How Big Is Your God?, Part 2

Guest (Male): It's the focus of our most treasured hymns and songs of worship, the greatness of God. In fact, it's a theme that goes all the way back to the oldest book in the Bible.
Guest (Male): Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah takes us back to the book of Job to consider the many ways in which God demonstrates His greatness. From making sense of it all, here's David with the conclusion of How Big Is Your God?
Dr. David Jeremiah: And I thank you for joining us today. We are finishing up what we started yesterday as we take a look at Job's encounter with the majesty of God. Job went through the worst things you can imagine. From our perspective, we could say it wouldn't be surprising if he came out mad at God and determined never to serve Him again, but he came out stronger. He came out fortified in his faith. He came out so majestically right that he said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." What kind of faith is that? That's Job faith. That's the faith God wants to give you and me as we face the difficulties of life. We'll get to this portion of God's Word in just a moment. Don't forget, we're getting close to the end of the month now, and if you haven't done so already, you need to order your copy of 100 Bible Verses That Made America. This book by Rob Morgan is yours for the asking when you send a gift of any size to help Turning Point teach and preach the Word of God around the world. The resources are used carefully to do just that. And when you send your gift, we want to add value to your Christian experience by giving you this resource that comes from the pen of a good friend of mine, Rob Morgan. It will define the moments that shaped your enduring foundation of faith. It is a great read, and it will help you be strong and strengthened in your walk with the Lord. Once again, don't forget, when you send your gift, ask for this book and it will be on its way. And now, here is part two of How Big Is Your God?
Dr. David Jeremiah: So we have here a denial of the justice of God, a defense of the justice of God. And then in the 35th chapter, we have a description of the justice of God. And I'm just going to cover this quickly so you can just put it in your notes and you can think about it later. But this is incredible theology, incredible truth. Number one, God's justice is not affected by our words. Verses one through three, chapter 35, "Moreover, Elihu answered and said, 'Do you think this is right? Do you say, My righteousness is more than God's? For you say, What advantage will it be to you? What profit shall I have more than if I had sinned?'" And once again, Elihu is instructing Job, and he's actually saying to Job that no matter what he may have said or not have said, it doesn't make any difference to the character of God. Listen to me. God's justice is not affected by our words. God is just because it's His nature to be just. He is just whether my words match up to that or not. I can say anything I want and it has no impact at all on the justice of God. Because His justice is who He is. It's a part of His character, it's a part of His nature. You do not have, nor do I have, the power with the words of my mouth to change the nature of God. That's what Elihu was saying to Job. Job apparently thought if he said God was unjust, he'd get a hearing. God isn't going to be affected by what you say. Number two, God is unaffected by our works. In verses four through eight, "I will answer you and your companions with you. Look to the heavens and see, and behold the clouds. They are higher than you. If you sin, what do you accomplish against Him? Or if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give Him? Or what does He receive from your hand? Your wickedness affects a man such as you, and your righteousness, a son of man." Elihu says, "Job, why don't you just look up at heaven for a moment? You see how far the clouds are up there and how far they are above where we are? That's how far God is from you." Job, do you actually think that something you do can change who God is? Do you think that by your rebellion you can make God different? Do you think by your righteousness you can make Him different? Elihu was not saying that good works do not have merit. He is saying that our works, whether they're good or evil, cannot change the nature of God. God cannot change for the better because He's perfect. And He cannot change for the worse because He's holy. So, do what you do, say what you say. You'll have to deal with it, but it doesn't have anything to do with who God is. Don't say God is unfair, because if He's unfair, He can't be God. And you can say it, but it doesn't make any difference. Every time I preach the Gospel, someone will say to me, "Well, Pastor Jeremiah, I just need you to know, I just don't happen to believe that." And I've gotten bold here lately and said, "You know what? You may not believe it, but that doesn't make it untrue." We sort of have the idea that, "Well, if I don't believe it, then I don't have to believe it." Well, it's true whether you believe it or not. And if you don't understand that now, there will come a day when you will understand it very clearly. The truth is the truth whether we believe it or not. God is just whether we accept it or not. It makes no difference what we do or what we say. God is who He is, and He's not changeable. He is the immutable, unchanging God of the universe. God's justice is not affected by our words or our works, and it's not affected by our ways. Notice verses nine and 10. "Because of the multitude of oppressions they cry out. They cry out for help because of the arm of the mighty. But no one says, Where is God my maker who gives songs in the night?" I remember when I was a student in college. For as long as I could remember, I loved radio. Some of you will remember this. When I was growing