Latest / INSIGHT FOR LIVING: Biblical Wisdom For Everyday Living / Unsearchable, Unfathomable, and Unmatched! │ Msg 2744

Transcript

Unsearchable, Unfathomable, and Unmatched! │ Msg 2744 · INSIGHT FOR LIVING: Biblical Wisdom For Everyday Living

0:01
Speaker 1: I hope you did not miss the great theology in
0:04
Speaker 1: those hymns we sang. That last line is magnificent. While
0:10
Speaker 1: all that borrows life from thee is ever in thy
0:14
Speaker 1: care and everywhere that man or woman can be, thou
0:19
Speaker 1: God art present there. I want to thank Isaac Watts
0:24
Speaker 1: for the introduction to my message today. That is absolutely
0:28
Speaker 1: right on target. It's not my message, it's the Apostle Paul's,
0:32
Speaker 1: given to him by the Holy Spirit. One of the
0:36
Speaker 1: magnificent scriptures in all the Bible is now laid out
0:42
Speaker 1: before us in these last few verses of Romans chapter 11.
0:47
Speaker 1: When you locate the passage of scripture, I would invite you,
0:50
Speaker 1: out of respect for God and his word, to please
0:54
Speaker 1: stand as I read for you this section of scripture.
0:59
Speaker 1: we're reading from the inspired word of God. Romans 11,
1:04
Speaker 1: verse 30. For just as you once were disobedient to God,
1:09
Speaker 1: but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience,
1:15
Speaker 1: so these also now have been disobedient, that because of
1:19
Speaker 1: the mercy shown to you, they also may now be
1:23
Speaker 1: shown mercy. For God has shut up all in disobedience.
1:28
Speaker 1: so that he may show mercy to all. Oh, the
1:32
Speaker 1: depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the
1:35
Speaker 1: knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable
1:41
Speaker 1: his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord,
1:45
Speaker 1: or who became his counselor? Or who has first given
1:49
Speaker 1: to him that it might be paid back to him again?
1:54
Speaker 1: For from him and through him And to him are
2:01
Speaker 1: all things. To him be the glory forever. And all
2:08
Speaker 1: God's people said, Amen. Remain standing, please. There are special
2:15
Speaker 1: times of worship that are set aside for the people
2:18
Speaker 1: of God. One of them is for the offering. This
2:23
Speaker 1: church doesn't exist to get everyone's money. This church exists
2:28
Speaker 1: for the glory of God, and we say that without
2:30
Speaker 1: any sense of false piety. We come for God's glory.
2:35
Speaker 1: We come to magnify his name, to obey his word,
2:40
Speaker 1: to receive from him direction and guidance. If you're here
2:43
Speaker 1: without Christ and you're visiting with us, come again. Come often,
2:49
Speaker 1: but don't give. It's the responsibility of God's people to
2:53
Speaker 1: support God's word. To give as he directs us, for
2:56
Speaker 1: some it's 10%, for others it's 20%, even 30%. It's
3:01
Speaker 1: never a tip. It's never just a stray dollar or
3:05
Speaker 1: $ 5 bill. It's giving sacrificially, just as we give our
3:09
Speaker 1: lives first to him. May we bow in adoration of
3:15
Speaker 1: our great God. Of you and through you and to you,
3:25
Speaker 1: For all things. Only to you be the glory. So
3:33
Speaker 1: Father today. Be our hope. Our hope. Not only for
3:40
Speaker 1: strength today. But for guidance this week. Be thou our forgiveness.
3:49
Speaker 1: We all come as. As sinners. As sinners. We're not
3:54
Speaker 1: pleased with it. We're cursed by it, but it's true.
3:58
Speaker 1: And part of that curse has been acted out this
4:01
Speaker 1: week in every one of our lives. Be our forgiveness, Father.
