Kennystix's podcast
From God, to God, Through God
The text for this morning sermon is found in the book of Romans chapter 11 verses 33-36. And you can find it in the Pew Bible in front of you on page 947. Romans 11 starting at verse 33, "Oh the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how insertible are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways, who is 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. Would you pray with me? Say it again, Lord, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah to the Lamb. We want Christ to be exalted in this room. From you and through you and to you are all things, and now to you be the glory. Now and forever and ever. Take the glory away from us, not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name, give glory. In this room where anybody is longing for the glory themselves, show them the superior joy that comes from letting it go to God where it belongs. So come in power now and do your mighty work as you have been already. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Today we complete a six-year journey through Romans 1 to 11, which we began in April of 1998. We've seen the terrible condition of our own hearts and the hearts of all humanity in chapters 1 through 3 verse 19. We've seen the unspeakably magnificent work of God in Jesus Christ on the cross and in the resurrection as He has provided righteousness for us and a great substitution punishment for us in chapters 3, 20 through the end of chapter 5. We've seen the magnificent work of the Holy Spirit in sanctifying the body of Christ and in knitting us together with Christ and in conquering the power of sin and in plugging us into absolute security of the love of God from which we cannot be separated in chapter 6, 7, and 8. And then we've seen a magnificent display of redemptive history in chapters 9 to 11 where God has defended by His apostle, His own sovereignty, and His promise-keeping faithfulness and covenant keeping reliability. And Paul came to the end and he said, "God has now consigned all man to disobedience that He may have mercy upon all." And Paul launches spontaneously into his praise and wonder, "Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His ways and how inscrutable are His judgments, who has known the mind of the Lord so as to be His counselor, who has ever given a gift to God so that He could be repaid, no, nobody, because from Him and through Him and to Him are all things to Him and Him alone forever be the glory." That's where we're supposed to end. Flying, as it were, on the wings of affection and wonder and amazement and praise with Paul up into God, further up and further in giving Him glory, giving Him praise, laying aside any thought of giving to Him and only receiving and receiving and receiving from His bounty forever and ever so that the giver will get the glory. That's where we're supposed to end almost because there's five more chapters to go. And they are very practical chapters. Now, I just want to mention it now because there's no accident that the bridge between the massive, deep, God-exalting theology of chapters 1 to 11 and the nitty-girdy, practical, daily, love-your-neighbor kind of chapters 12 to 15, it's no accident that the bridge is worship, it's no accident that the bridge is doxology, it's no accident that the bridge is wonder and amazement and mouth-shutting stunned, "Oh, the depth of the riches." The reason that's not an accident is because all of that practical obedience that Paul is now ready to unfold for us, he calls worship. Offer your bodies a living sacrifice which is your spiritual service of worship because you have seen the mercies of God. I beseech you by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice which is now your other kind of worship. We gather here once a week to do this, and this is godly, this is god-honoring, this is right, this is good, this is not all. There comes then chapters 12, 13, 14 which is all about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday afternoon, it's all about life. And the bridge from theology to this practical life is doxology because Christian morality is not willpower religion. Christianity and its morality is not, well, God has authority to tell us what to do. I better grit my teeth and do what he says so that I can go to heaven. That's not Christianity or Christian living. Christian living is the spillover of worship. It's the practical outworking of a heart stunned by a glorious sovereign saving god, or it's nothing worse than nothing. Pharisees were worse than prostitutes. So we're not there yet, I want to linger a little longer, like 30 more minutes, with this wonder that the Apostle Paul feels in verses 33 to 36 where we saw last week he begins with, "Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God." No matter how far down you go into the depth, you can't get beneath God. You look for explanations, beneath explanations, beneath explanations, and all you get is God. There are no explanations for anything, anything beneath God. There are no purposes higher than the glory of God. So as high as you go, "All you're going to get is God." There's no purpose out there beyond God. There's no explanation down here beneath God. And in the middle, there are no decisive competitors with him, none. So from him and through him and to him is everything which leads then to verse 35, who has given a gift to him that he should be repaid. And the answer to that question is nobody. You can't give anything to God he doesn't