Romans 11:33-12:2, How Do You Respond?, Dr. John Carpenter

Romans 11:33-36 and the Doxology of God’s Unsearchable Riches

You reading from Romans chapter 11 verse 33 to chapter 12 verse 2 Hear the word of the Lord. Oh. The depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

For who has known the mind of the Lord? 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 the glory forever.

Amen. I Appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice Holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing.

You may discern what is the will of God what is good and acceptable and perfect. May the Lord has blessings to the reading of his Holy Word. Well, how do you respond to things? That depends on why you're responding to obviously if someone asked, how are you?

How do you respond? Most people just go with a simple fine. Some people try to be cute. Dave Ramsey always responds with better than I deserve. Some people go with if I was any better vitamins would be taking me that's too long to say or finer than frogs hair or being more spiritual too blessed to be stressed or the more truthful.

Your attempt at social interaction to be polite is hereby acknowledged. Of course, if you actually stopped and gave a detailed answer, you know told all about your physical ailments your worries. Maybe how troublesome family members are worrying you or a problem for you your financial problems.

How you're disappointed in this or that relationship the weight that you want to lose or the money that you want to make. Whoever asked you how are you? Would soon begin to respond with a look on their face that they'll be sure never to ask you that again.

How you respond says a lot about you. Psychologists will sometimes use a word Association or any blot test or some other similar kind of test ask you to respond to the first thing that comes to your mind.

In order to see what you're like unfiltered responses are revealing. When I saw the video of Jordan Peterson the famous psychologist caught off guard. Was an intruder rushed onto the stage at Liberty University.

I was struck by his unfiltered response as immediate response he appeared totally unafraid of and Compassionate toward the distressed young man who was trying to get to him. I thought it spoke better of him than all the all the PR all the advertising that you could buy.

How do you respond to threats? Are you a fight person or a flight person? When the shed caught fire Micah's response was immediately to go to it. Hoping to try to save some things from it. My response was to go as fast as I could.

It was actually in my car to the fire department next door. Thinking that I could cut out the intermediary, you know of the dispatcher the 9 -1 -1 dispatcher, but no one was there. So I had to call the 9 -1 -1 dispatcher.

Anyway, I should have called 9 -1 -1 first saved about a minute or two to fire departments came both Providence and Yancey Ville. The sheriff's department the casual County emergency management staff and a bunch of other people some of whom were just spectators.

We called the people who officially are here for something like that. First responders is their job to respond. Well, how do you respond. Maybe to good things to to mercy? To grace to gifts. Traditionally, we're taught to respond with Thank you some expression of gratitude.

Thank-you cards are a custom etiquette at least to many people. Some people Teaches that you respond with a card you name the gift that you've been given and you express gratitude. Particularly for it there's even a business in producing thank-you cards because so many people send them even now when it's easier just to send a text or A message saying thank you.

Even if sometimes the sending of thank-you cards. Sometimes it's just fake. It's just a kind of a custom people have developed and they've forgotten really why they're doing it. They're going through the motions it expresses it still even then expresses a good principle that we should respond to grace with gratitude.

The Mountaintop View of Romans and the Flow of Salvation History

Well, how do you respond. Here at the end of chapter 11, we've reached the mountaintop really of Romans. Like a hiker going to the pinnacle of a highest peak in some great range and you stop at the top to take in the vista.

Romans has gone from the depths of depravity in chapters 1 to 3 to God putting forward Christ as our Propitiation the second half of chapter 3 to justification through faith in chapter 4 to imputation of Christ's righteousness in chapter 5 dying and rising with Christ in chapter 6 to the ongoing fight against sin in chapter 7 to the victory of chapter 8 and Then answering the question.

Well, who is all this for? Who is it for? Who are these? Super conquerors he mentioned at the end of chapter 8 if if they're not People who work for it or if they're not people who just kind of inherit it because they're born into it.

