When Man Is Big and God Is Small

[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. Well, it's good to be here tonight, and I greet you in the name of Jesus, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to be here. Thanks for inviting the conference here, and thanks to Brother Paul for inviting me to be part of it. [00:00:34] It's always a treasure to be able to speak from God's Word and to speak about God. This topic of man being big and God being small is one that is very intensely practical. I was thinking about as we sung the last hymn, I need thee every hour, and I wondered, is that really true, that I need him every hour? [00:01:07] Well, it's true that I do. The question perhaps should be, do I know that I need him every hour? And is God big in my life or is he small? Paul already talked about the whole question of the debate that's kind of going on right now about open theism. And if you've gotten Informer, the last couple of times they've had an article in there about that, a continued article. [00:01:40] Just the whole question about how much does God know? And it looks like there's going to be some really interesting topics this weekend on that whole thing. I wish I could be here for it, but we had some earlier commitments that are keeping us from that. Is man big and is God small? Well, really, that's not true. Man is not big and God is not small. You can see that so very clearly in Isaiah 40 when you see how the nations are as nothing, as a drop in a bucket. [00:02:19] But sometimes we are foolish enough to think or to allow ourselves to believe that we are big. Maybe not, we don't say it. None of us actually say, I am big, in the sense of comparing ourselves to, you know, in light of our destiny or whatever. But sometimes the way we live, we are saying, I am big. But interestingly enough, we can't say that we are big without also saying that God is small. [00:02:54] The two go together. If God is big, then we are small. It can't be that we're both big. But if man is big, then God is small. Romans 1 talks about this. Why don't you turn with me to Romans 1. This is a familiar passage that talks about the digression of man and of culture. And it's one that we can see in our own culture. And if you study cultures of the past, you can see it in those cultures as well. [00:03:31] Verse 18 says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it unto them. 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 man is without excuse. [00:04:03] That's why the wrath of God is revealed. It talks about in 2 Peter how there's scoffers. Where is this end time, this climactic end that's going to come? And sometimes I wonder if I really believe there's going to come an end and a time where judgment will be meted out. The wrath of God is revealed because we can know about God through creation [00:04:34] And yet it goes on to say that we've chosen to reject that Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God They didn't make him big That's what it means to glorify It means to lift up, to make big They didn't make him big But became vain in their imaginations And vain has an idea of emptiness, but you could almost a very, very loose translation or interpretation would be, they became big in their own sight. [00:05:07] And their foolish heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like into corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. He goes on to talk about how God turned him over to depravity [00:05:48] And we can see that happening But look at what it says in verse 21 even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. And this word knowledge is an interesting, it has an intensifier with it, epinosis. It has the idea of to know in such a way as to participate with. And man rejected that, did not want to know God in a way of participating with him. [00:06:19] And so because of that, God gave them over to reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient This is an age-old problem, this problem of man wanting to make man big and God small It's been around from the very beginning In fact, you could say it was part of the original temptation in the garden To make man big If Satan, the serpent, tempted Eve and said, you know, don't you want to become like gods, knowing good and evil? [00:06:59] And basically he was saying, don't you want to be big, like God? And she fell for it. And Adam fell for it. And all through history, think of different times. After the fall, you could see it even starting with Cain. You could see he didn't listen to God. God tried to intervene with Cain, and Cain didn't pay any attention. He took things in his own hands. [00:07:31] You think about the pre-flood man, the time before the flood, and coming up to that. The Bible says that the imaginative heart was evil continually, and God, it says, he repented that he had made man. Now, I'd like to have Brother Paul explain what that means, that God repented that he made man. Perhaps it's a way of us understanding God. God's sovereignty is very difficult for us to really get a hold of. [00:08:04] This whole question of how much does God know and when does he know it, the sovereignty of God, just came up this last Wednesday night. I was speaking with our youth and there was a young man there that has kind of a loose connection with our youth and is in school right now, going