I'm going to be reading from Isaiah 40 and verses 12 through 31. Here are the word of God. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, measured heaven with a span and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure, weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the spirit of the Lord or as his counselor has taught him? With whom did he take counsel and who instructed him and taught him in the path of justice? Who taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket and are counted as the small dust on the scales. Look, he lifts up the aisles as a very little thing, and Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor its beasts sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing, and they are accounted by him less than nothing and worthless. To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to him? The workman molds an image. The goldsmith overspreads it with gold, and the silversmith casts silver chains. Whoever is too impoverished for such a contribution chooses a tree that will not rot. He seeks for himself a skillful workman to prepare a carved image that will not totter. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He brings the princes to nothing and makes the judges of the earth useless. Scarcely shall they be planted. Scarcely shall they be sown. Scarcely shall their stock take root in the earth, when he will also blow on them, and they will wither, and the whirlwind will take them away like stubble. To whom then will you liken me? Or to whom shall I be equal, says the Holy One? Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these things, who brings out their hosts by number. He calls them all by name. By the greatness of his might and the strength of his power, not one is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, and my just claim is passed over by my God? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, he increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but Those who wait on 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. And all God's people said, Amen. Father, we do say amen to your word, and we glory in your omnipotence, your wisdom, We glory in all of the attributes that make up who you are. And this morning, as we study your Word, I pray that you would quicken the Word to our hearts and enable us to get a tiny glimpse of your majesty, your transcendence, your glory. Fill our hearts with yourself, O God, because you have said, amazingly, you have said that if we ask, you will give your Holy Spirit to those who ask. This is an amazing thing to us that you give your omnipotent Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts. Praise be to your name. We continue to worship you as we interact with your word, and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, two weeks ago we started a mini-series that I have titled, Lord, I Want to Know You. This is not just knowing intellectual facts about God, as important as those facts are. We love theology. Theology is important. But it's going beyond theology into knowing God himself through our theology. In the first sermon, I set the foundation by looking at a number of scriptures that call us into relationship with God. We looked at what it meant. to be alienated from God, and what it means to be reconciled to God, and even to be ushered into the fellowship the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have with each other. To me, this is an astonishing thing that we have, through our union with Jesus, been called into the fellowship that the Son himself has. As J.I. Packer said, there is a tremendous difference between knowing the Word of God and knowing the God of the Word. And I won't take the time to summarize what we looked at in that sermon. Last week, we looked at the attribute of omnipresence. Now, since God is present everywhere, Why does the Bible command us to seek him? Why do saints like David grieve over the fact that God seems so far distant from them? It's certainly not spatially distant, because he is everywhere, but he can become distant from us in terms of relationship, just like a husband and a wife can, from time to time, feel distant from each other, even though they're living in the same home. And we went through the incredible benefits of practicing the presence of God. The more conscious we are of his presence and his attributes being for us, the more our faith will grow and the more our relationship with God will grow. And I obviously cannot repeat the things we talked about in that sermon either. I joked in Presbytery that my homiletics is, I would get an F on every homiletics sermon almost. you know, 15thly and 16thly, if you look at the outline, there's quite a few points there, aren't there? But let me start this morning with a silly parable. It's a parable about a caterpillar. Suppose you're in your backyard and you overheard a caterpillar saying, oh, how I would love to become a brightly colored butterfly. I've been crawling around in this lousy yard for a long, long time. And I try to look colorful, but it doesn't work. I've been trying to leap from branch to branch to see if I can start flying. You know, if I'm airborne, it just doesn't work. I'm committed. I'm committed to being a butterfly. I'm committed to trying. I'm going to hang in there. But I'm beginning to think that even though other people become brilliantly colored butterflies, it's my destiny to just be a crawling, brown, ugly butterfly. Now if you were to overhear this butterfly talking that way, you might be tempted to tell the butterfly that all the commitment in the world is not going to change him from a caterpillar into a