Well, they are he says the elect. They're the vessels of honor. They're the people to whom God gives mercy like Jacob to whom God gives faith through people with beautiful feet. Who are going out gathering all?

Israel in chapters 9 to 11. So here he pauses and takes in this view. He's reached the top. There's the vista takes in this view and how does he respond? How do you respond? How should you respond? We see that here in three parts first the exaltation then the presentation and finally the Transformation, how do you respond to the gospel?

Exaltation: The Proper Response to God’s Riches, Wisdom, and Knowledge

Well, you should respond first with Exaltation. That's what Paul does in chapter 11 verses 33 and 36. Oh. Notice the emotion that's how he begins but with a no and inspired. Oh. This isn't just a cerebral Romans is not just a cerebral analysis of theology the gospel is it just good for an academic cool.

Critical.

Emotionally detached explanation. Now sometimes reform people particularly forget that so impressed by their own theology by they think they've mastered it better than other people but the beauty and the Intricateness and the intellectually impressiveness of their theological systems and so the right books and papers.

There's probably no one reads and engage in debates so sure are they that they're complicated theology with this Latin phrases and speculations and elaborations and distinctions. And Logic is how you respond to the gospel that with tombs of massive theology.

That's how you respond to the gospel to salvation. Well, they might look down on those simple pietistic people who are just in it singing hymns and songs and praising God but sometimes simply singing praise.

With passion is The best response. That's what Paul does here. Oh there's the passion and inspired Oh a word of amazement by reaching that peak looking down and the indescribably beautiful view below and oh the depth.

It's so deep. We can't describe it other than with and oh. It's it that is deep is first the riches that is God's wealth. Riches his wealth is deep. He's exalted God's wealth. Earlier in Romans in chapter 2 verse 4.

He praises the riches of God's kindness. That's wealthy and kindness in chapter 9 verse 23 He exalted in the riches of God's glory. In chapter 10 verse 12 He exclaimed how God bestows his riches on all who call on him and here he God's riches inspires an oh, not only God's riches deserve a no, but also God's wisdom.

God's. Oh. Inspiring wisdom is his design how he has arranged things here in particular. His design of the gospel what he made it to be by wisdom. God has put in the gospel the power of God for salvation.

So instead of being ashamed and unashamed of the gospel for in it is the power of God for salvation. Instead of being ashamed we go. Oh and His knowledge is all-inclusive.

Exhaustive.

Understanding so that he knows everything about everyone knows everything about everything. He knows how to save people to not just be a tribal God in Which people are saved if they just happen to be born to the right tribe the right nation or a religious God.

Who gives out salvation to people who jump through the right hoops who keep the rules who do the right thing if they do the Works. And that then unlocks the so-called grace. No, he knew better than that.

He knew a way to save people that's neither based on works or on ancestry on family on ethnicity one. That's based purely on his mercy. He has mercy on whom he will have mercy. Oh the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

His riches and wisdom and knowledge is so deep. We can't get to the bottom of it in verses 33 to 35. Now. Look how Paul describes it there. It is first unsearchable in verse 33. It's like an abyss. Deep at sea is so deep.

We can't find the floor to it now. Maybe with sonar today as assumed we've mapped the bottom of every undersea Canyon. But until recently very recently like in the last century in human history, there were abysses so deep that no one knew Where they finally ended how deep it went.

He's saying that that is a small picture of God's riches wisdom and knowledge. It's unfathomable. We can't measure how many fathoms it goes down to. It's impossible to discover so we're no closer to discovering the end of God's wealth and wisdom and knowledge now than we were almost 2 ,000 years ago when this was written.

It's also inscrutable. That is it's incomprehensible. It's beyond our ability to explore you can never figure it out. So that you've mastered it you get a master's degree in it. And so, you know everything there is to know about that subject with with God's wisdom and riches and knowledge.

You can never get there. That's why the attempt by some theologians that if they you know, they think somehow they write in their pages. Accurately enough. They'll be able to get to the bottom of it to fully explain what God has done.

