When You Do Not Know (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth and we are about the Lord Jesus Christ and his work, the one who never compromised, and of course his work at Calvary. You look at all the attributes of God and not one of them was compromised.

Hence the name No Compromise Radio. Hence my new intro music. I think you'll start to like it after a while. I think you'll start to like it after a while. Working on a new book, Gospel Assurance, a 30-day devotional.

It's a smaller version, easier to read than the 31-day guide. Two pages for every day instead of sometimes 10, 11, 12. We'll see how that goes. I mean, if it helps people, fine. It's just a work and then off to Amazon we go.

Then you can say I published another book. Another one without my material. That's S. Lewis Johnson. That's not my material. I did write a long introduction. Gospel Assurance, that's not my material, but I did write a long introduction.

And Gospel Assurance, the devotional, I did write a long introduction. And do you know what? When all is said and done and I'm dead, it doesn't matter how many books I wrote, right? I hope my children might like some of them.

They might hear their dad's voice in it. In them, maybe my grandchildren might read a book or two. And after that, I'm long forgotten. I don't think any of these are going to make the classics of the Christian faith.

Oh, if you want to order the Gospel Assurance book, the current one, the 30-day guide, and you'd like to order that, it's Amazon. Or if you want to order a bunch, you can email me. Probably sold, I don't know, 400 of those from people saying I'd like to order some bulk books.

So, all that to say, thank you. It was a good run while it lasted. I have other ideas that I'm working on. But right now, I've just been enjoying my grandson Amos and getting ready for the kids to come home for Christmas.

And that's kind of what I've been doing. Oh, and I did the Gospel Assurance series on American Gospel Television, AGTV. If you don't have a subscription, you can get a free week subscription and then just watch all the shows and jam them in.

I mean, if I have to be known for something on No Compromise Radio Ministry, I hope it's Christ-centered. I hope it's duplex gratia, Christ for pardon, Christ for power. I hope it is law gospel. I hope it is three theological covenants.

I hope it is assurance of faith. They kind of all go together, don't they? I mean, when you have objective assurance in Christ Jesus for pardon and for power, you are granted assurance, right? Can we just put all those together?

Kind of like the Heidel cast, Theo cast, Pactam cast, No Compromise cast, all getting together for a large brouhaha in January, live in Escondido. We're going to talk about what makes us tick, kind of the things I talked about, sola fide, et cetera.

And in the midst of life, we are in debt, et cetera. Where does that come from? It's a lyric from someone I just quoted. We're in the book of Ecclesiastes, and today we're in Ecclesiastes 11, continuing from yesterday's show.

Faith in the Face of Uncertain Futures

When you don't know what to do, when you don't know the future, when life is uncertain, when life is unpredictable or unpredictable, when there are terrors on every side, when there's bad things that have happened, will happen, are happening, what does a Christian do?

A Christian who doesn't know those things still trusts in the one that does. That's Ecclesiastes 1 to 6. And we didn't make it but to verse 4 last time. When you don't know what to do because of uncertain realities in the future, in a fallen world full of pain and sorrow and death, what do you do?

You walk by faith. Galatians 3, the just shall live by faith. Hebrews 10, the just shall live by faith. Romans 1, the just shall live by faith. And there's another one in there someplace. Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, and there's another.

I cannot believe. That's how bad my memory is these days. Obviously, Habakkuk 2, 4, the just shall live by faith, but I believe four times the New Testament, Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, and then what?

I don't know. What? I mean, I could start thinking about, okay, what are the books of the Bible? I mean, maybe we could do that, right? You start going through and you're like, huh. All right. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Acts, and the Letter to the Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1 and 2, 3 and John, Judah, and Revelation, and it still didn't help me.

Just live by faith. Let's see if I type that in, what will happen? Galatians, Romans, Hebrews, is that it? And then Habakkuk, maybe I'm thinking of those four, and I just forgot to say it's all the books of the Bible.

I mean, in all the books of the Bible. It doesn't matter. Well, it does matter, but for the show today, it doesn't matter. When you don't know, what do you do? You look online. And what do you find? Not a whole lot.

