Is Your God Too Small?

Pastor Mike Kelsey | March 23rd, 2025

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Transcription

Hey, can we just turn that toward the One who is everything to us? Oh, come on, y'all. We can do better than that. We already turned up already in the first 30 minutes. We might as well just keep going and giving him the praise that he is worthy of and that he deserves. Come on, y'all. Let's give God praise. It is good to be back. Before I have you take your seat, I just want to say, I said this at the earlier service. If you are new and you are visiting this church, if you're here, you're sitting in overflow. You are online. The primary reason I came back is because you are surrounded by people who have decided, I don't want to play no games with church. You're surrounded by a group of. I said this at the earlier service. When I see the worship team up here leading worship, I don't just hear songs. I see stories of people who have been changed by the grace of God. And you are surrounded by people who have been changed by the grace of God. So if you are a mess, a hot mess, if you are struggling in your life, if you're struggling with temptation or sin or whatever it is, you feel like you don't even belong around all these church people, you are in good company because we are a people who have been changed by the grace of God.

Come on. Can anybody give God praise for his grace, grace and for his mercy? We thank God for his grace, and we thank God for his grace to us through the leadership of this church. Can we give it up for Pastor Tim and Janice, their family and all the leaders here? Praise God for you. And we are. I'm so thankful, so thankful to be here, to learn from you, to grow with you, to worship with you. And I want to read from Psalm 99 while you're standing. Psalm 99 if you want to meet me there. Psalm 99. I'm going to read this whole Psalm. Is that all right? We're going to read Psalm 99, and we're going to pick it apart together. Anybody come to hear a word from the lord today? Psalm 99. If you're new to the Bible, if you have an actual physical Bible cheat code, you just open to the middle and you're probably going to hit a psalm and then just find 99. Psalm 99. Let me read this psalm for us. The Lord reigns, let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim, Let the earthquake.

The Lord is great in Zion. Zion is another way of referring to the Holy city in Jerusalem. The temple in Jerusalem. The Lord is great in Zion, and he is exalted over all the peoples of the world. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he. The king in his might, loves justice. You have established equity. You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the Lord our God. Worship at his footstool. Holy is he. Moses and Aaron were among his priests. Samuel also was among those who called upon his name. They called to the Lord, and he answered them in the pillar of the cloud. He spoke to them. They kept his testimonies in the statute that he gave them. O Lord our God, you answered them. You were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain. For the Lord our God is holy. Listen, here's the title for my message. I didn't actually have it at the early service, but I got it now. You turn to somebody beside you and just say, is your God too small?

Is your God too small? Let me pray for us.

Father, we thank you so much for this opportunity to hear from you. Expand our vision. Expand our vision Holy Spirit, give us eyes to see you. Not the you that we've created in our own minds, but give us eyes to see you as you have revealed yourself. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen. Amen. Won't you go ahead and grab your seat? Let me ask you a question. How many of y'all have a family member? Kind of low key, embarrasses you sometimes. You don't have to respond too loud because they're in the vicinity if you didn't remember. Some of us, we have that family member, they family. We love them. But when your friend is coming to the cookout, you find yourself having to give disclaimers about that uncle. It's always an uncle. I don't know why, but it's that uncle. We love him. He's been through. He just got out. You know what I mean? You gotta give some explanation, right, to that uncle. Right? You love him because he's family, but there's some aspects of his personality that you might be embarrassed about. I asked that question because many of us are like that in our relationship with God.

We rock with God. We're part of his family. We believe in God. There's aspects of his character that resonate with culture. And so we're cool with that. We're fine talking about the love of God because our Culture is fine talking about the love of God, but there are some aspects of God's character. There are some ways God moves in scripture that kind of embarrass us. So we don't like to talk about those aspects of God. So we exalt the love of God, but we don't want to talk about the holiness of God. And part of that might be because we've misunderstood what that actually. What does it mean for God to be holy? That's what this psalm is about. This psalm is a call to worship, an invitation, a command to worship God for a very specific reason, because he's holy. And so the psalm is organized around these three very repetitive lines. It's kind of like the hook in a song, right? So you know how a hook works. A hook is designed to get something stuck in your head. So let me test this out real quick. I'm going to be respectful.

