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How Big is Your God?

July 3, 2005                                                                                                                  Laura Crosby

I will be quoting from the Message translation of the Bible and we will be looking at various passages of Scripture in the Bible. I wanted to start this morning with a question: How many of you have ever either seen or met or spent any time with a famous person? I am not the type of person who usually hob-knobs with celebrities but about twenty years ago I had the unusual opportunity to go to dinner with Dustin Hoffman and I was living in Chicago at the time. Dustin Hoffman was there and was performing in the play “Death of a Salesman” downtown. We were invited to this fancy dinner and it was one of those deals where you think, “What am I going to wear?” and “What am I going to say?” I got ready and went and they answered the door. I walked into this penthouse and there were about twenty people milling around eating fancy hors d’oeuvres and I stood in the doorway and looked and looked. Like most of you I had seen Dustin Hoffman in movies; I had seen his picture in magazines, I had seen it in newspapers. I knew what he looked like. But I’m standing there and I couldn’t see him. Finally, I see this short little bald guy over there and I realize it is him. He had to shave his head for a wig he was wearing in the role. But my overwhelming impression was he’s too small. He’s too little. This is not the Dustin Hoffman that I know on the big screen. I couldn’t match that up in my head.

Similarly, when I went to seminary I thought I knew what God looked like. I had been a Christian for years. I knew the four spiritual laws and had been to all the Christian conferences. I thought I knew what to expect of God. I thought I knew what He would look like. What I discovered as I spent more time with God and looking closer at Him was that unlike Dustin Hoffman who was so much smaller than I imagined, God proved to be so much bigger than my mind could comprehend. He was bigger than my questions and bigger than my boxes. He was so big that He must be God and not just some human construct that I had made up. I thought it was humorous when I graduated from seminary and I won this theology award they give out. I thought it was ironic because I was uncomfortable with systematic theology. I sometimes didn’t recognize the God they were talking about in theology. At the time we lived about forty-five minutes away from the seminary and I would drive home some days and my mind would be swirling with questions and sometimes tears of frustration coming down my cheeks. I would think “God, what is up here?” I was trying to figure out good and evil, suffering, sovereignty, free choice, all that stuff. It was too big. And at that time, two different Chris Rice songs became very dear to me. One of them was a song about heaven and how all our questions will be answered there. The other one has these lyrics in the chorus: “God, if you are there I wish you’d show me. And God if you are there, I want you to know me. I hope you don’t mind me asking the questions but I figure you’re big enough. And I am not big enough.” Here’s the pattern in my life; I feel like God keeps trying to remind me. 1) I am not big enough; and 2) God is. I am not big enough but God is. I think the temptation for all of us is to try to squish Him into our boxes. We don’t think He is big enough to answer our questions or forgive an unforgivable sin or to understand our pain or to use us or to guide us in our complex modern world.

The good news is that we aren’t the first people to struggle with the scope of God’s power and our relationship with Him. David in the Bible is a great example of someone who experienced the emotional highs and lows of sin and forgiveness, doubt and fear, joy and sorrow. As we look at his life and the Psalms and his expression of his responses to those events in his life, I think we can learn something about the big-ness of God. What I would like to do is take a look at the ways we try to squish God into a box. Have you ever been wrapping a present – like at Christmas, when you have a big bulky sweater and you are trying to put it into a shirt box? And you put it into the box and the lid keeps popping off? I’d like for us to look at the ways we try to squish God into a box and the way that the words of David might encourage us to take the lid off and let God expand to what He really is.

