Romans 11:33-36
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to the book of Romans, book of Romans chapter 11. Our
reading today is Romans chapter 11, verses 33 to 36. Today is
the last of our sermon series on the solas or the alone statements. And so today we look at sola
deo gloria, to God alone be the glory, to God alone be the glory. And so from the 11th chapter
of Romans, I will read Paul’s explosive doxology after having
written 11 wonderful chapters about the gospel of Jesus to
the Gentiles and how God is going to save his own people, Israel.
He then expresses his joy in praise. And so from Romans chapter
11, beginning at verse 33, we read these words. Oh, the depth
of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable
are his judgments and inscrutable his ways. For who has known the
mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given
him a gift that he might be repaid. For from him and through him
and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. Pray with me. Lord, give
us eyes that see and ears that hear and hearts that perceive
the glories of the truth about you, the wondrous provision in
the gospel, and our duty to proclaim the greatness of your name. With
your help, we can do this. And so we ask for it in Christ
Jesus name. Amen. Over the last many weeks,
we have thought much about spoken much about considered a good
bit about the reformation, the Protestant reformation and Though
Martin Luther was the one who, as he nailed his 95 theses into
the chapel door at Wittenberg, really sparked a revolution that
to this day has had lasting effects. We understand that many who went
before him, who spoke up and said things, and even lost their
lives, did much to lay the groundwork for the Protestant Reformation.
But Luther, on the 31st of October, 1517, nailed a sheet of paper With written in Latin, his 95
disputations or his theses, his points of debate or discussion
that he wanted to have with the church leaders and the scholars
of his day. He nailed it on the chapel door, the place where
discussion points were put. It was nothing out of the ordinary.
They were put for others to read, and then a discussion would be
held. Well, it was printed, it was distributed, and it sparked
a worldwide reformation that lasts to this day. We are Protestants. We are in the vein of the church
that lasts from Martin Luther’s day. Well, on his 95 theses,
he had a lot of issues with indulgences and some of the practices of
the Roman Catholic Church that he thought were unbiblical. And
in recent years, a more modern day Martin Luther was asked,
if you were in this 21st century to post your 95 theses on your
chapel door, what might be included in your list? Well, there were
three main things that this theologian, this doctor of the church, this
minister mentioned. And those three things were these,
I have issue with the lack of gospel in the church in America
today. I have issue with the human-centered,
non-Christ-exalting, non-God-honoring worship that exists in the church
in America today. And I also take issue with the
church’s lack of trust in the sufficiency of God’s word to
guide us and to teach us and to do its work. Now related to
the gospel, this person mentioned this. We need to recover the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus? What has he done
and what does he offer freely to us for our salvation? In the
gospel, we need to recover the great doctrine of justification
by faith. The truth that God declares men
and women and boys and girls righteous in the sight of God
as they come to him by faith and Jesus alone for their salvation.
We need to uncover the preaching and the offer of Jesus, the gospel. Now regarding worship, he spoke
of. how worship has devolved, has
degraded into a man-centered performance. It’s not God-centered,
but man-centered. And so we go into these auditoriums
of rounds and we We worship things, but not the creator of all things.
And on and on he went there. But then this sufficiency of
scriptures, that the Bible alone can teach us who God is and what
he’s done and who we are and what we need, and that’s Jesus.
And that we can trust the scriptures to guide us in worship, to guide
us in family and marriage and life and work and all the things
in between as we make our way toward heaven. But go back to
this middle issue that this man mentioned. worship. Why is it
that we don’t worship God rightly? Why is it that the church in
America has come to worship things, has come to worship sentimentality?
