Thank you.
And I'll see the pitch pipe here.
608.
No, he'd give us more grace.
600 and 8.
He gives more grace.
We were singing this morning, his power has
no boundary known unto men.
That's what we'd like to talk about today.
We'd like to talk about that attribute of
God which is known as his omnipotence.
Omnipotence, we have to use some big words,
but all it means is all power.
God is all powerful.
What a tremendous thought that is.
There's nothing God cannot do.
One of the names of God in the
scripture is the Almighty.
And we use that word and sometimes I
don't think we stop to think what it
really means.
He is almighty.
He has all power.
He can do anything.
There's nothing he cannot do.
And you know, the omnipotence, the all power
of God is one of the favorite themes
of the Bible writers.
I'm going to read some of the passages
to you.
It would take quite a while to look
them up.
So I'll just read them to you.
Genesis chapter 17 and verse 1.
I am the almighty God.
Walk before me and be thou perfect.
Genesis 18, 14.
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
And the implied answer is nothing.
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
A very favorite verse of mine, Job 42,
2 says, I know that thou can't do
all things and that no purpose of thine
can be thwarted.
That's great, isn't it?
I know that thou can't do all things
and no purpose of thine can be thwarted.
There's no one and nothing that can ever
hinder the purposes of God from being carried
out.
Jeremiah 32, verse 17.
O sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens
and the earth by your great power and
outstretched arm.
Nothing is too hard for you.
Matthew chapter 19, verse 20.
With God, all things are possible.
Luke chapter 1, 37.
But with God, nothing is impossible.
And then finally, Revelation chapter 19, verse 6.
It says, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
That day is coming when the nail-scarred
hand of Jesus is going to take the
scepter of universal dominion.
And it will be true that the Lord
God omnipotent reigneth.
One of the great men to write on
the attributes of God was a man named
Charnock.
And he said this, the power of God
is that ability and strength whereby he can
bring to pass whatsoever he please, whatsoever his
infinite wisdom can direct, and whatsoever the infinite
purity of his will can resolve.
Of course, when we speak of the fact
that God is omnipotent, we mean that he
can do anything that is consistent with his
other attributes.
I think we've suggested that the attributes of
God can't fight against one another.
They have to work in unison with one
another.
And so now you'll think I'm engaging in
double-talk again when I say there are
certain things that God can't do.
There are certain things that would be inconsistent
with his other attributes.
For instance, God cannot lie.
Because he's holy, and because he's righteous, and
because he's faithful.
And you see, if God were to lie,
that would be a contradiction of those other
attributes.
He cannot lie.
Numbers 23, verse 19.
And Hebrews 6, 18.
It's impossible for God to lie on a
pillow on which to lay our heads.
He cannot deny himself.
2 Timothy 2, 13.
God cannot deny himself.
He ever abides faithful.
God can't be tempted with evil.
James, chapter 1, verse 13.
We mentioned that in connection with the temptation
of the Lord Jesus.
Jesus was tempted from without.
But he couldn't be tempted from within.
He couldn't be tempted with an evil solicitation,
if there was anything in him, to respond
to it.
You say, well, then he wasn't perfectly man.
Yes, he was perfectly man.
You and I aren't.
He was perfect man.
Perfect humanity.
And we're not.
We're fallen humanity.
God cannot condone evil or look with favor
upon it.
We already had that, didn't we, in Habakkuk,
chapter 1, verse 13.
Thou art of pure eyes, and to behold
iniquity.
He can't condone evil.
He can't wink at it.
He can't say, oh, well, it was just
a little one.
God can't say that.
Because God is eternal, he can't age.
He can't grow old.
Isn't that wonderful?
I tell you, it's a wonderful thing to
use our minds just to dwell on this.
God cannot grow old.
He can't die.
Because he's immortal and eternal.
And I love this, God can't swear by
anyone greater than himself.
Hebrews, chapter 6, verse 13.
Why?
Because there's nobody greater than himself.
I often think of that in connection with
the Bible.
People trying to prove the Bible to be
the Word of God.
Look, there's nothing greater than the Bible to
prove it.
The Bible is the Word of God.
And there's nothing greater than the Word of
God.
So the best way is just accept it
as the Word of God and then God
will show you.
He who has felt the force of it
is not likely to deny the source of
it.
So there are things in the moral realm
that God can't do, but they don't affect
his omnipotence, do they?
They're not a contradiction to his omnipotence.
Now, some people raise absurd questions like, Could
God lift a stone?
Could God make a stone too heavy for
him to lift?
