It Ends in Wonder, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Friend, there are untraceable things. There are unsearchable things about God's ways that you cannot understand. But God's character is revealed in Jesus.

And that's something you can hold on to. And one day you're going to see that all the secret things wove together in the same beautiful pattern that we saw revealed in the cross. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Bittovitch. You know, I've been thinking this a lot lately. Life can be really tough. There's so much uncertainty, pain, and struggle for so many of us. How do we worship God when we don't understand how He could let us experience the difficult circumstances of 2023? In this message from Romans chapter 11, Pastor J.D. shows us how even the Apostle Paul acknowledged that God's ways, even for him, are unsearchable. But after we hear about how God keeps His promises today, we'll find our only real response should be to worship Him.

Let's rejoin Pastor J.D. in Romans chapter 11 as he continues our teaching titled, It Ends in Wonder. All Bible study, whether it's in here or it's around your living room, all Bible study should end in worship. The fact that Paul ends his examination of doctrine and explanation and an explosion of worship illustrates for you and me that the purpose of Bible study is not just to expand your spiritual head.

It is to set your heart on fire with passion. And I say this because for many of you, growth in Christ is primarily growth and knowledge of Bible facts and doctrines. That's what it is, what you love. Then you come here and you like bringing your 48-inch notebook and you got your big Bible with the Greek and the Hebrew interlinear and you're going through and you're listening to your sermon podcast and you're reading all these books and I'm right there with you, okay? I love knowledge. But the point of the Bible is not to fill your head with knowledge. It is to fill your heart with wonder. For others of you, your interest in Christianity, I would say is more of the practical variety.

Maybe even more of you are in this category. Now you wanna know how God can help you have a better marriage, how He can give you better kids, how you can have a more stable family, how you can have a more fulfilling career. And so you love those messages where I start breaking it down for you and making it practical. And you're like, oh, pastor, it was great today.

I got like three things I can actually do this week with that message. I love to see it change my life. And listen, that's great. That's great.

I love giving that kind of guidance. The Bible is full of wise counsel on ordering your life, but you understand that the Bible is not primarily a book of best spiritual practices. The Bible is a book that is designed to lead you to wonder. The stories we see in the Bible are not primarily of heroes that you're supposed to emulate, where you're supposed to have courage like Daniel, where you're supposed to fight Goliath like David did and have faith like Abraham did. The point of all these story is to give you a savior that you were supposed to marvel and adore.

That's the point of all of it. I've told you that nearly 75 years ago, there was a British pastor named D. Martin Lloyd Jones, who jumped into a controversy in his day about whether sermons should tend more toward the doctrinal or whether they should tend more to the practical. Because already 75 years ago in the Western world, they were arguing, you know, sermons ought to be full of doctrine.

You ought to leave with, you know, just knowledge about Greek heiress tenses and superlapsarianism and how this fits with that, you know, that's what they want. And the other group of people are like, no, it's just gotta be practical. You gotta tell people how it changes their lives.

You probably have an opinion too. D. Martin Lloyd Jones says, I would humbly say the purpose of the sermon is neither of those things. The purpose of a lecture is that you leave with a page full of notes. The purpose of a motivational speech is that you leave with a page full of action steps.

The purpose of a Bible sermon is that you leave worshiping. There must come a time, he said, in every message where the pen goes down and the eyes go up and you stop saying, oh my God, look at all these things I gotta do for you. And you start saying, oh my God, look at who you are. And oh my God, look at what you have done for me. And you stand in wonder.

You stand in wonder. That's why D. Martin Lloyd Jones said, I spent half my time telling Christians to study doctrine and the other half telling them doctrine is not enough because worship is the point. Number three, we see from this passage that worship arises with right posture of humility toward God. Worship arises with the right posture of humility toward God. Our worship often gets short-circuited right from the beginning by two false assumptions. The first one is that we're smarter or more fair or more compassionate than God is. And so we get into some situation when we think, well, God, this is the way you should do it.

