Wait, let me just bring you up to speed with the story before I get into the message.
This is a story about Abraham and his wife Sarah.
They're in the tent, it's a hot day outside, and they see three men walking towards them.
Now these three men come and they say, listen, come on in.
They were hospitable, they said, come on in, sit down, I'm going to make you something to eat.
He told his wife, he said, go in and cook some food and make something
and I'm going to go get some meat going and we're going to have a barbecue
and we're going to give you something to eat.
So they went and got the food together and they prepared it and they served it to them.
And these three men, one of them starts to talk to Abraham and he says, where's Sarah, your wife?
Now we find out later in the story, if you know the story, Genesis 18 to 19 is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And so in Genesis 18 these three men appear to them. One of them is God, one of them is Jesus Christ,
and two of his angels that are with him.
A little later in chapter 18 here, he sends the two angels down to Sodom.
They start walking down to Sodom to see whether what they thought was going on was really going on, the filthiness,
and that's a whole other sermon in and of itself.
But he sends these two men down to Sodom and God and Abraham are left alone
and they have this conversation for the rest of the chapter.
But the part I want to focus on here is when they first come to Abraham
and they tell Abraham that he's going to have a son.
Now 13 years previous he had a son, Ishmael, with a handmaid that he was not supposed to do.
What happened was God had promised Abraham that he was going to be the father of many nations.
He said, I'm going to make up be a great nation. He said, look up at the stars
and if you could count the stars, that's how many descendants you're going to have.
He said, look at the sand that's by the seashore.
If you could count all that sand, that's how many descendants you're going to have.
And Abraham's thinking to himself, I don't even have one child.
Because his wife was barren, she could not have a child.
And he's thinking to himself, how am I going to be the father of this great multitude?
I don't even have one kid.
So by the time he gets to be 87 years old, he had a lapse in faith here.
Actually, I'm sorry, 86. When he got to be 86, he had a lapse in faith and said,
you know what, maybe I need to take things into my own hands.
And he took his wife's maid, Hagar, and he had a child with her because he said,
well, I'm going to have a kid one way or the other.
And obviously that was wicked for him to do that.
And they had a child named Ishmael, which is basically the father of the Arab nations today.
And then 13 years later is where this story occurs when Abraham is 99 years old and his wife is 89 years old.
And the Lord says to Abraham, in one year from now, your wife is going to have a child.
Now she laughs at him like, good night, I'm 89 years old, I'm not going to have a child, that's ridiculous.
And God says, why are you laughing about that? Is anything too hard for the Lord?
And she says, well, wait, I didn't laugh. He says, look, you laughed, I know you laugh, I'm God.
It's amazing how we try to hide something from God. Obviously he knows the truth about it.
But the name, the child that was born is Isaac, who's the father of the Jews today.
And Isaac's name means laughter. And they named him laughter because they laughed about the fact that they were going to have this child.
Now, this is where the whole strife in the Middle East comes from today, which will never be resolved.
Every president of the United States always has the road map to peace.
We're going to make peace in the Middle East. Every president, I mean Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, you name it, that's their big thing.
They're going to solve the Middle East peace crisis. Never will happen.
It will never happen because the Bible says it's never going to happen.
And eventually the anti-Christ is going to come and he's going to solve the problem.
But then it's going to turn into much worse things. That's a whole other sermon in and of itself.
But it all comes from the fact that Ishmael is the elder son.
He was born 13 years before Isaac. So he feels like he has a right to the land that was promised to Abraham because he's the eldest son.
But Isaac feels like he has the right to it because it was promised to Isaac by God.
Because Ishmael was the bastard son that was not the legitimate heir, that was not the child of promise.
He was the child of works, which represents someone working their way to heaven, doing it in their own hands.
Whereas Isaac represents by grace through faith, trusting God, waiting on God.
And that is the one who God said that that land belongs to.
So there's the stripe that's going on today.
All the way back to one sin that Abraham did.
But that brings you up to speed with the story here.
I want to preach to you just on this one statement though.
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
Three times in the Bible God says, is anything too hard for the Lord?
In Jeremiah 32 17, the Bible says,
Ah Lord God, behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth, and by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.
Jeremiah 32 27 says, behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh.
