Making God's Power Personal
Notes
Transcript
Making God’s Power Personal Psalm 139:13-18 4th in a series, In Awe of God June 4, 2017
Note: Psalm 148 is read before today’s sermon.
Series Introduction
This is a series designed to deepen your worship of God.
The Bibles offers us 3 lenses to view God. I owe this insight to John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God: A Theology of Lordship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2002), 343.
The 1st lens, The Bible gives us various names of God including Yahweh (Lord), Elohim (God), and El Shaddai (God Almighty).
The 2nd lens, the Bible presents word pictures of God.
You probably know the Bible pictures God for us as a Shepherd and a Judge, a Shield, and a Rock.
But did you know the Bible also pictures God as a Potter (Romans 9:19-22), a Farmer (Isaiah 5), a Landowner (Matthew 20:1-6), and even a Knitter (as we’ll see in a few minutes).
And the 3rd lens, the Bible describes God with numerous traits, attributes, or characteristics.
My aim in this sermon is to deepen your sense of reverence for God…
… to encourage you resist the encroaching sense of cynicism of our age where nothing really matters in life…
… and to encourage you to rest in the refuge of God’s protecting power during times of distress.
1. Hope in God’s Power
When your life seems out of control, God wants you to know of His power.
When you feel like a pin-ball bouncing from one trouble to another and you are powerless to stop, God wants you to know of His power.
In fact, one thing we are told to pray for other believers is that each of us know more of God’s power in our lives: “and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might” (Ephesians 1:19)
So the Bible calls on us to pray for one another to have a deeper knowledge of God’s power.
God has the power to do all He wants to do.
God has the power to carry out every one of His plans to perfect completion.
There’s nothing God wants to but can’t.
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20–21)
In fact, one of the Bible’s favorite names for God is God Almighty.
Almighty appears nearly 60 times in the pages of Scripture.
“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2)
In place of saying, “Yes, we can,” Christians unite in saying, “Yes, He can.”
Now, everything about God is mighty.
He is mighty in mercy – He can forgive the hardest heart.
He is mighty in wrath – God has an intense hate against all sin.
He is mighty in wisdom – He knows more than enough to help you in your crisis.
He is mighty in power – no force of evil can threaten Him.
Even though Satan roams around like a roaring lion, God Almighty is His safari hunter.
Once you are in Christ, no one can remove you from God’s Almighty hands.
He is mighty in love.
At the height of his success, John Lennon wrote a personal letter to an evangelist.
After quoting a line from a Beatles song, “Money can’t buy me love,” he said, “It’s true. The point is this, I want happiness. I don’t want to keep on with drugs. . . . Explain to me what Christianity can do for me. Is it phony? Can He love me? I want out of hell.” Steve Turner, The Gospel According to the Beatles (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 2006), 187-188.
Yes, God is mighty even in His love.
God’s power glitters through in all His works. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (n.p.: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1874), Kindle Location 13275
Here’s 3 quick-hitters to increase your hope in God’s Almighty power:
1.1 God Cannot be Stopped from Accomplishing His Purposes
“No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord.” (Proverbs 21:30)
Remember what the angel Gabriel said to Mary? “For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)
1.2 God Does Whatever He Pleases
“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” (Psalm 115:3)
“Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” (Psalm 135:6)
1.3 God is Superior to All Other Powers
Do you remember the story when Jesus was sleeping in the boat and the disciple woke Him because of the fierce storm on the Sea of Galilee?
Jesus awoke and spoke to the lake and do you remember the reaction from the 12 disciples?
“And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41)
In fact, you can make this personal by repeating this to yourself: God is my shield and my protector.
Today’s Scripture
In the heart of this series, we are spending 4 Sundays examining Psalm 139.
This psalm actually breaks down into 4 almost completely equal and matching parts of 6 verses each.
The first part (verses 1-6) tells us we are surrounded by His knowledge.
The second part (verses 7-12) tells us we are surrounded by His presence.
The third part (verses 13-18) tells us we are surrounded by His power.
While the fourth part (verses 19-24) is a response to the first three parts, telling us we are surrounded by His pure justice. Omitted in the interest of time: Putting it all together, God not only knows what needs to be done, but He’s also where He needs to be, and lastly, He has the power to do it while there.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” (Psalm 139:13–18)
“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23–24)
1. Hope in God’s Power
2. Marvel at God’s Artistry
Augustine writes these words in his Confessions: People go everywhere from the tallest mountains, to the mighty billows of the sea, the tides of the river, or even the circuits of the stars above, but they pass right by themselves when looking for God’s power. “… men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by…”
The truth is most of us do not realize how awe-inspiring our anatomy really.
George Gallup, the American statistician, said: “I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone—the chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity.” https://www.crossway.org/tracts/the-reason-why-2645/;accessed May 31, 2017.
You were at one time a single cell.
While you have no memory of this stage of your life, yet you began dividing.
You have probably never worked so hard, and never again with such skill and certainty.
