Wealth of Knowledge

In Ephesians 5, it says to sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs to the Lord. When we sing, we're singing to Christ, but it also says addressing one another. So our songs are sung in the presence of one another and to one another.

And how many of you, when you sing worship in the assembly are encouraged and reminded of the faithfulness of God? Anybody else?

Amen.

So that's what happens when we're in the presence of one another singing songs. I also think that the devil is kicked out when the praise of God's people begin to rise in the assembly. Well, praise God for what's happening here this morning.

Let's praise him in prayer and then the preaching of the word. God, thank you so much for being here with us. You have said that where two or more are gathered in the name of Jesus, you are here with us.

We know that's true. We feel your presence and we give you all the glory and praise. Father, we have sung praises to your name for you are worthy. We have been encouraged. And now Lord, as we open the word, we pray that you would cause us to tremble before your word.

This is the one to whom I will look, the one who is contrite of spirit, humble and trembles at my word. So Lord Jesus, we tremble before your word and we ask that you would speak to our hearts and change us through it in Jesus name, amen.

Does anybody here remember navigating before map apps? Remember that? I remember moving from Tampa to Dallas and me and my brother drove together. My older brother rode with me. And we had one of those map books that had to been this big by this big.

And it had maps of all of the regions of the United States. We had to follow that to figure out how to get from Tampa to Dallas. Did you know that the Monarch butterfly spreads out over 1 billion acres of territory in Canada, all the way to Northern Canada, here in New Jersey, all across the Northeast and Northern parts of the country, over 1 billion acres.

Yet at a certain time in late August, when the sun hits 46 degrees in Canada, the Monarch butterflies individually, wherever they are, say, let's go. They pick up and they fly to a certain place in Central Mexico, not more than seven acres in total.

And they all arrive, 25 to 50 million of them arrive in this seven acre area. Now to put that in perspective, our property is nine acres. Six football fields is what we're talking about here. Seven acres.

They all arrive there precisely on November 1st of each year, the Day of the Dead. Now let's think about that for a moment. None of these butterflies had ever been to Mexico. They are fourth generation butterflies.

The overwintering butterflies from the year before would reproduce in Mexico. The first generation would leave Mexico in May and make it to Texas by June. That first generation dies in Texas. Not saying anything about Texas, but they die in Texas.

They then, having reproduced, that next generation goes up as far as the Great Lakes, and then the third generation goes into Canada. The fourth generation will live longer, six to nine months, and at a certain point in time, they will pick up and head back to Mexico.

How do they know how to get there? They've never been to Mexico. In fact, their brains don't seem big enough to be able to calculate these directions. Do you know that the butterfly head, the brain, is the size of a pinhead?

So butterflies are pinheads. They're not huge big brain creatures. In fact, they can't even fly from Canada to Mexico. Their body's store of energy can last only 10 hours of flight, yet they must fly for months.

How do they do it?

They catch the winds. They rely on prevailing winds to carry them all the way to Mexico from wherever they are.

Isn't that remarkable?

Absolutely astonishing. And sure enough, they all arrive in that little space. They land in oyamel trees, is what they're called. They carry extra heat within their trunk, and that's how the butterflies survive.

In fact, the only way they can eat en route is if they find a certain kind of milkweed.

It's the only thing they eat.

So they have to happen to land on milkweed and survive all the way back. There's a book about these butterflies called Bicycling with Butterflies. And a commentator on it says, this author provides a wealth of knowledge about the monarchs.

A wealth of knowledge. In truth, all that I can do in relaying this story about the monarch butterflies is record information that describes what we can see. But what we cannot see is the wealth of knowledge, the omniscient God who made the butterflies to be able to do this.

The God who controls the prevailing winds. The God who made the butterfly is the true wealth of knowledge. I want you to think for just a moment about the knowledge of God and how inscrutable are his ways.

How does the salmon for five years swim in the open ocean, wherever the currents take him, wherever the prey chases him, wherever the predator chases him to be a prey, wherever it finds its food, and then precisely five years in, find its way back to its birthplace upriver somewhere in Washington State.

How does it know in that little fish brain how to do that? It doesn't have GPS. It can't recalculate using the satellite system. Consider your own body, the complexity of your eyeball to be able to see things or the movability of your hands.

Scientists can make robots modeled after us. And yet how clunky is a robot compared to the dexterity of a human hand and the motions that we can do fluidly? Think about the designs of God, his wealth of knowledge.

