The Unrivaled Power of God - Part A

We need power. But what if you had unlimited power?

What if you could do anything at all and there were no limitations on energy? The resource was always there. Well, that happens to be one of the qualities that God operates with. God is called Almighty 57 times in Scripture.

It means His power is boundless. Connect with Skip Heitzig today as he shares why this means you can live more confidently in the Lord. Then stay tuned after the message as Skip and his son Nate share why God's unlimited power matters to struggling families. The truth of God revealed in the Scriptures that God is at work. Somebody once said God's ways are behind the scenes, but He moves all the scenes that He is behind. That's the providence of God. That's God working, even though when I can't see it or I can't feel it. He's a way maker.

He's a way maker. Yeah, that's that's another song. That's the same song. Okay, so I love that song and I love that concept.

Thank you, Skip and Nate. Be sure to stay with us after today's message to hear the full discussion. Right now, we want to tell you about a resource that will help you transform the way you pray and the way you live. Recent research has found that Google searches for the word prayer have surged worldwide alongside the spread of the novel coronavirus. In fact, Google Trends data shows that the search intensity for prayer doubles for every 8000 COVID-19 cases. But is there a right way or a more effective way to pray?

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Give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Now, as we join Skip Heitzig for today's teaching, we're in Psalm 139. Well, one of the great challenges that we face on a daily basis is acquiring energy. And I say it's a challenge because just about everything we do or have requires some sort of power. Whether you have just a cell phone, you know how quickly that thing can discharge and you have to recharge it. We are always looking at how much battery power we have left.

If you have a car, you need to go somewhere, you got to put gasoline in it. You need power to run your air conditioner at home and all the appliances you have in your house. Because of that, we as a species, as a human race, these days especially are using a lot of energy. It is estimated that every day the human race uses more than a million terajoules of energy. That's roughly equivalent to what we would use if all 7.5 billion people on the planet boiled 70 kettles of water an hour around the clock. That's a lot of energy consumption. It's also estimated that the typical American household has roughly 50, that's 5-0, devices or appliances that are always drawing power. Whether they're on or off, they're always drawing power. What that means is we are very dependent upon the power grid. Very dependent on it. And then the question comes, what if that power grid fails?

And these are issues that keep people up at night. What happens if the power fails? And by the way, it has failed. In Venezuela last year for a five consecutive day period, there was an entire nationwide blackout. What that means is those who were elderly and in high rises had to be carried down and out to safety. Food was spoiling if it was in the refrigerator.

People had to cook with wood fires and eat by candlelight. Traffic lights failed on the streets. Pumps that brought water into homes failed so people did not have fresh water. And you can imagine all the hospitals in the country in crisis mode. It would mean that patients whose kidneys failed did not get dialysis treatments.

People who had gunshot wounds could not get operated on. It was pandemonium for a five day period. We need power. But what if you had unlimited power?

What if you could do anything at all and there were no limitations on energy? The resource was always there. Well, that happens to be one of the qualities that God operates with. God is all powerful. We've been looking at Psalm 139 and we have looked at all these omni attributes of God. God's omniscience, that is, He knows everything. And we discussed that He doesn't have to learn anything or observe anything.

He knows it instantly, intuitively, totally. Then He also has the attribute of omnipresence. He is everywhere present in the totality of His being. And then this week we look at His power, the energy with which God operates. And the theological term is God is omnipotent, omni potent, all potent, all powerful.

God has power. In Psalm 139, the author, the biographer of God is David. David, who was a shepherd boy, who became the king of Israel, who gave us many of these great poetic psalms. David is writing about God. And it's pretty obvious, reading any part of this psalm at all, that David served a big God. David's God was not small.

Years ago there was a book put out by J.B. Phillips, I recommend it. It's an excellent book. It's called Your God is Too Small. And that happens to be the problem of many of us. Many of us have a small God. We have a view of God that makes him very limited and inept and unable. Your God is too small. David's God was not too small.

David's God was a big God. I've always loved the story of one of my favorite authors ever by the name of Donald Gray Barnhouse. He was the pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church back in Philadelphia years ago. And he went to school at Princeton, Princeton Theological Seminary. He graduated from Princeton. One of his professors, in fact his Hebrew professor, was the famed Robert Dick Wilson.

Brilliant man. And Barnhouse went back to Princeton 12 years after he graduated to give a message in Miller Chapel. Sitting in the front row was that renowned professor of Hebrew, which would be intimidating when your professor is sitting in the front row to hear you now speak.

He spoke and afterwards the professor went up to Barnhouse, shook his hand and said, if you come back again I will not come to hear you. I only come once. And I listen to my students and I see if they are big Goders or little Goders.

And I will know what their ministry will be like. That is spelled G-O-D-D-E-R, Goder. Big Goder or Little Goder.

