The Power of God

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Nahum 1:3-9

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I know we're in Nahum, but I'm going to begin the sermon by quoting a passage from Jeremiah.
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Jeremiah chapter 9 and verse 23 and 24.
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Thus says the Lord, Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the
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Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.
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For in these things I delight, declares the Lord. As we begin this sermon today, we continue on really being confronted with the
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God of Nahum. I told you before, I wasn't anticipating this. You know, I kind of began to do an initial study and lay out the sermons and kind of think through, you know, where we're going to go and those things as I pray and seek the
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Lord. But as we've drilled down into the text, we've just been reminded that Nahum comes out of the gate just showing us, hey guys, remember, this is
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God. I was told this morning from a brother that he had read a quote that one of the problems in America today is the weakness of the pulpit.
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I think there's a lot of truth in that. And I think one of the weaknesses of the pulpit has been that we've been afraid to open up the
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Bible and say, friends, this is who God is. We have done great damage in trying to soften
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God or try to apologize for God or try to maybe hide certain aspects of what the
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Bible tells us about God. And so we've been providentially reminded, confronted, encouraged, challenged, stretched in awe of the
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God of the Bible from Nahum. And we continue that today as we consider the power of God.
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Nahum chapter one and verse three. Would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word?
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We're going to read more than this later, but let's just start the text or the sermon with just this first part of verse three.
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Let's just simmer on these words. Let's chew on them.
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Let's meditate on them. Let's think about these last three words in the English. The Lord is slow to anger.
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And here they are. Great in power.
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Our triune God. If we could just get a drop of your power in this place, what a change that would be.
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If we could just see even this morning a taste of your redemptive power in this place of bringing sinners from death to life, what an awesome reality that would be.
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We see your power all around us, and yet we fail to recognize it as was prayed for the offering in the green grass and in the blue skies and in the temperature and in the rain and in the earth on its 23 and a half degree axis and spinning perfectly and revolving around the sun and galaxies upon galaxies and innumerable stars.
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Your power is everywhere. So often we don't trust it. We don't believe it.
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We don't look to it. Help us today. Please, our great God, understand your power.
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And may your power increase our faith. Help us to be the people you'd have us to be because we serve a
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God who is great in power. We pray that Christ would be exalted. We'd see your power in connection with the gospel.
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Bless our time today. We pray that you would visit us. We plead that you would visit us.
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In one sense, we don't even know the fullness of what we're asking, but we pray that you would visit us this morning with your power.
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Visit our nation with your power. We know that your power in this text is displayed in wrath, but we pray for your power for revival, your power for redemption.
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We pray for power to restore families. We pray for power to restore prodigals and wavered children.
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We pray to see your power in this land and that everyone would be able to look around and say that's nothing to do with Quatro or Providence or Jacob or anything like that.
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It's all about the power of God. We want your power to be here. We plead for it and we pray in Jesus name.
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Amen. You may be seated. We consider this morning the greatness of God's power. I am mindful.
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I am mindful. I do own a watch. I'm mindful of how long last sermon went and I am thinking about that today.
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I hope that's not a distraction for me, but I do want to be mindful. The first point
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I have this morning is the power of God defined. And so we look at the text and we just think about the words there.
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The word of God is breathed out. Every word, every syllable, every sentence here is the word of God.
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And so we have these three English words there at the end of the first part of verse three. Great in power.
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That's two Hebrew words. The word for great. It has the idea of bigness rather than moral greatness.
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So we'll talk about moral greatness in a couple of weeks when we get to verse seven. But the word power there.
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So great in power is the idea that you have the English word strength, might, power.
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And so the idea is highlighting the vastness of God's might. The Lord is great in power.
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It reminds us of places like Genesis 17 one where God says, calls himself
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El Shaddai. That is God Almighty. And we still talk about that today. Probably we should bring that language back a little bit.
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When we usually talk about God, we say God or the Lord. But kind of an antiquated way to refer to God is to call him the
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Almighty. Well, etymologically, Almighty. What does that mean? All might. He has all might.
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That's what we're saying. The one who has all might. And Nahum reminds us here that Yahweh's power is great.
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And then something else that's interesting is it's kind of a reminder of the frailty of human language.
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And that is, it's one thing to say God is great in power, but now Nahum is going to describe it for us.
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Because it's almost just not enough to say God is great in power. It just fails.
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It kind of falls flat a little bit. And so Nahum shows us. So, for example, I'll just read it.
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The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. The Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
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Now we start to get some imagery of His power. His way is in the whirlwind and storm.
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And the clouds are the dust of His feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry. He dries up all the rivers.
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Bashan and Carmel wither. The bloom of Lebanon withers. The mountains quake before Him. The hills melt.
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The earth heaves before Him. The world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before His indignation?