butterfly. What it takes is God's power to metamorphose him from a caterpillar into a brilliant flying insect. And I'm sure some of you can, from time to time, identify with that caterpillar. You're frustrated. You're weary at the failed attempts at transforming yourself into something that will have lasting results. There are areas of your life where you feel weak. You feel totally out of control. Well, take heart. Paul went through exactly that frustration. Romans 7 describes the frustration of self-transformation without the power of God. Paul says, I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. Now, if that is your testimony, this sermon is for you. Perhaps you're one of those people who starts out great, but you have a hard time carrying through. You've started at least 25 diets. You've started having devotions a hundred times. You've started trying to be more consistent in the discipline of your children. Maybe there's all kinds of things you've started and you wonder, why is it that I can never carry through on these things? In Psalm 6, David said, I am worn out, O Lord. Give me strength. I am completely exhausted, and my whole being is deeply troubled. And there are some people who think that's their life verse. Well, it doesn't have to be for the rest of your life. But what do you do when you realize that your ability does not match up with what you know needs to be done? God has good news for you, and the good news is that His omnipotence is not simply an abstract doctrine. In past weeks, we have seen that God is for you in his person and in his presence. And today, we're going to be seeing that God is for you with his attribute of omnipotence. Omnipotence is a big word that just means God is all-powerful. And you might say, well, why don't you just say so? No, we need to know these theological words. Omnipotence means God is all-powerful. What kind of power does God have? Well, let's take a peek at his creation. Science books tell us that our sun radiates more energy in one second than mankind has used since creation. How they know that, who knows. But anyway, it's a lot of energy that our sun puts out in one second. And yet there are suns in our Milky Way galaxy that are a hundred times larger than our sun. And speaking of our Milky Way galaxy, It has estimates between 100 billion stars and 400 billion stars in just the one Milky Way galaxy. And how many other galaxies are there? Well, there's estimates that it's anywhere from 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies. It's astounding. And our measurements, they keep discovering new galaxies. But let's just take a look at the power of a quasar. A typical quasar throws out enough energy in one second to supply present electrical needs on planet Earth for billions of years. The most powerful quasars have luminosity thousands of times greater, not in just the Sun, larger, thousands of times larger than the entire Milky Way with its hundreds of billions of stars. That's one quasar. And yet scientists have identified about a million quasars. It's just mind-boggling. And yet Genesis 1 says God spoke all of this into existence just with the Word of His power on day one. He spread out the heavens. This is the power of our Almighty God. And here's the point. There are many passages which describe God's creative power when He made this universe, and He says, the same power is working on your behalf. This is the thing that we need to quicken to our hearts. Look at Isaiah 40, the passage we read earlier. I think it's a wonderful description of God's omnipotence, but it does not leave God's omnipotence as an abstract doctrine. It applies it. Verses 28 through 31. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, He increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But those who wait on the Lord, that's a key, those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not faint. So he is promising the same power can help us in our weakness. So it's no wonder that Paul says, if God is for us, who can be against us? When you understand the omnipotence of God, it makes our doubts seem foolish. It really does make our doubts seem foolish. So it's not enough to know that God is omnipotent. The question this morning is, are you in such a relationship with God that you actually experience His power? That's what I want for each one of you. Or switching gears, we can look at the enormous power that God displayed in His ordinary providence. Hebrews 1.3 says that God the Son is, quote, upholding all things by the word of His power. He's upholding all of the cells of your body with the word of His power, including cancer cells, by the way. Those are not mistakes. God upholds all things by the word of His power. He controls that. In our Joshua series, we saw that even when dice are cast, that a casting of the dice occurs by God's providence. Nothing's out of his control. That's as clear a statement as you could get that there is no such thing as blind chance or blind luck. Another passage shows that when a soldier just at a whim shoots an arrow, and has no purpose in it whatsoever, God has a purpose for that arrow, and he makes that arrow strike right at the mark that he intended it to strike. He raises up, he casts down, he raises up Mordecais, you know, in the book of Esther, who think that they are so smart and they are in control, and he lets them feel that they are in control for a while, but God orchestrates it in a way where he shows his omnipotence and he shows the impotence of man. Praise God. And Jeremiah 31 says that the God who controls all creation with His power exercises that power in a loving way on behalf of His people. Praise God. Now the Gospels show the incredible power which Christ exercised when He was God, but His power continues to be available to us when we have faith in Him. John 14, 12 says, most assuredly I say to you, He who believes in me, Notice he didn't say, he who is a fantastic apostle. No, it doesn't say that. