How Big Is Your God

[00:00:00] This audio sermon is provided by AnabaptistSermons.com and may be freely copied and distributed. You may not sell or edit this sermon. Our prayer is that you would be blessed by this ministry. Good morning. Good morning. A lot of smiling faces. Oh, now Dave's not here. Dave and Anna. Welcome, Lynn, First Burger family. Welcome again. [00:00:37] See, I cheated and I went on the phone out there. I didn't really know. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for this time. And I pray, Lord, that you would draw us to you, draw not only our minds and our thoughts to you, but I pray, Lord, that you would draw our hearts to you by your Holy Spirit. I pray that you would encourage us and that you would strengthen us and most important, Lord, I pray that you would convict us so we can grow in you. In Jesus' name, Amen. [00:01:14] Okay, I have some verses to hand out for you to look up. I need somebody that is younger than 12. Okay, John 3.16. You look up John 3.16, okay? Now maybe somebody that is 12 to 18. I need you to look up Jeremiah 31.3. [00:01:50] Somebody? I'll start naming names. Great. Okay, now, somebody look up Romans 5.8. Maybe another under 18. Cam? Great. Thanks for raising your hand. Ephesians 2, verses 4 and 5. Anybody? Anabaptist, Anabaptist, Anabaptist [00:02:40] and I thought it was interesting, you know, this star is so big and this is how big the earth is and this is how much bigger, all that stuff. And I thought, what? That's neat, you know, but it really didn't really soak in that much. Then this year in choir, covenant choir, our theme is how big is God? I was thinking, well, that's neat. Yeah, he's big. And I had to think of the song, Our God is So Big, and we sing it, and that he's this big. [00:03:19] And that doesn't even do justice, does it? And I was just thinking, I mean, that just kind of got my mind going on how big God is. And I don't know, maybe I shared some of this information with you, but I started texting Cha-Cha to get some information. So this is the information I got for you. It's pretty interesting. You may want to write it down if you have a paper and pencil. Don't lose your spot there. You don't need to. Okay. Okay. I was also, I saw this article. [00:03:53] I think it was in USA Today somewhere. It was a free paper on top of a trash can somewhere that said, there was a little article in there about this new galaxy that they have found that's 320 million light years away. Hey, that got me curious. How far away is this? Does anybody know how far a light year is? Anybody, quickly. A light year. How long does it, how far does light travel in one year? Anybody know? Try 6 trillion miles. [00:04:27] Now, somebody while I'm talking here, figure out how many zeros that is. Okay, it's 12, I'll tell you. 12 zeros, 6 trillion. It's actually 5,878,173,478,565. That's a long ways. Okay, so then I multiplied that times 320,000,000. Okay, and that came out to 192 and then 21 zeros. That's eight commas. I don't know if you were counting. That's miles. Okay, so then I multiplied that by 5,280, which would get me how many feet that is. And that's a very big number. [00:05:16] And then I just got to thinking, if, you know, God, you know, God is much bigger than that yet. And God made this, made that. And I was thinking, let's just say that God would be exactly 320 million light years tall. And I'm not even six foot. What would be the difference? [00:05:47] How big of a microscope would I need to see something that would be that small? You know, like if I was that big. And that just, there's, we can't even fathom. We can't even begin to begin to begin to think about how big that is. And that's our God who loves us. And the song, how can it be that God should love or die for me? [00:06:20] How can that be? Or that He would, that He should, or that He even would die for you? And you're just a little, just like any of us. That boggles my mind. And so how is it that I can go throughout life doing my own thing and not the will of God who loves me? How can that be? [00:06:53] How? I could just sit and think and think and think on this. And, you know, I don't want to take a whole lot of time, but, you know, even, okay, across the United States is 2,800 miles. Has anybody driven across the United States? If you would drive, I forget how fast now, and around the world is 24,000 some hundred miles. If you would drive 300 miles an hour, it would take you three and a half days. 300 miles an hour would take you three and a half days to go around the world. [00:07:27] But yet, the earth would fit inside the sun 109 times. and the sun would fit into the biggest star a million times. Or maybe it's a billion. I forget. Who cares when you get that big? And God created all this and He loves us and He is jealous of us. He wants a relationship with us. And He gives us this choice to serve Him and to love Him back because He first loved us [00:08:01] and then we go on our way throughout life. Pursuing our own things Okay, John 3.16 Read it really loud, John 3.16 Now, we all know that verse [00:08:33] My heart. And do we take it to heart? Do we really see? You know, if we would look at God's love, it should compel us beyond us, you know, to seek Him and to serve Him. Okay, next one. Was yours Jeremiah 31? Three. The Lord has appeared above unto me saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness I have drawn