God Is Omnipotent. God Can Do All Things. There Is Nothing Too Hard for Him. Lio Vh God Is Omniscient. He
Our general subject is The God of the Bible: The God of the Bible as distinguished from the god of “Theosophy” and the god of “Christian Science” and the god of “Spiritualism” and the god of “New Thought” and the God of “Unitarianism” and the God of “The New Theology” and the god of “Modern Philosophy” and the god of “Modernism” in general. In our previous studies of this general subject, The God of the Bible, we have already seen: First, that the God of the Bible is a Personal God; Second, that the God of the Bible is Essentially Spirit, Invisible and In¬ corporeal, but that He has Manifested Himself to Men in a Physical Form, and that He Has a Form Now in which He Manifests Himself in the Celestial World; Third: that according to the teaching of the Bible there is but One God, but that in This One God there are Three Persons, God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit; Fourth, we have seen that God is Everywhere, but that He Manifests Himself in the Fullness of His Presence and Glory in Heaven, in a way that He does not manifest Himself here on earth; and Fifth, we have seen that God is the
Eternal I Am, that He always Was, that He always is,
‘’ no
III
and that He always Shall Be, and that He is always the same, and that He is Self-existent.
The special subject of this chapter is. The God of the Bible: God is Omnipotent, God Can Do All Things, there is Nothing Too Hard For Him. I have six texts. You will find the first text in Job 42:2:
‘1 know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be restrained.”
You will find the second text in Gen. 18: 14:
‘Ts anything too hard for Jehovah?”
You will find the third text in Gen. 1:1:
“In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth.”
You will find the fourth text in Jer. 32: 17, 26, 27:
“Ah Lord Jehovah! behold thou hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and by thine outstretched arm, there is nothing too hard for thee.... (26, 27.) Then
came the word of Jehovah unto Jeremiah, say¬ ing, Behold, I am Jehovah, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?”
You will find the fifth text in Gen. 1:3:
“And God said. Let there be light: and there was light.”
And you will find the sixth text in Matt. 19:26:
“And Jesus looking upon them said to them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
You will note that five of these six texts are from the Old Testament, and that three of them are from the first book in the Bible, and that one is from the book of Job which is regarded by many scholars as one of the oldest books of the Bible and by some as the very oldest book. One of these texts is the very first verse in the Bible, and one of the most remarkable and significant of the texts is the third verse in the Bible. Some of these passages, so lofty both in their thought and in their expression of the thought, were written about thirty-three hundred and seventy years ago, and there is every reason for supposing that Moses derived his account of Creation from much earlier sources. So I ask again the question which I asked in our last study of The God of the Bible, How did Jeremiah and Job and Moses living in such a far away past, many centuries before even the earliest heathen philosophers had worked out their vague and indefinite and inadequate and now entirely antiquated conceptions of God, attain to such a lofty view of God? And in reply I declare again that there is but one answer to such a question that has in it even the remotest approach to reasonableness and that is, that God supernaturally revealed Himself to those men and declared to them these lofty truths about Himself, and that this Bible is, even in its earliest and most ancient parts, beyond a question, a supernatural book, a super¬ natural revelation, and the unique and inerrant inspiration of the Bible in all its parts is a scientifically proven fact.
The doctrine that the Bible presents to us a Revelation given directly by God to men whom He had Him¬ self chosen for that purpose, and who spoke and wrote as they were ‘‘inspired,” and “borne along” in their utterances “by the Holy Spirit” (II Tim. 3: 16; H Pet. 1:21) is scientifically demonstrated, it is an unescapable conclusion from facts that lie right before our own eyes to-day. The doctrine of the Divine Inspiration of the Bible is demanded and necessitated by the inexorable logic of facts, and not merely from facts of a long, long ago but present-day facts that we can see for ourselves with our own eyes.