You know, those are intellectual absurdities and not
worth even discovering.
They make me think of an old Puritan.
Somebody said to this old Puritan, What was
God doing before he created the world?
And the Puritan said he was creating hell
for people who ask foolish questions.
The power of God, the power of God
is seen in the creation of the universe
and in the creation of man.
Just think of this, he created the universe
out of nothing, without using tools, instantly
and by a word.
How do you like that?
He created the universe.
He created the universe without using materials, without
using tools, and he did it instantly, and
he did it by a word.
Think of the power that spangled the heavens
with stars, with all the galaxies of the
heavens.
I'll tell you, it boggles the mind.
Man, with telescopic vision, man can look out
and see stars, and it has taken 20
billion light years for the light from those
stars to reach us.
In other words, when we look up into
the heavens at night, we're not looking at
current events, we're looking at history.
We don't see them where they are now.
We see them where they were billions of
years ago.
It's amazing, 20 billion light years.
A light year is the distance that light
travels in a year.
Just think of 20 billion.
Well, I can't even think of that, it's
too big for me.
But just think of the universe we live
in.
And yet I don't think the universe is
infinite, only God is infinite.
And the universe is not as great as
God, but man can see no limits to
the universe, and God created it.
Think of the power that created you and
me in the mother's womb.
You know, it's interesting to me that when
the psalmist thought of the power of God
in Psalm 139, that's what he thought of.
Turn to Psalm 139, it's really quite beautiful.
And incidentally, this deals primarily with three attributes
of God.
Maybe tonight we'll take up the other two.
Verses 1 through 6 deal with the omniscience
of God, that he knows everything.
Verses 7 through 12 deal with the omnipresence
of God, that he's in all places at
one and the same time.
But I want to begin with you in
verse 13.
And it describes the formation of the baby
in the mother's womb, and it's done with
extreme delicacy and extreme beauty, so don't be
afraid of it.
Worship.
It says, For thou hast possessed my reins.
The word possessed means formed.
And it refers to the formation of all
the parts of the human body.
Thou hast possessed my reins.
Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
And in the original language of the Old
Testament, that word covered is knit.
Knit, K-N-I-T.
Thou hast knit me.
Well, you know, that's beautiful when you think
of all the veins and all the arteries
and all the muscles and all of the
tendons and how they're all knit together in
the human body.
That's what the psalmist is speaking about.
Knit.
Thou hast knit me in my mother's womb.
I will praise thee, for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made.
Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul
knoweth right well.
My frame, my substance.
The word there is frame.
The word for substance really means the skeletal
structure, the bones.
This is really lovely.
My bones, my skeletal structure was not hidden
from thee when I was made in secret
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of
the earth.
Now, I'm going to surprise you by what
I say here, but I want to tell
you this morning that the expression the lowest
parts of the earth is a poetic expression,
is a figurative expression for the mother's womb.
You say, how do you know?
Well, he certainly wasn't formed under the ground,
was he?
I mean, the psalmist wasn't made under the
ground.
He's not a subterranean being.
The psalmist is describing what happens in the
womb.
And the lowest parts of the earth describes
that.
It's just a poetic expression for that.
And you've got to get used to figures
of speech when you study the Bible, don't
you?
Incidentally, let me take a detour now and
go over to Ephesians chapter 4 where that
expression or a similar expression is found.
Ephesians chapter 4.
It says, verse 9, Now that he ascended,
this is speaking about the Lord Jesus.
Maybe I should go back to verse 8
because he quotes there the psalmist.
The psalmist says, When he ascended up on
high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts
unto men.
Now that he ascended, what is it that
he also descended first into the lower parts
of the earth?
Now, first of all, the argument is this.
You go back to the Psalms and you
read about the Messiah ascending.
How could he ascend?
He had always lived in heaven.
Yes, it presupposes that he came down from
heaven to earth.
The ascension of Christ spoken of in the
Psalms presupposes that he first came down to
earth.
Now it says in verse 9, Now that
he ascended, what is it that he also
descended into the lower parts of the earth?
Now I know some people think that this
means that he went to hell after the
crucifixion and emptied a compartment of hell and
took the saved of the Old Testament home
to heaven.
I don't think it means that at all.
I believe the lower parts of the earth
in that verse is a poetic expression for
Mary's womb.
And in a general way, it's speaking of
the incarnation, the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ down to the earth.
What is it but that he also descended?
In other words, the ascension of Christ presupposes
the incarnation of Christ.
Just something to think about and talk about
at the lunch table.