Crickets. I think I have a crickets button here. There you go. All right. Verse 5 of Ecclesiastes 11, as you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

Now, that's one of the coolest verses in all the Bible, Ecclesiastes 11, 5. See, Habakkuk 2, Hebrews 10, Galatians 3, Romans 1, they all go together. Even with our science today, we still can't figure out how that all happens and what happens there.

I mean, do you know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child? The answer is no. And if we don't know that, how can we know the providential working of God who makes everything?

Obviously, the psalmist said, my frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. We don't really know how life comes to being and how the soul gets placed in the child.

Do we know as much as God knows? Obviously, no, we don't. And since we don't know that, it's okay to just trust him. He knows, we don't know. Of course, Jesus meets Nicodemus. In John 3, the wind blows wherever it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So, it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. You get to see the effects, but you don't know how it happens. You just see the fruit. Okay, what about the human spirit? What's going on in the womb there?

This is amazing. I can't figure that out. It's beyond me. It's the mysteries of creation. It's mysteries of providence. Now, some make it seem like the translation is how bones grow in the womb. I think that's NIV-ish.

You do not know what is the way of the Spirit or how bones grow in the womb. That's English authorized version. Not English, but authorized version, which isn't English. You do not know what is the way of the Spirit in the bones of the womb.

You don't know how the Spirit comes to the bones of the womb. Those are other ways you could translate it. But ultimately, whatever it means in this context, it's a bigger principle. You don't know what's going on in the womb and how it all happens.

I mean, you can observe it. That's right. But you can't do it. You can't figure it out. So, if you can't do that, well, you're going to go to a higher pay grade, the origin of the human spirit, how the little baby grows.

That should tell us we don't know. I, when it comes to the Spirit going into the body of a baby, I don't know. I, Mike Evendroth, am ignorant. And if I say that, which is true, then I can also say I'm ignorant to the providential hand of God.

I can look backward and say, oh, I see His working now, and I see how many things have come together. But even there, that's just partial. I don't know everything, right? I can only see it in my own life, maybe in the lives of others to a smaller degree, and then many other people.

I have no idea. Faith, though, trusting in the Lord Jesus, walking by faith, is the perfect and right response. We don't have to say, now, I can't believe. We say, because of that, I do believe. And I can't explain it.

You can't find a wise person who can figure it out. It's a mystery. You can put a little camera in the womb and film, but you can't figure it out. And Solomon's advice is to say, you know what? Stop trying to figure out how God works, especially in the future.

You can't do it. You trust God with the future, you trust God with the results, you trust God with eternity, and you don't know where the wind blows. You don't know how it blows. You just see the effects and providential hand of God.

Sometimes you see the effects, and that should not lend itself to you or to me to be lazy, to be fatalistic, to be irrational, to be sinful. Remember the hymn that says, I do not know how the Spirit moves convincing men of sin, revealing Jesus in his word, creating faith in him.

But I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. We still trust. We say, uncle, theologically, we don't know what God's doing, but we're not going to try to unscrew the inscrutable, and we know we're responsible, and we're going to focus on redemptive issues.

We're going to set our minds on things above, not on things that are on earth. We know we've died, and our life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then we will be revealed with him in glory.

And the mystery is not going to hinder our belief or our service. We are going to walk by faith. Since we have not commanded the morning, since our days began, and we have not caused the dawn to know its place, we'll trust God.

Since we have not sent forth lightnings that they may go forth, and we say to them, where are you? And they say to us, here we are. Then we will walk by faith. That's Job. God says, I know. We say, I don't know, but God knows.

I trust him. That's the issue here. Uh, I surrender. I say, I give up. I tap out. Remember even in chapter eight of Ecclesiastes, when I applied my heart to know wisdom, Solomon said, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep.

Then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that it is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.

I mean, it's built into the system that we can't know. Why would they, we would then, why would we then worry? Matthew Henry, leaving the Lord to clear up all the difficulties in his own time, we may cheerfully enjoy the comforts and bear up under the trials of life while peace of conscience and joy in the Holy Ghost will abide in us through all outward changes and when flesh and heart shall fail.

Even an unbeliever wrote, our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance. Do the secret things belong to the Lord? Yes. And God doesn't even expect you to know those. How good is that?

Now that's interesting thought. Theologians call this concept of us not being able to understand God since God is transcendent and other and different. We call that, theologians call that the incomprehensibility of God.