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Who can endure the heat of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by Him.
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Do you see how that is an illustration of the power of God?
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So what we want to discuss in this point here, the power of God defined, is what theologians call the omnipotence of God.
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Now, omnipotence comes from two words. Omni, it's Latin, all. And then you know the word potency, it's power.
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So to say that God is omnipotent is to say that God has all power.
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Now there are a few things that we want to think through here. The first would be that the power of God cannot be exhausted.
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So in one sense, we shouldn't really say that God does things with little effort, right?
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Because that's actually not fully accurate. God doesn't do things with little effort. He does things with no effort, right?
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He speaks and galaxies are created. He speaks and the stars come to existence.
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And yet, His power is never diminished. It's never lessened. Remember Isaiah 40, 28.
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Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God. The creator of the ends of the earth.
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He does not grow. He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
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The Lord never grows weary. You read Genesis 2, 7. The Lord rest or actually, sorry, 2, 4.
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I sing a seventh day. Lord rest on the seventh day. He's not resting because he's tired.
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His power does not drain. His energy does not weaken. Also, you saw that in Isaiah 40, but His power and His understanding go together.
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This is important. All of God's attributes that we're reading here, all of God's attributes are connected.
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Even that's kind of a clunky way to say it. We separate the attributes of God in order to kind of see in parts and try to get a clearer picture of who
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God is. But you need to understand that the attributes of God, they're not separated in God. God's power and His wisdom and His holiness and His sovereignty and His love.
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It's all just a different angle, if you will, of who God is. This is who God is.
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He's not part power over here, part love over here, part wisdom over here. It's all together.
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And I hope that begins to stretch your heart and your mind as you think about the vastness and the greatness of God. But I'm just trying to make a little note here that the wisdom of God and the power of God go together.
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If we can, we could say it this way. The wisdom of God directs the power of God so that all of His power is wise power.
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Just put it to you this way. You know people who are wise, but they're not powerful. And you know people who are powerful, but they're not wise.
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This is not true with God. God is both wise and powerful, all wise, all powerful.
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It brings me to another thought here about defining God's power. Martin Lloyd -Jones preached, the omnipotence of God is that by which he brings to pass everything he wills.
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The omnipotence of God is that by which he brings to pass everything he wills. So again, think about myself.
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I have the will to do things that I do not have the power to do. So, for example, the will in this way,
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I desire to say, take my family to this or that place. Well, I don't necessarily have the power to do that.
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Or I could say, I am willing next week to meet with you for counseling, but I don't have the power to keep myself alive till then.
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I don't have the power to keep you alive till then. I don't have the power to keep the universe running until then.
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But this is not true with God. He has the power to bring about all that he wills to bring about and what
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God wills he is able to do. And he does do. Now that brings some more to our minds here to mention.
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First, let me help some of the young folks here, probably. Maybe older folks deal with this kind of nonsense, too.
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But young folks, if you haven't already, you'll encounter the, you know, the snarky atheist or whatever.
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And he'll say to you, is God all powerful? And you'll say, well, of course, God is all powerful. And they say, OK, can
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God make a rock that he can't lift? That's a conundrum, right?
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Oh, no, what am I going to do? If God can make a rock he cannot lift, then he's not all powerful because he just made a rock he can't lift.
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If he can't make a rock that he can't lift, then he's not all powerful because there's something that he can't do, right?
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Or that is the conundrum. What do we do with that? Well, we say the whole equation is faulty, right?
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It's foolish. We don't even entertain that. God will not do that. Why? Because it's an irrationality.
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It's illogical. It is impossible because it's like saying, make a square circle, right?
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You can't do that. God is able to do and does do all that he wills to do. But listen to me.
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It is impossible for the will of God to be illogical or irrational because that is contrary to his holy essence.
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Furthermore, this brings up another thought. I always like to trick the kids here. But now that they know that I'm going to trick them, they may answer this differently.
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But let me just ask the children for a second. So let me see your eyes. I'm looking. I can see you. All right, good.
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Good listeners. Can God do anything? I tricked them anyway.
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Yeah, that's not true. God can't do anything, right? The Bible specifically tells us some things.
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So there you go. I got the feather in my cap. I trick children. So the Bible specifically tells us, children, there are things that God cannot do.
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Such as what? What can God not do? Titus says God cannot lie.
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God cannot lie. It is impossible for God to lie. Why? It's contrary to his will.
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It's contrary to him. God can't break promises. God cannot cease to be who he is.
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God cannot sin. God cannot change. This is all important for our understanding.
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In our text, you look at verse three, there's a specific thing in the text. The Lord is slow to anger, great in power, and the
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Lord will by no means clear the guilty. So God cannot be unjust. He cannot do any of these things.
