The God(ness) of God: The God of Future - Week 4
July 27, 2008 10:33 am Chapter 11, Romans, Sermon-Texts
This sermon is week 4 of The God of Future section of our “The God(ness) of God” sermon series. This sermon concludes our series. It is an exegetical treatment of Romans 11:33-36, addressing how God knows all things, does all things well, and is worthy of all our praise. This sermon was originally preached July 27th, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
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July 27th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets
Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36
Week 4 - Romans 11:32-36
Introduction
Good morning everyone. It’s good to gather as the church with you today. If you’re new or visiting San Diego I have to tell you that we don’t normally have as many men running around in tights and capes…there’s just an extra amount of that going on right now because it is the week of Comic-con, the annual comic book and now movie and pop culture convention that happens here in San Diego. It’s good times. Everyone sort of loses their brain and starts dressing up like superheroes and going crazy. You’re like in the grocery store buying eggs and you look to your right and you see Captain America buying beer…and you’re like where am I? San Diego, I love our city.
Well, my name is Duane, I am a pastor here under Jesus the head pastor and I get the weekly joy of preaching from the Bible for us all. This week is the final week of our summer sermon series, “The God(ness) of God” and not only that but it concludes the major doctrinal portion of the book of Romans as a whole. After this week we’ll take a break from Romans for the month of August. Our summer intern, Andrew Schey, is going to preach one week. I’m trying to get another Acts 29 pastor to come and preach one week. I’ll preach a couple special sermons…one famine in the Bible and how to trust God during times of economic crisis and one on being a member of Jesus’ church because we got a group of new members who just completed our membership class. Then at the beginning of September we’ll return to Romans for our final Romans series called, “Viva La Vida Christus: Living the Life of Christ” because the rest of the book of Romans, chapters 12-16 are all about how to practically live out our faith as a Christian. So that’s the plan, where we are headed.
For this week, let me try and pull us together and set up our verses. For eleven chapters now, Paul, the human author of Romans has been breaking down the gospel. He started out with a thesis, that the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.
To support his thesis he started at creation itself, how we all really do know there is a God, but how we all really do know that we have not loved, worshipped or served and honored God as we ought and how that is a really serious offense.
So he set up this big problem and then he broke down how Jesus solves the problem…he came into the world to live the life we’ve failed at in loving and worshipping God and how he died on the cross to take care the consequence of our offense, rises again and then offers us all the benefits of new life, freedom from guilt, the law, and death. We get Jesus’ Spirit, adopted into his family…we get a promise and a confidence that all evil and suffering will be taken care of and it will all work together for good.
After that Paul went real deep talking about why God created at all and how it was all for his glory and how salvation from beginning to end has everything to do with him and not so much us and we learned about things like predestination, election, and God’s design to save people from all different backgrounds and people groups, and how God does in fact control and order the future and all of history. Massively deep, human brain limits pressing stuff.
It’s like he’s been taking us on a trek up Mount Everest. At first the hike was hot, but the trail was clear, and we walked slowly upward in the hot sun. A lot of talk about sin, death and hell. But as we moved on, the brush and the trees got thicker and taller, beautiful and comforting. We learned about Jesus and who he is and what he has done for us. Imputation, justification, freedom from guilt and the law. We didn’t realize there was so much to walk through and that he had done so much. Adoption, his spirit, being conformed into his image! As we moved up the mountain, it started to get a little colder and we had to put some more clothes on. Snow started to show. We hit some steep jagged cliffs and had to pull out the rock climbing gear to scale up the steep faces of inner moral conflict, suffering and evil. The last stretch has been the most arduous. We had to bust out ice picks and snow shoes. The air has got thinner and harder to breath. Election, predestination, God’s glory and his saving purposes, his design with gospel and people groups and his ruling over all of history. The last steps seemed almost impossible. If it were a meal we just felt too stuffed. But we saw the peak, pressed on and with one last step in verse 32 from last week, “God has consigned all to disobedience in order that he might have mercy on all” …we made it to the top and now we stand up and look out at the view from the highest of the highest peaks in all the world. We look down over the snow, over the tall trees which now look so small and so far back, we look over the valley and the city way down below…ALL THAT GOD IS AND HAS DONE!!!! It is breathtaking.