already have and therefore you can never put him in your debt, God will never be a debtor to any man, or devil, or angel. He owes nobody anything ever, never does God owe you anything. Which leads to verse 34, a specific instance of what he doesn't receive, who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, answer nobody. One specific instance of what you cannot give God is advice. We'll be back to that, which leads now to verse 33, second half of the verse. If all things are from him and all things are unsearchably deep and you can't give God anything and you don't know his mind well enough to give him any advice, is it any wonder that we are sometimes bewildered, confounded, perplexed, and have to say, oh, how unsearchable are his ways and how inscrutable are his judgments. That's not a surprise that my mind cannot get itself to the bottom of God or all the way around his infinite circumference. Which leads then finally to verse 36 to him be glory forever. Are you happy about that? You must willingly give him all glory, or one day you will unwillingly glorify him by your damnation. I'll say that again, you live in a short time in which mercy is flowing to you. This service is one of them. And opportunity is wide for you to give God glory by receiving mercy from him. And if you choose to get glory for yourself and not to give it to him, you will one day give it to him through being damned by him. He will vindicate his justice and wrath by sentencing you to a just eternity in hell and you will never be able to rob him of his glory. Well that's the outline of the message that I just walked through with you. Let me give it to you in short form and then back up and preach it. Number one, all things are from him and through him. Point number two, nobody can give him a gift. Point number three, therefore you can't give him any advice. Point number four, his ways are inscrutable, his judgments beyond our finding out. And point number five, therefore let us all gladly give him all the glory and keep none of it for ourselves. Let's take those one at a time, number one, from him and through him, I'm at verse 36. From him and through him are all things. I'll get to to him, that'll be the last point, but let's just take from him and through him. I take that to mean that the ultimate origin and the ultimate explanation, the ultimately decisive reason for being for all things, no exceptions, is God. Everything is dependent for its existence on God at its beginning and all the way along its existence until it goes out of existence if it ever does. It is dependent on God. Ephesians 1, 11 puts it like this, "God works all things according to the counsel of his will, all things according to the counsel of his will." Romans 9, 16 puts it like this. So then it depends not on human will, but on not on human exertion or will, but on God who has mercy. Proverbs 16, 33 puts it like this, the lot, we don't use lots anymore, we would say dice. The dice are cast into the lap. We don't throw them into the lap, we throw them on a casino board. So the dice are cast in Las Vegas and every decision is from the Lord. Every roll of the dice in Las Vegas is governed by God. Every little spin of your gain that you play on the floor in your living room, spin green, God. You reach your hand into a scrabble bag and pull out three letters, God decides what letters. The lot is cast into the lap and every decision is from the Lord. All things from Him and through Him, no explanation for dice or anything beneath God, which raises lots of questions, doesn't it? The devil is not co-eternal with God. The devil is not ultimately independent of God. His existence is from God and through God and at any moment God with no injustice to anyone could put Him out of existence. The devil is doomed. He will never be saved, therefore His being sustained in existence is not to give Him a chance to be saved. Therefore, God has other reasons for letting Him exist with all His massive misery-producing power. He is sustained in existence by the living God. Every decision the devil undertakes and makes, God sees it coming and knows it beforehand and therefore, since God does nothing whimsically or capriciously has a purpose for every decision He's allowing Satan to make at this very moment everywhere in the world. Some Him and through Him are all things, and nobody frustrates His ultimate designs. Now, is there any qualification to that? Yes there is. Let me read for you, 1 John 2, 15 and 16. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him. For all that is in the world, listen carefully to this, all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride in possessions is not from the Father, but is from the world. All things are from Him. The desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life are not from the Father. So what does He mean and what does Paul mean? I take this to mean that sin does not come from God's nature. That is, sin is not an extension or an aspect of God's nature or character. God is holy. There's no unholyness in God. God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. There's no sin in God, no evil desires in God, no lust in God, no greed in God. There is no sin or darkness or unholyness in God's nature or in God's character. Therefore they do not come from His nature or His character as an extension of that nature, an aspect of that nature. Sin can be from God and through God in the sense that God is its ultimate reason for being. That is, God wills that sin be without Himself