Astounded | Self Sufficient (June 6, 2021) - Mike Armstrong

All right.

Well, good morning, uh Redemption.

We are thrilled to be uh with you uh in your homes in a kind of way, uh, with you in the office as well.

Uh just grateful to have you uh viewing with us, and uh we're excited to see uh the Lord Jesus Christ magnified through all that we do today.

And we're about to get into uh God's word here in just a second, but uh a few things before that, uh we've been talking about this church center app that we've got.

You can download it on your phone if you don't already have it.

It's through Planning Center, it connects everything uh that you have uh in in our church and connects you to what's going on in our church.

You can find sermon video, you can find uh ways for you to uh uh to give.

We've got uh redemption kids online happening in there.

We've got uh prayer requests through our connection cards through there.

Uh everything that you should really need uh is in there.

And so uh that is a way for our church family to connect with what uh with what's happening uh throughout our church.

Now, uh in line with giving, as we are just so grateful uh to you for your uh giving and the way that you are supporting the work here uh for the rest of this month.

It's been going on for about a month now.

We've got our uh special offering that's happening right now.

We're looking to raise uh$14,000.

We're uh over the halfway mark at uh at this point, and so we're grateful to those of you who have already given.

Uh this is going to Dale Gloria Church in Ployash, Romania, uh brand new GCC church that has uh just launched about a month or so ago.

And uh so we're looking uh for creative ways to partner with them.

And one way is that we want to send them uh a good solid gift as they get themselves uh off the ground and running.

Uh the Life Center, the TLC, uh, that's a ministry right here in town that works with uh young moms and uh uh pregnant women who uh uh need some help and need some love and need to be pointed to Christ.

And so uh we're excited for that ministry.

We've been giving to them for a number of years now.

I want to continue to do that.

And then, of course, we have some uh needs as well here uh in our church in terms of some capital expenses.

And so these are the three uh buckets, the three areas that your gifts would go to.

And uh we uh know that it's you know income tax time and uh and all of that, but uh we we just ask that you would prayerfully consider how the Lord might use you in this, and this is above and beyond our regular offering.

And so we've always been so blessed that we have a generous church, a church that loves people and uh uh wants to bless them in this way.

And so special offerings at redemptionnewmarket.ca.

You can e-transfer there.

Any of your giving you can bring uh to our office uh on Sunday mornings as well, and we've got a box that you can put it into there.

So just so, so appreciate all of that.

Online prayer meetings or something that we do twice a week.

And uh the first one, or the first one that we started was on Tuesday mornings, and it's happening from 6 till 7 uh a.m.

7 at the very latest.

And it's a great way for you to spend your day.

We always get there and it's we're so tired and we're groggy and we're just getting our first sips of coffee in.

Uh, but it's such a blessing and such an amazing way to start our day off.

I know I'm always uh mega blessed by it.

We invite you to join us uh this Tuesday uh through Zoom.

You can go to our website and find it there.

Again, Church Center App has it all as well.

Uh, and you should be able to find it in the email that you get uh sent into your inbox as well.

Now, Sunday mornings at 9 50 a.m.

So, really following the first live stream or the first service over at the office, uh we have a Zoom prayer time as well.

If you're at home, and especially if you're on your own and you don't have anybody to pray with uh and you would like that, we uh will be meeting with you uh through Zoom, and I'm looking forward to doing that as soon as our service here is uh is done this morning.

All right, we'll get your Bibles and get them turned to gonna be in a couple places, but Acts chapter 17 would be a good place for us to begin uh here as we continue in our astounded series.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

Now, while I'm sure that all of us, you know, have have come across people who we might characterize as needy, right?

People who you know seem to require that much more time and and attention and care than uh maybe others that we know.

Uh the reality is we're all needy.

Okay, we all have needs.

We have tons of them, in fact.

I mean, each one of us uh requires uh food and water, right?

Without that, we simply do not last long.

We require money in this world.

We need money to buy food, we need money to buy clothes and shelter, finding a house, rent, mortgage, all of that.

I mean, that is just a couple of needs.

Needs for relationship and community and love expressed and received in those ways.

I mean, these are these are basic and very core needs that every single person um has.

In fact, you could say uh that every single thing around us also has some kind of need.

Okay, or as uh A.

W.

Tozer put it, uh, nothing is complete in itself, but requires something outside itself in order to exist.

Okay, so you look around at all of creation, you take something like trees.

You look out the window right now and you see a tree.

Uh that's not self-in- it's not a self-existent thing.

It requires uh water, it r it requires uh you know the proper soil and and fertilization and sunlight and all of these things in order to grow.

I mean, you even think about inanimate objects around us.

I mean, even this table here that my Bible is sitting on, uh, it had an a need or needs of sorts in the sense that it needed to exist, it needed uh a designer, somebody to to come up with a plan on what this table was gonna look like.

