Our God is Omnipotent (Part 2)

And so Romans chapter 1 verse 20, we’ll look at that if you would turn there and look at that with me, Romans 1 verse 20. Romans 1 verse 20 says this, for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Let’s pray together.

Lord, as we come to You now in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we ask for Your grace and help as we study Your Word, as we study the Scripture. Lord, give us understanding. Lord teach us Your ways, teach us, Lord, about Your character and Your attributes. Lord, let us stand in awe. I pray especially, Lord, You would bless Your people with that profound realization of Your great power.

Lord, that each one of us would not just know things in our head, but would be moved by the fact of these truths, so that our life would be affected, so that our worship would be affected. And so Lord, guide us in our study. Lord, let it be profitable and edifying to Your people, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. So we see in verse number 20 of Romans, it says, the Scripture says, even His eternal power and Godhead.

Now you know in Romans chapter 1 what the apostle Paul is talking about is God’s creative acts, right? The things that God has made reveal something about God. That’s what we talked about last time. And one of the two things that God’s creation reveals about Him is His, as verse 20 says, His eternal power, eternal power. And so that’s what verse 20 says. And so we looked at that already and we saw a number of passages of Scripture.

I’ll just give you one that remind us of the relationship between God’s power and His creative acts. For instance, Jeremiah 27 verse 5, God speaking says, I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meat, unto me. And so that’s something we see over and over in Scripture and we won’t rehash all that, but here’s the point.

God has shown and revealed and demonstrated His power by the fact that He has created the world. This is why it is so important that our understanding of the debate between evolution and creation is so important. It is not a minor thing. There are many, especially these days, there are many, many people, many, many people that are, I’m talking very popular in the broader Christian world, that are very popular speakers and figures who do not believe in the six literal days of creation.

They do not believe in that. They believe essentially theism, that God wound the universe up and let it go like a clock and it evolved into what it is today. Now that undermines a great deal of the faith of the Scriptures, but my point is that it also undermines the power of God. It also undermines the power of God because the Bible, repeat, I mean how do you sink that with, He hath made the earth by His power.

I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground. That’s a pretty clear explanation of how man, mankind and the animals and all those things wound up on earth. It wasn’t through an unguided evolutionary process or even a guided evolutionary process. No, it was a direct act of power that God exercised to bring this world and all things in it into existence.

And so, and then we looked, so here’s the thing, by examining the creation of God, the things that God has created in the natural world, by examining those things we can learn about God’s power. And so that’s what we did last time in our Sunday school is we examined a few key things or just a few things that we know show or demonstrate power in God’s universe.

We’re talking about the physical things like the stars, not only the stars on the grand scale but also atoms, the nuclear force that keeps the nucleus together in an atom. We looked at that and the great power that comes out of that nuclear power. We talked about the amount of power we see in a storm or the amount of power we see in the movement of the heavenly bodies and the sun and the moon and the stars and the planets and all of those things.

We don’t think about those being expressions of God’s power but if God put them there, and we absolutely are convinced that he did, then they are expressions of God’s power because power is what keeps them there. That’s why they exist. And so we look at those things and I would challenge you, I know not everybody is into science and that kind of thing. And it’s not even so much science but it has been a long and history tradition among Christians to pay attention to the world and the wonders that God has created because by that you learn about God and his power and his wisdom and all these things that we see in scripture.

So I would challenge you if that’s not something that you’ve paid attention to. Sometimes we have this magazine on the back that’s given to us for free. It’s called Acts and Facts and it discusses some of those things and I would encourage you to read it because as you read it you will learn about the God of heaven who created these things and you learn about his power.

And so that’s one of the biblical methods by which God has revealed himself. So we pay attention to that and we learn about God. So on this in Romans 1 verse 20 moving forward now notice it says, the verse says, even his eternal power. So that idea of eternal gives us the idea of in time it’s limitless but it also speaks of something that is without boundaries.

