The omnipotence of God.
I. THE SOURCE OF THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD.
1. His essential being. He is the Lord, Jehovah, the Self-Existent. God is not only greater than all other existences, he differs from them in his essential being. He is eternal; they have come into being. He is self-contained; they are created.
2. God's relation to all other existences. He is the God of all flesh. He is the First Cause, the Source of the first being of all things, and the ground of their continued being. But for him they could never have been and could not now endure. We human creatures, "flesh," may realize this especially in regard to ourselves. Therefore to us in particular God, who created us all, and in whom we all live and move and have our being, must be almighty.
II. APPARENT LIMITATIONS TO THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD.
1. The character of God. We say that God cannot do wrong. But this simply means that his character is such that he never will do wrong. He is physically as able to do the actions which are wrong as those which are right. If he were not, there would be no goodness in his refraining, for purity is not impotence to do evil, but a will not to do it in face of the power to do it. Omnipotence is a physical characteristic. Goodness, the moral characteristic, does not destroy this by controlling the action of it. The power of the steam-engine is not lessened because the driver turns the steam on and off at will.
2. The free will of man. This introduces an unfathomable mystery, which no philosophy has solved or is ever likely to solve. But the mystery is more especially felt on our side. If God created us and gave to us free will, and, being omnipotent, can at any time destroy us and withdraw it, this must not be regarded as any real limitation to his power.
III. HOW A CONSIDERATION OF THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD SHOULD AFFECT OUR CONDUCT. We are not called to worship mere power. To do so would be to renounce the rights of conscience. We worship God, not because he is almighty, but because he is supremely good and morally great. But starting from this position, we have to take account also of the omnipotence of God.
1. It shows the utter vanity of all resistance to the will of God. This is a most obvious inference? The more strange, then, that it is so little acted on. We need to feel it as well as to believe it.
2. It should lead us to trust that God will overcome difficulties which to us appear insuperable. The restoration of Israel appeared impossible; the salvation of the world seems too great and difficult to be realized; there are special difficulties in special cases, but some with all, so that we may exclaim, "Who then can be saved?" But if "with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26), how can we fix any limit to the ultimate triumphs of redemption? "The mercy of the Lord endureth forever;" then God will always seek the recovery of his lost children. "Is anything too hard for me? Then, in spite of present unbelief, impenitence, wild wanderings further astray, may we not believe that he will find his children at last?
3. These considerations should lead us to seek the help of God's strength in our weakness. How foolish for the sailors to weary themselves toiling in vain at their oars against the tide, when if they would spread their sails the strong wind would carry them swiftly on! How foolish of us to toil on only in our natural power and with mere earthly means, when there are heavenly influences of omnipotence ready to help us if we will seek them!