I recently spent some time watching a video that has been floating around cyber space entitled "How Great is our God" with a preacher named Louie Giglio. If you have taken the time to watch the video you will know, Louie is a great preacher. If you haven’t watched it, a portion of it is posted here for you to see for yourself. Louie is emotional. He is passionate. He is knowledgeable and informative. He is engaging and interesting to listen to. As a fellow preacher, I wish I had a tenth of his skill.
But there is more to be seen here than simply rhetorical style. Where Louie is successful at putting together a moving presentation, he fails at delivering to us the Gospel in all its fullness (Romans 15:19). He fails at delivering to us Jesus dead on a cross for the forgiveness for our sin. (1 Corinthians 1:23)
The theme of Mr Giglio’s presentation fits in with the Chris Tomlin song, How Great is our God. He is participating in a Chris Tomlin tour. Chris sings and then introduces Louie who comes out to do his presentation.
The video posted here is an excerpt from a larger presentation that lasts about 50 minutes. You can find them all on YouTube if you want to watch them back to back. Louie does a great job of convincing us that God is great, that God is big, that God is all powerful and sufficient and that is all really good. But for me, a sinner doomed to hell because of my sin, that is not good enough. I need more.
Louie does talk about sin. He says that because of sin we make God to be so small. Over the course of his 50 minute presentation Louie demonstrates that God is not small. Earth is small. On a small earth we are small people. In the vastness of the universe we are minuscule. Louie makes this point very effectively. God is not small. God is big, bigger than the universe. God is powerful, breathing out the stars and the galaxies, creating them with a word. But still this is not enough. I need more.
Louie’s big left hook (as he describes it) is a little protein molecule called laminin. Laminin is a molecule in every human cell that keeps the entire human body together. Louie effectively defines the central significance of this molecule. Louie rejoices in the fact that this molecule is in the shape of the cross. He uses that as his hook to bring in the “sufficiency of Christ”, “the supremacy of Christ”. He quotes the Apostle Paul who tells us all things hang together in Jesus from Colossians 1. Louie says, “So you’re at the toughest place in your life, how can you know that God is going to hold you together. You know because there is a cross standing over history.” Amen! That’s it. If only he would have ended here.
As soon as Louie tells us that Jesus made peace with God through his blood he blows right past it and gets on to what he seems to think is our biggest problem – to what he believes I think is my biggest problem – all of my baggage, my struggles, my hardships, the problems of this life. He says, “Yes I will accept that God died on a cross, but what I really need to know right now is does God see what I am going through?”
Yes my life has problems. Everyone’s life has problems. This side of heaven, we always will. According to Louie, my biggest problem is that I make God too small, too small to handle all my life’s issues. His solution is to make God big, big enough to handle my life’s issues. If my biggest problem was life issues then a big God would be great. But it’s not. Therefore, I need more.
My biggest problem is sin. Sin that makes God small. Sin that makes sin small. Sin that has doomed me to hell. I need Jesus – that big, universe creating, star breathing God, on a cross for me in my place and for my sin. I need that Jesus to suffer in my place as my perfect sacrifice to fix that biggest of problems that I am too small and too weak to overcome. Mr. Giglio gives me a bigger God. Being a sinner, all he has done is give me a bigger problem. Mr. Giglio, Louie, I need Jesus. I need Christ. I need Christ crucified!
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