to college, a pre-med student. and he was talking with some other young people at in their fellowship some kind of a Christian [00:08:38] fellowship that is on the campus there I forget the name of it and he's quite involved in it but they got to talking about how much does God know and if he knows what the future holds then He's responsible for it, right? So how can he know what the future is? And so they talked about this and kind of batted it back and forth and finally came up with the conclusion that [00:09:08] God really doesn't know for sure what's going to happen, but he knows all the possibilities of what's going to happen. What do you think about that? You know, in some ways, this whole sovereignty thing for some of us in the conservative circles maybe scares us a little bit because we think Calvinism and we think of the ultra-Calvinists or the extreme Calvinists who would say that, you know, God has destined who's going to go to heaven and who's not. [00:09:43] In fact, if you look at mission history, one of the reasons that there were no missions in the Protestant circles for almost 200 years after the Reformation, other than the Anabaptists primarily, but outside of that in the Protestant circles, there really wasn't a lot of mission work, and a lot of it had to do with the influence of John Calvin and this whole thing of the sovereignty of God. William Carey started getting a hold of this concept of the heathen needing to hear the gospel [00:10:18] and an older preacher told him, said sit down, when God wants to save the heathen he can do it in his own way and he doesn't need your help in fact there was a Scottish Presbyterian church that kind of came up with a document and they said that it would actually take glory away from God for us to share our faith because we would be trying to do something that he's very capable of doing himself and that is saving who he wants to save and condemning those that he wants to. [00:10:49] So if we would actually share our faith or send missionaries out, we'd be taking away from God's glory. Well, that's a very extreme view of Calvinism, I mean of the whole sovereignty of God that's very distorted. It is something that we can't fully understand And yet, I take great comfort in knowing that God knows the future And one of my responses to this young man the other night was I think one of the reasons this is complicated [00:11:20] Partly is because we can't understand what it's like to not be bound by time God knows 50 years from now Now, Sunday night, Friday night, whatever, you know, 50 years from now, he knows what's going to happen then just as good as he knows what's going on today. And how can we comprehend that? That's very difficult for us to understand. But just because God knows it does not mean that he has taken away our choice. [00:11:58] For instance, I could be standing on a high hill and looking down and see a curve in the road and two vehicles coming towards that curve and neither one can see each other and I can see what's going to happen and they're going to run into each other. Does that make me responsible? No. They still have those choices. And that's kind of a crude illustration but God knows what's going to happen and he works in our lives but he still, leaves man responsible for the choices that he makes. [00:12:32] But this whole thing of man wanting to be big is a problem that we've struggled with. God created us with choice. And even before the fall, Adam and Eve were tempted to want to become like God, knowing good and evil. And since the fall, it has been our driving motivation, I guess, to want to be in control of our own life, to want to do our own thing, and to not pay attention to God as it talks about here in Romans 1. [00:13:12] After the flood, you think this is a new start, you know, Grandpa told Grandchild what happened, the flood, Noah told his sons, they told their sons, and, you know, we could avoid this kind of thing again, right? But it wasn't that long, I don't know how long, not in Bible it wasn't long, it was probably many years But after a while, here man was trying to be big again, the Tower of Babel [00:13:43] And wanting to try to make a name for himself All the way through scripture we see this theme of be careful not to think more of yourself than what you should You see it in the Exodus, in the children of Israel and how quick they were to doubt God or to take things into their own hands. You see it when they were getting ready to come into the land of Canaan. [00:14:16] You see it after they were in the land of Canaan. Moses gave his final instructions to the children of Israel and he said, Be careful in Deuteronomy 8. Be careful that when you get into the land and you get satisfied and you've got everything you want, kind of like living in America, be careful that you don't forget God. Don't forget what he's done. Isaiah 53 says [00:14:47] All we like sheep have gone astray We have turned everyone to his own way And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all But the first part of that verse is talking about that tendency That after the fall, our tendency is to want to go our own way To make ourselves big and to make God small All the way through the Bible, even in the period of the exile, Jeremiah is talking. [00:15:18] Turn with me there in Jeremiah to chapter 44. Kind of the context here