thee. [00:09:24] Ephesians 2, 4, and 5. Who has that one? Oh, yeah. 1 John 3, 1. Verse 1. Who was that? Have you ever just looked up all the verses about God's love for us in the Bible? [00:10:08] There's like lots and lots. So I just picked out a few. They're very familiar verses, but is what I, you know, Maybe we can be refreshed by these very familiar verses. Now I'm going to read from 1 John 4, verses 9 to 19. In this, the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. [00:10:41] That's how we know God loves us. In this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us of His Spirit. Amen, somebody. [00:11:13] And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. I mean, where would we be if God wouldn't be abiding in us? Man, it would be worse off, wouldn't it? And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because he is, so are we in this world. [00:11:52] There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us. What is the greatest privilege and the greatest honor for us to do? It has to be, I mean, it has to be to do the will of God. I mean, I'm thinking of just everything. [00:12:27] Thinking of how big God really is and then why He should even die for me. Why He should even love me. So, why it has got to be the greatest honor and the greatest privilege to do the will of God. And so, what is the will of God? You know, Jesus taught his disciples that. And I think, well, okay, there's a bunch of little verses. [00:13:03] Matthew 7 There's a couple of verses in Matthew. Verse 21 Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. So who will enter the kingdom of heaven? Those that do his will. And also in chapter 12, verse 50, [00:13:37] For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and my sister. Those were his true brothers and sisters. In 1 Peter, In 1 Peter chapter 4 verses 1 and 2 Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, [00:14:12] for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men but for the will of God. That's why he has set us free. That's why he came to die for us. That's why he set us free to do what? To do his will. And Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10 [00:14:53] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. That's why He created us new. That's why He made us. It's not that He didn't set us free so that we can live how we want to live. Do whatever we want to do. Spend money however we want to spend it just because we have it. To live for ourselves. [00:15:25] But it was so that we should walk in the way God has planned for us to walk. God has a plan. You know, I heard that for a long time. God has a plan for your life. God has a plan for your life. For youth, where are you going to live? Who are you going to marry? What for a job are you going to have? You know all that. You're going to be a dairy farmer all your life? Is that what God wants for you? Or, what does he have? You ever wonder, you ever seek God in your youth? I know I didn't. My girlfriend's dad's got a job for me. I'm just going to go work there. I don't want to be a truck driver. [00:15:57] Did I seek God? Did I ever wonder what God's plan is? You know, and as I'm talking about the will of God, I was thinking, it's our privilege, it's our honor to do His will. Well, what is that? Is that just where we live? Or it would also apply to how I live my life, the thoughts that I have, how He convicts me. You know, what am I doing? Am I living the way that God wants me to live? [00:16:30] Doing His will? It could be all of that. And I'm not sure where you all are at this morning. You know, as a youth, or as an old guy, 40 years old, family, you know, we're all at different places. And when I say, when I ask the question, are you doing God's will? It could mean a couple different things. So, think about what is God's will for your life? What is it? How does He want you to live? What does He want you to be working? [00:17:03] What are you pursuing? Are you pursuing God's will? And when you know God's will, are your decisions helping you towards that? Boy, I'm not sure if that made any sense. I confused myself. And I'm not sure how much, so much, I think that if we don't focus on that, [00:17:38] if we don't focus on looking at what God's will is for our lives, I think it's going to create shallowness and less power, I think. Because if we're so focused on just leading people to Christ for forgiveness, if we're just looking for forgiveness, we're just going to be shallow. But really, forgiveness is just the beginning of a spirit-filled Christian walk. [00:18:18] It's just the beginning. You know, to live a life that is fully entrusted or you're totally given up to God's will, that's what we need to be after. There's a little bit of a thing I wanted to talk about in just a couple of minutes. [00:18:53] So, as I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking, man, I've really messed up. Because I haven't always done God's will. So, does that mean that it's over for me? No way. We all know the answer to that. I think that I could get pretty discouraged in that I didn't seek God. So did I marry the right person? Of course I did. No doubt in my mind. Am I doing the right job? I think so. [00:19:26] Um, but if we don't, okay, um, we know that David, um, was a man after God's own heart, says that in scripture, and he made a lot of mistakes. God can still use us, I think, and I want to say that, give that