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The point is God's power and God's will are connected. And his power is wise and his power is good.
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This is God's will. So when we speak of God's will, it's a little bit theological in this point, but it's important.
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We speak of it from two angles. Not that God has two wills. God has one will. But there are two ways that our little peanut brains can look at God's will.
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The first way is the aspect of his decretive will. That means his will of decree.
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What God has decreed. So think through this with me for a moment, church. Before the uttering of let there be light in Genesis 1 -3, there was in the mind of God all that would come to pass.
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His perfect plan, ordained in the mysterious and eternal counsel of the Trinity, that brings us into really a realm that we're not allowed to enter into.
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And his power perfectly brings about this plan and this decree of will, his will of decree.
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Lamentations 3 -37. Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it.
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What is happening in the world today unless God is sovereign over? I understand that's a little bit of overlap from last week.
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In fact, I'll read. I read this last week from our confession. But let me read to you what the Westminster Confession of Faith says.
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Chapter 3, paragraph 1. God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever come to pass.
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Yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
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This is the power of God. This is his decree of will. Jobiki says of God's omnipotence, the Lord has infinite power to accomplish all his decree of will and enforce the full rights of his authority.
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God's power. You don't have the power. Like there's so often there are things that we wish we could do. We can make our family more complete that we could maybe make more money.
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So many desires that we have. But in God's decree of will, all that he desires, it does come to pass.
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His infinite power is able to bring it to pass. So my point here is the power of God carries out the decree of God.
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And we usually call this providence. The providence of God is the power of God carrying out the will of God.
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Then there's another aspect of God's will that we can look at, which we would call his prescriptive will, which means what he commands us to do.
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Now, all the time you see people disobeying God's commands. But this is how we can say that the perfect plan of God is still never thwarted, even though men reject and disobey what
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God has revealed in his commands. But let me just pause. I know that was theological before we go to our second point.
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Can we not just like for a second, just pause and take a breath and say, this God is worthy of our adoration.
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This God is worthy of our worship. This God who has created DNA and has created galaxies and created the seasons and who has created rain and even things that we haven't discovered yet.
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This God who is the God of science, this God of true science, this God is the God of the natural and the supernatural and the
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God of salvation and the God of babies like this is the God of the Bible and he deserves our worship.
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Secondly, let's talk about the power of God displayed. So back to our text.
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The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. Now, what is this in reference to?
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As we've examined already time and time again in Nahum, we see Nineveh falling here under the judgment of God.
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And we see that now the great power of God is displayed in his holy and righteous wrath.
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We've read it, but let's just read it again. Here's the display of God. Here's his display of the power.
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I'll start in verse 4. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry. He dries up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither.
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The bloom of Lebanon withers. The mountains quake before him. The hills melt. The earth heaves before him.
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The world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger?
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His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by him. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble.
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He knows those who take refuge in him. But with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of the adversaries and will pursue his enemies into darkness.
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What do you plot against the Lord? He will make a complete end. Trouble will not rise up a second time.
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This speaks to the power of the wrath of God displayed. God has the desire and the will and the power to carry out here judgment upon Nineveh.
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And so he does. The power of God is displayed in his wrath. This is seen throughout the scriptures.
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You see it in the flood. The literal global flood. You see it in Genesis. You see it in the raining of fire on Sodom and Gomorrah.
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You see it when Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire and God kills him.
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You see it when Uzzah goes to stick out his hand and he touches the ark and God kills him.
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You see his wrath at times poured upon Israel. You see sometimes in Korah's rebellion where the earth opens up and it swallows people.
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Well, that's just Old Testament. No, you see in the New Testament and Ananias and Sapphira. They lie to the church and God kills them.
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And then even you could think about hell. The vivid imagery of the power of God's wrath.
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The lake of fire that the Bible says burns forever and ever. So Nahum here is in solidarity with the rest of the scripture.
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Not merely to tell us that God is great in power, but to show us a small taste of how his power is displayed in his wrath and how powerful he actually is.
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Psalm 62 11 says, Once God has spoken, twice have I heard this, that power belongs to God.
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And God is displaying this in his wrath. You know the answer to verse 6 is no one, right? Who can stand before his indignation?
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Who can endure the heat of his anger? That's rhetorical. So the idea here is that Assyria cannot endure.
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And it's important contextually to remember this. At this time period, when this was written,
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Assyria is either at its height or at very near the height of its power.
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You would look at the Assyrian empire during this time and you would say, there's no way this is ever going to change.
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It's always going to be the same. Assyria is always going to be in control. Nothing can take them down.
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They will always be like they are now. But God says they will not stand before my indignation.
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God's power is infinitely superior to the power of people or the power of nations.
