Is anything too hard for God?

I need your help. Tell me, is anything impossible for God? Actually, the answer is yes. That may come as a surprise, but it really is true. God cannot do anything that would be inconsistent with His nature. For instance:

·        Because God is Holy, it is impossible for Him to lie.

·        Because God is Truth, He cannot deny himself.

·        Because God is Life, He cannot die. 

·        Because God is perfect, He cannot make a mistake.

·        Because He is immutable, He cannot change.

We must not think of God has some overblown human being. He is not human; He is God Almighty!

As I noted in earlier messages in this series:

·        He is glorious;

·        He is eternal;

·        He is all-knowing; and

·        He is omnipresent.

This morning we will explore the fact that He is omnipotent

OMNI means all.  Potent means powerful. Omnipotent simply means, “all powerful.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines omnipotent this way, “All powerful, having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; God.”

 ·        God is greater than any amount of atomic energy,

·        Greater than the sum total of this world’s gravitational pull,

·        Greater than all military forces – both past and present,

·        Greater than all human causes and movements,

·        Far superior to world history itself;

·        Indeed God’s power is greater than the greatest of powers for He is the source or creator for those powers.

So, how does one spell omnipotent?  G-O-D! God is omnipotent!

LOOK WITH ME NOW AT SOME VERSES OF SCRIPTURE THAT TESTIFY OF THE omnipotence OF GOD

·        Job 42:2, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.”

·        Psalm 62:11, “Power belongs to God.” 

·        Psalm 147:5, “Great is the Lord, and abundant in strength.”

·        Jeremiah 32:27, “I am the LORD…. Is anything too hard for me?'“

·        Matthew 19:26, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

·        Revelation 19:6 (The King James Version), “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”

 Listen to a portion of Ephesians 1:19 from several translations:

·        The exceeding greatness of His power;

·        The immeasurable greatness of his power;

·        The surpassing greatness of His power;

·        The incredible greatness of His power;

·        The immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His power.

Get the message? 

Everything about God is consistent with His omnipotence.  Everything! 

·        His names cry out that He is omnipotent.

·        His character,

·        His Word,

·        His actions,

What an awe-inspiring thought it is that there is ONE BEING IN THIS UNIVERSE WHOSE POWER HAS NO LIMITS, WHO CAN DO ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING HE WILLS TO DO, AND DO IT BY HIS MERE WILL AND WORD, AND DO IT IN THE INSTANT HE WILLS IT!  That being is God!

 I want us to now notice four ways that HE manifests this awesome and omnipotent power.

1.            FIRST, creation

Genesis 1:1 notes, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Verse 3 adds, “And God Said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.”

 I repeat, “AND GOD SAID, ‘LET THERE BE LIGHT, AND THERE WAS LIGHT.’” That is one of the most remarkable sentences that was ever written.  It says so much and yet it says so little. It is so profound and yet at the same time, it is so simple. A literal translation of the passage could go, “AND GOD SAID, LIGHT BE; LIGHT WAS.”

Then as if God merely flipped on a light switch, light came into being. Heavenly light; light without a sun, moon, or stars. Remember, they don’t come into existence until the forth day. Nonetheless, God created light – great light – with Himself as the only light source. “LIGHT BE-LIGHT WAS!”

 God can say it because God can do it!  Jeremiah 32:17 therefore cries, "Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you."

 A well-known American black preacher once mentioned in a sermon that God came out of nowhere. After the message, a fellow challenged him on that point. He said, "Preacher, let's be reasonable about this" to which the minister replied: "Alright, if you want to be reasonable about it, the reason God came from nowhere, there wasn't anywhere for Him to come from, and coming from nowhere, He stood on nothing, for there was nowhere for Him to stand. And standing on nothing, He reached out to where there was nowhere to reach and caught something when there was nothing to catch and hung something on nothing and told it to stay there, and nobody said a word, and the reason nobody said anything, there wasn't anybody there to say anything so God Himself said, 'That's good!'"

 Let’s try a little experiment. I want you to speak something into existence. Let's start with something easy. You can chose between:

·        A blade of grass,

·        A common housefly, or

·        A daisy.  

Be creative. Come on, now. I am waiting!

Hard, isn't it? No, impossible! Man can’t; God can and did. Romans 4:17 declares that the Lord “calls into being that which does not exist.”  That's power!!! 

Psalms 33:6, 9 adds: “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.  For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.” 

