The Omnipotent Lord

This month we've been visiting the stable in Bethlehem and gazing on that little one lying there and seeking to meditate on some of his excellencies. The excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. It was really a wonderful verse, wasn't it? I often think of a line from a hymn.

It says, Thy life, thy death of shame and sorrow was like unto thy birth, which would no glory borrow, no majesty from earth. You know, that was true of the birth of the Lord Jesus. It didn't borrow any glory or majesty from earth, and neither did his death.

But that won't be true when he comes again, will it? He'll come in power and great glory. Well, we reminded ourselves that in that little child lying in the manger, all the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell. That's marvelous, you know.

Really marvelous that in that little body dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead, and all the attributes of God were there all the time. Some of our learned brethren argue as to when, at what age, Jesus first knew he was the Messiah. Nonsense.

All the attributes of God were dwelling in him all the time. It would be just as senseless to say when did he first become omnipotent? That's what we're going to think about first of all this morning. And it's a paradox that that little child lying in the manger was the omnipotent God.

That meant he had all power. Let me read you some verses that speak of the omnipotence of the Lord. I am the almighty God.

Walk before me and be thou perfect. Genesis 18.14. Is anything too hard for the Lord? Job 42.2. I know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted. That's really marvelous.

God has spoken once, twice have I heard this, that power belongeth unto God. Jeremiah 32.17. Ah, sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.

With God all things are possible. With God nothing is impossible. The Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

All of that is true of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who was born in Bethlehem's manger. Charnock, who probably wrote the greatest work on the attributes of God, said, The power of God is that ability and strength whereby he can bring to pass whatever he pleases, whatever his infinite wisdom can direct, and whatsoever the infinite purity of his will can resolve. All power, nothing is impossible with him.

You know, that would be dangerous in the hands of anyone but a perfect being. It would be very dangerous enough, for instance, for a man like Saddam Hussein to have the power that he has today. Just think of a person, we're a wicked person that has all power.

No one knows what could possibly happen under those circumstances. But you know, that's a wonderful thing for us, that our God is a God of omnipotence. Think of what he's able to do.

He's able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him. That's a great pillow for us to rest our heads on. He's able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him.

He's able to keep us from falling and present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. Our God not only is able to save us, he's able to keep us. He's able to build us up and give us an inheritance among all of those who are sanctified.

He's able to make all grace abound toward us. He's able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. And he's able to succor those who are tempted.

Now, it might seem like a contradiction when I tell you, in the face of all that, there are some things that God can't do. Because these things would violate other of his attributes. God cannot lie.

God cannot deny himself. It would be impossible for him to do that. God cannot be tempted with evil.

You and I can. The Lord Jesus was tempted from without, but he was never tempted from within as we are. God cannot age or die.

Marvelous, isn't it? God can't swear by anyone greater than himself. Why? Because there's no one greater than himself. But these limitations do not affect his omnipotence at all.

They're moral limitations. They're spiritual limitations. And by his very nature, he cannot do these things.

Think of the power of God. And when we think of it, think of that babe in Bethlehem, because that little one who was lying there in Bethlehem was the creator of the universe. He spangled the skies with the stars and the planets and called them all by name.

I tell you, that's omnipotent. I think man with telescopic vision can look out to about 20 billion light years now. I mean, don't ask me to understand that.

I can say it, but I can't understand it. 20 billion light years. The distance light travels in 20 billion years.

But all through that area, stars and planets, he made them all. And he put them there in their orbit, and he keeps them there in their orbit as well. The psalmist tells us that he calls them all by name.

Think of the power of such a God. Think of the power. The psalmist, when he thinks of the power of God, also thinks of the power that creates a little child in the mother's womb.

That's marvelous, isn't it? I mean, it takes you out from the starry heavens right down to the maternity ward, doesn't it? And if you want to thrill, just read the 139th Psalm and see how David puts that together. Think of the power that holds matter together. It's the hand of God that holds it together, the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ that holds it.

If he just released his hand like that, the whole thing would go up in one gigantic nuclear blast. But he sustains all things by the word of his power. What a great God he is, the babe of Bethlehem.

And it's marvelous to me to think that when he created the universe, he created it out of nothing, without tools, and only by the word. By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things that are seen were not made of things that do appear. Just think of that.

He made it out of nothing, without the use of any tools, and he did it merely by speaking the word. We see divine omnipotence in floods, in earthquakes. We had it here in an earthquake not too long ago.

