Sunday March 16th, 2008 River of Life Ministries Pastor Michael West
Series: His majesty, His Names part two
Sermon: How big is God? Scripture: Isaiah 40:22-26
Turn to:
Psalm 8; Habakkuk 3:18-19 —Adonai—plural and comes from the singular form Adon which means Lord. Adonai is the substitution for YHWH which is considered to be too sacred to be spoken by man.
Adonai, the Lord My Great God. God the Master.
God our Majestic Lord and our total authority.
Majestic’s definition: impressive; greatly impressive in appearance - dignified: showing great dignity and grandeur.
Majesty, majestic splendor, greatness. The majesty of God, the divine nature of God. Showing means, the majesty and glory of God filled and surrounded Christ when He walked upon earth.
Early Christians knew that Jesus was the Savior of men because they saw the majesty and glory of God in His life and in His deeds. Jesus went to great pains to reveal the majesty and glory of the Father and He proved time and again that He was God’s Son.
Can we measure God? Do we understand what we are saying when we use His name, Lord? Can we really know our majestic God? More important, how much do you want? What do you really want in this life? In the end, what will matter most? Look at the warning given to us in Matthew 16:25-26
Paul sums it up for us in Philippians 3:8(MSG):
"Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ..."
Father, forgive us for losing sight. We have seen and looked upon things in this world contrary to Your wisdom and ways. Help us to re-focus, show us Who You are. Reveal to us oh Great and Mighty Shepherd the sweet wonders of Jesus, Your love, Your Majesty. Amen.
A French philosopher and mystic mathematician named Paschal said; “We are halfway between immensity and infinitesimally. In other words, there are worlds beyond our world, and beyond those.
If you look inward, you will see smaller worlds and in them little worlds, molecules all the way down to infinitesimal smallness. A very famous doctor named Dr. Suess, wrote a story similar to Paschal’s findings, it is titled “Horton Hears a Who” about a very small infinitesimal world, held in the trunk of an elephant who believed that a "person was a person no matter how small."
God has the attributes of immensity and immanence.
Immensity can be thought of this way: We think our sun is big, and has all the planets going around it, the truth is, it’s not that big in comparison to some other stars also called suns. These suns are so big, they could swallow up our sun. Some suns could hold millions of our suns inside them—and who in this world can comprehend that?
Lets not forget space. The distance between us and the moon is 250,000 miles, but from here to the sun, it’s a whopping 93 million miles. To make it easier, they start talking light years and that’s where I get lost real fast.
For instance let’s take 10 million light years. How far is that in laymen terms? Multiply 5 trillion, 860 billion, 484 million by 10 million and that equals...well, a major headache! The answer? The answer is, we are really small. Not the smallest, but that is why Paschal said he believed we were halfway between the biggest and the smallest. Therefore we have
the immensity of God.
Next is Immanence and in the nutshell, bottom line is, you don’t have to go the distance to find God. The fact is, He is here. He is above all things, beneath all things. God is above, not pushed up, beneath, not pressed down. He is outside and inside.
God cannot be fenced in.
Above means God presides over. Beneath means God sustains things. Outside, He embraces, inside He fills all things. We don’t just get a portion of God by way of the Holy Spirit or a little bit more here and there, we have all we need and it is all Him.
God never measured Himself out in portions.
God doesn’t travel to get anywhere. When we ask God to come and help, God doesn’t actually “come” to help us because there isn’t anywhere where God is not. That means He is immanent.
Jeremiah 23:23-24(MSG): "Am I not a God near at hand"—God’s Decree— "and not a God far off? Can anyone hide out in a corner where I can’t see him?"..."Am I not present everywhere, whether seen or unseen?..."
Psalm 139:8-10 reminds us that it’s impossible find a place that God is not.
God’s immensity and immanence make Him majestic—follow with me in Isaiah 40:12
If you saw the movie MIB (Men In Black), you know they discovered that the world they were looking for, was hanging around the cat’s neck—Orion’s belt. At the end of the movie we saw more little worlds—now, picture this, a box big enough to hold them all...no can do. Impossible, because they were endless.
