Is Anything Too Hard for God?

Rev. Dr. Buford Edwards II

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Introduction

Good morning and welcome!

This morning I wanted to talk to you about something that God has laid on my heart since we have been studying the Fruit of the Spirit on Wednesday nights.

And that is trusting God and God’s perfect plan.

Think about how many times has God spoken something into our lives or planted something in our soul?

Now, think about how often we build up our own understanding of how those things should come to pass and when it doesn’t work out our way we try to make it happen.

We try to get ahead of God and try to “help God out.”

Am I the only one that has ever done that?

Things start to happen and things start to change and but its not the way we thought or the timing in which we thought, so we think there is something wrong and WE, key word here is “we” think we need to fix it.

When the reality is, all we need to do is listen to God and trust God.

We need to remember that God is working things out from both ends of every situation.

We need to remember that, if He said it, He will see it through.

We need to remember that we just need to be present in God’s will and sometimes get out of God’s way.

One of my favorite verses in all of the Bible is Exodus 14:13....

Exodus 14:13 NKJV

And Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever.

Listen to what God is saying here, do not be afraid!

See when we try to get ahead of God and intervene on our own behalf, it typically comes from a place of fear.

We are afraid that God will not follow through.

We are afraid we will mess something up.

We are afraid of this, afraid of that.

Here’s the thing, has God ever NOT fulfilled a promise?

Has God ever NOT been there?

Is there anything too hard for God?

See, the fear is an attack of the enemy.

The fear is also and indication that our resolve and our faith needs to be strengthened.

That fear is something that we need to give over to God and allow God to deal with.

God’s Word says . . .

2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Do we hear that?

The Spirit of Fear is not from God.

God gives us love, power, and a sound mind.

A rational mind.

A clear mind.

A mind that had the ability to hear God and respond to God.

But fear will try to drown that out.

Fear will try to interrupt that process, with “what if’s”

If we find ourselves asking 10,000 “what if” questions, we need to take a step back and clear our minds.

We need to rebuke that and turn it all over to God.

We need to tap into the power, love, and sound mind that God has given us.

But go back to Exodus 14:13 again....

Exodus 14:13 NKJV

Moses tells them to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

Now, many of us know this story.

The Israelites have just left Egypt and we at the edge of the Red Sea.

And the Egyptians were chasing them.

God has already told them that He would deliver them.

But they don’t see a way.

All they see is this army coming at them from behind and this sea that they couldn’t cross in front of them.

So they are crying out to Moses in fear that they are all going to die and Moses in turn calls out to God, who says stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

And here it is folks—When we can’t take another step.

When we think there is nothing else that we can do, then God says stand still and watch Him work.

Stand still and watch Him deliver us.

Stand still and watch Him make a way.

And what does God do here?

He parts this mountain of water, the Israelites cross on dry ground, and when the Egyptians give chase, they get stuck in the mud, God releases the sea, and they all drown.

Now, I ask you again, if God can do this, what can God not do?

What issue that you have that God can’t solve?

What promise that God has made that may seem impossible that God cannot fulfill?

And that’s what I want to get to this morning, because God has made a lot of promises, to us as individuals and to our church.

And as God has made promises, the enemy has sent attacks of doubt and fear.

And we need to be reminded of exactly who God is and what God is all about from time to time.

Abraham and Sarah

So, I want to take a look at another promise that God made to some folks in our Bibles.

This one to Abraham and Sarah and a child of promise.

The first thing God does is tell Abraham of the covenant promise to form a great nation from Him . . .

Genesis 15:18–21 NKJV

On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates—the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”

However, there was one big problem.

Abraham and Sarah had no children.

How can Abraham be the father of a great nation, if he has no descendants?

Abraham had received God’s promise and believed God’s promise, but God had not revealed all of how He was going to fulfill this promise yet.

So, Abraham was a little bit confused—as any of us would be.

So, some time passes and Abraham and Sarah begin to get a little impatient and a little bit worried about God’s plan being fulfilled.

Abraham begins to think he missed something here so he and Sarah decide they are going to have to fix this problem.

They are going to have to help God out just a bit.

They have to move things along just a bit, so . . .

Genesis 16:1–3 NKJV

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan.

So, look closely at what happens here.

A decade has passed here.

10 years of waiting.