Is there anything too hard for me?
Let me ask you something this morning.
How big is your God?
God said there's nothing that's too hard for me.
But sometimes I feel like we have just this little puny, tiny God that can't really do anything.
When we ask him to do something, he can't really make a difference.
He can't really step in when we need him.
How big is your God?
Some people's God is even so small that they make it into a little statue.
And their God is so small that it sets on the dash of their car.
And their God's so small that they wear it around their neck like some kind of rabbit's foot and good luck charm.
You know, God said, I don't dwell in temples made with hands.
God, this isn't the holy temple of God, this sanctuary of a church auditorium.
No, God said, he said, what's the house that you'll build unto me?
He said, I inhabit heaven and earth.
Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.
And yet we make God into an image made like unto corruptible man, the Bible says.
Idolatry is what I'm talking about.
Little statues, little, you know, people, I mean people bow down and have a little Buddha statue.
They've got Jesus hanging on the cross, some long haired hippie that they say is Jesus hanging on the cross.
And you know, God says, I'm a big God.
I measure the universe with the span of my hand, from the tip of my thumb to the tip of my pinky.
That's how I measure the universe.
Nobody knows how big the universe is.
Man cannot measure the universe.
God said, I just go like this and that's the size of the universe.
That's how big I am.
How big is your God?
Do you rely on yourself all the time or do you trust in the Lord and say God can step in to take care of what I need?
God can solve my problems.
God can pay my bills.
How big is your God this morning?
And by the way, don't have idols in your house.
It's an abomination, God said.
And God said, don't bring in a cursed thing into your house or you'll be accursed like it.
He says, you bring in something that's cursed, I'll curse you.
And I remember one time I went through my house, I read that verse, just reading through the Bible and the book of Deuteronomy.
I read that verse and I said, you know what, I'm just going to clean up my house.
And I walked around my house and said, God, show me everything in my house that's not of God.
And I just walked around just looking for it.
And I found a lot of stuff.
I found stuff and I said, this is not of God.
I threw it in the trash.
You know, pornographic things, you know, just even just the most, you know, magazines that seem harmless.
But then I looked through them and they had ungodly pictures of them.
I said, this is, this is trash.
This is a curse.
I don't want to be cursed.
I want the blessing of God.
I'm going to get it out of my house.
Men, especially, I'm talking to men right now, you are the king of your castle and your house.
The house is your domain.
That's your house.
This is my house.
And I'm responsible for everything that goes on in my house.
You think I'm going to hide behind my wife as some kind of excuse and say, well, that's my wife, you know, well, she does it.
No, sir, this is my house and I'm going to make sure it's clean and I'm going to make sure it's right.
If my wife had something that I don't agree with, that's something that's a curse according to this book, I'll take it and throw it in the trash myself.
Now obviously my wife and I agree on these things, but even if we didn't, this is my domicile.
This is my domain and I'm not going to have curses stuck in my house.
But beware of idolatry.
What's the big sin of idolatry?
The sin of idolatry is you're taking God and you're bringing him down to man's level.
You're bringing him down to the level of an animal in many cases.
You're bringing him down to the level of human being and saying, this is how big my God is.
I put him in my pocket and whenever I need him, I pull him out and rub him and chant some words.
That's not God.
God is the God who parted the Red Sea.
God is the God who made the walls of Jericho fall down.
God is the God who made the sun stand still for a day and he's not some little tiny puny God.
Let me read this for you.
And point number one I want to make is that God can provide your needs.
God is big enough to provide what you need in life.
Let me read this for you.
The Bible says, but my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus.
God is big enough to supply your needs.
Look at this right here.
Psalm 37 25.
I've been young and now I'm old, yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
What's he saying?
He's saying, I've never seen God let the righteous down and leave them high and dry, out on the street, begging bread.
He's never seen the God, you know, he's never seen them on welfare is what he's saying.
You know, out with their hands out because they didn't have any money, they weren't being taken care of by God.
He said, no, I don't let them down.
I can provide for my people.
I provide for my children, don't I?
Don't I give them three square meals a day?
You don't think God's going to do the same thing for his children?
God can provide.
God is a big enough God.
Listen to this verse.
