Magnify The Lord

Magnify the Lord

JCC 01.10.09 am

PP Illustration slide 1: Telescopes, key-hole surgery, binoculars, reading glasses, microscope and the human eye

Object: a magnifying glass and tiny pictures

Activity: Children to use magnifying glass to find out what’s on the paper

A lens brings the object closer only in vision, not reality

Glass curved slightly to form a convex lens, while the glass in our windows are plane glass

The magnifying glass is not projecting an image onto anything; it is merely bending the Light rays from the object so that the object will appear larger

Read Psalm 34:3 O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.

Praise enlarges God

Too many with strained eyes, trying to see without praising and exalting him

PP illustration slide 2: 2-7 bird 8-12 Jesus’ face

As Christians we are to magnify the Lord

We must be the lens through which the world views God

The problem arises when we don’t see God magnified ourselves

What does this mean?

In his book, William Hendricks, ‘Revealing Stories Why People Are Leaving the Church’, he took a survey asking folks why they no longer attended church. Surprisingly, the most common complaint was not the music, or the facility, or that church was dull. The most common reason given for leaving the church was that the church did not provide them an opportunity to meet with God. E.g., it was not ‘worshipful’ enough!

They came hoping to experience something of God, to be spiritually fed, but many left empty. Hendricks wrote: “Apparently, it doesn’t matter if the service is entertaining. When interaction with God is absent, eventually the church loses its appeal.”

You see, when people do not connect with God is some way, there is frustration, and emptiness and they begin to drift away

We the church must take some responsibility for this

Why?

Our God isn’t big enough, or strong enough

We show them a God who can’t fulfill our needs, let alone theirs

One who isn’t important to us because we fill our lives with other things

They see we don’t have any commitment to church

They watch us squabble and fall out

They can only see the Lord through the projected image we give of Him

If God is small in our eyes, we will nothing happen

Many see God too small:

· Not able to deal with their difficulties

· Not able to save their families

· Not able to do something in the community

Men & women who have great faith in God, and in whom God has given strength, how enormous He becomes!

Have you never studied of the great heroes of the Bible?

The spies saw the enemy as giants and themselves as grasshoppers; how small was God? Num 13-14

Joshua and Caleb saw God bigger than the enemy, they were the grasshoppers, then Josh 2 they entered the land

What was the difference between Caleb, Joshua and the other spies?

Their view of God

God was bigger than anything or anyone

Num 14:24 But My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall inherit it.

This different spirit, is one who sees the greatness of God and the smallness of man

Someone whose eyes and mind magnify the Lord

1 Sam 17 When David went to the battlefield, the army were afraid; they saw Goliath as big and God as small

However, David saw a big God and a small man with a big mouth

When people are against you, how do you see God? As one who curls up and runs away? Or one who stands and sees the magnification of the Lord?

2 Kings 6 Elijah saw what his servant didn’t when the enemy surrounded them

Not only the army of the Lord, but God was magnified in the situation

When circumstances surround you, magnify the Lord

Mary said, ‘my soul magnifies the Lord… Luke 1:46

Here was God beginning to show the first glimpse of His plan of salvation

Mary doesn’t want to be seen before her Lord, but she made her God bigger than herself

As the people of God we never should out-view the Lord

Many times men and women seem bigger than the God they serve

Col 3:3 Paul said, For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When we see God bigger we will see people, difficulties and even Satan smaller

We are to see God big. ‘In the beginning God’, He is all in all;

The text is our telescope allowing us to see how God worked in the lives of men and women

We must study the scriptures to get the right image of who God is, and who we are