If you're really just and you're really fair and you're really compassionate, you really understood how things work, this is how you would do it. And we start lecturing God. The second assumption is that God is somehow being unfair to us, that God owes us good things.

And the fact that bad things, any bad thing is happening to us is unfair. God, why me? Paul addresses both of those false assumptions with just two phrases because he knows that both of those assumptions will destroy your trust and your joy in God. Verse 34, who has known the mind of the Lord?

Who has been his counselor? In other words, which of us is in a place where we think we can lecture God on the right thing to do? Before you lecture God on the right thing to do, you should stop and ask, where did I learn these concepts of justice and compassion from?

Where did they come from? Did I not learn them from him? And now I want to teach him. Furthermore, has he not worked out the salvation process in a way that showed me that he's worthy of our trust? Just the little glimpses Paul says you get of what God is up to. Don't you already see that God took some of the very worst and turned it into the best? He took the cross and turned it into the resurrection. He took Jewish rejection and turned it into Gentile salvation. Don't you realize that given enough time and perspective, you're going to see how he does that with everything in human history?

That's the humility of perspective. There's also for Paul, the humility of unworthiness. Who's ever given to God that he should be repaid? Like I told you, most complaints to God are built in the assumption that God owes us good things and therefore it is wrong for him to let us experience bad things.

Well, Paul says, not if you understand the gospel, that's not true. What does God owe you? Nothing, only condemnation. The fact that you got up this morning and took a breath of non-hell-based air is grace, all grace. The fact that you experienced anything other than condemnation is grace. You see the question, if you understand the gospel is not, God, why are you letting bad things to happen to us good people? The real question from the gospel, Paul flips the script on it and says, why have you given such good things to a race of deliberately bad people? Listen, I am not saying that there's never a place for you to question why God allows certain things to happen.

I'm not saying there's not a place to lament loudly about some situation you can't understand. I'm just saying that behind every single question that you ever asked to God should be the recognition that you are at our core, we are part of a race that rejected God and deserve condemnation. The humility of perspective and the humility of unworthiness, both are necessary to thrive with joy and worship.

Number four, the best worship is grounded in who God is. Paul shows us not in your perception of what he's doing in your circumstances. Paul's whole explosion of praise here is not because he finds himself in great circumstances. It's not even because he understands what's going on.

In fact, you see that Paul still acknowledges he didn't have the foggiest idea about how everything's going to turn out. Look at verse 33, how unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways. I say this because for many of you, in order for you to really worship God, you got to feel some token of God's love. So when you go to the doctor and you get back the cancer screen comes back negative or the marriage gets reconciled, you get accepted into the school, you get the promotion, right? The kids are doing well, you feel the love of God. And that's great by the way, you should be thankful toward God for any of those things. Those things are certainly tokens and manifestations of his love for you. But I need you to understand that God's ways are often untraceable.

Paul says so. And that means that if your joy in God is dependent on understanding the particulars of his plan, if your joy in God is dependent on you being able to trace what he is doing, you are going to be miserable. I was listening to some well-meaning Bible teacher the other day explain. She said, you know, to really praise God, you need to know what season you're in. Maybe you're in a season of waiting or season of transition, season of development. And if you understand that, well, then you'll be able to praise God in that season.

I really appreciate what she was trying to say, but the problem is that it's still built on some version of understanding. I can praise God if I understand what God is doing in this season. Paul says, verse 34, you simply cannot know his mind.

His ways are untraceable. Real joy happens when you trust a God who is faithful in all seasons, regardless of whether you understand what season it is or not. The best praise, the most joy-giving praise is anchored in who you know God to be. And that is not known primarily through his small tokens of favor in your life. Who God is is determined more by his dramatic work of salvation in human history. You know, throughout the Old Testament, whenever Israel was in a dark and trying time, God would comfort them by doing something that we might see as odd, but he would comfort them by revealing one of his names to them.