Have you ever thought about vultures? Vultures are remarkable. I don't know what they did prior to the fall, but since the fall, they clean up the dead animals that are on the side of the road. When I was in Florida recently, I came out of the house and I was waiting to go somewhere.

You know, you're kind of waiting on the women. And Timmy was sitting in the Telluride and I was out just waiting in the driveway. And I thought, oh, the Florida sun, that feels good. So I laid down in the driveway and I just laid still and was enjoying five minutes of sun.

Next thing I knew, vultures were circling me, not more than 10 or 20 feet above me, but at least 10 of them, swirling around like they're coming in on a carcass. Where the corpse is, the vultures will gather, says the word of God.

And I saw that that was true. They thought I was a corpse. So I jumped up and I was ready to fight. And then they left. 20 years from now, I will have fought them. You know, when I'm telling the story, I threw one on the ground.

They thought I was a corpse. So I went in and I told the girls about what happened. I said, hey, let's go see if we can do it again. And my wife was like, no, you are not putting my children on the driveway.

To get eaten by vultures.

All that to say, it's remarkable that an eagle's eye can spot a dead carcass, or a vulture can spot from miles away and close in on that corpse. Have you ever thought about how amazing this world is and the wealth of knowledge that must be behind it?

Listen, guys, we can describe what we see, but there is an omniscient mind. The Bible calls it the logos, the logic, the wisdom. Jesus is described in John 1, 1 as that personification of wisdom because God is an omniscient mind.

And everything that we collectively know about science and about God from his word is derivative knowledge. We receive from the logos. All truth is God's truth. And when we come to the word of God, we must approach it with that kind of attitude, that kind of humble submission to the things revealed, realizing that we are dealing with an omniscient God, an absolute wealth of knowledge.

We are made in his image. And so we must grow in knowledge and depth of insight as we receive what's revealed, but we must do so, listen, humbly, remembering that the secret things belong to the Lord, our God.

There's a rash of deconversions in our culture. Young people that go off to college and having once claimed Christ, they now find themselves not believing and they pick apart the Bible and eventually lose their faith.

Atheism has been on the rise in the last hundred years. Intellectual pride has ruined many hearts and souls. Intellectual pride, that's what deconstruction is. It is intellectual pride. I'm gonna give you a verse that protected me when I was in college, that rescued me from professors that were bent on the destruction of the faith of the Christians on campus.

It was absolutely their agenda. This verse should be memorized by every believer. It is Deuteronomy 29, 29. Deuteronomy 29, 29. It's in your notes, not the whole verse, but it's mentioned in the main idea.

Deuteronomy 29, 29. The secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do everything written in this law. The secret things and the things revealed, holding those two things and being humble with the knowledge that we receive.

That's what this passage is about today. Turn with me to Romans 11. We left off at verse 27. Last week, we heard a mystery. What is a mystery? Is a mystery a paradox? Is a mystery a conundrum? Scripturally, when you have that word mystery, it doesn't mean a paradox.

It doesn't mean a conundrum. It means something that was previously hidden that is now being disclosed. In the Old Testament, in Daniel 9, verses 24 to 27, God's plan for an age of Gentile inclusion is hidden.

It's not disclosed in the Old Testament, but Paul in Romans 11 discloses a mystery, and that mystery is this, that all Israel will be saved. A remarkable teaching. The same Jewish people as a nation that rejected their own Messiah will one day believe.

A deliverer will come from Zion and he will banish ungodliness from Israel. Deliverer, that word is goel. It means the goel is the strong kinsman who rescues his weaker friends. He's a deliverer. God will send a deliverer and he will not destroy Israel.

He will rescue Israel from their own sin, from their ungodliness. God will one day bring Israel right back into that olive tree from which they are presently cut off. That's a remarkable mystery. We learned that last week, and so we pick up now at verse 28 and following.

As regards the gospel, they, that's Israel, the Jewish people, are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

For just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy.

For God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all. You guys got that? We good? Or is that a little complicated? Little difficult to follow? We begin in verse 28. As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake.

The Israelites by and large reject the Messiah, their own Messiah. We go preaching the cross and Jewish people by and large reject the message of the cross. That was the case in Paul's day. It was the Jewish synagogue that persecuted the early church.

They were enemies of the gospel. That might cause some to harden their hearts against the Jews, but Paul has warned us not to do that, not to boast about the Jewish people. Rather, he says here, but as regards election, that word election just means choice, God's choice.

