23-1203p Transcript

Now to the King eternal, immortal, (0:30) invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. (0:41)

Preacher: Jim Lokenbauer

(0:46) Thank you, John. Well, this morning we started exploring some different aspects (0:54) of God. We looked at his eternalness, and we looked at his omnipotence, and this (1:07) evening we’re going to continue our search of scripture. In the Apostle John’s (1:14) revelation, when he was called up to heaven in spirit, there Jesus gave him a (1:21) revelation of what would soon take place for the church.

Jesus, in his glorified (1:29) appearance, told the very frightened John who he was. He gave the essence of his (1:36) most holy name, Yahweh. He said in Revelation 1.8, I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord of God, (1:45) who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

The Godhead, Father, Son, and (1:56) Holy Spirit, are eternal, self-existing, perpetual beings who have no beginning (2:04) and have no end. By stating that he was also the Almighty, Jesus is identifying (2:13) himself as God who spoke to the patriarchs who appeared to Abraham, to (2:20) Isaac, and to Jacob. They knew him as El Shaddai, God Almighty.

Moses and his (2:30) people didn’t refer to him as that. He was Jehovah, or Yahweh. So Jesus is letting us (2:41) know his eternalness here, that he was all the way back then, to the time of the (2:50) patriarchs.

How long ago is that? Four thousand years? Yeah. No human has ever (3:00) lived that long. Only God can do that.

And so the proclamation that Jesus made to (3:09) John is sort of a nice segue into this evening’s topic about his omnipotence. (3:17) Again, we defer to our old sage Noah Webster, the great American wordsmith, who (3:25) defines omnipotence this way. In Latin, it’s supra.

It means Almighty, possessing (3:35) unlimited power, all-powerful. And then he uses omnipotence, or omnipotence. It (3:43) looks like omnipotent when you read it.

He uses omnipotence in a sentence to (3:48) show how it’s used. And he says, that being can create worlds, or the being (3:58) that can create worlds must be omnipotent. So the actual power of God (4:06) cannot be even begun to be comprehended by us.

His power is infinite. It can’t be (4:15) measured. By his word, he was able to bring into existence everything out of (4:24) nothing.

And that, of course, is an amazing feat. Everything in the seen universe, and (4:36) everything in the unseen world, heaven, God created. Every living thing, all (4:44) vegetation, all living things from the microscopic germ all the way up to the (4:50) giant blue whale, including all humans, God created.

And he did that with his (4:59) omnipotence. He is the omnipotent God. Think of all the energy that our sun (5:06) consumes and produces to be that giant gas ball that keeps this planet alive.

(5:16) Now multiply that by billions as you look out and see billions of stars. Who (5:23) can produce that kind of energy with a word from the power of his mind? How did (5:33) that happen? It can only be an omnipotent, all-powerful, awesome being. Something we (5:45) can’t even begin to wrap our minds around.

I have a hard time sawing and (5:51) putting a few pieces of wood together to create something, but I’m really not (5:56) creating. I’m just sort of rearranging. But he created out of nothing.

That’s (6:04) awesome. Think of all the stuff out in space that the web and the Hubble (6:12) telescopes have shown us. You know, nebulas, supernovas, black holes, planets, (6:20) stars, just amazing galaxies.

With the word he spoke that into being. Awesome. (6:34) And everything he created, scientists don’t know what all that stuff does out (6:40) in space.

They don’t know the purpose of black holes. God has a purpose for (6:46) everything. He just doesn’t make things willy-nilly.

It’s got a purpose. We just (6:54) haven’t discovered what it is yet, because we’re finite. In Genesis 1, it says in the (7:03) beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

In Hebrews 1, 1-3, it says in the (7:09) past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and (7:14) in various ways. But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he (7:22) appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son made (7:31) the universe.

And that’s in harmony with John chapter 1, verses 1-3. In the (7:38) beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was (7:45) with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made. Without him nothing (7:51) was made that has been made. Jesus spoke everything into existence.

And the Son is (8:02) the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of God’s being. Isn’t that (8:09) what he told Philip? When Philip asked the question, show us the Father and that’ll (8:15) be enough for us. And Jesus had to say, Philip you’ve been with me this whole (8:20) time, don’t you know when you see me you see the Father? God is one.

Our God is one. (8:33) You see Jesus, you see the Father. You see the Spirit.

I just think that’s (8:45) awesome that they even give us consideration. Like David said, what is (8:52) man that you think about us? After he provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the (9:05) majesty in heaven. So once he rose from the dead and then ascended 40 days later up (9:12) into heaven, there he’s reigning.

And it says that he’s holding everything (9:19) together by his powerful word. He keeps everything working through his power. (9:34) That’s omnipotence.

Because of man’s great sin in the ancient times, by the power of (9:47) his word, he called for a do-over. He destroyed the world that he created. God said to Noah in Genesis 6.13, I’m going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.

I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. Genesis 7. In the 600th year of Noah’s life on (10:19) the 17th day of the second month, is God not a timekeeper? Doesn’t it stand to reason (10:27) that a perfect, infinitely powerful, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal God would (10:39) remember dates? What is that in our time? Isn’t that like October 17th? That’s the (10:52) birthday of the flood, so many millennia ago. God says, the springs of the great (11:04) deep burst forth and the floodgates of the heavens were opened and rain fell on (11:08) the earth 40 days and 40 nights.