That was it, just give them one of his names. So when Israel was wandering in the wilderness, in this new area, God appears to them and says, my name is Jehovah Rapha, I am. Jehovah means I am your healer. And he showed them that he could heal their diseases when Jeremiah was discouraged by Israel's persistent unfaithfulness. And he looks up to heaven and he says, God, how can this nation survive?

We are so sinful. God reveals to him, Jehovah is kidding you, I am your righteousness. I will be your righteousness when you are unrighteous. In Ezekiel's day, when the people of God felt scared and alone, God revealed himself as Jehovah Shammah, I am the presence that is with you. When King David felt lost and confused with no friends in the world, God revealed himself, Psalm 23 is Jehovah Ra, I am your shepherd. When Abraham was old and childless with no hope and no prospects, God declares Jehovah Jireh, I am your provider. Now here's the thing, how God was going to be all of these things to them was unclear because even after revealing these names to them, people in Israel still got sick. People still sometimes went childless.

Sometimes people died. How God was all of those names to them was unclear until Jesus showed up. And then Jesus starts doing the unheard of thing of claiming the I am name for himself.

By the way, go back and read your Bible. That's what got him on the sideways with all the Jewish leaders. What really ticked them off is he started saying, I am and applying that name to himself. And they knew that man, he was claiming the name of God, but he was fulfilling all those promises.

It was intentional. He was Jehovah Rafa, the God who is our healer, which is why he went around healing diseases. Even more so though he went and healed us at the source of our disease. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our infirmities.

He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities so that by his stripes, I could be ultimately healed. He was Jehovah to his kid knew God, my righteousness, because at the cross, God made him who knew no sin to become sin for me so that I could be made the righteousness of God in him through the Holy spirit. Now he is with me Jehovah Shama, the God who is ever present with me and carries me in the Palm of his hand. He is in Jesus, Jehovah Rafa, the Lord, my shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep and will never leave us or forsake us. Jesus has become Jehovah Jireh, my provider, the God who supplies all of my need so that I can say with Paul, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Do you want to know what God is really like? Look at Jesus. Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. I'm the clearest picture of who God is. And see, that's what you can hold onto in the midst of everything else is falling apart. Thanks for listening to Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. We'll get back to today's teaching from the Book of Romans in a minute, but first I wanted to tell you about the latest premium resource that we are offering our Summit Life family right now. With your financial gift of $35 or more to this ministry, you'll receive the second part of a Bible study through the Book of Romans written by Pastor Tim Keller, who was one of Pastor J.D.

's biggest influences in the faith. Not only will this Bible study help you gain a better understanding of one of the deepest, richest parts of the Bible, but it's also a great reminder of Pastor Tim's years of faithful gospel ministry as he takes us through the second half of the Book of Romans. Be inspired to embrace this gospel message and all of its beauty and maybe even study with a friend. To get your copy, call right now with your gift.

You can reach us at 866-335-5220 or visit jdgreer.com. And as always, we want to thank you for your continued support of this ministry. Now let's get back to today's teaching from Pastor J.D.

right here on Summit Life. Jesus showed us, for example, Luke 15, what the heart of God was for every sinner. That the God the Father stands at the edge of heaven longing for a child to come home.

Y'all, I don't understand everything there is to know about election. We've tried to struggle through that for a few weeks, right? But what I do know is that God the Father, never talking to another human being where God the Father is not standing there with open arms longing for them to come home because Jesus showed me God was like that. Jesus showed me that he's the kind of God that weeps when his children go through pain. I see that at the tomb of Lazarus when he knows that Lazarus is about to get raised from the dead, yet still he stands there with Mary and Martha and he weeps with them because he feels their pain. And it shows me that when I'm going through pain, God is not a God who is distant. He is a God who feels my pain, even if he knows that healing is right around the corner. Jesus showed us that God was a God who literally could not turn anybody away.

