God Beyond All Praising

Doxology is our subject this morning. “What on earth is that?” you may be thinking. I’ll tell you – but first please turn to Romans 11.33-36. That’s on p1139 in the Bibles. When you get there you’ll see that this short section is headed ‘Doxology’. A doxology is a hymn of praise. There are doxologies dotted all around the writings of the apostle Paul. It’s typical of him that as he approaches the end of an explanation of God’s plans and purposes in Christ, it’s as if can’t contain himself any longer, and he bursts out into praise.

I was trying to think of occasions that have generated spontaneous outbursts of heartfelt praise. You could think of a moment after Newcastle score at St James’ Park. Rare, I know, but when it happens, there’s a very loud spontaneous outburst of praise.

Or, if I dare mention it, there’s that moment on Britain’s Got Talent when at her first audition Susan Boyle opened her mouth to sing, and the judges’ jaws dropped and the whole audience burst into spontaneous, joyful applause. If you haven’t yet seen that video clip of the incident, then you’re probably in a minority by now. I admit to having watched it more than once with great delight. Last time I heard, it had been watched by 100 million people.

Or, to go from the somewhat ridiculous to the sublime – I watched ‘Amazing Grace’ the other night – the film about William Wilberforce and his decades long campaign to end the slave trade. There’s a moving scene at the end. It’s in the House of Commons and the bill to end the slave trade has just, finally, been passed. Charles Fox stands and pays a handsome tribute to the great Wilberforce who’s sitting there quietly. Then the whole house erupts with applause in appreciation of all that Wilberforce had done.

In Ephesians 3.21 Paul bursts in to praise:

… to [God] be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

And in Philippians 4.20:

To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Then in 1 Timothy 6.15-16:

15…God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no-one has seen or can see. To him be honour and might for ever. Amen.

And again in his Second Letter to Timothy – 4.18:

The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Whatever Paul says and whatever he does, he wants it all to glorify the glorious God. That is the whole purpose of his existence – and not just his existence – ours too. Indeed the purpose of all creation is to glorify its majestic creator.

So that’s what he’s doing in Romans 11.33-36. It’s a doxology – a hymn of praise to the glorious God. It’s a fitting end to chapters 9 to 11. We’ve worked through those over these last few weeks, and we’ve seen the staggering scope of God’s plan of salvation and our minds have been stretched beyond snapping point. But more than that, these verses are a fitting climax to the whole of the letter so far – all of the first eleven chapters.

Up to this point Paul has been unfolding the gospel. He’s shown us how deep is the pit of the world’s sin and need, from which we cannot escape. He’s shown us the astonishing, amazing grace of God in giving us his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for us. And he’s shown us the hope that we have, because, Romans 5.4…

… God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit…

He’s about to move on, in chapters 12-16, to the application of that grace to our lives and how we’re to live out our calling. But he can’t help himself – nor would he want to. The praise bursts out.

Let me sum up the message of these verses under these three headings, which we’ll take one by one. First, the wisdom of God is deeper than we could ever fathom. Secondly, the work of God is greater than we could ever repay. And thirdly, give glory to this glorious God. So:

First, THE WISDOM OF GOD IS DEEPER THAN WE COULD EVER FATHOM

Now, I want us to get hold of the structure of these verses before we go any further. Verses 33-35 talk about the wisdom and the work of God, and give us reason for our praise. Then verse 36 is Paul’s shout of praise.

Verse 33 introduces both the wisdom and the work of God. Then in verse 34 there’s an Old Testament quotation on the subject of God’s wisdom. And in verse 35 there’s another Old Testament quotation on the subject of the work of God. Look at verse 33:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgements, and his paths beyond tracing out!

You’ll see if your eyesight is good that verse 33 has a little footnote that gives an alternative translation here. So it says verse 33 could read, instead of ‘the riches of the wisdom and knowledge …’, ‘the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God’. I think the footnote’s the right way of reading it. So this is not just talking about the wisdom and knowledge of God. It’s talking about the riches, and the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

The riches of God is what God has.