4:08
Speaker 1: Be our joy. So little around us provides it. You
4:14
Speaker 1: be that for us, our Father. Be our provider. Remind
4:20
Speaker 1: us that what we have is not our own. It's
4:23
Speaker 1: all on loan. We'll carry none of it with us
4:26
Speaker 1: to the grave. So open our hearts and open our
4:30
Speaker 1: hands and open our wallets. Be our provider. Now be
4:38
Speaker 1: our vision. O Lord of our hearts. In the name
4:43
Speaker 1: of Jesus, we give and we pray. And all God's
4:48
Speaker 1: people said. It was Socrates who said on one occasion
4:55
Speaker 1: when realizing he could not put the truths into words,
4:59
Speaker 1: words are stupid things. At times we realize that more
5:05
Speaker 1: than others. It always occurs when we come to that
5:09
Speaker 1: place in life when we cannot describe in human vocabulary
5:15
Speaker 1: with sufficient superlatives what it is we're trying to communicate.
5:22
Speaker 1: The Himalayan mountain peaks range four and a half to
5:26
Speaker 1: five and a half miles above sea level. They have
5:30
Speaker 1: been the climbers' dream since the beginning of the whole
5:34
Speaker 1: thought of climbing, though no one attempted to scale the
5:37
Speaker 1: peaks until 1920. And between 1920 and 1953, 11 expeditions
5:39
Speaker 1: were attempted. The first 10 were failures. One of them
5:52
Speaker 1: was attempted by two men, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine.
5:58
Speaker 1: They were last sighted at 28,200 feet, still 1,000 feet
6:00
Speaker 1: below the peak of Everest, and they never returned. They
6:04
Speaker 1: were lost forever. It was 29 years later before finally
6:08
Speaker 1: Sir Edmund Hillary died. and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay,
6:24
Speaker 1: took on that task. On the 29th of May, 1953,
6:31
Speaker 1: for the first time in all of time, a human
6:36
Speaker 1: boot was felt at the peak of Everest, 29,028 feet
6:44
Speaker 1: above sea level. The freezing, wind-beaten peak of Mount Everest
6:52
Speaker 1: felt its first human foot. And unlike the one who
6:57
Speaker 1: stepped on the moon, Edmund Hillary, to my knowledge, never
7:05
Speaker 1: recorded what he saw. He told of the climb, but
7:10
Speaker 1: I've never read in all my research the words he
7:15
Speaker 1: used to describe what he saw and what he felt.
7:22
Speaker 1: I would say the reason is because words are stupid things.
7:27
Speaker 1: When trying to describe the panoramic peaks of the Himalayas,
7:37
Speaker 1: perhaps only one could really identify with him. 1900 years earlier,
7:44
Speaker 1: the Apostle Paul, sitting in the city of ancient Corinth
7:49
Speaker 1: with stylus in hand, writing his magnum opus to believers
7:55
Speaker 1: in Rome, came to the place where he again found himself. Well,
8:03
Speaker 1: like the psalmist feeling it is high, I cannot attain
8:07
Speaker 1: to it. How can I put into words the truths
8:12
Speaker 1: of what God has revealed to me? As he walked
8:16
Speaker 1: the Himalayan heights of theology, we have felt the winds
8:22
Speaker 1: of ice-like sovereignty of God knifing their way through us.
8:28
Speaker 1: We have also seen the peaks of human responsibility and
8:35
Speaker 1: the remarkable plan of God's grace in setting aside the Jew,
8:40
Speaker 1: albeit temporarily, while allowing the Gentiles, like most of us,
8:45
Speaker 1: into his family by his grace. Paul has been building
8:50
Speaker 1: toward this point, this peak, and when he comes to it,
8:56
Speaker 1: it's as if he has run shy of superlatives. What
9:01
Speaker 1: words do you use to describe the mountain peaks of
9:05
Speaker 1: God's greatness? You're shut up to words like unsearchable and
9:13
Speaker 1: unfathomable and Unfortunately, those words are used, they're overused in
9:24
Speaker 1: our day. When the little Dodson sports car came out,
9:29
Speaker 1: all the ads read, awesome. Now I have looked at
9:34
Speaker 1: the old Dodson sports car. I've never seen a thing
9:40
Speaker 1: awesome about it. Doesn't even have the same name today.
9:45
Speaker 1: No car is awesome. That's a word reserved for only God.