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Some of you, some of you rightly fear what would happen if a certain person was elected,
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Kamala Harris. Her power does not compare to the power of God. You understand?
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This is important for us to remember. God's power is infinitely superior.
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The raging of the nations and the plotting of the people against God is absolutely all in vain.
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I'm going to tell you something that's true. It's true of me. It's true of you. You put far too much stake in the power of man.
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You put far too much stake in our economy, right?
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Our economy is much more fragile than you realize, right?
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And we put far too much stake there. We put far too much stake in the
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American military. Nothing could ever conquer the American military.
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And I'm grateful for the American military. And we should be grateful. But you need to understand, it's not invincible.
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Our economy is not invincible. Our food system is not invincible. Even the very earth beneath your feet is not invincible.
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But God is great in power, infinite. And when God is ready to bring his wrath upon a nation, when
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God is ready to judge a people, there is not a single person that can stand against him.
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Yeah, but guess what? I'll go out into the mountains and I'll build me a cave.
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And then I'll be a hoarder. I'll have all my stuff. I'll be a prepper. That's the word I was looking for. I'll be a prepper. I'll have all this ammunition stored up.
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I'll have all these cans of food stored up. And I'll be ready. No, you won't. Not when the wrath of God comes.
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Your little hole in a mountain is going to stop him. The mountains melt before him.
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You cannot stand against his indignation. But listen, I need to show you something else in the text because it's not all doom and gloom.
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Not only is God's power displayed in scripture and in our text, in his wrath, but also in his redemption.
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The two verses I'll mention here, one, and we're going to get to these, one is in verse seven, not today, but we will.
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The Lord is good, think about this word, a stronghold, a stronghold in the day of trouble.
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That is, you're going to go run out into your cave and you're prepping and you're, by the way, not that I'm against if you've got stuff stored up by all means, right?
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I'm not against that. I'm just saying, if that's your hope, you're going to go in your cave and get away from God's wrath. No, you won't.
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But there is a way to get away from his wrath. He says he's the stronghold in a day of trouble.
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He's the stronghold. And then in verse 15, read this, Behold upon the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace.
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And then he says this to the people of Judah. In the midst of wrath, he says this to his people. Keep your feasts,
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O Judah, fulfill your vows, for never again shall the worthless pass through you. He is utterly cut off.
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In other words, God's power is displayed in his wrath, but it's also displayed in his redemption.
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In one act of power, as it were, God is going to display his wrath over Nineveh and then he's going to display redemption by showing wrath on Nineveh.
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He sets free Judah. You understand? By the judgment of God on Nineveh, Judah will be redeemed.
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And all of this displays the omnipotent power of God. Now, if you're tracking with me, that doesn't take as much to get to the gospel, does it?
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This small picture here in the book of Nahum points us to the cosmic picture of the cross.
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This is why Jesus says things like this. You search the Scripture because you think that in them, you have eternal life, but it is they that bear witness about me.
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In other words, you read the book of Nahum and you don't see Jesus, you're reading it wrong. Christ is here and is pointing us forward to the gospel.
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On the cross, the power of God's wrath is displayed upon the Son of God in our place, while simultaneously the power of His mercy is also displayed.
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Both wrath and redemption meet under the omnipotent hand of God upon Calvary.
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What a powerful God. We have a God who doesn't just have the power to destroy sinners, but also the power to forgive sinners.
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This is power. The judgment of God falls upon Jesus so that all who repent of their sins and put their faith in Him alone are saved.
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I lied to you earlier. Verse 6 Who can stand before His indignation?
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I said no one. I should have made an exception. Who can endure the heat of His anger?
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I said no one. I should have made an exception. The Lord Jesus Christ.
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Who can stand before the indignation of God? Not you, not Assyria, not
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Nineveh, but Christ can. Not only can He, but He did. One time the Jehovah's Witnesses came to my house.
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I don't know why they came to my house. The church van was out there. Soli Deo Gloria is on the front of the house. They come.
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They want to have a conversation. They start talking to me. I talk to them about the gospel. Of course, they're rejecting it. And I'm saying to them, how can someone who is not
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God pay for our sins? You understand? Jesus had to endure the wrath of the infinite eternal
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God. And He does so as the God -man upon the cross. He stands before the indignation of God in the place of sinners.
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This is the power. Of course, the power of God is all around and in the gospel.
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The power of the incarnation, that is the Holy Spirit, would knit inside the womb of Mary's human nature, hypostatically united to the divine nature.
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This is power. Or the power of the righteousness of Christ, fulfilling the law of God on our behalf.
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Or the power of Jesus taking upon our sins and enduring their punishment as our propitiation under the wrath of God.