Barnhouse had never heard that term before and so he asked Professor Wilson to explain what that means. And the professor said, well, some men have a little God. They're always in trouble with him. He can't do any miracles. He can't take care of the inspiration and transmission of Scripture.

He doesn't intervene on behalf of his people. They have a little God and I call them little Goders. Then there are those who have a great God. He speaks and it is done.

He commands and it stands fast. You, Donald, have a great God and he will bless your ministry. And the old man smiled, said, God bless you, and walked out. David was a big Goder. And I'm praying and hoping that during this series, 2020, Seeing Truth Clearly, as we uncover through the lens of Scripture, God, the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, who we are, et cetera, week by week we will grow in our perception of God and we too will become big Goders. Well, I want to share with you, beginning in verse 13 of Psalm 139, three observations about the God who is all powerful. First of all, God's work is marvelous.

That's the statement David makes. God's work is marvelous. Let's read some of these verses.

Verse 13, we begin the thread of thought. For you formed my inward parts, you covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works. The word marvelous means unique, singular, even miraculous are your works. And that my soul knows very well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me when as yet there were none of them. Go back to verse 14 and look at the second part of verse 14 where it says marvelous are your works. Now that little statement there in verse 14 is the hinge or pinnacle of the verse. In a literary fashion, it is the middle thought of verses 13 through 15. It is the summary statement of God's power, of God's ability. Marvelous are your works. So David now, not considering God's knowledge, not considering God's presence, he is considering God's power, God's works, and he calls them marvelous.

Now watch this. In considering the power of God and the marvelous works of God, David goes inward, not outward. That is, he looks inward at the human body, the intricacies of the human body, rather than outward at the majesty of the constellations of heaven.

Now you would think if somebody is going to talk about the great power of God, you're going to go out at night and look at the moon, the stars, or during the day, the brightness of the sun and consider the galaxy that we live in. David goes inward to the human body. That's not to say that David in other places doesn't go outward.

He certainly does. In fact, in Psalm 8, David said, When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him or the son of man that you would visit him? So he's considering the heavens, looking outward. He does it again in Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God.

The firmament shows his handiwork. Day into day utters speech. Night into night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. He's saying the heavens shout the glory and majesty and power of God. So he does that, but not here. Here, he looks inward. Here, to highlight God's power, his marvelous work, David is considering the human body. Why is that? I don't know, but I can only give you my opinion.

Here's my guess. It's because David here realizes human beings are God's crowning creation, his best work. It is the pinnacle of his work. Of all the things God made, we alone are created in the image of God. Genesis chapter 1, God made man in his image, so in the image of God created he them. No other creature can make that boast. So we are God's crowning creation. Your dog is not God's crowning creation. You might have a good dog. No offense to your dog. You probably have a wonderful pet.

I have two cool dogs. That's not God's best work. Beautiful waterfall in Costa Rica, not God's crowning creation. Whale at the bottom of the Pacific, awesome, but not God's best work.

The belt of Orion, not God's crowning creation. We are made in his image. So David is considering, in God's power, us, people.

That's pretty evident in these verses and in the ones I cited otherwise. David is describing a powerful God. God is not weak. God doesn't get tired. God doesn't stop and go, man, I need a nap. I need to rest. It's been a hard day working.

You say, well, wait a minute. It says he created the heavens and the earth in six days, and on the seventh day he rested. Well, he rested not because he was tired. He rested because he was done. He was just done making what he wanted to make. There was nothing else for him to create.

So he rested, but he didn't rest because he was tired. The truth is God operates at full strength. He always operates at full strength. God is referred to in the Scripture as Almighty God.

Almighty 57 times. He is almighty, all powerful. Psalm 24, the Lord strong and mighty. Job 42, I love that chapter because Job gets schooled by God in the previous chapters. And so in chapter 42, Job finally says, I know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be restrained. Jeremiah the prophet said, there is nothing too hard for you, O God. In Ephesians chapter 3, Paul says he is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we ask or think. The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, announcing that she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit.

She goes, I can't figure that out. And Gabriel said, with God, nothing shall be impossible. And then Jesus turned that around and he said, with God, all things are possible. All of that speaks of the power of God.

I was reading early this morning in my morning devotions, something out of Psalm 62 where David says, God has spoken once, twice I have heard this, that power belongs to God. I like that, power belongs to God. Now that's enough scripture to make any of us a big gotter.

We should be big gotters. God's work is marvelous. God can take a 99-year-old Abraham and turn him into a dad. God can take a 90-year-old Sarah who has been infertile her whole life and now quite past the age of childbearing and turn her into a mom. God can take a group of slaves, two, three million of them, take them to the desert, dry land on the Red Sea bed, and then use the water of the Red Sea to drown an army afterwards. So God is all powerful.

This brings up a question I get asked. Are there things God can't do? Now the knee-jerk to that is, no, God can do anything. And that's really not the right answer. Because are there things God can't do?