This is Psalm 78.
And they sinned yet more against him by provoking the most high in the wilderness.
And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust.
Yea, they spake against God.
They said, this is how they spake against God.
Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?
This is when the children of Israel were out in the desert.
They'd just come out of Egypt.
There's no water, there's no food.
And they said, look, can God furnish a table in the wilderness?
Look around.
And God said, boy, that makes me mad.
I just parted the Red Sea.
Why don't you think I can provide your needs in daily life?
Look, if God can save you from hell, if God can forgive your sins,
but God can't give you the money that you need to pay your bills,
God can't provide the food that you need to eat,
and you'll fret and worry about it
and feel like you have to take things into your own hands
and sin against God to make the money to pay the bills
when God said, look, I can furnish a table in the wilderness because I'm God.
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
Absolutely not.
I mean, can God furnish a table in the wilderness?
And then the Bible says that they spoke against God
and they limited the Holy One of Israel in the same chapter.
So God said, look, you're limiting me.
Why are you limiting me?
I can do anything.
I want to do something big.
I want to come through for me,
but you're limiting me because you will not trust my promises.
You won't obey, and so I'm limited.
You say, God can do anything.
Well, God can't do anything because you're limiting him.
He wants to do a lot of things, but he can't
because he's being limited by us.
You know, here's an illustration.
I was thinking about this.
When I went away to Bible college,
now, I've never seen Bible college mentioned in the Bible,
but you know what I've seen mentioned many times?
Church, church, the local church,
church, church, church, church, church, many times.
Never seen the word college in the Bible.
So what do you think's more important?
The church, when the Bible says that God gave his life for the church,
he shed his blood for the church.
He said, upon this rock, I will build my church or college.
Well, I just decided a long time ago
that church is my number one priority in life,
not college, not anything else, and this is a Bible college.
I mean, this is a college where you train to be a preacher,
where you're training to go out and do like I'm doing,
you know, start a church or pastor a church
or something like that, right?
Well, I get there, and everybody is working on Wednesday nights
and not coming to church on Wednesday night.
They're working through Wednesday night church.
I mean, these are guys who are going to the ministry to preach.
They're going to start a church one day
and have Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night,
but because they have college in the daytime,
they've got to work second shift Monday through Friday
and miss Wednesday night church.
And they have this rationale,
well, I'm hearing preaching in college every day and whatever.
And I said, that's not church.
And so I told God, I said, you know what, God?
Are you a big enough God to put me through college
without me working on Wednesday night?
Why would I violate the Bible?
I'm supposed to be a preacher, right?
I'm supposed to get up and preach and tell people,
man, be in church, church is important.
That's hypocrisy.
So I'm going to lay out a church on Wednesday night
to go through some college
so somebody can hand me a piece of paper.
And I said, you know what, God?
If you're not a big enough God,
and this kind of reminds me of on Wednesday night
when we talked about coming boldly to the throne of grace,
I said, God, if you're not a big enough God
to get me through college without me missing church,
then I won't go to college.
And I will not even go into the ministry
because I'm not going to serve a God that's that small.
That's what I said to God.
That's literally what I said to him.
I went to my first job interview,
and I've been there for a few days.
I put out like 40, 50 resumes.
I went to my first job interview,
and I gave them my resume.
They had the times that I was available,
had it all laid out.
And they said I was not available on Wednesday night.
And they said, well, you know what?
You've got to work on Wednesday night.
This isn't going to work because it's the second shift.
And I said, I can't work on Wednesday night.
I said, if you can't give me 40 hours, that's fine.
I'll just work 35 hours or whatever.
But I'm not going to work on Wednesday night.
And they said, OK, OK, well, we'll give you a call.
Of course they never called
because they've got a whole bunch of other guys
that are willing to work when they want them to work.
That job was offering me a certain amount of money per hour.
Well, I waited, and I kept looking for a job.
Seven days after I got to town, I mean nothing,
I was putting out resumes.
I was spending eight or ten hours a day
just trying to get a job.
Seven days later, I got offered a job
that totally worked around my schedule,
exactly the way I had it laid out,
and I made time and a half what that other job was making me.
I mean, we're talking about a huge difference in money.
