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Ingleside Presbyterian Church A Congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America |
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Ingleside Presbyterian Church A Congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America |
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Picture a couple of comic strip
characters.
One is sitting alone, watching television.
In storms the other, demanding that he
change the channel to a show she wants to watch, threatening him with
her fat fist in his face.
Somewhat meekly, he asks her what makes her
think she can march in and take over.
She blurts out: “These five fingers!” which
she tightens into a fist.
It works.
The guy responds by asking which channel
she prefers.
He slowly slips out of the room, feeling
like a wimp.
He looks at his own five fingers and asks,
“Why can’t you guys get organized like that?” It has taken a great deal of organization to pull off
this joint celebration today and I am grateful to our ushers, our praise
band, the choir, the fellowship team and children’s ministry volunteers
for pulling together into a productive, instead of a threatening “fist”
today. It is SO GOOD for us to be
together in one worship service today.
We’ve literally “rubbed elbows” in order to
get everyone in here.
We’ve had two worship services for well
over a year and a half now, but it is always good to truly worship
together.
In spite of worshiping at two different
times, I believe that God has maintained unity in our midst.
We know that
uniformity has everyone
thinking alike and unanimity
is having complete agreement across the board.
It’s obvious that we don’t meet those
definitions. But unity refers
to a oneness of heart, a similarity of purpose and an agreement on major
points of doctrine.
And, praise God, He has given Ingleside
Church UNITY! As Colossians 3:15 states,
“Let the
peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were called in one
body.
And be thankful.”
God has blessed Ingleside with His peace! Col. 3:16
“Let the word of Christ dwell in
you richly, teaching & admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing
psalms & hymns & spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to
God.”
We’ve had some wonderful singing today.
And, folks, we have every reason to be
thankful today. Our faithful, sovereign God
continues to bless us.
I attend Presbytery meetings and Kevin and
I meet with area PCA pastors and often hear about how “tough” things are
financially at their churches.
Each week, parachurch organizations plead
for funds in a down economy.
And, yes, our giving is a little down this
year compared to 2008, but so are our expenses.
Every pay envelope to the staff actually
has a check in it.
We are current in supporting our
missionaries and we pay our mortgage on time.
When people hit tough times
financially, one of the first things they eliminate is giving to the
church.
Ingleside folks don’t do that.
You have continued to faithfully give. But more than blessing us
financially as a church, God has been blessing us in other ways.
We have had more opportunities to serve
during the past year.
The
First Fruits Garden was inaugurated this past Spring and involved a
number of folks in providing fresh produce for the Lawrenceville Co-op.
I have never been more proud of our
shepherd couples as I have watched ministry in action in recent months.
We’ve had the strongest Sunday School
attendance since moving to this location.
A huge VBS this past June.
A lot is going on around here. But even more than “busy-ness,”
God has been blessing our church through growing our people.
Folks have had their faith stretched.
Folks have been reading their Bibles more.
Folks have demonstrated faith in numerous
situations…even under difficult circumstances.
And while I could spend all of
the time enumerating God’s blessings to us this morning, I want to focus
on God and not merely on His blessings.
And I have three words for us today—a
concise three word phrase—if you get it—if you truly get it—you can jot
it down and then take a nap.
(Just kidding!)
This phrase is based on Ephesians 3:20-21.
We sometimes hear these verses as a
benediction to close worship.
“Now
to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or
think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the
church & in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever & ever.
Amen.”
Here are the three words:
GOD
IS ABLE!
And because God is able, like my message
title this morning:
With God, you get more! We so often live our lives in a
box where we are confined and limited.
And it appears to be safe; “normal,” like
we think things should be.
But life in the box is NOT where God is.
God is bigger than our box and He will not
let us conveniently confine Him to our limits, boundaries or parameters.
If we can apply the text we just read and
not merely relegate it to being a benediction, we will leave here
knowing that GOD IS ABLE!
GOD IS
ABLE…
With God you always get more.
Do you remember this kid’s praise song?
“My
God is So Big!”
It goes:
My God is so big, so strong & so
mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do.
(Then there are two claps.)
The
mountains are His.
The rivers are His.
The stars are His handiwork too.
My God is so big, so strong & so mighty,
there’s nothing my God cannot do. I loved to read comic books
when I was a kid…Superman, Batman, Archie.