And Paul burst out in praise! Here’s our verses read ‘em with me. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
Let’s pray…Oh God, you are unfathomably rich and glorious and superb and wonderful and wise and incredible. There are not enough words in the human language to extol your greatness and your goodness. And all of it you have opened up to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. We are so thankful for you today. I pray that as we look at this great exclamation of praise from your book today that we would be moved deeply as we consider your depth. Would great humility overwhelm us as we recognize that you are a God who does all things well. And would the result be that our lives are a praise unto you, a continual offering devotion to you our glorious God. Help us in that way today I pray my Lord, Amen.
Well, I’m ready to go home. How can you take such an awesome passage of the Bible and say anything about it? I can’t improve upon it and it’s original construction is so sublime, it rarely needs much updating and interpretation for us all…it’s pretty clear, God is utterly amazing! This text stands on its own in a way that very few passages of the Bible really do. It is nothing short of breathtaking.
So, what I want to do for us today is to try and make clear the three distinct things said about God here…God’s depth, ways, and praise. We’ll look at them this way. One, God is deep, rich, wise and knows all. Two, God is beyond critique, advice and debt. And three, God is the source, sustainer and summary of all things.
God is Deep, Rich, Wise and Knows All
So first, “God is Deep, Rich, Wise and Knows All.” This is from the first sentence verse 32, “Oh the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God!” This first sentence just explodes with superlatives on how great and good God is. God is deep.
Some of you are into scuba diving. I’m told that you can only scuba dive about 300 feet, that’s with a oxygen tank on and everything because the deeper you go the pressure gets greater and greater. 300 feet. That’s not that much. The deepest place in the Ocean is the Mariana Trench, about 7 miles off the coast of Guam. It is over 36,000 feet deep. That’s more than 7 miles deep. You could take Mount Everest and turn it upside down and it still would not hit the bottom of the Mariana Trench…that’s deep.
Now, obviously Paul didn’t know that. The deepest sea in the middle east is the Mediterranean, it’s about 15,197 feet…that still really deep. But he probably didn’t know that either. For him, he just knew it was deep and didn’t know how far down that water went, too far for anyone at that time to know. Paul thinks of that and then thinks of God and says…”that’s what God is like, he is bottomless in his wisdom and knowledge, there is no end to it. It is deep.”
And not only is it deep but it is rich. It’s like if you could get to the bottom, then what you would find there is the greatest discovery of treasure ever known. Currently, the greatest discovery of treasure is said to be the $13 billion dollars worth of 18th century jewels and gold coins discovered off the coast of Chile Robinson Crusoe’s Island in the Central Pacific. That is some riches.
In the first century the richest person probably would have been the Roman Emperor, Octavian. It was actually defeating Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt and taking all her riches…gold, silver, jewels, everything that helped him come to power and Octavian becoming both the world’s richest and most powerful man at the time.
Currently, the world’s richest man is a guy named Warren Buffet who is a stock market investor and shareholder. He recently passed up Bill Gates who was the richest for like 13 years. Warren is currently worth around $62 billion dollars while Bill Gates only has about $58 billion dollars. That’s pretty rich.
But neither the Chile Robinson treasure nor all of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates money combined compares to the riches of God. Deuteronomy 10:14 says, “…to the Lord God belong(s) heaven, the heavens of heavens (and) the earth with all that is in it.” God owns it all. In Psalm 50 God even names some of the specific things he owns…”every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.” God owns it all. He is the richest person of all.
God is rich and God is deep. His depth and riches are so great but even at that they are only meant as small mere analogies that fall short of expounding how great his wisdom and knowledge are. God’s wisdom and knowledge are far greater than the deepest of the deep and the richest of the rich.
