Ps Darin Browne @ Ignite Christian Church
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
So far in this series we have looked at faith, discovering that it should not be dependent on circumstances, feelings or even the results (can you have faith in God if you don't get what you want?). Faith is dependent on the object of our faith… God Himself!
So this morning I am going to show you just how unbelievably huge and powerful your God is..
Mankind thinks it is pretty awesome, and I suppose in many ways we are. We've designed great things like cars, TV, cell phones and the internet, we've travelled to the deepest depths of the ocean and right around our incredible world. We've even travelled to the moon and back, and sent probes into deepest space, learning, exploring and all the time glorying in ourselves and what we can do.
Mankind is pretty smart, pretty clever and ultimately that feeds into the fact that we fear each other… what we say, what we do and threats we make towards one another.
And fear destroys faith. We have been speaking about faith, and many of you leave here inspired to be more and more faith filled, but then you encounter people, or you turn on the TV and see so many things to fear in this world.
The Bible says
1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:8
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
As I have repeatedly told you, true, Biblical faith is not dependent on circumstances, or even results. Faith is dependent on the object of our faith, and that's God.
So if we can focus on the facts that God not only loves us, but is perfectly in control and orchestrating everything for our growth, development and benefit, and if we can begin to understand just how awesome He really is, then a tiny amount of faith in an infinitely powerful God will move any mountain, and make us into everything we could possibly become for Christ in our lives.
Hence this message... Rather than talking directly about faith I want to focus on the object of our faith, and how big, awesome and great He really is. If you believe God loves you as He has promised, and that He wants the best for you, then in these next few moments as I prove how big, amazing and awesome He is, you cannot help but have faith in Him!
IT IS TIME TO LOOK UP
Psalms 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Like men throughout the centuries, this morning I want you to look up, and I am hoping you will see God’s creation in a new and fresh way. And as you marvel at the wonder, stop and realise that this God loves you, is for you and
Romans 8:28
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Have you ever looked up at night and started to ponder how far it really is between you and any of the stars, between you here in earth and that tiny pinprick of light in the sky you can see?
Why bother? Why try and learn, contemplate and understand the heavens? Because it builds our faith. When we stop to realise that the God we serve, the God who loves us, the God who works all things for our good, this is the same God who created everything. Is He able to do anything? Yes! And does He love us? Yes again! So should we have faith in Him? Yes!
"Ah, Lord God! Behold You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You!" (Jeremiah 32:17).
While the you and I cannot even begin to fathom how awesome God is, we can learn a little and stand in wonder. Let's start our celestial journey close to home…
THE SUN AND THE MOON
Earth is a perfect environment for life. Nowhere else that we've discovered comes close. The atmosphere is perfect, the tides controlled but the moon, life and energy by the sun, all in perfect balance for us to live.
1 Corinthians 15:41
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
Both the Sun and the Moon appear the same size in Earth’s sky because though the Sun is four hundred times larger than the Moon, it is also four hundred times further away.
The Moon is the perfect size to contribute to a habitable Earth. If the Moon were larger, it would cause Earth to tilt so far on its axis that the side facing the Sun would experience unbearable heat while the opposite side of Earth would know perpetual subzero winter. As it is, the Moon is just the right size to cause Earth to tilt at a very acceptable 23.4 degrees, bringing both winter and summer to the planet.
The Sun, on the other hand, is a star, burning brightly in a process called nuclear fission, which is what atomic bombs do. 99.9% of all matter in our solar system is contained within the Sun. The luminosity (intrinsic brightness) of the Sun is 40 billion billion megawatts. Putting this into perspective, the total human consumption of power on Earth is about 2 million megawatts. The temperature of the Sun’s surface is 10,832 degrees Fahrenheit
And, remarkably, the Sun is stable. Were the Sun to have huge swings in output or if it were slightly closer to or farther away from Earth, we'd be vaporised or frozen instantly!
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth … and in him all things hold together. (Col. 1:16–17)
Our Sun is just one of an unfathomable number of stars in our galaxy, called the Milky Way. Although it is a fair size, it certainly shrinks to insignificance next to some of the other stars in the neighbourhood.
