Things that Are Unsearchable

This is a slightly edited version of a sermon that I preached on Sunday evening, 10/20/13, at Landmark Baptist Church (my home church; see our website at landmarkbaptistga.com). 

THINGS THAT ARE UNSEARCHABLE

Text: Romans 11:30-36

INTRODUCTION

The goal of this study is to magnify the Lord and edify each of you in the process.

We’re living in a time when man is becoming increasingly magnified and God is becoming increasingly debased. A famous British author, Christopher Hitchens, wrote a book demeaning God’s greatness, and it sold over 500,000 copies. He died in 2011, so he knows better now, but what about the 500,000+ people who read his book?! How has their view of God been marred?

Elihu said in Job 36:24, Remember that thou magnify his work, which men behold.

…and that’s what I intend to do tonight, by showing you five things that are unsearchable and all of which have to do with God.

We’ll begin here in Rom. 11 to establish the biblical definition of “unsearchable,” which is important as a foundation for our survey, but we’ll look at this passage in more detail later.

In Rom. 11, Paul shows how God is able to save the Gentiles in this age through the unbelief of Israel at its outset. He also shows how God means for the Gentiles’ belief to provoke the Jews into believing in Christ themselves. This demonstration of divine wisdom causes Paul to burst into the praise found in vv. 33-36.

Note esp. v. 33b:…how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out.

So if something is unsearchable, it is past finding out. It’s something you can’t fully grasp or comprehend.

One might say, then why are we studying these things, if they can’t be grasped or comprehended?

Excellent question! Answer: to magnify the Lord and help you to fear him and love him more.

Ps. 33:8, Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.

You might think, “But that’s old testament…” Well then, let’s hear it from Paul. 2 Cor. 7:1b,…perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

My hope, then, is that this survey of the unsearchable will magnify God that much more in your eyes and help you give him the respect and love that he deserves from you.

1. GOD’S ATTRIBUTES (Ps. 145:3)

Ps. 145:3, Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.

God’s greatness is said to be unsearchable. He is so very great.

2 Chron. 2:5-6, And the house which I build is great: for great is our God above all gods. But who is able to build him an house, seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him? who am I then, that I should build him an house, save only to burn sacrifice before him?

Exactly—that’s all that the house could do, serve as a place of worship of a being far too great to be contained in the heavens, much less four walls.

But greatness is only one of God’s attributes. I would argue that all of God’s attributes are past finding out.

Both Zophar and Elihu touch on this in the book of Job:

Job 11:7-9, Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It (scope of God’s presence) is high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth , and broader than the sea.

Hell may be separation from God’s blessings, but it is certainly not separation from his presence, which is said to be deeper than hell (v. 9).

Job 37:23-24, Touching (or concerning) the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict. Men do therefore fear before him (at least they should): he respecteth not any that are wise of heart.

So God’s attributes, all of them, are unsearchable. You could learn all that you could about them, and there would still be more to learn. Paul affirms this, when he says “to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge” (Eph. 3:19).

2. GOD’S WORKS (Job 5:8-16)

Now, because God’s attributes are unsearchable, the next unsearchable thing logically follows.

Let’s turn to the oldest book in the Bible, where we find the patriarch Job arguing with his friends in the city dump (among the ashes, Job 2:8). Since the foolishness of God is wiser than men (1 Cor. 1:25), we’d be wise to pay attention to this seemingly commonplace argument.

Ironically, the book of Job contains some of the deepest material in the Bible. I jotted down on a piece paper one time the number of subjects covered in this book, most of which is indeed an argument between five men (Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu), and it is vast.

Outside of the Pauline Epistles, this is my favourite prophetic book. There’s so much mystery to it, and a good example of that is right here in this passage, where Eliphaz, one of Job’s friends, is addressing him.

Notice especially v. 9, Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number.

You can’t search out the greatness and number of things that God does. You see why I said this follows from passage we looked at in Ps. 145, which extols God’s greatness. God does great things, because he is great. God does good things, because he is good. Remember Ps. 119:68, Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes.

Mt. 12:33,…for the tree is known by his fruit…,and the same may be respectfully said of the Creator. God does what he does because of who he is.

So since he himself is unsearchably great, then it follows that his works will be that way too.

Thankfully Eliphaz provides some examples of God’s unsearchably great works:

• Giving rain upon the earth (v. 10a)

• Sending waters upon the fields (v. 10b); more specific

• Setting upon high those that are low (v. 11a)

• Exalting those which mourn to safety (v. 11b)

• Disappointing the devices of the crafty (v. 12)

• Taking the wise in their own craftiness (v. 13a); Paul mentions this one in 1 Cor. 3:19, so he read and believed the book of Job!

