with me here today or one of our leaders, and we would love to walk you through this.

Okay, but as we go to prayer, we'll give you uh, you know, five or ten minutes or so, however long uh that you need when um when you're done, the service is done, just as we've been doing for quite a while now, and you can make your way outside.

I know the weather is amazing, but let me just close in prayer now, Lord.

We thank you for uh your omnipotence.

Lord, I know that it's a struggle to even describe how awesome you are, just how great your power is.

I pray that all the limitations that we view, the power of things of this earth, I pray that all those limitations, we would not apply those to you.

Lord, I pray that the limitations we might have in our minds about what you can or will do would just come crashing down.

Lord, I pray that you would move and work in power in our lives today, this week.

Lord, I pray that you would show us the awesome, the awesome reality of your omnipotence.

Lord, I pray that we would be astounded by it.

God, as we go to prayer now, would you answer these prayers?

Would you hear our cries?

Lord, would you be glorified?

We pray all of this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's go to prayer.