SIZE DOES MATTER
So to help you get your head around just how big and awesome your God is, let's talk for a moment about size, because as they said in Godzilla, “Size Does Matter!”
Now remember, God spoke and these worlds sprang into being!
Psalm 33:6
By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
and by the breath of his mouth all their host.
The comparison scale works like this: If Earth were the size of a golf ball, the Sun would be fifteen feet in diameter. I think we can comprehend that, right? Taking it a step further, again, if Earth were a golf ball, that would be enough golf balls to fill an entire West National Coaches bus!
But looking a little deeper into space we find a more massive star called Betelgeuse, which is 427 light-years away. Betelgeuse is so big, in fact, that it’s twice the size of Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and 262 trillion earths would fit into Betelgeuse.
So if Earth were a golf ball, that’s enough Earths to fill an indoor football stadium with golf balls—three thousand times!
I mean, God is really, really huge! But let's not stop there, just because we are having trouble getting our heads around things.
Mu Cephei is a red supergiant and one of the largest and most luminous stars in our galaxy. Mu Cephei would hold 2.7 quadrillion Earths!
But hey, why stop there? Let me consider one more star, which we call VY Canis Majoris.
It’s 4,900 light-years from Earth, it boasts a diameter of about 1.7 billion miles. If Earth were a golf ball, VY Canis Majoris would cover the state of NSW end to end filled with golf balls almost up to your knees.
And that's just four of the hundreds of billions of hundreds of billions of stars that YOUR God manages every second of every day.
SO HOW DENSE DO YOU FEEL?
If you're having trouble fathoming all that, and feeling not so bright and more than a little dense, let me mention brightness and density to you.
Heard of supernovas? They're massive stars in the throes of death—blazing millions of times brighter than our sun. In fact, during their final stages, these dying stars can shine brighter than an entire galaxy. We also find neutron stars—so compacted and dense that scientists predict one teaspoon worth would weigh a billion tons. Spinning around at speeds of up to six hundred revolutions per second, these stars are far beyond our imagining.
Add to theses dark stars or black holes, which are so dense at their core and exert a gravitational pull so extreme that not even light can escape from them!
And beauty, wow, this is beauty on a cosmic scale that makes mere earthly beauty look like a pinprick!
Stars are beautiful, aren't they? And we find myriads of them—clusters and galaxies with hundreds, thousands, and even billions of stars in beautiful formations. We discover other objects too, such as nebulae—stunning clouds of gas and dust, far larger than we could ever fathom.
It seems that Annie Dillard was right when she looked up and concluded, “The creator loves pizzazz.”
Isaiah 45:12
I made the earth
and created man on it;
it was my hands that stretched out the heavens,
and I commanded all their host.
The immense beauty and power of these stars… and your God is in control of all of them, all day every day!
SUPER GOD, SUPERNOVAS
Supernovas and nebulae are the really sexy, colourful parts of God’s creation. And why on earth, or in heaven, would God bother doing such spectacular things so far away in the heavens? Because He can, that's why! Because God is extravagant.
Ephesians 3:20
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,
I mean, if you have a room in your house that no one sees, you basically never clean it, right? But God, God is different. He does it simply because He can. He's creating, He's having fun, He is your God and He loves you!
Job said it well…. Job 26:14
Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways,
and how small a whisper do we hear of him!
But the thunder of his power who can understand?”
Red giant stars have a crazy way of dying… they throw off their outer layers of dust and gas in a round shape that resembles a planet when glimpsed in earthbound telescopes. However, when seen through Hubble’s superior lenses, these dust and gas clouds, called planetary nebulae, and other similar supernova remnants appear in random, whimsical shapes and are composed of vibrant and varied colours.
Who knew that death could be such a glorious thing, producing some of the most mesmerising spectacles in the heavens? And we’re not talking small-scale, Earth-sized glory here; some of these nebula clouds defy description. Some of the “death-bed” phenomena of these stars are so massive and powerful that they stretch far beyond the limits of our ability to comprehend.