It needed uh, you know, somebody to actually build the parts and machine them, and then it needed somebody to actually put it together when it arrived in the box, which just so happened to be me.

And uh you can tell it's me because the tabletop is super wobbly and doesn't work real well, and if I were to lift it, the top would come right off, uh, which just tells you um not the most handy of guys.

Okay, but God, however, God is completely self-sufficient.

Okay, which which means simply that he has absolutely zero needs whatsoever.

Okay, he is dependent, he is reliant on nothing and no one.

Okay, Tim Temple uh writes this: I really appreciate it.

God is perfectly complete within his own being.

I think that's really well put.

Okay, so here is our main idea today, our main thought.

It's I am astounded as I consider that God is self-sufficient.

And so as you read that, and maybe you even jot that down to think about it and meditate on that this week, you're probably noticing a bit of a pattern here in the way that this is phrased.

Each of our messages through this uh attributes of God series is really framed this way.

We're looking to be astoundered.

We're looking to have our minds blown, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, because when you and I see God for who he really is, our lives, us, us ourselves, we change.

Everything that is kind of broken and wrong and off within us is because we fail to see God as clearly as he really is, as as awesome as he truly is.

And one of the things that is so amazing and astounding about God is his self-sufficiency.

Okay, so again, I said that we were gonna look at Acts 17 for this.

If you're there, you can uh find verses 24 and 25.

This is a passage of scripture where Paul has been walking around Athens in his missionary journey, and he's noticing the various idols that the people of Athens have erected and they worship.

And there's even one he comes across to an unknown God.

And so for them, they're basically like, We think we're worshiping all the right gods, but but just in case, here's kind of a junk drawer idol that we're gonna create just to make sure if there's something we didn't cover off, this unknown God, we'll even worship him or it or whatever it is.

And so, in this, as as Paul is taking all of this in, he wants to point them to the one true God.

And so here's what he says in Acts 17, 24 and 25.

He says, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, awesome, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands.

Here it is, as though he needed anything.

You see that?

As though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Okay, so in that verse, in verse 25, there, you see that that God is the source of everything.

He he is the source of all life.

And so you see that that God is not needy, Paul spells it out word for word, right there, not needy in any way whatsoever.

He is self-sufficient in and of himself.

Now, 2 Corinthians 3 verse 5, going to look at that here, and you can go there if you want or just listen.

2 Corinthians 3:5

But it gives us a glimpse into this idea as well, but it comes at it from kind of a different angle.

Uh here's what it says it says, not that that we as people, not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, which is implying that God is self-sufficient.

Okay, so our needs, our deepest needs, being being met and being satisfied and being fulfilled is is really dependent on our our self-sufficient God.

Okay, you and I uh obtain our sufficiency or or or whatever it is that we might need in any given moment from the ultimate source.

Okay, the one who has absolutely no needs.

Okay, the one who never tires, uh the one who never runs out of what we need, the one who never has to outsource to something or someone else greater than himself because of some deficiency that he might have.

No, not at all.

Everything that God is and has, he will always be and have.

Now I want to just share with you uh a couple of quotes here that I thought were uh were helpful.

This one is by Scott Swain.

This is what he says.

He says, speaking of God, he possesses infinite riches of being, wisdom, goodness, and power in and of himself.

Because he possesses these unfathomable riches in the perfect knowledge and love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God is the blessed or happy God.

Okay, that's this idea that God is perfectly content within himself because he has no needs.

Okay, amazing to think about that of our God.

How about this one uh from A.

W.

Tozer?

I've used him quite a bit.

I really can't recommend his works to you enough.

Here's what he says to admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in the divine being.

Need is a creature word and cannot be spoken of the creator.

God has a voluntary relation to everything he has made, but he has no necessary relation to anything outside of himself.

His interest in his creatures arises from his sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply him from any completeness they can bring to him, nor from any completeness they can bring to him who is complete in himself.

Love that.

Okay, so as you kind of think about all this and you mull this over and it's settling on you, I think a good question that we're always gonna ask as we go through God's attributes is how does this apply to us?

Like that that's great.

This is who God is, but what does that mean for me?

Like, how does this come to bear on uh on a Sunday morning or a Monday morning when I have to get up and face you know a long work week ahead, or or when trials hit, or or when I've got free time, like how does this impact my life?

Okay, well, we're gonna look at three things here.

Okay, that God is self-sufficient.

It means a couple of things.

Here's the first one.

It means that he is much more stable than I realized.

Much more stable.

In fact, he's perfectly stable.

Okay, think about it this way.

Okay, God is not desperate for your attention and your affection like some love stick puppy.

Okay, you your your love for him doesn't fill some hole in his heart that he is itching for you to fill.

Okay, he doesn't look at you like Jerry Maguire and say, you complete me.