I want to get invited back. So we're not going to go. I don't want to bring out the worst in y'all, because we're talking about the holiness of God. So let me just give you some neutral examples that are safe from church. I'm going to start a song, and I want you to finish it. It's going to be easy. Okay, here we go. Nationwide is...

On your side.

Dawg, that's crazy. You don't even have Nationwide and you singing a song. Here's another one, like a Good Neighbor...

Where. You know what I mean? That's the power of a hook. And you got some hooks going on in your head right now that haven't been redeemed yet, right? The power of a hook is that it gets whatever the rider wants stuck in your head. Stuck in your head. It's an insurance company that wants you to know they're the friend that's always going to be there, right? So go back to Psalm 99, because it's organized around this hook. You see it? What does the writer want to get stuck in our head? Verse 3, it says, Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he.

Verse 5. Exalt the Lord our God. Worship at his footstool. Holy is he. Verse 9. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy. What's the hook in the psalm? The hook is the holiness of God. That's what the writer wants to get stuck in your head, the reality that God is holy. Now, you can get lost in all the details in this song, but the one thing the psalmist wants you to remember the one thing. The psalmist wants you to walk out. You know how a hook works. You start singing a song, you ain't even thinking about. You ain't heard the song in 10 years. The Psalmist is like, I want you to walk around this week with the reality of the holiness of God stuck in your head. So that it moves down into your heart and it changes your life. So the question then is, what does it mean that God is holy? Well, to be holy means to be set apart, to be reserved for a special purpose. So you got your regular silverware over here. You got that bag with all of the extra plastic silverware that you done kept from all the takeout food over here.

And then you 3 your fine china over here. What's 2025? Y'all like fine? What is fine china? What? No, you know, grandma got fine. We don't have no fine china. Let me give you another example, better example. I got my everyday sneakers over here. These are the ones I just step out in just to, you know, I'm saying just to go out, but when I really want to flex, I got those sneakers over here. They still in the box. I do the duck walk to keep the crease from out the toes, right? Those sneakers are reserved for a special purpose. They are set apart. They're different than all the other sneakers that I wear. Those sneakers are holy. The holiness of God says that he is set apart from everything that he has made. Why? Because he made everything that has been made. And the examples I gave aren't even the best examples, because I gave you different and better versions of the same thing. But God is not a better version or the best version of anything. He's in a category by Himself. There is no one like Him. There is nothing like Him.

Nothing. And no one compares to God. He is the Creator, and everything else is the creation. He is set apart from everything that he's made, and he's set apart from sin. There's no impurity in Him. He is perfect. He's holy. And because he's so unique, there's no one like Him. And because he's so, so pure, there's no sin in him, then that means he is infinitely more valuable and praiseworthy than anything else in the world. It's like we say, you look at a ball playing, you're like, hey, that dude. Different. He's different. God is different. He's different. He's in a class by Himself. God is holy. He's set apart. And the question that the psalmist is trying to answer for us, to help our hearts resonate with the reality of his holiness is what sets God apart, what makes him so different. And he gives us three answers. Number one, God is worthy of worship. There's nothing else that's worthy of our worship. And you see this picture of God in Psalm 99, that God is king, that he is sovereign. He is the one who is in control. He is in charge of everything. The psalm opens with that phrase, the Lord reigns.

He is actively ruling, presiding over everything. Everything in heaven, everything in the universe, everything on earth, everything in your life. God is in charge of everything, which means he has the power to use anything and everything, even the bad things, for his good purposes. That's how powerful he is, that he can use anything and everything, even the bad things, for his good purposes. Bad things cannot stop God from accomplishing the good that he wants to accomplish. He is sovereign and he is in charge over everything. You say, well, what about that thing that happened in my life? What about that thing that caused so much trauma in my life? Where was God in that? Well, God may not have caused everything bad, everything sinful, everything abusive and traumatic. But if God is not in charge over everything, then who is? And if God is not sovereign over everything, then how could he ever promise you that he can take that bad thing and work it and turn it around for your good? If God does not have control over all things, then how could he promise that he can turn all things into things that would be beneficial for you? God is sovereign.