In Amos 3 .2, God says about Israel, you only have I chosen from among the nations of the earth in the NIV, or you only have I known from among the nations of the earth. The Jewish people were uniquely chosen to be the people of God.

They're the chosen people. As regards this choice that God has made of the nation of Israel, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. Do you guys believe that there's a generational blessing?

Do you think God blesses children for the sake of a parent? We have to be careful with the proverb that says, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. That genre of teaching, the proverbs, is called wisdom literature.

It gives us principles of life by which we are to live and govern our behavior and thought, but it is not a promise of God. God is not saying that there will never be a child of a believer who will be lost.

That's not what the word of God teaches. In fact, it's not what we observe. The word of God teaches clearly that God will judge people as individuals, and each one must give an account of himself to the Lord and stand before the great white throne.

So there's not a promise, but is there not a pattern? When you look at the history of the world and how generations unfold, that there is a blessing to being born in a Christian home, that that proverb principle, train up a child in the way he should go, is a true principle, and very often is the means by which God regenerates, often within a family line.

And parents should pray that way over their children and seek to lead them to Christ. Notice here in verse 28, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. In the case of Israel, this ethnic people, God has not forgotten Abraham.

He has not forgotten Isaac. He has not forgotten Jacob. He has not forgotten Judah or King David. He has not forgotten his own son, the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. And on account of this lineage that the Jewish people have, God remembers his own covenant.

He is faithful to what he always said. Remember when God called Abraham and gave him a covenant in Genesis 15. He put Abraham to sleep, and he divided the pieces of the sacrifice. Abraham did that, and then Abraham fell asleep.

God then himself, pictured in a fiery furnace, passed between the pieces, which is the symbol of initiating a covenant, cutting a covenant with blood. That was an unconditional covenant. God did it while Abraham slept.

It was unconditional because God will be faithful to what he promised. If we are faithless, he remains faithful and will not disown himself. He is not a man that he would lie or change his mind. With Abraham, he gave covenant, and he remembers it to this day.

That's the idea. He's not done with Israel because of the forefathers. He's remembering their faith. Verse 29, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. The patriarchs, the word of God, all those things listed in Romans 9, one to five, these gifts, these callings of God will never be revoked.

God remembers Israel. Now, verse 30 is the part that's a little hard to follow. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, question, how did you receive mercy because of Israel's disobedience?

Behold, the king comes gentle and having salvation, humble, riding on a donkey, Zechariah 9 .9. When the king presented in Israel, had they welcomed their king, submitted to him as Lord, bowed the knee in humble obedience to the king, there would be no sacrifice for sin.

It was by the Jewish rejection of their own Messiah that sin was atoned for on the cross. Acts 2 .23 calls this the definite plan of God, that the Jews would deliver Jesus up to be crucified at the hands of lawless men.

Do not even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table, said the Syrophoenician woman. Jesus was pleased with that answer because, listen, the Gentiles receive a derivative blessing based on Jewish rejection.

The Jews were offered the kingdom, their disobedience to it resulted in the rejection of Christ, crucifixion of Christ. The gospel was brought to the Jew first, then to the Greek. When the Jews rejected, Paul turned from the synagogue to the Gentiles and they will listen.

So on account of Jewish disobedience, the gospel came to you. The mercy of God came to you, it says in verse 30. And now look at the next part of the mystery. So they too have now been disobedient, meaning not believing the gospel, in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy.

In the great plan of God, Jewish disobedience to their own Messiah would bring us in and then our acceptance, our being recipients of mercy will eventually bring them back in. Disobedience leading to mercy, and now better, even better, the mercy given to us will finally result in their receiving mercy.

How so? During this dispensation, according to Romans 10, 19, the Jews are jealous. They're jealous. Anybody here ever read the Talmud? And the horrifying things that are said about Jesus? There's a jealousy.

It is not a good jealousy, it's an angry jealousy. There's an angry jealousy against the church, but there's coming a time when that jealousy will cause them to look upon the one they pierced and mourn for him, their eyes will be open.

I think this happens when the two witnesses of Revelation, remember those guys, begin preaching and then are ultimately killed? The Antichrist presents himself as God in the temple, and most of the nations are now believing that.

The Jewish people are outraged and they turn to the true Messiah. They become jealous of the church which has been caught up to heaven. They mourn for their own Messiah and they believe. This is yet future.

Now, some have asked, well, does that mean that every Jewish person in history is going to be saved? The answer is no. To die without Christ is to enter a Christless eternity. Whether you're Jew or Gentile, Scythian, barbarian, slave-free, male, female, there's no distinction.