Why is it that the church in America has come to worship everything
other than the living and true God? It’s because we have lost
a view. We have lost a glimpse. We have
lost a vision for the glory of God and that God, the God and
Lord and savior and master, the maker of all things, the sustainer
of all things has made us that we might worship and glorify
him. And he himself is worthy of glory
and worship. and that he is to be worshiped
according to scripture. We’ve lost all these things. And so
one of the great truths, one of the wonderful recoveries of
the Reformation, in addition to sola scriptura, by scripture
alone, in addition to faith alone and Christ alone, in addition
to the great solas we have studied already, we have this sola deo
gloria, to God alone be the glory. And this is something that was
the heartbeat of the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul knew that
at the end of the day, he could spend 11 chapters speaking of
the wondrous and glorious gospel of salvation that God has unfolded
in history and in the pages of the Bible. He understood that
all of that wonderful theology is useless unless it leads us
to doxology, or praise to God. Every week after the offering,
we sing a doxology. What is a doxology? It’s a glory,
a gloriology. It’s a word about God’s greatness. Praise God from whom all blessings
flow. Praise him, all creatures here
below. Praise him, Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. It’s a song we sing weekly, not
just to fill the time, but it is a response. It is a response
for us to give to God for his greatness. Now, as we consider
the subject today of Sola Deo Gloria, to God alone be the Gloria,
to be the glory. Get your Latin and your English
mixed up there. I want you to answer this question in your
mind and in your heart. Is your heart, is your mind,
is your soul so filled with admiration for God that you can’t contain
yourself when you speak of him and you speak of him in worshipful,
glorifying ways? Oh, we watched the ACC football
championship, Clemson Tigers and the Miami Hurricanes, the
stadium filled with Go Tigers and Go Canes or whatever. I mean,
people’s hearts were filled. They were wearing their orange and
their green. Or we could do Blue Devils and Tar Heels. We go to
these stadiums and we have our pulse quickening excitement because
our team is there and we want to see them win and do well. It isn’t that fun. It’s a great
thing. But are our hearts and our minds
and our souls so filled with awe because the God of the universe
has revealed himself to us that we come jumping out of our skin
in just the same way. that we would fill a stadium
full. If God were to show up, if Jesus were to be there and
to preach to us, that we would say, I can’t wait to be there
in his presence and cheer him on and see these things. That’s
how the apostle Paul feels here in Romans chapter 11. Think on that. As we consider
a couple things from this passage, there’s a set of threes in this
passage. And you’re wondering, Do every
sermon have sets of threes? Well, this sermon has not only
a set of threes, but each set of three has three things under
it. So you get a lot of threes today. The first thing we find
though, in verse 33, are three exclamations by the apostle Paul. Look at Romans chapter 11, verse
33. He says, oh, the depth of the
riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable
are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways? Some of you no
doubt watch these shows on television, maybe on PBS or National Geographic
or some scientific explorer channel. You watch these shows about the
human brain or the ocean depths. or the galaxies that extend in
the sky beyond our greatest imagination. And as you watch these shows
and you hear the details and you hear the testimony of the
scientist and the facts of their studies, they can only come to
this conclusion in any of those realms. We can only go so far. We can only plumb the depths
of the ocean. We can only explore the human mind or we can’t even
begin to know the depth of the galaxies of the skies and the
stars and the planets and their revolutions and their lights. And is there life there? You
see, we can only go so far. And that is exactly the same
conclusion the apostle Paul comes to here in Romans chapter 11.
He says, I have just given you 11 chapters of gospel Eleven
chapters of theology, the darkness of man and his sin, the righteousness
of God that comes by faith, the example of Abraham, the way of
the Christian life. I know what I ought to do, but
that is the thing I do not do. And I know what I ought not to
do. And that is the thing which I
love to do. And he goes on through the history
of Israel and God’s saving plan for them. And he comes to the
end of Chapter 11. of his gospel of Romans. And
he says two things. God’s ways are unsearchable.
God’s ways are inscrutable. And in his three explanations,
oh, the depth of the riches of the knowledge of almighty God,
he says they’re unsearchable. They are inscrutable. You cannot
trace the path of God. You cannot look for his footprints
and track him down and say, God, I have you all figured out. Nor
can you scrutinize his ways and say, oh, I see why you did what
you did. No, the word of God tells us
his riches, his wisdom, his knowledge. They are deep. They are unsearchable
and they are inscrutable. God is full of surprises. And
yes, he does reveal himself to us. Psalm 19 tells us, well,
the heavens declare the glory of God. Day after day, they pour
forth speech. Night after night, they tell
of his handiwork. And so we can see in creation,
the greatness of God, the majesty of God, the power of God, the
wisdom of God, the creativity of God, but it is not sufficient
to give us a knowledge of him that can save us. It goes on
in Psalm 19 to speak of the law of God and how the law of God,
the word of God, the revelation of God, the special revelation
of God, it teaches us who God is and what he’s like. But it’s not enough to give us
exhaustive knowledge. It cannot tell us everything
there is to know about God. Our little pea brain minds couldn’t
conceive of it if he told us. And these three explanations,
in response to the glory of the gospel, are Paul’s way of saying,
oh Lord, your plan of salvation is amazing. Your grace cannot
be measured. Your covenant love for your people,
especially as shown through Jesus, are utterly amazing. Your judgments,
your ways, your wisdom, your goodness, your knowledge, It
is so deep. It is so high. It is so vast
that I cannot search it out. You know, every week the job
of the preacher, in addition to visiting and in addition to
making sure things are kind of in order, those sorts of things,
the job of the preacher is to plumb the depths of the
scriptures. and to go as far down and as
far wide and as far out and as far up as is possible. And to
come back to you week after week and say, let me just tell you
where I have been in the scriptures. This is how great is our God.