is that Jeremiah had told the remnant after the Babylonians had come and taken most of the children of Israel and there's just a few people left, the poor people left [00:15:50] Jeremiah was given the option of staying and he stayed too and he told told them this is going to happen told them long time before this is going to happen the Chaldeans are going to come and they're going to take over and we should just submit to them go live in their land and the Israelites resisted resisted and finally it happened sure enough a lot of them are taken some of them are left and they get this idea we need to go to [00:16:21] So we can be safe. And Jeremiah said, don't go to Egypt. Don't go to Egypt. You won't be safe. You go to Egypt and the Babylonians are going to come there and they're going to ruin Egypt. Egypt's not a safe place. But they went anyway, took Jeremiah with them, and then here in Jeremiah 44, he's talking, he's reminding them, he's in Egypt, and he's talking to the Jews in Egypt, and he reminds them how they are not humbled, even unto this day, even after all that had happened, and basically their land was desolated. [00:17:01] Even after all that, they still didn't humble themselves, but they were looking to try to lean on, try to depend on man. Neither had they feared, nor walked in my law, nor in my statues, that I set before you and before your fathers. Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will set my face against you for evil, and cut off all Judah. And I will take the remnant of Judah that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there [00:17:34] And they all shall be consumed and fall in the land of Egypt They shall even be consumed by the sword and by the famine They shall die from the least even to the greatest by the sword and by the famine And they shall be in excretion and astonishment and a curse and reproach Here they were leaning on Egypt They were trying to find support, trying to depend on Egypt. You can see it all the way through, even at the time of Christ. [00:18:06] The fact that the Jewish leaders rejected Christ, in a sense, was because they had made a God of their own liking and rejected this idea of needing a Messiah. They didn't like the way Jesus was coming. They didn't like the fact that he wasn't going to free them from the Romans. And they rejected him. They didn't want to lose their power. They had become big and God had become small. You can see it throughout church history. You can see it in the dark ages when the church really became God and distorted who God really was and oppressed the poor and told them that if you give money then you'll be okay and your souls will be saved. [00:18:51] You can see it in the beginning of the Reformation or before the Reformation during the time of the Renaissance when humanism came up and it really was a reaction to the teachings of the church. But at that point, the idea that man was good started to surface and it's affecting us still today. You can see it in Darwinism in the 1800s where we came up with a way of explaining our existence [00:19:23] or trying to explain our existence in not a very good way by doing away with God altogether. Man became quite big at that point. And I believe that that whole evolution affects us more than what we think. The whole idea of man being evolving and not really God not being in the picture. You see it in the whole modernism when we became secular and we really didn't need God and we depended on science. [00:19:58] And you see it in post-modernism, where we're living today, where we are religious again, but it's a religion that really mostly we've created to suit ourselves. I'd like to ask you, if the Holy Spirit would leave, would we be able to just keep doing church as we have been? And sometimes I wonder in America if really we haven't created a religion that has a God in it. [00:20:36] But really we don't need God, but we like the feeling of being religious. Because we've kind of shaped it the way we want it to be. and the things that we don't like we leave out the things we like we leave in selective obedience you know selective obedience for a parent is no nothing that nothing to be happy about right [00:21:07] I mean there's often times that our children will obey us because they might like what we're asking them to do or it might not go against what we're asking them to do and so they'll obey us so if If they obey us 50% of the time, does that make us happy? No, it doesn't. We think about that 50% of the time they're not obeying us, right? And how can it be for God to look at the church and say, well, we're obeying him 50% of the time. And that's selective obedience. Well, I'd like to just quickly go through a few points as to when man is big and God is small. [00:21:47] I've already talked about them, I just kind of want to summarize them a little bit. When man is big and God is small, we will want to be as God's. We will want to know good and evil, as it talks about in Genesis 3. We will want to be like God. You know, there was a reason that God wanted to protect Adam and Eve. from knowing good and evil but they weren't satisfied with that they wanted to know they [00:22:24] wanted to be like God and that's our natural tendency as well if you look at the tower of Babel you would say that we when man is big we find strength in numbers and this isn't