That is Hubris is pride and folly a Glimpse of God's ways at the gospel shouldn't first provoke more ink to be spilled. But more praise to be sung so that's what Paul does. He goes to poetry. First to one of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible to Isaiah chapter 40.

Particularly quoting verse 13 for who has known the mind of the Lord. Who could have guessed this? Who has been God's counselor who could have advised him to come up with this? Gospel and now a tribal God who saves everyone in the tribe that is in his chosen nation.

That's easy to imagine people think God is like that all the time. Imagining that their God is always on their side. He's blessing their country and their people. That's not remarkable at all. A religious God who saves people who gives him what he wants who rewards sacrifices.

He rewards money who who's as predictable as a vending machine. You put in the right coins, you know. The right religious deeds the right rituals the right church attendance right giving you the right prayers and outcomes.

The blessings you want from him. That kind of God is totally fathomable. One of Mary's nephews tried to talk her mother his grandmother. Out of believing in Christ by saying that when he prays to who was it Buddha or ancestors or whatever traditional God?

He prays to. When he prays to this God He gets the thing he asked for he gets what he wants. The God responds by giving him what he's asking. The prosperity preachers try to sell us the true God the same way.

You know give God the money He wants by very conveniently by giving it to them. You give God through them. That's very inconvenient of for them and God will give you what you want. Now Mary told her mother that faith in God is not about getting the things you want.

It's about forgiveness of sins and a relationship with God that Christ our Savior loves us and he will one day. Restore all things and she nodded in agreement and understanding. When you're on your deathbed Being pitched a God who will give you the car or the money or the apartment or whatever you want.

That's not going to impress you. You want a God whose wealth and wisdom and knowledge is so unfathomable that it makes you go. Oh Here it makes Paul reach for more poetry this time from Job and Job chapter 41 verse 11.

Originally God spoke it himself of himself. Is one of God's near the end one of God's searing? Earth-shaking questions to make Job question himself. Job thought he could be God's counselor. Job thought he could set God straight.

Tell him what to do and God asked him who has given to me. That I should repay him. Now much human religion is about Trying to put God in our debt. You know telling people that if you give this you give a tithe and offering a sacrifice of prayer.

Church attendance a baptism, whatever a.

Jawstick.

You can buy off God. He must respond in the way you want him to like a customer has to respond. You know if you run a business you give him the product the food Whatever it is you're selling and he has to respond by giving you the money, right?

It's exchange like that. It's about trying to force God to respond in the way we demand. Here Paul puts puts that what God said and the third person he him and asked after we've been to that mountaintop and Seeing what God has done for us in the gospel.

Do you still think? God has to respond to you as you demand. Who has given a gift to God that that he the giver? Might be repaid. Who was forced God? to give. By giving God something.

No one.

His responses. God's responses are out of our control. For in verse 36. That's because God's responses are out of our control because from him and through him and to him are all things. And this answers three questions.

Where.

How and why? First where why can't we fathom him? What can't we figure him out? Why can't we control how he responds to us? Because. Where do all things come from and where? From him from God. He is the creator.

He's the source. Everything comes from where comes from him. When I was a little kid, but probably about seven eight, I guess I noticed a day or two before Christmas that there was almost. Or maybe no gifts for my mother under the Christmas tree not realizing it's a long Long husband's tradition to wait till Christmas Eve to do the shopping, but whatever I noticed there was nothing for my mother under the Christmas tree.

So I thought I got to rectify this situation. I knew there was a storage closet. My mother never visited but had a bunch of old things from her clothes and so forth and I thought well I don't have any money, but I can take some of that.

I wrapped some of it up clothes put it under the tree for her. And of course it was her stuff it came from her and but I was hoping maybe she wouldn't remember it. But she did. You can't impress someone with things that came from them in the first place.