We think of wisdom as all in the mind, but that’s not so in the Bible. Wisdom is lived. It’s not only knowing what to do. It’s doing it as well. Knowing what to do and then not doing it is pretty much the definition of folly. A wise person is a person who lives well. So the wisdom of God is what God does.

And the knowledge of God is (of course) what God knows.

So we’re thinking about what God has, does and knows. And when Paul speaks of the ‘depth’ of these things, he means that they’re too much for us to take in. Our brains aren’t big enough. The prophet Isaiah uses a similar picture when he says (this is Isaiah 40.28):

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth… his understanding no-one can fathom.

No-one can fathom it. In other words how ever hard you try, you can never reach the bottom of it. It’s too deep. Think of lowering an anchor off the side of our ship. We can let out more and more rope, until we have no more – but it’ll never reach the sea bed. There’s always more. It’s so great that it goes way beyond the limits of our ability to grasp it.

Paul is saying that all that God has and does and knows is so great and so extensive that it’s way beyond us to get a hold of it all. And he hammers that home in the second half of the verse, first in relation to God’s wisdom and secondly in relation to God’s works, v33:

How unsearchable his judgements [what he thinks], and his paths [or ‘his ways’ – what he does] beyond tracing out!

I mentioned Isaiah 40.28 about how no-one can fathom God’s understanding. Here in verse 34 Paul quotes a different verse from that same chapter – Isaiah 40.13:

“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor?”

God is God. We cannot get inside God’s mind. What he thinks is beyond our tiny minds to figure out. Now, there is a problem with that. We need to think about it for a minute.

Realising that we have no access ourselves to the mind of God is good as far as acknowledging God’s greatness is concerned. He’s in a different league, a different realm to us. We shouldn’t be surprised if something he does or says we find hard to understand. That’s what you’d expect of God. That’s good. It’s vital we realise that he’s beyond our understanding. The trouble is, that’s not good when it comes to us knowing God – relating to him, loving him. If he’s so far beyond our reach, how can we know him at all? That, of course, is what many people think about God. He [or it] is an infinitely distant, unknowable being. All we can know is that we can’t know.

So how can we know God? What’s the answer? The answer is we don’t have an answer, but God does. And his answer, you could say, is the Day of Pentecost, that we commemorate today. On the Day of Pentecost, God poured out his Holy Spirit on his people, and promised his Spirit to all who turn to him in repentance and put their faith in Jesus who laid down his life for their forgiveness. And it’s the Holy Spirit who enables us to know God. Without the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, we could not know God. Let me explain why, by taking you on a detour into another passage in another letter of Paul’s. Bear with me on this, because it’s crucially important.

Keep a finger in Romans 11, and turn on to 1 Corinthians 2.6-16. That’s on p1145 – just a few pages on.

Here in 1 Corinthians 2, Paul quotes exactly the same verse from Isaiah 40 as he does in our passage in Romans 11. It’s there at v16:

“For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?”

But what he’s doing here is explaining how as believers we can and do know the mind of the Lord.

To help us understand this, here’s a little experiment I’d like you to do. I’m going to be quiet for a moment. And I want you to decide what I’m thinking about during this time. Here goes… [silence]. Right, what do you think? Keep it to yourselves please. I’ll tell you what I was thinking about: hot porridge with sultanas on top and a glass of cool orange juice with bits in – my favourite breakfast at the moment. Who knew that? None of you. And if you thought that’s what I was thinking about that was a very jammy guess and you’re probably married to me. Now go back up to 1 Corinthians 2.11:

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him?

Answer: we can’t even know what goes on in one another’s minds – let alone the mind of God. So v11 goes on:

In the same way no-one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

And the end of v 10:

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

We can’t fathom God’s depths. But God can. The Holy Spirit can. So here’s the wonderful, wonderful thing about Pentecost (vv12-14):

We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them…

And at the end of v 16:

But we have the mind of Christ.