9:50
Speaker 1: Be careful about awesome. Everything is now awesome movie, awesome music,
9:57
Speaker 1: awesome person. No, only God. Unfathomable. No, only God. No
10:06
Speaker 1: truth you've learned, no invention you've studied, no person you've
10:10
Speaker 1: met is unfathomable. Only God. That's as it should be.
10:20
Speaker 1: Now we are inserted into the picture of all things,
10:22
Speaker 1: we of all people, because of God's unsearchable mercy. Now
10:27
Speaker 1: I've left out a section of Romans 11 deliberately because
10:31
Speaker 1: in good Pauline fashion, he says the same thing again
10:34
Speaker 1: and again in different ways. And I think you've gotten
10:37
Speaker 1: it by now. I think you understand that the Jew
10:40
Speaker 1: has temporarily been set aside, put under discipline, if you will.
10:43
Speaker 1: And it's true, a few in the remnant have come
10:46
Speaker 1: to Christ. A few have been converted to Christ, and
10:48
Speaker 1: some of you are among us. And some of those
10:51
Speaker 1: who have come to Christ, we know personally. Most of
10:53
Speaker 1: them we don't. But it's a remnant, which is the
10:57
Speaker 1: word Paul uses when he describes those few. But during
11:01
Speaker 1: this period of time, God, by his mercy and grace,
11:03
Speaker 1: has allowed Gentiles to be grafted into the vine. And
11:08
Speaker 1: he describes that in the section we're leaving out. We
11:11
Speaker 1: come to the climax of it at verse 30. Down
11:14
Speaker 1: through verse 32, the unsearchable mercy of God is highlighted.
11:19
Speaker 1: Before we read the word four times in three verses,
11:22
Speaker 1: where we're shown mercy, we're shown mercy, mercy is shown us,
11:26
Speaker 1: we're shown mercy, let's understand what mercy is. The theologian A.W.
11:32
Speaker 1: Pink gave it this description, the ready inclination of God
11:37
Speaker 1: to relieve the misery of fallen humanity. Once again, Mercy
11:42
Speaker 1: is the ready inclination of God to relieve the misery
11:46
Speaker 1: of fallen humanity. That's all of us, as we'll see
11:50
Speaker 1: when we get to verse 32. How grateful we are
11:54
Speaker 1: for the mercy of God. Remember Ephesians 2? We were
11:57
Speaker 1: dead in trespasses and sins. We were engaged in transgressions
12:01
Speaker 1: that at times were downright filthy, wicked to the core.
12:05
Speaker 1: And God in his great mercy came to our rescue
12:08
Speaker 1: and relieved us from the consequences of or the misery
12:11
Speaker 1: of our lifestyle by delivering to us his son, Jesus Christ,
12:18
Speaker 1: who came to live inside us. That's called the mercy
12:22
Speaker 1: of God, his inclination, his ready inclination to relieve our misery.
12:29
Speaker 1: Look at the mercy of the Gentiles in verse 30.
12:33
Speaker 1: Just as you, it's plural, y'all, Paul was from the
12:38
Speaker 1: southern part of Turkey. Just as y'all once were disobedient
12:41
Speaker 1: to God, but now have been shown mercy because of
12:44
Speaker 1: their disobedience. What's he saying? The Jews, in their disobedience,
12:48
Speaker 1: finally God said, that's enough. You reject the Messiah, I
12:52
Speaker 1: have said. I will turn to the Gentiles. And God
12:55
Speaker 1: used Paul to reach the Gentiles. Our forefathers in Europe
12:59
Speaker 1: heard the gospel of Christ. We have no Abraham to
13:02
Speaker 1: point back to like the Jews. But the Jews in
13:05
Speaker 1: their disobedience turned from the Messiah. And the Lord said,
13:09
Speaker 1: then I will turn to the Gentiles. And by his mercy,
13:13
Speaker 1: we heard. We received the gift of eternal life. We
13:17
Speaker 1: were shown mercy because of their disobedience. But Paul doesn't
13:21
Speaker 1: leave the Jew out. He can't. He is one. He
13:25
Speaker 1: won't let us forget. Verse 31 reminds us. So these
13:29
Speaker 1: also now, meaning the Jews now, have been disobedient that
13:34
Speaker 1: because of the mercy shown to y'all, they also may
13:40
Speaker 1: now be shown mercy. We saw that last time. Our
13:44
Speaker 1: lifestyle is to be lived in such a contagious way
13:47
Speaker 1: that the Jew who is lost witnesses what Christ can
13:51
Speaker 1: do in a life. And will realize out of envy
13:55
Speaker 1: and jealousy what he or she is missing. And will
13:57
Speaker 1: turn to Christ. We are testimonies of that around us.
