We’re reading God’s word in our time of prayer. Romans 11. After contemplating some weighty thoughts about divine election and the future of Israel, Paul ends with a doxology to God. We look then to the reading of God’s word. If you please join with me in prayer. Blessed are you, O God, the Father of all mercy. You have elected us, you have called us, you’ve justified us, you’ve sanctified and glorified us all through your son, who is the living word. And may it please you today to take from the blessings of your word and to feed us by your spirit of truth, working in us and through us, all according to your purpose, according to your eternal counsel. And this we would ask and pray, all in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen. Beginning then in verse 33, Oh, the depths of the riches in the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments, 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? Or from him, and through him, and to him are all things.
Do him be glory forever. Amen. The word of the Lord. A while ago, a book published by a Christian counselor, Ed Welsh, and the title was When People are Big and God is small. His point was to help people overcome the fear of others. In light of big fears and problems, God can seem small. Certainly true. I think the title of the book can speak to many things more than just our fears. So often people live with themselves at the very center, and God is in the background. We live with life as God being a very small part of it. Or indeed, people are very big, and God is very small. It’s the time that we give to him, the time that we think about him. In 2005, a book came out by a sociologist, Chr. Smith, and it was simply labeled Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. And from their study, they coined the expression Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. No teenager has ever said that of their belief system, but it is just something that captures a set of commonly held beliefs and assumptions by young people. Moralism refers to being good.
Just try and be a good moral person. Don’t hurt others. Be tolerant. Don’t be a bad person. Moralism. Therapeutic. It refers to benefits for me. I want to be healthy, happy person who feels good about himself. The focus is me, and it’s therapeutic. And then deism, it refers to the idea that God is remote and involved in our lives a little bit, but mostly he’s off at a distance, the God who has made things and just watches it work. And from they distilled five basic principles that they gather from interviewing 3,000 American teenagers. The first one is, a God exists who created and he ordered the world and he watches over life on Earth. The second is God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to one another, and that’s taught in the Bible and by most world religions. Third, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Four, God is not particularly involved in one’s life except when he’s needed to resolve a problem. And fifth and final, good people go to heaven when they die. That’s the summary of these beliefs. And I think it’s fairly easy to see that this is hardly just a belief of American teenagers.
This really can represent a dominant view of religion by many Americans today. This type of faith, a pseudo-christianity, where God is here essentially to give me a good life and make sure that I’m happy. He lives off in the distance, but will come around when I ask him to, and When I die, of course, I’m going to heaven because it’s not like I’m a serial killer or anything. Oh, people just go to heaven. It’s a very big view of people, and it’s a very small view of God. The doxology of God, it gets turned around to a doxology of myself. And this view of God is not what we see in the Bible. God is very big and we are very small, but it is a view that captures the hearts of many. I appreciate It’s Pastor James’ voice. He rightly said, he said, no people ever rise higher than their idea of God. No people ever rise higher than their idea of God. A small idea of God leads to a diminished anemic people. A diminished anemic worship. But because the Lord, he alone is worthy of our highest praise, we must bow before his greatness in adoration and humility.
Doc doxa. Doxa is an expression of praise to God. It comes from a Greek word doxa, which just means glory. There are several doxologies in the Bible, short expressions of God’s great worth. Praise to him. But two questions naturally arise when we consider God’s great worth. Who is he? Who is this God we’re worshiping? Secondly, how are we to respond to him? Who is our God? Our God is self-existent. The fancy Latin word for this is aseity, self-caused. He just is. No one made God. It’s the question that all little kids ask their parents and their pastors, too. Who made God? And you’re like, Well, nobody. And you can see in their mind, it’s just like something doesn’t register. It boggles the mind to think that no one made God. He just is. He’s completely self-sufficient. He doesn’t need anything from us or anybody else. Do you realize that every time you fall asleep, you are saying, I am not God. Because we’re dependent on sleep. You can’t not sleep. God doesn’t slumber. God takes no rest. He’s not dependent on anything. The most megalomaniacal dictator on the planet still needs to go beddy by.
