My God Is Bigger than Your God! - Part A

God never runs out of his unlimited power. He is all-powerful. He is omnipotent.

And that's a Bible word, by the way. One of the great anthems sung in eternity, Revelation 19, is, for the Lord God omnipotent reigns. He's omnipotent and he can control everything. Have you ever heard a kid say, oh yeah, my dad is bigger than your dad?

They try to one-up each other to prove just how great their dad is. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares just how limitless and powerful your Heavenly Father is. Then, at the end of today's program, Skip and his wife, Lenya, share how a fuller knowledge of God helps you create a more intimate relationship with Him. You know, it's hard to relate to these aspects of God, the omni attributes of God that He is, everywhere present, all-knowing, all-powerful, because none of us can relate to that. So, fortunately, though He is all of that, at the same time, He reveals Himself as Father, as Savior, as loving, as compassionate, as forgiving.

Thank you, Skip and Lenya. If you want to hear more, please stay tuned after the teaching. Now we want to tell you about a great resource that explores God's character and nature and shows you what it truly means to be His friend. Can you imagine reading a biography about your life, only to find details about your life that were wrong?

Well, it would be frustrating, wouldn't it? And God's nature, character, and motives have often been poorly portrayed and even intentionally misstated. And that's one of the reasons I decided to write the book, The Biography of God, to open your eyes and heart to a larger picture of God. I hope you will go on this journey with me as we ask and answer the universal question, can we know God? Here's how to get your copy of my newest book, The Biography of God. The Biography of God is our way to say thank you when you give $35 or more today to help expand this Bible teaching outreach to more people.

Request your copy when you give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Okay, we're in Psalm chapter 139 as Skip Heitzig starts today's study. The title of this message today, you can pretty obviously see, was taken from the kind of stuff we would say to each other as kids. I don't know, girls do this much as boys, but we'd always say things like, well, my dad's bigger than your dad. My dad could beat up your dad. My dad was six foot one, so typically he was bigger than a lot of guys' dads.

And we love going back and forth. Essentially, though it's not as explicit in this Psalm, David in the Psalms would declare that in comparison to any other gods that are worshiped, Yahweh, his God, was bigger. For example, in Psalm 115, he says, why do those nations say, where is their God? And then he says, for our God is in heaven and he does whatever he pleases, but their gods are idols made out of silver and gold.

They have eyes but they can't see, feet but they can't walk, hands but they can't handle. So in essence, he's saying, my God is bigger than your God. My God can actually do stuff. My God is actually awesome and powerful and filled with wonder. Just how powerful is God? How big is he? Well, he's powerful enough to create everything in your universe and big enough and powerful enough to care for everything in your life.

And he'll never run out of power. I don't know how many truck fans we have here, Star Trek that is, at this service. We got any? Okay, so who was the chief engineer in Star Trek? Scotty. And Scotty would inevitably say things like, I don't know how much longer we can hold it together, captain.

We haven't got the power. And he was always worried about what kind of power would be available for him to finish the task. God never runs out of his unlimited power. He is all powerful. He is omnipotent.

And that's a Bible word, by the way. One of the great anthems sung in eternity, Revelation 19, is for the Lord God omnipotent reigns. He's omnipotent and he can control everything. Now to get our minds around the concept of God's greatness is not so easy for an adult or for a child. Although I sometimes, as you know, think children do a better job of articulating how great God is or wrestling with the issue. I love talking to kids about God. I love reading books about what children say about God. I have two of them. One is called Letters from Children to God.

Here's a few entries. One writes, Dear God, are you really invisible or is that just a trick? Norma writes, Dear God, did you mean for giraffes to look like that or was that an accident? Little Nan said, Dear God, who draws all of those lines around all of the countries?

Tom, Dear God, when you made the first man, did he work as good as we do now? Susan said, Dear God, I know all about where babies come from, I think. From inside mommies and daddies put them there. Where are they before that? Do you have them up in heaven? How did they get down here?

Do you have to take care of them all first? Please answer all my questions. Jeff wrote, Dear God, it's great the way you always get those stars in just the right places. Donna said, Dear God, we read that Thomas Edison made light. But in Sunday school, they said you did it. So I bet he stole your idea. Jonathan said, Dear God, if you would have let the dinosaurs not be extinct, we would not have a country.

You did the right thing. I'm glad he thinks so. And I love the way one small boy told his buddies about how powerful God is. He said, He's greater than Superman and Batman and the Power Rangers all put together. That's actually a good, from a child's perspective, description of just how big and powerful God is. Psalm 139, we have been there for a few weeks because there's four great and unique qualities of God. We would call them incommunicable attributes unique to God alone.

Nobody else can have them. He is all-knowing, He is everywhere present, and He is all-powerful. Or He's omniscient, He's omnipresent, and He is omnipotent. Now, the biographer in this psalm, God's biographer here, is David. And it's pretty obvious that David only scratches the surface in any of these attributes. How in six verses can you fully write about one of the great concepts of the eternal God? We just scratched the surface, but it's enough to get us started. And it's basic.