Second how do all things come about? Well, every Christian is going to say that they believe God is the creator of all things, but many think that God may have created it all originally that's where but then how things got the way they are now.

That is through us. It's through our choices through our works is through our Free will free meaning. God is not in control of it. It's our doing what we want to do or it's just a world out of control.

It's just random events. That's the reason the world is the way it is now. That's that's what they think many are now functional. Even Christians are functional deist that isn't they believe a creator God.

But he is no longer in control. You just kind of set the world on moving and then it goes off out of his control like the footprints. God who apparently really feels bad that you went through some rough times in life and your walk and through life and He even carried you Therapeutically kind of emotionally through the rough times, but there really wasn't much he could do about those rough times.

Paul here says no. Through him are all things God is the means he's the instrument through which everything is the way it is. As RC Sproul said if there were one maverick.

Molecule in.

This universe and the whole universe running loose one molecule outside of God's control outside the scope of God's sovereign control. God would not be sovereign. Everything wouldn't then be through him, but it is third why.

Why is everything the way it is? What purpose does it serve? And if it's not the way I like this causing me pain. We think this is not right. But when we think that way we're thinking it's got to serve a purpose for me.

It's got to be about me and my comfort and my pleasure. But that's not why all things are the way they are. What's the goal of everything? Why? To him God is where everything is going as for his glory.

He's the end of it all especially our lives. What's the chief in demand to glorify God and enjoy him forever? So, of course, how do you respond to this unfathomable? Oh. Inspiring gospel since all things are to him.

To him the glory forever. Amen. How do you respond? Not only with exaltation. Oh but also with presentation. Second. Presentation in chapter 12 verse 1. Something that you respond to the gospel of grace by hey, it's grace.

I don't have to respond at all. You continue in sin that grace may abound. Not change at all. You spend your money just like before you spend your time like before you pursue the same same things. You think the same thoughts you can go to church if you really want to if you're kind of into that thing.

Kind of that into stuff like that, but you don't really have to do anything you respond by not responding. But just like if the doctor hits your knee with that little hammer and you don't respond your leg doesn't kick up.

You might be paralyzed. You might have some disconnection in your brain between your life and your responses. Or you might be dead. How a healthy person responds to God's mercy is by presentation of him or herself to God.

After though the exaltation Paul appeals to us urges us because it's urgent that we respond in the right way. He urges by the mercies of God that is by the same mercy. God has shown us he urges you to present.

Therefore because of all that indescribable gospel He's been describing for the first 11 chapters to present like worshipers in the old temple would present an offering. You know offerings had to be the right kind.

It'll be male or female a gold or a bull or a lamb or whatever depending on the sacrifice. And they had to be without blemish and the priest was to inspect what was presented to him. The offering presented to him had to Get to inspect it.

Was it the right sacrifice? So here's my offering presented for inspection. We respond to God's unfathomable gospel by presenting our bodies as Sacrifices. So this notice he says our bodies. So this is flesh and bones this thing that lives on the earth.

We present as a sacrifice. Not something in his place. Not if I give a little money I could kind of Pay off God and I could do with my body as I want know. Our actual body our actual life, but it is a living sacrifice.

We don't have to pour gasoline over our heads and set ourselves on fire. We don't have to thrust the sword into our guts. We don't have to go looking for some persecutor and provoke him to kill us. We respond to God's salvation by living for him by what we do with our body.

You present your body as a living sacrifice by how you live day to day in the real world now. What's that mean exactly? Well that he describes in the remaining chapters of Romans. It's what the rest of Romans is about.

As someone said that in Christianity religion how you get right with God is grace and ethics is gratitude. Religion is grace and ethics how you live is gratitude. You respond to God. Having given you grace by gratefully.

Giving your life.

To serve him. It's not just that you spend six days a week. Maybe five making money and one day doing chores. Serving the dollar looking for fun and then a couple hours of Sunday morning. Hoping to placate the God that you've been ignoring all week.