He reigns. He rules. And we get this picture of God's sovereignty in this psalm. Listen to me. God is not up in heaven anxious, y'all. History is not a nail biter to God. It ain't like he got to episode five and now he's mad because he gotta wait till the next episode drops. That's not God. He's not waiting to see how history is about to unfold. He's not confused or anxious or uncertain about the circumstances in your life. This is not like y'all sitting around wondering what Jerry Jones is going to do next season. I had to throw that in there because I'm a Washington Commanders fan and I know I'm in Dallas territory. I'm sorry. God is not looking at history or looking at your life or looking at the future. Worried. You know why? Because verse 1, he sits enthroned upon the cherubim.

He's seated on the throne of these cherubim. These angels, y'all. These are not like Little fat babies floating around with diapers on. That's not the picture of angels in the Bible. You read about the cherubim in Ezekiel 1 and Revelation chapter 5. These are ferocious warrior angels. These are goons.

This is the secret service of heaven. And as you read about the cherubim, they're pictured as the carriers of God's throne. So hear me. What that means is this is not a stationary image. In other words, when you get the picture of God seated on the enthroned, on the cherubim, this is not a picture of God just sitting still on a throne. No. What the author wants in your mind is like an angelic motorcade. I come from DC as motorcades all the time, right? Presidents and senators and all of that. This is a picture of a God who was on the move, the one who is reigning in heaven. Something or someone has got his attention on Earth. And he calls the guys together and he says, it's time to ride. This is the picture of a God who is about to intervene, the one who has all power and who is moved to action. We see this God who is great in verse two and exalted in verse two, and great and awesome in verse three. And the psalmist is not only calling the people of Israel to worship God, but he's acknowledging the fact that one day all of creation will see his holiness and recognize the undeniable reality that God alone is worthy of worship.

He's the one that's worthy of our affection, of our trust, of our obedience. He is worthy of our worship. And his holiness demands a response. And it's why the people of God in this psalm are celebrating the holiness of God, because he's worthy of worship. Now here's what happens. Remember I went to LA. My wife's family is from LA, from Compton. My brother in law is living in LA right now in Pasadena. And I went out to visit him. So he's driving some famous street in the Pasadena area. So we driving down this street, there's all these side streets, and every side street that you look down, y'all, you just see a mountain. Now where I'm from, we say we got hill, we got high hills. You know what I'm saying? Like, no, these are mountains, y'all. Every side street, we're in a conversation. I can't even concentrate because I'm just in awe of these mountains. My brother in law is not moved at all. It's like he don't even see him. You know why? Because when something becomes familiar to you, you begin to lose your awe. The same thing happens in our relationship with God.

Some of us grew up in church. Some of us, we've heard Grandma singing all the songs. Some of us go through the motions of church and God becomes so familiar to us that we lose our sense of wonder. We lose the reality of who we're talking to and who we're singing about. And the one who has made himself available to us. This is the God who was high and lifted up. This is the God where there are angels hovering like helicopters. Isaiah 6, around the throne room of God, saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. They are covering their face and their feet and they are crying out to God, holy. This is the one, y'all, who is worthy of our worship. And some of us have become bored with God. Hear me. The problem is not in God. The problem is in you and in me. That we have lost the sight, the reality of who God really is. This holy God is the one who's worthy of worship. And he invites us to see him for who he is. Now here's the problem, though. The problem is that that God is not only worthy of worship, the other thing that separates him is that he's serious about sin.

I got three and a half Amens on that one. He's serious about. Can we talk about it? So look, verse 1-3, we looked at the Lord reigns, but look at how he reigns. Verse 4. The king, in his might, loves justice. Now, in one sense, this is good news. This should cause us to worship and trust God with our whole hearts. Because listen, God has absolute power. He's the one who reigns, right? You saw that in Psalm 99. Absolute power is not good news with somebody. That's shady. Yeah. If somebody steps into power, but we don't trust that they have good character, that's not good news. Just because you have power is not an encouragement to me because I don't know how you're going to use that power. So it's encouraging to us when it says that the king in his might, the one who has all power, loves justice. Because that gives us confidence that he will always use that power in righteous and just and fair ways. That's what it means here. He expressed that justice in the laws he gave his people to abide by in the Old Testament. Can we teach for a minute? So verse 4, when it says, you, God, have established equity, you've executed justice and righteousness.