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Or the power of the triune God. Who rose Jesus from the dead? God did. God the
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Father? Yes. God the Son? Yes. God the Holy Spirit? Yes. The triune
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God displays His power in the resurrection of the dead. Great is His power indeed.
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I'm just going to tell you this morning that we are far too on it because we've watered down the gospel.
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We're far too unamazed at the power of God to redeem. We talk a lot about the power of God to bring judgment, but there's great power in His redemption.
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The truth of the matter is, God's power is going to be displayed in your life in one of these ways.
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It is displayed already in the sense of Acts 17, 28. It says, In Him we live and move and have our being.
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That is, apart from the power of God, you're not here today. Your heart's not breathing. Breathing.
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Your lungs... What am I saying? Your heart's not beating. I just put that together.
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Your heart doesn't breathe. I'm not a doctor, but... Your heart's not beating apart from the power of God.
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Your lungs aren't breathing. That all come out right? Apart from the power of God. The synapses in your brain aren't firing apart from the power of God.
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The cells in your body are not reproducing apart from the power of God. You're only here by God's power, but it will be displayed either in wrath or redemption upon your soul.
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Every soul will experience one of these displays of the power of God. And this ought to cause within you a time of sobering reflection.
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And just think and pause for a moment in this sermon. Is God's redemption present in my life?
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A few weeks ago when I was reflecting and thinking, and just working on thinking about God's power, another verse came to my mind.
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The verse that Pastor Jacob read this morning in Sunday school. Romans 1 16. It says this,
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For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is... What? The power of God.
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For salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also to the Greek.
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Now, this is not disparaging God's law. God's law is necessary to show us our sin, to convict us of our shortcoming, to drive us to Christ.
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But the law, because of the weakness of the sinful flesh as we've been memorizing, has no power to redeem us.
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Thus, we see the omnipotent power of God displayed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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It is not only displayed in what we've talked about, all that we've talked about, wrath, redemption, resurrection, all these things, the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
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It's also displayed in the power of God bringing sinners from death to life.
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Out from under the wrath of God and now under His favor and transforming them and making them new and casting off the darkness with the light.
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That is, God displays His power in actually saving sinners. Even faith and repentance are gifts of His power.
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And when He redeems a rebel soul to His holy cause by His grace and for His glory, that person is, sure enough, a new creation.
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They are transformed. They are changed. You know, you've seen the incredible stories when animals attack, right?
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And you've seen people face these crazy animal attacks like a bear attack or maybe a mountain lion attack or maybe they got attacked by a squirrel.
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I don't know, that's not as intimidating, is it? But they have these attacks with these animals and they survive.
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But you can tell just by looking at them, whether there's some sort of physical mark or whether like their whole disposition has changed.
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They are forever changed because of that interaction with that wild animal.
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Well, I'm just arguing here for a second. If this is true with animals, how are people saying that they encounter the
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God of all power, the God of all grace, the holy triune
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God of the Bible, and yet they're left unchanged? Can you really say,
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I have encountered this powerful God and the power of His redemption and the power of forgiveness of sins and the power of regeneration and the power of justification and the power of sanctification?
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Oh, yeah? What's different about you? Nothing's different about me. I just got a ticket now that I'm going to heaven.
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What gospel are we preaching? What a strange salvation exists in churches today that men and women and boys and girls could recite a little prayer or get dunked in the baptistry or sign a card or raise a hand and sure enough, they're going to heaven.
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All the while, they've been left unchanged. They have no desire to read the
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Bible. They have no desire to be engaged in the church. No desire to live holy.
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No desire to share the gospel. No desire to pray. I'm asking you today, church, is the power of God great or no?
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Is the gospel the power of God for salvation of all sinners who believe or no?
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Does the work of Christ actually accomplish real redemption in the hearts of those who look to Jesus in faith or no?
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What kind of gospel do we proclaim today? I'm telling you this morning that the gospel we preach is saturated with the power of God.
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It is God's power that accomplished it. It is God's power that applies it to the sin -stained soul.
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It is God's power that transforms the sinner from being enslaved in the shackles of sin to now being in love with Christ.
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From being in love with the world to now being endeared to Christ, to being free from the penalty and the power of sin and in love with the
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Lord Jesus and His church and His Word, God's power is displayed in wrath. That's true.
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It's true of Nineveh and it's true of everlasting hell. But I'm telling you in this point that His power is also displayed in His redemption of unworthy sinners.
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In time and again, rescuing Israel in the Old Testament, in the work of Christ for us, and in the application of the gospel to our souls.
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Friends, just ask yourself for a moment as we get ready to move on, how is God's power displayed in your life?
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Okay, thirdly, God's power defined, displayed, and thirdly, God's power depended on.
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Now, the text says the Lord is slow to anger and great in power. It's interesting, we could explore this point maybe in a few different ways here, but Nahum, the prophet
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Nahum that is, depended on God's power. He depended on God's power for this revelation.
