The Omnipotent Power Of Yahweh

Good morning.

If you're a student, you're dismissed.

Greetings, welcome to Christ Community Church.

Robin, that was great.

Thank you, ma'am, for encouraging us.

I was just saying thank you.

If you'll notice our pretty flowers up front, Ron Eddy, one of our most wonderful uh part of our church family.

Uh he because of some uh challenges he was facing, he had to move to Atlanta to live with his son and daughter-in-law, and they uh for just wanted to provide some flowers today, just to remind us of uh his love for us and our love for him, and because it's Veterans Day, or it was this week, and um he was a veteran, very proud of the fact that he served our country uh in the military.

And we'll miss him.

Yes, I will especially miss him very much.

He was he was great.

He is great, he is great.

Anything I need to mention?

I think we're good.

Other than that, okay.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Um I love Veterans Day because for a week or two before Veterans Day, uh they show all these Army movies.

And uh so I've spent the last week and a half watching uh The Longest Day, which arguably might be the greatest movie of all time.

Um Midway.

Uh what else have I watched?

Oh, Sergeant Alvin York.

Uh a couple of others, but I uh I love watching those those movies.

Oh, save in private, Ryan.

I watched that, and that was that's incredible.

Anyway, one of the things that I when I watch these movies, I'm always left really being in awe of what people endured, what they sacrificed, um, their courage, their strength, what they accomplished, um, what they overcame.

Oh, Hacksaw Ridge was another one if you've ever seen that, but dude, that is a deal.

Uh that that's unbelievable.

Anyway, but you watch these people in the face of uh just indescribable opposition and attack and danger and pain and loss, and they just don't stop, they don't quit.

Um and it always makes me think about how unlike that my world is, and truth be told, how unlike that I am.

Just how fragile and rather than being undeterred, how deterred.

I don't even know if that's a right, that's a word, but but um you know, just um how overwhelmed.

I hear that word all the time.

I'm just overwhelmed.

Uh, you know, I've got to get my nails done, and I've got to go buy some Christmas presents, and I've got to get my car washed, and I've got to get my kids uh lunch to.

I mean, I'm just overwhelmed.

And then you watch the longest day and you're like, really?

You're overwhelmed?

That's what you're overwhelmed over.

And um I don't know, it just how quickly the little difficulties in my life can just so quickly lead me to fear, to rage, or to despair.

Um and I I I ask myself, does my faith in God in Christ have any impact?

These are millions of American men and women out of just a sheer love for country, did what they did.

Um so my question is, does my love for God and my trust in God does that impact me in that direction?

Does that move me to be even a little bit more like that?

Um I'm not that encouraged with my answer, to be honest with you.

Um I I feel like in my life, if you watched me on a day-to-day basis, I'm the one that is just so fearful, so weak, so fragile over the you know, the smallest of things.

And I'm I'm ashamed of that.

Um what did you want to Well, uh pretty much the same thing, but we've been talking uh I've been uh examining and reading literature about uh resilience in children.

I teach high school, so I teach arguably still children.

Um and you know how resilience levels are low.

And I don't know, uh everywhere I think um there are um professionals among us who could probably confirm that.

And I've just been thinking about the fact that resilience is not a I think is not a personality trait, but it is learned behavior, it is a character quality.

And so a personality trait is a thing you're just born with, I suppose, like this person's optimistic, this person's an extrovert, whatever.

But resilience is a different thing.

Resilience is something you can work on.

And you work on resilience during hardship.

If there's no pressure, then there's no need for resilience.

There's no there's no building of that.

And and you believe that's true, that resilience.

That's a that's a significant declaration you're making.

And it and I never hear that.

In fact, I don't know that I've ever heard that statement in my life.

And if that's true, and I believe it is not a trick question, is it?

It is not a trick question.

It is uh it is an act uh an acknowledgement that you are making a statement that I don't believe most of us have heard or hear very often, and that is that resilience is not something we're born with, but it's something we're learn that is learned.

That's a that's a that's a that's a big statement right there.

Go ahead, I didn't interrupt you.

I just wanted to give a give acknowledgement to that.

So here's an example from my own classroom.

Now, she the what I'm about to tell you, the girl was kidding.

So, but I have these lamps in my classroom because I don't like overhead, I don't like the the the the blueness of fluorescent light.

I have lamps.

Yeah, please go to Lowe's and get me some more lamps because I I like softer light.