• Carrying the counsel of the forward headlong (v. 13b-14)

• Saving the poor from their enemies (vv. 15-16); can’t help but see the great tribulation typology in this passage (“the poor” is often a cue for that).

Some may not consider these things great, but God does. I believe that he inspired Eliphaz to mention these things, as fouled up as that man was spiritually, for our learning and admonition, so that we might magnify these works ourselves.

The world surely won’t! They won’t even acknowledge God’s control of the weather, except extreme circumstances which they have to call “acts of God,” though it’s nothing reverential, but rather an ignorant confession, sort of like the Athenian altar, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD (Acts 17:23).

3. THE HEART OF KINGS (Prov. 25:3)

Prov. 25:3, The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable.

Here’s one that appears to deal with man, since it mentions the heart of kings. The first two parts of the verse provide two examples of unsearchable things: the height of heaven and the depth of earth. These were actually touched on in Job 11, where Zophar said that God’s presence was “as high as heaven” and “deeper than hell” (11:8). I think the overall idea is the heaven is the highest vantage point in the universe and earth (with hell inside of it) is the lowest. This will likely change when the lake of fire is created at the second coming (Is. 34; Rev. 19:20, 20:10).

These three things are unsearchable to men, but of course they aren’t to God. As Zophar said, God is bigger than heaven, earth, and hell, he doesn’t have any trouble with the heart of kings, or of any other man for that matter.

Jer. 17:9, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Answer, v. 10: I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

God can search the heart of every man, according to this verse, including kings. What makes the heart of kings unsearchable is that it’s a special province of God. He mentions the gap between heaven and earth, which is unsearchable to everyone but God, and then he mentions the heart of kings, because only God can understand the workings therein, since it’s a special sphere of his activity.

Prov. 16:10, A divine sentence is in the lips of the king: his mouth transgresseth not in judgment.

So, when the king passes judgment, he’s doing it in the place of God. The context here is a righteous king (“his mouth transgresseth not in judgment”) and foreshadows Christ in his millenial reign, but the general principle holds: when Caesar Augustus said that all the world should be taxed, that was God’s decree or judgment; Caesar was just the instrument.

What man could explain this decree? But if you read the rest of Luke 2, you can see that God knew exactly what he was doing: fulfilling his word that Christ would be born in Bethlehem, which Jesus’ parents had left for Nazareth (v. 4).

So the heart of kings is unsearchable because it’s a place that God is constantly at work, and as we saw before, no one can search out God’s work. Consider another proverb:

Prov. 21:1, The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.

Now, this doesn’t do away with freewill; God didn’t force Caesar to decree worldwide taxation, but he definitely influenced him, and achieved his purpose, in ways that only he can understand.

Better to just stand back in awe and wonder than to question. As Michael Card, the Christian songwriter said, “Give up on your pondering/And fall down on your knees.”

4. GOD’S JUDGMENTS AND WAYS (Rom. 11:30-36)

Only God could have come up with this plan for saving both Jews and Gentiles by grace. Only the wisdom and knowledge of God could conceive Calvary (1 Cor. 2:6-9), and only the wisdom and knowledge of God could conceive the fall of Israel and subsequent salvation of the Gentiles in this age.

Verses 34-35 provide scriptural support for what Paul exclaims in v. 33 about God’s judgments and ways, just like Eliphaz supported his statement about God’s great works with examples.

Paul draws from the prophetic scriptures for support:

• Verse 34 is a free quotation of Is. 40:13. No one can know the mind of the Lord or counsel him (i.e., add something to his mind that he hasn’t already thought of; nothing has ever “occurred” to God). His mind is past finding out.

• Verse 35 is a quotation of Job 41:13. In the midst of a description about leviathan, the Lord pauses to magnify his own power, which leviathan is an example of, and he declares that no one has ever given him anything. Everything that anyone has ever had came from God. You not only can’t give God counsel, his wisdom is so profound, you can’t give him anything that he doesn’t already have (1 Chron. 29:14; 1 Cor. 4:7).

Praise God, he’s the source of everything we lack. Why waste time looking anywhere else? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things (including the salvation of Jews and Gentiles): to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

5. THE RICHES OF CHRIST (Eph. 3:8)

One more from Paul, and perhaps the greatest unsearchable thing for believers in this age personally.

Eph. 3:8, Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

The spiritual riches that we’ve been given in Christ are past finding out. They’re limitless. It’s true that you can’t find them in the old testament, so they’re unsearchable in that sense, but going by the definition in Rom. 11, they’re also past finding out in the sense of their scope.