Wisdom and knowledge are so similar they are almost interchangeable. They get at two main ideas. One, that God knows all things. All truth resides with him. There is nothing he does not know. Wisdom gets more at what he does with what he knows. God does not just know facts but he knows how to sensible and keen in what he does with his knowledge. He does not just know things but know what to do with them and how to do it in a good and proper way. God is wise.
In Romans, we just finished talking about God’s plan for the future, how he is ordering history a certain way, in order that people of all different races and cultures and background might be saved through Jesus and how that started with one people group the Jews, branched out, and then will come back and end with that same people group. Not one of us would ever have conceived such a plan. Not one of us would have ever even thought to do things that way. God’s knowledge and wisdom is so great. His whole plan of salvation is ingenious. God is so wise and so knowing.
But I don’t think it’s enough that we just hear that and think, oh yeah. God is omniscient. He knows all things. There must be a sense of it in our hearts…where we recognize his greatness in that.
The apostle Peter comes to mind. After Jesus died and rose again, in one of his resurrection appearances, he hangs out with Peter for awhile to restore him. Peter had denied knowing Jesus three times. So when Jesus is hanging out with Peter he asks him twice, “Peter, do you love me?” Each time, Peter says, “Yes Lord, I love you.” Jesus asks him a third time, “Peter, do you love me?” And the third time, Peter breaks down and he says this, “Lord, you know all things. You know I love you.” Do you have that sense in your heart? Do you worship a God today that you look to and you say, “Jesus…you know all things and I love you.”
God is Beyond Critique, Advice and Debt
Well, let’s move on to our second point for today, “God is Beyond Critique, Advice and Debt.” The second part of verse 32 up through verse 33. “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’”
We have another exclamation and then two rhetorical questions. First the exclamation, “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” Here we turn to God’s decisions. What he has done. This text once again acknowledges and asserts that it is God who is ruling over history and all that happens in this world and all that occurs in each of our individual lives. It takes all of that, looks at it and says…how could we even begin to search or understand all that goes into God’s decision making process, his judgments…and on top of that how or by what standard would we use to critique the decisions he makes…they are inscrutable! Any scrutiny we could provide we be vastly insufficient and unequipped.
But doesn’t God get scrutinized all the time? I mean it seems to me that is often one of the biggest barriers for people in becoming a Christian. Because something bad or unexpected has happened in their life or in the course of history, which they think ought not have happened and if there was a God or a good God who cared, he wouldn’t have let it! Right?
God gets critiqued and accused of his judgments and his ways all the time. For many, the idea that you must believe in and receive his Son Jesus purely as a free gift, is too hard for them. They don’t like that idea or think it is right. They think God made a bad judgment and bad way of salvation. For many they think that predestination and real human choices are incompatible and so they either force out human response, or divine election out of the equation. They think it does not stand up to human reason and so they critique and judge the way the Bible clearly lays out.
Maybe that is you and you have a hard time with God’s judgments and ways today? Maybe it’s over something entirely different? You can fill it in with anything you may be struggling with today when it comes to God. Here is the answer this text gives. Some things you just can’t understand because you are a small little human being and God is a big big God. He has a big big brain and you have a tiny tiny brain and it is silly for you to think your tiny little brain could understand huge enormous brain so quit trying and just love God and his Son Jesus.
You have to have some compartment in your faith as a Christian for mystery. Now I say that carefully because we are a culture who loves mystery. Mystery is it’s own genre of books, movies, and TV. Mystery. I used to love reading the Hardy Boys when I was growing up…they were always trying to figure out some mystery. In Scooby Doo they drive the mystery machine. There was this ridiculous movie called “Mystery Men” with Ben Stiller. Then there was the long running TV show, “Unsolved Mysteries.” There is a skateboard company called Mystery Skateboards. You can go to a “Mystery Dinner.” And perhaps the most ridiculous is something called, “The Mystery Method” which defines itself as, “a step-by-step system to meet, attract, and seduce or date beautiful women.”