Remember, God is outside of all things and He made us, our world, the universe—that is the immensity of our Lord, Adonai. His presence in us displays His immanence. So to the question: How big is God?
Isaiah 40:15-17 (MSG):
Here’s the best part.
The basic Church member can be panicked, but a Christian who believes in and believes God is not easily moved by circumstance. If the islands are a speck of a problem, then what does that make the size of your circumstance or your problem compared to God’s ability? — Isaiah 40:22-26
What an awesome picture of God, the Lord—Adonai. God who soars through the heavens, knows the names of every star, sees into the depth of every man’s heart, cares for the sparrows, knows the number of hairs on our heads, watches after us as a shepherd who watches his lambs—and not one, not one! is ever lost or out of His sight. You are never out of the sight of God!
We look to the stars with our little telescopes and still we seem to miss the fact that God is still running the universe we live in. Atoms repel each other and we are made of atoms yet, we do not fly apart. How can we not marvel at what holds us together.
God loves us. God loves you and keeps you, and what God made, God loves because, it is inconceivable that God would create anything that He didn’t love. Junk is un-loveable, which means “God don’t make junk.” You are so very precious in His sight. What God loves, He holds on to. As the song goes; “He’s got the whole world...He’s got you and me...in His hands.”
Before my wife passed away with bone cancer, I did everything I could for her. I have done everything for my three sons because I love them. Even when there were times of great struggle, I pressed on to provide, guide, keep them safe and raise them in the admonition of the Lord. I am not willing to lose them so easily.
I am an earthly father. Our Father in heaven is more and is not in a position to lose anything because He is not able to lose it. If a man is your friend, you wouldn’t lose them if you could help it. And if he died, you’d bring him back if you could. Well, God is able to do just that. Abraham was God’s friend and we know that he will rise again because we know God isn’t going to let him lie around and rot forever. He is going to bring him out of the grave. Jesus proves that.
Think on this, John 3:16. God the maker of the universe. God, creator of you and me. God who loved us first, sent His Son, so we could live. God believes you to be “a keeper.”
Back to Paul and the question; “What do you want?” If Christians are meant to be the happiest people on earth, why aren’t we?
Answer: We look for happiness in the little things, earthly things to fill us up. We aren’t looking for His majesty.
Compared to a job, fine car and clothes, a marvelous home, or what have you, God is the most precious, most vast and everlasting, but we seek Him least. Why? Because we forget that “this world is not” our home. We are putting our confidence in things, not God.
Why? Because we have lost sight of His Majesty.
All that is beneath God will not satisfy us. You and I are made in His image and are stuck with it. Is it okay to have nice things? Yes. However, to put trust in what will decay, to hope for things, only ends up occupying space in your heart where God should be. The blessings we receive are real and tangible and they come from God. However, our happiness should be because of Him, not because of the blessing.
If you take away every blessing, you should still be wanting more of God. My challenge is, can you throw out that picture of Jesus on the wall? That cross? That precious gift from your aunt Edna? Or are you bound to it. If you can’t, something is wrong. Of course this isn’t meant to say throw out your stuff, it’s about revealing the truth to what occupies your heart.
My greatest challenge in life was to let God take my wife willingly and remain happy in Him. This doesn’t mean I don’t miss or that I have joy in the fact I will see her again. I know that what I truly need is more of the Lord and His Majestic presence to be truly happy. My wife is not here, but Adonai, My Lord is.
Church, God must be first. We claim to be the richest nation blessed by God. How is then we have the highest divorce rate, suicides, juvenile delinquency and so much wontedness? Money doesn’t change anything, people who serve God do.
Funny thing God’s principles, give your all to Him, take on His righteousness, seek His kingdom and then all that you have desired comes back to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.
The Christian world has almost lost it’s ability to kneel barefoot on holy ground—Isaiah 60:20—
What is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul? You have nothing left in the end. Our cry should be: God, only You. Take the world but give me Jesus. Remove wontedness away from me except the wanting of Your Spirit. Imagine a church filled with those seeking His Majesty, what a real difference we would make in this world.