14:01
Speaker 1: All around us. How grateful we are. But God in
14:04
Speaker 1: mercy has not forgotten the Jew either. Verse 32 says
14:08
Speaker 1: there's mercy to all. Talk about unsearchable. God has shut
14:14
Speaker 1: up all in disobedience so that he may show mercy
14:19
Speaker 1: to all. The next time you're tempted toward arrogance. The
14:25
Speaker 1: next time pride gets a foothold in your life. Remember
14:29
Speaker 1: verse 32. God's mercy has been shown to all of us.
14:36
Speaker 1: I've left out words that we weren't allowed to say
14:39
Speaker 1: when we were little kids. Shut up. See verse 32.
14:43
Speaker 1: God has shut up. It's the word that means to
14:48
Speaker 1: enclose together. The Greek term is a combination of two
14:53
Speaker 1: words to enclose together. It's the idea of a fish
14:57
Speaker 1: caught in a net was said to be shut up
15:02
Speaker 1: in the net. An animal caught in a trap was
15:05
Speaker 1: shut up in the trap. In this case, our prison
15:10
Speaker 1: is depravity. Wesley realized it when he wrote, Long my
15:15
Speaker 1: imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night.
15:21
Speaker 1: Thine eye diffused the quickening ray. I rose. Listen to
15:27
Speaker 1: these words. My dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off.
15:32
Speaker 1: My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
15:37
Speaker 1: What's he describing? Being shut up in depravity. Called in
15:41
Speaker 1: his language, of that grand hymn, and can it be,
15:45
Speaker 1: a dungeon. We have all been in the dungeon of sin.
15:52
Speaker 1: We are all depraved. One of my mentors used to say,
15:57
Speaker 1: if depravity were blue, we'd be blue all over. Isn't
16:02
Speaker 1: that good? We're all blue with depravity. How do we
16:10
Speaker 1: get free of it? How do we get out of
16:13
Speaker 1: the trap? How do we get released from the net? Mercy.
16:21
Speaker 1: God's ready inclination to relieve the misery of our dungeon.
16:29
Speaker 1: James Montgomery Boyce has written a four-volume work on the
16:32
Speaker 1: letter to the Romans. In that third volume, he writes
16:37
Speaker 1: this about mercy. Listen carefully. Picture the Ark of the
16:42
Speaker 1: Covenant in your mind. It was a wooden box about
16:46
Speaker 1: a yard long, covered with gold and containing the stone
16:50
Speaker 1: tablets of the Law of Moses. The lid of this
16:54
Speaker 1: box was the mercy seat, constructed of pure gold with
17:02
Speaker 1: images of cherubim or angels on each end. Their wings
17:08
Speaker 1: spread backward and upward. almost meeting over the center of
17:14
Speaker 1: the ark of God. I take it they were with
17:18
Speaker 1: their backs toward it and their wings spread above it.
17:23
Speaker 1: Now with that in mind, their wings went backward and upward,
17:27
Speaker 1: meeting over the center of the ark. God was imagined
17:30
Speaker 1: to dwell symbolically between those outstretched wings. As it stands,
17:37
Speaker 1: it is a picture of judgment for what does God
17:40
Speaker 1: see as he looks down from between the wings of
17:43
Speaker 1: the cherubim? He sees the law that we have all broken.
17:48
Speaker 1: He sees that he must judge sin. But here is
17:52
Speaker 1: where the mercy seat comes in and why it is
17:54
Speaker 1: called the mercy seat. Upon that covering of the ark
18:00
Speaker 1: once a year on the Day of Atonement, the high
18:03
Speaker 1: priest sprinkled the blood of an animal that had been
18:06
Speaker 1: killed just moments before in the courtyard of the temple.