The idea that God’s eternal power, it means no matter how much he exercises it can never be exhausted because it’s eternal. It never ends no matter how much it’s used. There’s always a full supply. And what we have to remember is that all of the natural things that God has created, we call them natural but in other words they were created by God, the natural laws and those things could not exist except God had put those into place by his power.

And so, and I’m just trying to wind this up, this part about power which is for this reason because the existence of God’s material creation is a manifestation of his power therefore we should not look lightly upon God’s help that comes to us by means of that material creation. Often when you pray you want and I want God to do something special. If you have a financial need you want God to drop it from heaven like you get a $20,000 check from the IRS.

Everybody wants to have that. And I’ve had that happen before, not a $20,000 check but I’ve had, Miss Karen might even remember when we were on the field we got a letter from the IRS, I can’t remember if I was talking to you about that but it was like we owed like $40,000 or something and then so we were praying and we were praying and we were praying and I had no idea and just filing our taxes like normal and no big thing had changed and so we got, and we were on the field so it’s not like you could easily communicate with the IRS, which that’s not humanly possible anyway but it’s impossible to easily communicate with the IRS.

So we had to like, I had to like fax in my, you know, the tax returns that they said they didn’t have or whatever and so I faxed it in of course, no confirmation, no we received it, no nothing. I mean we thought we owed $40,000 or whatever it was and then we got, and then finally my mom got a letter in the mail because that was our address and it was like, it was this one of these, you know, stories, you know, where you get a letter from the IRS, balance zero, you know, it was like wow, you know, that’s what you want and as it turns out they just didn’t get the last two pages of the tax return or something and they, you know, made assumptions on that but anyway so they fixed it but that’s the kind of, that’s the kind of things we want to see.

We want to see the big check, we want to see the big, but don’t forget that natural things the natural process of things are also expressions of God’s power. We’re going to have a wedding on Saturday. Depending on which weather app you look at it’s supposed to rain. So if we pray, I don’t know if it’s going to rain on that day or not but I’m sure there are people who are praying that it doesn’t and if it doesn’t how is that less an expression of God’s power than if, you know, if there was some other, you know, some other spontaneous or sensational thing God did.

No, if natural things are also part of God’s power and those things are under his control and therefore they can be subjects of our prayer, right? And we shouldn’t be shy about that. If we believe, if you believe that God is able to control the weather, I mean think about, think about Joshua in that great battle with the, I want to say it’s the Amalekites, but, not AI, what’s AI?

It was AI, the Gideonites. Gideonites, that’s it. For the Gideonites. Yeah, that’s right because the Gideonites got, they had the special, special treaty, the deal with Israel. Yeah, so during the battle with them, Joshua like basically cried out to God that God would keep the sun up. Now think about that. Think about the power that and the forces that God set in place that in this case causes the earth to rotate on its axis, right?

Think about the power that God had to interrupt to answer his prayer. And he did. I don’t know how all that works. I don’t, I’m not, you know, I’m not, I wasn’t privy to that. That’s been a few thousand years ago. But here’s the point is God did something special but he was accessible because he is the God who has all power. So over the natural things, that’s, in other words that’s fair game for us to talk to God about.

Well, I mean, they said it’s going to rain so I mean it’s going to rain. It might be that it might. Yeah, so yeah exactly. But the, but those things are fair game for us to pray about because God is the God of all power over all of those things. Now, our understanding of God’s power can be formed in two ways.

The first is God’s power seen in his creative acts. So again, anything that we see in creation that exists demonstrates God’s power. Okay, so if you see it, and I’m going somewhere with this and I’m repeating myself a little bit, but if you see it in creation, pay attention because you can see God’s power in that thing. Now as a side note before we get to the second part, I want to remind you of one little statistic, if you will, about the word almighty.

