POWER! We all have it and we all use it. We may be surprised by all the power we have. The measure of a man is how he uses his power and we must learn from our Father who is All Powerful. We’ll talk about His Power and ours this week at FORGE! Join us!
GREAT MEN GREATER GOD SERIES
Knowing & Experiencing The God Who Is Forges Men of Distinction
Talk 2
HOW SHOULD I USE MY POWER?
January 16,17,18, 2018
INTRODUCTION:
HEY GUYS Welcome to FORGE!
It’s good to be back in Orlando! I spent Friday and Saturday in Indianopolis giving the Rock Solid Men Seminar to 300 guys at White River Church in Noblesville. It was 12 degrees when I got in the car to the event on Saturday AM and reached the wonderful high of 20.
Turned out the 120,000 th man to ever attend a MIM Seminar was at that seminar.
Great time…but I told them about FORGE and it’s good to be here with you!
We are on mission to building great men as God defines Greatness and God defines greatness as becoming Disciples of Jesus Christ. So we’re all male disciples of Christ in process…along the spectrum of spiritual growth.
The Series we’re in is: GREAT MEN GREATER GOD…and the premise is that
Knowing & Experiencing The God Who Is Forges Men of Distinction
Why seek to be a mediocre man? Why aspire to mediocrity? One of our big enemies in life is AVERAGE. If we men shoot low we will hit our target every time!
….Alternatively: If we’re going to become distinguished men, good men, better men, godly men, even great men, we simply have to be around someone greater than us.
And it turns out that our Heavenly Father, the Greatest there is, wants to develop his boys into real men, great men.
So that’s why we’re studying God and His Attributes so we can see who He is, honor Him, and let Him shape us with His Greater Greatness.
ILL I saw a commercial for the new FORD F150 truck the other day and it showed the great points of the new F150 and then it showed a huge bar being lifted up on pullys…THE F 150 IS RAISING THE BAR.
And I thought about our series: AS WE DEAL WITH THE ATTRIBUTES/PERFECTIONS/QUALITIES OF GOD, we need to grasp that when we look at who God really is we don’t see that He raises the bar…God is the bar!
He’s the standard of perfection and greatness that we are pursuing as men. Jesus has reached that bar for us in His perfect earthly life and then in His death, burial and resurrection He has taken our cures for failing to reach God’s perfection.
Jesus has a perfect record and through faith in Him God views us as having a perfect record!
So in thinking about God…we need to remember:
There is no standard of perfection outside of God that He happens to meet. He is the standard. He is the Law. He is perfect Righteousness. God raises the bar of our manhood.
When we compare ourselves to
Remember this list of the Attributes of God that I put up there last week?
Here it is again:
- Self-Existence (Aseity)
- Eternity
- Immutability
- Omnipotence
- Omnipresence
- Omniscience
- Holiness
- Righteousness
- Love
- Grace
- Mercy
- Patience
- Justice
- Goodness
- Faithfulness
- Wisdom
- Infinity
- Trinity
- Simplicity
We dealt with SELF-EXISTENCE (ASEITY) OF GOD LAST WEEK,
And we said that because God is Self-Existent he is also eternal, immutable (unchangeable/never changing!), and well…nearly all the other attributes of God fall are encompassed in SELF-EXISTENT.
TODAY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT OMNIPOTENCE AND SOVEREIGNTY…OR GOD’S POWER.
WHICH OF COURSE BEGS THE QUESTION OF OUR POWER AND HOW WE USE OUR POWER AS MEN!
But first of all today I want you to note:
- THE GOD OF POWER
In the OT God is often called: GOD ALMIGHTY.
The Hebrew= EL SHADDAI
The very first time we see EL SHADDAI in the OT is:
MICHAEL: PLEASE PUT UP AS MUCH OF THE FOLLOWING THAT FITS ON ONE SLIDE…THANKS!
Genesis 17:1-8
17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty;[a] walk before me, and be blameless, 2 that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, 4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram,[b] but your name shall be Abraham,[c] for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
Now look at this:
As God Almighty:
- He takes a really old guy and promises that He’s going to make him a physical daddy for the very first time.
In a day and age today when male sexual dysfunctions are talked about boldly in the news all the time…this is a remarkable promise to make. As God Almighty- God promises to make a 100 year old guy a dad. And El Shaddai makes it happen. Issac is born. Read Genesis 21.
- As we see in this text also that as God Almighty: God Promises to make a covenant between Himself and Abraham and Abraham’s descendents. Not only is God going to make an old guy a dad, God is going to build a nation from him. God even changes Abram’s name to Abraham to prove the point: God has the right to change his name: From Exalted Father to Father of a Multitude. The past tense shows that what El Shaddai says He will do, He does: v5:
“For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.” The Promises of God are as good as gold…as money in the bank!
ILL At the conference I was at the leaders gave a book on fathering away to the dad with the most kids.
And the dad who got it had 8 kids.
All his.
On the spot in front of all those guys I renamed that guy ABRAHAM.
- Notice also: As God Almighty: He gives to Abraham and the Jews after him THE LAND OF ISRAEL, for an everlasting possession. As El Shaddai, God Almighty, He owns everything because He made everything and He can give to anybody whatever He wants.