Now I say all of that sort of in jest. But I think there has been somewhat of a collective shift in our culture and our time period in history where mystery has almost become virtuous. Here is what I mean. We live in “the information age.” We have the google and wikipedia at our fingertips. There is so much out there to know and it is so accessible that we have all collectively realized that there is no way one human person could know everything. So, we have become very very tentative about ever taking a stance on anything especially when it comes to things like God and putting faith in Jesus…because we are afraid we will discover some new knowledge and find out it is not true and then we will look stupid for being wrong. So postmodernism and pluralism…just saying whatever way works for you and there is no one right way has become popular. You just can’t know. We punt to mystery at the first sign of any conflict.
So I think there is something very bad and very dangerous about mystery. We need to be careful. That is my warning. But at the same time we must have some compartment in our Christianity to say that some things are beyond us about God and even the gospel itself, there is mystery. I don’t know how Jesus if fully God and fully man at the same time in one person. I don’t understand the Trinity. I can’t figure out for the life of me why Adam sinned or why God chose the ones he did before the foundation of the world. Big capital “M” Mystery to me. And when it comes down to God future plans and his working in the world, especially when things don’t go the way I think they should…mystery.
It is beyond us to comprehend. John Calvin warns us well here. He says this, “If any one will seek to know more than what God has revealed, he shall be overwhelmed with the immeasurable brightness of inaccessible light…the riches of God’s wisdom are deeper than our reason can penetrate to. Whenever then we enter on a discourse respecting the eternal counsels of God, let a bridle be always set on our thoughts and tongue…so that our reasoning may at last end in admiration.” Good words from a man who penetrated as far as he could.
So let me ask you, are you okay with mystery? If you’re going to be a Christian, you’re going to have to be okay with not understanding some things and still moving forward in faith and love for God and his people. That’s what this text teaches us.
The two rhetorical questions make it even clearer. A rhetorical question just means the answer is obviously negative. So here in this case, when Paul quotes the Old Testament Scriptures and says, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’” The answer to both the questions is NOBODY. No one. No one can know the mind of the Lord or be his counselor. No one has ever given him a gift that put God in debt to them.
I love these questions because they draw out so well our own absurdity at times. I mean don’t lie. You’re not human if you don’t get frustrated at life and with God at times. I do. And then this verse comes and says, “Ah, so you want to give God some advice eh? Okay, what’s you’re advice, what’s you’re counsel?” “Ah, Umm, Ah…never mind, I don’t know.” How are you going to tell God what do and how can you tell him how to do anything any better. He see and knows everything in his mind.
Life is full of these cause and effect relationships between things. This effects this which effects this and in turn it changes this. God sees and knows intimately how it everything effects everything and how it all plays out. There’s no way we could see that and know that and then be qualified to give him some advice on it. Plus he gave us our reason in the first place so how could we add to anything that he does not already know. It’s just funny when we stop and sit back and think about it.
The second question, is even more telling of us and I think it points out a trap many of us fall into at times. Have you ever given God a gift? Think about it for a second. If you consider yourself a Christian and you’ve given your life to God, was it a gift you gave him? That’s the trap. It is easy to think yes, when the answer is clearly no. Our life was his in the first place and he does not need anything. Our salvation is wholly his work and on top of it God doesn’t need us. We have nothing to add to him or give to him that he does not already have and own.
Or what happens with many people is they become overwhelmed with how much God has done for them in Jesus and so what do they do after they become a Christian? They start trying to pay God back! You can’t do that! It’s an infinite gift for one and two you demean the gift if you start trying to pay it off like a credit card bill. What we are to do instead is to thank God for his gift by asking for more gift. That’s how he gets his glory. By him always being the giver and us always being the receiver. The minute we absurdly think we could be the giver we have attempted to try and reverse roles with God and make him the creature and us the creator.
Here’s the point. God is not in debt. Period. To no one. And he never will be. There is nothing greater than God or that would be God. He is the greatest. God is beyond critique, God is beyond advice, and God is beyond debt.