In Jacob, what it's saying there is God hates individual personal sin, but he Also hates systemic sin. He also hates institutional sin. He hates social, legal and economic systems that are unjust and oppressive. And so, as you read through the Old Testament, you see God wanted his people to work for a just society. Let me just give you a quick summary, just off the top, from the Old Testament. That's why it's important to read your Bible, not just the New Testament, not just Psalm 23, but to read your Bible. It can be confusing, but it's revealing something to you about what God is like. Look at what God did. He wanted his people to organize a society that was governed by laws that protected the most vulnerable. Let me just give you a summary of it. That protected orphans, widows, refugees, the poor. He established laws against robbery, murder, bribery, false charges, predatory loans, discriminatory policies. This is straight out the Old Testament. And why did God want His people to work for justice in that way? The reason is because God wanted the world to look at his people and see what he's like.

When the world looked at the nation of Israel in the Old Testament and saw that they had these laws of equity, these laws of justice, these laws that protected the most vulnerable. It was supposed to be a picture, a commercial for what God is like. That God is just, that he loves and cares for and protects the vulnerable and the oppressed. And I'll be honest, it would be very difficult for me to trust, much less worship, a God who was indifferent toward oppression. It would be very difficult for me to trust, much less worship, a God who was apathetic toward those who are abused. This is why, as you read about people who have suffered under extreme oppression, the idea of a judgment day is good news. We talk some history for a minute. You read, you read the accounts of Christians who were under slavery, who lived under Jim Crow, even outside of Christianity, you read the accounts of people during the Holocaust or people who have been trafficked. These are people who, they are oppressed by, people who have absolute power. They don't have any power to change it.

So the idea that there is a God who sees everything and one day will execute his perfect justice is good news to them. It's why they worship God. Because they know trouble don't last always. Trouble don't last always. And so it makes me think about Fannie. Anybody remember Fannie Lou Hamer? If you don't know who Fannie Lou Hamer is, Google her and learn your history. This black woman who led this movement for voting rights and when African Americans were given the legal right to Vote. Yet culturally, we were still kept from voting, politically kept from voting. Show up to the voting booth and be attacked and be kidnapped and be lynched. Fannie Lou Hamer says, I'm not going for it. So she organizes people to go show up and exercise their right to vote, which took courage because you were risking your life. But she says, we gotta do it for the next generation. So she's in Mississippi. She organizes people to come vote. Her and a group of other women are arrested on false charges. They're dragged into jail. You can listen to her own testimony of this because she gave it to the whole country.

And she recounts the story of being brutalized by these police officers all night long, every part of her body. She recounts the story of hearing everything that these officers were doing to every single woman. One by one, she gets out, fast forward, she's telling this story, and one day, she's being escorted now by police officers as a free woman. And one of those officers was one of the officers that abused her. And she looks at him and she says, do you people ever think or wonder how you'll feel when the time comes? You'll have to meet God. Oh, she didn't have the power to completely change society on her own. She didn't have power to fight off these officers who were brutalizing her body. But you know what? She knew the one who did have ultimate power. And she believed in the authority of this word that said, there is a king of kings and a Lord of Lords who loves justice. And even though I may not be able to execute perfect justice right now, in this life, there is one who will. And you know what? That freed her. She didn't have to pop off.

She didn't have to grab for vengeance on her own. She was able to pursue justice in a way that honored God, knowing that one day God would bring perfect righteousness and perfect justice. That person that abused you, they get away with nothing. Don't put that on God. God, in his mercy, loves even the worst of sinners to see his love and his grace and to be changed and to repent. But apart from Jesus, y'all, everybody has to stand before God. And he is not indifferent to the injustice and the oppression and the abuse that happens in the world that he created. Now, here's the issue. Everybody wants to talk about justice when it comes to their sin. We don't want to talk about God's justice when it comes to our sin.

We get fired up. We want to post on social media. We want to march. We want to do all this stuff when it's about the sin of other people out there. We don't want to talk about the reality of God's justice, his judgment, his holiness toward the sin that you and I cling to in our own life that equally offends him, that equally disrespects the image of God in other people in the ways that we talk to them and talk about them.