Time and a half where I was willing to make,
and I had a company vehicle within a week.
I got a $2 raise a week later, and it was flexible.
It was the best job I've ever had in my life.
It's the job I'm working for right now.
But what if I would have said,
oh, I'm scared, I'm scared, I can't pay my bills.
Oh, no, I've got to get through college.
I've got to go to Bible college.
I've got to serve God.
I'm going to work through Wednesday night church.
I never would have got that job.
I'd be working on some loading dock.
I'd probably still be there right now
trying to pay my way through college
because I wouldn't have been able to do the things
that I've been able to do because I told God,
I said, God, you're going to come through for me, God,
because you're a big God, and God came through for me.
That is what faith is about, saying, God,
I'm going to put you to the test,
and I'm going to watch you do something.
You know, God can pay your bills without you missing church
to pay the bills.
Did you know that?
The truth of the matter is God keeps us all
a little leaner financially than we'd like to be.
A lot of people say, well,
as soon as I turn the corner financially, man,
it's coming up.
I can see it.
I'm just about to get everything,
all my ducks in a row.
Did you know that none of us ever have
all our ducks in a row, ever?
And you say, well, just as soon as I turn that corner,
then I'll be faithful to church.
As soon as I turn that corner financially,
then I'll go soul winning.
As soon as I turn that corner financially,
you know, it's like a round room, friend,
this thing of finances,
because God keeps us a little leaner than we'd like to be
because he doesn't want us to be too puffed up.
Sometimes if we get a little bit too much money in our pockets
and things are going a little too smoothly,
we start to live it up a little bit.
So God likes to keep us a little bit under pressure,
a little bit leaner than we want to be.
But that doesn't mean that we should take it into our own hands
and violate the laws of God
because we've got to put food on the table for our family.
God said, I'll provide your needs.
You don't have to provide for your family.
I'll provide for your family.
Obey this book.
Work hard at your job.
Do what I told you to do,
and I'll open it up for you,
and you will be able to make it.
I promise you that.
But how big is your God is the question.
You've got to have a big enough God to do that.
You've got to have a big enough God to believe that.
But secondly,
you know, by the way, I was just thinking about this.
I remember when I was 16 years old
and I got my first job at Round Table Pizza
in Sacramento, California, working at a pizza restaurant.
And I was 16 years old,
and I hadn't really been taught very much about the Bible
You know, I grew up in a Christian home,
but it wasn't the type of churches that this church is.
It was a little more laid back and so forth.
And I hadn't been taught a lot of things,
and I didn't really have a conviction that said,
Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night,
I'm going to be there.
But I remember when I went
and got my first job at Round Table Pizza,
I walked in, I was 16 years old,
and I said, I need two days off,
Sunday and Wednesday.
Those are my two days off.
I'm going to work the other five days,
Sunday and Wednesday.
I'm going to be off.
And they acted like, well, you know,
I said, well, that's the way it is.
And they said, okay, and they hired me.
But I was thinking about it.
It wasn't even out of a conviction.
It wasn't even because I felt like,
man, if I miss church Wednesday and Sunday,
God's not going to be pleased.
It was literally just because I wanted to go to church,
because I liked going to church,
because I didn't want to feel like I missed something.
I felt like if I wasn't there on Wednesday night,
I was missing it.
I was missing what was going on at the house of God.
That's why the Bible says,
I was glad when they said unto me,
let us go into the house of the Lord.
And what God, we come to a place where instead of like,
well, I'm going to go to church,
we have to go to church.
Well, I want to go to church.
I want to sing the hymns.
I want to hear preaching.
I want to learn the Bible.
Hallelujah.
I love church.
To this day, I love church.
I always look forward to it.
Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
I love church.
And God loves church, by the way, too.
But number two, here's a case in point.
What about the story we were just looking at?
Here's a man and a woman who could not have a child.
And they laughed about it and said,
you know, God can't do this.
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
Let me show you another story about Abraham's son, Isaac,
the son that he had.
This is the story that it talks about Isaac.
The Bible says in Genesis 25, 20,
and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah the wife.
So how old was he when he married his wife?
How old was he?
Forty.
Forty, okay.
And the Bible says,
and Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife because she was barren.