I was always drawn to the advertisements on
the inside front cover and on the back of the book.
You could order cool stuff like gum that
would turn your teeth black or sea monster tablets that “came to life”
when you dropped them into a cup of water.
A couple of times I ordered some of that
stuff and you know what?
It never turned out to be what I expected.
I learned one thing from comic
book advertisements—you generally get LESS than you expect.
And because I’m a “slow learn” I sent off
for tomato trees three years ago.
I actually ordered this from a gardening
supply magazine and I paid $9.95 for two trees.
I wasn’t sure if the UPS guy would be able
to haul those trees to my front porch when they were delivered.
Let me tell you about my “trees.”
What I received were two very small
cardboard cups full of dirt that were supposed to have the tomato tree
SEEDS in them.
I watered and watered, but they never even
sprouted.
Again, I had the disappointment of getting
less than I expected. With God, according to
Ephesians 3, you always get more than you expect.
I like the way the King James Version puts
verse 20.
It reads:
“Now to him
that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask
or think…”
Paul is actually using a double compound
word here.
He is kind of making up his own word
phrase.
He is so caught up in the bigness and
awesomeness of God that he stacks these words upon each other in an
attempt to say:
·
God is not just Big, but He is “Big-uhmundo-huge-a-riffic!
·
He is super-beyond—erful!
·
He is incredi-outrag-i-ble! Paul is saying that God is
incredibly incredible.
He is extravagantly extravagant.
He is awesomely awesome in His awesomeness.
He is amazingly amazing!
What I’m saying is there is NO
BOX big enough to hold our God.
God is truly able in His
ABILITY!
And He always exceeds our expectations.
Think of this!
The Lord not only forgives a sin, but God
can forgive ALL your sin.
He not only loves you when you are good,
but He loves you when you aren’t so good.
God not only gives us our daily bread.
He gives us steak and potatoes, corn,
macaroni and cheese, salad bars, hot apple pie with a huge scoop of ice
cream and if you’re still hungry, there is always
Krispy Kreme—unless your
doctor has eliminated those delights from your diet.
Ingleside, this is the God that
we serve!
He will do
“far more abundantly” than
all we ask or think.
Lam. 3:22-23
“The steadfast love of the Lord
never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every
morning; great is your faithfulness.” God is faithful.
God is able.
He didn’t make just one drop of water.
He made oceans of water.
He didn’t create only one star.
God made galaxies.
God didn’t make a single kind of bird.
He created hundreds of kinds of birds.
God didn’t just make a hill.
He made the Rocky Mountains.
He didn’t make just the sun, but He made
sunrises and sunsets.
He exceeds all the expectations, because HE
IS GOD!
There are
no limits to His love;
No
boundaries to His blessing;
No fences
withholding His faithfulness;
No lines
drawn separating us from His salvation;
No
guardrails against His grace;
No
containers holding His compassion;
No
restrictions to experiencing His righteousness. If God is able to do all of
that, what can He do in your life?
What can He do with your heart?
Your hands?
Your abilities?
With your potential?
With your love?
What can He do through your challenges?
With your weakness?
With your problems?
With your disappointments?
He is
“able to do far more abundantly
than all that we ask or think.” I’ve quoted the old Chevy Chase
line from Saturday Night Live
decades ago, when Chase would say, “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not!”
Folks, God is God and I am not!
And you aren’t God either.
I don’t get it all the time and I don’t get
it all most of the time.
I don’t know what God knows or see what God
sees or even understand what God understands.
But we have a Power above us—a God who is
God and a God who is able! God ventures out in our passage
from merely being a power above us, guiding and directing creation.
There is a real surprise in this passage.
Point two…
Notice a distribution center of
God’s power in our passage—in other words, where this power works.
It works,
“according to the power at work
within us…”
That Greek word for
power is the word we get our
English word “dynamite” from.
It describes explosive energy.
It is awesome ability.
God’s power is to be demonstrated within
US!
Isn’t that amazing?
(Now, please don’t tell that to a TSA
worker at the airport.
They don’t want to know that you have
“dynamite” inside of you.) I was getting the “drowsies”
one day last week at work and I went to the kitchen and put a small
scoop of coffee in one of the coffee makers to brew.
I came back a few minutes later to retrieve
my coffee but there was nothing in the pot.