This is basic. In fact, I would say that if you want to flourish in your faith, there's some things you need to know. Number one is the cross.

Nobody ever gets saved or gets to heaven without the cross of Jesus Christ, His shed blood on our behalf. Number two is the authority of Scripture. To believe that God's book is authoritative, inerrant, and passed down to us. And number three is the greatness of God. It's absolutely essential that you get a handle on God's greatness.

Because if you have a teeny weeny little God, He can't help you or do anything for you. So it's good to be refreshed on the awesomeness, the magnitude, as a child would say, the bigness of God. So, looking at verses 13 through 18 today, this third paragraph, or third section of the psalm, this is what we consider.

And David would want us to know three things about this characteristic of God. Number one, God's work is marvelous. God's work is marvelous. He says so in verse 14, and I'm going to go right to verse 14 instead of beginning at the beginning.

Because I want to lift out a concept. Look at the second part, or the second strophe of verse 14, where it says, Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. You just can't beat the King James here. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well.

Powerful way to say it. Marvelous are your works. Now, that little phrase is the pinnacle phrase or the hinge phrase in this section. There are equal amount of lines poetically before that phrase as well as after that phrase in verses 13 through 15.

So this becomes sort of the summary that David is getting our attention on. Marvelous are your works. See, up to this point, David would say, Marvelous is your knowledge, verses 1 through 6. And David would say, Marvelous is your presence, verses 7 through 12. But now his emphasis is on what God can do, his ability.

Marvelous are your works. And David would want you to know that God is not weak. That God operates at full power. Now, Job, in Job 42, who was way before David was, said this, I know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be restrained. Job said he knew that about God. He knew that. And David here says he knew that.

Marvelous are your works and that my soul knows very well. Here's my question. Do you know that? Do you really know that God, your God, can do everything? Because if you know that, let me take it a step further.

Why not learn to say that more often? That is, as you and I go through our day and we notice the work of God, it could be a sunrise, a sunset, some cool thing you discover that God has done in your day, why not pause to actually articulate that? Marvelous are your works. I was driving last Sunday after church west through New Mexico and into Arizona.

It was snowing all the way, nothing like New Mexico when there's snow on the ground. And then at the end of the day, the clouds broke, the sun came through, and the sunset was unbelievable. And this verse came to my mind. Marvelous are your works. Now why is it so important that we not only know it, but as Job and David, we say it?

Here's why. I think if we learn on a daily basis to praise the Lord and thank the Lord and actually say marvelous are your works, it'll keep us from having a hard heart. It keeps our hearts soft when we're thankful and we articulate that we're thankful and noticeable of God's work.

All right. It almost goes without saying, but every great biblical author understood this attribute of God, that he is all powerful. But perhaps none framed it as well as Paul. In Ephesians chapter 1 verse 11, he writes, God is this powerful. He works all things according to the counsel of his will. Once again, he works all things according to the counsel of his will. Just how big and powerful is God? Well, God's powerful enough to take a 99-year-old man and his 90-year-old wife and they can't have kids, make them have kids.

And who am I talking about? Abraham and Sarah. And when God said he was going to do it, what did Sarah do? She laughed. She didn't think anybody heard it. She was behind a curtain and God said so and she went... God said to Abraham, why did your wife laugh? And she said, I didn't laugh. God said, yeah, you did.

I heard it. And then God said to her, is anything too hard for the Lord? Now there's a good question for you to answer when you face something insurmountable, impossible. Is anything too hard for the Lord? So God did that. That's how powerful he is. And God could open up a body of water to let two to three million people go on dry land across it and use the same body of restrained water to then bury their enemies. God is so powerful that he can take a ragtag group of slaves in Egypt and give them their own land and make them a world power at the time.

God is omnipotent, all powerful, super strong, operates at full power. Now every now and then, you'll get somebody arguing these points. And it's really a nitwit argument. That's a word my mom taught me, nitwit. I remember it quite well.

I was called that on a number of occasions because of the things I did and things I said. But here are the nitwit questions like, well, can God make round squares or triangular circles? Or here's one, can God make a rock so big that even he can't lift? You see, these are self-canceling questions. These are nitwit questions.

And here's the answer to those questions. God can do anything he pleases that is in harmony with his nature. And that is the confluence of all the biblical teaching on this subject. God can do anything and everything he pleases that is in harmony with his nature. Now having said that, there are some things the Bible says God cannot do. Number one, God can't lie. Hebrews chapter 6 verse 18, it is impossible for God to lie because it is in opposition and in disharmony with his nature. The second thing the Bible says God can't do is God cannot approve of evil or let it go in his presence unchecked.

Habakkuk chapter 1 verse 13, the prophet says, you are of purer eyes than to behold evil, you cannot look at wickedness. So God can't lie, God can't approve of evil or have it in his presence undealt with unchecked. The third thing God cannot do, you'll like this, God can't be unfaithful. Can't be.

Impossible. Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 13, even if we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. It is contrary to his nature, God is ever faithful. So here's David writing God's biography in part.

