How Big Is Your God?
How Big is Your God?
A couple of weeks ago, I shared the gospel with a young man who had lots of questions about the Christian faith and we talked about many things, we talked about how God knows us and loves us each. One of his questions was “Do you believe the Bible literally?” I know that that is a big question that is packed with something else, so I said “What do you mean?” He opened up easily and said “I just cant believe some of the miracles – like Noahs flood, or the guy swallowed by a whale... I think those just be metaphors for other things but not real events – Right?!?”
I prayed a quick prayer – the kind in your mind that can happen in a flash – like “God give me the right words to help this young man” and then I said “Well, How big do you think God is?”
With a puzzeled look he said “What do you mean”
Do you think God is knows everything? – yes
Do you think God is strong enough to do anything? – yes
Do you think God is limited in some way? – no
That’s right – God is everywhere, He knows everything, as a matter of fact he is so big that he is bigger than anything you or I know – he is able to control nature and the physical world – he is not limited by physics or gravity or time – Do you believe that? Yes
Then why couldn’t he cause a flood to cover the whole world or a fish exist large enough to swallow a man and yet still be strong enough to keep that man alive foor 3 days if he wanted to.
So your question is not How could he buy Why would he – and that is the right question
How big is your God
We often loose sight of Who God is, what he has done and why
We are usually more interested in our own lives, what I am doing, what I am going to do, will I have enough money. Will this make someone else mad or will they still like me...
How big God is – what he is doing – what he has done doesn’t enter our thoughts all that much sometimes and we are not always sure if that really matters all that much. The sun still comes up tomorrow, I still go to my job, I still deal with my problems, I still have my family, friends, spouse, kids tomorrow – life goes on - How big is God? Great question, but a little too philosophical for real life.
We must never forget the benefits of being in a relationship with God or else we will reduce Jesus down to our size
and then our faith becomes impotent.
David wrote in Ps 103:1-5
Praise the Lord , O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the Lord , O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits —
3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
David says we must never FORGET the benefits of being in a personal relationship with God
Forget – is more than I just can’t remember what I am supposed to do later today or would forget my friends phone number but the word carries the sense of ‘mislayed’ like I have misplaced my keys, or I have misplaced my thoughts, I have misplaced the affections of my heart, like my keys are lost – so are my thoughts and affections – the things that are important to my life.
The word also carries the idea of ‘oblivious’ or ‘living oblivious’
David is saying – don’t misplace your thoughts and the true affections of your heart be misplaced or lost –
Dont live oblivious to the presence and activities of God in your life – he is at work
Dont forget his benefits – he is saying look at the way God has treated you, how he has interacted with you, the word literally means His treatment to you or His service to you, the emphasis on this word points towards the positive treatment you have received from God
David is saying “Dont let your thoughts get lost or misplaced, don’t live oblivious to all the good things God has done for you in your life.”
The he begins to draw our attention and remind us of precisely some of the things God has done for us.
Who Forgives all your sins
He extends His GRACE– he has pardoned or spared us from the justice of our mischevious faults – mischevious being the ones we intended to do with the hopes of not getting caught. But the truth is we have been caught – he sees and knows all you and I have done and he has not looked away but looked over, he is not counting them against us, even though he could, should and in another situation probably would hold us accountable for them. That is what the Bible calls GRACE – it is by grace that we have been saved – each one of us who call the God of the Bible our Father and HE calls us His child because we have been born through Jesus Christ.
He heals all your diseases –
He makes you WHOLE AGAIN
– the word Heal is Rapha – which means to mend, restore, make proper or whole again. It is not limited to physical healing but he mends our brokenness our hurts. When a father leaves a child in the midst of divorce or abandonment that hurts that child deeply those wounds are like open sores and tender scars for the rest of that persons life and Jesus can come in and heal that brokenness. When a person goes through bankruptcy more than the bank account is emptied, but that persons hope is emptied too and Jesus heals and restores that hope so the person can recover and make different decisions so they can become profitable again.
Another Benefit of being a Christian is v 4
“who redeems your life from the pit”
He restores your value and purpose to life
This ‘redeem’ is ga’al and refers to the oriental law of kinship, like Boaz, the redeemer kinsman in the story of Ruth, a family member that ‘goes to bat’ for you and pays your way out of a really bad situation, the one you might call to bail you out, you start with close family members who you are confident are going to care about you.
We can all be in many different pits – where you life is being sucked from you, you are trapped, confined – you are stuck.
You have lost sight of the journey you have been on because you are stuck in a deep pit and cant get out on your own.
“and crowns you with love and compassion”,
He lifts you up and sets you a part
There is a rich reward for God’s children both in this world and in heaven
Here he sets us a part with 2 qualities – love and compassion
The Hebrew word of love here is a beauty and goodness that cannot be opposed
Compassion – ‘Rakh-am’ the womb of compassion – as a mother would have compassion on her child
Also as a Christian we experience the benefit of God
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
To be honest – the Hebrew here is very hard to translate – the difficult word is desire
Some translate as
5 Who asatisfies your 1years with good things, So that your youth is brenewed like the eagle. NASU
5 Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's. KJV
5 Who satisfieth thine old age with good [things]; thy youth is renewed like the eagle's. Darby
The word ‘desire’ is ‘ad-eek’ which literally means ‘mouth’, ornaments, or age / stage of life - carrying with it a sense of finery, trappings, things adorned.
To the ancients the mouth meant more than the physical place of your face where you put food or where words came out.
Just like the eye was the ‘lamp’ of the body where light was transmitted, the mouth was the door to the heart...
Matt 12:34-36
For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. 3
This is why it is important to God that we confess Jesus as Lord – because it is the evidence of what is in our hearts. Or why Paul commended Philemon
Philem 6-7
6 I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. 7
Proverbs says: Prov 4:23-24
23 Above all else, guard your heart,
for it is the wellspring of life.
24 Put away perversity from your mouth;
keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
Here is how you can tell what really satisfies the desires of your heart – what do you always talk about? These are the ornaments of your life
Ornaments – these are the things that are valuable and delight our eyes – our lives
What do we talk about? These are the things we think alot about, our minds dwell on. A benefit of being in a relationship with God is he wants to satisfy our desires with good things...
Much of what i think about is primarily selfish things, things I want
We can think about our jobs, time, money,
Next electronic toy I want to buy – or next pair of shoes I want
We think about family, kids, food, sex – are these things bad – not necessarily
We also think about our hurts, our pain, I wish I were someplace else, I wish my spouse was different, I wish I wasn’t like this,
What would someone say you are always talking about? That is the doorway to your heart -
God wants to increase HIS GOODNESS in our lives. When we look to God to do the things only God could do we discover His goodness flowing through our lives and out of our mouths
AND our God gets bigger and bigger and new dreams are birthed and new freedom found.
He reorients your desires towards true goodness
He renews your ability to dream and be free again