The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of over 20 feet. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. The waters flooded the earth for 150 days.

Nobody can hold their breath that long. Nobody can tread water that long. (11:40) The omnipotent power of the Lord can create and the omnipotent power of the Lord can destroy.

After destroying the earth by water, the earth was forever changed. The earth we see now, today, is not the earth that they saw during Noah’s time. They are two different worlds.

Peter warns us that our omnipotent Lord is not yet done. (12:09) In the destroying and creating process, 2 Peter 3, 5-7 says, but they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word, the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By the same word, the present

heavens and earth are reserved for fire being kept for the day of judgment and the (12:37) destruction of ungodly men.

And then 2 Peter 3, 10-12, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar and the elements will be destroyed by fire. The earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as (13:11) you look forward to the great day of the Lord, speeding its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire and the elements will melt into heat. Can you imagine? Just with the power of God’s word.

So once again, because of sinful, unrepentant man, we will provoke God to anger and (13:40) force his hand to make good on his threat to punish the world. On that day, God’s power will be on display for everybody to see and God will destroy all the creation of the earth, the heavens included, on the day that Christ’s second coming happens. But to those who love and obey God, we have nothing to fear.

(14:07) Peter goes on to tell us in 3.13, but in keeping with his promise, we were looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. In John 14, the Lord told his apostle disciples that he was going to be with his father and he was going there to prepare a place for us to dwell. (14:32) In Revelation 21, 1-3, it says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.

There was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city and new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a beautiful bride dressed for her husband. (14:57) And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.

They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. (15:12) So after destroying the heavens and the earth, and judgment taking place, and everybody being sorted out where they’re going for all of eternity, God will create a special dwelling place for all of his children to live together with him for all eternity. And it takes an omnipotent God to accomplish all of that.

(15:41) The next unique trait that only true deity has is omniscience. And our God-fearing lexicographer Noah Webster defines omniscience this way, as an adjective, having universal knowledge or knowledge of all things, infinitely knowing, all seeing, as the omniscient God. (16:09) I love how he always praises God in his descriptions.

Simply put, God…​ Okay, lesson over. We’ll lightly touch on this. (16:25) King David marveled over God’s omniscience and wrote in Psalm 139 about it.

And I’ll read the first 18 verses of this psalm. And these words describe his omniscience. Also touches on his omnipotence and his omnipresence.

(16:47) O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely.

(17:06) O Lord, you hem me in, behind me and before me. You have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? (17:23) If I go up to the heavens, are you not there? If I make my bed in the depths, are you not there? If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. (17:41) If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you.

The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light for you. For you created my innermost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

And that innermost being is the Hebrew idea for soul, the eternal part of us. (18:07) And this is where we get the understanding that God creates our eternal being part of us that goes on once this flesh dies. He makes that first, and that happens, that conception.

And then he starts knitting the flesh around that, as it says here. (18:30) You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful. I know that so well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body. (18:51) All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of the sand of the sea.

(19:12) Isn’t it amazing how God knows everything about King David’s life, even before King David drew his first breath? God knows each one of us intimately, too. (19:28) And Peter acknowledged this aspect of God and his omniscience in his prayer to God when the apostles were picking a replacement for Judas. In Acts 1.24, Peter prayed, (19:44) Lord, you know everyone’s heart.

Show us which one of these two you have chosen. So the Lord knows what’s in everyone’s heart. God reveals his omniscience to Isaiah in 46.9-10. He says, (20:05) Remember the former things, those of long ago.

I am God, there is no other. I am God and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning.

From ancient times, what is still to come. I say, my purpose will stand and I will do all that I please. (20:26) There is nobody like the God of the Bible.

He knows what will happen far in the future. And his will will make that happen. This next verse, God speaks to both his omnipotence and his omniscience.

(20:42) In Jeremiah 51.15, he says, He made the earth by his power, he founded the world by his wisdom, and stretched out the heavens by his understanding. Imagine sitting down and talking to God about physics? I would be like a chimpanzee in front of Albert Einstein. (21:12) Please give me a banana.

I’d be about as much as I’d contribute to that conversation. (21:20) Likewise, Daniel speaks to God’s

omniscience and his omnipotence. In Daniel 2.20-23, he says, (21:31) Praise be to the name of God forever and ever.

Wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons. He sets up kings and deposes them.

He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what lies in darkness.

Light dwells within him. (21:54) I thank and praise you, O my God of my fathers. You have given me wisdom and power.

You have made known to me what we ask of you. You have made known to us the dream of the king. (22:09) God probably put that dream in King Nebuchadnezzar’s mind and then revealed that dream to Daniel.

(22:20) God knows everything. Job 38.1-21. This is probably one of my favorite slam dunk shut up and listen to me for a second moments in the Bible. (22:41) We’ve got Job who’s suffering.

He’s righteous. He’s a good man. He wasn’t a sinner.

