I call upon you to contemplate God. I know that we are gathered to worship. We have just sung, prayed, and read Scripture together to help do that. We intentionally set aside time each Sunday to gather in this place to worship God through Jesus Christ. We prepare ourselves in mind and body to worship. Yet worship does not happen because we participate in the elements of worship each week. Unless we contemplate God as He is, as He has revealed Himself through Scripture and ultimately, in His Son and by His Spirit, we will only go through the motions of worship without worshiping. We may sing, pray, hear the Word, and even add the voice of “Amen,” yet fail to worship if we fail to contemplate God.
He is a massive subject! No sermon or lifetime of sermons can begin to disclose the enormity of His being and the glory of His works, yet each Sunday, gathering as we do this day, we try to think upon Him. Our aim is not to think upon a God of our imagination or making. Many do just this. They come up with nice little phrases and ditties which they apply to this Infinite Being, as though He were a new product for us to consume. That is idolatry. But God will not be worshiped in that way.
Carelessly and tritely, many assemble on the Lord’s Day with no thought of worshiping the One who created them and sustains them by His power. If for one moment He withdraws His mercy, they all perish for eternity. Each breath drawn is His gift. Every ray of light seen comes at His pleasure. Yet multitudes think nothing of this—or of Him. They sing the songs and tolerate the sermon, hoping of course that it will entertain their senses. But God is absent from their thoughts!
How unlike this was the Apostle Paul at the end of Romans 11! He was consumed with thoughts of God in His glory and mercy! As was the case in several of his letters to churches or individuals, he burst out in doxology—or praise to God.
Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen (1 Timothy 1:17).
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen (Ephesians 3:20-21).
Yes, for Paul, the contemplation of God led to worship. Indeed, as we think rightly about God it inevitably leads to worship. And that’s what we see in our text.
Some complain that Romans 1-11 is just too theological, and therefore, being theological impractical. Yet good theology always leads to worship; and proper worship is always rooted in good theology. Nothing is more practical than to plunge into the ocean depths of the revelation of God! And nothing is more heaven-like than to contemplate Him with passionate worship.
And why shouldn’t we worship when we pause at the end of Romans 11? Think of where we have trod together. We’ve considered the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the economy of God. We’ve contemplated the gospel as the righteousness of God through faith in Christ. This need for righteousness was made crystal clear in chapters 1-3 as we considered the sinfulness of man— to the last person, every part of our being affected by sin. Yet remarkably, God made a way for sinners to be counted righteous. That way is not through adherence to the law but through the righteousness of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Eternal justice that held us in its crosshairs was satisfied by the death of the Incarnate God on behalf of all the redeemed. Now, in union with Him, believers are legally and morally affected by the death and resurrection of Christ. A new obligation to live as new men and women in Christ pulsates through us. The Holy Spirit actually leads those redeemed by Christ and adopted into His family. Paul declares the certainty of God’s providential care all the way to glory, assuring us that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Then he pulls back the curtain. It’s not that Paul understood all things about God. Though he was caught up to the “third heaven,” as he described it, and “heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak,” he only knew a little about the depths of God (2 Cor. 12:1-6). Thankfully, the Holy Spirit gave him utterance to write those things that knew! So beginning in chapter 9, he considers the judgments and ways of God with Jews and Gentiles. He delved into the electing grace of God, showing that salvation is all of grace and therefore, all of God. He reminds us of the free offer of the gospel to whoever calls on the name of the Lord for salvation. Then he tells us remarkable things: when God has completed His saving work among the Gentiles He will again turn to the Jews. Massive numbers of Jews will be brought to faith in Christ and join Gentiles in the church as the Bride of Christ for eternity. So none of us should become arrogant or boastful as though we moved God toward us or we convinced Him to save us. Instead, Paul ends in 11:32 on a sobering note: “For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.” Now its time for doxology! How should we praise God in light of His saving work among the nations?
Paul begins with his own exclamatory particle: “Oh!” Why does one use such a short phrase? It expresses a sense of pause, wonder, and adulation over what follows. It calls attention, special attention to wondrous truths. Do you ever break out in “Oh”? It’s a pause in your life and thought. You lose focus on the passing, temporal things of this world and focus on what is eternal and of ultimate value. What leads to the “Oh” in Paul’s thought? It’s as though he sees something yet he realizes that he only sees the surface of what is truly present. “Oh, the depths!” He knows that he cannot understand it all—that will take all eternity! He knows that he has seen wondrous things and set them forth in his letter to the Romans. Yet he realizes that the finite mind can grasp only so much of the infinite realities of our God.