You see, God's justice is consistent. And every single one of our sins deserves his judgment and his punishment. You know why? Because God is not out here grading on the curve. He is not comparing you to the average sinner and then giving you a grade based on that. He's not weighing your good works and balancing that off with your bad works. You know why? Because God is just. He doesn't just give a wink, wink. He can't be bribed. He doesn't just sweep sin under the rug. You and I have sinned against a holy God and we deserve his judgment. And because he is good and he is righteous and he is just and he is holy, he has to address sin. Here's the thing. He can't address sin without addressing you and without addressing me. So you and I got to deal with the same question. You ever think about the day when you'll have to meet God? You'll have to meet God. And what we end up doing is we end up mistaking God's patience for tolerance. We think, well, just because God has not flexed his authority in my life yet, just because he hasn't executed his, just because he hasn't yet brought the full weight of the consequences I deserve into my life, that must mean he co signs the way I live.

No, God is being patient with you. You still have breath in your lungs. Because God loves you so much and wants to get your attention, that he desires to draw you back from going too far. Come on. Can anybody testify to a God that love you enough to say, I'm not going to let you keep going that far? Maybe he brought some painful circumstances in your life. Maybe he weighed down on your conscience, but he said, listen, son, daughter, I'm trying to get your attention. We don't get a pass. God will deal with sin. And maybe the reason you're alive today, maybe the reason you're here, maybe the reason you're watching right now is because God is giving you an opportunity to make a U turn and say, I'm gonna walk away from the sin that I've been clinging to. And God, I'm gonna Release this to you. I don't know fully how yet, but I'm gonna trust you enough to lay this down at your feet and trust you to change me from the inside out. God is serious about sin. Well, here's the good news. And this is where we gonna land. He's not just worthy of worship and serious about our sin, but here's what sets God apart.

At the end of the day, this same God is full of forgiveness. He's full of forgiveness. Let's look at verse 6-9. Verse six says, Moses and Aaron were among his priests. Samuel also was among those who called upon his name. They called to the Lord, and he answered them in the pillar of the cloud. He spoke to them. They kept his testimonies in the statute that he gave them. O Lord our God, you answered them. When they were praying on behalf of the people, you answered them. You were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain. For the Lord our God is holy. Now, can I be honest? Because some of us not gonna be honest. We look at this, we like. I don't know what they talking about in that song, because some of y'all are like, all right, preacher, I'm with you. Thank you for explaining to Cherubim. I get the picture now. God is in control. He's powerful. He's worthy of worship. I see that God is serious about sin. Thank you for explaining the whole Jacob righteousness, all of that stuff, and laws in the Old Testament.

He's just. I get that he's serious about sin, but why does all of a sudden the psalmist just randomly start giving us a history lesson? Why does he bring up Moses and Aaron and say. Like, what. What is happening here? Can I teach for a minute? We got to understand this. Some of us will remember these leaders in the Old Testament, in ancient Israel. You remember Moses, right? Let my people go. God uses Moses to free, liberate his people from Egyptian slavery. Moses was the one that God revealed the law to. That's Moses. Aaron was Moses assistant and the first high priest in Israel. He was one of the first high priests who would represent the people of God in the presence of God. He would bring a sacrifice on their behalf. And Samuel. You guys remember Samuel? Anybody remember Samuel? He was a prophet. He was a judge. He was the one who anointed King David and King Saul. And so you have these different leaders in ancient Israel, different roles, but they all served one main role in Israel's history. They served as mediators between God and His holiness and the people in their sinfulness.

They were a bridge between God and the people. This is a bridge that the people cannot cross on their own because God is too holy, they're too sinful. And so what the writer is doing here is he's reminding them of the history of God's intervention. Because read the Old Testament, there's so many times and points in Israel's history where God's people broke their covenant. You remember, God comes to them, he redeems them out of slavery, sets them free, and then says, you're mine. You belong to me now. Therefore, now I want you to live this way. Now I want you to notice that order. He did not say, you need to live this way. And if you do, then I'll set you free and you'll be mine. He said, I set you free. I made you mine. Now, in light of all the grace that I've given you in the new identity I've given you in the new future I've given you now, in light of that, I want you to live this way. Way. And that helps us understand why God was so offended by their sin. Because when they sinned, when they pursued all these idols and did all this sin, they weren't just breaking God's laws, they were breaking God's heart.