And you hear that in verses like this, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised and his greatness is unsearchable, Psalm 145. Behold, those are but the outskirts of his ways and how small a whisper do we hear of him, but the thunder of his power, who can understand?

I mean, when you see things going on in the earth, it's just the fringes of his ways. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts, Isaiah 55.

Romans 11, oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor? I mean, God is incomprehensible.

I mean, think about it. We're finite. God is infinite. And therefore, God has no limitations. And there's this huge gap between finite and infinite creature, creator distinction. Baving said the distance between God and us is the gulf between the infinite and the finite, between eternity and time, between being and becoming, between all and nothing.

I mean, you just try to get your mind wrapped around that and you think, wow, how can I fully know God? Well, we can't. We can know plenty about God, what he's revealed, but we can't know everything because we're creatures.

One, two, we're sinful, we're fallen, and our minds have been distorted and perverted and confused. And even though we are redeemed and we have a desire to have the mind of Christ and the word is renewing us and washing us, we still can't think properly.

It's like God is putting out his message on the FM receiver and we've got a broken AM antenna. Once we're saved, we've got that FM antenna now, but it's still not perfect. We will be perfect one day in glory.

Sin is real and it has affected us. And I also want to say it's built into the system, as I alluded to before, for us not to know who God is. That's how God has designed it. The secret things belong to the Lord.

He purposely doesn't tell us everything. He purposely has told us a lot. We have a whole Bible, but he hasn't told us everything. And in heaven, when we're sinless, we'll still be finite. And we won't know the knowledge that God knows of himself.

We'll know what God reveals to us. And the good news is forever and ever, he will be the object of your worship, your study, and you could learn and love forever and ever. Many people think that because God's incomprehensible, it makes him far off, stoic, static, distant, and it suppresses worship.

Does that suppress worship to you, such a God? When I read you those verses in Psalm 145 and Romans 11 and Isaiah 55, did that suppress your worship? No. Like with Thomas Watson said, learn to admire what you cannot fathom.

Isn't that good? Learn to admire what you cannot fathom. So, I've got to get to the bottom of this. No, no, you need to worship. I need to unsolve, I need to solve this riddle. No, no, you need to worship.

I need to overcome this issue. No, no, you need to worship. He's a person. He's not a riddle. And though we can't perfectly understand, we can understand what he has given us to understand. Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, God, Solomon writes.

How much less this house that I have built, 1 Kings 8. Who alone can fully and wholly understand all there is to know about God and his works? God's incomprehensibility severely limits the answer to this question.

Only God can comprehend himself. We as finite humans can barely understand ourselves, right? I don't even get myself. I don't understand my wife sometimes. Well, how much more the transcendent and eternal God, whether before the fall, after the fall, or in glory?

God is a great being, and we cannot get our minds wrapped around him completely, because we are creatures. People these days are starving for the glory and greatness of God. And this great incomprehensibility, what we call it, should satisfy your longing soul.

God's immense. God's beyond human reasoning. He's higher than any logical system or thought or philosophy. As Robert Morey said, he's not mentally manageable. How can we explain God exhaustively? No, then he wouldn't be God.

He's always beyond our grasp intellectually, theologically too. This is the godness of God. God is God, and there is no other. Tozer said, to say that God is infinite is to say that he's measureless. Measurement is the way created things have been accounting for themselves.

It describes limitations, imperfections, and cannot apply to God. Job 26. I quoted it earlier, a different translation. Behold, these are the fringes of his ways. If the meager fringe of God is this great, how incredible must be the inner workings of God?

And we can worship them. We can walk by faith. When you don't know what God is doing, when you don't know the future, when you don't know what the next catastrophe is going to be, what do you do? You still walk by faith.

That's the point. Verse 6, in the morning sow your seed, and evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. We don't know, so we leave it in God's hands.

What's the old phrase? The best laid plans of mice and men? But we still want to do the right thing because we're walking by faith, and that's going to lead to joy, that's going to lead to happiness, that's going to lead to contentment, that's going to lead to many wonderful things.

It must not lead to inactivity, sloth, disobedience, and lawlessness. I mean, some people are just paralyzed by the future. Something bad's going to happen. It's true something bad's going to happen. So, work today.