up, they used to have a little thing called Allied Kits and Heathkits. You could buy them, and they came all broken down, and if you had a soldering iron, you could build your own radio. And I did lots of those. My mother used to say, "David, if you don't get those wires out of your room, you're going to electrocute all of us." And I had wires everywhere, and I was really into electronics. And then as I got a little bit older, I got into the programming part of it. And when I was a student in college, I got involved with two radio stations. We built the campus station on the campus of Cedarville College, and then I was an afternoon announcer on WEEC in Springfield, Ohio. I was a disc jockey. I played music, I gave the weather, I did the news, I put the tapes on of all the taped programs, and I loved it. It was kind of hard when you were a student, and one night I fell asleep on the watch and let a record go click, click, click, click, click. My father called me on the phone and said, "For Pete's sake, David, wake up." And I did. One of the things that I did when I was an announcer is I got to put all these wonderful programs on the air. This is a Christian FM station. One of the programs was a program produced by the Moody Bible Institute called "Songs in the Night." They got the name of that program right out of this text, "Songs in the Night." It was produced by a guy named Bill Pierce, who was at one time a professional trombonist. He was one of the greatest trombone players you ever heard in your life. And then he got into radio, and he had a blessed voice. He had this deep sepulchral voice. And at midnight, when he talked real soft, it was so soothing. And he used to play music at night that was real laid back, mellow. And he played that music in the night for people who were going through night, not just as a day part, but they were going through the dark night of the soul. And I used to love putting him on and listen to him. He was just such a pro. You know, research shows that newborn babies have no fear of the dark. After all, they just spent nine months in the darkness of the womb. We put night lights in the nursery so we can see the babies, not so they'll be unafraid. But a strange thing happens to us as we start to grow up. Children develop night fears, imagining creatures outside their windows or monsters under their beds. And as we age, as we get older, those nighttime fears become even more sophisticated. Many of us struggle every night with letting go of our worries so we can sleep. I've had sleepless nights, as I'm sure you have. How many of you have ever struggled with sleep? Now I know why you all sleep in church on Sunday. Yeah, all right. Well, I want to just give you a little something special today that I discovered that was a blessing to me. I want to give you seven passages from the Psalms to help you sleep at night. Here's the first one. Psalm 4:8, "I will both lay down in peace and sleep; For You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." Psalm 42:8, "The Lord will command His loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me." Psalm 63:6, "When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches." Psalm 74:16, "The day is Yours, and the night is also Yours." Psalm 121:4, "Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." Psalm 127:2, "For so He gives His beloved sleep." Psalm 149:5, "Let the saints be joyful in glory; Let them sing aloud on their beds." Now, if you are an insomniac and you're married to someone who is not, you may not want to try that last verse, because singing aloud in the middle of the night may not be a good thing. But these are wonderful truths from the Word of God. In fact, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great English preacher, once said it this way, "They slumber sweetly whom faith rocks to sleep, and no pillow is so soft as a promise. No pillow is so soft as a promise." And these are promises from God. I would suggest to you if you have trouble sleeping that you just take those seven verses and memorize them and just repeat them in the night. One guy said it this way, "If the Lord's going to stay awake all night, I'm going to sleep. There's no sense both of us staying up." Amen. Amen. So Elihu was saying to Job, "Job, God's justice is just, but even when it doesn't seem like He's removing our burdens, even then He always gives us strength to bear them, and that strength oftentimes is like a song in the night." Hallelujah. And so many times He's done that for us. When I was so sick a few years ago, I was taking medication for the pain, and it was morphine, and I don't do morphine too good. I hope I don't have to take that again. It kind of made me crazy. You wake up with a start, and you know, you don't know where you are sometimes, and I just got my Bible and stuck it right by my bed, and I had it open to Psalms, and as soon as I'd wake up, I'd just get it and I'd start reading the Psalms. And I'd read them, and God so ministered to my heart. You know, when you're in a hospital and you can't sleep, you don't read Leviticus, right? You read Psalms. You read Psalms because Psalms is going to help you. And so I recommend that. You can find "Songs in the Night" whatever you're going through. Now, I want to answer the second question. The first question that Elihu answers for Job is this: Is the God we serve a just God? And the second question he asks is, Is the God we serve a great God? Because you see, Job in his questioning about what's happening in his own life has come to the conclusion that either God is unjust and won't help him, or God is just maybe not able to help him. So Elihu is going to help him understand the greatness of God. Now, I've chosen some passages, and I'm going to give you the key verses, and you can write those down in your notes. And then I'm going to read just two passages, and then we're going to be finished. The