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Nahum didn't just come up with this. Nahum wasn't sitting around one day and just thought, you know what, I think I'll come up with a prophecy about Assyria.
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No, he had to depend on God's power to reveal it to him. But more specifically to the text, he had to depend on God's power for the destruction of Nineveh.
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There was nothing that Nahum could do about Assyria, but God could.
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I'll take you back to verse 15 again. By the way, the second part of that, it's a command when he says, keep your feast,
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O Judah, fulfill your vows, for never again shall a worthless pass through you. He is utterly cut off.
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This is a command and the book of Nahum here is calling upon God's people, not merely to reflect upon his excellencies and perfections and to be in awe of his righteous judgment, but also here, the command is to trust him.
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To trust him. We're not preaching so that you can pass a seminary exam.
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I know what the omnipotence of God means. It comes from two words, Latin, omni, all, potent, power.
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I know that God is all powerful. That's not what Nahum's doing. He's not merely saying
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God is all powerful. He's saying God is great in power. And then when you get to the end of the chapter, he's saying, trust him, trust him.
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Do now what he has said. Why? Because he is the God of all power.
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He is able. Got it. Do you believe that this morning? That he is the God of all power and then he is able.
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And this is good news for God's people. This is good news because there's no situation that you face today that is outside the purview of the power of God.
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There's not a scenario in your family or with your medical report or with your finances.
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There's not a relationship catastrophe. There's not a situation you face today that is outside the power of God.
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Is anything too hard for the Lord? Do you believe that? I don't want you to just be able to get an
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A on the seminary test. I want you to believe it. I want us to live this way.
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We're far too dependent on our own power and not the Lord's.
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We are so weak. We are so frail, but we have a very high view of our abilities.
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You don't believe in God's power like Nahum presents it to us.
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It's just a fact. The Lord is great in power. The reason
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I know this is because Israel did this a lot. They trusted in Egypt's power.
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Or they trusted in their own power. Or they trusted in false gods. They would fail to time and again trust a triune
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God of all power. And you do this too. You put your hope in your bank account.
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You put your hope in the overtime hours. You put your hope in the next coming election. You put your hope in your child's successes, whether it's in the classroom or on the field.
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You put your hope in all of these other things that time and time again, I'm telling you, they will at some point, they will fail you.
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Because they don't have the power. Suppose the people of Israel in our text had taken, or people of Judah had taken the initiative to just overthrow
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Assyria by their own hands. What would have happened? Well, we know what would have happened. They would have been defeated.
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They must here depend on God. And I'm telling us, Providence Baptist Church, so too is this reality applicable for us.
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We are dependent on God. We are dependent on God for everything and so many things we've failed to give him gratitude for.
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Every breath, every heartbeat, every meal. But beyond that, I'm telling you that we serve a
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God who is able to work in ways that are far beyond what our little brains are able to comprehend.
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I understand I'm speaking very personally to you. I don't know all the situations that this congregation may be in, but I am just simply telling you this reality that God is able.
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How do I know? Verse three, the Lord is slow to anger and great in power.
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Have you tried pray? Prayers to be a first response, not a last resort.
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We serve an omnipotent God. Don't depend on Egypt. Don't depend on the world. Don't depend on your own wisdom.
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Don't depend on your own power. Depend on God. Go to him. Here's another reason.
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God's omnipotence is such good news. Everything that he wants to do in your life. You're listening to this.
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Everything he wants to do in your life. Ain't nothing stopping him.
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He's doing it. So everything he wants to do in your life, he is doing for his glory and for your good.
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Romans 8, 28. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
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For those who are called according to his purpose. Clearly, God isn't working all things for good for everyone.
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That's not what the text says. It says for those who love him, for those whom he has called according to his purpose.
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So now listen to this. You say, you just tell me to pray? You don't know how many times my face has been in my pillow.
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And my face, I know what my carpet smells like because my face has been in my carpet because I'm crying out to God.
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Who are you to stand up there and tell me I just need to pray as though that's gonna solve everything? No, listen to me.
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I'm telling you that sometimes you pray for God's power and it's actually displayed differently in your life than how it is that you pray.
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Listen, believer, it's not that God didn't answer your prayer. It's that God said no.
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His answer was no to what you want because he is good and he's accomplishing his will in your life for your good and his glory.
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I also mentioned this. We depend on God's power in the church.
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It's God's power that births the church. It's God's power that sustains the church.
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It's God's power that protects the church. It's God's power that sees the church through to the end.
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We believe here at Providence Baptist Church in the power of God. We believe the
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Holy Spirit is still working today. We've been out preaching before and there's been people from different traditions that have shown up like, what do you believe about speaking in tongues?