18:10
Speaker 1: The animal was a substitute, an innocent victim, dying in
18:15
Speaker 1: the place of those who deserve to die. Now, when
18:19
Speaker 1: God looked down from between the outstretched wings of the cherubim,
18:23
Speaker 1: what he saw was not the law that we have broken,
18:26
Speaker 1: but the blood of Of the innocent victim, he saw
18:29
Speaker 1: that atonement had been made and that his love was
18:33
Speaker 1: now free to reach out to save anyone who would
18:36
Speaker 1: come through faith in that sacrifice. What a grand portrayal
18:41
Speaker 1: of the ancient and most sacred piece of furniture in
18:44
Speaker 1: the tabernacle and later the temple, the mercy seat. That
18:49
Speaker 1: is the role that Jesus Christ filled when he came.
18:53
Speaker 1: He became the once for all sacrifice for sins. And
18:58
Speaker 1: as Hebrews writes, if the blood of bulls and goats
19:01
Speaker 1: and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctified
19:05
Speaker 1: to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall
19:08
Speaker 1: the blood of Christ relieve us of our sins? God
19:13
Speaker 1: sees his son and sees the blood that was given
19:17
Speaker 1: on our behalf and he in mercy saves the sinner.
19:22
Speaker 1: How important is the mercy seat. My older brother Orville
19:26
Speaker 1: visited our home a number of years ago, and as
19:29
Speaker 1: he often does when he visits, he sat down at
19:32
Speaker 1: our piano, and I heard him playing an old hymn
19:35
Speaker 1: that dates back to the 19th, early 19th century. I
19:41
Speaker 1: asked him what it was. He said, oh, this is a, Charles,
19:44
Speaker 1: this is a hymn you should know, and you should learn,
19:48
Speaker 1: and once again, older brother telling younger brother what to do.
19:53
Speaker 1: I listened and I realized he was again right. Marvelous
19:59
Speaker 1: hymn that we no longer sing, though it is in
20:02
Speaker 1: our hymnal. From every stormy wind that blows, from every
20:06
Speaker 1: swelling tide of woe, there is a calm, a sure
20:10
Speaker 1: retreat that's found beneath the mercy seat. Ah, whether could
20:16
Speaker 1: we flee for aid when tempted, desolate, dismayed, or how
20:21
Speaker 1: the hosts of hell defeat had suffering saints. No mercy seat.
20:27
Speaker 1: Isn't that a great hymn? We have the mercy seat.
20:32
Speaker 1: The tabernacle is gone. The temple is gone. Even the
20:36
Speaker 1: ancient golden chest is gone. Never to be found again
20:43
Speaker 1: for we no longer need it. We have the person
20:46
Speaker 1: of mercy who has come to our rescue and he's
20:49
Speaker 1: rescued all of us. His mercy is unsearchable and how
20:54
Speaker 1: grateful we are for that. Now this causes Paul to
20:57
Speaker 1: look across the theological mountain peaks and begin to describe
21:03
Speaker 1: the greatness of God. I just hope I can get
21:07
Speaker 1: through it. Oh Bathos, writes the apostle. Bathos. The Greek
21:16
Speaker 1: term is bathos. We get our word bath from it.
21:20
Speaker 1: William Beebe was the explorer in the ocean depths when
21:23
Speaker 1: I was a little boy. Later came Jacques Cousteau with
21:28
Speaker 1: all of his interesting expeditions. But William Beebe invented a
21:33
Speaker 1: spherical submarine, a large steel encased submarine with air, of course,
21:41
Speaker 1: going in and out, and one large window made of
21:45
Speaker 1: quartz so it could handle the depths of the ocean.
21:49
Speaker 1: And bright lights shone out all around this globe-like submarine
21:55
Speaker 1: as it was dropped into the deepest parts of the ocean.
21:59
Speaker 1: He took the first pictures taken down deep. He called
22:03
Speaker 1: his invention the bathosphere. Bathosphere. The word means depth, as
22:11
Speaker 1: we see it rendered here. It's used in 1 Corinthians 2.10.