In fact, here's the challenge. Go through your New Testament and find me one person, one that ever came to Jesus that got turned away. What that tells me is that when I come to God and sometimes I feel like the heavens are brass, well, no, he's not gonna turn me away. He never ignores me because I saw that in Jesus.

He never turned anybody away. And I know he's listening to me. At his cross, I see that he is a God who can take even the darkest and foulest plans of men and rewrite them so they turn in forgiveness and resurrection and healing. And he shows me that he is a God who prays only for the forgiveness of those torturing and maligning him.

Y'all, there is so much, so much I do not understand. God's ways still are for me, as Paul says, untraceable, but I know, I know who Jesus is. Reminds me of that verse we looked at a few weeks ago.

I told you Deuteronomy 29, 29. John Calvin's favorite verse, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed, they belong to us and our children forever. There are secret things. Friend, there are untraceable things. There are unsearchable things about God's ways that you cannot understand, but God's character is revealed in Jesus.

And that's something you could hold on to. And one day you're gonna see that all the secret things wove together in the same beautiful pattern that we saw revealed in the cross. I've got a friend who was walking through a particularly difficult chapter right now. She told me recently, told me this week about her situation. And she said, I'm gonna be totally honest with you. She said, there's no way you can tell this story where a lot of the details in this story are pretty. She said, they're just not pretty, but I know, I know that when this whole story is over, it's gonna be beautiful. Not every detail is gonna be pretty, but the whole thing is gonna be beautiful. And I know that because the cross and resurrection shows me that the character of God revealed in the cross and resurrection shows me that that might describe your life. You're looking at some detail in your life.

There's no way this detail is pretty, but I can promise you friend, that the whole story is gonna be beautiful one day because that's what the cross and resurrection shows us, which leads me finally to number four. We can worship even when we don't understand. Like Paul, friend, like you, I got a lot of unanswered questions. There are things that don't add up for me. Listen, y'all, I can stand up here as your pastor.

This is an easy gig in one sense because I can stand up here as your pastor and I can tell you what the Bible says, but I will tell you, my heart is not always at peace with it. There are times I sit with people in pain and I think, God, why if you love this person, why would you let this happen? I've thought that about things that I've gone through.

God, you say you love me. Why would you not at least give me this? I think I'm asking for the right motives. I think it seems to me to be good. I can't see any downside in it, but God doesn't give it to me, at least on my timetable, and I just don't understand. You see, what I do see revealed in the gospel is the evidence of God's goodness. And friend, I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day.

And I know just like he came out of the tomb when everybody thought he was gone, that one day he's going to come and make all the sad things come untrue. Let's hear one of the things I hate. We don't do it at this church, so I don't think I'm talking about anybody here, but I hate it when a worship leader stands up and asks, all right, good morning. How's everybody feel this morning?

I've been places where, in fact, I spoke at a conference not long ago where a guy did that. And I'm like, how do I feel? Listen, bro, it's 830 in the morning. I feel terrible. Things are going wrong in my house. On the way here, my wife and I got in a big fight and my kids were insane. I got bills I'm not sure how to pay.

My kids are literally holding me by the last string. I feel overwhelmed and confused. How about instead of you asking me how I feel, why don't you tell me about what I should know? Why don't you tell me about him whom I have believed in and can trust in?

I feel terrible, but I know that he is faithful. You see, worship here is not about how you feel. It's about who God is.

And here's why I'm concerned. Some of you base your understanding on how God feels about you. You base that on perceptions of what's going on. If you feel like things are going well, you feel like he loves you. Listen, you are always going to misinterpret God if you do that. God's ways are untraceable, but his character revealed in the gospel is undoubtable. So no, I don't know all that God is doing in every situation and neither will you.