This is how glorious is our salvation. And that’s what the apostle Paul
has done for us. He’s like that deep sea diver that has gone
down into the fathoms of the sea and he’s come back up and
as they’ve unscrewed that heavy mask from his body and depressurized
him, he says, boy, Let me tell you what I have seen. It is far
beyond our imagination. And so he gives these three explanations,
how deep, how unsearchable and how inscrutable are the ways
and the judgment, the knowledge and the goodness of almighty
God. Then he leads us to another set
of threes. You have these three exclamations
and now you have three questions. And those three questions are
in verses 34 and 35. Who has known the mind of the
Lord? Who has been his counselor? Who has given a gift to him that
he might be repaid? Many of you in the summertime,
in our Sunday school hours, studied the book of Job. And Job wanted
to have a face-to-face with God. He wanted to get face-to-face
with God and say, why have you done this to me? Why the trouble? Why the suffering? Why did you
take my children? Why did you take my health? Why did you take
my wealth? Why did you take my livestock, my very wellbeing?
I was living righteously. I was doing everything you asked. Why the cancer? Why the hardship? Why the loss of loved ones, we
might ask. And God says to Job, you dress
like a man and you come into my presence and we’ll go toe
to toe. We’ll go face to face and we’ll see if you’ll be standing
at the end of this time. And so what does God do with
Job when Job enters this great disputation with him? Some call
it a divine brow beating. God is taking his head and he
is Head-butting with Job. Job, you think you’re so smart?
You think you’re so deserving? You think you’re so great? You
think you’re so wise? Let me just ask you a couple of questions
here. And Paul, in his great doxology,
his great explosion of the greatness of God, he puts us in our place,
if you will. Three questions. Who has known the mind of the
Lord? Who has been his counselor? who’s given a gift to him that
he might be repaid. The first question, who knows
the mind of the Lord? Not a one of us. Oh, we may read
our Bibles. We may listen to R.C. Sproul.
We may have all the systematic theologies on our shelf. We may
have a row of commentaries. We may have been to this school
and that school. We may think we know it all,
but God says, you don’t know squat. You don’t know anything
about me. I, and I alone, I act uniquely
and independently And as if I need you, or who has been the counselor
of God. Now you understand there’s a
little satire in these questions as if God needs you to counsel
him. How often do we think God could
use a little advice from us? Well, God, I think I would have
done it this way. You know, we’re like those Monday morning sports
folks. What do we call it? Monday morning,
quarterbacking armchair, courting back at, well, if I was the coach
of the Steelers, I would have done it this way. Or if I was
the coach of the Tar Heels, I would have done it this way. Well,
they didn’t pay you the big bucks and the alumni didn’t hire you,
so tough. But we think we’re so smart,
don’t we? Who has counseled the Lord? And the answer is no one. He doesn’t need you. He is wise
and sufficient in and of himself. Who has ever given in advance
to the Lord? When has the Lord ever come to
you and said, hey, I need a payday loan. I’ve run things a little
thin. Can’t you give me a little advance
on some cash? No, God is a debtor to no man. And in fact, it is us who owe
him a great debt. And that great debt that we owed
him, he paid in full in Christ. We’ll see that on display in
the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. But these questions are meant
to put us in our places. He is the creator. We are the
creature. You know, sometimes as reformed Christians, we get
our smarty pants on. Well, we’re reformed and everybody
else isn’t. We believe the Bible and we know what is the gospel. We have our worship right. And
we can win any gospel debate. I know why a baby should be baptized
and not believers baptism. We know about predestination.
And we could go on and on and on and get a little snooty. And
God has a way of saying, look here, smarty pants, you’re nothing
without me. And so these questions, they
put us in our place. Now, other times we may feel entitled. It’s
a good thing Jesus saved me because I’m a, I’m a pretty good catch.
It’s a good thing Jesus saved me because what an asset I am
to the kingdom of almighty God. And these questions, they put
us in our place who has known the mind of the Lord, not you.
who has given God counsel, not I, who has ever loaned him or
advanced him some cash that he might repay, not a one of us. And then as if the apostle Paul
couldn’t say anything more, he goes from these three exclamations
and these three questions to three confessions. And these
three confessions in verse 36 are great and they are wonderful.