Someone once asked Jay Kesler, former President of Youth for Christ International if he believed that God could make a fish big enough to swallow a man? With him being president of a college, with him being above average in intelligence, in a world where we're splitting the atom, and going to the moon and sending spaceships to Neptune; do you really think God can make a fish big enough to swallow a man?  I mean REALLY?  Dr. Kesler's reply is classic.  He said, "I not only believe that He can make such a fish, the God who made the sun and the moon and the stars, if he wanted to, could air-condition and carpet the fish!" 

 Listen to Matthew 3:9, from The New King James Version, “For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”

God can do far more than he has already done:

·        The Lord did not exhaust the limits of his power when He created Adam and Eve, He could have created many more people had He have wanted to.

·        For every one world that He has made, He could have created millions;

·        For every star, if He would have willed, could have been multiplied endlessly.

Tonight, why not go out and look up into the sky. As you do so, remember the God who created the limitless expanse that will be spread out before you. Remember Him and know that He is a Great Creator God who is without limits!

 2.         Next, we will look at his power as it relates to  nature

There is an old saying that goes, you had better not fool with mother nature. God can and does – at his will.

 I am awestruck by the fact that what cannot be done according to the laws, rules, and natural course of nature can yet be done by the GOD OF NATURE who is above these laws and cannot be bound by them!

·        As we know, He once stopped the sun dead still in it’s tracks for almost a whole day.

·        On another occasion, He made the sun reverse directions 10 degrees. 

·        He once made an iron axe-head float;

·        He protected the three Hebrew children while they were in a fiery furnace;

·        And Daniel when he faced the hungry lions in the lion's den.

·        Then too, Jesus walked on water.

·        Also, He ascended up into Heaven without the aid of any sort of rocketry.

Repeatedly the Lord defied laws of physics as well as gravity. He defied them because He ruled them!

 Genesis 18:14 asks, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” The word that is translated "hard" here actually means, "to be beyond one's power, to difficult to do."  While I constantly encounter things that are to hard or to difficult for me, God never runs into that. Nothing in creation, nothing in nature is beyond the scope of His great power.  Nothing.

 His works testify of His power - His omnipotent - awesome power!

3.         HIS POWER OVER THE NATIONS

Isaiah 40:15, 23-24 cries, “Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales.... He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.”

Napoleon was the greatest general of his day and maybe even of all time. He was also unequaled as a politician. He was known for a most unconquerable will. He willed to have the whole world at his feet; and it looked as if nothing could prevent that from happening.  BUT GOD WILLED OTHERWISE.

History records how the grand army of Napoleon marched on Moscow after boasting "Russia next, the Britain and Napoleon shall rule the world." But friends, God spoke and a tiny snowflake fell on the emperor's coat sleeve. He brushed it off as nothing. Then another fell, and another, and another and they kept on falling until Napoleon's proud army was reeling back, broken and defeated, a sick shadow of it's former strength. History tells us that the emperor muttered darkly, “God Almighty was too much for me.”

God's armies of the elements were loosed and the history of the world was changed by the SNOWS AT MOSCOW and the RAINS AT WATERLOO!

 Daniel knew of the power of God. He wrote: “All the inhabitants of the earth [are] reputed as nothing; God does according to His will in the army of heaven and [among] the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” Daniel 4:35 (The New King James Version)

 Psalm 33:10-11 adds, “The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.  But the plans of the LORD stand firm for ever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.”

 Do you realize just how many kings, emperors, chiefs, pharaohs, Caesars, prime ministers, and presidents have ruled at one time or another on this earth? No doubt there have been millions down through the ages. Nevertheless there has been only One True God on the throne in heaven during all that time. Kingdoms rise and fall but His reign is without end.

 In 1997 I was a part of a preaching team that went into Romania in eastern Europe. Four of us went there to preach in the evenings and to teach at a pastor’s school during the day. We reserved our last day in the country for sightseeing. That morning we visited what was once called Ceausescu's Palace. Ceausescu was the ruthless communist dictator that ruled Romania with an iron fist until he and his wife were finally executed following the revolution of 1989.

From 1984 to 1989 Ceausescu was busy with the construction of his parliament building. It was only 70% complete when he died. The place is huge; it is the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon in Washington, D.C It has 440 offices plus dozens of reception halls, conference rooms and assembly halls. Over one-third of old Bucharest was leveled in order to construct the palace and the cost of the place was somewhere around $2 billion. You wouldn’t believe the gold, marble, and native woods that decorate every room. In some rooms the curtains are 70’ long. The crystal chandeliers defy description.