For example, the Eagle Pillar Cloud is a cloud-like tower of gas stretching 9.5 light-years (about 57 trillion miles) above the Eagle Nebula. One of NASA’s most famous photos of the Eagle Pillar Cloud is called “The Pillars of Creation.” This “pillar cloud” alone is just a tiny fraction of the entire nebula, though it’s many times the size of our entire solar system.
The horse head nebula is only 3-4 light years high, and made up of hydrogen and dust. It is part of the Orion constellation, which is an enormous birthplace for stars spanning hundreds of light years across.
How about this Supernova, 1987A, one of the brightest supernovae seen in over four hundred years of astronomy and research. This star exploded into a supernova which burned over one hundred million times brighter than our own Sun.
HOW FAR WILL GOD GO?
Distance and time are more areas where God’s awesomeness is on display.
Psalm 90:4
For a thousand years in your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night.
Light, as you know, is ridiculously fast, screaming along at nearly 186,000 miles or 300,000 kilometers per second). It’s so fast that a beam of light can circle Earth seven times in one second. Now traveling nonstop for 365 days, light covers a distance of about 5.8 trillion miles. We call this a light year, and Star Trek fans will be familiar with the term, but don't lose sight of just how far it is… 5.8 trillion miles!
So, Just to put the universe, and indeed the God of said universe, in perspective here, the distance from the Sun to the next closest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light-years, or 270,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Our immediate star neighbourhood, the Milky Way Galaxy, is somewhere in the range of 100,000–120,000 light-years rom side to side and 1,000 light-years thick.
But listen, the Milky Way is not the whole of space. In fact, to a cosmologist, a galaxy like the Milky Way, which contains hundreds of billions of stars, is the smallest thing in the universe worth taking note of. So here on earth, we’re simply orbiting just one of hundreds of billions of stars in the relatively insignificant Milky Way Galaxy, which is only one of hundreds of billions of other galaxies in a universe that’s too big to fully map.
At present, with our very best instruments, the furthest we have been able to detect objects in space is around 13 billion light-years from Earth. So far away, without sophisticated instruments we can't even detect them, but God in His extravagance just does it! God says…
I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself. (Isa. 44:24)
My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshalled their starry hosts. (Isa. 45:12)
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Heb. 11:3)
But even more specifically, Scripture reveals that Jesus is the creative force behind it all.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:3)
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible … all things were created by him and for him. (Col. 1:16)
But in these last days he [God] has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. (Heb. 1:2)
WHILE SCIENTISTS AREN’T ENTIRELY SURE JUST HOW BIG THE UNIVERSE IS, ONE THING IS CLEAR: Earth, and us human beings are really, really small within it. In fact, in terms of scale, Earth itself is inconsequential amid the expanse of space around us. The same could be said for our entire solar system, and the Milky Way Galaxy, both of which, when it comes to size, really don’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things.
Yet in the midst of this insanely huge universe, God looked through all the planets and galaxies, across 7 million humans on earth and chose you, God loves you and God, in the middle of all this, takes time for you and has a plan for your life.
So our entire solar system is tiny in the midst of the vast Milky Way, which itself is only one of billions of other galaxies in the known universe. By way of example, scientists say the size of our solar system relative to the Milky Way would be roughly the size of a 20c coin in an area as big as all of North America, Canada, the US and Mexico. Imagine placing a 20c coin in the Rocky Mountains , gaining enough altitude to view the entire North American continent at once, and then trying to find that quarter. No way. You wouldn’t even be able to see cities!
HOW SMALL WE ARE
It was February 14, 1990, and the Voyager 1 spacecraft screamed through the darkness of space, traveling forty thousand miles per hour away from the Sun. Launched thirteen years earlier, in 1977, Voyager was now beyond Pluto, having successfully accomplished its mission of photographing each of our distant neighbour planets. Amazingly, though the spacecraft was flying past the edges of our solar system, scientists had Voyager take one last Earth-facing image before continuing on its one-way journey away from the Sun through space.