He says in 36, for from him, and through him and to him are
all things. To him be glory forever and ever. The great Johann Sebastian Bach
was a wonderful composer of music. He loved music from an early
age. His brother was a musician. It was part of the family line
and Bach had to sneak into his brother’s music cabinet. He kept
it locked. but he could somehow reach through
the vents in this cabinet and he could roll up a piece of music
and sneak it out and he could copy that music and then he could
go to the instrument and play it. And over the years, Bach
became one of the great musicians post-Reformation. People thought
his music a little too flowery. Music should be simple, they
said. Music should be simple and not flowery because simple
music does not honor and glorify God. And Bach said, no, everything
we do, whatever from the heart, whatever from the mind, whatever
from the hands should be for the glory of almighty God. And so he signed each piece of
music, S-D-G, Sola Deo Gloria. And so when you hear the Passion
Chorale of St. Matthew, when you hear Magnificats,
when you hear the Brandenburg Concertos, when you hear any
piece of the music of Bach or Handel or any others, you should
recognize that these men, because of the Protestant Reformation,
realized that whatever came from their hands was for the glory
of Almighty God. And so when we sing a hymn to
the ode to joy tune, joyful, joyful, we adore thee. We recognize
that these men, these great composers wrote for the glory of God and
it assists us in praising almighty God. And that’s what the apostle
Paul is affirming here in these three confessions. These three
confessions related to three little words from, through and
to. For everything is from God. It
is through God. It is to God. God is the source. God is the accomplisher. And
God is the end goal. These three things teach us that
God is the creator of all things. He’s the governor of all things,
and he is the end of all things. Everything God is and has done
and will do is for his own glory. And the apostle Paul, after speaking
of and explaining the gospel to the Romans, says, for from
him, and through him and to him are all things to him alone be
glory forever and ever. Amen. Now think very practically
for a moment about giving God glory. There’s a lot of ways
we can give God glory. First of all, we must understand
though, that God in and of himself is glorious. He doesn’t need
a creation to prove it. He doesn’t need you to see it
and to tell him. God alone in and of himself is
perfectly glorious. But in his good wisdom and in
his pleasure, he has seen fit to show his glory in the midst
of his creation and redemption through you, through Jesus, through
the trees and the stars, the human body, the depths of the
sea, the lengths of our galaxy. He has seen fit to show his glory
in those ways. So God of himself is worthy of
glory, just because of who he is, his character, but his actions,
his creation, his redemption, his work of salvation through
Jesus is worthy of us saying back to God, you alone are glorious. Why? For you’re the great God
who made all things. You’re the powerful God who sustains
all things. You’re the God who brought us out of Egypt, out
of the house of bondage, out of the house of slavery. You’re
the God who sent his only son, the Lord Jesus to the cross of
Calvary to pay for my sins. And by faith in him, I receive
his obedience. I receive his righteousness.
So why worship God? Because he’s glorious. Why else
worship God? Because he has done many glorious
things. What is man’s chief end? Man’s
chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. We will
glorify God in this life and the life to come. So go back
to my question from a few moments ago. We’ll ask it a little different
way. Does the greatness of God. Does it cause you to stagger?
Does it cause you to to shake? Does it does it cause you to
to shiver? To think this God, this glorious
God, this majestic God, this gracious God has saved me through
Jesus. If so, it will manifest itself.
it’ll manifest itself through your daily life. Like J.S. Bach, you will put on your dish
towel, on the music you write, on the piano that you play, on
the children you teach, on the house that you keep, on the insurance
that you sell, on the land that you survey, whatever it is God
has given your hands to do, you’ll put as your signature, Sola Deo
Gloria. You’ll enter his house and you’ll
worship him. You’ll give him praise and thanksgiving because
he has saved you. But do you know what the opposite
of giving God glory is? It’s in the first part of Romans.
It’s in the dark part of Romans. It’s in chapter one. Paul, through
the Holy Spirit, says that those who know God, they fail to acknowledge
him. And they fail to give him thanks.
And they fail to give him the honor and glory that is due his
name. They suppress that knowledge
of him and they live for themselves, giving themselves the glory that
is due God. So back to that question. Does
the majesty of God, the glory of the gospel, the fact that
he has saved you cause you to shake and to shudder and to stagger? Can you not help but to be overwhelmed
and overfilled with joy and thanks and say, From him and to him
and through him are all things. Blessed be God, to him be glory
forever. Amen. Pray with me. Our great
God and heavenly father, this day we come before you. We come
before your greatness, your majesty, your goodness. We come into your
house with other people, with other Christians to sing your
praises. May the words of our mouth, the meditations of our
heart, not only be pleasing in your sight, but may they be full
of joy of the gospel and awe, because your glory has been revealed
to us. Reveal that glory to us now even
more through the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. We do ask
and pray. And we pray that these elements
that we are about to receive would be set apart for not common
use, but uncommon use. That the emblems of your death
Uh, the signs and seals of your redemption that is ours in Christ
would be evident to us by your spirit. We pray in Jesus name.
Amen.