It says here in verse 32, for God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all. The idea here is a future softening of the people of Israel. They too will receive mercy. It's really a summation of what Paul has taught through the book of Romans, that all of us together, Jew and Gentile,.

Are disobedient.

We are like a guilty lump of clay, all of us. None of us having anything to boast in. All of us together unworthy. Our throats like an open grave. Jew and Gentile having no distinction. That's why it says, for God has consigned all to disobedience.

Then in verse 32, that he may have mercy on all. Does that mean like Origen held, one of the church fathers, that everybody will be saved?

Is this universalism?

All people will be saved. It says mercy on all. He may have mercy. He can dispense that mercy as he freely chooses to give, but it doesn't say that all people, head for head, will be saved. In fact, this is an ethnic all.

The Jew and the Gentile, all together, are consigned to disobedience, and God will have mercy on all he chooses from within that. We know that because, listen, all through the New Testament, we learn that there will be people in hell.

And the Bible is not contradictory with itself. You interpret scripture with scripture. This is not universalism, but it's saying that all together are consigned to disobedience, and grace will operate this way.

It will only ever be mercy. It will only ever be mercy. No one will make a demand upon God that they deserve something from him. That's the idea. God will mercy some from the Gentiles and some from the Jews.

It is his free choice. Now, this has been just a whirlwind of teaching from Paul. The section began in chapter nine, verse one, and continued to this point. The question is, why is Israel not believing in their own Messiah?

How could the gospel be true? Paul answers by saying, God will harden some for his own purpose in order to bring Gentiles in, and in the future, he will soften ethnic Israel. But it introduces this idea of God's sovereign choice, Romans chapter nine.

So we come into this section here, verses 33 to 36, having received marvelous, mysterious teaching. In fact, he said some things that should blow our minds. It should be beyond us. But Paul is not frustrated by the difficulty, and he's not boasting or prideful.

In the marvelous things he's received, notice the humble posture towards the knowledge of God, verses 33 to 36. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. He's the wealth of knowledge.

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? 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. That last phrase, verse 36, is the most important sentence in the book of Romans. Paul finishes the theological content before he goes practical beginning next week in chapter 12.

Paul finishes by showing the purpose for which all things exist. The book of Romans is God's plan of redemption. It's about how he saves us by justifying us by faith, sanctification in chapter six to nine.

This is all based on election, chapters nine to 11. But the salvation of man is not the big point. The highest good in the universe is not the saving of sinners like us. The gospel is not first and foremost about you and I.

It is about the glory of God. All of the book of Romans and the plan of salvation is to the praise of his glorious grace. And God is just as glorified in not saving some as he is in saving us. What if God desired to make his power known in displaying wrath against some and displaying mercy in others?

What if you are to look at the world and know that there are many outside of Christ that unless they repent, they will be lost. And from that, tremble in fear of God, the holiness of God on display, his power, his wrath, and glorify God for his justice.

And then look at your own salvation and be so humble as to say, but for the grace of God, there go I. Yet he chose me, he saved me. He revealed his son to me. He saved me for his own glory. All of this is not about us, it's about him.

And that changes our entire worldview. That's why this sentence is so important. From him, he's the maker. He's the omniscient one who dreamed this world before he spoke this world. It comes from him.

He's the alpha.

And through him, he's the providence that keeps it all going, that guides the monarch butterfly and the salmon in the sea. And you and I, as we go about our days, he's here and he's everywhere. All things exist through him and to him.

Not only is he the alpha, he is the omega. All things wrap up with us worshiping him in heaven, praising him for his glorious grace. All things to him be glory forever, amen. So the posture that Paul takes in verse three, verses 33 to 35, is a humble knowledge.

He's been given mysteries revealed, knowledge shown to him, but he does not puff up. One of the most annoying places to be is in the cafeteria of a seminary. Theology students debating the word of God and puffing up in knowledge.

You know what knowledge does in our human fallenness? According to Paul, it puffs up. And the arguments that you hear and the intellectual pride that comes, not only in seminary, but also in all aspects of life.

The more that people know, it's like Solomon says, it only increases sorrow because it's accompanied with intellectual pride. People argue about Calvinism and Arminianism. What if the Bible teaches election and the Bible teaches human responsibility and you are to believe the things revealed, both of these things.

And in your mind, in your intellectual pride, you think it can't be reconciled. The two can't go together. Intellectual pride would cause us to be frustrated at that. And some people even back away from the Bible because they cannot hold things that seem too great for them.

