Providence Church (CREC)
Sunday School
Second Sunday of Epiphany, January 18th, 2009.
The Omnipotence of God in Psalm 139
I would like to continue thinking through Psalm 139 this morning. And I am going to focus on a particular dimension of Psalm 139. I learned this in seminary, that when you try to cover too much material, which my professors were experts in doing, you end up not covering much at all. With that in mind, let me narrow our attention to one particular aspect of Psalm 139, and that is the omnipotence of God.
This morning we worked through the four stanzas of Psalm 139. If we were to give systematic categories to the four stanzas, here is what we have:
a) Psalm 139:1-6 – God is all-knowing, Omniscient
b) Psalm 139:7-12 God is all-Present, Omnipresent
c) Psalm 139:13-18 God is all-Powerful, Omnipotent (Remember Handel’s Messiah based on Revelation 19, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth – He reigns with all power.
d) Psalm 139:19-24, The Holiness of God.
Our focus will be on the systematic discussion of the omnipotence of God. Let me begin by giving you a working definition of this term. God’s omnipotence means that a) He can do anything He pleases and that nothing is too hard for Him.[1]
Our Westminster Shorter Catechism question four asks the question: What is God? Answer: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.
There is a sense in which all these attributes are found in Psalm 139. And there is another sense in which all the attributes of God are inter-related. For instance, God’s power is eternal, unchangeable, good, true, and so on and so forth.
In simple terms, God’s omnipotence means that God can do whatever He pleases and whatever he pleases to do is not hard for Him to accomplish. Continue reading “The Omnipotence of God in Psalm 139, Part 1”