Among the many fantastic theories of the Higher Criticism is the much cherished one that the account of Creation in the Bible was derived from the early Accadian traditions. But the Accadian accounts contain no lofty teachings about God such as we find in the Bible. On the contrary they are replete with the most childish and now utterly discarded fancies about the birth of the gods of their puerile mythology. The Bible representations of God stand not only apart from all the literature or fragments of literature of that day, but from the literature of all days, even from the literature of our own day, this day supposedly of such unexampled enlightenment, except in so far as the literature of to-day has borrowed its views of God from this old, old Book.
/. God Is Omnipotent: He Can Do Anything
The first thing that these lofty and matchless and evidently Divinely Inspired utterances of Jeremiah and Moses and Job and our Lord Jesus Himself make clear is, that, there is no limit whatever to the power of the God of the Bible, there is nothing He cannot do. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, too hard for Him.
What a heartening and gladdening and overwhelmingly thrilling, as well as awe-inspiring, thought it is that there is One Being in this universe whose power has no limits, who can do absolutely anything He wills to do, and do it by His mere will and word, and do it in the instant He wills it, and not by a slow, age-requiring process of evolution. All the comfort and all the joy and all the soul-stirring inspiration there is in that thought can only be felt when we put it in conjunction with the thought of the moral character of the Being who possesses this power, His Righteousness, and His Holiness, and His Love, and His Loving¬ kindness (all of which we are to study later as they are set forth in this wonderful Book of God), and also in conjunction with the thought of the relation of thi3 Omnipotent God to us, namely, that He is our Father, the Father of every one who truly believes in His Son Jesus Christ.
But let us go somewhat into particulars, as the Bible itself does, in the setting forth of this truth, both so wonderful and so glorious, of the Omnipotence of God.
I. In the first place, All nature, not the whole earth only, but all those innumerable stars, perhaps five hundred million of them according to the latest opinion of the best astronomers, and each one of them of such vast magnitude that our minds cannot take it in, and in comparison with which our whole earth is but a mere speck, all these inconceivably vast worlds are subject to the voill and Word of God. Listen to what David says in Ps. 33: 6-9:
“By the word of Jehovah were the heavens
made;
And all the host of them by the breath of
His mouth.
He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap:
He layeth up the depth in storehouses.
Let all the earth fear Jehovah:
Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
For He spake, and it was done;
He commonded, and it stood fast/^
Listen to what Jehovah (The Everlasting God, the Eternal I Am) said through Nahum, one of the older Prophets, antedating Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Nah. 1:3-6:
“Jehovah is slow to anger, and great in
power.
And will by no means clear the wicked:
Jehovah hath His way in the whirlwind and
in the storm.
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
He rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry.
And drieth up all the rivers:
Bashan languisheth, and Carmel,
And the flower of Lebanon languisheth.
The mountains quake at Him, and the hills
melt;
And the earth is upheaved at His presence, Yea, the world, and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before His indignation?
Who can abide in the fierceness of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire.
And the rocks are broken asunder by Him.”
Merely as literature, what can match in vividness and force and splendor and sublimity of expression these utterances of this man of long, long ago, whom “God’^ “inspired,^’ and whose ^’writings’’ Paul declares were “God-breathed”; and we can see for our¬ selves to-day that this statement of Paul’s must be true.
But I have reserved one brief statement that arises to loftier heights than these all, and it is found in the first book in the Bible, and in the first chapter of that book, and in the first three verses of that chapter:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: And the Spirit of God moved upon (was brooding over) the face of the waters. And God said. Let there be light: and there was light.”
Notice especially the closing words, “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” That is one of the most remarkable sentences that was ever written, remarkable in its sublimity, and remarkable also in its beauty, brevity and simplicity. The Hebrew literally translated is even more remarkable. Let me give you an exactly literal translation, “And God said, Light he; and Light was.” Yet our sons and daughters are being taught in our colleges and even our little boys and girls in our public schools, and sometimes even in some of our Sunday schools, that the first chapter of Genesis is only “Folk Lore.” Let me say in the light of the facts, that to say that the first chapter of Genesis is “Folk Lore” is “Fool Talk,” no matter how learned and scientific the gentlemen may claim to be who indulge in this kind of thoroughly puerile non¬ sense. Gen. 1: 1-3, written so many centuries before modern science and philosophy were dreamed of, bears on its face the unmistakable marks of Divine Inspiration. The very first verses of the Bible bear the unmistakable stamp and seal of their Divine Origin.
