God the Father Almighty

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So last week, we started this new series called Foundations, the Building Blocks of Faith. And we are excited about this, I am. We're going through some of the basics, and yet the same basics are so important for us. So last week, we started out and said the first words of the Apostles' Creed, which are kind of building blocks that the church has seen for millennia, that the building block starts with, I believe in. I believe, not I know. And I said the difference is because belief means trust, reliance, the fact that you can just fall into your father's arms, like this picture, versus knowing can be very detached, very disconnected. Do we know a lot of stuff? Yeah. Do I know biblical theology and stories from the Bible and truths from God's words? Absolutely. So I know in my head, but I believe with my heart. They go together. And it's not just about knowing, it's about trusting and believing and relying on. It's really about that relationship with God, not just understanding some ideas. You see, we live in a world that is filled with a lot of noise, and we're bombarded. I think there's 360 different advertisements that are thrown at you from different forms of media every day. We are bombarded with so much stuff that it colors and confuses and clouds over what life is about. And it gets very confusing to us, and we need to have some type of a filter that finally comes down and says what's really important. And I think the Apostles' Creed, as we're going through it, is kind of the rule of faith. It's kind of a filter that says, this is what's foundational. This is what it's all about. And it's all about God. It's really all about God. And your belief in God actually affects all the other beliefs about everything else. So last week, we covered I believe in, which moves us now to the first part of the creed of God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. Now over 85% of people say they believe in God in the United States yet today. And when they confess him, they'll not get too far as to how to describe him. They'll probably call him God Almighty. He's almighty. He can do anything he wants. He's got all the goods. He can do it. We've almost got this Zeus-like lightning bolt kind of feel to God Almighty because he can do whatever he wants. He wills whatever he wants. He gets away with whatever he wants to get with. And that's the way it is. And so beyond that, most people don't know what to make of him. They don't know what else to attribute to him. He's perfect. He knows everything. We get these omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent kind of attributes in the abstract. But what is he really? It's almost like he's one of our superheroes, just a little stronger. And you can almost see that superhero action figure, God Almighty. There he is. Wow. And we can kind of play with him and we use him to zap other people or do whatever you want, I guess. But that's a problem. Because if all you know about is that God is great or God is powerful, you don't know much about God at all. Saying God is great is really almost, you know, redundant. Big deal. It's kind of like saying Bill Gates is rich. Do you know anything about Bill Gates? Do you know what makes him tick? Do you understand who he is? Do you really relate to him at all or is he just rich? Is God just great? Is he just all-powerful? Is that all we can say about him? We need to know how God is great. What makes him great? What's he really like? And the creed comes to our aid, because the scriptures are just redundant behind it, that we have God the Father Almighty. That is, before there was a world, before God created anything, God was the Eternal Father who eternally loved his Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. So that before there was world, before anything, there was love and this perfect community of relationships that spills over then in joy and love to create this wonderful world and everything out of that love. Not because God was lonely, no. He was complete in himself. He already had love. He was love. Not that God was... It's just because God loved that he created, because God had this perfect relationship that he created us in his image. So the creed says, God is Almighty. That is, he is the Almighty Father. Now there's many Bible passages, and we're going to go through a few of those that talk about this juxtaposition of Almighty and Father. Psalm 135 says it this way, whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and in earth and in the seas and all the deeps. In Isaiah 44, it says this, Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts. I am the first and I am the last. Besides me there is no God. He's Almighty. He's ultimate. There is no one besides him. That's it. And yet, God is not some tyrant who uses his power as he wills for his own perspective. He's not some brute force...