as far away from us as what we might think we find strength in numbers too don't we well if you can Let me say, you know, to the pastor, well, there's quite a few of us who feel this way, you know, that's, I always like to say, well, just name them for me, you know, tell me who all feels this way. [00:22:59] We find strength in numbers, and that's true today in the whole ecumenical movement of trying to get people together, and it started in the Tower of Babel, you know, let's all get together, let's build this tower up to the heavens. We feel better when there's more on our side. But that's just putting strength in man. It's making man big. Where really, God says, and if we look at the Bible in the New Testament, it's clear that walking in obedience is not going to be a path that many choose. [00:23:36] It's going to be a path that few choose. But when man is big, we find strength in numbers. If we had time, we could look at the story of Nebuchadnezzar and think about what happened to him. This was prophesied, and a year later, after Daniel prophesied it, Nebuchadnezzar was walking through his palace and he said, Look what I've done. Look what I've accomplished. Isn't this the great Babylon that I've built? [00:24:08] And just like that, he was struck with insanity and went out and ate grass like an animal, feathers grew like eagles, claws, totally marked, complete change from the person that he had been. And after that he says, and I do want to look at that, he talks about, I'll get this out of the FCM, I forgot to write it down, in Daniel 4, he says this, [00:24:47] All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. He 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? No one can talk about how much we put our trust in man. And I already talked about how the children of Israel trusted in Egypt. And I wonder sometimes how much we put trust in man. How much are we concerned about the stock market and whether it continues to do well or struggle along at about 10,000 or whatever. [00:25:27] You know, how much does that bother us? Sometimes I wonder, and maybe this is meddling a little bit, but you can get so much insurance today. You can get insurance for hurting yourself while you're at work. You can get insurance to pay for your house if you'd be killed. You can get life insurance. You can get all kinds of insurance. And I wonder, really, do we really need God anymore? And isn't that maybe a way of us putting our trust in man rather than God? [00:25:59] I'm not saying it's wrong to have insurance. I have some insurance, what the law requires. But do we trust God to take care of us? Or are we putting our trust in man? Another very significant part of when man is big is we have selective obedience. And I remember someone saying that our view of God's words should be like this. It is our judge. [00:26:31] Where instead, when man is big, our view of God is like this. I'm the judge. And I decide if it's applicable to today or not. That's man being big down here. When it's up here, God is big. And we let him speak to us. And if he says it, whether it seems to fit with our culture, whether it seems to really, you know, be where we're at, it doesn't matter. We do what he's asked us to do. Really, when man is big and God is small, we will remake man to suit us. [00:27:07] And that's really what has happened in our culture with the whole humanism and seeing man as being basically good and trying to work from that standpoint. We've remade man in the way we, and I think it has a lot of roots in the whole evolution as well where we think somehow we're just going to keep getting better and better and if you just treat people right and let people alone or, you know, Let's not be too hard on each other. [00:27:38] We'll eventually get better. You get them the right atmospheres and all that. And really, you have to remake man the way we want him in order for man to be big. But probably most importantly, we remake God to suit us. We remake God to suit us. Even in this whole open theism debate, how much does God know? Really, it has to do with our defining who God is. [00:28:12] See, our minds can't fully comprehend how can God know a thousand years from today and what's going to be going on. I mean, I don't think we're going to be here, but let's just say we are. Our children, great-great-great-grandchildren, how does he know what's going to be going on then, just like he does today? Our minds can't totally fathom that But because our minds can't fathom it Doesn't mean that it's not true And doesn't mean that God is able to know what the future has [00:28:44] And is sovereign, completely in charge How can God be sovereign and yet man have choice? Because he is God And those are some questions that we start to be able to struggle with And in this open theism debate Really what we're doing is we're saying I can't understand a God who could know that and somehow still leave me responsible, so I will change God. I will make Him into the kind of being that I can understand. That's when man is big and God is small. [00:29:16] We remake Him. You know, we don't talk about hell or things that would maybe bother people, even though it's a very important part of what God has communicated to us. So we remake him and we remake his word. We just make it say what we want it to say. That God has a wonderful plan for us and