to you, because I think that for me it'd be easy to get discouraged and say, We can say, well, I messed up and now it's all over with. And maybe God's will was for me to go down this road. [00:19:57] Now I went down this road. Well, that's not true. We can turn back to Christ. Say, hey, I went this wrong direction. And turn around full circle. Well, that wouldn't be a full circle. Yeah, it would be. Full circle. And come back to Christ and repent. Are our hearts set on doing God's will? We would all raise our hands, yes. We want to do God's will. [00:20:29] But the kicker for me was the word, if you add in there, all of God's will. That's what's tough, because to be totally obedient to Him, and then we say, well, how do we do that? Well, we need more of Christ. We need more of His Holy Spirit. Amen. So, and I think another key thing for me in a ways is that as I draw closer to Him, as I more and more, as I obey Him more, I see my sinfulness more and more. [00:21:07] And I was going to look at Paul's life in his letters, in the different things that he said, and I didn't write them down, but you can see a progression. Maybe I'll share that next time. I'll check it out. But with each letter, he got a little bit closer to God and he saw his sin a little bit more. And I should have had examples, and I didn't. That was interesting. I thought I was on to something and then I forgot it and it got late and I didn't get it done. But anyways, as we draw closer to God, we're going to see our sin. [00:21:40] We're going to loathe ourselves. We're going to say, hey, man, we are not all that we're cracked up to be. And sometimes we come to church and we act a certain way and we say these things, but really deep inside we're not as spiritual as what we really think that we are, or that we really say that we are, knowing that we're really not. And so we need to be honest. As God draws us, as God speaks to us, as His Holy Spirit speaks to us, we need to humble ourselves. How else did we come to Christ? [00:22:11] We had a decision to make. God called us and we said, hey, I'm going to give up for Him. So there are so many decisions that we have. God gives us the choice. He gave Adam and Eve. We can go on and on and on. And when we make these decisions, they need to be focused on Christ. In the New Testament, we know how Christ urges us To follow Him. [00:22:43] And if you look at His life, no matter what happened to Him, nothing stopped Him from doing the will of His Father. Nothing stopped Him from doing the will of His Father. In John 4, He says, My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. And so I had food. I think it says meat somewhere. But food, man, I crave food. If you go without food for a while, you get pretty hungry. [00:23:17] And you crave even certain foods. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. You crave. What are we craving this morning spiritually? Do we crave Him? Do we crave to be obedient to Him and to do the will of God in our life, Whether it's where he wants me to work, where he wants me to live, whether it's on the mission field, what for job he wants me to do, or whether it's having right attitudes. [00:23:48] Man, I know I'm critical of this brother. And I can be so focused on Enos' problems when really there are spots on my eyes and it looks like there are spots on him. When really I'm the one that has the problem. You know, what are we doing with what God is telling us? And what are we craving after? Whatever we crave, that's what we're going to go after. If we're seeking to justify ourselves, we'll justify ourselves. [00:24:19] We're seeking self, then we're going to justify ourselves. If we're seeking God and we want more of Him, we want more of the Holy Spirit, we're going to be honest and we're going to be humble. And we're going to say, you know what, I want more of God. And the only way to get more of God is if I'm obedient to Him in this area. And that can be many different areas. Are we craving to do God's will? Are we seeking? Are we hungry? And how silly and how foolish it is not to seek God's guidance. [00:24:53] I had to think of, Adalconian's coming and he has a lot of stories about being in the jungle. And I don't know if he talks about this or not, but I had a, he was telling some stories how he's running through the jungle and it's dark and he can't see where he's going and all this stuff. I just had to think, man, what if that was me in the jungle? What if you were in the jungle all by yourself in the jungle? I had to think of our woods. That's not so scary, but a jungle. You don't know which way you would need to go. [00:25:24] There's no path. You're stuck there. And it's pitch black. No stars are out. You can't see the hand in front of you. And then somebody would come along and say, hey, I know how to go. It's a five-mile trip from here. Just follow me. You're going to say, no way. I'm going on my own. He said, I've been living here for 20 years. I know exactly where to go. Just follow me. Would you follow him? Of course you would. Or would you say, no, I'm going to go do my own thing. So here's Christ, Holy Spirit, He drew us into His fold and now He wants to lead us. [00:26:03] And we're not going to follow Him? We're not going to seek His guidance? We're going to go do our own thing? A decision comes up and we need to make it right away? The reason I'm saying all this is because I've done all this. There's