“Depth” inevitably makes us think of ocean depths. When I was a small kid it was a big deal to get to swim in the “deep end” of the pool. Deep was eight feet. The older I got the more careful I had to be when diving into the deep end, lest I crack my head on the bottom. It was deep when I was small but as I got older the deep end did not seem so deep. Then I swam in the ocean, seeing depths of 20-30 feet around small islands and reefs. I could see the bottom even when I could not reach it due to the pressure and current. But then I saw what I could not see. Clear blue water stopped and gave way to dark, mysterious depths, dropping 1500 feet off a shelf to the depths. I could see clearly in the 20-30 feet deep portions but the part that dropped to the depths remained a mystery. Yet even the 1500 feet drop is shallow compared to the massive depths extending miles below the ocean’s surface in the Pacific.
Now, consider what Paul is doing. He looks with praise to God from two angles. On one hand, he praises God for what he has seen and what he has written of the saving work of God through Christ. He worships God for what God has revealed to Him. But on the other hand, he worships and praises God for what he cannot see of God and what he cannot know of His judgments and ways. Worship is not just what we know about God but it is also recognizing that there is much more to Him that we do not know and cannot fathom. We do not worship Him as though He were one of us with a beginning and ending, with accomplishments that can be fully traced and recorded.
We have exhaustive biographies available on a number of important figures in history such as Lincoln or Churchill. But Paul laid no claim to an exhaustive treatise on the being of God or on the works and ways of God. Nothing exhaustive here! But oh, how it exhausts our finite minds to try to fathom the depths of God!
What regions of “depth” does the Apostle contemplate? He identifies three attributes of God while pointing to two actions that result from His attributes.
I think the ESV better captures the Greek, though it can be translated as found in the NASB. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!” Some scholars argue that “riches” simply describes what Paul saw in God’s wisdom and knowledge. Though I would not argue that point, it seems that Paul uses “riches” in reference to the grace of God in Christ. Consider these statements. “Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4) “And He did so to make know the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom he also called…” (9:23-24). “Now if their transgression is riches for the world and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be!” (9:12) We can go further in seeing how Paul used “riches” in Ephesians 1:7-8, “riches of His grace which He lavished on us,” 1:18, “what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,” 2:7, “so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus,” and 3:8, “To me…this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ.” Do you notice a common denominator? “Riches” focuses on the grace of God shown in His saving work through Jesus Christ. When Paul thought on Jesus Christ’s redemptive mission and the Father sending the Son to do that work, he saw it as “riches” beyond anything held by the world. No man, company, nation, or collection of nations comes even remotely close to the riches of God through Jesus Christ!
Each year Forbes comes out with their richest people issue. We ooh and aah at the buying power of those topping the list. But what are they and what is their wealth in light of the eternal gospel? They will soon pass away and so will their wealth. But the gospel lasts for eternity; its value is found in the Person and work of Jesus Christ the Lord!
Wisdom has to do with action. It is not just smartness but rather it is the insight to take the right actions in a given situation. “Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom…of God!” His wisdom answers the question of how? How will You deliver Your creation from the effects of the fall? How will You get glory out of such a sinful world? How will You rescue those You elected before the foundation of the world? How will You satisfy Your eternal justice and yet still have a people for Yourself? How will You accomplish the work of Your kingdom when the world has rejected Your Son? How will You bring the nations together in white-hot worship of Your name and as a display of Your glory?
We stretch our brains on trying to figure how to work through a complicated equation or how to put together a difficult puzzle or how to accomplish some large project laid in our laps. We also struggle in other ways, such as with how to handle the sorrow and grief that comes our way, how to live with an incurable disease, how to turn an erring child around, and thousands of other things. But so often we admit that our wisdom for such things runs dry. We cry out to Him who has infinite wisdom to give us insight for right action in the difficulties of life (James 1:5). Why do we ask Him? Because He alone possesses all wisdom: “In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).
What Paul has particularly in mind are those wonderful truths concerning our salvation that he has set forth in these chapters of Romans. Here God displayed wisdom to turn the effects of the fall around, to glorify His name in a sinful world, to rescue His elect, to satisfy His eternal justice through Christ, to declare His kingdom and its King, and to save the elect from every people group. “Oh the depth of the…wisdom…of God!”
“Oh the depth of the…knowledge of God!” What does God know? Everything, of course; but in practical terms, what does that mean? A.W. Tozer in The Knowledge of the Holy, expressed it so well:
God knows instantly and effortlessly all and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell….