But the secret things belong to the Lord our God. And those things which are revealed belong to us. The right posture before the word of God is to say, I believe this, election, and I believe this, responsibility.

God has revealed both. What about the things to come? Eschatology, premillennialism, amillennialism, postmillennialism. Theology students debating and arguing. Someone once said that the millennium is a thousand years of peace that Christians love to fight about.

Intellectual pride. When we come to the word of God, it must be with the kind of posture we see Paul taking. Look at verse 33. He's been shown deep mysteries. And he says, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

He's not puffed up. He's humbled before these words. He trembles at God's word. He recognizes that as much as he knows, anybody here think you know more than the apostle Paul?

Anybody?

No hands, right? Yet Paul feels like the depths are so far beyond him. We have a guy in our church named Dan who is like a free diver. He'll go out in the bay and he'll jump off of his jet ski and go like so deep under the water.

Last thing I would ever wanna do. But if I tried maybe 10 feet in, I would be out of my depth. I couldn't do it. But if Dan or some free diver were to go in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and try to dive down, how close to the bottom would they get?

They're just scratching the surface. That is our knowledge of God. As much as we know about God revealed to us, the depth of his knowledge is so far beyond us. We're swimming in the ocean. The depths that we reach are nothing compared to what's there.

How unsearchable are his judgments? How inscrutable his ways? For who has known the mind of the Lord? Yeah, someone can write a book about monarch butterflies and describe what they're seeing. But who knows the mind of the God who invented the monarch butterfly?

The God who guides that butterfly to its destination? Who has given a gift to this God that he might be repaid? Knowledge is not bad. Knowledge is good. God is the Logos and all knowledge is in him. How do we come to know things?

It begins, first of all, with general revelation. You have to know language before you can read this book. But there comes a point in time for every believer when the truth of God's special revelation is revealed.

When I'm talking to young people, how do you know that this book is truly from God? It professes to be the word of God. The claim of the author is that these are not human words only, but the very inspiration of God.

It has prophecies of things to come that happen in time. Prophets foretell things and then they happen. It's perfect. There is a unity to the message that all fits in such a way that only God could be the author.

It's written on three different continents by 40 different authors, over 1 ,500 years, and yet it teaches one coherent message about Jesus Christ. It's proven by every archeological discovery and every testable statement.

It holds up and it's powerful. Those who read this book and stay in it are kept safe from the wiles of the devil. Addicts are set free by reading this book. Sinners like us come to believe in the son of God and have been doing so throughout history.

I call those the five Ps that attest to the Bible, professing, prophetic, perfect, proven, and powerful. If you have come to believe in the professing, prophetic, perfect, proven, powerful word of God, you have knowledge that the world does not have.

Elon Musk can build SpaceX and do remarkable things with these rockets. That's based on knowledge, accumulated human knowledge in God's world. But what we have here is special revelation. It reveals the very plan of God for the hardening of Israel and then the softening of Israel in the last time and the way to be saved.

This is the fountain of knowledge. This reveals the deep things of God. When we come to this Bible, listen, this is the closing. We have to tremble before this word. We have to recognize that this is coming from the mind of the omniscient God.

Those who stumble in their faith and often wander out from us do so by intellectual pride. But here, Paul models for us the posture of humble trembling before the very word of God. Here's what I would like you to do, application.

Memorize Deuteronomy 29, 29. Memorize it. You could probably accomplish that before the sun goes down today. Return to it often whenever you're struggling with some question of knowledge. Remember also this passage that we studied today, Romans 11, 33 to 36.

God grants joy and peace to the humble. You keep him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed on you because he trusts in you, Isaiah 26 .3. Remember, listen guys, the logos, the wealth of knowledge is God's mind.

And all of our knowledge is derivative from him. So we cannot let that knowledge puff up. We must hold tightly to everything God said and loosely to our own opinions. We close with 2 Peter 1, 3 to 7. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

For this very reason, listen, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that every word you say is yes and amen, that you are faithful to your promises, even if we are oftentimes faithless. Thank you for revealing the deep things of God in scripture.

And our prayer this morning, Lord, is that you would humble us before your word, that we would tremble at everything that you say, that we would hold fast to the prophetic word made more sure, that we would not regard our own opinions, but that we would regard every single word that you have spoken, every jot and tittle of holy scripture.

Thank you, Lord, for this amazing journey through the theology of Romans 1 to 11. And we pray coming in next week with Romans 12 and following that you would teach us then how to live. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.