2. In the second place, Not only is all nature subject to God’s will and Word but all men are also subject to the will and Word of God. Listen to James 4:
13-15
‘‘Come now, ye that say. To-day or to-morrow we will go into this city, and spend a year there, and trade and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. What is your life? For ye are a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will we shall both live, and do this or that.”
What God wills man must do. There is no thwart¬ ing the purpose of God, and there is no subverting of His Word. What God promises and what God threatens are both as absolutely sure to be done as if it were already accomplished. We form our plans and marshal our resources, and sometimes they seem very great; indeed they seem invincible and irresistible, but, if God plans otherwise, all our wisest schemes and all our most determined and most potent efforts come to nothing. We say ‘7 will do this or that,” and it seems as if nothing could prevent us, but how often man’s impotent ‘7 wilF’ is met by God’s Omnipotent ‘7 won’t.” This is what we would more wisely say, ‘7/ the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that,” (Jas.
4: 15). But, if the Lord won’t, we shall not do this or that, no matter how irresistible the forces that are at our command may seem. We have it constantly dinned into our ears in this day of man’s magnificent self-confidence, “the will is omnipotent.” Yes, “the will is omnipotent”; but zvhose will? God’s will, Jehovah’s will — and His alone. All nature and all men must do His will.
Happy is the man who voluntarily and gladly subjects himself to God’s will and Word. We would far better do it from choice; for in the ultimate outcome we will have to do it anyhow. And there is all the difference betwe heaven and hell in doing the will of God voluntarily or doing it by compulsion. Do it we must,
Napoleon was the ablest general of his day, and probably of all time, at the same time he was the most adroit politician the world has ever seen, and he was also a man of the most unconquerable will. He willed to have the whole world at his feet; and it seemed as if it would be, and as if nothing could prevent. But God willed otherwise. God spoke, and the soft and gentle snow flakes fell, and they fell, and they fell, and they kept on falling: and Napoleon Bonaparte’ fell also.
Kaiser Wilhelm also determined to rule the world with “Deutschland fiber alles.” And years went into preparation, marvelously ingenious preparation of the best trained army the world ever knew, the best guns, the mightiest navy, unconquerable and almost innumerable submarines, wonderful fortresses, mighty Zeppelins that filled London with terror and came within one of laying it in ruins, destructive gases the world had never dreamed of, and much besides. Germany must conquer. But Kaiser Wilhelm’s “7 will” was met by the Lord God Almighty’s W wont” And the army is scattered, and the navy and submarines scrapped, the Zeppelins in ashes, the gases evaporated and Heligoland dynamited, dismantled, a pile of ex¬ pensive rubbish.
The whole human race and every member of it, from emperor to blind beggar or outcast leper, is subject to the will and Word of God. The time is fast coming when all who have sought to withstand His will, “the kings of the earth, and the princes, and the chiliarchs, and the rich, and the strong, and every bondman and freeman” shall hide “themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains; and they (shall) say to the mountains and to the rocks. Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of their wrath is come; and who is able to stand?” (Rev. 6:15-17). Yes, the time is fast coming when not only shall the will of God be resist¬ less (as it is to-day), but when all the world shall know it and when all shall hear “as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying. Hallelujah: for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth” (Rev. 19: 6).
I am not greatly troubled about the Bolshevik machinations in Russia and throughout the world, or by the plots of Germany and her conspiracy with Russia, even if “together they do form two-thirds of the population of Europe,” nor about the miscarriage of well meant plans at Versailles or Genoa, or Lausanne. In spite of all this and all else, I know that God is Omnipotent, and that He reigns, and that His king¬ dom will come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and that in due time, “the kingdoms of this world (shall) become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. ii: 15).