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also and greater works than these he will do because I go to my father. Do we really believe that? I think sometimes we doubt it. I think we sometimes doubt that. Or look at Ephesians 119. Ephesians is really a book we need to know, and we need to pray through and claim for ourselves. It's a marvelous book. Describes the incredible inheritance we have in Christ. But let me read you Ephesians 119. It says, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his mighty power which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Did you get that? The exact same power that raised Jesus from the dead, seated him at his right hand where he's ruling over the universe, is a power that is at work in you and me, those who believe, not just special people, in those who believe. And this was what Paul was trying to get the Ephesians to really lay grasp on. Every one of them, he wanted to experience this power in their lives. It wasn't automatic. He wanted them to have the needed faith to enter into the experience of God's power. But for many of us, God's omnipotence remains simply a doctrine. We have the recipe but we don't eat the cake. We know about God, but to what degree have we experienced the reality of his person and his attributes in our day-to-day lives? That's the question I want to continue to probe today. Paul's prayer to the Colossians was that they might be, quote, strengthened with all might according to his glorious power for all patience and long-suffering with joy. In other words, God didn't just describe his omnipotence. The Bible tells us that God gives us his power for living, which is point number two, and part of that living is joyful patience when everybody around us lacks joy and is utterly impatient. In other words, Paul expects his power to be relevant to our daily lives. Now in point two, I give scriptures which say that every believer has already experienced that power to some degree or you wouldn't be a believer. If you're a believer, God used his power to change your hearts from self-absorption to being servants of the Most High God. That's remarkable. For some of you, like the Jameses, it was almost overnight. It was immediate. For others, it was a gradual process that happened. But God's power was at work in making you Christians, and God's power continues to be at work in you. 2 Timothy 1.7 says, For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. So if you have the Spirit, you are indwelt with the omnipotent Spirit of power who helps us to have a sound mind. Romans 5, 6 describes unbelievers who, quote, are, were still without power. Still without power. What does that say about believers? Well, that implies that believers have, they're indwelt with the omnipotent Spirit of power. And yet we live way, way, way below the privileges that Jesus has purchased for us. And what is God's attitude to Christians who deny God's power? He didn't think too highly of them. I can assure you of that. Let me give you one scripture. 2 Timothy 3, 5 says that we ought to turn away from theologians who deny such power. It says, having a form of godliness, but denying its power, and from such people turn away. A theology of God without God's power is probably almost as dangerous as Simon Magus' theology, who wanted the power, like magic, without the God, without submitting to God. But you cannot separate God from his theology. You cannot separate God from his attributes. It's a package deal. And as we saw last week, God is not tame. We take him as he is. Now, of course, just because we've experienced God's power in some measure in our lives, as every Christian has, does not mean we are experiencing his power as fully as we should be. We must continually be growing in the experience of his power. Acts 9.22 says, And Saul increased more and more in power and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ. He increased more and more in power. That's God's goal for us. The closer we walk with God, the more of his power and his other attributes that we will experience. Isaiah 40, verse 29, He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Well, that's what we want, His strength to be increased in us. In Ephesians 3.16, Paul prays that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man. Psalm 84.7 says of believers that they go from strength to strength. Now in contrast, and it's actually pretty stark contrast, there is a bunch of other scriptures that speak of Christians becoming weaker and weaker. Okay, more and more weak. That too is a possibility. And even Gary's and my ministries can be limited by the degree of faith that this congregation has. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10 15, quote, that as your faith is increased, we shall be greatly enlarged by you in our sphere. Now that's quite something. Paul is saying that his ministry sphere would be increased as the faith of the people within his congregations was increased. I'm trying to give you a little bit of a picture of what it means to know the God of all power. Now, what is God's purpose in manifesting His power in our lives? It is nothing less than being conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. That conforming to Christ is gradual, but eventually it will make us perfect in heaven. One author put it this way. you must realize from the outset that the goal toward which he is beginning to guide your life is absolute perfection. We may be content to remain what we may call ordinary, but the Holy Spirit is determined to carry out quite a different plan. And by the way, God's plan for your life is not to take away all pain and suffering and discomfort. It's to make you more and more like Christ as Jesus faced pain and suffering and discomfort. He wants to turn ordinary men, women, and children, like you and me, into extraordinary examples of courage and love and purity and honesty and humility. Actually, the thing that makes me weep when I read some of the great missionary biographies and biographies of great saints of the past is not so much the stupendous things that happened, some of the miracles and healings. We believe in miracles and healings, don't get me wrong on that. Those are wonderful manifestations of His power, but the things that make me weep are when I see the inward character of people turned around, where they have self-effacing, sacrificial love and humble service, like Florence Nightingale, or when you see the degree of love and forgiveness that Corrie Ten Boom's sister showed to her persecutors in the prison camp, or the love that Richard Wimbrandt showed under torture. That is no more natural than a caterpillar flying. And yet, that's God's destiny for us, to transform us by his power into that. Many Christians are content with the same love, joy, and courage that unbelievers have. We shouldn't be content with that. God wants us to experience more than what unbelievers have. He wants us to experience supernatural love, joy, and courage. Well, that requires that God's power apply his other attributes of love and joy and courage into our lives. Okay, so each of these attributes are connected with each other, and ultimately that power will convert nations, will bring in a world of righteousness, will resurrect our bodies and completely renew this universe. Philippians 3.21 says that the Lord Jesus, quote, will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself." Verse after verse in the Bible shows the stunning power that God exercises on behalf of his saints. And I'm going to give you a few more examples here. of when people walk in the Spirit, what kinds of things does he produce in them? And we'll start with the spectacular, even though that's not the main focus. But when you understand the omnipotence of God, we should not be surprised at all by these spectacular things, like the report that Gary gave earlier of the healing. We've seen miraculous healings as well. When Jesus healed people, various scriptures say that he noticed that power had gone out of him. Mark 5.30, the woman touched his robe in faith, and the text says, Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that power had gone out of him, turned around in the crowd and said, who touched my clothes? Now, this is one of many passages that indicates that there is a transference of power from Jesus Christ into our lives. Luke 5.17, and the power of the Lord was present to heal them. All healings, whether those come through Jesus or through the apostles or through us, is 100% the power of God at work. This is the God that we're trying to draw near to in this series. as Paul worded it in Philippians 3.10, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death. So once again, notice that experiencing his power does not remove all suffering in our lives any more than it did in Christ's life, but it helps us to approach those things in a totally different way. And all miracles showcase God's power. Acts 6, 8 says, Stephen, full of faith and power, those two go together, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. It was because he was full of God's power he was able to do those miracles. Now let's spend some time on what we consider to be the ordinary aspects of Christianity. And actually, the more you study ordinary Christianity, the more you realize there isn't any such thing as ordinary Christianity. It is all extraordinary. God's power is at work every time a person becomes a Christian. Romans 1.16 says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation. Charismatics sometimes speak of power encounters as if the only time you have a power encounter is where you have a miracle. Every time a person comes to Christ, there has been a power encounter. God has changed a person in a marvelous way. There are several scriptures that say there is no way any person would turn to Christ unless God's grace sovereignly turned them. It's impossible. Saul was dead set on exterminating the church, and in a moment of time, God turned him around and made him a firebrand for the gospel. Now you might think, let's apply this, you might think that it's impossible to overturn abortion in America, or it's impossible for our nation to become a Christian nation once more. And I say, nonsense, nonsense. Consider the incredibly wicked city of Nineveh that Jonah was sent to preach to. The book of Jonah says, God took the weakness of Jonah's preaching, even with his bad, bad attitudes, he took that preaching and God soundly converted every man, woman, and child in that city. One day. America is not too difficult to God because His omnipotence is connected with His grace. And God loves to work His power through agents of faith, weak agents of faith, who were convinced that Jeremiah was true when he said that nothing was too difficult to God. Here's what Jeremiah said. Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for you. When we get involved in politics, we must be convinced of that and not try to use the tactics and the strategies and the manipulations of the world because we think, well, that's the only way it's going to change, is we got to use their strategies. No, we've got to represent Christ in every sphere of life. Last week, I talked about practicing the presence. Well, if you practice the presence of the omnipotent God when you go into politics, it will elevate your faith on what is achievable. It will make you shoot for a much higher goal than Christians tend to shoot for. Most Christians who are involved in politics will only shoot for what they think their flesh can achieve. William Wilberforce was a politician who would be, and should be, a rebuke to those kinds of Christians. He sought to represent Christ in politics, and he had faith that God's power could do the impossible in politics, and God blessed his faith by doing the impossible in politics. And actually, there have been many politicians down through history who have experienced the same miracles in politics. Why, God is omnipotent. When your children display hard hearts, it should drive you to your knees and cry out to the God who is omnipotent and who can change people's hearts. God alone can change the hearts of our children where the heart of the children is drawn to the fathers and the fathers to the sons. You know, what is it, Malachi 4.6, something like that. God is the one who does that. So don't engage in your parenting and your own power and wisdom. You have access to the omnipotence of God to change your children's hearts. So when you start doing the steps I outlined last week for practicing the presence, do it with a consciousness of the attribute of omnipotence. It will elevate your faith to expect great things from God. and to attempt great things for God. It will give you faith to begin to expect the extraordinary in the lives of your children. Likewise, every aspect of ministry that the elders or deacons engage in should be done with a dependence upon God's power. The disciples had experienced this power in their own lives, but over time, it says, they began to grow in their experience of God's power. Acts 1.8 records Christ's promise to them, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. And what was the result of that power? It gave them, it took away their fear, it gave them boldness, gave their witness effectiveness that they would not otherwise have had apart from God's power. Acts 4, verse 33 says, and with great power, the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all. Now the Puritans, spoke of this not just for witnessing out there in the world, but they also spoke of preaching transformed by God's power. Some of the Puritans spoke of them saying that pastors need to pray for the baptism of the Spirit, and others said an anointing of the Spirit. However you describe it, I would encourage you to pray that God would not allow me as a pastor to just be communicating information to you. Here's what Paul said. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. or consider the power of God that's at work every time He gives us hope or peace or joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 15, 13 says, Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope, how? By the power of the Holy Spirit. When you lose hope or peace or joy, Paul says you need an encounter with the God of all power. God is powerful enough. He has enough resources to change any bad human disposition into a good human disposition. And he's done that with me many a time, where I've come to him with a bad attitude and said, Lord, please, I need your grace. And he has, in a moment of time, completely changed that around. You have immediate access, by faith, to the God of all power. But the point of these verses is that you can only abound in hope, peace, and joy inexpressible and full of glory when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Every day we need to be praying for the filling of the Holy Spirit. It is not something that is natural to men. It is supernatural and we must seek it from God. So don't be satisfied with anything less than experiencing the God of all power in your day-to-day walk. Now, of course, Scripture speaks of the power that is needed to resist Satan or any of his other demons. I happen to believe, in terms of eschatology, that Satan was bound in the pit in AD 70, and that demons from that time on are increasingly being bound in the pit. But hey, there are still millions, if not billions, of demons out there, and they're all on a war path against you. And every demon is more powerful than you are in yourself. These are incredibly powerful. They're fallen angels. They're incredibly powerful beings, and we cannot resist the demonic unless we are clothed in the power of the Holy Spirit. Right? We've got to, day by day, take this seriously. In describing the armor of God which we are to put on, Paul makes clear in Ephesians 6, The armor comes from God, and the strength to use that armor comes from God. He says it's by union with Christ that we can resist even the strongest of demons, who is what? Satan, so that he would flee from you, right? And so Paul says, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. It's not automatic. He's commanding us, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. And if you've never experienced this, you need to revisit sermons one and two in this series and use the steps outlined there to connect with the God of all power. What about an ordinary thing like patience? There is such a thing as patience that simply comes from our flesh. But that counterfeit patience is quite different from the patience that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. If the