5 Things God Can’t Do – 5) God Can’t Fail.
Gladstone Baptist Church – 6/2/05 pm
(Adapted from “It’s Impossible for God to Fail” – By Doug Fields)
We’ve reached the end of our series on 5 things God can’t do. 1) We’ve seen that God can’t lie – What he says he will do – no ifs, no buts. 2) We’ve seen that God can’t want your worst. No matter how badly we mistreat him. No matter how much we hurt Him, he still wants our very best, just like a perfect father. 3) We’ve seen that God can’t abandon you. Yes, we might feel, like God has left us to our own devices. But facts are different to feelings. When we feel this way, we need to remember that God is there, even carrying us. We’ll never walk alone when we walk with God. 4) Last week we saw that God can’t reject us. It doesn’t matter how bad we are or how ugly we think we are, He loves us, He wants to make us all that we could be and He will never give up on us, no matter what.
So here we are at the last week. There is one more thing that I want you to know about God. 1 More thing that God can’t do. God can’t fail. It’s impossible for God to fail. This is a big one for many of us in here tonight, because many of us think that God has failed us in some way.
Usually when something bad happens we love to blame this on God. I realize that not every one of you drive, but those of you who drive, you know that you have to have insurance. When there is insurance policies on a car or homes, they always cover most things, but there are always exceptions. One of the things they never cover is what they call “Acts of God.” – earthquakes, lightning, flooding, exploding poodles, and other “Acts of God”. The insurance companies blame God for these things and we often shake our fist at Him too.
Have a look at this clip and see how ludicrous it is.
Clip from “The Man who sued God”
When bad stuff happens we love to blame God. Somebody gets drunk, they are driving erratically and hit a child and kills them. Do you know what everyone does – they blame God for it. “God! Why did let this happen?” I mean, like it’s God’s fault that someone got drunk and ran someone over. You cheat on a test. They get caught and you are expelled. You say - “God! I thought you were all loving and taking care of me and now you let me down!” When we’re idiots, we love to blame God. Like God has failed us or something.
What I want you to walk out of church tonight with is this one truth. It’s impossible for God to fail no matter how you or I feel. As I’ve thought about this during the week I believe that many of us have feelings that cut so deep. Feelings of disappointment because we think God has let us down. Here are three big ones.
1. Sometimes I feel like God has failed me because of the way that I’m DESIGNED.
We’re not happy with how we are. We wish we had smaller ears or bigger ears or a bigger nose or a smaller nose. I know some of you think I can’t relate to this because I have the perfect bodybuilders body, What – you don’t think that is the case? Well it once was – Age is now working against me!!!
The truth of the matter is that every one of us in here wish something was different. It’s very normal to wish that. And it is why there is such a huge business in plastic surgery and make overs. Every week, now we have numerous shows where people seek to be transformed … We have extreme makeover, the biggest loser, nip and tuck, the Fad Five, etc, etc
Even “beautiful” people have things about themselves that they would like to change.
2. Sometimes I feel like God has failed because of my PAIN.
Most people walking sitting around you right now, seem fairly happy, fairly content with life. That’s on the outside anyway. On the insider of many of you, is pain. Many people have a lot of pain in their lives. A lot of times we try to hide it with how we look. Girls put their make up on. They keep up the routine and hang out with other “happy people”, but they are crying on the inside.
Until you open up and share with other people nobody knows your pain. Some of you cry yourselves to sleep, you families are broken, your dad doesn’t spend any time with you, you’re totally lonely. And because of all that you say, “God! What are you doing?”
3. Sometimes I feel God has failed because the world is so MESSED UP.
The world is so messed up. People are idiots. There’s some wacky stuff happening.
I know that for most of you, your television program of choice is not news. You don’t watch news. But if you did, the first ten minutes is all about who stabbed who, who shot who, who blew up what, who murdered or raped… it’s all about how evil our world is. Good people get caught in the crossfire of stupidity. Our world is messed up. There’s racism, there’s fighting, there’s hatred, road rage, terrorism. All this horrible stuff happening. You look around and it is evil. And the evil is starting at younger and younger ages. Kids and teenagers today are running wild. They have no respect for authority and no fear of their parents. They are so messed up. They are ruining our society and they are getting younger and younger and younger.
When we take a look at this world, you have to wonder where God is in all of this? When I don’t like the way that I look, when I feel pain, when I look at the world and see how screwed up it is I need to ask God why it is this way? Has God failed? Believing that God fails leads to a loss of hope. Today we’ve got a whole world of people just walking through life with no hope.