So Paul is saying, as it were: “There’s no way we can know what’s going on in God’s mind. He’s far too great and glorious for that. The only way we can know is if he tells us, and even then we won’t understand without the help of his Holy Spirit, who can understand. And that’s exactly what God has done. He’s revealed himself to us by telling his apostles what’s on his mind, and by giving all of us disciples his Holy Spirit so that we can understand what he’s told them.” That’s the wonder of Pentecost. God has given us his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has told us what’s on God’s mind. The permanent record of that is in this Book. And the Holy Spirit in us enables us to understand what he’s told us. So because of Pentecost, we can know about God, and we can know God personally.

That means, of course, that the moment we start speculating about what God thinks when he hasn’t told us, were simply guessing – and that’s either pointless or dangerous. He’s told us all we need to know for life and Godliness. We can’t know it all. God’s far too great and glorious for that.

Back, then, to Romans 11 on p1139. And that was all point 1: The wisdom of God is deeper than we could ever fathom. The next two points, I promise, will be shorter, and without major cross references.


Secondly, THE WORK OF GOD IS GREATER THAN WE COULD EVER REPAY

In the context of chapters 1-11, the ‘riches’ of God refers to everything available to us through all he’s done. Certainly his ‘paths’ or his ‘ways’ must also refer to what he’s done and is doing. And then the Old Testament quotation in v 35 picks up the theme. This one’s from Job 41.11:

“Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?”

In chapters 1-11 Paul’s been unfolding all that God has done and is doing and will do for the world and us through Christ. Once we’ve begun to understand all that, then the idea that it’s possible that God could owe us anything becomes ludicrous.

The truth is we owe him such a vast debt that it’s completely and utterly and eternally unpayable. The generous mercy of God through the death and resurrection of Christ and the gift of his Spirit is overwhelmingly greater than we could ever repay. We cannot and should not even begin to try. We should receive it all as a gift and live for evermore lives full of astonished and grateful praise. If you’ll allow me just one brief cross reference, let me remind you of what Paul says back in 8.32:

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things.

The front cover of the Economist magazine a couple of weeks ago asked the question: “Three Trillion Dollars Later… what have learnt about how to run the banks?” We’ve all recently learned a thing or two about debts too huge to repay. Praise God he doesn’t want us to repay our debt to him. We can’t. He just wants us to enjoy him, and love him. That is amazing grace.

Point 1: The wisdom of God is deeper than we could ever fathom. Point 2: The work of God is greater than we could ever repay. So that leaves us our response, summed up in the final point.


Thirdly, GIVE GLORY TO THIS GLORIOUS GOD

That’s how Paul ends these marvellous chapters. Verse 36:

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever and ever! Amen.

That reminds me of what Paul says about Jesus in Colossians 1. By him all things were created. In him all things hold together. And through him God was reconciling all things to himself.

God is our source, our sustainer, and our saviour. He made all things. All things have their being in him. And all things will be brought under his rule and will fulfil their purpose of glorifying him for ever. We would not exist without him. We would not survive without him. We would have no purpose without him. So to him be glory for ever and ever. And here are three ways that we can glorify this glorious God.

First, always be humble – both in mind and in spirit. Acknowledge that we can’t know God’s mind, and know that we don’t deserve and can’t earn God’s acceptance.

Secondly, always be receptive – both in mind and in spirit. Be receptive to God’s word. Be committed to the evangelical principle that the Bible is God’s word written. It’s all we need for salvation and for our knowledge of God, whose mind we can’t know without it. And be receptive to God’s grace and his gifts. Be receptive to his Holy Spirit. Accept all that God gives, on God’s terms.

Thirdly, always be grateful. Colossians 2.6-7:

6So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, 7rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

Romans 2.4:

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience…?

Always be grateful – in mind and spirit, and also in body. It’s this response to God’s unfathomable wisdom and grace that Paul moves on to in chapters 12-16. So 12.1, that we come to next time, says this:

Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.

Whatever we say with our tongues – let it be all to God’s glory. Whatever we do with our bodies – let it be all to God’s glory.

Always be humble. Always be receptive. Always be grateful.

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever and ever! Amen.