Yet his friends insist that he sinned because of what he was suffering. (22:54) If you suffer, you must surely be a sinner, which is a lie. Sometimes suffering creates character in us, creates dependence on God, builds our faith.

Thus says James. (23:13) Then the Lord answered Job out of the stone. He said, Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man.

I will question you. You shall answer me. (23:29) Where were you when I laid earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.

Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set? For who laid its cornerstone? (23:46) While the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy, who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb? When I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness? When I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place? (24:05) When I said, This far you may come and no farther, here is where your proud waves halt. Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? (24:23) The earth takes shape like clay under a seal.

Its features stand out like those of a garment. The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken. Have you journeyed to the springs of the deep or walked in the recesses of the deep? (24:43) Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this, what is the way of the abode of light? Where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths of their dwelling? (25:08) Surely you know, for you were already born.

You have lived so many years. God really let Job and his know-it-all friends have it. He was so fed up with his friends' pseudo-intellect and wisdom that he just teed off on them here.

(25:28) And really let them know who the source of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding is, and who the grantor of those are. He’s the creator. He alone knows all those things.

(25:47) And that’s really awesome to think about, that Jesus, as he was a man on earth, was the carpenter’s son. He was a handyman, a jack-of-all-trades. I would imagine most of what he set his mind to was some pretty quality work.

(26:14) And he had done all creation with all those intellectual tools. When King Solomon assumed the throne of power after his father David passed away, Solomon prayed for wisdom, to be a good leader for God’s people. (26:30) And God was so impressed that a child asked for that rather than riches, God blessed him and filled his cup to the overflowing measure with wisdom, and he became known as the wisest man ever to live.

(26:47) And he wrote down for his posterity about wisdom and how to obtain it. In Proverbs 2, starting at verse 1, he says, (27:00) My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. (27:24) For the Lord is wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

He holds victory in store for the upright. He is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones. (27:45) Then you will understand what is right and just and fair and every good path, for wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

(28:01) In the New Testament, Paul too knows the source of all wisdom and he praises our omniscient God to that end. (28:11) In Romans 11, verse 33-36, he says, O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out! (28:27) Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to the Lord that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory, now and forever.

Amen. (28:49) So our final aspect of God’s character we’re going to go over is the ability of God to be everywhere at the same time. Omnipresence.

How does that happen? (29:07) It’s like, how is God here at Westside and perhaps over at Broadview and at the traffic light at the corner here where people may dwell? He’s everywhere. (29:25) That’s hard to wrap your head around. And that’s part of the mystery of our God, is to try and understand how absolutely awesome he is.

(29:40) Webster defines omnipresent, present in all places, and at the same time ubiquitarily as the omnipresent Jehovah. There it is. Again, we go to Psalm 139, which we just read, to describe this unique ability of God.

(30:01) Where David said, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. God’s everywhere.

(30:16) King David, by God’s spirit, lets us know he is everywhere. From the beginning of creation, we know that every living creature, including man, has God’s breath of life in him. (30:31) That’s what animates all living things' flesh.

And when our flesh dies, God’s spirit returns to him. And James tells us that when he’s talking about faith. (30:45) Faith without works is dead, just as the body without the spirit is dead.

And the Ecclesiastes writer, Solomon, once again, said when the flesh dies, your spirit, O Lord, goes back to you. (31:03) So everything that’s alive has God’s spirit in it to animate that flesh. It gives it life.

And Paul lets us know that the spirit of God, that Jesus, and that God himself, the Father, are in his people. (31:36) We are the temple of God. God is in each one of us.

You can’t see him, you can’t feel him, but he’s there. Ephesians 4, 4-6, is talking about all the ones, the unique oneness of the church. (32:03) There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called.

One faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. He’s in all of us. (32:23) Sometimes you wonder if that’s one of the ways he knows each of our thoughts.

He’s in us, whether we’re thinking good thoughts or whether we’re thinking bad thoughts. (32:36) Isn’t that what Solomon also says at the end of his Ecclesiastes letter, when he boils down the very rudiments, the very lowest common denominator for the role of man to obey God’s commandments? (33:01) Because God will expose every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil, including our thoughts. God knows.

God is everywhere. (33:22) So I hope that I was able to at least scratch the subject of some of the amazing uniqueness that our God has. There’s no other God.

Nothing even comes close to that. (33:42) And I think maybe the next time I speak, perhaps I might talk about, even though I don’t like the subject, talk about the one who wants to be worshipped like God, but because of these things, he fails. (34:02) Satan is not omnipotent.

Satan is not omniscient. Satan is not omnipresent. He may be eternal because God created him that way.

He was an angelic being at one time. Now we don’t know what to call him other than the enemy. (34:22) Powerful enemy.

Jude warns us not to slander any celestial being, including Satan, but he is not deity and not worthy of worship. I don’t know how he fooled so many angels. (34:43) What does that say about them? Maybe they’re a lot like us.

They’re not God, who can’t be fooled. (34:54) So I’ll extend the invitation now, and if you need assistance from the church in any way, you can make your request known. (35:01) And I’ll leave you with this one last thought.

Hebrews 13, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And there’s his eternalness. Amen.