They got to go to sleep so they can wake up refreshed in the morning to conquer and take over the world. But they got to sleep. Our God is from everlasting to everlasting. He’s outside of time. There’s no beginning or end with him. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. And this God has revealed himself to us. He is a self-revealing God. Psalm 19, it tells us that God’s creation speaks to who God is. God reveals himself through creation. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they reveal knowledge. They have no speech. They use no words. No sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. You look at creation you see a reflection of the God who made it. It reveals something about God. But more than that, God has revealed himself personally to us, not simply just in creation. The Psalm goes on. Psalm 19 says, The law of the Lord is perfect. How do they know the law of the Lord? Because God gave them the law, refreshing the soul.
Statutes the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving a light to the eyes. That’s because God has revealed himself to us in his word. We see who he is, holy and just, merciful and patient. More than just looking at the skies and the stars, God has personally revealed himself to us. And we see that we are made in His image and His likeness. And this Creator God desires a relationship with us. He comes, he reveals us to us in the word. We see the word made flesh, the ultimate revelation of God. But even this has limits for us. The apostle Paul has just been walking us through some very heady stuff. He’s talked about predestination. He’s talked about election, the immense sovereignty of God, completely on display. He has affirmed that human responsibility is compatible with God’s sovereignty. And we’re left wondering, how do you manage these two opposite poles? By keeping them both opposite and not trying to flatten them out. But they’re beyond our understanding. Paul then affirmed how God keeps his promises to his people, which includes Paul’s own people, Israel, which, less than least, is wondering, how is that yet to take place?
What does that mean? There’s all these things that Paul has been speaking of so far in Romans, and he doesn’t exactly answer all the questions, does he? At times, he just simply brings us to the brink of who God is. He brings us there. And now he does so with a doxology of praise. We’ve all had this experience of standing on the precessus of some great panoramic view. It moves us this way. The edge of the grand Canyon, going up the Glacier Park and looking out over this amazing vista. The Swiss Alps, the immenseness of the ocean, the wonder and terror of deep space. Our smallness is magnified even as we see the vastness of the God who made these wonders. And Paul has taken us to the edge of the vastness of God’s sovereignty and mercy. He has shown us the beauty and the attractiveness of overflowing grace. And Now he brings us to respond to this. Even what we don’t fully comprehend and understand, we respond with praise. Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Some translations make that, too, wisdom and knowledge, but I think he captures it really well.
It’s riches, wisdom, and knowledge. The riches of God’s mercy, the wisdom of his counsel, the knowledge of his workings. How unsearchable are his judgments, how inscrutable his ways. In Greek, both of these words, unsearchable and scrutable, they sound very similar. There’s a resonance between them. And this is a very poetic way of bringing us together because that’s what Paul is left with. He’s left with elevated prose and metaphors to talk about the indescribable. God’s path are untraceable by us, by anyone. Then after he’s laid this out, he asked these three rhetorical questions from scripture to highlight the greatness of God. From Isaiah, For who has known the mind of God? Who has been his counselor? From the Book of Job, when God questions back to Job, who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? The obvious answer is no one. You see, that first question lines up with knowledge. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Knowledge. Who has been his counselor? Wisdom. Who has given a gift that he would be repaid? Riches. Each of those three things reinforced by the single questions Paul is asking. Again, with the answer, nobody.
For from him, through him, and to him are all things. Do him be glory forever? There’s a similar expression that comes out of stoic thought about God. Marcus Aurelius in his meditations, he was a Roman Emperor. He spoke of God and he said, From you are all things, in you are all things, and you are for all things. Very similar in wording, but there’s no comparison to the God they represent. Paul is deeply grounded in the God of scriptures. This is not an abstraction. This is not the great unknown, the God of a philosophical belief. It’s the God who has brought redemption to the personal work of his son, who has revealed him self to us. That is the one Paul is talking of. Think back to what he just said earlier from James Boyce, no people rises higher than their idea of God. And with Paul, we respond with to write thoughts about God, high thoughts about God. Now, a reminder, maybe a warning. There’s a little a little booklet. It’s a little exercise for young theologians. There’s a theology professor and pastor, Helmut Thielika, and he wrote this to help young, embodying theology students to navigate some of the challenges ahead of them.
