Gen 18:14, "Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son." 
	Last week, we concluded our consideration of the statement that God made to Abraham, "I am God Almighty; Walk before Me, and be blameless. We looked at this statement from the two angles of what it indicates about God and His Character of Being as the Almighty. We then saw it from the vantage point of how His Character is to have immediate and absolutely tangible effects in our lives. It is very appropriate, then, that we begin our current deliberations with this morning’s passage as it highlights how we are to regard the Nature of God in action in our lives and in the world around us. It is, as such, the manifestation of Who God is in our lives. As He is the Lord God Almighty, so will our hearts find that we learn to see Him on a daily basis as the very source of our every strength and provision of security and comfort and peace, no matter what is going on around us. This is where we pick up this morning.
	"Is anything too difficult for the Lord? This question, poised to Abraham is one with which we each must struggle to come to an answer in our personal relationship with God. It is at the very core of just how much we truly believe that God is Who He is and that He will do what He says He will do. It is an earnest question put to us by the Lord God Almighty in reference to how much we love Him and just how fully we trust Him. What is our response as we ponder this question?
	Rest assured that we are not the only ones who have had to face the daunting reality of our response before God. Everyone throughout history, unto whom God has revealed Himself, has come face-to-face with the heart of this query. We see it placed before Moses in Num 11:23, And the Lord said to Moses, "Is the Lord's power limited? Now you shall see whether My word will come true for you or not." 
Moses was faced with the task of leading 600,000 people through the wilderness and having to make provisions for them lest they die of starvation and dehydration. When facing this overwhelming responsibility for the very lives of so many people, he had to learn what it meant to fully trust God. Moses had to rely on God to make every provision or the results would have been the absolute annihilation of all those people. God put before Moses the utter necessity to trust Him and His divine power and His intervention with the question and the reassurance "Is the Lord's power limited? Now you shall see whether My word will come true for you or not." 
	God’s absolute faithfulness to provide established a relationship with Moses that Moses tried to explain to the people. As they were preparing to cross the River Jordan and to enter into the Promised Land, Moses gave them many instructions as to the manner in which they were to trust God Who had faithfully and fully met their every need all those 40 years in the wilderness. In those instructions was the encouragement that as God went before them, He would make every provision for them to conquer the land and to overcome all the enemies that would face them. Deut 7:20-23, Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish. You shall not dread them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. And the Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them quickly, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. But the Lord your God shall deliver them before you, and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. 
	Notice that it was God Who would drive out the nations from before the Israelites. And also note that He would do it in the time frame that would best suit His purposes in protecting His people. He would not do it quickly as that would mean that the Israelites would be overwhelmed. Rather, it would be a slow and steady process by which the People of God would be delivered by His own Hand until they were victorious in all the land. 
	Another who knew the ways of God’s provision in battle was Jonathan, King Saul’s son. As he was facing overwhelming numbers of enemies, we read of his stand in the name and the safety of the Lord as recounted in 1 Sam 14:6. Then Jonathan said to the young man who was carrying his armor, "Come and let us cross over to the garrison of these uncircumcised; perhaps the Lord will work for us, for the Lord is not restrained to save by many or by few." 
	He knew that numbers meant nothing to God. No matter how overwhelming the force arrayed against His people, God would be the Savior as His people went forth in obedience unto Him. Numbers of adversaries have never been a deterrent against the Hand of God in operation. He is not limited by numerical superiority or overpowering odds. All that has ever mattered to Him is the heart of those who call upon Him in truth and in righteousness and in humility. These are the ones who know that they have no place else to turn or to seek refuge except in His loving embrace. Theirs is the solid assurance that He will do all that He promises to do in the time that He has allotted for its completion. We are to have no fear and no doubt as to His certain victory.
	We are encouraged in this by Job as we read in Job 42:2, "I know that Thou canst do all things, And that no purpose of Thine can be thwarted. God can do all things, no matter how seemingly impossible that may be to our limited knowledge and intellect. The reason is that He is not restricted nor is He constrained by human intellect and comprehension. Nothing that He determines as right and proper will go undone as He accomplishes His plan and His purpose to the uttermost. All that He desires to have established is done in the perfect and complete work of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Against that ultimate triumph, nothing can stand!  
	The Psalmist gives us further encouragement in this certain knowledge of our personal relationship with God in many passages. Consider, for example, Ps 93:1, The Lord reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The Lord has clothed and girded Himself with strength; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved. The certainty of this abiding truth of God’s sovereignty is the foundation for our hope in Him as we face each and every day on this earth. Knowing that He is the One in charge of His Creation put everything its proper and ordered perspective as we sojourn in our mortal lives. 
	As well, we are given unqualified confidence in the manner in which we are to respond to the greatness of Our God in Ps 95:2-6. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, And a great King above all gods, In whose hand are the depths of the earth; The peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He who made it; And His hands formed the dry land. Come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. 
We are to come before the awesomeness of His Power and His Grace and His Mercy with thanksgiving and with highest praise and worship unto Him. This is the entire course of our gathering together in His Name. We are here to offer up exaltation and adoration and honor and glory as His redeemed people. This is no social gathering! This is not a cultural outpouring or a meeting of habit and custom. We are here to worship and to bow down and to kneel before the Lord God our Maker. We are acknowledging, in our praise and song and prayer and worship and the reading of His Word, that He is the All-Powerful One by Whom we have life on this earth.