Okay, that's not the way that that works at all.

But I think sometimes, unintentionally, okay, we I think that's kind of how we come to think of God.

We think that he is desperate and and and if we don't repent, he is just gonna be moping around and like, when are they gonna figure this out?

And I need like in this kind of needy type way, but that is that is simply not it.

The fact is that is that God is the greatest being in the universe.

Okay, and so he he knows that what we need most is him.

Okay, he knows that he is the best.

That's not an ego thing.

There's no pride or sin in that for him.

He just objectively is the best, and he knows that we need him.

And so when we sin, it is in our best interests to repent.

He's not he's not insecure about any of this.

Remember, the Trinity, okay, the Trinity is perfectly content, perfectly satisfied with the relational unity that they experience within the Godhead.

Okay, again, he's he's secure in that.

He's perfectly strong, perfectly stable.

Okay, and if you and I don't know that, okay, I don't just mean in our heads here where we could write the answer down properly on a test, but if we if we don't know that deep down, we will always question his stability.

We will always question his strength.

And and so if we're questioning that, we will always run to something else.

We will we will look to something or someone else for hope and for life.

Okay, it's so important, crucial even, that we truly know that he is perfectly, again, strong and and and stable because it means that we will be more likely to depend on him in all ways.

Okay, that God is self-sufficient means that he's much more stable than I realize.

Second thing.

Uh his love for me is more astounding than I realize.

It's more astounding.

Okay, that God is self-sufficient, not dependent on anything or anyone, makes his love for you and I that much more incredible, I think.

It does.

Because his love for you, again, it doesn't come from this place of insecurity.

It doesn't come from this place of like he's trying to manipulate you, you know, where he's he's showing us some love in hopes that we would, you know, love him in return again to kind of fill some some crack or some void within his heart.

No, no, not at all.

Okay, his love is is is a decision on his part.

Right?

As Tozer said, it's it's out of his sovereign good pleasure that he decides to love us.

And it's coming out of the very fact that he is by nature love.

He's not just loving, he is love.

Yeah, I love Ephesians 2, verses 1 to 10.

Ephesians 2:1–10

It's such an amazing picture of the gospel, right?

And in verses 4 and 5, there, after describing our brokenness, our deadness and our transgressions and our trespasses, it says this in verses 2, uh sorry, verses 4 and 5.

It says, But God, okay, after describing our sinfulness, our brokenness, but God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us.

Okay, because of his great love, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved.

That's an amazing thing.

God doesn't love us to try and you know gain something, you know, fill in some hole in his heart.

Right?

It's not that we're loved even because we are extremely serviceable or anything like that.

He loves us because he is love and he wants to share that with us.

His love is amazing.

Right?

It's not something that we can earn, it's not something that we deserve at all.

It's a gift, right?

By grace, you have been saved.

Here's the third thing here as we consider what God's self-sufficiency means for us.

It means that I can trust him more fully than I realize.

Right?

We really can.

You know, if God really is all the things that we've looked at and been talking about this morning, right?

If he will never run out of things like power and and and wisdom for us, and of course we've talked a lot about love, if he will not and cannot let you down ever, because it's impossible for him to, then why would you, why would I, why would we ever run to anything else?

Why would we do that?

He is self-sufficient, he is strong, he is stable.

That is the kind of God worth worshiping.

That is the kind of God worth loving, the kind of God that we should be running to in prayer.

And that's exactly what we want to do right now.

We're gonna have some prayer points uh up on the screen here uh in just a moment.

We encourage you to pray with your families, to pray with those gathered at the office, or or uh log in and join us uh on our Zoom prayer time here in just a few moments.

But as we close this down here, I want to pray.

I want to pray to this self-sufficient God, and I invite you to join me as I do that.

Lord, we come before you and we thank you for uh being this God who has absolutely no needs.

You don't need us to love you, but you love us, which should make us want to love you back.

And so, God, I I pray that we would.

I pray that you would be uh moving in our hearts.

Help us to be astounded by this.

Help us to be astounded by you.

I pray that we would live to spend every moment of our lives to know you more deeply, to see you more clearly, and to live our lives in surrender to you, in awe of you.

And so, God, as we go to prayer here as a church now, I pray that you would be working these things out deeply, pressing them down into our hearts, Lord, that they would actually change us.

Lord, it would not just be head knowledge, Lord, where we could get into lofty conversations with people about doctrine and about theology, Lord.

All of theology and doctrine is is crucial and it's important, but Lord, we we want our lives to be changed by it.

We want to resemble Jesus Christ.

And so, God, would you do this work in us?

We invite you to, Lord.

We pray that your glory would fall, that we would sense it, that we would long for more of it, that we would be forever changed, and you would be glorified through all of it.

So, Lord, we bring these things to you, knowing that you are trustworthy, knowing that you are good.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.