So much for the Chamber of Commerce report. In one of the offices we visited, we were told by our guide that Ceausescu had planned on using the room as the nation’s communist party meeting hall. It was a great room with massive wooden doors and state-of-the-art electronics. A large number of plush leather chairs were pushed up against a rich wooden horseshoe shaped table. It was a beautiful place.

·        As we prepared to move on, I couldn’t help but think that that very room had been dedicated to atheistic communism.

·        That those who were to sit there denied the existence of God and hated and terribly persecuted the Romanian church.

·        That the plans and strategies of the devil were to be hatched in that very place.

Nonetheless, Ceausescu was gone as were the communists  and there in that very room stood four Pentecostal preachers from America who were in the country to teach and preach about the living Savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth!

As these thoughts raced through my mind, I couldn’t help myself. I had to say aloud: “Jesus Christ is Lord!” It just welled up and out!

In another great hall, the team had to wait on the guide for a few minutes. As we waited, we stood together and sang “Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art, How great Thou art.” God was there. God was in Bucharest, Romania, in Ceausescu's Palace. 

·        The Berlin Wall has come down,

·        The USSR has become history,

·        And Ceausescu is dead.

I have studied with great interest the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern European Communism and there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever but that the biggest factor in these unique events was an omnipotent God who was  moved by believing prayer. He brought the Red Bear and it’s allies to their knees! Oh, friends, what a mighty God we serve!

 I am not too awfully concerned about China, the bomb, or the ravings of some half-crazed Islamic terrorist. In spite of this and all else, I know that God is omnipotent, that He reigns, and that His Kingdom will come and His will will be done on earth even as it is done in heaven.

 Revelation 11:15 promises that in due time the kingdoms of this world will “become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.” 

4.         LETS NOW NOTE THAT HE HAS POWER OVER DEATH

Nothing seems as final as complete or hopeless as death. It’s everywhere reminding us that while we live we are in the act of dying; that someday our names will be craved on a cold hard block of granite. 

 We jog.  We diet.  We pump iron.  We play golf.  We try with everything that is within us to escape it, but we can’t. The best that we can hope for is that we can postpone the inevitable.

 Oh, perish the though, but have we been left to the whims of this dreaded enemy? Is there not a savior somewhere that can rescue us? Yes, yes, yes there is! His name is Jesus! He interrupted every funeral that he attended. Whenever Jesus came upon a dead person, he would either say, “Get up!” or “Come out of there” and the dead person had no choice but to obey!   

The Apostle Paul wrote these familiar words in 1 Corinthians 15:51-57, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed -- in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  Then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.'  'Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

 God is more powerful even than death. By His awesome power every man, woman, boy, and girl who has ever lived will be raised from the dead. The saved to everlasting life, the lost to eternal destruction. He can promise that for He and He alone has power over death!

 WHAT ARE SOME OF THE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD?

1.         IT ASSURES US THAT HE IS ABLE

A biblical translator once translated one of the names of God, “He is able.”  He is!  Able to do what, you ask?  Whatever! 

 ·        He is able to guard us while we are battling temptation,

·        He is able to comfort us in affliction,

·        He is able to keep us from falling away.

·        He is able to save;

·        He is able to heal;

·        He is able to deliver;

·        He is able to restore;

·        He is able to raise us from the dead;

·        He is able to take us to be with Him in heaven;

·        He is able to keep that which we commit unto Him.

He is able!

 You see:

·        His names, 

·        His creative acts,

·        His power over nature,

·        His power over nations,

·        His power and place as seen in the Word--

Everything comes together in a beautiful harmony to declare, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).

 Someone once observed, “When God is going to do something wonderful He begins with a difficulty. If God is going to do something very wonderful, He begins with an impossibility.  Regardless, He is able!

 2.         HE GIVES US POWER

Listen to the words of Isaiah 40:28-31, “Don't you yet understand? Don't you know by now that the everlasting God, the Creator of the farthest parts of the earth, never grows faint or weary? No one can fathom the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the tired and worn out, and strength to the weak.  Even the youths shall be exhausted, and the young men will all give up. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

 Do you ever get tired?  Boy, I do.  God doesn’t.  The Bible says so. He does not exert energy to do what He does. He doesn’t strain, grunt, or groan. He doesn’t get sweaty because something is too hard to lift or too difficult to make. It takes no more effort for God to create a universe than it does for Him to create an ant. 