No you offer yourself to him. Every day putting your life on that altar now sure you might serve him by working out of the world. You might be running a business. You're being employed. You have a job making money with your family doing chores.

All the other things you do in life, but you do it all not Just to be making money and get the chores done or have a family but as a way to worship God. You put your life on the altar every day. Of course the problem with living sacrifices is they.

Crawl off the altar here and now put your body your life back on the altar presented to God says holy and set aside for God and acceptable. Well pleasing to God. Now some people think God accepts any sacrifice, you know any worship that we intend to bring to him.

He's just glad to have it. He's got it. He's like he's like a beggar. He's not so we can't be a chooser. Anything we do for God any songs we sing any prayer any way we do the Lord's Supper or not at all.

Anyway, we baptize or not. Anything we do in church or supposedly for him in private. He accepts it all. But that's false. From the beginning God had acceptable worship worship that he accepts and Leviticus God gave detailed instructions for how the Old Testament worship was supposed to be conducted.

You know all the sacrifices and the rituals and everything down to the instruments used. Right down to where where the fire came from you can't just get fire from anywhere. Can't just have a lighter in your pocket and start the fire has to be a particular Holy fire to use that they use in burnt offering down one day and Leviticus 10.

Two of Aaron's sons made a bonobo who thought that they could take a shortcut. Maybe the Holy Fire was on the other side of the tabernacle, I guess there was some convenient fire here use that right here.

Why bother? The following instructions any fire. What's the difference fires fire? Well, God sent his own fire to devour them. In John chapter 4 the Lord Jesus says that those who worship him must. People always looking at the spirit and truth part must worship him in spirit and truth.

He also says must. Must means it's required. God insists that worship be done his way and that's true of the worshipful giving of our bodies to him. We don't get to live any way we choose and say well, I'm doing it for the Lord.

Oh No, we lay our body on the altar for him and that is our spiritual as an in the spirit.

Worship.

Spiritual as opposed to fleshly making ourselves. Do rituals or ceremonies going through the motions? No spiritual means from the heart led by the spirit or the word there literally Can be translated logical.

We really often think logical and spiritual kind of opposites. Don't we often a lot of people do but here's the same word. Our logical worship the worship that reasonably, you know, which if you think clearly about it, you're thinking Logically reasonably about how should I worship God?

You've been to that mountaintop you get a glimpse of the unfathomable works of God in salvation and responding Reasonably you think about it by offering your whole lives For him. Well, which is it? Is it spiritual or is it logical?

Well, it's both the only logical.

Response.

To is to worship God his way with our bodies.

Spiritually.

Transformation by the Renewal of the Mind

How do you respond to God's unfathomable salvation. Third by transformation in verse 2. You've reached the mountaintop and you see this. Oh. Inspiring view of God's inscrutable ways in saving his people.

You respond by that vision. So impressing itself on to you that you are different. From those who haven't seen it you give your life as a living sacrifice and. Your mind is changed. Do not be conformed to this world.

Don't respond to the culture around you by just mindlessly doing whatever it does. You value things you think things the same way it does. You show you're born in your age. Just like it it starts naming its pronouns because after all it thinks people can change their sex.

So you start naming your pronouns. It puts money-making ahead of worship. If you're conformed to this world. Will you do the same? Don't respond like that. Instead be a. Be a non-conformist. It's what the Puritans called themselves non-conformist the dissenter an oddball an outsider.

To this world literally age it's what the world the word their world is age. It's not the planet. This is the problem.

It's not the earth.

It's the cultures the society the spirit of what Paul calls this present evil age in Galatians chapter 1 verse 4. So don't be like it. This age has a mold that is pressing people's minds into so that they conform.

So they think and they say and they value what the age says. It says serve money. Conform people go along. It squeezes minds into this mold. People this age value money first and so they think that.

They have to work.

Instead of go to church. You're not conformed to it. If you put worship the Word of God the body of Christ ahead of dollars people of this age value ego first. They want to be seen as somebody. They might even come to church just for that purpose.

