Heartland Family Productions
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
The Power of the Cross - Part Three
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It’s limitless. It’s inexhaustible. Aren’t you glad that God will never have an economic crisis? He will never have a sub-prime mortgage crisis. His riches are inexhaustible. He says, “My God shall supply all your needs.” From what source? Where’s he going to get what he needs? What’s he going to get? What’s needed? All of our needs in this room and every other believer everywhere else—where’s it all going to come from?
It’s according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. His riches. “Oh, the depth of the riches of God.” They’re infinitely beyond what we can fathom, what we could ever mine or match. That means that the riches of God are always more than what you need in your situation. “Oh, the depth of the riches of God.”
And then, “Oh, the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God.” I’ll just keep those together for brevity here at this point. The depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
God has complete wisdom and knowledge. He knows everything about everything. Everything about the world, everything about history, everything about the future, everything about elections, everything about economies and where they’re headed, and not only does He know everything about them in the macro picture, but He knows everything about your life.
He knows where you’ve been, your history, the things that have been done to you, the things you’ve done.
- He knows everything about your present.
- He knows things about your past and your present that you have not told a single soul on earth.
- He knows all about your future, too. He knows it all! The depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
- He knows about your family situation.
- He knows about your financial needs.
- He knows about your physical challenges.
- He knows about your motives and your sins and your fears and your insecurities. He knows mine, too. He knows it all.
The wisdom and the knowledge of God are infinitely greater than ours. And as an example of that, in the context of this passage, chapters 9 through 11 of Romans, Paul leads us to respond that the human mind could never have come up with a way that sinners could be justified or declared righteous before a holy God.
We could not have found a way to do that. But the wisdom of God found a way. You say, “So what does that mean for me?” It means the wisdom of God knows how to deal with your situation, as complex, convoluted, impossible as it may seem, oh the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
Paul goes on to say, “How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways.” His judgments, His decisions, His decrees—they are unsearchable, beyond our capacity to fathom.
And His ways, the means that He chooses and uses to fulfill His purposes, the ESV that I’m reading says, “His ways are inscrutable.” The New American Standard says, “They are unfathomable.” If you’re using the King James, it says, “His ways are past finding out.”
Dictionary.com defines inscrutable this way (it’s not a word we use every day, so let me just give you this little definition): “incapable of being searched into or understood by inquiry or study; impossible or difficult to be explained or accounted for satisfactorily; incomprehensible; not easily understood; mysterious.”
No human being can fathom the judgments and the ways of God. No matter how brilliant that person may be, no matter how hard he or she tries, we can never get to the bottom, never explore the depth and the breadth and the width and the height and the length of the judgments and the ways of God.
If you do a Google search for “judgments of God,” you’ll come up with 313,000 hits. If you do a search for “the ways of God,” you get 1,006,000 hits. Now, I just want to say that if any one of us could ever read and master any one of those entries, we would barely have skimmed the surface of the depths of His ways. We cannot know all that He is doing. We cannot know why He is doing what He is doing. I once heard pastor Charles Swindoll say, “Don’t try to unscrew the inscrutable.” There are some things that are hidden and locked for this time in the mind of God, and you have to leave them there.
I heard Dr. John Piper say in a message years ago something that really stuck in my heart. I’ve shared it with many people over the years in conversations and counseling situations, and I want you to remember this. He said, "In every situation, in every circumstance in your life [think about what you’re facing right now, and just apply this], in every situation, God is always doing a thousand different things that you cannot see and you do not know."
It’s true. You may be able to see a few things that God is doing. “Oh, that makes sense.” But God’s doing a thousand different things that you cannot see and you do not know.
I shared that quote with a mom the other day who is heartbroken over a prodigal daughter. We talked about how unsearchable are the judgments of God and how inscrutable are His ways. I shared that quote with her, and she said, “I need that hanging in my home where I can look at it all the time.”
We need that hanging in our hearts. God is at work. You cannot see what He’s doing; you do not know. He doesn’t owe us an explanation, but He is at work. You can never exhaust or fully explore the ways of God. We cannot see the end. We cannot see the outcome. We cannot fathom the means that God has devised to fulfill His holy purposes.
Now, in verses 34 and 35, Paul goes on to ask three questions. They’re rhetorical questions, and the answer to each question is the same.
First question, verse 34, “For who has known the mind of the Lord?” What’s the answer? Let me hear you. No one has known the mind of the Lord.
Or, second question, “Who has been His counselor?” What’s the answer? I can’t hear you really well. No one has been God’s counselor. Isaiah 40 tells us, “Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or what man chose Him his counsel?”
No one! Third question, “Who has given a gift to Him,” to God, “that he might be repaid?” What’s the answer? No one. Job 41, “Who has first given to Me,” God says, “that I shall repay him? Whatever is under the whole Heaven is mine” (verse 11).
So how can we give anything to God and expect that He owes us something? Now, the implications of those three questions are staggering.
If we could just lay hold of this in our hearts, God never needs to consult with anyone about anything. He never needs input. He never needs counsel. He never needs advice, not even mine, not yours. He has limitless wisdom. He is self-sufficient. He is independent. He never needs help. He never needs a hotline. He never has to call directory assistance.
And I’m not trying to be trite, I’m just saying, God needs nothing and no one. He’s complete. He doesn’t need anything outside of Himself.
Now, how opposite are we? We are utterly, totally, absolutely, dependent. You say, “Well, I’m sitting here.” How are you breathing? It’s God on whom we depend for every breath. We need Him. He doesn’t need us. We can’t tell Him what to do. He makes no mistakes. He’s not indebted to anyone. He does not owe us anything.
As I’ve been pondering that, the obvious question in my own heart is, “So why do I get so bent out of shape when things don’t go my way?” As if God owed me something. He owes us nothing. We owe Him everything.
Nothing ever occurs to God. Nothing ever surprised Him. He never has to scramble to come up with a solution. He never has an emergency come up. He knows everything. He foresees everything.
I was thinking about the news this morning, and it struck me that God doesn’t follow current events. God determines all events, past, present, and future. He never has to figure out what His next move will be. So what does that mean? It means there’s no place for criticism, or doubt, or fear, or anger, or second-guessing, or arguing, or disputing God’s choices.
Ladies, we’ve got to get it into our heads and hearts, He is God, and we are not. He’s sovereign,; He is all-wise. His ways are unfathomable, incomprehensible. We can’t understand Him with our finite minds and perspective.
Now, God’s ways do not always seem right to human reason and sense. Sometimes God’s ways are hard, painful, confusing, confusing to us, not to Him. Well, we stand in a long line of sisters who have been faced with the inscrutable ways of God.
Next Time: God's Ways Don't Always Seem Right