 Not only does He have this power, but according to the passage I just read, He shares His strength with us to the extent that we are able to “mount up with wings like eagles; run and not be weary; walk and not faint.”

In addition to this:

·        The Word teaches us that He has given us power over the evil one including unclean spirits and devils.

·        He has given us power and authority over temptation, and sin; 

·        He has given us power to witness;

·        He has given us certain gifts of power including healing, miracles and faith. 

As Christians, we have power -- the imparted power of the Holy Spirit!

 We are often like the little boy whose father told him to pick up a heavy rock that was in their way. The boy tried, grunted, and finally said, “Daddy, I can’t lift it.”

His daddy said, “Yes, you can.”

The boy tried again.  “Ughhhh.  Daddy, I can’t lift it.”

“Yes you can.”

The boy, believing his father, went back and tried it a third time but only to again meet with the same result.  “Daddy, I really can’t lift the rock.”

“Yes, you can son.  You’re not using all of your strength.”  The father then went over to the lad and put his arm around the child and said, “Son, you did not ask me to help you.”

God can help you pick up the heavy rocks in your life. He has repeatedly promised us power to help. We just need to call upon His name. He is standing nearby simply awaiting our call. Believe me, there is power, wonder working power in the name of the Lord!

 3.            FINALLY, HE HAS POWER TO SAVE

I want to make a bold statement here. Greater power is put forth in conversion than was expended in creation. When God made the world, He met with no opposition; for there was no devil, the world had no will with which to resist His commands, there was simply nothing there to hinder Him.

In conversion, though, He has to contend with the human will, with the opposition of Satan, the lure of temptation and the affection with this present evil world. The world, the flesh and the devil do not give up their prey easily.

Nevertheless, we remember the stories of:

·        The Prodigal Son,

·        Peter,

·        Paul,

·        The Woman at the Well,

·        The woman that had been caught in the very act of adultery,

·        Matthew, and

·        Zaccheaus.

Hey these were all at one time or another real bad people! Paul in fact called himself “the chief of sinners.”

 Along this line, have you ever given thought to the fact of just how few so-called “good” sinners were saved in the Bible? Almost every one who came to God was a “no-good” in the eyes of the world. Nevertheless, the Lord redeemed them one and all. The Bible teaches us that truly the Lord has power to save. 

Shortly after Viet Nam fell, Phom Hinn tried unsuccessfully to escape his country. Hinn had been a professing Christian who worked with some American missionaries. I will let him tell you the rest in his own words:

            “I was put behind prison bars. Three different prisons I was taken to. And when I was in one of these prisons, they were tormenting my mind, calling me a CIA agent, working for the Americans, a Christian.” 

            “Then they started to brainwash me. They gave me books in Vietnamese by Marx and Lenin. They gave me the writings of all of these men telling me that the capitalist was a liar, the American was a deceiver. And all of these things were bombarding my mind. Then one day, they gave me a book written by Engalls, who was the patron of Marx and in that book he described the man living under capitalistic oppression, destined to be a communist. “The more I read it, the more it started to change me. For the first time in my life, I wondered if I’d believed a lie. Maybe my American missionary friends had lied.  Maybe the capitalistic system was all a lie. As I was on the verge of breaking, they gave me one more book written by a French author, a woman.  And that woman’s book had the story of a priest who was trying to win a young boy for the priesthood. And one day the young boy comes home from school and listens through the key hole and then he finds out his mother is having an illicit relationship with the priest. In fact, he is the illegitimate son of that priest and that book slashed my faith in God and the church once and for all.”

            “God I don’t believe in you. I don’t believe in any of this.” And as I came to that verge of abandoning everything, the commander put me in charge of latrine duty -- to clean the toilets in that dirty camp.”

            “I started to clean that dirty place and the stench... ohhh!”  As he went on to share his testimony he apologized due to any offense his story might cause, then he continued, “There was a small can in that latrine with used pieces of paper that had been used as toilet paper. And as I was about to empty it, I thought I saw it was English. I looked closer. I saw ‘Romans’ written on the top.”

            And he said, “My brother, forgive me. I picked up that dirty piece of soiled paper with human excrement wiped on it. I washed it, put it into the shorts pocket I had, went back into my room and, under the mosquito net, I flashed a light and there near midnight I started reading this: “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: 'For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

He bent his knees under that mosquito net and gave his lif