At a certain stage, when you were very young, only a few hours old, you sorted yourself out and became a system of cells, each labeled for what it was to become - brain cells, limbs, liver, gall bladder, heart, the whole gamete.
All of these systems signaling to each other, calculating their territories, laying you out…
Yet, if it had been left to me to do the mapping of my cells I would have got it wrong....” This is an adaptation of Lewis Thomas, The Fragile Species (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 17-18.
“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139:14)
God is pictured as a skillful weaver, weaving the substance of you. Bruce C. Waltke and James M. Houston with Erika Moore, The Psalms as Christian Worship (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010), 60.
His studio is your mother’s womb.
God is seen as a craftsman who colorfully weaves the colored thread of your mind and soul.
It’s His needle that embroiderers even your psyche.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139:13-14)
David said, “I am not here because of Mother Nature, fate or evolutionary chance. You formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb.”
David realizes what a marvelous creation he is.
He is seated on a hillside watching his father’s sheep and he’s feeling the breeze blow over his body.
He looks down at his hands and his feet.
He feels his heart beat and watches in wonder as his chest rises and falls with each breath.
And he realizes this is no accident.
Now, if David could realize the marvel of the embryo, how much more should we due to advance of medical technology and the MRI.
Alexander Tsiaras, an associate professor of medicine at Yale in a recent TED talk speaks of the marvel of the human embryo.
By the time you’re 9 months old, you have almost 60,000 miles of vessels inside your body and when you are an adult they are closer to 100,000 miles laid end to end. https://www.fi.edu/heart/blood-vessels; accessed May 31, 2017.
And only 1 mile is visible to the eye.
The other 59,999 miles (seen only by using a microscope) that are basically bringing nutrients and taking waste away outside of the naked eye. http://www.cc.org/blog/nasa_astrophysicist_has_different_take_abortion_0; accessed May 31, 2017.
The complexity of building that within a single system is, again, beyond any comprehension or any existing mathematics today. https://www.ted.com/talks/alexander_tsiaras_conception_to_birth_visualized/transcript?language=en; accessed May 31, 2017.
In the 7th, 8th, and 9th weeks, a baby’s lungs develop.
In this finely tuned and choreographed fetal development process, the right lung grows longer and separates into 3 lobes while the left lung forms only 2 lobes because the heart needs to grow.
These heart cells actually “talk” to the developing cells of the lung, saying, “Hey, I need some room here”. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexander-tsiaras/pregnancy-anatomy_b_2499945.html; accessed May 31, 2017.
The Creator left his fingerprints all over our world and our lives.
The source of all of that is God’s power.
His power is directing our lives.
His power is guiding our lives.
Do you see it?
Better yet, do you feel it?
1. Hope in God’s Power
2. Marvel at God’s Artistry
3. Rest in God’s Plan
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s son, John Eisenhower, asked his father about the Bay of Pigs fiasco of then President, JFK.
The former President reminded his son of D-Day, “I don’t run no bad invasions,” Ike said. “You failed in Cuba”: “Grand Illusion,” Foreign Relations, Time, April 28, 1961 as quoted in Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), Kindle Locations 10872-10874.
If that is true of the former general and President, how much more for God?
“Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:16)
God knows the outline of your life and He has planned how your days will unfold.
Why? Because He formed you from “unformed substance”.
God’s planning began even before your birth.
He knows how clever you will be, what weaknesses you will have, and even how long you will live. John Goldingay, Psalms 90-150, vol 3, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Wisdom and Psalms, ed Tremper Longman III (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 635.
Remember from verse 4, God knows your thoughts before you form them and know we learn He has planned all of your days.
God has written your personal diary before your life began. Waltke, Houston, with Moore, 561. The Hebrew word translated “were formed” comes from the root word “יצר” meaning to plan ahead. It is also used in Genesis 6:5: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
All this was done “when as yet there was none of them.”
Here is a powerful reminder that the end of our lives is planned before we even begin.
God loves you and has a plan for you life.
But it’s not just your life, God has a plan for even the slightest details of the universe.
1. Hope in God’s Power
2. Marvel at God’s Artistry
3. Rest in God’s Plan
4. Trust God’s Mind
“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” (Psalm 139:13–18)
Here is an economic paradox. Waltke, Houston, with Moore, 562.
Typically, the scarcity of an item, raises its valuable.
The reverse is also true: when there is more of any one item, the less valuable it is.
But notice how odd verses 17 and 18 are – here there is plenty of something yet its value is incredibly high.
Drink this in: the all powerful God of the universe is thinking of you.
God knows the worst about you but loves you anyway. James Montgomery Boice, Psalms, Volume 3, Psalm 107-150 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 1213.
Oh Lord my God When I in awesome wonder Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made I see the stars I hear the rolling thunder Thy power throughout The universe displayed
Then sings my soul My Savior, God, to Thee How great thou art How great thou art Then sings my soul My Savior, God, to Thee How great Thou art How great Thou art https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tx7qozzvkmuq5e4h4ab32nicnoa?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics; accessed June 4, 2017.
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