Tremendous power. In volcanic eruptions, the psalmist says he touches the earth and you have this tremendous volcanic eruption. We see it in the storms and winds and waves.

Think of a hurricane that can take a two-by-four and hurl it through the air with such force that it can go through a tree. That's power. God can do that, and he does that too.

We measure power in megatons, the explosive force equivalent to a million tons of TNT. There's no measurement of the power of God. Human vocabulary has no word to indicate the power of God.

When the Old Testament saints thought of the power of God, they immediately went back to the crossing of the Red Sea. When Israel came out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, what a marvelous display of the power of God. God just driving the waters back so that his people could cross over on dry land and bringing the waters together as the Egyptian army went on the water bed.

God did that. But in the New Testament, the most gigantic display of the power of God is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as far as I know, this is the greatest display of power that the world has ever known.

You might say, why? I believe the reason why is because all the forces of Satan and of hell were camped outside the sepulcher that Easter morning, determined that the Christ of God would not rise from the dead. Read all about it in Psalm 18. And God thundered from heaven.

And I tell you, it was a great cannonade as the Psalmist describes it. A great battle went forth and God reached down and raised his son from the greatest display of power, I say, that the world has ever known. Sometimes it's taught that the Lord Jesus gave up his omnipotence when he came to the earth.

You can't be God and have anything less than the full attributes of God. But the Lord Jesus never ceased to be God. He was as much God in the manger as he was on the cross, as he is in heaven today.

So it would be impossible for the Lord Jesus to lay aside his omnipotence, but he could veil it. And he did. He oftentimes veiled his deity in that body of flesh.

I think the poet said it very well. He said, aside he threw his most divine array and veiled his Godhead in a garb of clay. And in that garb didst wondrous love display, restoring what he never took away.

But there were times during his earthly ministry when the glory of his omnipotence shone out. I admit it was veiled at times. I admit that the people there, when they saw him working in the carpenter's shop in Nazareth, just wanted the boys, just wanted ourselves.

But I think of that day when he stood in the boat during a raging storm on the Sea of Galilee, and he said, peace be still. And the winds and the waves obeyed his will. That's a tremendous encouragement to people of God who are going through storms.

The winds and the waves still obeyed his voice. And then at other times he spoke like this. He said, destroy this body and in three days, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again.

Dear friends, that's omnipotence. If I were to take those words on my lips, I wouldn't blame you if you all broke up laughing. Because he was speaking about the temple of his body.

And he said, destroy this body and in three days I will take it up again. He said, I lay down my life. That I may take it again.

No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. He was able to lay his life down, was able to take it up again. And so when the Lord Jesus came to earth, he didn't lay aside his omnipotence.

He veiled it. And it was still all there. And all the time he was on earth, he was sustaining the universe, he was providing.

What a monument of logistics, providing for all the creatures in the world. Did you ever think of that? All the human beings, all the animals, all the birds, fish, and all the rest. Guiding and overruling.

Our hearts should be filled with worship and reverential awe when we meditate on the omniscience of the Lord. And I think we're most apt to think of his physical power, but you have to think of his moral power, his spiritual power as well. I like what East Stanley Jones said, he said, the world is at the feet of the man, and he has capitalized man.

The world is at the feet of the man who had power to strike back, but who had power not to strike back. He said that is power, the ultimate power. He had power to summon more than twelve legions of angels, and yet the omnipotent one could not save himself if sinners were going to be saved.

Himself he could not save. He on the cross must die. Our mercy could not come to ruin sinners.

Yes, Christ the Son of God must bleed that sinners might from sin. There are very practical lessons to be learned from the omnipotence of the Lord Jesus. One is you can't fight successfully against him.

Imagine a human being, a finite sinful human being trying to fight against omnipotence. It would be like a net flying in the face of a blast furnace. That's what it would be.

Man still does it. Man still tries to defy him. But listen to what the scripture says, there's no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord.

No man can ever long prosper in a pathway like that. But I think the great lesson for those who are the children of God is this, that we're on the side of divine omnipotence, and therefore we're on the winning side. Somebody said to Billy Graham, are you an optimist or a pessimist? He said, I'm an optimist.

They said, why? He said, I read the last chapter of Revelation and God is going to win. But that's true. That's true.