You know the stories about David – he fought Goliath and won, he was chased around the countryside by Saul the jealous king, he was successful but then slept with Bathsheba. We want to look at some of these experiences in his life and look at how David might have been tempted to tell God that He wasn’t big enough to handle this. Here are some of the boxes that I think David might have been tempted to squish God into. The first would be labeled “Not big enough to use an ordinary person like me.” Are you ever tempted to put God in this box? You think you are an ordinary person and wonder how God could use you. When we first meet David, God isn’t pleased with the current King Saul and He tells Samuel to go to Jesse and to anoint one of his sons to be the next king. So Samuel goes to Jesse and Jesse brings his sons one at a time. To each one God says “no”. In I Samuel 16:11-13, Samuel then asks Jesse whether he has more sons. Jesse says that there is also the runt but he is tending sheep. Samuel ordered Jesse to get him. Jesse sent for him. He was brought in, the very picture of health, bright-eyed, good-looking. God said, “Up on your feet. Anoint him, this is the one.” Samuel took his flask of oil and anointed him with his brothers standing around watching. The spirit of God entered David like a rush of wind, God vitally empowering him for the rest of his life. So David has been anointed but it’s not public knowledge yet and he’s not officially king yet. The guy who is still king, Saul, is still in power and we’ve got these pesky Philistines who are making trouble for the Israelites. One in particular, Goliath, is really causing trouble. It says that Saul and the Israelites were dismayed and terrified. In I Samuel 17:15-17, it says: David was the youngest son. While his three oldest brothers went to war with Saul, David went back and forth from attending to Saul to tending to his father’s sheep in Bethlehem. One day Jesse told David his son, “Take this sack of cracked wheat and these ten loaves of bread and bring them down to your brothers in the camp. And take these ten wedges of cheese to the captain of their division. Check in on your brothers to see whether they are getting along all right.” David was up at the crack of dawn, and having arranged for someone to tend his flock, took the food and was on his way just as Jesse had directed him. He arrived at the camp just as the army was moving into battle formation, shouting the war cry. Now Goliath has been taunting them every day and here is what David says, “Master, don’t give up hope. I am ready to go and fight this Philistine.” Saul answered, “You can’t go fight this Philistine. You’re too young and inexperienced and he’s been at this fighting business since before you were born.” David said, “I have been a shepherd tending sheep for my father. Whenever a lion or bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I would go after it, knock it down, and rescue the lamb. Lion or bear, it made no difference, I killed it. And I will do the same to this Philistine pig who is taunting the troops of God. God who delivered me from the teeth of the lion and the claws of the bear will deliver me from the Philistine.” What are some things we can note about David just from these passages or glimpses of his life? He was a shepherd boy, not a big important guy. He was inexperienced; his father said he was the youngest and the runt. And he was a gopher; he was just the errand boy running back and forth between the big important people. He was the least likely to be anointed king and the least likely to kill the greatest warrior on the battlefield. How many of you remember the old Andy Griffith show with Barney Fife? This would be like us thinking that Barney Fife is “the man.” It doesn’t compute. But David didn’t tell God that He wasn’t big enough, that He couldn’t use him to do this. That’s not what he said. I think he might have been tempted to say that but the keys we see is that the spirit of the Lord came upon David in power and David said that the Lord will deliver him. It wasn’t David’s power but God’s; it wasn’t David who was extraordinary but God. Isn’t it cool that David recognized this? In Psalm 18:33-35, listen to what David writes: “He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle. Your right hand sustains me, you stoop down and make me great.” It is an extraordinary God who is too big for the confines of our worldly boxes and chooses to use His power and enable ordinary David and ordinary you and me and make us extraordinary. God opens the lid of this box of limitations and changes our ordinary into His extraordinary. He just blasts it open; He can do this.

The second box that I think David might have been tempted to have for God might have been labeled, “Not big enough to understand my pain.” In I Samuel, after David kills Goliath, Saul is still king but we learn that he has become insanely jealous of David. And he is chasing him all around the countryside; he is defaming and mocking him and trying to kill him. And David ends up in a cave. How confusing must this have been for David who’s been anointed; God has given him the “thumbs-up.” And yet he is running for his life from this maniac. I would think it would be very tempting for David to say to God, “Are you sure you can handle Saul? By the way I am in a lot of pain here, it’s confusing. I am not sure you can understand this.” That might have been what he would have been tempted to say. But, in Psalm 142, David writes: “I cry out loudly to God. Loudly I plead with God for mercy. I spill out all my complaints before him and spell out my troubles in detail. As I sink in despair, my spirit ebbing away, you know how I am feeling.” In Psalm 147 it says: “God heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord in might and power. His understanding has no limit.” God’s compassion is bigger than this box; it just spills out all over no matter what pain we are experiencing. God understands. Part of the way we know He understands is because God in Jesus experienced the mocking, the rejection, the betrayal, and the murder and pain that He did when He was here on earth. He has shared our pain. He is bigger than any pain or destruction or enemies that we face.