God we serve is a great God. How do we know that? Job 36:26, "Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him." The theme of this section is that God is great and that His ways are beyond our understanding. He is omnipotent, He is eternal, He is all wise. We human beings divide knowledge into categories and theories, but God who spreads the clouds out like a blanket, holds lightning bolts in His hands, He shatters our categories and He confounds our theories. What is there about God that is great? First of all, the mind of God is great. Job 36:5, "Behold, God is mighty, but despises no one; He is mighty in strength of understanding." Job 36:22, "Who teaches God?" Job 37:16, "He is perfect in knowledge." The Lord is great in understanding. His knowledge is infallible. Therefore, anything that deviates from what He says is false. We should never start with our thoughts, our opinions, our feelings. We must always start with the mind of God. Just remember if you're in a small group that your discussion can be very, very varied, but it must always start with God. You know what happens in a lot of small groups around the country? They get in their discussion time, and they go around the circle, and they talk about what they think something means. And when they get all done, you know what it is? It is a pooling of ignorance. That's what it is. Just a collection of everything. If you go to a small group and the only thing you take away from that small group every week is, "Oh, everybody else in my group is as ignorant as I am." That's not a good thing. You start with what God has said and then discuss what God has said and how it applies to your life. If you don't do that, you're not in a good small group. The Bible says the mind of God is great. Start with the great mind of God and go somewhere with it. Not only that, but the mercy of God is great. Job 36:6, "He does not preserve the life of the wicked, but gives justice to the oppressed." Job 36:15, "He delivers the poor in their affliction, and opens their ears in oppression." Have you ever had the Lord use oppression to get your attention and open your ear? That's what He does sometimes. He brings things into our lives so that we'll start listening to Him. We get pretty hardheaded sometimes, and God has to get our attention. The mind of God is great, the mercy of God is great. Notice thirdly, the might of God is great. Chapter 36, verse 5, "Behold, God is mighty." Chapter 37, verse 5, "He does great things which we cannot comprehend." Now, here's what I want to do. We could cover the rest of this, but I'm going to read this to you, but not from the King James or the New King James. I'm going to read you Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of these next verses, because in chapter 36 and in chapter 37, there is what we might call a little hymn. And it reads so good in the paraphrase, it'll help you get a sense of it. And here is Elihu's message to Job about God's greatness, about His mighty power. Listen. "Do you have any idea how powerful God is? Have you ever heard of a teacher like Him? Has anyone ever had to tell Him what to do or correct Him saying, 'You sure did that all wrong'? Remember then, to praise His workmanship, which is so often celebrated in song. Everybody sees it, nobody's too far away to see it. Take a long look, Job. See how great He is, greater than anything you could ever imagine or figure out. He pulls water up out of the sea, distills it and fills up His rain cloud cisterns, and the skies open up and pour out soaking showers on everyone. Does anyone have the slightest idea how this happens? How He arranges the clouds, how He speaks in the thunder? Just look at that lightning, His sky-filling light show, illuminating the dark depths of the sea. These are the symbols of His sovereignty, His generosity, and His loving care. He hurls arrows of light, taking sure and accurate aim. The high God roars in the thunder, angry against evil." Now I must tell you, if you live on the West Coast, you miss a little of this, because if you grew up in the Midwest, you know what these thunderlight shows are about. You can be outdoors in a picnic, and all of a sudden out of nowhere, the clouds cloud up and the rain starts to fall, and the lightning fills the sky, and the thunder rumbles, and you get a good impression of the power of God in nature. Does anybody understand how that happens? Oh, I know the scientists have got all their ideas, but behind all of the explanation is the God who's being explained. And that's what Elihu was saying. The God we serve is great. His mind is great, His mercy is great, His might is great. And finally, His majesty is great. Notice, verse 4, chapter 37, "He thunders with His majestic voice." Verse 22, "With God is awesome majesty." Now here is the little poem from chapter 37. Once again, I'm going to read it from The Message. I'm going to read it as if I think it should have been read this way. "Job, are you listening? Have you noticed all this? Stop in your tracks, take in God's miracle wonders. Do you have any idea how God does it all? How He makes bright lightning from dark storms? How He piles up the cumulus clouds? All these miracle wonders of the perfect mind. Why, you don't even know how to keep cool on a sweltering hot day. So how could you even dream of making a dent in that hot tin roof sky? If you're so smart, Job, give us a lesson on how to address God. We're in the dark, and we can't figure it out. Do you think I'm dumb enough to challenge God? Wouldn't that be just asking for trouble? No one in his right mind stares straight at the sun on a clear and cloudless day. As gold comes from the northern mountains, so a terrible beauty streams from God. Mighty God, far beyond our reach, unsurpassable in power and justice. It's unthinkable that He'd treat anyone unfairly. So, bow to Him in deep reverence, one and