Any one who really and intelligently believes in the God of the Bible is bound to be an optimist. I am sometimes asked, “How can you be such a constant optimist under present conditions?” I will tell you, it is because I believe in God, in the God of the Bible, an Omnipotent God who can do anything, and for whom nothing is too hard. Oh, it is a great thing to really believe in the God of the Bible, an Omnipotent God, a God for Whom absolutely nothing is too hard, Who can do anything. I would rather believe in such a God and not have a penny in my pocket at the present moment, than not to believe in Him and have a billion dollars in the bank awaiting my call. Oh, you men who have your thousands and your millions of money, keep them! Give me God.
3. In the third place. All the angels are subject to the will and Word of God, In Heb. i: 13, 14, we read:
“But of which of the angels saith He at any time.
Sit thou on my right hand, Till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet?
Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?”
We constantly think of men, the intelligent beings who in a bodily and visible form inhabit this globe, as being the only intelligences in the universe. How absurd! absurd not only from the standpoint of Bible teaching but also from the standpoint of an open-eyed science and of common sense. This vast world tO’ whose stupendous magnitude science is beginning to open our eyes, and to think that we are the only intelligences in it! Ridiculous! No! there are countless angelic hosts with ranks and super-ranks among them, “angels” and “principalities” and “powers” and “world rulers” and “spiritual hosts” and “authorities” and “dominions” (Eph. 6:12; R. V. 1:21), with wisdom and power far transcending that of men. Why, the Angel of Jehovah passed through a camp of the enemies of God’s children, and when men awoke in the morning there were one hundred and eighty-five thou¬ sand who did not awake; they were corpses (II Kings 19:35). And all these vast, innumerable, potent angelic hosts are at God’s command; they are one and all subject to His will and His Word. Therefore, I can¬ not see why I should not sing in the midst of any seeming perils, when confronted and surrounded by countless foes, as David sang of old:
“Jehovah is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
Jehovah is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I he afraid?
When evil doers came upon me to eat up my
flesh,
Even mine adversaries and my foes,
They stumbled and fell.
Though an host should encamp against me.
My heart shall not fear;
Though war should rise against me,
Even then will I be confident” (Ps. 27: 1-3). In the fourth place. The Devil is absolutely subject to the will and Word of our Omnipotent God. This comes out very plainly in the first and second chapters of the book of Job. Read these two chapters through entirely. We are told how Satan maligned Job before God and asked the privilege of touching his property, saying if God would permit him to take Job’s property away, Job would renounce Jehovah to His face. But Jehovah did not permit Satan to touch Job’s body. So we see that Satan could do only what Jehovah permitted him to do. He could not go one step further than God said “You may.” In the second chapter Satan appears again and maligns Job and tells Jehovah that if He will permit him to touch his “bone and his flesh” that Job will renounce Jehovah to His face. This time Satan is permitted to touch Job’s body, but is compelled to “spare his life.” Again we see that Satan even with all his power could go no further, not one inch further, than Jehovah permitted him to go. So we see that Satan himself is subject to the will and Word of God, and can only do what God for His own wise purposes permits. As great as the Devil is in cunning and in power, one who is in fellowship with the Omnipotent God has no need to fear him.
To sum it all up: All nature is absolutely subject to God’s will and Word; all men are absolutely subject to God’s will and Word; all the angels, fallen and unfallen, are subject to God’s will and Word; and Satan himself is absolutely subject to the will and Word of God. God is Omnipotent. He can do any¬ thing, and do all things. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, too hard for him. There are countless blessed and glorious applications of and inferences from this great truth, but we have not time now to consider them. You must each of you make these applications and inferences for yourselves; but it will take you your whole lifetime to discover them all, and you will rejoice in them throughout all eternity.