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I'm like, can we just preach the gospel and have this argument at a different time? But they don't want to. So it's like,
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OK, well, I think that that gift has ceased. You don't believe the Holy Spirit works. Yes, I do believe the
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Holy Spirit works. He's working. He's working right now in this mysterious way.
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As you're hearing the word of God preached, he's working in your heart. He's sanctifying you. He's bringing sinners, perhaps even this morning, from death to life in his regenerative power.
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His power is at work. He's growing us in the knowledge of God. He's increasing our love for the
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Lord Jesus. His power is at work. This is the omnipotent power of God. And if the church is dependent on God's power, what does it look like to show functionally dependence on that power?
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Well, it looks like this. A people beholden to the word of God. Don't tell me that you depend on God's power if you aren't a person of the
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Bible. A people beholden to the word of God. Trusting its sufficiency.
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Bowing to its authority. What does it look like to depend on the power of God? It looks like a people who prioritize prayer.
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Calling upon the Lord to work and to act for his glory. A people who prioritize prayer.
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Who gather together and pray. It looks like a people who prize worship. Who prize the
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Lord's day. The whole world has treated Sunday like just another day today. Our country, I think there's actually, believe it or not, you call me crazy, lots of things you call me crazy for, but you could call me crazy for this one, but I don't think
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I'm wrong. I think there's a connection between morally the way that our society treats
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Sunday and where we're at today. There's a connection. Now you can talk about what comes first, chicken or the egg, but it goes without saying, okay, this is how
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I get in trouble in sermon link, tangent real quick. Do you know why we vote on Tuesday? Not this
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Tuesday, but do you know why we vote on Tuesdays and not Monday? That's weird, isn't it?
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The doctrine of the Christian Sabbath. You understand? That's woven into our country.
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We vote on Tuesday because people ain't traveling on Sunday to get to town. Why? Because in their minds that would violate their conscience in,
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Sunday's not for that. So that gives them Monday. They can travel into town on Monday.
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They can vote on Tuesday. That's woven into the very fabric of our nation.
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And now we treat Sunday like this another day. I'm saying a people who depend on the power of God are people who prioritize and prize worship in the
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Lord's day and the fellowship with God's people. It looks like a people who eschew gimmicks and embrace the gospel who rest in the gospel themselves, but also work to communicate the gospel accurately to a lost and dying world because the gospel is the power of God and the salvation, not our gimmicks.
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Brings to my mind, Luke 18, and we talk about power of the text. God is great in power. In Luke 18 verse 25, following it says, for it is easier, this is what
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Jesus says, for it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.
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And you look around and you think, well, that's good because I ain't rich. So therefore it must be easy for me. No, but his disciples understood what he was saying.
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And he wasn't talking about some sort of weird hole in the wall in Jerusalem. You know, actually it's a hole in the wall. No, he's talking about a needle, a camel going through the eye of a needle.
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It can't happen. So his disciples rightly say in verse 26, then who can be saved?
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And Jesus says this, what is impossible with man is possible with God.
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You want to know the main point of that? No one is getting saved without the power of God.
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It is impossible for you or anyone else to come to a saving knowledge of God, to be born again, to be forgiven of your sins, to be reconciled, to God apart from a tangible, real experiential display of the power of the most high
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God in your life. Left to your own power, left to your own choice, left to your own way.
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You will be the camel that can't get through the eye of the needle. You will reject
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God. But when the power of God's grace shows up in the sinner's heart, glorious things happen because what is impossible,
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Jesus says, what is impossible with man, what is impossible with man is possible with God.
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I'm saying that the church must depend upon the power of God. Church, the only hope we have for the salvation of our friends, for the salvation of our family, for the salvation of our neighbors, for the salvation of our countrymen, the only hope we have for the world is the power of God in the gospel of Christ.
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And I'm preaching to you today from Nahum 1 .3 that the Lord is slow to anger and great in power.
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And I'm saying that what we need, God is able to provide. This is good news.
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And there's a story, and historians aren't really sure if it's true or not, but you all know the story.
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You know the story of the Persian War and the Greeks and the Persians. And so they get this big idea, the
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Greeks aren't able to penetrate the walls of Troy. And so here's a great idea.
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I would have never come up with this idea, but here's the great idea. We'll put a big, giant wooden horse outside the gates.
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And they'll obviously bring it inside, right? So they build a big wooden horse outside the gates, and they all get in the wooden horse, and then they open up, and you know the story.
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They penetrate the gates of Troy through gimmickry.
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I'm telling you today, that's not the gospel we have. We don't have to build churches today. We don't have to build a
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Trojan horse and we say, come here and you get food, or come here and you get a new car, or come here and our children's programs are really great.