That means he was going to God in prayer
because his wife could not have kids and was barren.
And he's praying.
And the Lord was entreated of him,
and Rebekah his wife conceived.
Now this is all one verse.
Let me read it for you again.
This is one verse.
And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife because she was barren,
and the Lord was entreated of him,
and Rebekah his wife conceived.
Now it sounds like it will happen the next day, right?
His wife's barren.
He prays about it.
Boom, she has a child.
Well, let's go down a little bit.
It says right here in verse 26,
and after that his brother came out,
and his hand took hold on Esau's heel,
and his name was called Jacob.
So the two twins are Jacob and Esau that she gave birth to.
And Isaac was three score years old when she bare them.
So here he is.
When he's 40, he gets married.
His wife's barren, and he starts praying.
God, would you please let us have a child?
And it sounds like gloom.
It just happens right away.
But you know what?
He was 60 years old.
Three score years old when those children were born.
And you know, we live in such a day of this small God mentality
where people say after one year of marriage,
oh, we can't have kids.
Let's go down to the doctor,
and let's get out a petri dish,
and let's mess with nature,
and let's do IVF,
and let's harvest a bunch of eggs,
and put them on the counter,
and fertilize them,
and then we'll watch them and see which ones gimp out and die.
And then we'll take the good ones and put them in,
and then 85% of those are going to die also.
But we just have to take things into our own hands
because God's not big enough to give us a child.
That's ridiculous.
I've never met anybody who tried to have kids for 20 years
and prayed for 20 years.
They tried for like two years,
and then they just give up,
and they run to the doctor,
and they say, oh, doctor, you're my God.
You can solve all my problems, doctor.
Now, I'm not against doctors, of course,
but the Bible does say they that are whole
need not a physician, but they that are sick.
The Bible says, look, when you're sick, go to the doctor.
When you're not sick, don't go to the doctor.
And you know what?
You've got to go to God, not just run to the doctor
and say the doctor's going to solve all my problems.
The doctor's going to give me children.
God said I open the womb and I close the womb,
not some doctor.
And the perverted stuff that goes on with this,
I was just reading something this week about this,
about this IVF, and they said our goal
is by the middle of this century
for people to just be able to just come down
and this would just be the norm
because they can do this right now
a little bit to an extent.
You can come down and say, I want a boy or a girl.
I want them to be blond hair, blue eyes.
I want them to be dark hair, olive complected.
I want them to have an IQ of this much.
That is wicked and ungodly and unnatural and against God.
This has been going on throughout history.
It was going on in Genesis chapter 6,
if you study the Bible, and God destroyed the world
because it was going on.
And God said, as in the days of Noah,
it's going to be in the days of the Son of Man
when Jesus comes back.
It's totally ungodly.
It's playing God.
It's not our place to play God.
Let's trust God.
Let's live with the hand that God deals us.
And why don't you pray like Isaac for 20 years
and God's going to do something for you.
And God didn't just give him one child.
God gave him twins.
And one of those sons' name was Israel
and he grew up to be one of the greatest men that ever lived
to have the nation that would one day be the nation
that Jesus Christ himself would come from.
Well, why don't you get a hold of God in prayer
and say, God, you said, God,
that there's nothing too hard for you.
Prove it.
Now, it's not going to happen overnight.
It might take 20 years.
But that's where the faith comes in.
But, boy, I'd wait 20 years to have a kid
who's got 20 some chapters of the Bible written about him,
who the whole rest of the Bible is about his descendants.
I'd wait 20 years for something like that.
Or you can run down to the doctor,
to the pervert doctor.
Yes, he's a pervert.
The guy who's got the petri dishes out
and he's screwing with human life.
And you can run down to him and have some ishmels
that'll blow up the twin towers 3,000 years later,
his descendants, from what he was doing.
That's the truth.
You know, think about how people play God in our society.
You know, look at euthanasia.
I'm against it.
Euthanasia, where they, you know, old people,
they just put them down.
Assisted suicides in the state of Oregon,
where somebody's old and decrepit,
and they say, listen, let's just put them out of their misery.
Look, if God wants them out of their misery,
then God can put them out of their misery.
It's not our job to take human life, to kill people,
because we think they're old and they're a burden and so forth.