	Our hearts should echo the words of the Prophet in Jer 32:17, 'Ah Lord God! Behold, Thou hast made the heavens and the earth by Thy great power and by Thine outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for Thee… This is not to be just a phrase spoken in habit. It is not just a statement which has some validity in some sense in the innermost recesses of our understanding. This is to be the declaration of our heartfelt tribute and adoration unto God. This needs to be the very source of who we are and how we function on this earth. This is the core reality that is the basis of our living relationship with God through Jesus Christ! Do we know it as our certainty? Have we come to the place in our faith in God where we know, without hesitancy, without doubt, without any qualms whatsoever that there is nothing too difficult for God! Nothing!
	A key aspect to this rock solid assurance is that our praise and our worship will reflect that confident conviction. If we know this in reality, we will come before God on a completely different plane of understanding and appreciation. We will not be causal and disrespectful. Neither will we be audacious and callous. It will not be a gathering together of spiritual paupers and neither will there be haughtiness and social superiority in evidence. We will come before Him in utmost reverence and awe and wonder and appreciation to be in His presence by the blood of the Lamb. 
This will hold such importance in our hearts that we will not allow ourselves to be waylaid or late. Neither will we permit that our hearts are unprepared and distant, distracted by anything of this realm. We will present ourselves unto Him for His glory and for His majesty to be further enhanced with our hearts of dedication and respect and veneration for Who He is. 
	Our every consideration of Him will be as that which Isaiah voiced in Isa 59:1. Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short That it cannot save; Neither is His ear so dull That it cannot hear. There will be a confident assertion from our lips and from our hearts and in our thoughts that God will not be thwarted from all that He will do. We will present to Him, and to this world, a view of His people who are steadfast and unshakable in our trust in Him to do everything in our lives that will bring forth His glory and His testimony of life. We will not be hindered in any manner from declaring His Goodness and His Grace and His Mercy despite all those seemingly overwhelming circumstances or dilemmas. We will know that He lives and that He saves to the utmost in Jesus Christ, and that we can trust Him to meet our every need on this earth. He, Alone, knows what lies before us and what is necessary in our lives in order for us to be the witness of true life to all those who are perishing in their ignorance and sin. 
	This brings us to several examples from scripture of that very physical provision of God for the sake of His testimony on this earth. The first is recorded in Dan 3:16+17, where we read of the faith and the confidence that those three young Hebrews; Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, displayed when they were faced with imminent death for standing up for God. They refused to allow the very certainty of death to dissuade them from declaring their allegiance and their reliance and their accountability to God, Alone. Just before they were thrown into the fiery burning furnace, they were given one last opportunity to disavow their allegiance to God and this was their response. Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego answered and said to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter." If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. They were certain that God would deliver them unto Himself, which is exactly what He did in His divine protection. They were not even singed by the fire of that deadly furnace was so hot that it slew the guards who threw them into it. 
	The other account of the inestimable power of God to keep and to protect against even the most seemingly impossible of situations is the familiar narrative of Daniel in the lion’s den. Daniel refused to allow any decree to keep him from his dedication of prayer and supplication unto God. For that, he was sentenced to be torn limb from limb by ravenous lions. The next morning, after he had been thrown into that den of lions, King Darius came to the edge of the den to discover what had befallen Daniel. 
Please turn to Dan 6:20-23 and let us read it together. Dan 6:20-23. And when he had come near the den to Daniel, he cried out with a troubled voice. The king spoke and said to Daniel, "Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you constantly serve, been able to deliver you from the lions?" Then Daniel spoke to the king, "O king, live forever! "My God sent His angel and shut the lions' mouths, and they have not harmed me, inasmuch as I was found innocent before Him; and also toward you, O king, I have committed no crime." Then the king was very pleased and gave orders for Daniel to be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no injury whatever was found on him, because he had trusted in his God. God had protected Daniel from any harm by shutting the mouths of those lions. Daniel knew that God could do anything and nothing could thwart any of God’s plans or purposes.
This is the reality of God that we each must come into through all the means that God deems necessary to prove Himself in our lives. We dare not just accept this as an ideological doctrine! It must be worked into us in a living and certain manner. That happens as God foreordains to take us through the trials and the circumstances and the situations and the dilemmas in order to prove Himself mighty to save and to provide. This necessitates the willingness on our part to have Him prove Himself as our Lord God Almighty. It will not be the easy road with only minor bumps and potholes. It will be a path that is filled with all types of peril and strife and treachery in every earthly sense. However, it is a path that is maintained and guarded by the very Hand of God as He works to manifest Himself over and over again in the reality of His Omnipotence, His Omniscience, His Omnipresence, and His Love. 
Next time, Lord willing, we will continue with this passage as we see the magnificence of God that is only visible to those who freely choose to tread this path to the glory of God, Alone. So be it!
"Is anything too difficult for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, at this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son." Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 148, 1-5. Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; Praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; Praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all stars of light! Praise Him, highest heavens, And the waters that are above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, For He commanded and they were created. Amen.