It should not be remarkable to you that the land of Israel was the Jews from time immemorial until 135 AD…when Rome scattered them… and that the Jews regained much of it miraclously in 1949. It should not astound us that Israel should be allowed to exist contrary to most of the nations in the United Nations…why: because El Shaddai gave it to them.
And doesn’t it make sense that with 28 Muslim Nations in the world that there ought to be one nation that the Jews could call home? Makes sense to me. Now I’m glad they are a democracy, the only one over there, but even if they weren’t it makes sense that they should be allowed one nation even though it’s extremely small.
The land of Israel is God’s and He gave it to the Jews and in the land of Israel Jesus will return. The land of Israel is a living and breathing illustration that one day the new heavens and the new earth will be all for God’s people!
GOD IS GOD ALMIGHTY. EL SHADDAI
57 times that term is given God in the Bible. 31 of those times it’s found in JOB.
Look at this verse in the NT:
MICHAEL: CAN YOU GET THIS ON 2 SLIDES?
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial?[a] Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
17 Therefore go out from their midst,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
then I will welcome you,
18 and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.”
- Apostle Paul tells Christians not to get into entangling alliances with unbelievers, because, come on, what do we have in common? We don’t have God in common, Christ in common, we don’t have belief in the Bible in Common, we don’t therefore have values in common. You marry someone outside of the faith, you start a business with someone outside the faith and you’ll have conflict . God Almighty says this.
- God Almighty says we are His temple in which He lives. We are the sons of God Almighty..>El Shaddai.
So we see that God is The Ultimate Power. And no one can come close to challenging the power of God with their power. No one is even close to as powerful as God.
One thinker: “Sovereignty and Omnipotence must go together. One cannot exist without the other. To reign God must have power and to reign sovereignly He must have all power. And that is what omnipotence means, having all power.” (Tozer, p. 71)
- HOW GOD USES HIS POWER
Now real quick let me give you a run down on how God uses His omnipotence and then we’ll make a quick application how we men, His sons through Christ should use our power.
God Uses His omnipotence:
- To Create All That is Good!
God never creates what is bad. God permits evil to exist but never creates it.
- To Sustain/Protect All That is Good-Providence!
Providence, Rhode Island, got it’s name from the Christian teaching on the Providence of God…El Shaddai provides for that which He creates.
- To Teach us how to live- The Law- Holy and righteous! He models all that is right and holy. He rules in righteousness.
His power is always conducted with the utmost rightness. He never abuses His power. God is not a child abuser!
- God uses His power To Promise To Save That Which Has Fallen
- God uses His power To Actually Save That Which Has Fallen-A Savior has come! He uses His power as a Promise Keeper.
- God uses His power To Prove to Us that He can be trusted: Romans 12:1-2…What He does in the past enables us to trust Him in the present and the future. To give us security and to deal with fear!
- God uses His power To build His virtues in us: Fruit of the Spirit…to build great men.
- God uses His power to fight evil and eventually bring justice on the earth.
- God uses His power to protect the weak.
- God uses His power to confront the proud.
Nothing God intends to do is impossible for Him because He is God Almighty.
Everything God intends to do He will do because He is God Almighty.
Since He is Self-Existence and Self-Sufficient…He uses His power for our good and His glory. Since He is Self-Existent and Self-Sufficient He uses His power For His glory and our good.
Which comes first…His glory or our good? Answer: YES!
God’s glory is our good and our good is God’s Glory!
- HOW GOD’S SONS SHOULD USE POWER
Now thirdly of course what this does for us as the Father’s sons through faith in Christ is to enable us to see how we as His sons ought to use our power!
And we men do have power!
Don’t tell me that you don’t have any power.
Of course you have power even though you might not think of it that way!
- God has delegated His power to men to lead their families as Christ leads the church. Servant Leadership is our delegated leadership. Men have power as husbands and fathers and we have to make sure that we use our power according to Scripture, according to God so that we take proper care of those entrusted to our care.
ILL We’ve seen a spate of men who have fallen from powerful positions because they have misused their positions of power to take advantage of women sexually.
And they should have been brought down. Abuse of power is ungodly.
Now: History has on record many women who have allowed men to use them sexually so that they they women, can get what they want. They use their sexual power to get their earthly power.
Read the Book of Proverbs and it reminds us of this.
The Bible tells us as men not to abuse our power
- Short truth: We should use our delegated power as men in a way consistent with How God uses His power!
- To create
- To sustain
- To encourage
- To heal
- To help
- To love
- To teach
- To protect
- To love our wives
- To lead and develop our kids
- To use our resources for good
Ask God to be powerful in you. Invite His Omnipotence to flow through you in service.
Worship Him and bow the knee, for He deserves this.
TEAM TALK:
Ok…here are the questions for Team Talk:
- HOW DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL TO KNOW THAT GOD IS ALL POWERFUL?
- WHAT STOOD OUT TO YOU ABOUT HOW GOD USES HIS POWER?
- HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE YOUR POWER AS A MAN IN A MANNER MORE LIKE GOD USES HIS POWER?
Go to it!
WRAP UP:
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