What’s interesting is of course the word almighty, we use it to describe God having all power, his omnipotence, which is what the word means. So the word almighty is an attribute of God, but it’s also, and most frequently it is a title of God, not just an attribute, God is almighty, but God is the almighty as a name, as a title. And it is, the title almighty is a favorite title of God in the book of Job.

And of the 57 instances of the title almighty in the Old Testament, 31 of the 57 are found in Job. So it’s a favorite way to refer to God, almighty. And what you also find, just as a little side note, is although we find the word almighty throughout scripture, both Old and New Testament, it is mostly used in the Pentecostal period. It is mostly used in the period of time prior to God interacting with Israel, the covenant with Israel.

Now you think, well why? What name is most often associated with God’s relationship to Israel? It’s Jehovah, or Lord, you know, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Lord, which is God’s name as he revealed it to Moses, I am that I am. But from that point, you don’t see almighty as much, although it’s there, because of course it’s the same God. But you see it especially prior to that, and there’s a reason for that.

It’s because the name almighty is associated with God’s creative power. And so prior to his relationship to Israel and his covenant with Abraham, in fact that’s how he introduced himself to Abraham early on. He called himself, I am the almighty God. And that’s how Abraham knew him. But as that relationship with Israel progressed, the Lord revealed himself in a new way with a new covenant to Israel, and so there was another name by which he was called.

But prior to that it was the almighty, because that speaks of God’s relationship to humanity as their creator. So almighty is related to God’s creation. And that’s why you see it in Job, because Job has no mention. That’s one feature of Job that’s so unique is it has no mention of Israel at all. And so the name or the title almighty has relationship to humanity as a whole.

And the fact that God has power and authority over us for no other reason except that he created us. If there’s no other reason, he created us, and that’s reason enough. And so you also see the name almighty in the book of Revelation is more frequent than in other places as well. I think in Revelation there are eight mentions of the name almighty, and most of the time, if not every time, it’s spoken by those who are in heaven.

Which also associates it with creation, because of course Revelation deals a lot with God’s judgment of the nations as a whole. God judges the nations because he is their judge. He is the almighty. He is over all men. Not just one man or one group or one nation, but over all. It speaks of his relationship to, as the creator of humanity. Okay, so I said this. I said we can look at, our understanding of God’s power can be seen in two ways.

Number one, through creation. Number one is through the things that God has created. And that’s what we’ve done so far. The laws of nature. The things that God has made. We see that and we think, wow, God is mighty. Look at what he has made. But there’s one other way that you can see God’s power in relation to creation. And it is by miracles. It is by miracles.

We see God’s power clearly demonstrated and seen in his natural creation. Right? The sun, the moon, the stars. Yet, we remember that miraculous events provide additional evidence of God’s power. Because miraculous events overrule the natural power that God established. Right? As an example, when Jesus walked on water, that was a statement of power. Right? Why? Because he was overruling the law, I guess in that case, the law, the power of gravity that would take him, that would cause him to break the surface of the water and sink.

So, in other words, God establishes natural law by power. And he shows his power and his strength by that. And then at times in Scripture, he overrules that. But the only way you can overrule a natural law that God has created by his power is by a greater exercise of power over that natural thing. Right? And that’s what a miracle is. That’s what a miracle is. And there’s a number of them, of course, in Scripture that we see.

In fact, we’re definitely not going to try and cover every one, but there are absolutely miracles that are repeated in Scripture. In other words, we see them kind of as a feature. But in order to understand the power of a miracle, you have to understand the power that the miracle overrides. Right? I’ll give you an example. Well, I’ll give you several examples. You take the Exodus when the children of Israel came out of Egypt.

The Bible very clearly says, I’m going to just read these verses. You can write down the references if you like. Deuteronomy 4.37 says this, You see, so this is not the only time, but you see God is saying, I brought them out by power. The means I exercised was a means of power. Not wisdom, power. Although, of course, we could say wisdom too. But the thing that stood out when God led them out of Egypt was power. Okay?