22:14
Speaker 1: The Spirit searches all things, even the bathos of God.
22:20
Speaker 1: The depths. The old Latin vulgate renders this profunda Dei.
22:27
Speaker 1: The profound depths of God. No one can plumb the depths. A.T.
22:34
Speaker 1: Robertson writes of it, Paul's argument has carried him to
22:37
Speaker 1: the heights and now he pauses on the edge of
22:40
Speaker 1: the precipice as he contemplates God's wisdom and knowledge, fully
22:44
Speaker 1: conscious of his inability to sound the bottom with the
22:47
Speaker 1: plummet of human reason and words. Once again, they're stupid things.
22:53
Speaker 1: The best he can do is unsearchable, unfathomable. What is that? Well,
23:05
Speaker 1: look closely. depth of God's riches, the depth of God's wisdom,
23:15
Speaker 1: the depth of God's knowledge. If you and I could
23:20
Speaker 1: live ten lifetimes, we would not ever come near plumbing
23:24
Speaker 1: the depths of any of the above. We live in
23:30
Speaker 1: a humanistic era when everyone, it seems, is important and
23:34
Speaker 1: influential people are, again, pointed out as being awesome in
23:39
Speaker 1: their presence. None of the above is true, only God.
23:45
Speaker 1: And when we reserve those thoughts for him, there is
23:47
Speaker 1: a respect that opens up and a trust that is
23:52
Speaker 1: then ours to enjoy. We're trusting in an infinite God.
24:00
Speaker 1: See the explanation that needs no proof? God knows no bounds.
24:05
Speaker 1: God cannot be measured. God defies comparison. His activities have
24:13
Speaker 1: no human explanation. How often we find ourselves, as Wesley
24:20
Speaker 1: put it, lost in wonder, love, and praise, saying, what
24:24
Speaker 1: is God doing? Why is God not changing this situation?
24:31
Speaker 1: Why did God allow this to happen? You cannot get
24:36
Speaker 1: the answers. You simply trust him. And when you trust him,
24:42
Speaker 1: you trust in one who is infinite. A.W. Tozer writes
24:47
Speaker 1: in his fine work on God's infinitude, when we say
24:51
Speaker 1: that God is infinite, we mean that he knows no bounds.
24:56
Speaker 1: Whatever God is and all that God is, he is
24:58
Speaker 1: without limit. And here again, we must break away from
25:02
Speaker 1: the popular meaning of words like unlimited wealth, and boundless energy.
25:08
Speaker 1: They are further examples of the misuse of words. No
25:11
Speaker 1: wealth is unlimited and no energy is boundless unless we
25:16
Speaker 1: are speaking of the wealth and energy of God. Stay
25:19
Speaker 1: with me. It gets deeper. Again, to say that God
25:23
Speaker 1: is infinite is to say that he is measureless. Measurement
25:26
Speaker 1: is the way created things have of accounting for themselves.
25:30
Speaker 1: It describes limitations, imperfections, and cannot apply to God. Weight
25:36
Speaker 1: describes the gravitational pull of the earth upon material bodies.
25:40
Speaker 1: Distance describes intervals between bodies in space. Length means extension
25:46
Speaker 1: in space. And there are other familiar measurements such as
25:48
Speaker 1: those for liquid and energy and sound and light and
25:52
Speaker 1: numbers for pluralities. We also try to measure abstract qualities
25:56
Speaker 1: and speak of great or little faith, high or low intelligence,
26:01
Speaker 1: large or meager talents, Is it not plain that all
26:06
Speaker 1: this does not and cannot apply to God? It is
26:10
Speaker 1: the way we see the works of his hands, but
26:13
Speaker 1: not the way we see him. He is above all,
26:18
Speaker 1: outside of it all, beyond it all. Our concepts of
26:24
Speaker 1: measurement embrace mountains and men, atoms and stars. Nothing in
26:33
Speaker 1: God is less or more or large or small. He
26:36
Speaker 1: is what he is in himself. Without qualifying thought or word,
26:40
Speaker 1: he is simply God. Now some of you right about
26:45
Speaker 1: now are going, what? I understand. Because words are stupid things.