I'm preaching to myself right now. How many lives do you have? So, let's get going. The mysteries of God and His nature and how great He is. Well, I'm humbled, but I'm trusting. I'm dust and ashes, but I'm a child.

I'm not going to lay back and let God. I'm not going to say, you know what, I don't know what's going to happen, so I better not do anything. You know, it kind of reminds me of evangelism. What do you do?

Well, you know, whoever's going to get saved will save. God unconditionally elects eternity past, you know, pactum salutis, covenant of redemption. He's going to save people whether I do anything or not.

He doesn't need me to save people. Preach the gospel to them, rather. We're to sow seed. We're to evangelize, and God will take care of the rest, right? And that's the wonderful thing. You look at the parable of the sower or the soils.

The sower sows the word, Mark 4. That's all you have to do. I just stand in awe of a great God who does things. You say, God is so sovereign, I trust in Him, and I will respond with Revelation 19, sixth language, hallelujah for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.

Talking about Jesus, it comforts me. It doesn't make me lay back and do nothing. I mean, otherwise I've got to carry all the load of this on my own shoulders, like some camel. How much can you put on a camel?

A. S. Lee's reports that camels can generally carry from 240 up to 1 ,200 pounds, which only, quote, the very best animals can manage. The record for camel capacity in Australia is 1 ,904 pounds. Well, I don't have a camel's back.

I have a camel back. I think it's an offshoot brand. Kim has a camel back hydration system. I don't. I had a friend that used to mow his lawn, a small little lawn with a camel back, just in case he needs some water.

The world's crazy. The world's in crisis. The world's in an alarm. Is God? Is God surprised? Is God shaking? He works all things after the counsel of His own will, Ephesians 1 .11. So, fear not. Be confident in a sovereign God.

His love's infinite. His power's infinite. His glory's infinite. Warren Wiersbe said something that kind of just struck me. I'm thinking Warren Wiersbe, scholar, theologian, writer. He's got those kind of that warm face.

He said, when I trusted Jesus as my Savior, I married adventure, and that meant living by faith and expecting the unexpected. I married adventure. I woke up married. Like Adam, hey, I'm married? Yes, you're married.

There's a lot of things we don't know. I don't know how the breath comes into the womb of a child, a spirit. I don't understand all the workings, but I know God's sovereign. I know He governs everything, controls everything, works out everything for good.

I don't need to know that. I just need to know who He is, and I need to know that He's not just sovereign and transcendent, but I only have to look at the Lord Jesus in the incarnation to see that He's kind, to see that He's gentle, to see that He goes up and touches the beard, the board that's got the dead body of the mother's son, and He says, young man, I say to you, arise.

That's all I need to know. I need to know Jesus cares, therefore, I can with Luther, like I said yesterday. I can say to myself, Jesus is coming back tomorrow. If I knew that for sure, I'd plant a tree today.

That's so good. I don't need to be paralyzed with all that. Life under the sun is uncertain, unpredictable. You can't see God's sovereign hand, so you walk by faith. And not only that, you rejoice. That's next time.

I alluded to it a little bit, but that's next time. If you want to write me, it's mikeatnocompromiseradio .com. We're working on a new website now. If you'd like to support us on Patreon, you can. I took down the PayPal thing on the website because I didn't like what PayPal was doing, so it's harder.

You can always send a check to the church. You can research that on your own. I hate to talk about money, but if anybody wants to give, you can. What else do I want to say? I think that's about it. I think that I've got some more music here.

I've got some more outros. I've got some more things coming down the pike. And if you want me to do a particular show on a particular topic, please let me know. Don't forget to listen to The Pactum, my brother and Mike Grimes.

Every time it says Pat and Mike, I'm thinking about Pat and I, my brother, but it's a different Mike, Mike Grimes. And if you want to listen to Pat, he really researches and studies. I mean, for me at No Compromise Radio, it's just off the top of my head.

There's no prep. There's no practice. There's no anything. And I know what you're saying. It shows, right? So there you have it. That's okay. If 1 ,000 or 2 ,000 of you download every week, I mean every show, I'm happy.

It's more than I deserve. Anyway, we're thankful that you are listening today and tune in tomorrow for the next installment of No Compromise Radio Ministry.