The third box I think David might have been to slap a label would be: “Not big enough to forgive me.” All of us know the story of David and Bathsheba; it’s one of the saddest ever. David was a very successful and popular king but he kind of gets to a mid-life crisis where he is lounging around at home while his troops are out fighting the real battles. He’s on his rooftop and he sees Bathsheba, ends up having an affair with her, and gets her pregnant. He then compounds things by having Bathsheba’s husband killed. Nathan, David’s right-hand man, when Nathan confronts David and his eyes are finally opened, the temptation might have been for him to say, “You’re right. I’ve created pain and destruction; I’ve really messed up and compounded sin upon sin. Lord this is probably too much for you to forgive; I’m so ashamed.” Listen instead to how David experiences God’s greatness, his plea for forgiveness in Psalm 51: “Generous in love, God give grace. Huge in mercy, wipe out my bad record. Scrub away my guilt. Soak out my sins in your laundry. I know how bad I’ve been, my sins are staring me down. You are the one I violated and you’ve seen it all. The full extent of my evil, soak me with your laundry and I’ll come out clean. Scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.” Then we see in Psalm 103 David’s experience of forgiveness. He says: “Oh my soul, bless God. From head to toe, I’ll bless His holy name. Oh my soul, bless God, don’t forget a single blessing. He forgives your sins, every one.” David is saying that he is confident of this, that he has been forgiven. It says: He heals your diseases every one. He redeems from hell, He saves your life, He crowns you with love and mercy. A paradise found.” As parents feel for their children, God feels for those who fear Him. God is bigger than any box of sin you have. It doesn’t matter, no matter what you have done, God’s grace covers it. God’s grace just spills out over everything.

So what I’d like to ask you is: What do your boxes for God look like? What labels might you put on them? In what area of your life are you tempted to think that God isn’t big enough or worry that He’s only as big as your limited understanding? What are the small boxes you are trying to keep God contained in? I wish that I could give each of you a box, but I’d like you to think, where do you think that God isn’t big enough. Is it about sin in your life? Do you feel that God is too small to forgive your sins? Or maybe, do you think He is too small to understand, that He doesn’t know what you have gone through? Or that He is too small for physical or spiritual healing in your life? Or He is too small to guide you or too small to be sovereign over your decisions? Is He too small to provide for your needs? Is He too small to give hope? Is He too small to give peace? There is an area in my life that I’m tempted to think that God is too small to handle. Over the past year I have been struggling with a relationship that has brought me more pain than anything else in my life. My temptation is to think that God can’t possibly redeem this, that He can’t be big enough to bring good or healing or restoration or growth out of this. I wish that I could say that this was in the past and this is how I experienced God’s redemption in this situation; but it’s current. I’m waiting to see how God is going to blast through this box and show me His redemption in this situation because He has promised that. So if you had a real box in front of you, what box would you be tempted to put God into? I’d like you to picture opening that box and seeing if God might be bigger than that box you are trying to keep Him contained in. we are in the middle of summer. Summer can be wonderful. We tend to change our routines and that can be great or not so great; it’s wonderful that we get the refreshment and rest. We are at the lake or outside expressing God’s beauty. But it can be a challenge because we are out of the routines of being in worship sometimes or we’re not meeting with our small groups or Bible studies. What I would like to do is to give you a challenge for the rest of the summer. I would like to challenge you to read through the Psalms – that would be about 2 a day which is not a lot. If you are like me, you might even want to make a list of them. As you read through them, I’d like you to notice the characteristics of God. What is God like? How is He expressed in the Psalms? How might that inform your picture of God? How might that open the lid to your boxes? The second challenge is to pray and pray and ask God to reveal to you the extent of His bigness, His power, His understanding. Ask God to reveal to you the extent of His character. And maybe some of you aren’t dealing with doubts in that area and as you read through the Psalms, you know you have been there before and praise God for that. Thank Him for that; worship Him. I’d like to close by reading you three verses from Psalm 145 that David wrote: “I lift you high in praise, my God, oh my King. And I bless your name into eternity. I’ll bless you everyday and keep it up from now to eternity. God is magnificent. He can never be praised enough. There are no boundaries to His greatness.” There are no lids on the box. Let us pray.