019. Our Majestic God

Introduction 

I wake up early in the mornings, glad to be alive.  I sometimes lie there for a while, thinking about how majestic God is.  How awesome, how loving, how kind, how big.  I get dressed and walk outside to be amazed at the stars and to thank God that He wants little me to have a relationship with Him.  -  Our Majestic God! ------

A young man came up to a preacher by the name of Jay Kesler, and he said, “I don’t want to insult you, Jay, but I come to this church service mostly because it’s a good place to meet girls.
There are some very beautiful, young, professional women who come to this church, and so I’ve found this a good place to meet dates. It’s a wholesome place on Sunday evening. I don’t want you to feel insulted, but I don’t even believe in God.” 

 pp  Jay said to him, “You don’t believe in God? Tell me what God you don’t believe in? Maybe I don’t believe in him either.” 

Then he began to tell Jay about a particular relative of his, I think a maiden aunt, who was sort of neurotic. Every time their family wanted to talk about sport or something, she wanted to talk
about death. Every time someone was having a good time, she wanted to bring up questions of hell and so on, and so he had concluded that believing in God had something to do with his maiden aunt. 

 Jay listened to the young man for a while and finally said, “I’m very glad you took the time to challenge me, and I’m also glad I took the time to listen to you, because, in fact, if I thought God was like you’ve described him to be, I wouldn’t believe in God either. I would be insulted that you would think I would have trivialized my life to believe in a God who spends all His time on how long’s long, how short’s short, and how shiny’s shiny—involved in all sorts of minor,
microethical issues that don’t really matter so much, in the long run.”  -----

 pp  An old preacher by the name of A.W. Tozer said, “We tend, by a secret law of the soul, to move toward our mental image of God.” Let me suggest that probably in no period in history has it been so important to think Biblically correctly about God as in this particular age. 

Many years ago, the Bible translator J. B. Phillips, wrote a book titled Your God Is Too Small. Just going down the index of that book is of great value. Phillips talks about inadequate ideas of God. His chapter titles are these: “The Resident Policeman,” “The Parental Hangover,” “The Grand Old Man,” “Meek-and-Mild,” “Absolute Perfection,” “The
Heavenly Bosom,” “God-in-a-Box,” “The Managing Director,” “Second-Hand God,” “Perennial Grievance,” “The Pale Galilean,” “The Projected Image.” ------- I thought, How many of these chapter titles have actually become common in the media over the years right down to today?

Let’s have a look at some things in our Bibles.

pp  The Psalmist looked at the sky and was amazed by God’s greatness. 

Psalm 8:1-9   (page 620)

(lights on)

Psalm 8 (page 620)  

We turn to reading King David’s view of God, as we read Psalm 8. David said, 

V1  “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your Name in all the earth, who have set Your glory above the heavens. 

V2  Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength because of Your enemies, that you may silence the enemy and the avenger. 

V3   When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, 

V4     What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him? 

V5   For You made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. 

V6   You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands; You put all things under his feet; 

V7    all sheep and oxen – even the beasts
of the field, 

V8   the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas. 

V9   O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!” 

(lights off)

pp   Trees, Milky Way and shooting star.

 This young shepherd who became a king, was looking into the expanse of the universe with his naked eye, and he wrote a poem.  He wrote a poem to remind us of the necessity of never limiting God to simply the size of our own little understanding, or even a group of doctrines or teachings that we humans may have put together. 

 Looking at that sky with his naked eye – thousands of years before some of the early astronomers like Ptolemy, Galileo and Kepler, David said, “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent, how majestic is your name! …. when I see the heavens, the sun and the moon and the stars!” -----   I often think, how strange it is that as man has expanded his ability to understand the universe, he has diminished his ability to
understand the greatness of God!  Today, I’d like to suggest what it might mean to us to move from David’s naked eye to what we now understand about the universe of which we are a part. 

 We know, for instance, that we are living in a galaxy that is moving like a great, oblong pinwheel through time and space. At the point where we’re riding in this great galaxy, on planet Earth, we’re moving along at about 220 kms per second, or 792,000 kms an hour.

Moving at792,000 kms an hour in our galaxy, we make one rotation in 200
million years. 