26:54
Speaker 1: I mean, we read that he's infinite. Here's this preacher
26:56
Speaker 1: trying to describe the infinite. One of my Former teachers
27:02
Speaker 1: at Dallas Seminary used to say, Lord, humble us, guard
27:06
Speaker 1: us against trying to unscrew the inscrutable. He is inscrutable.
27:14
Speaker 1: How unsearchable are his judgments, how unfathomable his ways. And
27:17
Speaker 1: if statements aren't enough, he offers three questions that defy
27:21
Speaker 1: an answer. Verse 34, who has known the mind of
27:28
Speaker 1: the Lord? He draws that from Job. Remember Job asking that?
27:31
Speaker 1: Remember back in our marathon going through Job for 28 years? Remember?
27:36
Speaker 1: A little exaggeration there. Who has known the mind of
27:41
Speaker 1: the Lord? Second question, who has been his counselor? Who
27:45
Speaker 1: advises God? Who has given to him that it might
27:51
Speaker 1: be paid back to him again? Oh, we've got it
27:55
Speaker 1: backwards here. Who understands God? Who informs God? Who provides
28:00
Speaker 1: for him? Job and Isaiah blend together in the quoting
28:03
Speaker 1: of that verse. The whole point is there is none
28:08
Speaker 1: like unto God and how easy to forget it when
28:12
Speaker 1: our lives break down. During the era of our darkest
28:17
Speaker 1: time as a nation, following the assassination of our 16th president,
28:25
Speaker 1: following our bloodiest war when a third of the male
28:29
Speaker 1: population in the South had been killed. It was a
28:35
Speaker 1: time of reconstruction, and we were a people in chaos.
28:44
Speaker 1: People were uneasy and restless. Across the Atlantic in the
28:50
Speaker 1: little Scottish village lived Walter Chalmers Smith, whose heart went
28:57
Speaker 1: out to our country, in 1867. And he wrote a
29:03
Speaker 1: hymn we should have learned and sung, but it didn't
29:07
Speaker 1: become a beloved hymn until years later. Immortal, invisible, God
29:13
Speaker 1: only wise. In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes, most blessed,
29:18
Speaker 1: most glorious, the ancient of days, almighty, victorious. Thy great
29:23
Speaker 1: name we praise, unresting, unhasting, and silent as light. Nor
29:29
Speaker 1: wanting nor wasting thou rulest in might. What words of
29:36
Speaker 1: the unfathomable depths of God. Words a nation needs to
29:42
Speaker 1: hear when we're back on our heels, wondering if we
29:45
Speaker 1: will ever reconstruct and recover. The next time you find
29:51
Speaker 1: yourself flat on your back, the doctor's report is dark
29:57
Speaker 1: and the future is foreboding. Remember your God is limitless, unfathomable.
30:08
Speaker 1: And as soon as we use the word impossible, it's
30:13
Speaker 1: an exciting thing to God since that's his specialty. Now
30:19
Speaker 1: when you realize this, you finally come to the doxology.
30:25
Speaker 1: Don't you love the doxology? For of him and through
30:29
Speaker 1: him and to him are all things. Meaning what? Of him.
30:34
Speaker 1: He is the ultimate source. Through him, he is the
30:37
Speaker 1: ultimate means by which things occur. To him, he's the
30:42
Speaker 1: ultimate goal. The ultimate end of all things. Source, means, end.
30:50
Speaker 1: Of him, through him, to him are most things. Let's
30:56
Speaker 1: look again. One of Paul's favorite expressions, all things, all things.
31:04
Speaker 1: That includes your current situation. That includes what you cannot
31:08
Speaker 1: figure out. That includes your loss of employment. That includes
31:14
Speaker 1: your promotion. That includes the test you're going through right
31:19
Speaker 1: now that you cannot see an end to. That includes
31:23
Speaker 1: where you find yourself regardless of how painful or how
31:26
Speaker 1: pleasant the situation may be. Of him. Through him. To him.