only patience you experience is the kind of patience that any unbeliever can have, you've not yet known the power of God in your patience. You might have known it in some other areas, but not in your patience. Colossians 111 says that we are to be, quote, strengthened with all might according to his glorious power for all patience and longsuffering with joy. Did you get that? In order to have supernatural patience and long-suffering with joy, we need to be strengthened with all might according to His glorious power. And I've given numerous scriptures in your outline which show that every aspect of the Christian walk is intended to be lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Point H shows that if the church discipline is to be effective, it has to be accompanied by the power of God's discipline. Church discipline is not simply a convenient way of getting rid of ornery people. No. When we humbly approach church discipline, God accompanies that discipline with His loving discipline in order to restore that person. Right? It's a restorative. And we have seen time and time again where the power of God's discipline accompanies church discipline that is exercised in faith. And almost immediately after the church discipline, God has unleashed financial problems and health problems and car problems and emotional problems and disaster after disaster. And I can tell you one example of a person who still was obstinate, and God killed him, took him out. Right? But to me, it's still evidence God loves that person because whom the Lord loves, He disciplines. Point I talks about the need for power in our prayers, and this is because elsewhere we're commanded to pray in the Spirit. What does it mean to pray in the Spirit? Well, I believe it means that the Spirit impels our prayer, guides our prayer, infuses faith into our prayer, and lifts our prayer up to the throne of heaven. J calls for power to endure suffering. K speaks of God's power of preserving us. Point L of his power enabling us to effectively confront sin. Let me park on that one a little bit. That's a pretty interesting point there. Let's say that the Spirit guides you, moves you to confront your child about some sin, or maybe confront some fellow believer about a sin that you really feel is destroying their lives. Listen to what Micah 3.8 says. It says, but truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord and of justice and might to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin. He needed God's attributes of power, justice, and might to effectively confront sin in a way where it wouldn't just be blown off. You know how people can just blow off loving rebukes. I hope after listening to the past two sermons you're seeing that true fellowship with God is experiencing the reality of God's ministry in your life and connecting with all of His attributes. When God manifests Himself tangibly in your life, He will often do it by highlighting one attribute that is needed in your life. Perhaps He brings comfort into your heart, or love, or patience, some other attribute that is needed. But numerous times God has given me the faith to lay claim to his power to do the impossible things he has called me to do. And when you are invading Satan's territory, whether in evangelism or business, and yes, Christian businesses should be invading Satan's territory and taking profits away from Satan's kingdom, right, and into God's kingdom. But when you're invading Satan's territory through evangelism, through business, through politics, you need his power to break through. Your business needs his power to break through. Point M says that it takes his power to progressively take territory from Satan's kingdom. And God has given me faith to begin asking Him to restore some of these Western nations that used to be part of Christ's kingdom, that used to be Christian nations, to restore fourfold. I mean, if Jesus deserves justice, which He does, what does the law say? When restitution has not come back right away, you know, it could be 125 percent, 200 percent, well, it's drug out for a long time. I'm saying, no, the law of God demands that Jesus receive four-fold restitution, which to me means that these former Christian nations like America and Canada and Sweden and all of these countries are going to be four times more Christian than they ever were before. That's what I'm praying for. And so, can God do that? Yeah, he's omnipotent. He can. Paul spoke of, quote, some who think of us as if we walked according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled." Now, does that even remotely resemble the way Christians confront strongholds in the political arena or other arenas today? It needs to. Those are satanic strongholds and we need to have faith when we enter into the political arena that the omnipotent God accompanies us when he has called us to go there. Let me read that passage again and apply that passage to you with the demonic strongholds in our culture. Paul describes Christians who had a super, super, super low vision of what Paul was doing. Paul said, some who think of us as if we walked according to the flesh, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Brothers and sisters, that is talking about God's power linking us to His holiness, to His wisdom, to His grace, to His promised purposes for planet Earth. Our faith must reach much higher than we tend to reach for. How many of these do I go through? Point N shows that the entire Christian life is supposed to be the outworking of God's divine power. Second Thessalonians 1, 11 summarizes the Christian life when it says, therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling and fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodness and the work of faith with power. Second Peter tells us, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And so I would encourage you sometimes to try to do exercises in your devotions or in some other place, looking at every attribute of God including his omnipotence as a window into the whole of God, as a window into looking at how his other attributes work. And I think it will encourage you, like when you're discouraged over your holiness, just say, Lord, You're omnipotent. You can conquer my heart. You can infuse your holiness with your omnipotent almighty power. I want to be sanctified. Take me. Use me. Last week we saw how the gospel helps us to see God as wonderfully present in everything we do. His presence must be related to even the most mundane things of life, like brushing your teeth, hygiene, finances, marital intimacy. His presence must be related to our politics, our farming, everything else. And since God's presence is a holy presence, a just presence, a truthful presence, and a presence characterized by all of his other attributes, we insult the gospel of the kingdom, which is a universal kingdom. when we allow politics to define justice, or politics to define truth, or goodness, or anything else. Too many Christians fail to see that it's not just individuals who have been alienated from God and need to be reconciled. All of life was alienated, and all of life needs to be reconciled to God. And the more we as Christians begin to exemplify the attributes of God by His power in the various spheres of life, the more we're going to be transforming things, and it's because Christ reconciles us to God, and he transforms everything that we think and act in that very area of life. But Christians often think, well, that's just not possible. It's not realistic. Look at how long it has taken. After all, politics, education, business, everything's just gone too far. And that's why in this third sermon I decided to look at the omnipotence of God and show that if God's intention is to reconcile the world to Christ, which he explicitly says it is, to reconcile the world to himself, then since he is omnipotent, that goal is going to be achieved. There is nothing that is too difficult for God to do. And you might say, well, why didn't he do it right away? Because one of his attributes is patience. Unlike us. One of his attributes is patience. And over the last 2,000 years, he has been patiently and omnipotently advancing his kingdom. And there's never been a stage where there has not been growth of his kingdom. There's been almost a doubling in the last few decades of Christians worldwide, according to statistics. There are more Christians today than any other period in world history. Yes, he has been advancing the kingdom of Christ worldwide. So, you've got to link patience with omnipotence, right? 1 Corinthians 4.20 says that the kingdom of God is not in word only, but in power. But how frequently do we speak and work for the kingdom and yet fail to experience this power? And there's a reason. I want to spend the remainder of this sermon adding a few other tips to the previous sermons on how we can experience God's power in abundance. First sub-point is obvious. Isaiah 33, 13 commands us, you who are near, okay, well, that was sermon number two, right? Experiencing the presence of God. You who are near, acknowledge my might. If you do not believe God's power continues to be exercised daily on our behalf, you're not going to have the faith to claim it. What did Christ say when people came to Him for healing? Do you believe that I am able to do this? I like the response one person gave, and I only have it memorized in the King James. Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. He knew there had to be some unbelief mixed in, but help me, I really do want to believe you. But we must believe Christ's words, not just in the abstract, oh yeah, God's omnipotent. We need to believe Christ's word, my grace is sufficient for you. My grace is sufficient for you. So by faith we must acknowledge that God's power is available right now for our Christian walk. Many Christian theologies deny that such power is available to us right now, and I suspect that they've come up with a power-denying theology because they've never experienced it. And so an excellent place to begin to experience the reality of what we're talking about this morning is to prayerfully read the book of Ephesians, laying claim to its promises in light of the steps we talked about in the previous two sermons. You will not regret it. So first, acknowledge God's attribute of power is available to you. A second important step is that we must admit that we don't have the power in ourselves, and therefore to humble ourselves in the sight of God. This is always a key point in experiencing a relationship with God, because God hates all pride and all self-sufficiency. One scripture that says this quite well is 2 Corinthians 12, 9-10. And he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness, therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Now let's stop and think about that for a minute. Notice that word, that. Paul is saying the reason he gladly boasts in his infirmities is so that the power of Christ might rest upon me. Unless we boast in our weaknesses, we're not going to know God's power. But that does not come naturally. What happens when people point out our weaknesses? We get upset. We deny our weaknesses, right? We're embarrassed about our weaknesses. And he says, no, that's going to alienate you from God's power. You need to boast in your