When you have no hope you easily get discouraged and you live as though life is being sucked out of you. Can you relate to this? You hunger for something, anything which will give you a little bit of life and with it a bit of hope. Maybe that drug will help. Maybe that relationship. Maybe a little sex. Maybe if I drink this or hang with these people. Maybe if I win some lottery I’ll have a better life. You become open to anything because you’ve lost your hope. You feel as though God has let you down and failed you.
But feelings come and go. If you base your life on feelings, on how you feel, you will be one messed up person. Up one minute, down the next. No there’s got to be something better to base our lives on than feeling and there is – truth.
Let me tell you what the Bible teaches about these three areas you and I feel God has failed us in.
First, see in Jeremiah 29:10 the heart of God for his people. The Israelites had thought God had failed them. They had been carted away into slavery. Their city Jerusalem had been destroyed and with it their temple. What was God doing? Where was He? Had He failed? Was He too weak to stand up to these foreign gods? Here’s what God says to those feelings.
Jer 29:10-14 This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. [Remember we learnt that God can’t lie. He will fulfil his promises] 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. [God can’t want your worst. He wants your best] 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. [God can’t reject you] 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
The people were questioning whether God had failed or not and God answered … “For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They’re plans for good and not for disaster, plans to give you a future and a hope.’” He is saying the same thing to us. “In the midst of your feelings, in the midst of you not liking the way you’ve been designed, in the midst of you feeling some pain in your life, in the midst of us living in a wacky world”, God says, “Time out! I’ve got good plans for you. You may not know what they are but I do. The are plans to give you a hope and a future.”
So what is the truth? What does the Bible teach about this?
1. God has created everyone as an ORIGINAL MASTERPIECE.
Out of the six billion people on this planet there is not another person like David Elvery and there is not another person like you either! You are an original masterpiece. There is nobody like you.
Psalm 139 says, “I praise you because I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know full well… While I was still in my mother’s womb you began to knit me and form me.” I found a picture this week of an 18-week-old baby being operated on while still in the uterus. The uterus was pulled out and the baby was being operated on for a spinal problem. The baby’s reached out of the slice in the uterus and has grabbed the doctor’s finger. And the Bible says, while you were still in your mother’s womb, God began to knit you and form you. As a unique human being. There’s nobody like you. You’re an original masterpiece right from conception.
Some of you aren’t quite sure that God made you – you maybe believe in evolution that we came from slime and grew from fish, lizards and monkeys. I want to tell you that it takes a lot more faith to believe that we are here because of chance than it does to believe that there was a loving and intelligent designer behind this whole thing. God did create you as an original masterpiece, regardless of whether you believe it or not. God hasn’t failed.
2. God comforts his children and today’s pain is only TEMPORARY.
What about our pain? God comforts his children and today’s pain is only temporaty. Some of you might be dying in a pile and say, “David, that’s easy for you.” But that is what the Bible teaches - our pain is temporary. That doesn’t reduce the intensity of it, does it. Physical and emotional pain can be really intense.
Have you ever seen a child get hurt. What does it do? It runs to Mum. It Doesn’t matter if Dad is standing right there, they run straight through Dad as though he doesn’t even exist and make a bee line for Mum. Why? Because we learn very early on that Mum is the nurturer. When you run to dad the first time Mum’s not there, what does Dad do? “It’s alright! That’s not blood! Come on get up, Let’s go! Be a man!” “But I’m a girl!” “It doesn’t matter. Act like a man. Let’s go!” We learn that dads don’t comfort, Mum’s do.
God says, “Time out! In the midst of pain, don’t call your Mum, your Dad or your best friend. All they’re going to do is give you a band-aid.” God says, “In the midst of pain, I’m the God of comfort.” Come to me.
2 Corinthians 1:3 says, “All praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He’s the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us. He comforts us in all of our troubles.” God is a God of comfort right here and now – that’s the first thing the Bible teaches. Take your troubles to Him, because he cares for you.
The second thing about our pain, is that it is temporary. Romans 8:18 “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” f you have a relationship with God, glory is just a matter of time. The pain that you’re living in now is temporary. Eternity is coming! Eternity is a long time. When I was growing up, one of the men in our church used to explain it this way. Imagine you had a block of the hardest steel 1km x 1km x 1km and every 1000 years, an angel came up to it and brushed it with a silk handkerchief. The time it would take that block of steel to be worn away would only just be the start of eternity. We are going to live to be 80, 90, 100 years old. But Eternity is a long time! The pain that we live with now, the Bible says, will be gone once we reach heaven. It might be very real for you now and you need to get some help to get some of that pain dealt with, but remember it’s only temporary. God hasn’t failed you.