They were looking God in his face. After everything he did for them, after all the times their back was against the wall and they're at the Red Sea and God stepped in and made a way out of no way. After the slavery that, that kept them bound and they had no way. They could not see a future outside of that slavery. And God intervened and he got them up out of there and he set them free. After every single time they were down deep in the pit and God lifted them out of the pit, out of the muck and miry clay, and set their feet on a rock. After all that God had done for them, they would stiff arm God and said, I don't need you. I'm a do me over and over and over again. The people of Israel lived this way. And yet God in his mercy, he kept pursuing them, kept trying to get their attention. He kept sending prophets, he kept sending judges and priests trying to get their attention. He kept sending, sending mediators. And it was like he kept the door open, y'all. He kept the porch light on and say, there's always a way back home.

There's always a way back home. He kept sending these people to stand in the gap. That's what they were. They were authorized to stand in the gap between God and his people. They needed a mediator. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed now in the New Covenant. Nothing has changed. You and I, we still need a mediator. Because you cannot just walk up into the presence of God in your kind of way. Like you and me. We don't even rock with certain kinds of people. It's certain kinds of people. If they violate my code, I don't want anything to do with them. So how much more then will the perfectly holy and righteous God keep his distance from those who defile his presence with their sin? The only way for you and I to have access to God is through a mediator. And listen, if there's one thing I came by to tell you today, it's that that mediator is not Moses. That mediator is not Aaron. It is not Samuel. It's not Paul. It's not Peter. It ain't the pastor that you love, your favorite preacher or pastor. It ain't your grandmother. It's not Mary.

It is one person. First Timothy, chapter 2. Y'all know the verse. For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and man. Who is it? The man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. God sent us a mediator, another mediator. Except this mediator was without sin. This mediator don't have to make sacrifices for himself. This mediator becomes a sacrifice fully and finally in order to pay for our sins. And God does not outsource this. He does not just send people. He comes Himself and wraps himself in human flesh. And he looks humanity in the face so that we can see his compassion and his mercy and his grace. We can watch how he moves so that we get a picture of his character. And he lives a perfectly righteous life. No sin. He lives the life that you should have lived and I should have lived. But we can't live. And he went to the cross for sin. Whose sin? He ain't have no sin. He went to the cross for your sin, and my sin. In our place, as a sacrifice for our sins. To pay the penalty and experience the punishment that you and I deserve.

And then he rose from the grave three days later to demonstrate for all of the rest of history that he is the one who is authorized to stand in the gap. You know what that means? That when you and I want to come into the presence of God, we don't come with confidence in ourselves, because we know that we don't deserve it. But we come before his throne of grace with boldness now because our confidence is in Jesus. It's in what Jesus did for us when he died on the cross for our sins and he rose from the dead. So this is why I said we don't want to just play church around here. Because God has done too much to make too much available to us. He owes us nothing but offers us everything. Through Jesus, he makes a way for us to come before his throne. Think about that picture. Think about the picture of God seated on the throne with cherubim flying around, yelling, holy, Holy, holy. And you and I, as sons and daughters, get to just walk up in the throne room of God. Just ask for what we need to sit and enjoy his presence with no fear of condemnation.

Because Romans 8 says, There is therefore now, no more, never again, any condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus. Why? Because Jesus did everything necessary for you and I to be accepted by God. The audacity that we have to walk up into the presence of God like we belong there. You know why? Because we do. Because Jesus made it so that we belong there. So here's what happens. Here's how this works. And we're going to take a minute to respond to God. Here's how this works y'all. Anybody love the beach? Yeah, I know some of y'all can't swim, but you still love the beach. And here's the crazy thing about. About the beach. You got to be careful because the ocean is a dangerous thing.

You don't just be out here lollygagging, playing around with the ocean and playing with rip currents. And now you approach with caution. Because the ocean is so massive and so overwhelming, you know, you could get swept all the way out and. And it'll be totally beyond your control. It's dangerous. And yet the very thing that makes it dangerous, the very thing that gives us a healthy sense of fear, is the thing that makes us love it.