A few years ago, Delphine and I walked across the narrow top part of England.  We took about 12 days --
Now, our galaxy is a bit bigger than England.  It is a fairly expansive place. If you want to go across it the short way, and you move at the speed of light—we know the speed of light is about 186,000 miles per second; that’s moving right along—you can cross the narrow expanse of our galaxy in 20,000 ‘years’ - twenty thousand light years to cross it. -----------If you want to go from top to bottom of our own little Milky Way galaxy it would take us100,000 light years. Our galaxy is about five times as long as it is wide; 100,000 light years to go its length. 

Astronomers now tell us the number of stars in the known universe exceeds the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of all the seas of the entire earth. 

The Bible says that God, somehow in his creative ability, with a thought threw into existence all that we have today. There’s even a place in Scripture that goes so
far as to say that the whole thing may be glued together by Jesus Christ himself—that he holds the universe together. --- Why am I saying these things?   I simply say it to say that David of old looked into the heavens and said, “When I consider the heavens, the sun and the moon and the stars, which You put in place, I say, ‘What is man that you are mindful of him?’”  

This is David’s question:

 pp    Why would such an amazing God bother with such little people like you and me?  -  Because He loves us! ------

So now we want to notice that ---

pp     God is great and powerful. 

When we look into the skies today, we know things that David couldn’t even imagine, and we should begin to understand what David couldn’t understand, that our God is great and
powerful and mighty— far beyond the kinds of things that people say about that particular God. Why? Because the Scripture begins with a simple phrase: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” 

 pp  “Tell me what God you don’t believe in. Maybe I don’t believe in him either.” 

 pp  “We tend, by a secret law of the soul, to move toward our mental image of God.” 

 Suppose we could escape the kinds of things that are said or written, that degrade the gospel (or at least people’s understanding of the gospel). And for a moment suppose we could believe that there is no limit to the God that we say we worship when we say, “I believe in God.” And suppose we could believe that God is indeed larger than His creation—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And that that God has chosen to communicate with little, two-legged things down on some insignificant dust speck just a little distance from a dying spark called the sun. -----  What would it mean if that God who made the heavens and the
earth was the God we address when we say in the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father, who is in heaven”? If God wasn’t limited to some small ideas we may have picked up along the way, what would it mean? 

 I have people question me every once in a while. They say, “You mean, you believe in God then?” 

I say, “Yes, I absolutely do believe in God.” 

 “Do you believe in the Bible?” 

 I say, “Yes, I believe in the Bible. I’m banking my joy and peace and happiness now on the Bible and also my eternal life later.”   Now, I don’t believe in God because I believe in the Bible; I believe in the Bible because I’ve learnt to believe in God.  If He’s as powerful as I believe He is—a God who can breathe out a universe, then He can speak to you and me through His Scriptures.
 
People say, “You mean that you believe God can make a fish big enough to swallow a man?   Like in that story about Jonah in the Bible?   You’re an intelligent human being living in the 20th century  where we’re splitting the atom, and going to the moon, and sending trips around Venus. You think God can make a fish big
enough to swallow a man?” 

 Let me tell you, the God who made the sun and the moon and the stars, if He wanted to, could air condition and carpet the fish.  We’ve seen that in the documented story of James Bartley who fell overboard when they harpooned the whale.  They brought the whale in and cut it open and there inside it they found Bartley, alive!  This is my God, and as

you put your faith in him, He will transform your life. ------- 

pp   Starry sky picture

 How does this relate to me today? If the God who made the heavens and the earth is my God, when I feel my problems may be too big, is it possible that I’ve come up with a problem too big for the God who made the heavens and the earth? I suddenly realize I’m serving the Creator God, and there’s no problem that I can face that’s even going to cause that God to need to have a committee meeting. They aren’t having hastily called committee meetings in heaven.

When something new comes up on this earth, they don’t get together and get all frightened up there and say, “Let’s go with Plan B.” ---  No friends, God is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. ------

(quiet)       What problem have you been struggling with all week? What problem has so consumed your mind that you can’t even concentrate on your family or your work? Is it possible perhaps, that you’re bringing your problem to a God in your mind who’s too small, and you need to expand your mind and bring your problem to a God who’s big enough to handle it?  -----

We know that we’ve all messed up at different times – we’ve all sinned and come short of the glory of God; we know that the Bible is right when it says there’s none righteous, no not one; we know all our righteousness is as filthy rags; we know the wages of sin is death; but we also understand that the gift of God is eternal life though Jesus Christ our Lord. We know that God’s grace, His kindness, is greater than all of our sin.