sinning. Therefore, all things are from Him in the sense of ultimate explanation, ultimate cause, decisive reason for being, but not from Him as any aspect of His nature or any aspect of His character or any extension of who He is in His essence. Let me try an illustration for you. And listen, this may work for you too. You can get a black eye in two ways, more than two, but two in this illustration. You can take a syringe full of black dye and inject it in your eyebrow and it drained down all through your blood vessels and make your eye black. Or like happened when I threw a snowball six years ago, you can hit your worship leader smack in the middle of the eye with a big white snowball and make his eye turn black. You get it, there are two ways that sin can happen, two ways that evil desires can come into being, you can get hit with a white snowball that has no blackness in it, no darkness in it, no unholyness in it and the eye got black. All things are from God, even sin, but not as part of His nature. God doesn't have to inject Himself into you, in fact, couldn't to make you a sinner. And God ordains that sin be, that is the only possible explanation for the existence of the devil today, because He is a great sinner and God lets Him exist when He has no possibility of being saved. All things are from Him and through Him, but He is no sinner, He is infinitely holy and the practical upshot of this is that we are utterly dependent on God for all things and utterly responsible and guilty for the evil in our lives. You don't have to be able to explain that, you just better believe it. Your conscience when you know it well testifies to both truths. I am guilty for my sin and God is absolutely sovereign over all things. Both of those are written on your heart when you are honest with yourself. Verse number two, verse 35, "Who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?" Answer, nobody. You cannot give God anything that is not already His because all things are from Him. He made all that is, He brought it, wheeled it into being. If you have anything that you would want to give to Him, He owns it already, it is His. You cannot give a gift to God as though He needed anything or could then be beholden to you for having received anything from you which He didn't already have. And therefore, you remain absolutely in a position of no negotiation. You have no position from which to barter. Nobody negotiates with God. Nobody says, "I have this, you have that," will trade. Or "I have this, you don't have this," I'll give. Nobody negotiates barter's sales deals with God. You either receive mercy or you die. We are receivers and we can willingly receive mercy or make an effort to rebel and be independent and self-sufficient and die. There aren't any other alternatives in a relationship like this. He owns you, you are a squatter on His territory in this universe and you better not try to pay taxes, but rather receive mercy, mercy, mercy. All are consigned to sin that there might be one and only one way to relate to God, hopefully receive, receive, receive, don't try to give your morality to God. He will not be impressed. He is impressed with one thing, His own glory. And the best way that God has to display the fullness of it is to give it and give it and give it absolutely free. And if you try to buy it with any of your morality or performances, you will offend Him mightily. Point number three, specifically don't try to give Him advice, verse 34, "For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?" Now, don't take this beyond what's intended. He has just spent 11 chapters showing us the mind of the Lord. The iceberg has come up out of the water a little bit and Paul has spent 11 chapters describing the terrain on this iceberg that stretches from the top of the sea of reality that you can see infinitely into the universe. That's just the way it has to be with infinity. You say, "Oh no, 10% is above the water." Well, if the iceberg is infinite, then 10% is infinite, isn't it? I think it is. I think 10% of infinite is infinite because there's no end, can't chop it off there and chop it off here and say, "That's 10%. So Paul has just displayed for us as much as he can in human words inspired by God what he sees above the water of this ability and we are responsible to know that as much as he has revealed it. So don't take this to mean that you can't know the mind of God at all, but you can't know it so as to be His counselor. No human being has ever known the mind of God or anything else well enough to come to God with any advice. Now, here's a thought that should sober us. Maybe some of you are in this category. Is it not remarkable that the one thing Paul chooses to point out of all the things that you cannot give God, the one thing that Paul chooses to point out that we can't give God namely advice is the one thing that most sinners give God most of in this world. Not love, not faith, not hope, not obedience, not joy, but why didn't you? You should have, where were you? The world rings with advice for God. The one thing that Paul says explicitly, we dare not give him. The world gives him most. And if you're in that category, which many of you are, I beseech you, lay down your pride. Don't presume to counsel the Almighty. He is infinitely wise. His knowledge is infinite. The riches of His grace are infinite. If you can explain things, makes no difference whatsoever. What matters is that we put our mouths on, our hands on rebellious mouths and give Him no counsel, but say, I submit, I