It's way more fun to play in the ocean than to play in a puddle. You can manage a puddle. You can dip your toe in it. You can jump over it. You can manage a puddle. You can't manage the ocean. And it's what makes us love it. It's the same thing with the holiness of God. When something changes in your life, when your eyes are finally opened to see God for who he was. Because this is what happened to me. I shared this last time I grew up going to church. It never hit here. I went to college and my dream was to turn sin into a full time career. I love to party, I love to chase girls. So this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a party promoter because I love a vibe. I wanted to finesse that into owning my own club in DC and then I wanted to use that to build out an entertainment company. That's what I wanted to do for my whole life. Because I didn't see God for who he really was. And then one day, as a college student, my eyes are opened to see God for who he really is.

That he is high and exalted and majestic and beautiful. That he is more desirable and more satisfying than anything else in this world. And yet there's a problem, because I know I've been living reckless and I don't deserve anything good from this God. He's serious about my sin. And the only thing that gave me hope was that he's full of forgiveness. That the gospel that I heard, that Jesus that had heard about was enough for me. So here's what happened to me. The very same thing about God that made me want to keep my distance. The fact that he was so holy and righteous and pure. The very same thing that gave me a sense of fear and condemnation because I knew how I was living. When my eyes were open to see God through the lens of his mercy and his grace. The very thing that pulled me away from him now became the thing that drew me to Him. Because I realized that I had settled for a God that I could manage. You see, some of y'all, your version of God is too small. And the reason why you have not stepped into the fullness of who God has made you to be.

The reason you don't experience the fullness of what God desires you to experience. The reason why sometimes some of these songs don't really hit. You look around other people, you're like, why are there so much more into this than I am. For some of us, the reason is because we have settled for a God of our own imagination. We have reduced him to this tamable, domesticated God. There's no joy in that. But when God unlocks your vision of who he is, listen to me, when you finally begin to see God for who he is, that he is not just some manageable God. And listen, how do you know that he's too small? Let me tell you real practically the way you know God is too small is by the way you respond to Him. You see, some of us, God, Jesus, Christianity, is like one little part of our portfolio. It's just one little piece of the life that you've kind of designed for yourself. He doesn't have authority over the whole picture. He's just one little puzzle piece. So you can have a little bit of religion and be a good person. The way, you know, you see God for who he really is is when you take the whole picture and you just throw it out the window and you say, God, you take the whole thing.

You're not just a piece of my life. You are the king, you are the Lord of my life. You are the holy one. And you can have the whole thing, God fit me into. However, you have a plan for my life, God. For some of you, your God is too small. And maybe you're here today, maybe you're watching today because God is trying to get your attention. And he's saying, listen, get out of the puddle of the things you've been pursuing in your life and step into the ocean of who I really am. This is an invitation for you not just to be saved. And you might need to be saved. You might need to be forgiven of your sin. You might need to start a relationship with God for the first time. But there's many of us who have been saved, and we know God and we have a relationship with God. And yet we've still been standing on the shore settling for this version of a God that we can manage that is way too small. And the invitation from God for you today is to say, would you trust me enough? Would you trust me enough, like Peter, to step into the water as deep as I'm willing to take you, Trusting that I've made a way for you to experience everything that I want you to experience.

That my plans for your future are better than your plans. That if you would just give up the things that you're clinging to, I would fill your life with more than you. You could ask for or imagine. This is the God that invites us to worship him, to trust him, to obey him. And we want to give you an opportunity to do that today. Wherever you are, wherever you're watching from, as the worship team prepares to lead us, we want to create some space for you to respond to God. It could be in singing. You might need to get on your face before God. You might need to confess some things to him. You may need to ask him to come into your life, to lead your life, to save you for the first time. But let me give you a head start. I want to pray for you, and we want to give you space to respond to him. So with every head bowed and eye closed. Father, we thank you for not just leaving us on the shore, but inviting us to come in to the depth of who you are. And, Father, I pray and have been praying, God, that you would open eyes today like you did for me and for so many others in this room.

That you would open our eyes to see you high and exalted and lifted up. That we would see you as more satisfying and desirable than anything else in this world. In your holiness. God, that we would see ourselves before you and we would surrender ourselves fully to you God. Would you meet us where you are, where we are. And don't leave us there. Father, would you draw us deeper? We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.