Anyway, so I've got one of those lamps, you know, that has like in the kids' bedroom, it's got like five different things.

So it's got five bulbs, and and one day one of the bulbs was out.

That's it, and I didn't have any, and I was gonna bring some from home.

That's all there is to it.

And the girl, a girl who sits close to that lamp, said she was kidding, but she said, Your lamp, one of the bulbs is out.

And I said, I know, and I hope I remember to bring one from home.

And she said, That stresses me out.

Now, I think she was exaggerating.

I think she was kidding.

That stresses me out, but we are in a time period, and maybe it's always been that way, I don't know.

We are in a time period where people are are stressed out and anxiety-ridden.

And I just wonder if a whole lot of it is maybe not habitual language, language that's that's allowed.

Um even encouraged, maybe.

Um but all of that to say, resilience can only be practiced when it's needed.

And that's when something is difficult.

Now I want to and we I think we allow our people to escape that difficulty.

It's a big deal you're saying, because and I guess you'd have to you'd have to ask yourself the question, do you think that God wants us to be resilient?

It's an important question.

It's not a it's not a just a given answer, I think.

I think that's a real question.

Does God does God value that for us?

Does he want us to possess that quality?

And hence, if it can only be learned when we face difficulty and pressure, I think those are the two words you used, then is he very actively putting pressure and difficulties in our lives to create resilience in our lives?

Do we would we even consider that the God of the Bible does that, puts pressure and difficulty in our lives for purposes?

Well, we we believe that with physical exercise, if you want to be stronger, well, you probably know I watch a lot of college football, and so if you want to be stronger and hit people harder and tackling and all these sort of things, you just work all week and you just push and push and push and push and push, and you don't think you can lift anymore, and then you lift some more and then you sweat some more and you hurt some more and and you get stronger in order to do the task.

And so it it works that way, so why should it not work emotionally the same way?

Well, baby, I'm I'm with you.

I'm just I think what you're saying is way better than what I've got to say.

And uh I just wanted you to, I wanted everybody to hear that.

Um every hero, I don't know who all you're gonna mention today, but every hero in the Bible, I shouldn't say everybody, it seems like, um what made them heroic was the hardship.

People thrown in prison, people thrown in lions' dens, you know, bellies of whales, and if all that's true, which we think it is, we believe it is, then where the strength comes is not by snatching the people out of the hardship.

We want to rescue our loved ones, but then they don't learn resilience.

And then they're weak, and then we're mad at them for being weak.

Or at least we're annoyed.

Yeah.

I tried to say every week while we were studying Jonah that the Bible was not written just to be read and obeyed.

That's okay, but it was written to be pondered and meditated on.

Most of what God wants to say to us through the scripture, we won't get just from reading it or even obeying it.

Most of what we that God wants us to get, it takes pondering and meditating on that which we are reading.

Because the Bible isn't just conveying facts and rules.

It was written to convey wisdom and truth.

And that's very different.

And to and to get wisdom and truth from something, it takes a lifetime of pondering.

One of the qualities that I believe the Bible, I I would almost, some of you won't like this, but I would argue just because of the sheer amount of ink that God devoted to this quality.

The quality that God wants us to ponder the most, and therefore understand the best and embrace the most is his attribute that he is all powerful.

That the Bible would declare that God doesn't just possess great power.

The Bible would declare that Yahweh is all powerful.

Psalm 89 says, your arm, O Lord, is endowed with power, and your hand is strong, and your right hand, your hand of strength, is exalted.

And the the point that the Bible's trying to convey to us is that God doesn't just do great things.

He does great things.

No denying that.

But what the Bible would like for us to see is that God doesn't just do great things, but rather Yahweh is great.

It's who he is, it's his nature.

It defines him.

And, you know, I wanted to spend some time in the book of Jonah.

We just ran out of time.

We just did not have enough time.

But there is no lesson running through the book of Jonah that is more important, more that the writer wanted us to see than the lesson that Yahweh is a God of all power.

He is all powerful.

I mean, you see it from the fact that he, I want a storm, and there's a storm.

I want a fish to swim up and swallow a man, and he obeys.

I want that uh fish to spit him out on the bank, and he obeys.

I want the sun to shine extremely hot when Jonah was out in the desert, and it did.

I want a plant to grow, and it does.

I want a worm to eat the plant.

I mean, what are all those little uh bits of information trying to convey?