You know, I remember when I was working,
I was working on a water treatment plant up in Glencoe, Illinois,
when I was doing fire alarms.
And I was there, and I noticed just ladybugs everywhere.
And I'd be working, and they'd just be crawling all over me.
I was putting in a fire alarm and just ladybugs are crawling up my arms.
It's like, oh, get off me.
And you'd walk into these rooms, and there's just ladybugs everywhere
in this water filtration plant.
And I said to the guy that worked there, I said,
what is the deal with these ladybugs?
Why are there so many ladybugs here?
And the guy told me, he's like, oh, man.
He's like, I tell you what.
He said there was some problem that they were having with some bug,
and it was a real minor problem.
And so they said if we bring these ladybugs,
then we can like have the ladybugs eat this other little pest,
aphids or whatever it was, and these ladybugs will eat them,
and it will solve the problem.
But what happened is the ladybugs had no natural predators.
Nothing was eating these ladybugs,
because these ladybugs were not designed to be in Glencoe, Illinois.
And so these ladybugs were just unchecked,
and they were just multiplying and multiplying and multiplying.
So I wish you could have seen it.
There were just ladybugs everywhere, and it wasn't getting better.
It was getting worse, because they're just multiplying and multiplying
and multiplying, and that's just how we are.
We think that God's not smart enough to run the ecosystem.
God's not smart enough to run the environment and, oh, global warming,
and, oh, you know, we're all going to die, the greenhouse.
God knows what he's doing.
But we feel like we always have to step in, and we better save the earth.
Look, God knows what he's doing.
We don't need to introduce all these ladybugs and crazy stuff like that,
but that's our mentality.
We always think we can do it better than God.
God can do anything.
I think we need to put a little more things in God's hand
and say let's let God take care of it, not try to tamper with nature.
Anyway, that's the thing about the queers that's so bizarre.
I mean, they're against nature, the Bible says.
That's part of the problem.
I mean, so many weird things are going on.
I read in the news.
I don't want to get too much into this, but this is in the news so much
that some guy has a kid like 20 years after he's dead
because they put the stuff on ice and all this.
God can't be pleased with that kind of nonsense.
That's just against nature.
It's wicked.
You know, God, number three, not only can God provide your needs
and not only can God handle nature himself
and he can handle how many kids you have and so forth,
but number three, God can get lost people saved.
Let me ask you this.
Is it too hard for God to get the really hard cases saved?
I mean, the guy who everybody says,
boy, there's no way this guy's ever going to get saved.
Look how wicked he is.
He doesn't want anything to do with the things of God.
Is it too hard for God to get the really hard cases saved?
Is your God big enough to get people saved
when you call a call on him and preach the gospel
and the Word of God is preached?
Is it too hard for God to get those people saved?
The Bible says,
He that goeth forth and weepeth,
bearing precious seed,
shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him.
And, you know, sometimes the problem is there's no weeping involved.
That's the problem right there.
He that goeth forth, oh, by the way, and weepeth,
bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again.
Now, what does doubtless mean?
I'm not very smart.
Doesn't doubtless mean that it's going to happen?
I mean, without a doubt.
He says, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him.
And, you know, sometimes we get this Calvinistic type mentality
where, well, maybe they're going to get saved
and maybe they're not going to get saved.
I don't know.
Why don't you get a hold of God and get him saved?
Why don't you open your mouth and preach the gospel?
Why don't you get on your knees and weep and pray
and see what God can do?
I've seen it, and God will do it again,
and he's done it in this book, and he'll do it again.
You got to go forth.
I mean, get out of your house.
Let's just break it down.
Boy, the King James Bible is so hard to understand.
Let's just break it down.
It's so hard, isn't it?
Go forth.
That means go.
That means not where you are right now,
but you need to go somewhere and do it, okay?
See how easy this is?
You go forth, and then you weep.
That means you start crying about it
because you want somebody saved, okay?
Then the next thing you do is you bear the precious seed,
which the Bible says the seed is the word of God.
That means you get a King James Bible,
not some stinking NIV with 15 missing verses
and changes everything and tones everything down,
some thunder knife of an NIV.
Get the two-edged sword of the King James Bible,
the precious seed, and then what happens?