weaknesses and say, you're right. I am messed up, but I'm going to the Lord who is sufficient for the needs that I have right here. Pride keeps us from enjoying God's provision, and so continuing to read from the same passage in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says, Most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. I shared last week how The Lord has caused me over the last year to rejoice and be thankful for the encephalitis that I had that's kind of evaporated some memories, which are coming back, but it has made me, it's forced me to walk in dependence upon the Lord and daily experience Him coming through and things I didn't think in myself I could do. than I've ever had in the rest of my life, and I boast in my weakness. I'm glad for my weakness because I've experienced God's grace. It's made me realize how important it is to walk in the Spirit in everything you do, not in the flesh. Third, we must receive the Spirit's transforming power into our own life by faith. We must believe we can receive Him. We talked about this during the last sermon. Luke 11, 9 through 13 says, God is far more ready to give the Spirit than a parent gives food to his children. He's far more ready to give the omnipotent Holy Spirit to dwell within us and minister in us than a generous parent who gives food to his children. Ephesians 1 makes clear that till the end of time, the church will need to experience the Holy Spirit's powerful working. The fourth step for entering into the experience of God's power is to place ourselves into a good church, into a place where He loves to manifest His power. The book of Revelation says that Christ walks in the midst of the candlesticks, and He says the candlesticks represent the churches of God. Okay? He indwells the temple, which is the church, and it's from that threshold of the temple that rivers of living water flow. We live in an age when many Christians think that the church is irrelevant. They maximize the importance of individual ministries and they minimize the importance of the church. Many don't even have membership in churches. But to whom did Christ make the promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against it? the church, right? I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And when the church, once again, takes up the mantle, begins to experience God's power in richness, then God's people, yes, individually will begin to experience it in greater measure as well. Psalm 63, 2 says, so I looked for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory. He sought God there, he found God there. Now Psalm 68, 35, you are awesome, O God, in your sanctuary. The God of Israel gives power and strength to his people. The next step is to keep right with God on anything that the Holy Spirit is convicting you about. James 5, 16 says that it is as we confess our sins that the prayer of faith will heal the sick. Now, confessing sins may seem utterly irrelevant to being healed, but the reason we always give you opportunity when you come to the elders to pray for healing, do you have any sense that you want to confess before the Lord, is because confession of our sins and humbling ourselves before others is near and dear to the heart of God and connects us with the power of God. I'll just read you one example. James 5.16. Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." Which, by the way, shows you don't just need to come to the elders. You can pray for each other. You can pray for healing for one another. But in connection with the importance of humility, Proverbs 3 verse 34 says, surely he scorns the scornful, but gives grace to the humble. And actually James 4, 1 through 10, if you just read through that whole thing, you'll see other ways in which God's power is manifested in our lives when we confess our sins, when we humble ourselves. Now, I've been at Presbytery all week, so I haven't had time to prepare this sermon to perfect it, especially to shorten it. Believe it or not, it's harder to preach a short sermon than a long sermon. But what I would encourage you to do is just look at the previous two sermons and the steps that are on there. and apply it to the doctrine that we're looking at today, and ask God to enable you to experience His power coming through in your behalf day by day. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Father, I thank you. I thank you so much for your power, and I admit that there are things that are just too hard for me. And on behalf of this congregation, I ask that your power would be manifested in their lives as well. We believe that nothing is too hard for you. We want to start believing in faith that you will fill us with your power this week and even in this moment. Help us, Lord, to love the unlovable. Help us to be patient with those who irritate us, supernaturally patient. to be friendly with those who rub us the wrong way, to find peace in the midst of anxiety-filled situations. As Gary said earlier, to put off discontent and envy, and to find supernatural contentment in you, to find joy in the midst of affliction, to rise above our circumstances. Please bring your power of healing where healing is needed. We want to know you and the power of your resurrection light. We're tired of living in the realm of the possible and want to begin laying claim to your promises for the impossible. Thank you that you've already raised us with Christ into the heavenly places, that you've seated us with Him in the heavenlies, and may our Christianity from this time forward flow from those heavenly places and transform what we do on earth. May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.