3. God has promised to create a new HEAVEN and EARTH.
If you don’t have a Bible we need to get you one. If you need one, come and see me afterwards. I’ve studied this book for many years and I’ve read the end of it many times. I’ll let you in on a secret - God wins. The Bible says there will be a day when God puts a stop to all the suffering and the heartache we see around us. He puts a stop to the crazy idiots that have ruined this world. And when he does, he is going to create a new heaven and a new earth. Yes, this world is messed up now, but there will be a day when God wins and He takes control.
John writes in 1 John 2:15-17, “15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”
Somebody says, “What’s the will of God?” The will of God is for those of you who are living the world’s way right now to turn and live God’s way. You are captivated by the world. You are seduced by the world’s desires. And you love living the world’s way. God’s will is that someday you would step away from the world’s way and be reconciled to God and have a relationship with him so that you can spend eternity with him. You’re either going to spend eternity with him or separated from him. God’s will is that you spend it with him in his new heaven and a new earth.
So you’ve got these three feelings that are very normal for us to feel, and you have what the Bible says, the truths about each of them. So what you say? What does that mean for me as I walk out of here in a few minutes?
If you want to be a person who wants hope, because you’ve lost hope and you’re easily discouraged and life is sucked out of you and now you’re hungry to look and go for anything and you say, “What do I do?” Let me give you some things I want to challenge you to apply to your life.
1. Open yourself up to God’s WISDOM.
Some of you think God has failed you because you don’t really know God. What I’m going to say next will be hard for some of you to accept - “You’ve got to accept that you don’t know everything”. You may be sitting there thinking God has failed you but you don’t understand God’s plan. God’s wisdom is so far above ours; His plans are so complex and intricate that we’d never be able to comprehend them; His purposes are far greater than we could ever even imagine. We don’t know everything and we don’t know everything about God.
Some people say, “I’ve got plans for my life, great plans.” Good. Here’s what the Bible says about human plans, Proverbs 21:30, “Human plans, no matter how wise or well advised cannot stand against the Lord.”
It is good to make plans, but if they don’t come about, accept that God is still in control of it all and maybe – just maybe, he has different plans for you. That is hard to accept isn’t it. Deanna and I would love to have children – we’ve made plans, but so far those plans haven’t come about. Has God failed us? No, he just has a different plan – one that is far better than what Deanna or I could ever imagine. How do you think God has failed you? Stop and recognise that God hasn’t failed you, he might just have a different plan to you.
2. Learn about God’s promises and BELIEVE in them.
Some of you in here believe that God’s failed you but you know nothing about God. Hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus came onto the scene, God promised that a Messiah would come. God promised that a Messiah would be unjustly crucified. God promised that a Messiah would be crucified but no bones would be broken. The Oxford Professor, Canon Henry Liddon found 332 distinct predictions which were fulfilled in Jesus. There’s a huge list of all these things that God promised and they call came true. I’ve put down 20 of them on the back of your handouts tonight.
If God’s promises about Jesus came true, then his promises to us also will come true. God can’t lie. I’ve put some of God’s promises for us on the back of your sheets. Read through them when you get home. Learn about them and most of all believe in them.
Once you’ve learned about God’s promises and believe in them...
3. ENTRUST your future to God.
It all makes sense. Don’t just fill in the blanks. Think about it. It all makes sense.
I don’t fully understand evil but I trust God for his goodness. I don’t fully understand atoms and molecules and hydrogen and all this stuff but I fully trust God that He’s going to hold everything together. I don’t understand all of life but I trust God that He’s the king of all life. I don’t fully understand why God has given me this perfect bodybuilding body but I trust him that He won’t cause women to stumble! You don’t have to understand everything. You trust your future on God’s promises.
My prayer is that you and I would have the confidence of the Psalmist, in Psalm 33:11, “But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.” We can walk out of here tonight saying, “God, you haven’t failed me. I’ve just misunderstood. No one can stop you. No one can disrupt your plans.”
I realize that in 30 minutes I say a thousand plus words. You’re only going to remember a few. I hope you remember this: God can’t fail you. You may not understand it now. But He’s not going to fail you. So accept His wisdom, Believe His promises, and trust your future to His promises because God can’t fail you.
Prayer:
God, thanks for your love that we can do nothing to earn your love, that you love us not based on what we look like. You love us not based on how much money we have. You love us because you created us and you want us to be your children. God, as we all go our separate ways may we walk out of here with a new understanding of how incredible you are and that you do keep your promises and that it’s impossible for you to fail. May that give us hope, may that give us the hope that we can hang on and put our faith in you and not look to everything else to pick up our life a little bit. Thanks for the people that are here and what you’re doing in their hearts. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