They're trying to convey that the God of the Bible, the God of Jonah, the God of Israel of the Old Testament, is a God that is great in power.

He is omnipotent in power.

And this theme runs through the Old Testament from the very beginning to the very end.

Um I'm not suggesting this.

I'm telling you what's true.

There is no quality that the Old Testament declares more often.

It's the most in fact, there's not even a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, or tenth quality.

You'd have to jump over into the twenties before you even could get close with love and holiness and wisdom and compassion and all the other qualities and attributes of God.

The quality of God that the Old Testament declares overwhelmingly the most is the quality that God is all-powerful.

He starts off, chapter one of Genesis, declaring that God spoke and the universe was created.

The Old Testament would also declare that God didn't just create it.

Somebody's got to run this deal.

God sustains it and God runs it by His power.

The story of the flood, the story of the of Moses and Pharaoh and the ten plagues, the story of the Red Sea, the story of God leading two to three million people through the wilderness for 40 years.

The splitting of the Jordan River, the conquering of the promised land, Jericho falling, and all the armies of Canaan being defeated, and you go on and on and on and on with these stories.

All of these stories declare that the God of the Bible, the God of Israel, is a God of all power.

Psalm 134 says, May the Lord bless and protect you.

Why?

For He is the maker of heaven and earth.

How many, those of you that read the Bible very much at all, how many times does the Bible make a statement and then either begins it or does it before or after with the little phrase, God will keep his word because he's the maker of heaven and earth.

God will defend you because he's the maker of heaven and earth.

God will provide for you because he's the maker of heaven and earth.

How many, it fills the Bible, this idea that God is all powerful.

Psalm 121 says, I look up at the mountains from where will my help come in times of trouble?

The eternal creator of heaven and earth and of these mountains will send me the help I need.

The message is simple, and that is that the person that created and controls and sustains the universe from the smallest drop of rain to the largest glacier, and from the dinosaurs to the amoebas.

The God of the Bible is a God who possesses the power to control these things, and because he controls them by his power, is he not going to use his power for the good of his image-bearers, and more importantly, for the good of those that he claims as his own children?

It's, I mean, the reasoning is so obvious and yet we miss it.

It's like a little boy who's been given an assignment at school and he goes home and he says, Dad, I've been told that I've got to build a paper airplane, and my paper airplane has got to go farther than any of the other kids' paper airplane.

Would you help me?

Sure, I'll help you.

Well, Dad, do you know what you're doing?

Do you think you possess the ability to make a great airplane?

Well, I'm the director of NASA.

Dad, I wanna I went to a friend's house and we his mom made grilled cheese sandwiches, and it was the best thing I ever ate in my life.

And Dad, I want to eat a I want to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

Would you make me a grilled cheese sandwich?

Yeah.

Well, Dad, do you know how to do it?

Well, my name's Bobby Filet.

And on and on and dad, I want to build a I'm a I'm a I'm a relatively great expert at building forts from pillows and blankets in the living room.

Just sheer practice.

Yeah, we're good at that.

You know, um, you know, I'm pretty good at that.

Tell you what's, hey lad, do you know what you're doing?

Do you know what you're doing?

And the answer really is not really.

Not really.

But what if your dad was Frank Lloyd Wright?

Dad, do you think you can build a a fort for me with blankets and pillows?

Yeah, I think I got it.

I got it.

Dad, do you think you could protect me and help me and guide me and direct me and meet my needs and get me through life and get me to the next life?

I created this universe.

I think I got it.

That's the message of the Bible.

But that's not the whole message.

That's half the message, or maybe 75% of the message, to be honest.

But there's another big chunk of the message.

And that is, and this is communicated in the Old Testament, but not like it is in the New Testament.

And that is that the God of the Bible is not just a God of all power, but he delights in sharing that power with his own.

God delights in sharing his power with his children.

And I can't convey to you in with my limited abilities of communication when I say this, but it was an incredibly big deal to the apostle Paul.

And we know this through his letters.

That the people he was responsible for spiritually, it was a big deal to him that they got that.

That the God of the Bible, the God of the Old Testament, and now the God of the New Testament, he didn't just possess all power.

He delighted in sharing that power, committing that power to his people, to though the way he words it is, God has committed his eternal power to those of us who believe.

I just picked the book of Ephesians.

I could have picked any of his epistles, but I just picked the book of Ephesians.

He starts the book of Ephesians with this.

I pray, this is Paul talking.