You come back rejoicing.
You're not crying anymore when you come back.
You're smiling.
You're saying, Hallelujah!
Praise God!
Doubtless.
That means it's going to happen.
How big is your God, though?
Because you've got to have a big God to do that kind of stuff.
You've got to have a big God to get the hard cases saved.
But how big is your God?
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
Let me show you a story quickly.
Ezekiel chapter 37.
I want you to turn there.
Ezekiel chapter 37.
This is toward the very end of the Old Testament,
the last big book in the Old Testament is Ezekiel.
Ezekiel chapter 37.
A lot of people think that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel,
these big, giant, long books at the end of the Old Testament,
these three big books, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel,
a lot of people think that these are kind of boring books,
a little bit too heavy reading perhaps,
but these books are fascinating.
These are the books that I really enjoy.
And especially for a preacher, there's so much good preaching,
because Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel,
these guys were preachers who just ripped it up.
I mean, these guys were some pretty radical preachers.
If you read these three books, you'd be amazed.
This is where the Bible tells you how to preach, by the way, in Isaiah.
He says, cry aloud! Spare not!
That means don't leave anything out. Spare not.
Don't leave anything out. Just say it all.
Lift up thy voice like a trumpet!
He says, smite with thy hand, stop with thy foot.
That's straight out of the Bible what God says to his preacher.
He said, this is how I want you to preach.
And as we preached last Sunday, he said, make it plain.
Same part of the Bible.
But look at this story in Ezekiel 37. Fascinating story.
This is Ezekiel. The Bible says,
the hand of the Lord was upon me,
and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord,
and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones.
So the Lord takes Ezekiel, and he wants to show him something,
so he takes him to a valley just full of bones.
And caused me to pass by them round about,
and behold, there were very many in the open valley,
and lo, they were very dry.
And he said unto me, this is God speaking,
Son of man, can these bones live?
And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.
Again he said unto me, prophesy upon these bones.
He's saying, preach to these bones.
I mean, he's talking about a dead church.
He takes his preacher and puts him in a valley full of dry bones.
He said they were very dry.
And he said, Ezekiel, is there any way that these bones can live?
And he says, I don't know, you can tell me, I don't know.
And he says, well, preach to them.
Preach to these dry, dead bones.
And it says in verse number 5, thus saith the Lord God unto these bones.
Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live.
And I will lay sinews upon you, that's like my muscles,
and will bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin,
and put breath in you, and ye shall live, and ye shall know that I am the Lord.
So, that's what he's saying, I want you to preach this.
So, I prophesied as I was commanded.
So he says, so that's why I preached.
And as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a shaking.
And the bones came together, bone to his bone.
So you've got to imagine this.
He's preaching, and this really happened by the way, this is a bizarre story.
He's preaching to these dead bones,
and the Bible says that the bones just start forming themselves into these skeletons.
I mean, they're forming bone to bone.
And these bones start to come up and come to life.
Then it says, the sinews and the flesh came upon them.
This is in verse number 8.
And the skin covered them above, but there was no breath in them.
He says they had the skin and the bone, and they were totally done,
but they still weren't alive.
They had no breath in them.
Then said he unto me, verse 9, prophesy unto the wind.
Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind,
Thus saith the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath,
and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.
So I prophesied as he commanded, and the breath came into them,
and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.
Now look, you say, well, this Bible's weird.
You know, this is crazy stories.
But look what he's saying here.
He's a preacher, and he just drops him off somewhere
in the middle of a valley where it's just dead.
I mean, nothing's happening.
People are not saved.
And by the way, people who are not saved, the Bible says that their spirit is dead.
And they're dead, and nothing's happening.
It's just dry. It's like Phoenix. It's so dry.
And just dry, dead bones.
And he says, can these bones live?
And he starts preaching, and what happens?
God raises up out of these bones, these dead, dry bones
that nobody thought could ever live.
And he raises up life.
And what were they?
A mighty army, God said.
He raised up out of the dead, dry bones a mighty army.
And God wants to take those that are dead.
He wants to go to the place where it's really hard
and where it doesn't seem like it's going to work.
And he wants to raise up people out of the dung heap, the Bible says.