Because God knows all things perfectly, he knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything, he is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their own good) does he seek information or ask questions [quoted by J.M. Boice, Romans: God and History, 9-11, p. 1149, from Tozer, pp. 61-62].
“How unsearchable are His judgments!” Paul goes back to the idea of “depth” when he refers to God’s judgments as “unsearchable.” They cannot be fathomed. We cannot get to the bottom of them. What does he mean by “judgments”? We must think particularly of God’s justice in light of His moral law. It is His actions due to the fall of man, His response to every breach of His law, His justice toward every act of idolatry and unbelief, and His justice toward the nations that have continued worshiping the creature rather than the Creator.
Justice has been a large part of this epistle beginning in the first chapter when Paul showed the reality of man’s sin and the “wrath of God…revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (1:18). Yet it is at this very point that men often recoil over the declarations of divine judgment. And why do we recoil? It is due to our own sympathy with sin and scant knowledge of God. We expect God to let judgment slide. Yet to do so would contradict His moral character and besmirch the glory of His name in the creation. So even when we do not understand His judgments we must recognize His wisdom displayed in them—and so glorify and worship Him for His judgments (even as is done in heaven, cf. Rev. 7).
“How…unfathomable His ways!” The word literally means that God’s ways are “not to be tracked out” [ELKGNT, 338-339]. We might track an animal in the snow or in the soft dirt but sometime the animal seems to vanish. It jumps upon a rock or springs forward with a leap so that we lose sight of its path. How foolish we are to think that we can track God’s ways! The “ways” of God are the multiplied actions and decisions that He makes with reference to His eternal purposes. This includes His judgments on the nations as well as His saving work among the nations. It includes the tragedies of the individual and the natural disasters that destroy communities. Would I dare to ascribe to God such things? Indeed, but His ways have an aim that we cannot fathom. He is the One who works “all things together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (8:28). His ways follow His purpose. While we focus on a small piece of the puzzle of human existence He sees the whole picture at one time. No detail is hidden. No glitch interrupts His plans.
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasure up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will…
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain [William Cowper, God Moves in Mysterious Ways].
So how do you respond to God’s riches, wisdom, knowledge, judgments, and ways? Do they leave you with perplexity? Or do they lead you to doxology?
Paul goes back to two well-known passages from the Old Testament to ask questions leading to clearer understanding of God’s character and ways. The first is from Isaiah 40 and the second from Job 35. The questions probe our whining against God and humble us in the dust. “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” Did God ever ask your advice before making a divine decision? How silly, and yet many times we find ourselves trying to tell God what He needs to do as though He needs our counsel. Isaiah launches into one of the most majestic passages in God’s Word, describing God’s handiwork in creation and how small mankind and the world is compared to Him. Would an engineer designing a bridge across the Mississippi ask his toddler for advice on building specifications? Would a neurosurgeon ask his five-year old how to carry out the complexities of repairing a damaged brain? Then why would we dare think that the Creator needs our two-cents? Our God is self-sufficient in every decision. All that He does is good and wise, even when we cannot fathom it.
“Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him again?” Everyone is in a position of obligation. None of us would have a life or family or job or education or food on the table had someone not given to us at some point. There is no such thing as a self-made person. Some certainly work harder and more independently than others but even if in a small way, someone else contributed to their lives. But not so with God! As Paul has already set forth, God is not obligated to us in any way. That’s why salvation is all of grace and never payback for acts of merit. He is the only being in the universe that is self-sufficient.
How does this affect our worship? Pause to consider what you owe God. If “everything” does not come to mind, then think again. Now, contemplate how God owes nothing to anyone; no one holds Him in debt. Yet this same God has given freely to you! Can you be silent in the face of such generosity, especially when it comes to saving grace?
The doxology ends with a summary declaration. It looks at the foundation of every detail in our lives and the universe. It considers the means that the universe and all within it functions. And it reveals the grand aim of everything in existence. “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” Three little prepositions take us from the origin of all things in God, to the sustaining of all things by God, and finally to the purpose for all things existing for His glory. Whether we see it or not, whether scientists have discovered it or not, whether we understand it or not—everything has its existence in the Lord; and everything has its ultimate purpose for His glory.
Take a look back at the declaration of the gospel as the righteousness of God, the explanation of the sinfulness of humanity, the gracious act of God propitiating His own just demands through the death of His Son, the assurance of sanctification and glorification for those redeemed by Christ, the electing grace of God, and finally, God returning in mercy to do a saving work among the Jewish people. There is one reason for all these things: the glory of God forever. Is His glory the aim of your life? “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”
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