He was a king, he was once a shepherd, he had been a warrior, he's a poet. He's seen a lot of God's work, a lot of God's power. And he would sum it up and say it's marvelous. God's work is marvelous. Or as one translation puts this phrase, I worship in adoration, what a creation.

It's a good way to put it. God's work is marvelous. The second thing David would have us know is that God's workmanship is meticulous. Now, look at verse 13. Notice the emphasis, for you, God, formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully created, is the idea. Made. You created me.

You're my creator. Now I know, I'm very aware of the culture in which I live. I am very aware of the ideologies that surround us. And I know that whenever you talk to any person who's not a believer in God about creation or design, you lose them.

There's this assumption that, look, it's a done deal. Everybody who's intelligent knows that we were evolved, not designed, not created. And when you say, I've been created by God, they go into altered states of consciousness.

They just go berserk, even though they don't have the stack of evidence on their side. And I know we've beat this to death in a number of studies. I'll just sum it up by quoting to you molecular biologist Michael Denton's words. Quote, The evolutionary theory is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis that is entirely without direct factual support.

Close quote. And we've already covered that in previous studies, how design is apparent, et cetera. What David points to here is one particular aspect of God's creation, and that is us. Human beings, because human beings are the crown of God's creative genius. So it's just interesting to me.

Now follow me here. Of all of the examples David could have pointed to about how big and great and powerful God is in creation, he didn't go to the stars like he does in Psalm 8. When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained.

Or Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God. Rather than pointing upward to the sky with its bright lights, he points inward to the dark womb where a developing child is inside the mother and is born. That's the section here. He points to the gestation period, the nine month development of a child.

Let's look at that. Verse 13, let's follow it through. 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 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 were all written.

The days fashioned for me when as yet there was none of them. Speaking of the marvels of the human body. Your body, marvelous, fearfully, wonderfully made.

That's interesting to me. A lot of people, dare I say in our culture, most people aren't really happy with their body. We'd be quick to say, marvelous are your works, but we'd be reticent to say marvelous is this work.

Because we're always trying to fix it and change it and alter it and fight the aging process, all that comes with it. But David would say and want you to know, you are marvelous. So let me just say it to you collectively, you're marvelous.

You are. You're the crowning part of God's creation. Marvelous are your works and the crowning work is you. You're in the image and the likeness of God. Look at verse 15. Notice the language that David employs. My frame, he says, was not hidden from you.

What is he speaking of? The bones, the skeletal system of a developing child. My frame was not hidden from you when I was skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Did you know that the term skillfully wrought literally is embroidered or knit together? And I think what David is describing very poetically is the network of veins and arteries that develops very rapidly in the placenta that surrounds that child and gives it that blood flow that is so crucial to life.

Skillfully wrought, embroidered or knit. And then notice the lowest parts of the earth. That describes the darkness of the womb.

Verse 16, your eyes saw my substance. Notice being yet unformed. That means rolled up, being yet rolled up or wrapped together. And the embryonic and especially the fetal stage, the body parts are folded up, scrunched together.

They lack distinct proportions. That's what he's describing. Okay, so here we get the picture. We all had humble beginnings. We all started out as a speck. You were once a speck, a zygote, a fertilized ovum. And one day you became an embryo and later on you became a fetus. You probably don't remember that.

It was so long ago. And then you were born and you grew and developed. And here you are today, a human being, an adult with about a hundred trillion cells with about 100,000 miles of nerve fiber, 60,000 miles of veins and arteries, 206 bones, muscles, tendons that make you you. And David's point is God has been superintending your development since those early stages onward and He's not going to stop now. And the big thought of the Psalm, since it begins with, you've searched me, you've known me, O God, is God has known me so well because He knew me and watched over my development since I was in those primary stages.

And if that is true, God's not going to stop now. That's Skip Heifel with a message from the series The Biography of God. Now let's head into the studio with Skip and Lenya as they share how a fuller knowledge of God helps you create a more intimate relationship with Him. We have a God who is all powerful, all knowing and everywhere present. It's mind blowing that God cares about every single one of us. Skip, in light of God's power and His wisdom, how have you been able to relate to Him and cultivate your own relationship with Him? Well, yeah, you know, David said in Psalm 8, 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 even mindful of him? You know, he was puzzled.

That was foreign to him. So, you know, it's hard to relate to these aspects of God, the omni attributes of God that He is, everywhere present, all knowing, all powerful, because none of us can relate to that. So fortunately, though He is all of that, at the same time He reveals Himself as Father, as Savior, as loving, as compassionate, as forgiving. So yes, there are non-communicable attributes of God, like the ones you just mentioned, but then there are communicable ones, like love, like compassion.

We can actually reflect a character of God, a characteristic of God, and be changed by Him so that we are reflecting more and more what He's like. Thanks, Skip and Lenya. Well, we hope this conversation encouraged you. And right now we want to tell you how you can help keep these teachings you love on the air for you and encourage others by giving a gift today at connectwithskip.com slash donate and help reach more people with God's word. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate, or call 800-922-1888.

Again, that's 800-922-1888. Thank you. Tune in again tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares why you can put your complete trust in God. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.