At any particular time in our lives, the waves may seem to be against us, but the tide is sure to win. Great comfort for God's people. Nothing can happen to the child of God apart from his permissive will.

And for that reason, we're really immortal until our work is done. I thank God that I know one who can control the intellect and the emotions and the will of men, so that he can cause men to do things that ordinarily they wouldn't do. Unsaved men can do that.

He's omnipotent and he can control their will. You know, he told the children of Israel to go up to Jerusalem to the annual feast in the Old Testament. I want you to go up now to the annual feast.

And you know what? The immediate reaction of the men would be, wait a minute. If we go up to Jerusalem and leave our ranches and farms, the enemy will come in and our wives and children will be defenseless. Would that be a natural reaction? So God made an unusual promise to them in Exodus 34, 24.

He said, Neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year. He said, You obey me and I'll take care of the enemies. And not one of them will desire to go in and take your land when you're obeying me.

I think that's wonderful. You know, only an omnipotent God could ever make a promise like that. We as believers will never be omnipotent.

We'll never have the attributes of God, will we? Never be omnipotent. But I've often said this, that we never come closer to omnipotence than when we pray in the name of the Lord Jesus. When you pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that means according to his will.

It's just the same as if he were making the request to his father. Those are the prayers that really get answered. And finally, I think that the omnipotence of God is a tremendous encouragement to his people.

What an encouragement to know that the God we love and serve can do anything, that nothing is impossible with him. I don't doubt that at this happy Christmas season there are sad hearts even in the room today. And you say, if God is omnipotent, why doesn't he do something? Because oftentimes God seems to be inactive.

I want to tell you this morning, the Savior can solve every problem. The tangles of life can undo. There's nothing too hard for Jesus.

So whatever your problem may be today, you're entitled to go to him and ask him to do the impossible. Elizabeth Elliot in one of her books tells of a motto on the wall of a mission in China. And this is what the motto said, The sun stood still.

The iron did swim. This God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide unto death.

The omnipotent one, he made the sun stand still. He made that axe head swim. This God will be our God forever and ever.

He will be our guide unto death. And Elizabeth Elliot said, This God, the one who, in answer to the prayers of an ordinary man, stopped the sun in its course, the God who suspended his own law of gravity and made an axe head float, this is the God to whom I come. This God is the one whose promises I am counting on.

And can he help me out of my predicament? Whatever my predicament may be, as soon as I compare it with the circumstances surrounding the miracles of the sun and the axe, my doubts seem comical. That's true. That's true.

My doubts seem comical. If God can make the sun stop in answer to the prayers of a man and an axe head to swim contrary to the laws of gravity, there's nothing he can't do for me. That babe in the manger is not only omnipotent, he's also all-knowing.

I can't understand this. I think I mentioned before, because the scripture says he grew in wisdom and in knowledge and in favor with God and man. It says, Of that hour knoweth no man, not even the son of man.

And yet I want to stand here today and tell you that he's omniscient, that there's nothing he doesn't know. You do run into this paradox when you come to the person of the Lord Jesus. And in our first message, we pointed out that no human mind can comprehend the person of Jesus Christ.

You can come to know him and to love him and to worship him, but you can't fully understand him. No man knows the son of the Father. And I'm glad for that.

We could understand him. We'd be just as great as he is. But our God is a God who's above us.

His thoughts are above us and his ways are above us. And that's the way it should be. The Lord Jesus is omniscient, has perfect knowledge of everything.

It doesn't mean that he could know things if he wanted to. It means he does know things. He does know everything.

He's always been omniscient and always will be. God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters. All mind and every mind.

All spirit and all spirits. All being and every being. All creaturehood and all creatures.

Every plurality and all pluralities. I've never heard of some of these words. All law and every law.

All relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feelings, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and on earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven and hell. He knows them all. One of the key passages on the omniscience of the Lord is found in Psalm 139.

Let me read it to you. Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise.

You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You're familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely. Oh Lord, you hem me in behind and before. You have laid your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. And it really is. When the psalmist contemplates the omniscience of the Lord, he's stricken with what people today would call sensory overload.

He can't conceive of such knowledge as too wonderful for him. I think the Lord pointed out a beautiful picture of his omniscience when he said, not a sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly father. Sparrow, one of the most insignificant of birds.