Spanning the canopy of black, Voyager snapped a series of 60 images, storing them for future delivery to Earth. Each of these 60 images consisted of 640,000 pixels (a pixel is one of the tiny series of dots that make up a photograph), yet because Voyager was now an estimated 3.7 billion miles from home, it took each individual pixel 5½ hours to make the journey back to Earth. Not 5½ hours for each photo, mind you, but 5½ hours for each of the 640,000 tiny dots in each picture. Talk about waiting a long time for something to download!
PALE BLUE DOT PHOTOGRAPH
But finally, an image appeared. Dubbed “The Pale Blue Dot,” the composite photograph captured within one of the coloured shafts a tiny dot, scarcely visible to the naked eye. Yep, you guessed it. That little speck is Earth, photographed from almost 4 billion miles away.
Psalms 8:1,3-5
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
A W TOZER WRITES…
God is above all things, beneath all things, outside of all things, and inside of all things. God is above, but He’s not pushed up. He’s beneath, but He’s not pressed down. He’s outside, but He’s not excluded. He’s inside, but He’s not confined. God is above all things presiding, beneath all things sustaining, outside of all things embracing, and inside of all things filling.
This is the awesome thing… the God who spoke and all this sprang into being, sees you, and loves you, and cares for you. Can you have faith in a God like that? This Creator God who became and man and died on a cross in your place.
That’s right, with all this creating of galaxies, universes, supernovas and so on, God knew He would have to die in your place. Even in creation the cross was always central to what God was doing.
THE WHIRLPOOL AND THE CROSS
Let me introduce you to the whirlpool galaxy, alias M51. This galaxy is not too distant from us, and quite beautiful. Scientists have discovered that, right in the centre of this galaxy, is a black hole. This black hole is so powerful that not even light can escape it.
When Hubble photographed this black hole at the centre, believe it or not they proved that, even in creation, God had the cross in mind…
There's a cross right in the middle, reminding us that Jesus, the creator of everything, died on a cross for each of us, then rose again to prove the awesomeness of who He is! That wasn't plan B, it was always God’s plan for us.
BRINGING IT DOWN TO EARTH
It’s overwhelming (and somewhat dehumanising) to realise that God is so unbelievably huge and powerful, and that we live on an obscure planet in the Milky Way galaxy, and that even on this tiny planet there are close to seven billion of us alive at this moment.
You might think that it’s too much for God to know everything about every single one of us, but I've shown you that there are more stars than that in just one arm of the Milky Way Galaxy than people on earth. In fact, the Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars, and our God put each one in its place.
Isaiah 40:26
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name,
by the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power
not one is missing.
It’s crazy to think that God can name each of the stars. But what’s more stunning is that He can call you by your name as well.
And while God is big, but He’s not too big to miss you in the crowd.
In this massive ocean of cosmic activity, you are not alone, or unnoticed. He knows the exact number of hairs on your head, and the number of fears in your heart.
He sees your fears—so why not bring them to Him?
He sees your wrongs—so why not confess them and receive His grace and forgiveness?
He sees your struggles—so why not stop pretending and lean on Jesus for strength?
He sees your questions and doubts—so be honest with Him.
He sees your dreams and aspirations—so put them in His hands.
He sees your motives and intentions—so let Him work beneath the surface.
He sees your deepest needs—He alone can meet them.
God knows everything that’s true about you, and He loves you anyway. You are His offspring, His creation, His idea.
And when it come to faith, it's not about how much you can muster. It's not about whatever circumstances you face. It's not even about the results, if you can get what you are praying for.
True faith, even a tiny mustard seed’s worth, is dependent on the object of our faith… God Himself. It's never about your ability, it's only ever about Him.
Knowing He controls all that we have seen today, and knowing that He loves you, can you trust Him with your life? Can you give Him first place in your life? What is it that you need to trust Him for today, because while He controls planets, supernova and galaxies, He always has time for you!
If you are believing for something today, there's only 4 possibilities…
Either He does it
Or He can't do it (clearly untrue)
Or He doesn't love you (Scripturally untrue)
Or He has a better plan.
Can you truly trust in this awesome amazing God today?
Don't tell God how big your mountain is, tell your mountain how big you God is!
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