if you give your life to him, then your life will go great and you'll have this wonderful life. And we kind of change his message to fit what we want it to say. And in many ways today in America, in Christianity, it's really just a feel-good religion. [00:29:56] It's not based on what the Bible teaches. It's based on a lot of pop psychology and trying to help people out of their problems. But it's not based on the fact that God said, we have all gone astray, we've turned everyone to our own way, and he laid on him, on Jesus, the iniquity of us all. Recently, someone told the illustration of dog-cat theology, dog and cat theology. [00:30:28] Have you heard of dog and cat theology? Dog and cat theology is where comparing a dog and a cat. I like this one because we have a dog and we don't have cats. I think it's a waste of money to have cats, but that's just, you know, if you have a cat, that's fine. But anyway, here's dog and cat theology. A dog, you take a dog, you feed the dog, you pet him, you take him on walks. You brush him out. We've got a big collie, and so right now he's real hairy. [00:31:03] You do things for him. You give him a nice place to sleep at night. And the dog looks at you and he says, Wow, you do all these things for me. You must be God. And they treat you like that, right? I mean, they're just happy to see you, and they bark. That's what I like about a dog. Everybody else might be upset with you, but at least the dog is happy to see you. Well, a cat, on the other hand, a cat, you feed it, you pet it, you clean up after it [00:31:33] You do all these things for the cat, give it a nice place to sleep And the cat starts thinking, he looks at you and he says, wow, you do all these things for me I must be God, you must be my servant Isn't that how cats are? Well, kind of If I'm a little biased towards cats, or against cats But sometimes that's how we are in our relationship to God God does all this stuff for us He blesses us Think about where we live I mean, there's no other nation to live like the United States [00:32:04] We have truly been blessed to live here And we tend to have one of those two reactions Either we say, God, wow, you've blessed me with so much I want to serve you I want to obey you Or else we say, God, wow, you've blessed me so much I must be God myself I can do what I want. I can live the way I want to live. I can seek the pleasures that I want to seek. I can do whatever I want. That's a view of God being small and man being big. [00:32:44] I'd like to encourage you to pick up this article or this copy of the SCM. One of the things that just kind of struck me funny was in this whole debate of open theism, how much does God know? One of the authors that has written, evangelical authors, that has written about, you know, God doesn't know everything, said that when Jesus told Judas, what thou doest, do quickly, that he didn't even know what Judas was going to do. [00:33:24] But it was just a big risk that he took, you know, what thou doest, do quickly. Well, what was Judas going to do? Jesus didn't know and so you can see that you're remaking God and we're putting man up we're taking man's inability to understand God and setting that aside and saying if I can't understand it then it must not be that way shrinking down our view of God and saying well God can't even know Jesus couldn't even have known what Judas was going to do that's not true Jesus did know [00:33:57] He knew exactly. He had said all along and specifically said that Judas was going to betray him. Jesus knew. God knows. I started out saying that it's not true that man is big and God is small. The opposite is true. But the truth is, only one of us can be big. [00:34:28] And I'd like to close with some verses from Isaiah 57. Verse 15. Thus saith the High and Lofty One The High and Lofty One That inhabiteth eternity [00:34:59] That's kind of interesting. He lives in eternity. God's view of time is so different from our view of time. His name is Holy. I dwell in a high and holy place With him also that is of a contrite and a humble spirit. The Bible is very clear that when man tries to make himself big, God sees him from afar off, it says. [00:35:34] He sees the proud from afar off. And it has the idea of lining up in a ray against him. But God does choose to dwell with a man who sees himself properly as being small And has a humble and a contrite heart To revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones Let's pray Father, I pray that you would help us in this whole struggle in our culture, in the larger church, even in our own churches, and even in our own lives. [00:36:18] To sometimes want to unconsciously have a larger view of ourselves, and consequently a smaller view of you. than what you would have. Father, help us to grasp the highness and the loftiness of you and to worship in the realization that you choose to dwell with us [00:36:52] who are of a humble and a contrite spirit. God, give us a proper perspective of who you are and of your greatness and of who we are and our smallness. Thank you that in spite of the fact that we are so small, that the nations are like a drop in the bucket, they're less than anything, Yet you chose to lay our iniquities on Jesus [00:37:29] For that we are so grateful And we look forward to spending eternity rejoicing with you In Jesus name, Amen God bless you