But Ironside was right when he said, God attends the funeral of every sparrow. And of course, the deduction from that is if he cares that much for a sparrow, how much more does he care for us and is interested in us? I like the poet that said, of all God's marvels transcendent, this wonder of wonders I see that the God of such infinite greatness should care for sparrows. And it is wonderful that the God of such infinite greatness should care for the sparrows and me.

In Romans 11, Paul just breaks out in rhapsody when he thinks of the knowledge of the Lord. He says, Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments in his past beyond tracing out who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor, who has ever given to God that God should repay him for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be glory forever. Amen.

I think it's wonderful to think back to that day when a woman came to the Lord Jesus in the crowd and she touched the head of his garment. She was instantly healed. The Lord Jesus was being jostled by a multitude of people.

They were elbowing him and pushing him and all the rest. And yet in his omniscience, he could tell the difference between being jostled and a touch of faith. I want to tell you that's omniscience.

She only touched the hem of his garment as to his side. She stole him in the crowd that gathered around him and straightway she was whole. Oh, touch the hem of his garment and thou too shall be free.

His saving power this very hour shall bring new life to thee. Wonderful, isn't it? Wonderful that he knew what people were thinking. He perceived their thoughts from afar off and yet he never needlessly embarrassed them.

I'm glad of that. I'm glad none of you can read my thoughts all the time because not all of them are worthy. He knew where all the fish were in the Sea of Galilee and he knew that one fish had a coin in its mouth of all things.

And he arranged it so that Peter would go and get that fish out of the Sea of Galilee. He was able to tell the future. His betrayal, his denial, his betrayal, that he would be delivered up to the Gentiles, not to the Jews, to the Gentiles.

That he would be tried and that the verdict would be guilty and that he would be put to death, but that he would rise again the third day from the dead. Look, if he could predict one thing, you could say chance. If he could predict two things the same, still chance.

But all the things he predicted, and they all came true exactly as he predicted them. I tell you, the chances of that happening would be 1 in 10 to the 157th power. Something like that.

1 in 10 to the 157th power. Marvelous. And this is our God, the God that knows all.

And this is the babe in Bethlehem's manger, not just a baby born, not just coming into the world in humanity, but deity coming into the world in humanity. He emptied himself of his position in heaven, but he didn't empty himself of his person. He couldn't do that.

A prince can leave the palace and go down and live in the slums, but he's still the same person. He has emptied himself of a position, but not of his personhood. He could not do that.

The fact that God knows everything, that the Lord knows everything should be a powerful deterrent to sin, shouldn't it? The idea that you can sin and get away with it. Nonsense. Secret sin on earth is open scandal in heaven.

But I think it's also tremendously comforting to know that God knows what his people are going through, too. The sufferings, the trials, the persecutions, the sorrows and the wrongs. In every pang that rends the heart, the man of sorrows has a part.

Never a burden that he doesn't bear. Never a sorrow that he does not share. I like the word in Revelation 2.9, I know thy works and tribulation and poverty.

Those words I know have a tremendous amount of sympathy and comfort in them. And what an encouragement it is to me to know that God knew all about me before he saved me, and he saved me just the same. Isn't that marvelous? I wouldn't have done that, but he did.

He knew what failures and flops we would be after he saved us. He saved us just the same. He knew how we would wander away and break his heart many, many times, but he saved us just the same.

He threw his arms of love around us and justified us freely by his grace. I think it's wonderful today to realize that because he's omniscient, he knows not only what we're saying, but he knows what we feel. Oftentimes we feel worship and adoration for the Lord, but you can't find words to express it.

He knows all about that. He knows that there are people in the world today who don't have much of this world's good, and they wish that they could give to the Lord, but they can't. He rewards them for what they wish.

It wasn't given to David to build a temple in Jerusalem. God said, nevertheless, inasmuch as it was in your heart, I'll reward you because it was in your heart to do it. This is the omniscient God, and this is the one who was born as a babe in Bethlehem's manger.

It's impossible to exhaust the subject. Go on throughout eternity and you'd never really exhaust the subject. You think of the prayers that he's answering in all the nations of the world today.

I read of a man, Robert Dick Wilson, who knew 40 ancient languages. God knows more than that. God knows all the languages in all the world, and he's answering prayer in all of them.

What a wonderful God we have. I hope to speak, too, on his omnipresence, but maybe that will wait until next week, Lord willing. Let's just sing that chorus we sang the first time, O Come Let Us Adore Him, and then we'll close in prayer.