Yet, today, there’s such a lack of understanding of the forgiveness of God in our culture that even Christians seem to want to seek revenge and destruction rather than offer forgiveness and life. I’m not justifying people’s actions; I’m simply saying that without forgiveness and without a Redeemer, where will this world go?     
Somehow people don’t understand about forgiveness and happiness and real life.  Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who
labor and are heavy laden (or heavy burdened), and I will give you rest.” People can forgive. They don’t have to live with revenge. People’s hearts can come clean.  We must, if we want true peace in our everyday lives.  -----

(slow)      Also, when I feel lonely, deserted, misunderstood, grieving, or sick, I know that the God of the Bible is companion, comforter, and friend. -----The New Testament talks about the Holy Spirit.  God through His Spirit walks alongside us, is with us, teaches us, comforts us. You may have been, with me, confounded and confused by Jesus’ statement in John 17, where he talks about “better that I go to be with the Father, so that the Holy Spirit could come.” I always thought it would be better if Jesus Himself hung around. Why did He have to go so that the Holy Spirit would come? Well,
think about it. One single Jewish man living in one place at one time in
history, replaced by God’s Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit, who right at this moment is in every place in the world - with every Christian, with every needy person, in every hospital bed, in every prison, in every place where a person cries out to God for help and guidance. 

If we just ask for His Spirit to dwell with us, live in us, comfort and encourage us and teach us, help us, like our conscience to know good and bad, right and wrong – if we just ask God with a sincere heart to give us His Holy Spirit in a greater measure, God-will-answer-our-request.---  But as the Bible says, “The Holy Spirit is given to those who obey Him.”   If we are planning on being obedient in our lives, then God will give His guiding Spirit to each of us in a greater measure than we’ve ever known before. -----im”.”Him

I once read that the nations of this world have enough explosives stored in their nuclear arsenals to be equivalent to two tonnes of TNT for every man, woman and child on the face of this earth.  Is that reassuring?

All the people in India have two tonnes each.  All the people in China have two tonnes each.  All the people on Bribie have two tonnes each.

Is it really a comforting thought to live in a world where we protect ourselves with assurances like that?

George Wald at Harvard University was asked about youth. He said, “Youth don’t fear the future. Youth feel there’s no such thing as the future.” What do we know about the future? ----  We do know that God is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. 

Now,

pp   God keeps track of every one of us

Remember what A.W. Tozer said, “We tend, by a secret law of the soul, to move toward our mental image of God.” 

I commend to you today the God of the Scriptures—the creator God; the compassionate, caring God; the redeeming God; the companion God; the consummator God; the God who can handle every human problem. The God who made the heavens and the earth is the same God who was there in Genesis chapter one, and he’s the same God to whom David looked with his naked eye toward the heavens, and he’s the God you and I can come to every day and say, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I consider the heavens, the sun and the moon and the stars which you’ve set in place, I say, ‘What is man that You are mindful of him?’” 

Isn’t that an awesome idea, that the God who made the heavens and the earth can keep track of everyone, you and me? Now think of how silly we’ve become over this. Not a person in this room doubts that the tax man can find us. And what’s he working with? Great adding-machine typewriters. Great, dumb, adding-machine typewriters called
computers. We’re talking today about the mind of God. 

 We say, “How does the great computer compare with the mind of God?” They’re as different as chalk is from cheese!

I’m talking about a God who sees us here as His creation. Who sees beyond the events of our life, beyond the situations of our life, beyond the motives of our life, beyond the anguish of our life, and He puts Himself underneath us to support us, and He holds out His hand to us and says, 

pp   Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. 

In conclusion,

Have any among us been coming to the wrong God?   --  like the young man who only came to church to meet people and socialize and didn’t really believe in God anyway?  If that has been your life, then I trust you are finally beginning to meet the real God, the real Jesus --- the God who made the stars, and who comforts us, and who desperately wants our friendship because He loves us.  ----    

He loves us!

Pray

‍