Yep. There are certain things God cannot do. It's really not accurate to say that God can do anything. Here's the accurate statement. God can do anything He pleases that is in harmony with His nature.

See the difference? God can do anything He pleases that is in harmony with His nature. So, for example, here's something God can't do. He can't lie.

That is against His nature. God is the truth. Hebrews 6, verse 18, it is impossible for God to lie. Another thing God cannot do is He can never approve of sin.

He can't wink at it, can't let it go, always has to be dealt with. Habakkuk, chapter 1, verse 13, the prophet said, you are of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wickedness. There's something else God can't do. According to James, chapter 1, God cannot be tempted with evil. Nor does He tempt anyone. So there's a few things here that God can't do. So when somebody comes up and there's always somebody that asks this lame question.

I've heard it too many times. Can God make a rock so big that even He can't lift? And the answer to that is God is not in the business of answering ridiculous questions. God's work is marvelous. But David goes beyond that statement in verse 14 to a second observation about the God who is all powerful. God's workmanship is meticulous. You'll notice that David highlights here human origin.

That's what he's speaking about. He's turning inward, looking at the miracles of the human body as it is being formed in the womb of a mother. And if you drill down through these verses, he touches on this meticulous workmanship of God in three ways. First of all, he mentions creation, or he alludes to it. Verse 13, look at this. You, speaking to God, you formed me in my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb.

I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully what? Made, not evolved. You made me. I am a product of special creation, David would say. What he's doing here is harkening back to Genesis 1-1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And in the same chapter, God created man in his own image.

Now, I know the world in which I live. I know that the idea of creation is completely and utterly ridiculous and naive to people outside the walls of a church. Take the idea of creation to Starbucks, or to the grocery store, or to your place of occupation.

Mention that you believe in a God who made you by special creation and you will be scoffed at by somebody. Because it is just sort of assumed now that the debate between evolution and creation has long been settled. Everybody who has a brain or thinks clearly past 2 plus 2 equals 4 understands by now that we all evolved. The problem with that is a thing called research. Research seems every year to defy that theory of evolution.

I could give you many quotes, but I'll just give you one. From molecular biologist Michael Denton, very renowned in his field of my molecular biology. He said, and I quote, the evolutionary theory is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support. See, Darwin knew when he came up with this theory many years ago in the 1800s, Darwin knew that when he came up with this, and he believed it was true, but he knew there was one glaring lack of evidence, and that was the field of paleontology, the fossil record. He believed that time would eventually vindicate him, but he knew that there was not enough factual support in the fossil record to support his hypothesis, his theory of evolution, but he believed that given enough time, the fossil record would vindicate him.

Only problem is, it has not. This is according to David Raup, who is the curator of the Field Museum of National History in Chicago, and I quote, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, that's when he made this statement, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn't changed much. We have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time, end quote.

So rather than having a multiplicity of transmutation or transitional forms that should abound if the theory was accurate, he says actually we have far fewer. That's Skip Heitzig, with a message from his series 2020. Now, here's Skip and Nate, as they share why God's unlimited power matters to struggling families. Skip, as you mentioned today, our God is all powerful, and he's unlimited in his resources. What do you believe this means for our families, especially in homes that are experiencing relational struggles in this season? There's a song that we've been singing lately, and I really love the lyrics.

It goes something like, Even when I can't see it, you're working. And I love that. The truth of God revealed in the Scriptures that God is at work. Somebody once said, God's ways are behind the scenes, but he moves all the scenes that he is behind. That's the providence of God. That's God working, even though when I can't see it or I can't feel it. He's a way maker.

He's a way maker. Yeah, that's another song, isn't it? That's the same song. Oh, that's the same song.

Okay, so I love that song, and I love that concept. You know, Jesus gave us permission to knock on heaven's door. He said, Ask, it will be given. Seek, and you will find.

Knock, and the door will be opened to you. So think of that. Here's Jesus telling us that's something we need to do. Prayer is the most powerful weapon in our spiritual arsenal, yet it's the most, I believe, undervalued weapon in our spiritual arsenal as well. So if he says call on me, if he says ask, seek, knock, I think we best be doing it because he knows that there's power there and things are gonna happen.

It's kind of like the Indiana Jones scene. You know, don't bring a knife to a gunfight when Indiana just pulls out that gun in response to the crazy sword guy. It changes the dynamic of the spiritual battle when you bring prayer in.

You're bringing a gun. Don't fight a spiritual battle without it. Thank you, Skip and Nate. We love hearing amazing stories about how lives around the world are being impacted through this ministry, and you are a vital part of making that happen. Your support helps expand the reach of this ministry so more listeners can connect with God's word and hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. We invite you to continue in that partnership today. Just visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give now. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate, or you can call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you for connecting more people to Jesus. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Hysek shares a special Christmas message that will encourage you in this busy season. Make a connection Make a connection At the foot of the crossing Cast all burdens on His word Make a connection A connection Connect with Skip Hysek is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.