been a lot of times when I knew that I should be doing this, but I went my own way, chose my own path. [00:26:34] And what did it get me? I had to think of Matthew 11. I'll read a few verses. It should be probably pretty familiar to you all about the yoke. Matthew 11, verse 28 to 30 Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [00:27:08] For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. If I try to live my life without God's guidance, without doing His will, going my own way, the burden and the yoke is going to be very, very heavy. I had to think of a yoke too. I think I've seen some cows to a yoke. And they work together and you know how they do. And I also know that if there's a young cow, a young oxen, [00:27:40] They won't put two young oxen together. They'll put one with the experienced one. That way that young one can't go too far ahead and can't lag behind. He's right there with them. Got to be right there with them. But we have to choose that yoke. He says, take my yoke upon you. He's offering it to us. for his my yoke is easy and my burden is light [00:28:11] if we try to go on our own ways it's going to be very heavy frustrations, defeats, regrets because we're trying to do it all on our own I just think that there were so many times I rejected that invitation I rejected his counsel I'm in a jungle He's saying, hey look, just take my yoke upon you. It'll be light and easy. Just follow me. And I say, no, I'm going on my own. [00:28:42] And how hard of a road that was compared to if I would have been truthful and honest and just and following after righteousness, how free I would be. How free I would have been. And, you know, you look at all the hurts that come from doing my own thing, all the pain, it's unbelievable and very, very sad. [00:29:15] But I can't dwell there. I have to look at, look, now I'm turned around. I'm in Christ. But people, let's follow Him with all of our hearts. Let's take that yoke upon us. Let's seek Him and His guidance. And He says, turn left. Okay, I don't understand. Why? What do I got to turn left for? I can go this way. Why do I got to? No, dude. [00:29:46] You turn left. Because it's black. It's dark. You can't see your way. And you're going to say, no, I'm going my way. He says, hey, turn left. And the weird thing is that He would let you go because you decided He'll let you go. It's your choice. It's going to be harder. So let's look at who God is. Let's see if, does He deserve, does He deserve our praise and our worship and our following and our service to Him? [00:30:21] Of course He does. How foolish to reject His invitation. Enoch walked with God, Genesis 5. God was pleased with him. We read that in Hebrews 11, I think. We can only please God by living and moving and doing under His yoke, in His will. [00:30:53] But if we have disobeyed God in some way, if you have, have you this morning? Have you? Are you still trying to do your own thing? Live your own way? I'm telling you, turn around and repent, Jonah. You know, what a Jonah, Jonah, he's going his own way. No way I ain't going those people, I'm going this way. He found it pretty rough on himself. Submit to His will to your life, for your life. [00:31:32] Get your eyes off yourself and what you want for your life. What does God want? Seek Him. How much do you pray about it? I know some of you with jobs gone and done a lot of praying. Get into His Son. What does that mean? Get into His Son. Step into His light. That's His Word. Just stay there. Seek Him. In closing, I wanted to look at a couple of verses in Ephesians 5. [00:32:13] Verse 15 to 17. See then that you walk circumspectfully or carefully, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil, the days are dark. Hello? We know that. We have got to watch where we go. We've got to watch what we do. We've got to watch who we hang out with. We've got to watch our conversation at work and people that are joking nastily over here and we're going to laugh with them. What for music do we listen to? [00:32:49] Walk carefully, not as fools, but as wise, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. In other words, seek Him. Then Paul said to Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 7, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. That is what we want to be able to say. [00:33:20] We walk our own way, we forget who God is, we forget how big He is, we forget that He loves us and why He would even love us. Why should He even die for us? We're going to do our own thing. We will have many regrets. We will not be able to say to our children, follow me as I follow Christ. That's what Paul said. How many people did he say that to? How many different churches? I didn't even look it up. But he's saying it to a lot of people. Here's his life. Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. Can we say that to our children? [00:33:52] Look, if you do as I do, if you have the same attitudes as I have, if you do everything just like me, just follow me. I don't know if I can say that. I mean, I think that I can. Knowing that I'm going to mess up. Knowing that I'm going to make a wrong turn. Knowing that I'm going to come back and I'm going to say sorry. We can live perfectly. But how are we living? [00:34:23] Are we living perfectly in His will? Am I talking the way that He wants me to talk? My thinking what He wants me to think. That was a challenge for me. May God be praised.