My God Cannot...

MY GOD CANNOT

2 Timothy 2:13 "If we believe not, yet he abides faithful: He cannot deny himself."

INTRODUCTION: There’s a children’s Bible song that says, "My God is so big… There’s nothing my God cannot do." The Bible does, however, tell us that there are some things that my God cannot do. This morning as we consider these things, I believe you will see how great and marvelous our God really is.

I. God cannot be contained, put in a test tube and analyzed.

A. Job 37:23 "Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict."

B. I have observed the power of the watermelon seed. It has the power of drawing from the ground and through itself 200,000 times its weight. When you can tell me how it takes this material and out of it colors an outside surface beyond the imitation of art, and then forms inside of it a white rind and within that again a red heart, thickly inlaid with black seeds, each one of which in turn is capable of drawing through itself 200,000 times its weight—when you can explain to me the mystery of a watermelon, you can ask me to explain the mystery of God. - William Jennings Bryan

C. 2 Chronicles 2:6 "But who is able to build him an house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him? Who am I then, that I should build him an house, save only to burn sacrifice before him?"

D. Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "It takes no brains to be an atheist. Any stupid person can deny the existence of a supernatural power because man’s physical senses cannot detect it. But there cannot be ignored the mystery of first life … or the marvelous order in which the universe moves about us. All of these evidence the handiwork of a beneficent Deity. For my part, that Deity is the God of the Bible and Christ, His Son."

E. John Wesley captured that truth of the incomprehensibility of God. "Give me a worm that can understand a man," he wrote, "and I will give you a man who can understand God." And in Psalm 145:3, David said of God, "His greatness is unsearchable."

II. God cannot sin.

A. James 1:13 "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts he any man:"

B. God is compelled to conceal himself in a measure from the natural world, for the divine illumination would blind the eyes of mortal man were it to shine upon him in full strength. L. S. Thornton

C. Habakkuk 1:13a "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity…"

D. There is a danger of forgetting that the Bible reveals, not first the love of God, but the intense, blazing holiness of God, with his love as the center of that holiness. Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)

E. Psalms 5:4 "For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee."

III. God cannot change.

A. Malachi 3:6 "For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."

B. The law of mutation belongs to a fallen world, but God is immutable, and in him men of faith find eternal permanence. A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

C. What peace it brings to the Christian’s heart to realize that our heavenly Father never differs from himself. In coming to him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find him in a receptive mood. He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith. He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when he will see no one. Neither does he change his mind about anything. Today, this moment, he feels toward his creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, the sinful, exactly as he did when he sent his only begotten Son into the world to die for mankind. A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

D. James 1:17 "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

E. God is not affected by our mutability; our changes do not alter him. When we are restless, he remains serene and calm; when we are low, selfish, mean, or dispirited, he is still the unalterable I Am. The same yesterday, today, and forever, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. What God is in himself, not what we may chance to feel him in this or that moment to be, that is our hope. Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853)