God Loves The Word Impossible!
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Creation
Creation
Grace to you, Shalom from God our Father--From Jesus our Messiah--From the Holy Spirit who gives us faith.
God loves the word...IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Though you cannot find a verse which says exactly those words, you can see that God loves showing us that what is impossible for us is very possible for Him!
The very first IMPOSSIBLE thing that comes to mind is CREATION.
How did God create our world and the entire universe which surrounds it? Simply by speaking.
The first words we have recorded that God spoke are:
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
God spoke these 4 small, simple words and what happened as a result was nothing short of miraculous. Genesis says that God divided the light from the darkness. Think of the vastness of our universe.
Not too long ago in the history of astronomy, we thought there was only our solar-system.
[picture of our solar system]
Then we discovered we were part of the Milky Way galaxy.
[picture of the Milky Way]
“The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy 120,000 light-years in diameter containing 400 billion stars. It may contain at least as many planets.”
So, we thought the Milky-way was the entire universe, and we were part of something quite large, until modern astronomy through things like the Hubble telescope have discovered that there are very many GALAXIES!
[insert picture of galaxies]
Today scientists know that there are 170 Billion Galaxies in the universe
So, just how many stars are there in the known universe today?
Taking the average number of stars in one galaxy and multiplying by 170 Billion you get a Septillion stars.
One Septillion = 10 to the 24th power, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the known universe.
All of this is a result of God speaking everything into existence. That is how powerful the Word of God is. How is that for an idea, or a challenge. The reason to immerse ourselves in the Word of God is that it is by His very word that every part of creation exists solely because of God’s Word.
God loves the word “IMPOSSIBLE!”
Impossible is the situation the Disciples are faced with in our Bible lesson from Mark 8 today.
The people have been with Jesus for three days. Jesus knows that some of the people have traveled a long way to spend time with Him, and if they walk home, after fasting for all this time, they will faint, because they don’t have strength from partaking in daily bread.
Jesus had just fed 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. That story is recorded in Mark 6:32-44. So, it looks like Jesus is testing his 12 interns. Yes, I found that term used recently in place of disciples.
In Mark 6, Jesus told the disciples to feed the 5,000 people. All Jesus does here is set out the situation. But again, just like before, the disciples think it is impossible.
Before you get too harsh with the disciples, remember times when God has come through in powerful, if not miraculous ways for you. Yet, we like the disciples are just as forgetful. The next time we are confronted with a difficult, or impossible situation, we throw up our hands and say, “WHAT CAN WE DO?”
We are no different from the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness with Moses. They had seen miracle after miracle with their own eyes:
Aaron’s Staff Became A Snake
The Nile River Turned To Blood
Egypt Covered With Frogs
Egypt Covered With Gnats, Yet Pharaoh’s Magicians Could Not Duplicate!
Egypt Covered With Flies--But No Flies Where the Israelites Lived!
Egypt’s Livestock Died From A Plague--But No Plague on Israelite’s Livestock!
Egyptians Covered With Boils--Pharaoh’s Magician’s Could Not Stand Before Moses!
Egypt Has The Worst Hail Storm Ever--But No Hail On The Israelites!
Egypt’s Crops Are Eaten By Locusts
Egypt Covered By Darkness That You Could Feel! Yet, Light Shines On The Israelites!
Egyptian’s Firstborn Die--But Israelite’s Firstborn Are Spared When Protected By The Blood Of The Lamb!
[Insert picture of Jesus on the cross]
[Explain the Gospel here.]
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
[Insert picture of the empty cross]
[Insert picture of the Holy Spirit]
So, the Israelites were freed from physical slavery by the blood of the Lamb!However after all of these miraculous interventions in the lives of the Israelites, when they come to Red Sea, and Pharaoh’s Army is pressing down on them, they fail to remember ANY of the miracles God has just done for them. Exodus Fourteen tells us how they reacted:
And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. So they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.
Then they said to Moses, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us, to bring us up out of Egypt?
Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness.”
Just like the Israelites, we do not handle change very well.
Imagine saying that slavery was better than freedom. They had just had their first taste of freedom and they wanted to go back to the familiar, but ugly life of slavery.
Is it any different with us who have tasted the freedom from Sin, Death and the Bondage of Satan? Are we not quick to turn back to the very things we were delivered from.?
Is there some ongoing sin, which keeps cropping up in your life? Is there a part of you that just longs to throw up your hands and say, “Oh, I might as well give in.”?
Many believers struggle daily with something which draws them away from Jesus. But that is the very thing which Jesus seeks to overcome in our lives. As long as we struggle with it, we will live in defeat.
We must come to the point of surrender. We must come to the point of admitting our own powerlessness. We must come to the place where we are willing to have Jesus put us to death spiritually, that we might be raised up in His power, and walk in the grace, mercy and righteousness of Jesus.
Going back to the Israelites complaining in the wilderness, we see that Moses is walking by Faith. Moses’ example is the one we must remember. Moses’ attitude is the one we must emulate. Listen to how he responds to the faithlessness of the Israelites:
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.
The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.”
Who will fight for them? YHWH will fight for them!
Then as you know they crossed through the Red Sea on DRY GROUND! With walls of water on both sides of them. After the Israelites were safely on the other side, God brought the two walls of water back together, completely defeating Pharaoh’s Army as they attempted to follow the Israelites across the bottom of the Red Sea.
[insert picture of the Red Sea Crossing] I like this picture, the pathway zig-zags through the Red Sea!
We need to be reminded over and over, that we are sinners in need of salvation. We need to learn over and over to trust Jesus with the very thing we fear, so that walking in His power, we see the very thing we were blind to before.
The disciples saw it for the second time. Jesus took 7 loaves and a few fish. Jesus then looked to His Father in Heaven, and gave thanks for what they were about to receive. You can almost hear the snickers from those who knew it was hopeless to feed 4,000 with 7 loaves and a few fish.
Yet, as they distributed the bread and fish, miraculously, they had more than enough. In fact it says they picked up 7 baskets of leftovers.
There is another lesson for us to learn here.
Obedience to the clear teachings of Jesus, even when they seem bizarre, can bring glory to God, and fulfillment to our own lives!
We can see God at work in the situations and lives around us. We can see Jesus doing things which look impossible, as we trust, and act in obedience.
Remember Jesus told His disciples to go the 2nd mile, when they only had to go one mile to fulfill Roman law? Jesus told his disciples to turn the other cheek, to bless those who cursed them, to pray for their enemies.
Each and every one of those things calls for us to die to ourselves, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and then walk in obedience to Jesus’ guidance in His Word.
The world around us is hungry, no its more than that, they are close to fainting because they have no real spiritual nourishment. Jesus calls us to take what little we have, even if it is only 7 loaves and a few fish, spiritually speaking, to take that and give thanks for it, and then share it with those around us. As we do this in obedience, filled with the Holy Spirit, we will see God feeding the Multitudes with the salvation that only comes through Jesus!
With Jesus, there is always enough to go around. With Jesus there is always left overs of Grace, Mercy and above all Love!
Now may the Shalom of God … [slides in Proclaim of this]