yield, I receive, help me, oh God, with my own sin and don't let me impute sin to you. It's a strange thing that humans, humans would not only tell God what He should do by way of counsel and advice, but would warn Him that if He doesn't, we're not going to believe. As if a little child should say to his pediatric physician as a diabetic, don't stick me anymore with that. Because if you stick me again with that, I'm not coming back. Don't counsel God, it is suicide. Don't warn God that you're not coming back because it is suicide, point number four. Since we can't give Him anything and since we can't counsel Him and since He's very deep and very rich and very wise and very knowledgeable, it's not surprising that we're often baffled. Verse 33, second half of the verse, how insertible are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways. Now we see through a mirror as in a mirror dimly, then face to face. Now we see in part, know in part, then we shall know even as we are known. Friends, we've got to be content with partial knowledge. Is that okay? We've got to be content with partial wisdom. We've got to look at the pain in the world and in our own lives and not get in God's face about it. We've got to. We've got to. This is not optional. We've got to get beyond counseling God. Our lives depend on this. We have to be content with finitude and fallibility and rebellion in our own hearts that we ought to be dealing with rather than accusing Him. So much sin and John Piper, I shouldn't blame my wife, I shouldn't blame my kids. I shouldn't blame this staff or you or God. I should be very concerned with all my energy about putting to death my rebellion. He's inscrutable to me in many ways. I've just seen enough in Jesus, I've seen enough at the cross, I've seen enough in the way He takes children in His arms, I've seen enough in the way He touches lepers, I've seen enough in the way He raises up a prostitute and says, "You're going into the kingdom before those religious prigs." I've seen enough of Jesus that I trust Him. I trust Him with the universe. I trust Him because He says all authority and heaven and on earth is mine. Trust me with the universe and I'm asking you to trust Him. Last point, number five, verse 36 at the end, so now we'll finish the trilogy from Him, through Him, and now we say to Him, and then He finishes it. To Him be glory forever. To Him be the honor, to Him be the praise, to Him be the credit. So I close with these questions. Are you glad that you exist to display the glory of God? Are you glad that God created the universe to put His infinite beauty and power on display? You glad about that? That He's the center of it all, the goal of it all? Does that make you say, "Yes, yes!" Or do you recoil from that wanting for yourself some of that glory? Are you glad that Christ came into the world to die, to vindicate the justice of God in justifying the ungodly, and that Jesus Christ came into the world to display the beauty and the righteousness of His Father, so that He would be seen to be glorious, that Jesus, are you glad that Jesus Christ came into the world to repair all the injury that you and I have done to the reputation of the glory of God? Are you glad Jesus came to do that? Or are you all wrapped up in, "I want to get out of hell, that's all I want?" I just want relief from my psychological guilt, that's all I want. I just want a better marriage, that's all I want. Or are you drawn out when you hear these things? When you hear these things, are you drawn out to say, "Oh, yes, I am glad that Jesus Christ came into the world in order to vindicate the justice of God in doing the impossible namely justifying the ungodly John Piper?" And I am so glad He came into the world to repair all the injury that I have done to the reputation of the glory of God by preferring television and food and family and job and vacation and toys to Him. What would I do if Christ had not repaired the injury that I do to God every day? My trembling is glory, in my half-hearted love for Him. Are you glad that the glory of God has been vindicated by the work of Christ? That make you say, "Yes, inside." Or do you just want to go home and watch television? This is why God created the universe, why He ordained history, why He sent the Son, why you exist. He did it so that people would see Him in His beauty and power and magnificence and savor, spiritually, taste and see that the Lord is good and glorious and powerful and magnificent and just and merciful and kind and true and reliable. See these things with the eyes of your soul, taste them with the taste buds of your heart and then show it by a life of love and sacrifice that is satisfied in Him and doesn't need the approval of people anymore, just the freest of all human beings moving as a giver through the world. You can't give God anything, you can only receive, but then you become a giver to everybody. Let's pray. Father Sharad asked me before I got up here, "I think God wants to do something here today," and He didn't know and I don't know what that might be, just a sense that in worship you were at work in an unusual way. So I just pause here with a couple of minutes left to be quiet. I just want to be quiet and whatever it is that you want to do here by way of helping people, saving people, healing people, reconciling people, let's just be quiet for a minute and let God work in our lives. [BLANK_AUDIO]
John Piper | Do you love the thought that you exist to make God look good? If not, you may be committing spiritual suicide.