Rom 11-Beyond Understanding 2

| Beyond Understanding – Part 2The Inscrutable God! Romans 11:33-36

January 6, 2008  (NLT) 33Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are his riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods! 34For who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who knows enough to be his counselor? 35And who could ever give him so much that he would have to pay it back? 36For everything comes from him; everything exists by his power and is intended for his glory. To him be glory evermore. Amen. (NIV) 33Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35“Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” 36For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.  PRAY Scripture Memory:For from him & through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. Romans 11:36 (NIV)(***song***) Intro:God is by nature incomprehensible to us. One of the reasons for this is, of course, that our experience limits us. We cannot think in categories beyond our range of experience or sensation.Does that mean we can know nothing about him? No, for the Scriptures and nature teach us much about what he is like. But we will never know him fully or exhaustively. Last week: (v. 33) Beyond Understanding 1: Knowledge and Wisdom1. The Unbelievable Knowledge of God2. The Wonderful Wisdom of God Next Sun: (vv. 35-36) Beyond Understanding 3:                                   The All Sufficient God This Morning: (vv. 33-34) Beyond Understanding 2:                                  The Inscrutable God1. The Sovereignty of God2. The Smallness of Man Before passing onward to the practical conclusions which flow from the grand and peculiar doctrines of the Gospel, the Apostle pauses to contemplate the ground which he had traversed; and, looking back upon the whole, he exclaims with astonishment and admiration, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God How unsearchable are His Judgments, and His ways past finding out!” 1. The Sovereignty of God(NIV) 33Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Judgments – Gk: krimata – generally used in the sense of God’s judicial decisions or judgments on the wickedSometimes used of decisions or determinations – “As of old, the ruler was also the judge—to judge often means to rule—[therefore] the same word is used for the decisions of the judge and the decrees of ordinances of the ruler. (Charles Hodge) Note: Parallel with paths or waysNLT: v. 33 – Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are his riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods!NCV – …No one can explain the things God decides or understand his ways.Therefore: Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his decrees, and his paths beyond tracing out!☞    The decrees of God are always for GOD’s glory.Why did God create the heavens and the earth? To give us a beautiful environment in which to live and work? Yes. But even more: Ps. 19:1 – The heavens declare the glory of God; / the skies proclaim the work of His hands.Why did Jesus come into the world? To save us from our sins? Yes. But even more: as Jesus said in John 17:4 – I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.“Most of us are hopelessly self-centered and subjective. But the universe and all that happens in it is first of all for God’s glory, and not primarily for us, though we benefit from it and God does also have our well-being in view.” (James Boice)☞    The decrees of God are absolute & unconditional.This means that what God determines to do is not dependent upon any condition that may or may not come to be or upon any act that you or I may or may not do.Some complain that if this is true then there is no free will and therefore no responsibility on the part of men and women….A mystery…God knows all the possibilities, all the contingencies, His decree in infallible, in part, because He NEVER makes a mistake. He is never surprised by anything (remember last week…)God’s love for us: Q: Are we worthy? – the difference between love because of… and love (period!)Boice: “Despite the way God’s eternal decree puzzles us and the little about it we truly understand, would we REALLY wish it to be otherwise? Would we prefer that our salvation depended on something WE did or decided, rather than upon God’ decree and choice?”☞    Three problems we have with the unchangeable nature of God’s decrees:1.  We are not always convinced that it is His will.2.  We do not where it is going.3.  It does not always work out as we believe it should. Elisabeth Elliot – Elisabeth HowardThe jungles of Ecuador / Spanish for a yr. / work with 2 other linguists to translate into the language of the Colorado Indians / Prayed for a native speaking helper / enter: Macario – fluent in both Spanish and Colorado / Shortly after joining them – murdered / POINTLESS? Frustrating…?By the end of a yr. She had accumulated thousands of vocab cards and done other preliminary work. It was all stolen and never recovered!Enter Jim Elliot  / who had had a year’s work washed down the river one night by a surprise flood / The Quichuas / The End of the Spear / after only 27 months of marriage… - POINTLESS? Painful…Enter Addison Leitch – slow, painful death from cancer…Her testimony: “The experiences of my life are not such that I could infer from them that God is good, gracious and merciful necessarily. To have one husband murdered and another one disintegrate body, soul and spirit, through cancer, is not what you would call a proof of the love of God. In fact, there are many times when it looks like just the opposite. But my belief in the love of God is not by inference or instinct. It is by faith. To apprehend God’s sovereignty working in that love is—we must say it—the last and highest victory of the faith that overcomes the world.”God’s judgments, or decrees (v. 33) flow from His infinite knowledge and perfect wisdom. The paths refer to the course these judgments or decrees take in human history. (Boice)☞    The decrees of God are “beyond tracing out” (NIV)v. 33 – How unsearchable [are] his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!The Gk word for beyond tracing out – anexichniastos – from ichnos – footprint – suggests that although we do not know where is coming from or where He is going, we nevertheless do see His footprints, and it is these that puzzle us. (Boice)NLT: It is impossible… for us to understand his decisions and his methods!This is seen first and foremost in the Person and work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ:“No human life has ever been so completely guided by God…. Divine guidance set Jesus at a distance from his family and fellow-townsmen, brought him into conflict with all the nations leaders, religious and civil, and let finally to betrayal, arrest and the cross…By every human standard of reckoning, the cross was a waste—the waste of a young life, a prophet’s influence, a leader’s potential. We know the secret of its meaning and achievement only from God’s own statements.” (J. I. Packer)Why do we fear? What gives us the hope and the strength to persevere in the midst of deep and intense pain? |   | 2 Corinthians 1:9 – Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 2 Corinthians 4:7 – But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
16Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  Therefore we do not lose heart….17For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2. The Smallness of Man William Beebe – biologist, explorer & author – friend of Teddy Roosevelt, 26th Pres. – visit Roosevelt @ Sagamore Hill, his home near Oyster Bay, LI – evening on the lawn surrounding the great house / search and find the faint spot of light beyond the lower left corner of the great square of Pegasus. One of them would recite: “That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda. It is as large as the Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of 100 billion suns, each larger than our sun.” Then the other would grin and say, “Now I think we are small enough! Let’s go to bed.”☞    Who can Instruct God?v. 34 – “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” Although drawn from Isaiah, this was essentially the question put to Job when God confronted him in Job 38 & 40.A question which is not really meant to have an answer…Note the connection with our discussion last week regarding the unfathomable knowledge and wisdom of God…The 1st Q contrasts the always limited knowledge of man with infinite knowledge of God.The 2nd speaks to the contrast between human and divine wisdom.Both questions speak to our natural human tendency to question God’s rightness in the events of this life…To argue with God is to argue with the one who makes it possible to argue! (R.K. Hughes)The story of the computer specialist to Brazil… ☞    Who can Understand God?Job: Wealthy / wonderful family / good health / man of deep faith… His 3 “friends” Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad, the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite came to sympathize and then to offer counsel…To put it in our terms, they were trying to explain “why good things happen to good people.”Rightly assumed that this is a moral universe of cause and effect events and God, who created it and determines its destiny, is a moral God.Everything has a purpose. God is good and therefore everything has a good purpose. Evil does not triumph. Virtue is rewarded. What was wrong with this reasoning?Their starting point… God is LIKE us…Judging of God as such a one as themselves, they were at first startled at the idea that He must love Himself supremely, infinitely more than the whole universe, and consequently must prefer His own glory to everything besides. But when they were reminded that God in reality is infinitely more amiable and more valuable than the whole creation, and that consequently, if He views things as they really are, He must regard Himself as infinitely worthy of being more valued and loved, they saw that this truth was incontrovertible. R. Haldane)Notice the nature of God’s rebuke:They did not understand or know even the things they COULD see, no less to presume to know things they could NOT…Notice Job’s response when he finally understood:Job 42:1-6 (NIV)1Then Job replied to the Lord: 2“I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. 3You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. 4“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ 5My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. 6Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” J. I. Packer – Ecclesiastes – “The harder you try to understand the divine purpose in the ordinary providential course of events, the more obsessed and oppressed you grow with the apparent aimlessness of everything, and the more you are tempted to conclude that life really is as pointless as it looks.”Apart from what God is doing in Jesus Christ and in our lives, the last part of which is at best only partially revealed to us, everything is indeed meaningless or empty.We find this SO hard to see or to grasp!We spend so MUCH of our time and energy working for things that do not satisfy at any significant level and, in fact, never will.Why do we put so much energy and thought into getting increasingly larger paychecks, acquiring houses, cars, TVs and fine furniture, which will eventually depreciate and decay?Why do we yearn for the accolades of others when they come and go so quickly?Because we have not learned the even the rudimentary earthly wisdom of the Book of Ecclesiastes, let alone the infinitely more profound wisdom of the revealed counsels of God. Yet we presume to suppose that we can criticize God for what He is doing in our lives. We think we could tell him how to do things better, if we only had the chance. What Folly! What utter folly!” (Boice)1 Cor. 1:20 (NLT) – Where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made them all look foolish and has shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense. Final application:☞    We need to learn and to embrace the truth that there is no true wisdom except in God.We can know what is TRUE because God is a God who knows. We can acquire wisdom because God is a God of wisdom. But we will never acquire either unless we begin with Him. ☞    We need to learn and to embrace the truth that though we begin with God, we will never fully understand Him and therefore we will never fully understand His ways.Isaiah 55:8 – My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. ☞    Finally, we need to learn to trust God fully and to follow Him with resolve.A Truth to Remember:  God is NOT a glorified man and we must NEVER presume to question the rightness of His decrees.A Challenge to Consider:Are you willing to entrust yourself to God fully and to resolve to follow Him with ever increasing resolve? One thing I heard this morning was…      |