How Great Is Our God (Part 4) Series

HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD (PART 4)

Scott R. Bayles, pastor

Blooming Grove Christian Church: 5/6/2012

A fifth grade teacher in a Christian school once asked her class to look at TV commercials and see if they could use them in some way to communicate ideas about God. Here are some of the results:

GOD is like a FORD ... He’s built tough.

GOD is like COKE ... He’s the real thing, baby.

GOD is like ALLSTATE ... You’re in good hands with Him.

GOD is like TIDE ... He gets the stains out that others leave behind.

GOD is like HALLMARK CARDS ... He cares enough to send His very best.

The truth is, though—no matter how many metaphors we might find, there is nothing in history, or humanity, or the ages, or nature that offers us anything to compare to him or understand him. God is simply uncontainable. Untamable. Unchangeable. Incomparable. Indescribable. You are amazing God.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Chris Tomlin struggled for a long time to find the words to his song, How Great is our God. And again, who could blame him? How do you describe the greatness and awesomeness of a God that’s beautiful beyond description? Too marvelous for words? Too wonderful for comprehension? Like nothing ever seen or heard. Chris certainly wasn’t the first singer/song-writer to face that struggle though.

The book of Psalms is the largest book of the Bible because it’s actually a collection of ancient hymns—songs, inspired by the Holy Spirit and penned by artists and kings, like David or Solomon. Most of these psalms sing of the greatness of God. This morning, I’d like to focus on one in particular—Psalm 147, which opens with these words of celebration: “Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God” (Psalm 147:1 NIV). It then goes on to highlight three aspects of God’s greatness.

First, this Psalm points us to the power of God.

• THE POWER OF GOD

Have you ever stood outside on a clear evening and gazed up at the awe inspiring beauty and majesty of the stars up above? Those gleaming lights twinkling against a black velvet sky are overwhelming not just in splendor, but in number. Have you ever tried counting the stars? Three hundred years ago astronomers believed there were just over a thousand stars in the universe, today we know that there are over 300,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy alone, which is just one of billions more galaxies stretched across the cosmos.

Yet, the Bible says, “He counts the stars and calls them all by name. How great is our Lord! His power is absolute! His understanding is beyond comprehension!” (Psalm 147:5 NLT). He counts the stars and knows them by name. I don’t want to overwhelm you with billions of stars, so let me just tell you about three. Can we handle three stars?

The first one is easy because it’s our star and it’s called the sun. Here’s an image of it [Next Slide] It’s a little fiercer than we often imagine it, but what I want you to notice is how big it is! It’s about a million times bigger than the earth. Let me share a little illustration I learned from Louie Giglio during the How Great is our God tour.

If the earth were the size of a golf ball, then the Sun would be 15 feet in diameter. It could hold 960,000 of our earths inside of it. That’s enough golf balls to fill a school bus! So what I want you to do tomorrow is go to Wal-Mart and get yourself a golf ball, then drive out to the school and hold your golf ball up next to one of the school buses! That’s how big our Sun is—it’s a huge, massive star and it’s just one of hundreds of billions of stars in our little neighborhood, called the Milky Way galaxy.

But let me tell you about another star. Its name is Betelgeuse [Next Slide] and it may not look as fierce, but this photo was taken from 427 light years away (427x5.88 trillion miles away). Betelgeuse is twice the size of the Earth’s orbit around the sun! If the earth were a golf ball, Betelgeuse would be the diameter of the Empire State Building stacked on top of itself six times! So here’s what I want to you to do Tuesday—you’re going to take your golf ball, get some plane tickets, fly to New York City, place your golf ball at the foot of the Empire State Building, back away until you can see the entire building, then imagine five more Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. That’s Betelgeuse! This is the Earth! And somewhere, you’re on it. You could fit 262 trillion Earths inside Betelgeuse. If the earth were a golf ball, that’s enough golf balls to fill up the Superdome… 3,000 times.