For the purpose of being looked up to is the big shot. But they won't serve the body of Christ with what it needs with the gifts that they have. People of this age value words only as tools to get what they want whether it's true or not.

They don't even think about that so if it makes them feel good to say something or if it serves their purposes to say something like make a promise and Now they'll say it without any thought that they actually have to keep that promise.

No thought that their words buying them to do what they've committed to do. People this age value expressive individualism me doing what I want to do what fulfills me what I feel like and you know you must affirm me and what I say I feel like or.

You're hateful. You're a bigot. You should be censored and canceled. So if a woman says she's a man or if a man says he's most pleased by having sex with other men. Well, we just have to go along or we're we're hateful.

That's the spirit of our age. Now if you're just conformed to the present evil age. You'll think like the world us. You'll decide just like it decides by what gives you the most money. What serves your ego or what serves your thrills?

You'll blather empty words and your kids will be conformed to. Maybe you were conformed to a conservative culture all about money-making and business and family and dressing nice looking good. And now you wonder what went wrong with my kids.

They're conformed to a pleasure-seeking. They're lazy. They're tick-tock queer affirming culture. And what did I do wrong? You might ask Why don't they follow my example?

Well, they did.

Just like you were conformed to the present evil age. So now are they? You're both conformed. Just two different cultures in the same age.

Instead.

You should be transformed. We are transformed by the renewal of our mind. Renewing means to make new again. You take your minds back. Like a computer go back to factory settings. Take your mind back to the condition They were created for if there had been no if there had been no sin, no fall.

No present evil age twisting our minds. And in wrong ways squeezing them into its cast the culture leaving its impression on us like a seal on the hot wax. We need our minds renewed so that they'll go back to what they should be before a sinful world distorted them.

And we do that with. Mostly with the Word of God. Through the Word of God and by reading it and meditating on it memorizing it singing it listening to it. Listening to a preacher taught or applied people advising us with with his word we press it down into our minds.

And we change the old shape of our thoughts when we thought that family or money or ego sexual expression was what mattered most and Keeping our word didn't matter at all because that's what the culture around us taught be transformed.

Press the Word of God on to your minds and Until it changes your mind. Respond to God's Word by being transformed by it. Not by making it fit comfortably into this present evil age and by doing that taking every thought captive to obey Christ.

You will then be able to.

Test all.

Situations in your life. The decisions you're to make. With a renewed mind one that thinks like God thinks you'll be able to know God's will. Should you buy that business? Should you have that relationship?

Should you go on that trip? Should you move there? Did you spend that money? Did you buy that thing? Did you study that? Be trained for this or that. Marry him or her. If your mind is transformed so that you love God and You love what you will then love what God loves you will think like God thinks now not as deeply not as widely.

Because you're not capable of that. But as far as you can think you will think like God and.

Then.

You can discern. You can distinguish. You can think clearly. You can discern. What is God's will in all your decisions? You'll know what is good. What's acceptable. Same word is in verse 1 about acceptable worship.

That is what's pleasing to God and What is perfect? That's. What's the final goal? What's the right purpose for everything?

Be.

Transformed. How do you respond to God's unsearchable gospel. To a wretch like you being saved. Certainly not by doing nothing. Only the dead don't respond to something that Oh inspiring. You respond not by trying to pay him off or pay him back.

You can't. You can't get him in your debt. He's too rich for that. You respond by enjoying him and Giving him glory forever. By giving your body every day to live for him and the Lord Jesus Gave himself for you.

So we respond by giving ourselves. You respond by giving yourselves to him. That's the only worship. God will accept. We respond. By undoing the distortions of our present evil age that twisted our minds to live for money for pleasure for ego to now think we've transformed them to now think and love like God thinks and loves.

We respond by offering our body and mind to God. How do you respond? To God's amazing grace with Oh inspired.

Worship.