And he wants to lift them up.
And he says, you're going to be my mighty army
to fight the Lord's battle, to win people to Christ,
to do something big in this city.
I'm not going to do it with the people who maybe we think he's going to do it with.
But I'm going to reach down into these dry bones
and lift up out of these dead carcasses a mighty army
to preach the gospel, to do my work.
God can do anything.
God can get the hard cases saved.
And God wants to use them for his mighty army.
Then the Bible says, then he said unto me, son of mans, verse 11,
these bones are the whole house of Israel.
Behold, they say our bones are dried, our hope is lost.
We are cut off for our parts.
Therefore prophesy and say unto them, thus saith the Lord God,
behold all my people, I will open your graves
and cause you to come up out of your graves
and bring you into the land of Israel.
And ye shall know that I am the Lord
when I have opened your graves, O my people,
and brought you up out of your graves,
and shall put my spirit in you, and you shall live,
and I shall place you in your own land.
Then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it
and performed it, saith the Lord.
That's not a boring book at all.
That's exciting. I like that.
Because it tells me that God's going to raise up something in this city.
He's going to raise up a great soul winning church in this city.
See, I don't just read about a bunch of bones.
That's what I read when I read that.
Which brings me to my fourth and final point.
God is big enough to build this church.
Is it too hard? God said, is anything too hard for me?
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
Let me ask you something.
Is it too hard for the Lord to build Faithful Word Baptist Church?
You know what? I think it might be.
Maybe it's a little bit crazy idea.
Maybe it's not going to work for God to build an old fashioned
hell fire and damnation, King James Bible, old fashioned, soul winning
type of Baptist church in this area.
Maybe it's not going to work.
So you know what we should do? Let's do this.
We're having a meeting as a church here.
We've got everybody together here.
We're going to go out.
I want you guys to do some research for me.
We're going to find out what people want.
I don't care what the Bible says.
Let's do a survey.
You guys need to help me with this.
We're going to do a survey.
We're going to ask people, what do you want when you come to church?
Do you like rock music?
We'll have rock music.
We'll rock for Jesus.
We'll jam for Jesus.
Oh, you like hip hop?
Then hey, I'll come up here and be like...
I'll put my pant leg up here and be like, yeah.
We'll give them what they want.
Maybe we can get some big TV ads with me wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
Come to the church where you just relax.
Just take it easy, man.
I'll be wearing flip flops and a big Hawaiian shirt and just be like,
oh man, let's just worship God.
I don't think God can do it.
I don't think God can build this kind of church.
In 2006, you've got to be kidding.
This is like dinosaur type stuff, right?
This is ancient history.
I don't believe that.
I think God's going to build this church.
God's going to build this house up jam packed.
We're going to fill it up and then we're going to get a bigger building
and we're going to fill that up.
Then we're going to do what we're going to do after that?
We're going to get one that's even bigger and we're going to fill that up
because God's going to do it.
I don't have to take it into my hands and go out and kowtow to the world
and get on my knees and say, oh, please, would you come to church?
We'll make it just however you want it to be.
No, sir.
We're going to make it how God wants it to be.
If God can't do it, then you know what?
Let's just go home right now if God can't do it.
Then what are we doing here?
If God can't build this church, what are we doing?
Let's go out and have some fun, man.
Let's go do something cool.
Let's not go to church if God is not big enough to do something in this church.
Think about that in your life.
Is Christianity real or not?
Is the Bible true or is it not real?
Get in or get out.
And God says, look, I want you to put me to the test.
I want you to believe that I can do something big,
and I want you to make Christianity real in your life,
not just something where you go to get your little vitamin of,
oh, I feel so good when I come out of church.
I just tingle all over.
No, God says, look, I want to do something big.
I want you to see me work, but you're limiting me because you don't think that I can do it,
and you think it's too hard for me.
But you know what?
The Bible says, is anything too hard for the Lord?
No.
Nothing's too hard for God.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, I thank you so much for the Word of God and the promises of God's Word.
And Father, I just pray that we would all put you to the test
and really see you do something in our lives.
God, help us to get out of the boat of just lame, plain Christianity
and help us to try to do something big
and help us to get a big God and a big Christianity, Father.