The short little book, most of it’s about having humility. And he points out that the first time we hear of God being spoken of in the third person was by the words of the serpent in the garden. Did God really say? Now, we can speak of God in the third person quite easily. But in doing so, our conversation is no longer with God, it’s about God. You see the difference? Right thoughts about God are not abstractions. They are personal pieces of information to bring us together in knowing our God in a greater way. Because God is not a science we’re trying to master. He’s a person we’re getting to know. And therefore, God is my God. He’s your God. He’s our God. He’s not an abstraction of the God. See the difference in how we communicate and how we talk about that? God’s not a science to master. He is the one that I need to know at the deepest level and core of my being. Have you ever watched someone or listened to someone teach you a subject that you weren’t really personally invested in or much interested in? But because of the person’s passion presenting it, they just drew you in.
Think about how many YouTube videos you probably watched with that. Like, that seems so stupid. And then like, oh. Because the person is so animated and so excited about it. And pretty soon you’re drawn into their excitement. You’re like, that is really cool. What am I saying? Because of their interest, because of their passion, that enthusiasm is infectious for learning subjects you’re not interested in. And have you ever noticed that when people who really know something about a topic, they have a much greater appreciation for it? You can look at an amazing, beautiful building and go, Wow, that’s pretty neat. I like how they did that, and go about your life. Now, you can stand there with an architect, a carpenter, an engineer, in here and they geek out on all the details. And they go, Oh, no, look at this and this. And they see what we miss because they understand. And pretty soon they’re pointing these things out and you’re now seeing them for the first time. And they have brought you into a greater appreciation of the building because of their knowledge. The more time you spend getting to know God, the more your vocabulary of praise is increased because you have more things to praise him for.
The more you know God, the more that you not only respond in worship, but in adoration, and you see more and more things and how they’re tied together, and God increases before you in size. Now, with human arrogance, when human arrogance runs into God’s untraceability, the response is often mockery and doubt. Because that’s usually what happens when we don’t know something, we make fun of or belittle the people who do. That’s arrogance. How people cannot understand the world around and not understand the ways of God, and this becomes an object of joke and derision. But not so with God’s people. We are to be in awe of him. He has shown himself to be faithful to his promise, merciful to sinners. This should also cause us to be comforted by his greatness and his goodness. There’s nothing outside of God’s reach. There’s nothing outside of his control. I don’t have to sweat the small things or the big things. That should be an encouragement. Now, think about it, where does most of our anxiety come from? It’s fear of things outside of our control. That’s why we’re anxious about them. There are things that are happening that we can’t control, and it It makes us anxious.
It makes us fearful. Now, I’m not saying this is easy. I’m saying that our very big God has given us resources to deal with our fears. Again, not easy. Just stop worrying. Let’s see how that works. But there is a, I need to understand who my God is so that I can stop worrying. I need to let go of this false image of control that I think I have and give it back to God who owns it. Isn’t that a very strange thing to think about? Our fear and our anxiety comes from taking a hold of something we don’t have control of anyways, and we’re fearful about it. It’s like, you can’t do anything with this. Give it back to God. He’s the only one who could do anything about it. Let him have what is rightly his and doesn’t belong to us anyways. None of us can add a span to our life by worrying. And we know who this God is who is in control. And I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t have to have it all figured out. All I have to do is be united to the one who does.
And if you step into all of this rightly, you’re suddenly going to feel the powerful current of our culture trying to sweep you downstream away from this. You don’t realize how just saturated this is in the American culture and ethos until you stand against it. It’s powerful. We are so much about ourselves. When people are big and God is small, when he exists for my personal affluence and happiness, when God is pretty much okay with what I’m okay with, then Paul’s great words of praise here get turned around for my own benefit. That’s what takes place. We could even use the things meant to be towards God, and we make it about us. And until you step against that, we don’t even know how much we are just being pushed down a cult of river, but it’s a septic tank of very small ideas about us. And we’re leaving very big and glorious thoughts of God far behind. The very last verse, To him be glory forever. Amen. God’s glory is the end game. It’s not my personal happiness. It’s not all about me. When we We can draw the threads of God’s self-existence, his self-sufficiency to Emmanuel, God with us in the personal work of Jesus, the God-Man.