Think about it. They have to be unsearchable, in keeping with the character of God, who was manifest in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:19; 1 Tim. 3:16).

While we haven’t been given a blank check for physical blessings, we have been for spiritual ones, and an excellent sample of those spiritual blessings can be found in Eph. 1:3-14.

The question I’d like to close this study with is this: what amount are you entering in your blank check? A paltry amount, or big bucks?

In 2 Kings 13:14-19, Joash the king of northern Israel came to the prophet Elisha on his deathbed and bemoaned him, admitting that Elisha was the real strength of Israel (the chariot of Israel; cf. 2 Kings 2:12), not Joash. Remember what Elisha told him to do: shoot the arrow out the window eastward, toward Syria. He even explained the type to him: the arrow stood for deliverance from Syria, northern Israels’ archenemy at the time. Then Elisha tells Joash to strike the ground with a bundle of arrows. And what did Joash do? Strike the ground many times? No; he balked at the type and only struck three times. If he had struck more, he could have smitten Syria much worse than he did, but his unbelief limited his blessings.

The same is true for us in Christ. The only thing limiting our enjoyment of the unsearchable riches of Christ is unbelief. Unbelief keeps sinners from entering into the benefits of salvation, and it also keeps saints from entering into the benefits of sonship.

So let’s not be like Joash and aim so low. C.S. Lewis put it this way: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with [earthly things] when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (Piper, J.; Desiring God; Multnomah, 2003; p. 20).

Our God is unsearchably great and wise, and he conceived a way for us to be saved through the fall of his earthly people, Israel. But it wasn’t just to keep us out of hell. Oh no, far much more than that. It was so that we could experience, as his children, the unsearchable riches of fellowship with him through our Lord Jesus Christ, whose body we now comprise.

As Paul said in 1 Cor. 3:21-23, Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are your’s; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are your’s; And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.

The Case for Paul's Journey to Spain

In this posting, I would like to make a case that the apostle Paul did make it to Spain, as he intended to per Romans 15:24-28, which is cited in its entirety below.  

24 Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company.

25 But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints.

26 For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem.

27 It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things.

28 When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.

So it was Paul's firm intention (mentions it twice), after his pending journey to Jerusalem (Acts 20:3-26:32), to visit Rome and then Spain.  He makes it to Rome in Acts 27-28 and likely appears before Nero the first time, per the coliphon (footnote) at the end of 2 Timothy 4: "The second epistle unto Timotheus, ordained the first bishop of the church of the Ephesians, was written from Rome, when Paul was brought before Nero the second time."  Likely he is released, since the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim., 2 Tim., and Titus) deal with events in the following locales:

• Asia (2 Tim. 1:15), including Ephesus (1 Tim. 1:1; 2 Tim. 1:18, 4:12); Miletum (2 Tim. 4:20b), where Trophimus is left by constraint; and Troas (2 Tim. 4:13; see notes below) 
• Macedonia (1 Tim. 1:1),including Nicopolis (Tit. 3:12)
• Achaia, including Corinth (2 Tim. 4:20), where Erastus apparently chooses to stay ("abode") rather than continue with Paul
• Crete (Tit. 1:5,12) 

Paul's final stop before returning to Rome the second time seems to have been Troas (2 Tim. 4:13) , where he left his cloke, books, and parchments, likely at the time he was apprehended by the Romans and then shipped to Rome.  

Paul seems to have spent a considerable amount of the time between his two appearances before Nero in Rome in the eastern Roman Empire.  Due to his strong desire to visit Spain, though, I think that he may have visited there, perhaps by the land route through Gaul, since he says that he would come by the Romans into Spain (v. 28) and "be brought on [his] way thitherward" by them.  There's no record of believers doing this by sea (Acts 15:3, 21:5; 1 Cor. 16:6; 2 Cor. 1:16; Tit. 3:14; 3 John 6), so Paul likely would have struck out north with a company of the Romans, just as they came a considerable way south of Rome to greet him when he arrived in Italy for the first time (Acts 27:13-15).  Note especially in Acts 21:5 that the accompaniment on a sea journey stops at the seashore. 

In closing, I'm reminded of the last verse of the gospel of John (John 21:25), where John states there are "many other things which Jesus did" which John did not record.  Because of the number of Paul's activites not recorded in Acts but recorded in his epistles (e.g. 2 Cor. 11:23-33), and because of the similitude of his ministry to the Lord Jesus' (Rom. 15:8, 16; Gal. 6:17; Col. 1:24), I'm confident that there are many others things which Paul did which are not recorded, perhaps even an evangelistic "journey into Spain" (Rom. 15:24).