all. If you're wise, you'll most certainly worship God." Amen. That's pretty powerful, isn't it? Elihu got into himself. He started to preach some good stuff. And it's good for us, especially at these times, to remember how great is our God. Leave it up to a children's book to help us grab this. The title of the book is, "Is the Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?" And it was written by Robert Wells, who takes us from a size we can grasp to one that we can't. Let this truth get in your heart as we close. Here's what Robert Wells wrote in this children's book. "The largest animal on Earth is the blue whale. Just the flippers on its tail are bigger than most animals on the Earth. But a blue whale isn't anywhere near as big as a mountain. If you put 100 blue whales in a blue whale jar, you could put millions of blue whale jars inside a hollowed-out Mount Everest. But Mount Everest isn't anywhere near as big as the Earth. If you stacked 100 Mount Everests on top of one another, it would be just a whisker on the face of the Earth. And the Earth isn't anywhere as big as the Sun. You could fit one million Earths inside the Sun. But the Sun, which is a medium-sized star, isn't anywhere near as big as a red supergiant star called Antares. 50 million of our Suns could fit inside Antares. But Antares isn't anywhere near as big as the Milky Way galaxy. Billions of stars, including super-giants like Antares, as well as countless comets and asteroids make up the Milky Way galaxy. But the Milky Way galaxy isn't anywhere near as big as the universe. And there are billions of other galaxies in the universe. And yet, filled with billions of galaxies, the universe looks almost empty. The distances from one galaxy to another are so far beyond our comprehension and imagination, we do not know how to explain it. And the Creator of it all is God, who with a word spoke it all into being, who is present everywhere in this universe and beyond, and who upholds it all with His mighty power. How great is our God, and greatly to be praised." And I ask you again today, my friends, is a God that great able to help you with your stuff right now? Is He? You see, what we do when we get in a situation like we're in, we start focusing on our stuff. And we get our eyes off of God. You know, there's a great story in the Old Testament that happened in Kadesh-Barnea when the spies were sent into the land. And, you know, the majority report came back and they said, "Man, we have looked at all these giants in here, and we're like grasshoppers before them. We can't do this." But there were two dudes named Joshua and Caleb who came out of there and they said, "We are well able to do this. Our God will help us." And the difference, let me just tell you what the difference was. The majority came out of Canaan, and they saw their problems in relationship to themselves and the other giants. Joshua and Caleb came out, and they saw the giants in comparison to God. So how do you get to where Joshua and Caleb were? You have to have a big God. You have to see God high and lifted up. You have to elevate God. He doesn't need to be improved upon. We just need to improve our ability to comprehend Him. And when we see God in His holy, high and lifted up, we look at our problems and we say, "God, one day you spoke and the whole world came into being. I know my problem, it's really big to me right now, but it's nothing for You." So I want to ask you, God, help me with my problem, and I know you are able to do it. That's what we need to come. We need to come with confidence that the God we serve is not taken by surprise by all the stuff we're going through, and He wants so desperately to have a relationship with you, so that He can not only be your savior and your God, but He can be your friend and your guide. My friend, I would not want to be alive on planet Earth today and not have a relationship with the great God of the universe. I am insufficient for these things, but I have a God who is able. And He is willing to come into your life, whoever you may be or wherever you may be, and make a difference that only God can make. So I worship Him today, and I honor Him today. Amen. You know, the Bible is such an incredible book. When you read it, you always come through the reading of it on the other side with a different perspective on things than if you hadn't read it at all. The Bible changes you. It changes your mind, it changes your heart, it changes your desires. It's so powerfully written, so powerfully communicates the majesty of God. So if you're in difficulty, don't neglect the Word of God. Run to it, embrace it, make it even more a part of your life than it was before. That's how your faith grows, and that's how you come to know this majestic God we've been talking about from the Book of Job. Tomorrow, we're going to the New Testament book of John, and we're going to talk about peace in a distraught world. Another passage on perspective. I hope you'll join us then. I'm David Jeremiah. Thank you so much for being a part of today's program.
Guest (Male): Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor, Dr. David Jeremiah. Drop us a note and let us know how God is using this ministry in your life. Write to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Visiting our website at davidjeremiah.org/radio or calling 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of Robert J. Morgan's book, 100 Bible Verses That Made America. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also view over 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah's sermons on any screen, anytime you like, on our Turning Point Plus streaming service for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit turningpointplus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we conclude the series making sense of it all on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.