I pray that you will know the immeasurable greatness of the power that God has committed to us who believe.

It's the same mighty strength that God used to raise Christ Jesus from the dead.

God has committed that power to you and to me.

Then we can jump all the way to chapter 6, and in Ephesians chapter 6 he says this be empowered in the Lord with the strength of his might.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

This won't matter to you, except maybe this will encourage you a little bit.

The word power, strength, and might are basically the same word.

Paul chose three variations of the same word, the same idea, and crammed them together as if he was piling them up on top of each other.

I want you to know that God is all-powerful, that God is mighty, that God is strong, and he's committed this power, this might, and this strength to y'all.

It's vital that I remember God's desire and his promise to share his power, his strength and his might with me as I begin each day.

I want to make a distinction here real quickly, and I hope you'll get this.

And we'll try to land this airplane.

I believe as strongly as anybody in this room.

I don't believe there's anybody in this room that believes any more strongly than I do, that God has committed his power to us so that we can do great and mighty things.

I believe that.

I believe that he empowered Moses to call down plagues, to split the Red Sea, to strike the rock and water gushes out.

I believe that he empowered uh Joshua to cross to split the Jordan River and to conquer Jericho.

I mean, I believe that God gave David the power to kill Goliath.

I believe that God empowered Elijah to call down fire from heaven on Mount Carmen.

I literally believe that God empowered those people to do that, and then all the people in the New the Apostles and all the New Testament Christians in the book of Acts.

I believe that.

And I believe he still empowers us to do great things.

Nowhere in my Bible does it say God turned off the faucet or the spigot.

His power hasn't changed.

Yeah, no, his power hasn't changed, and his commitment to share it with us hasn't changed, and he wants to share it with us so that we can do great and mighty things.

But I want to appeal to you and I want you to try to hear this.

As much as God wants to share his almighty power with us so that we can do great and mighty things, I believe that he also wants to share his immeasurable power.

That's Paul's phrase, so that we can not only do great and mighty things, but so that we can be great and mighty.

And that's different.

There's a difference in doing great and mighty things and a person that is great and mighty.

A person that possesses the power to obey when it is hard, when it is distasteful, when everything inside you, and as Robin said, every voice around you is saying, you're an idiot to do that.

But in your gut, you know God told you to do it, and by goodness, you do it.

That is power.

Power to forgive somebody that has wronged you and is glad they wronged you.

They're not coming saying, Oh, I'm so sorry.

I feel bad.

I made a bad mistake.

Would you forgive me?

Well, sure, I can forgive that person pretty pretty well.

But not the person that's smiling.

Every time they see me, I got you.

And God gives me the power to forgive them.

That's power.

Power to endure, to overcome, to be steadfast, to be immovable, to serve, to sacrifice, to hold on.

I declare again, Yahweh is a God of all power.

And Yahweh delights in sharing that power with you.

And that power is available so that you can do great things.

I am not in any way minimizing that.

But I want to remind you that doing great things is not as impressive to me as a person that is great.

And being great.

Choosing not to be petty and selfish and fragile, choosing to be strong and courageous and faithful, to say no to temptation, to say yes to the things that I know God has told me to do.

Choosing to do that, that is, in my opinion, another level of power.

Not just power to do miracles, but power to stand and endure and be steadfast and immovable when I face the challenges and the difficulties of life.

I spent a lot of time this week, and we don't have time to look at it, we're gonna land.

I spent a lot of time this week looking up all the verses that I could find in Paul's writings when he uses the word, and I would encourage you to do that.

Maybe some of you are going, I'm not sure about that.

Good, don't be sure.

Go home and do your own study.

That's even better.

Yay! But if you go home and you start looking up all the verses in the New Testament, Paul's, I'm talking about Paul, where he talks about might, strength, and power.

Never once did I find where Paul told anybody to do this or did it himself.

He never asked God to give people power.

I find that very significant.

He never once said, God, give Catherine power.

God, I'm facing a tough situation.

Give me power.

Never once did I find Paul asking for power or praying for people to have power.

What I see is Paul declaring, you already possess God's power.

It's there, it's available, it's because the Spirit of Almighty, all-powerful God lives in you, the power's there.

It's just a matter of, are you willing to access it?

My daughter is the most precious person on the planet.

I regularly exasperate her, which gives me some joy.

Because I'll be trying to do something.

And she'll say, lad, your phone will do that.

Do you not know that your phone will has the ability to do the very thing that you're struggling with?