31:31
Speaker 1: Of him. Source. Through him. Means. To him. Gold. And
31:36
Speaker 1: all things. Only one thing to say after that. Soli
31:40
Speaker 1: Deo Gloria. Only to the glory of God. And we
31:47
Speaker 1: might as well. Amen. Amen. Amen. You know what this
31:54
Speaker 1: does to all of us? It reduces us. to something
31:59
Speaker 1: smaller than a fleas whisker. I don't know if fleas
32:03
Speaker 1: have them, but they need them right now. I need
32:07
Speaker 1: them to have whiskers right now. I mentioned William Beebe earlier.
32:13
Speaker 1: He was a good friend with our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt,
32:18
Speaker 1: and they would on occasion have dinner together at Roosevelt's
32:20
Speaker 1: great home at Sagamore Hills on Long Island, New York.
32:24
Speaker 1: They had a little game they played together when they
32:26
Speaker 1: would finish their meal. Bebe and Roosevelt would walk out
32:30
Speaker 1: into that great yard, and they would lie flat on
32:34
Speaker 1: their backs, and they would look up into the night sky.
32:40
Speaker 1: Great thought, huh? President on his back, looking up. This
32:46
Speaker 1: brilliant explorer next to him, looking up. My source tells
32:51
Speaker 1: me that they together would look for that faint spot
32:54
Speaker 1: of light beyond the lower left corner of the great
32:58
Speaker 1: square of Pegasus. One of them would then recite these words. There.
33:05
Speaker 1: That is the spiraled galaxy in Andromeda. It is as
33:10
Speaker 1: large as the Milky Way. And it is only one
33:14
Speaker 1: of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of 100 billion suns.
33:23
Speaker 1: each of which is larger than our sun. Pause. Roosevelt
33:29
Speaker 1: would turn and look at his friend with a smile
33:32
Speaker 1: and say, Now, I think we're small enough. Let's go
33:35
Speaker 1: to bed. Isn't that great? You can't remember the last
33:43
Speaker 1: time you laid on your back and looked up at
33:45
Speaker 1: the stars. I can't remember the last time I saw
33:48
Speaker 1: the stars in Dallas. I think they're there. Not in
33:53
Speaker 1: some distant area when you find yourself free to do it.
33:57
Speaker 1: Get alone. Get on your back. The only way you'll
34:01
Speaker 1: look is up. And let the wonder in.
34:05
Speaker 2: Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom
34:10
Speaker 2: and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments.
34:14
Speaker 2: How unfathomable his ways.
34:18
Speaker 1: Of him, source. Through him, means. To him. Ending are
34:25
Speaker 1: all things. I am nothing. You are everything. And by
34:34
Speaker 1: your mercy, you have let me be your child. That's
34:45
Speaker 1: the right mental attitude. Oh, God. Degrees or no degrees,
34:53
Speaker 1: influential or unknown, male or female, young or older, ruined
35:00
Speaker 1: past or magnificent past, significant today or struggling today, Lord God,
35:11
Speaker 1: be merciful to me, a sinner. Oh, awesome God. I
35:22
Speaker 1: bow before you. Let's pray. Father, when we survey this
35:40
Speaker 1: wondrous cross on which our Savior died, we realize after
35:45
Speaker 1: a message like this that it is the bridge that
35:49
Speaker 1: connects us the undeserving to the awesome, the depraved to deity,
35:59
Speaker 1: the unworthy to the sovereign God of glory. Thank you
36:12
Speaker 1: for the cross. Lord, our trust in you has been strengthened.
36:20
Speaker 1: As a result of hearing what we have heard. We
36:23
Speaker 1: have been reduced to nothing but an observer of the stars.
36:29
Speaker 1: A sinner trapped in a dungeon. Without your mercy coming
36:35
Speaker 1: to our relief. We would never have known the light.
36:40
Speaker 1: Our life. Our father we come back to this epical
36:46
Speaker 1: moment where we remember our Savior's body and blood. again,
36:53
Speaker 1: accept our gratitude, our profound gratitude for the sacrifice, for
37:03
Speaker 1: the perpetual mercy seat that is in operation 24-7-365. May
37:08
Speaker 1: our worship now honor you in whom we trust. In
37:24
Speaker 1: the name of Jesus, everyone said, Amen. Duplication of copyrighted
37:33
Speaker 1: material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.