Deuteronomy 9.29, Yet they are thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest out by thy mighty power, and by thy stretched out arm. 2 Kings 7.36 says this, But the Lord, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, with great power and a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice. See that? Nehemiah 1.10.

Now these are thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power, and by thy strong hand. So when God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, Think about what God did to do that. What did God do to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? What miraculous acts? The plagues. All right? Think about those on an individual basis, just a few of them.

God sent frogs and flies and lice. He sent disease among the cattle. Muren, right? He sent hail and fire. He sent darkness. The Nile turned into blood. Am I getting them all? I know there’s a few more in there. The death of the... Boyles is another one. The death of the firstborn, of course, that’s the end. But only the firstborn. Not the secondborn, but only the firstborn.

The light and the locus. I forgot the locus as well. Exactly. So I think we covered all of them there. So you have all of those things God did just to kind of turn screw on pharaohs that he would let the people go. And finally he did. And God led them through the wilderness. How? A pillar of fire by night, a pillar of a cloud by day.

And then they got to the Red Sea, and of course the army of Egypt is following them to destroy them, and they got to the Red Sea. And then that cloud went and parked right between the two all night long to protect them. So there was darkness for them, but light for Israel. And then, and probably the greatest act of power that God did in the entire Old Testament, as described by Scripture.

In other words, if you take all the miracles and you grade them by might, the one that stands out in Scripture the most is the parting of the Red Sea. And so God parted the Red Sea, but we all know it was actually the Reed Sea, and it was just a swamp basically, thigh deep, and they just kind of sloshed through. Some of you know what I’m talking about. It’s a ridiculous Reed Sea, Red Sea.

Anyway, I can go into that. I can go into that. God parted the Red Sea such that there was a wall on this side and a wall on that side. And the children of Israel walked through on dry ground, and then when they got to the other side, it wasn’t over, the Egyptians tried to follow after them, and then God closed the Red Sea, which was almost like just in case, you know, that additional kind of kick, just in case you thought it was just an accident or something, God brought it back down upon the Egyptians to destroy them and protect Israel.

Okay, now, what...so those are acts of great power, but what did God have to overrule to do them? I mean, he had to overrule the force of gravity, all kinds of laws of physics regarding water, the natural movement of all of these animals and microbes and locusts and lice and flies and disease, and I mean, I don’t know how the water turned into blood, but the Lord did something there, and then the firstborn to cause death, and we don’t know if that was involved with disease or if that was...

but okay, say the death of the firstborn was a spontaneous disease. Why did it affect the firstborn and not the secondborn? See, all of those things overrule the natural power that God had already set up. You see, so that’s why it’s an extra kind of...that’s why a miracle is an extra expression of God’s power. And I think that’s why the Lord does it, is he wants to remind us that we can see his power in natural things and in supernatural things.

We can see it in the regular part of life and when God does something extraordinary. I think honestly, to be honest with you, I think we have been trained in churches to only expect the extraordinary, no, to only want the extraordinary, the sensational, and we overlook a great deal of God’s power, but both apply. Both are true, whether it be the natural or whether it be the supernatural.

But the miracles themselves are repeatedly, you know, this is just...if you ever want to study this out yourself, or maybe you want to check, you want to check me, that’s fine, check me. Do a search in the Scripture about power and find out how many times there’s like over 300, like I think there might be actually 275 occurrences of the word power or something in the Bible.

See how many of them are spoken in relationship to a miracle. See how many of them are spoken in relationship to God’s creation. And you see both, you see both. So when God wants to show his power, he uses both. Now I have, I don’t have time, we got to end there, but when we go, we go into a few more prominent miracles in Scripture that describe God’s power.

And so we’ll look at that next week, Lord willing, and then we will also look into the idea of authority, which is the second kind of aspect of power as we try to round out this subject. All right? All right. Thank you again for being here. Let’s pray together.