The Bible ascribes the same Omnipotence that it predicates of the Father to the Son of God also. In many passages in the Gospels we see how the Son of God had power over disease, how disease in all its forms was subject to His mere Word (e. g., Luke 4:39). In still other passages we see Death subject to His Word (e. g., Luke 7: 14, 15; 8:54, 55; Jno. 5:25). Again we see how He had power over the elements, over the wind and sea, how they were subject to His Word (Matt. 8: 26, 27). He had power over the demons also, they trembled at His presence and were subject to His Word. We read in Matt. 8:16:
“And when even was come, they brought
unto Him many possessed with demons: and
He cast out the spirits zvith a word, and healed
all that were sick.”
We read in Luke 4:35, 36:
And Jesus rebuked him (that is rebuked the unclean demon in the man), saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the demon had thrown him down in the midst, he came out of him, having done him no hurt.’^
And in the forty-first verse we read:
‘‘And the demons also came out from many,
crying out, and saying. Thou art the Son of
God. And rebuking them. He suffered them
not to speak.’^
In Eph. 1: 20-23, we are told that all the heavenly hierarchies of angels are under Him and subject to His Word. Here is the Bible statement:
“He raised him (that is, Jesus Christ) from the dead, and made him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come: and he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church.’’
And our Lord Jesus Himself said in Matt. 28: 18:
“All authority hath been given unto me in
heaven and on earth.”
And in Heb. i: 3 we are told that the Son of God “upholds all things by the word of His power.”
The Bible also tells us that Omnipotence belongs to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. In announcing to the Virgin the coming Birth of her Son, the God-sent messenger said in Luke 1:35:
“The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is be¬ gotten of thee shall be called the Son of God.”
In this verse, “the power of the Most High,” that is, Omnipotence, is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. And in the opening verses of the Bible we read regarding the Holy Spirit:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said. Light me: And light was (Gen. i: 1-3).
Oh, Wondrous Triune God of the Bible, Omnipotent Father, Omnipotent Son our Saviour, Omnipotent Holy Spirit our Sanctifier and Empowerer! What a marvelous God the God of the Bible is compared with the little godlettes of “Theosophy” and “Christian Science” and “New Thought” and “Spiritualism” and “The New Theology” and “Modern Philosophy” and all of the learned Modern Stupidity that passes muster with so many as philosophical profundity. Much that is called philosophy is merely “striving after wind” (Ecc. 2: 17) and a “feeding on wind.”
//. The Exercise of God’s Omnipotence Is Limited by His Own Wise and Holy and Loving Will.
Before we leave this exhaustless subject of the Omnipotence of God, one more thing should be said and that is: The exercise of God’s Omnipotence is limited by His own Wise and Holy and Loving Will.
God can do anything but will do only that which In¬ finite wisdom and holiness and love dictate. This comes out in many places in the Bible, e. g., in Isa. 59- L 2:
“Behold, Jehovah’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that he cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, so that He will not hear.”
The question is often asked, and it is a very natural question, “If God is Omnipotent why does he not de¬ stroy the Devil and bring his awful work to an end.” If we could not answer the question, we could rest perfectly at peace in the thought that an Infinitely Wise God could easily have a thousand perfectly good reasons for doing or not doing a thing, when we in our finite foolishness could not see even one. But in this case the answer to the question is simple and easy. God does not destroy the Devil as yet or put him out of business as yet, because by his very malevolence he is working out part of God’s benevolent purposes. God has purposes of love yet to be wrought out in a measure by the Devil’s unintentional cooperation. For example, the Devil put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray his Lord; but the Devil by so doing simply fulfilled God’s prophecies of centuries before and confirmed the Divine origin and Inerrancy of the Book of God; and further than that, the Devil by so doing led on to the Atoning Death of the Son of God, that meant salvation and pardon, justification and eternal life, Sonship and co-heirship with Jesus Christ for you and me.
God is Omnipotent. He rules the universe. He rules heaven and earth. Yes, Hades and Hell also. Not one thing can be done by all the frightful forces of misdirected nature, nor by the most potent men, nor by angels nor by the demons nor by the Devil him¬ self, except by God’s permission. Not one single demon can enter a pig but by the consent of the Son of God (Mk. 5: 1-13). God rules the world and so the ultimate outcome is sure. “The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth” and “the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ: and He shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. ii: 15).