So going back to Psalm 139.15, My
skeletal frame was not hidden from thee when
I was made in secret and curiously wrought
in the lowest parts of the earth.
That is in the mother's womb.
Thine eyes did see my substance yet being
unperfect.
This is a fetus in the mother's womb.
And in thy books all my members were
written which in continuance were fashioned.
Or it says in the American Standard Version,
In thy book were all my members written
which day by day were fashioned when as
yet there were none of them.
You know, God knew all about us before
we were ever formed.
And each one of us started off smaller
than the dot over an eye in that
section that we just read.
And yet in that dot all the characteristics
that you have today were already written.
Isn't that remarkable?
It really is.
Smaller than that dot, the shape of your
chin, the color of your hair, your eyes,
your teeth.
It was all programmed there.
Do you believe that?
Well, it's absolutely true.
Once that baby is born, that baby never
gets anything else.
Everything he's ever going to have he has
at the moment of his birth.
It's just a case of development from then
on.
And no wonder the psalmist said, How precious
also are thy thoughts unto me, O God.
How great is the sum of them, if
I should count them there more in number
than the sand.
I tell you, I love that verse because
I oftentimes go down when I have to
get some nervous energy off and I walk
along the beach in Alameda, California and I
think of all the grains of sand on
that beach.
And this verse says that God's great thoughts
of love and grace to me are more
than all the grains of sand on that
beach.
That's a lot.
It really is a lot.
If I should count them there more in
number than the sand, when I awake, I
am still with thee.
I think, this is just my own thought,
when I awake, I think that means at
the moment of birth.
God is with us all through that nine
-month period of preparation and then when we
awake and as we say, when we first
see the light of day, I am still
with thee.
But the psalmist is using this section as
a picture of the omnipotence of God, the
power that creates the human body in the
mother's womb.
Then think of the power that holds matter
together.
Colossians chapter 1, verse 17 says, By him
all things consist.
And in Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3b, it
says that he does it by the word
of his power.
It's really wonderful.
I was traveling from England to Ireland once
in a plane and I sat next to
a physicist, a very educated man, a very
gentlemanly fellow, and I said to him, Oh,
I'm so glad to sit next to you,
because I have a question for you.
And he said, What is it?
And I said, What holds matter together?
And he chuckled.
He said, I wish we knew.
And then he said, I guess cosmic glue.
Cosmic glue is an expression that indicates ignorance.
But we know, we know that matter is
held together by the word of his power.
We know that it's his power that keeps
the planets in their orbit and preserves his
creatures and answers prayer.
Mind you, we see divine power in floods,
don't we?
The power of a flood, in earthquakes, in
fires, in volcanic eruptions, in storms, tornadoes, wind
and waves.
We also see it in the salvation of
a sinner.
And in the healing of diseases.
And in the judgment of the wicked.
It's interesting to me that men measure power
with a word called megatons.
Does anybody know what a megaton is?
Well, it's the explosive power of a million
tons of TNT.
I guess that's the best that man can
do.
The explosive power of a million tons of
TNT.
That's a megaton.
We have no word in human vocabulary to
measure the power of God.
I mean, megatons, that's chicken feed when you
think of the power of God.
When the Old Testament saints thought of the
power of God, the greatest display of his
power in the Old Testament was the Red
Sea, crossing of the Red Sea.
That was a wonderful thing, wasn't it?
Children of Israel coming to the sea and
God parting the waters, and they're able to
walk over dry shod.
I tell you, that's wonderful.
When you come to the New Testament, the
greatest display of the power of God in
the New Testament was the resurrection of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
You say, why?
Why was that the greatest?
Well, I believe that all the forces of
hell, I believe that Satan and all his
emissaries were camped there at that grave outside
the city of Jerusalem, determined that he wouldn't
rise again from the dead.
And God reached down in mighty power and
brought him out from the grave.
And it was after that that the stone
was removed, you know.
The stone wasn't removed to let him out.
The stone was removed to let us look
in and see that he's no longer there.
The greatest display of power in Ephesians chapter
1 verses 19 and 20, Paul speaks of
the exceeding.
He piles words on words to create the
effect of enormous power, the exceeding greatness of
his power to usward who believe.
According to the working of his mighty power
which he wrought in Christ when he raised
him from the dead and set him at
his own right hand in the heavenly places.
Dear friends, that is power.
Then the question oftentimes arises, well, when the
Lord Jesus came down to this earth, was
he still omnipotent?
And I'm amazed by how men try to
deal with the person of the Lord Jesus
and oftentimes in a dishonoring way.
Did he lay aside his omnipotence when he
came to earth?