And again like with his knowledge we have to just accept that but be effected by it. Jesus healed a man who was deaf once. He put his finger in his ears, prayed a prayer and his ears were opened. When Jesus did this Mark 7:37 says the crowd was “astonished beyond measure” and one person spoke up and said, “He does all things well.” Do you worship a God today that you look to and say, “Jesus, you do all things well.”
God is the Source Sustainer and Summary of All Things
Let’s move on to our final point for the day, “God is the Source Sustainer and Summary of All Things” from verse 36, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
From him. God is the creator. All things have been made by God. God is the source of everything. The very first words of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1).” God is the creator.
Through him. God is the sustainer. God holds all things together. If he were to let go for an instant the whole world would fall apart. Hebrews 1:3, God “upholds the universe by the word of his power.” And not only externally with the laws of physics but our daily lives. Acts 17:28 “In him we live and move and have our being.” God is the sustainer.
To him. God is the summary. God is the goal of all things. God is the appointed end all things. Everything meets it’s ultimate destiny in God. Nothing means anything apart from him. God is the summary of all. Revelation 22:13 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” God is the summary.
What does this mean for us theologically? This is a very poetic passage, some even think it may have been a hymn the early church sang. But there is some deep theology here. Two things. One is for each of us personally and the other is for us corporately as a whole church.
First, the personal note. From him, through him, and to him. This is what I like to say is having a “God entranced view of all things.” Jonathan Edwards gets the credit for that phrase but I like it a lot. You see we have such a tendency to put God in a compartment. Where he is just a Sunday thing. Or just a couple days of the week thing. Or just a part of each day thing, maybe in the morning. That is not the view of God in the Bible. The view in the Bible is that God has to do with everything! From him, through him, and to him. Jonathan Edwards says this, “True saints have their minds, in the first place, (are) inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glory…of God. And this is the spring of all their delights (Religious Affections).” From him, through him and to him. God glory is always our ultimate focus and our goal.
The second thing, for us which is an application of the personal to us as a group. Good theology results in good worship and good worship results in good theology. Just being academically interested in God is flawed, thinking about God is meant to give way to worship. And on the other end just emotional worship is flawed, passionate worship is to spring out of a thinking deeply about God. Some of you don’t think enough. Others of you don’t feel enough. And they must go together.
So what does that mean for us corporately? It means that when Michael leads us in song it is always in response to God. We sing because of who God is and what he has done for us in Jesus. Always. Doxology follows theology. We sing and we sing because our God is so great! And because he has had so much mercy on us! We love him.
The last words of our text, “To him be the glory forever. Amen!” Glory driven. Passionate to make much of God in all things. Amen, means so be it, may it happen, it is true! Amen. Glory to our God and savior. God’s glory is the goal in all things.
As I have said at the end of each point today a personal engagement with our God is intended. On this last point I think of David in the Bible. He wrote Psalms. Sometimes they were journal entries and sometimes they were songs. Here is what he said in one of them, “Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.” Do you worship a God today that you look to and say, “Jesus, my praise is continually of you.” Do you live your life for your own praise and glory or for God’s? May it be of us all to be about the business of the glory of God.
Conclusion
Let’s conclude. God is deep, rich, wise and knows all. Our response is, “Lord, you know all things.” God is beyond critique, advice, and debt. Our response is, “Lord, you do all things well.” God is the source, sustainer and summary of all things. Our response is, “Lord, you deserve all the praise.”
Let’s continue to worship our God today and take communion. Respond to the grace God has given in Jesus. The table here, the body and blood of Jesus in the bread and wine is a vivid portrayal of the depth of the riches in the wisdom and knowledge of God given to us in Jesus. Wonder at it this morning. Be amazed.
Where we have attempted to critique and challenge God and foolishly try to pay him back…let’s be repentfull today and lay down those burdens and receive forgiveness and put our faith and trust in our God.
And lastly, let us leave the table today with a determination to live our lives for the glory of God and make him the goal and point of everything we do.
Let’s pray.