Everything changes. His Holiness, my sin, are problems that need to be solved that I can’t fix. His self-giving and my self-centeredness are problems that need to be solved that I can’t fix. What we are unable to do, God has done. His grace is truly that marvelous. And then I am a debtor to him. Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? No one. But we have been given a gift that we cannot repay, all of us. And Paul is drawing us into this awareness. We owe God everything. He is the one who came to fix what we have broken. He’s the one who came to remove our sins from us, to atone for them, we who could do nothing about it. And this same one who comes to us, even as we prayed earlier, invites us to the Father to pray, Our Father, my Father, and now your Father. And we are invited into the inter life of our Triune God by the ind dwelling of the Holy spirit in us. That is a big thought. In our praise and worship, we are learning to make our God very big in our awareness.
You see, God does not need worshippers. He doesn’t need us to praise him because he’s got this giant cosmic ego. He is our highest and our greatest delight. To know him more makes us better people. It is only of God that can be said that the call to love him is rooted in self-giving and not selfishness. There is no one else that can say that. How weird that would be for everyone to say, You need to love me for your greatest good. That’s one of the most egotistical things you could possibly utter. You’re either crazy or you’re a narcissus of massive proportions. But if God is the only one who can say that, that’s true. Who can actually give of himself to us, calling us to give of ourselves to him as the ultimate act of love and devotion. That’s a big thought about a very big God who has been pleased to reveal himself to us through his son. And there’s so much of this that we don’t understand. But it doesn’t change any of it. The call to worship, the call to praise, the stepping into the person and work of Jesus. Even if, as Jesus said in Matthew 16, For whoever wants to save their life will lose it.
Whoever wants to lose their life for me will find it. It’s paradoxical. If you shrink and are diminished, you come to the place where you can actually grow and receive. It seems like, how does that work? It works in the economy of God. It doesn’t work in our economy. Our economy says, There’s only so much out there, and I got to get what I can get and take it and shine it on me. Because if it’s shining on you, it’s not shining on me. And here we see, no, not at all. Allow it to go to somebody else. Allow it to go upward, and then allow that to reflect out to other people. As that takes place and this change in the heart, you begin to understand more and more of who this God is. You come to the brink and the edge of his magnificence, his Majesty. And all you can do is go, Oh, my goodness. I can hardly fathom what this means. Father, show me more. Help me to see more of you and less of me. And this very strange thing is that in doing that, there’s more of you then to give to other people.
Not for yourself. This is where Paul Paul brings us after this massive overflow of grace, the attractiveness of grace that he’s been speaking of. And he just stops. He did it earlier in chapter 8. He’s going to do it again in chapter 16, where he runs all these great thoughts together, and then he just like, God is great. And that’s what we are to do. When you run into some of these things, you’re like, I don’t know how this is going to work. I don’t see this. I don’t understand this. God is great. And I relinquish any arrogance that would try to doubt him, that would try to mock him. To open ourselves in a humble heart to be able to speak of who he is to a world around us that’s just sinking in the septic of self-identity. We need elevated from and only the one who can pull us up out of the mired clay, who can forgive us our sins and our trespasses, is able to do that. And when we stand before him, cleansed with the righteousness of Christ given to us, it will change your heart to worship. Pray with me.
Father, as we come before you, we all recognize, Lord God, we have a hard time with this us. Father, there is a selfish part of us that wants to be glorified above you. We ask not only that you would forgive us, but Father, that in your kindness, that you would teach us to mortify, to kill this part of us. That’s just bringing death to our soul. Father, we pray that you would bring life to us for the good news of Jesus. Lord, open our eyes to see more of the vastness of the horizon of your wonder. And Father, may it also please you to use us to proclaim this good news of Jesus to a world around us in desperate need. We pray then that you would bring glory and honor the lives of your people. And this we pray and ask in his mighty name. Amen. Please stand, all creatures of our God and King.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.