God's Power Series

INTRODUCTION

 When you think of God, what comes to mind? Who is God, what is God? When Barna research group asked this question in studies from 1997-1999 they got the following responses:

1. First of all 95% of those surveyed said they believe in God (1997)

2. Only 68% believe in God when described as the all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect creator of the universe who rules the world today. (1999)

3. 11% believe that God represents a state of higher consciousness (1999)

4. 7% believe that God is the total realization of personal human potential (1999)

5. 15% say God is no longer involved in their life (1997)

 I think that from these surveys and others that have been taken, it is obvious that many people, when asked about God, really do not know who or what God really is.

 That leaves us in an interesting position. We are trying to tell people about a God of whom they do not understand. We have to try to get people past all of the false notions about God before we can really reach them.

 I would submit to you that some of us really do not know or understand God.

 Why do I say this, well, if we had a proper understanding of God, our lives would be totally different from what they are, including mine. I cannot help but to go back to Isaiah in Isaiah 6 where when he understood God, he could not wait to serve him. His life was totally changed by the experience.

 How can we get to really know who or what God is? We can take opinion polls, but those will not get us very far.

 What we are going to do together for the next few weeks is we are going to look at the attributes of our awesome God as found in the bible. God has many attributes and as we examine some of them, we will start to get to know who God is.

 There are a number of places that we can start this examination, but over the next three weeks I want us to look at three foundational attributes that our awesome God possesses that make Him God. If you had these three attributes, it would be hard not to consider you a god.

 The attributes I am speaking of are: God’s omnipotence (or God is all-powerful), His omniscience (God is all-knowing) and His omnipresence (God is everywhere). God alone possesses these three attributes in the persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 Today we are going to take a look at Isaiah 40:21-31. In these verses Isaiah is telling the people about the greatness of God. In looking at the greatness of God we will see that our God is omnipotent (or all-powerful)

 Every one of us has a god in our lives, the question is, what or who is it? In Isaiah 40:18, Isaiah, after explaining some of the greatness of God, asks the question, “To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him?”

 Today as we look at our all-powerful God, I hope that we can answer Isaiah’s question with “no one!”

SERMON

READ ISAIAH 40:21-22,26,28

God Has power over:

I. THE UNIVERSE V22,26,28

1. God’s power over the universe is exhibited by His position v22

 Many times we ascribe power to someone because of his or her position. Is their office on the 75th floor of the office building? We recognize the power that comes with titles.

 This passage tells us that God sits above the circle of the earth.

 PSALM 11:4 The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven;

 PSALM 103:19 The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, And His sovereignty rules over all.

 Verse 22 tells us that God sits above it all and that He is so great that He towers over all of creation. This kind of reminds one of the biggest kid on the block. Everyone feared that kid because they knew that the kid could take them out if he wanted to. God is that big kid.

2. The universe is at God’s disposal v22

 We also recognize someone’s power because of the control that they can exercise over something. The CEO of a company has great power to direct the organization the direction they want it to go.

 We also recognize someone’s power by the size of the home that they live in. People put up extremely large houses so that they can impress people with their importance. (500,000 house in Springfield)

 As we look further at verse 22, the passage tells us that He stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. The heavens were made so that God would have a place to dwell. That is a big house!