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That's not what we're trying to do. We're saying, here's Christ. Here's Christ. Here's Christ.
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Because there's the power of God. We don't need gimmicks. We've got the power of God in the gospel. Now I could just preach on this all day.
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Don't worry, I won't. I know you're like, don't test him. I won't. I won't. I'm gonna wrap up, but just listen. John Owen says, cease putting confidence in man.
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So let's stop and let's just think for a moment. Can God really bring revival here?
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I'm not talking about a little meeting and a little week and we invite somebody to come up and he does all this stuff and he preaches really good and the altars are full and everybody says,
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I rededicate my life. I want to get re -baptized and that's the only kind of revival that most of us have ever experienced and it's false.
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I'm saying, can God bring true revival to our land? I believe he can. I believe that he can turn
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Perryville upside down. I believe that there will be a day or there could, at least in the possibility,
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I'm not a prophet. I believe there could be a day that we're driving to town, we're driving to church on Sunday and you can't get gas at Casey's.
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Maybe not even because of a theological doctrine of the Christian Sabbath, but you just got people, they're not gonna go to work on Sunday.
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Why? Because they want to be at church with God's people. Can't go to Harps. Can't go to Dollar General. It's all shut down.
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The churches are full. Why? The gospel is raining. I believe this is powerful or possible, but it's only one way.
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The power of God. Our hope is not in raises.
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It's not in Republicans. It's not in riches. It is in the power of God.
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I'm preaching to you today about a God who is great in power and a God who is able.
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Lost friends in this room, the only hope you have for the salvation of your soul is the power of God in the gospel of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. And I tell you the good news. Would you listen? We have a
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God who is actively and powerfully working in the world today. Will you trust
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Him? Even now, will you see the God of Nahum is the God of the Bible.
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You see the God of wrath is also the God of grace. You see the God of judgment is also the God of redemption.
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You see that the God who wiped out Nineveh also wiped out His Son on the cross for sinners and raised
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Him again from the dead. So that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Will you believe in that?
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God is working today. Is God working in your heart? Would you put your faith in the finished work of Christ, repenting of your sin, and turning to Jesus alone?
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Not works in Jesus. Not baptism in Jesus. Christ alone for the forgiveness of your sins.
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Church, I'm asking us today. Should we not be more desperate for the power of God here?
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Our hope is not ultimately in November. Yes, I believe I have a civic duty to vote best for our country and I'm going to exercise that civic duty.
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But my hope is not in a political victory. My hope is only in the power of God.
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Because without revival in our nation, it doesn't matter who's elected.
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We're sunk. But see, I'm setting before us today the
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God who is great in power. The God who Nahum is preaching. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power.
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And all we've done in this sermon is just take those words great in power. We've drawn a big circle around them. We've highlighted them.
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We've drawn arrows to them. And we've said, hey, listen y 'all, this is who God is and this changes everything.
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We have a God who is great in power. The God who will display His power in wrath, but also shows
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Himself faithful and good in His power, even in restoring and healing and reviving a nation.
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He's done it in times past. Oh, where are the men of Wesley and Whitefield and Edwards?
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Where are the men of Luther and Calvin and Zwingli? Where are the men from old?
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It's all about not being about those men. It's all been about the power of God. He's done it before and He is able to do it again.
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We have hope in the power of God if we will trust Him. Can we not be more desperate?
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I'm saying to know this God. To see our loved ones know Him. To seek
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His face together as a church. The power of God is not meant for us to just observe like He's a frog in a lab.
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It's meant to move the church to action. Okay, I'm going to land the plane.
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I'm closing here. You cannot hear a sermon on the power of God and rightfully leave this place thinking there's no call to action.
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It's because God is all powerful. That the church is called to hope, to trust, to pray, to work.
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If we're not hoping and trusting and praying and working, we're telling the world and the
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God of the Bible we don't believe this text. Let that not be you.
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As we leave because God is powerful, we will hope, we will trust, we will pray, we will work to the glory of God.
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Father, we thank you for your word and we plead for your power.
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The hope is not in the sermon. The hope is in what you do by your grace and for your glory.
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Perhaps today there's a little one sitting out there contemplating the goodness of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
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Would you draw them to yourself even right now? Would they repent in their little heart and call upon Christ in faith?
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Perhaps there's a visitor here today who is either openly not a believer or who has hypocritically professed
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Christ. Would you today show your power in their life to overcome their rebellion and bring them to Christ?
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Perhaps there's a believing one in our midst who is hurting, who's lost hope, who's frustrated.
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Would you comfort them again today with the reality that you are the
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God of all power. Nothing is too hard for you. You are able and you call us to trust and to rest in that.
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The Holy Spirit, we know that there are a million other ways to apply and think through this sermon and we just pray that you would do it.