Or if he didn't give it up, did
he refuse to use it ever, ever, ever?
They say, well, he performed all his miracles
in the power of the Holy Spirit.
He didn't do anything that you couldn't do
in the power of the Holy Spirit.
I would admit this morning that there were
times when Jesus didn't use his omnipotence.
He still had it, but he didn't use
it.
He could have called legions of angels to
come and deliver him, but he didn't do
it.
He was so morally perfect that he couldn't
do anything outside his Father's will.
But I believe he was omnipotent at any
one time.
He said, He said, Destroy this temple and
in three days I will raise it.
When he spoke of the temple of his
body and in raising it, he would raise
himself from the grave.
He said, Therefore doth my Father love me
because I lay down my life that I
might take it again.
No man taketh it from me, but I
lay it down of myself.
I have power to lay it down and
I have power to take it again.
I would say that Jesus did not empty
himself of his omnipotence when he came to
earth, but he veiled it at times.
In other words, he could walk the streets
of Nazareth and people didn't realize that the
Almighty God was in their midst.
Aside he threw his most divine array and
veiled his Godhead in a garb of clay
and in that garb this wondrous love display
restoring what he could not take away.
Our hearts should be filled with worship when
we think of the omnipotence of God and
the omnipotence of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When we think of power, we think of
physical power, but you know, there's such a
thing as moral power too.
And I'd like to just mention that in
passing.
Jesus has not only physical power, he had
moral power.
He had the power not to strike back
when men abused him.
That's power.
E.
Stanley Jones said, The world is at the
feet of the man who had power to
strike back, but who had power not to
strike back.
That's power, the ultimate power.
He had power to summon more than twelve
legions of angels, and yet he couldn't save
himself if you and I were to be
saved.
Isn't that amazing?
Moral power.
Himself he could not save.
He on the cross must die.
Our mercy could not come to ruin sinners.
Christ, the Son of God, must bleed that
sinners might from sin be freed.
Now, there are great lessons for us to
learn.
We were hearing yesterday afternoon that we must
always make practical applications of our study of
the Word of God, and that's true.
There are practical lessons to be learned in
connection with the omnipotence of God, and one
is that man can't fight successfully against him.
That's great for us to know, you know.
It would be like a gnat trying to
fight a blast furnace.
Hopeless.
Psalm 2130 says, there's no wisdom nor understanding
nor counsel against the Lord.
Another great lesson is that those who are
friends of God are on the winning side.
I love it.
God before us, who can be against us?
That is successfully.
At any particular time, the waves may seem
to be against us, but the tide is
sure to win, and nothing can happen to
us apart from the permissive will of the
Lord, and we're immortal till our work is
done.
I mentioned about white flour and white sugar
yesterday in jest.
I eat both.
I receive all things with thanksgiving.
I eat whatever food is put in front
of me and believe that I'm immortal till
my work is done.
I believe the schedule is all there, and
if I live sensibly, I cannot go ahead
of my time.
I'd like to give you a beautiful illustration.
I wish the time weren't going so fast,
but I'll just close with this.
Exodus 34-23, the omnipotence of God.
Exodus 34-23.
You won't see it at first, but let
me explain it to you.
It says in Exodus 34-23, thrice in
the year, three times in the year, shall
your men, children, that means your males, appear
before the Lord God, the God of Israel.
He said, look, three times in the year
I want all the men, folks, to come
up to Jerusalem for the feast.
What would the women say?
They'd say, look, we're surrounded by enemies.
Israel is in constant danger of being attacked,
and all our men go up to Jerusalem?
Who's going to protect us?
Listen to the next verse.
For I will cast out the nations before
thee and enlarge thy borders.
Neither shall any man desire thy land, when
thou shalt go up to appear before the
Lord thy God thrice in the year.
Now that's a wonderful thing.
Only an omnipotent God could say something like
that.
You know?
He says, don't you worry.
You obey my word.
You go up to Jerusalem, and I will
control the intellect and the emotions and the
will of your enemies so they won't even
want to come to your land at those
times when you go up to Jerusalem.
It's marvelous, isn't it?
That's our omnipotent God.
Let me just say this.
We as believers will never be omnipotent.
Only God is omnipotent.
We'll never be omnipotent.
But I want to just leave this closing
thought.
We're never more omnipotent.
We're never closer to omnipotence than when we
pray in the name of Jesus.
You know why?
Because when we pray in the name of
Jesus, it's just the same as if Jesus
were making those requests to the Father.
If we really believed that, we'd pray more
in his blessed name.
Glory to God.