And we have trouble waiting 10 minutes sometimes.

Am I lying?

So, after 10 years Sarah comes up with a plan that if she cannot conceive then Abraham was just going to have to have a child by somebody else.

So, she tells him to go and get one of the servants pregnant.

And Abraham—like a dummy, says “okay.”

And Abraham goes and gets Hagar the servant girl pregnant and she has a child and in verse 4, it says Sarah became jealous and despised her.

So Abraham seeing the mess he has made says, “I’m out, you deal with her however you want . . .”

Genesis 16:6–10 NKJV

So Abram said to Sarai, “Indeed your maid is in your hand; do to her as you please.” And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence. Now the Angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. And He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from, and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.” The Angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hand.” Then the Angel of the Lord said to her, “I will multiply your descendants exceedingly, so that they shall not be counted for multitude.”

So, Sarah runs the pregnant Hagar off and the angel of the Lord appears and sends her back home.

Which is God beginning to fix the mess that Abraham and Sarah had made for not being patient and waiting on God in the first place.

So, time passes and the child is born and Abraham names him Ishmael and the Bible says that Abraham was 86 years old at this time.

Not a spring chicken by any means.

And Abraham thinks it is all said and done at this point, but now, we get into Chapter 17 . . .

Genesis 17:1–2 NKJV

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.”

At 99 years old God reiterates the promise that He had made to Abraham, even before Ishmael was born.

You see, when God promises, God fulfills.

Regardless of how bad we mess it up—IF it is a promise of God, it will be fulfilled.

Now, was it God’s original plan for it to take 13 more years to fulfill the promise?

The Bible doesn’t say…However, remember when the Israelites were to take the Promised Land and they sent the spies.

The spies came back with a bad report and instead of trusting God, they doubted, which delayed things for 40 years.

See, even though God’s promise will be fulfilled, we can delay that fulfillment.

And we do this either by moving when God says stand still.

And also, listen carefully to this—by standing still when God says its time to move.

WE HAVE TO BE ABLE TO DISCERN THE TWO.

There are going to be times when the Promise right there and we can delay it because we refuse to step out in faith and grasp what God has promised, just as much as when God says slow down and wait.

And we have to be in tune with the Holy Spirit in order to be able to do this.

And I am not going to stand up here and say I’ve got all of this figured out, because I struggle just as much with discernment at times as anyone else.

There are times I don’t know what to do.

Don’t know if it’s time to move or time to stand still.

But what we can do is trust God and ask for His revelation and discernment.

Listen to what Jesus says . . .

Matthew 7:7–12 NKJV

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

And this asking, knocking, and seeking that Jesus is talking about is not a one time prayer and going away.

It is asking and continually asking.

It is knocking and continually knocking.

It seeking and continually seeking.

And it’s not our wish list of items we want from God. It asking, seeking, and knocking concerning His will and His promises that He has has already made.

It is asking, seeking, and knocking concerning the discernment of the Holy Spirit in all things in our lives.

We all love Psalm 37:4 . . .

Psalm 37:4 NKJV

Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.

Someone the other night pointed this out in class. I don’t remember who it was, but when we are asking, knocking, and seeking God’s will, we may find that those desires change.

What we thought we wanted may not be as important as we thought.

But back to Genesis 17 for just a minute. Verses 15-16 . . .

Genesis 17:15–16 NKJV

Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.”

So God tells Abraham, dude you are going to have a kid with Sarah.

But look at Abraham’s immediate response....

Genesis 17:17–19 NKJV

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” And Abraham said to God, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before You!” Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.

And it goes on to talk about God telling Abraham that this son will be born the next year and that God will still take care of Ishmael, but he was not the son of promise.

And some time passes and three “men” as the Bible puts it came for a visit right before they went to destroy Sodom and Gommmorah, and Abraham and Sarah prepare a meal for them and while they are visiting . . .

Genesis 18:9–12 NKJV

Then they said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” So he said, “Here, in the tent.” And He said, “I will certainly return to you according to the time of life, and behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son.” (Sarah was listening in the tent door which was behind him.) Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”

So, she basically does the same thing Abraham did, laughed in disbelief that God was going to fulfill this promise.

And here is the response and I want us to hear this . . .

Genesis 18:13–14 NKJV

And the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”