And Kevin wasn’t around to accuse of
stealing it.
I was bad mouthing the cheapness of the
machine, because it really wasn’t that old, until I noticed that it
wasn’t broken.
I hadn’t plugged it in.
This power of God is of no
value unless you are plugged in and switched on.
And to do that, you must be connected with
God.
We first appropriate His forgiveness through
repentance and faith.
And we begin to say ‘yes’ to the Lord.
We say, ‘Yes, I’m ready to receive You and
what You have for Me.
You are all the power I need.
You are able.
I believe that.
I will live that.
I will trust that.’
God will give you power!
Power to do what, you may ask?
It is the power to love!
It is the power to respond the way God
wants us to respond, even when our sin nature would LOVE to do something
else! Let me backup to the verses
preceding our passage this morning.
Paul begins his prayer in verse 14:
“For this reason I bow my knees
before the Father, from whom every family in heaven & on earth is named,
that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be
strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that
Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted &
grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth & length & height & depth, & to know the love of
Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the
fullness of God.”
In verse 18, the NIV translates
“strength to comprehend” as
“grasp.”
It literally means to “take hold of it with
the intent of never letting it go.”
In other words, possess it.
Seize this love.
Comprehend how wide it is.
Grasp how long it is.
Know how far His love will go to reach to
you and me.
We need to continually
experience this power to love.
We need to be constantly reminded that
there is nothing like this love.
This love surpasses our knowledge.
We can spend the rest of our lives trying
to fully comprehend this love but we won’t be able to do so.
It is the power to be filled with God and
the end result will be a power to serve in His love.
And it will be a power to surrender to His
love—daily.
Verse 21 of our passage reads:
“To him be glory in the church &
in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever & ever. Amen.”
As a result of the power that is
“within” us in verse 20, the
passage concludes with that power flowing through us to the next and
next generations.
As we close…
Because of the power that God
has given the church, Paul gives glory to God.
As God’s church, as the “Called Out Ones”
of God, we are to present God in all of His splendor to a watching
world.
That is our purpose and mission.
This is what we live for—His glory.
Psalm 29:2
“Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the
splendor of holiness.”
The word
“glory” denotes brilliance
and radiance.
Glorifying God is where the spotlight of
our lives is always directed to Him.
We want others to see Him…to see His
brilliant splendor.
That
“throughout all generations”
phrase in verse 21…we are in the business of passing on the faith…of
leaving a legacy for the subsequent generations of Ingleside Church.
That is why ministering to our children and
students is SO IMPORTANT to our Christian Education team.
We are to teach the next generation that
God can do “far more abundantly”
in our lives and He can do the same in their lives. This power is not
only to take residence within us, but it is to powerfully flow THROUGH
us…throughout
all generations. I read from Colossians 3 at the
outset of this morning’s message.
Let me close with verse 17:
“And whatever you do, in word or
deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God
the Father through him.”
As we have sung in
“The Heart of Worship,”
everything we do in life is to be
“all about
You, Jesus.”
“Do EVERYTHING”
as a result of your relationship to God through Jesus Christ.
And be THANKFUL. Let’s not relegate
thanksgiving to merely the fourth Thursday in November.
In 1998 baseball great Mark
McGwire was playing for the St. Louis Cardinals and seemed on track to
break Roger Maris’ single season home run record.
The Cardinals’ announcer, the late Jack
Buck gave this simple statement after McGwire hit the record-breaking
home run: “Pardon me, folks,
while I stand and applaud.”
McGwire exceeded expectations that season. People of faith, we are in the
presence of “Exceeded Expectations” every day.
Our God exceeds our expectations everyday
and in every way.
And we should do more than merely say,
“Pardon us, folks, while we stand and applaud.”
I saw an irreverent bumper sticker that
read: “Jesus is Coming Again.
Look Busy!”
Please, people of faith!
Let us NOT merely go through motions of
“busy-ness.”
Instead, let us be ABOUT our Heavenly
Father’s business, which is knowing Him and making Him known!
GOD IS ABLE!
Do you believe it?
Do you live it?
GOD IS ABLE!
That should be our first response to
anything in life. Ingleside, as the Psalmist declares (Ps. 92:1) “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High.” He is worthy of our worship AND our praise! Please pray with me! Please visit us at our next worship service.
In Christ,
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