And I go, nope, I didn't know that.

It's not that I need that I need to get her to add a an app.

Add an app to it.

It's not that I need, Rainy, could you add an app so that it would do it?

It's already there.

I just choose not to access it.

I choose not to learn to utilize that which I already possess.

How many battles, how many temptations, how many acts of obedience do I declare?

I just can't do that.

I can't do that.

And I believe the Spirit of God is trying to say, Larry, it's not a matter that you can't do it.

You don't want to do it.

At the end of the day, I tell my grandson every day.

He'll say, Let I can't.

I'll say, can't never good.

Yes, you can.

You can.

You can do anything you set your mind to.

I can't forgive that person.

I can't get up and read my Bible faithfully.

I can't uh uh whatever.

I can't, I can't, I can't.

Are we saying more about ourselves or are we saying more about the God who inhabits us?

When we say I can't.

I'm not saying I can do everything.

I'm talking about the things that God's told me to do that I know God's told me to do.

I can't fly to the moon, but God hasn't told me to fly to the moon.

But there's a lot of things he's told me to do, and I would like to chalk those things up too.

I can't.

Maybe the God of the Bible's not all-powerful.

And maybe he hadn't committed that power to me.

Maybe that power doesn't inhabit me.

Maybe, and if it's if it if that's true, then I can't.

But if I do possess that power, what is Christopher saying, what could we possibly face that we cannot endure and be strong in and get through if God's told us to do it?

What could we face that we cannot get through victoriously with the power of God?

You have anything else you want to add, friend?

Your metaphor about the phone is a good one.

That's a good one to close on, I think.

That phone will do way more than I or he knows.

But it does it can do lots of things.

The reason you don't you can't get it to do it or it won't do it for you, is because at the end of the day, neither of us really are very interested in learning any more about that.

I'm I know I'm not.

Right.

So, you know, somebody I'll give it, you put this app on, or you do this, and we're not really interested in that.

No.

Therefore, we can't access its power if we're not interested in it.

Um I have a I have a friend who um is now interested, kind of more of an acquaintance, but anyway, now kind of interested in uh spiritual the spiritual realm.

And what she is pursuing is healing practices and spiritual warfare and demonic activity.

She's interested in cast out demons and all that.

Which uh believe her.

But my point is that that same woman who is very interested in this power is cruel to her, is actively and every day cruel to her own mother.

She has she doesn't like her mother.

Her mother's annoying.

Her mother asks her questions she doesn't want to answer.

She's mean as a snake to her mama.

So we want we want this, we want to act in this power of God.

We want to believe in that.

But there are we can't access the moon until we learn how to run the daily machinery.

And I think as human beings, that's resilience to close.

The daily machinery is is mundane.

We want big stuff, the big stuff.

But you don't get to the big stuff without the you don't swim the English channel until you learn a proper swimming stroke.

And that's it.

You're never gonna swim the channel until I'm never gonna swim the channel until I've learned a proper stroke.

So maybe being nice to your mother or forgiving your spouse is the beginning to the opening to greatness.

Thanks be to God.

I want to learn to be resilient.

I don't want to damn myself and those that I love if I've got, I don't know how many years I've got left.

But I don't want to damn myself or them to living a life that's petty and shallow and weak.

I want to be resilient.

I want to be courageous.

I don't want Fox News and uh CNN to have the power to change how I live my life each day.

Nor do I want the jerk on the highway or the the the the irritating mom, not that you're irritating mom.

And I would love to be able to walk into St.

Jude and wave my hand and say a few magic words and everybody hop up and run out.

I'd love that.

But God has committed his great power to me and to you.

But we do I love your network.

But He probably wants us to start by loving our irritating numb neighbor.

Or asking that person's forgiveness, or giving that person forgiveness, or doing something that our mate wants us to do that we'd rather not do.

Okay.

I said last week we um we're gonna start uh at least giving you the option of having real bread and real wine versus um the the little kind that are covered.

We've still got it available, and you can choose which one you'd like.

But there's real wine in the trays as well as the covered kind.

And so um Jim, would you and Susan come up and and help me, please?

God has committed his great, immeasurable power to those of us who believe.

What is it in your life that you really think would be impossible for you to do?

Like I can't.

I can't.

Maybe that's something you ought to sit there just a moment and talk to God about, and maybe let him talk to you.

When you're through, you come up and eat and drink, and remember and give things.