But I know that what he is doing is bathed in love because that's who he is. And I know one day he will swallow up all this pain and confusion into a glory that is so glorious that even the suffering leading up to it will not even be worth comparing to it. I don't understand why God would allow my friend with three kids to get that cancer diagnosis. Candidly, I don't see any silver lining in it, but I know who Jesus is. And I know that just as God used Jesus' death for good and brought resurrection out of it, that he's going to do that with my friend. And so as the little proverb says, where I can't trace his hand, I still trust his heart. And one day like Paul, one day like Paul, I'm going to say, oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable were his judgment, how untraceable was his ways, who was known the mind of the Lord, who has been his counselor, who has ever given to God that he should be repaid for from him and through him and to him are all things. So to him be glory forever and ever.

Amen. Does the name Florence Chadwick mean anything to you? She was the first woman to swim the English Channel. 1952, 1952, later that year, she decided that she wanted to swim something no woman had ever swam before, and that is from Catalina Island to the California coast. It's about 26 miles. No woman had ever done it.

One man had done it. It was a very foggy day, the day that she set out and she couldn't see, just a few feet ahead of her. After 15 hours in the water, she looked up the little boat that was following her to make sure she didn't drown. Her mom was in it. And she said, mama, I just can't make it.

I can't go any farther. And her mom tried to encourage her. She said, just go a little farther, just a little farther. But eventually she said, I can't. Even after saying she couldn't, she paddled on for about 55 minutes, just slogging through the water stroke by stroke. Finally, she gave up and she climbed in the boat only to discover that she was about a half mile from the coastline, less than a half mile. She got asked later why she quit. And she said, it's just because I couldn't see anything. It was too foggy and I couldn't see the coastline.

If I'd seen it, I'm confident I could have made it. She waited two months. She got back in the water. This time, she not only swam from Catalina Island to California, she'd only made it. She beat the men's world record by two and a half hours.

Now I know what you're expecting. Expect me to say, and the difference was that it was a bright and sunny day and she could see. That's not how the story goes. When she did it the second time and she broke the record, it was even more foggy than the first time. She couldn't see anything. So naturally they asked her, like, why did you do it?

You said the problem was the fog and the fog was worse. She said, well, this time mentally I was ready. She said, it's real simple.

It's almost childish. The whole time I was swimming, I just kept in my mind a picture of that shoreline. Even though I couldn't see it with my eyes, it was ever before me in my heart.

I never lost sight of the California shoreline and so I felt like I was always closing in on it. Here's her statement. Listen, as long as I live for the picture of my mind, I can keep slogging through the fog of my challenge. Now it's not a Bible verse, but it's close.

Okay. As long as you keep living for the picture of future glory in your mind, you can keep slogging through the fog of your challenge. And that shoreline, that picture of vision, that picture of glory, that is Jesus. You're like, I can't remember all the Jehovah Rapha, Jehovah's shot. I can't remember all these names.

That's fine. Just remember one, Jehovah Jesus. Cause he is all of those things in one. He is your healer. He is your provider. He is everything that you've ever needed.

Every way that you were insufficient. He is your sufficiency for all the ways that you say, I am not. He would say to you, I am the great I am, and I will be your overwhelming supply. So yes, you can say, I will lift you up in the lowest Valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy with all my days, Lord. Yes, I will. I will do that as a choice because of what I know to be true, not because of how I feel. This is Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Now, J.D., we learned in the first volume of the Romans Bible study about hope and suffering, our union with Christ, obedience of faith and the Holy Spirit. So what should we expect to find specifically in the final chapters of Romans as we move on? I think what you'll see is the difference the gospel makes in your life. You're going to see this recurring theme of God's faithfulness and your inability to produce the fruits of the Christian life. He's going to show you that the gospel has implications for all of your relationships. One of the things that Tim Keller, who wrote this study that we're offering, one of the things that he had a trademark gift of doing is making the complex parts of the Christian life, making them very clear and making them joy based by showing you how they flow out of the new realities created by the gospel.

Christians who love studying the Bible, I think, will love this resource by Tim Keller because it really takes you into the heart of maybe the most gospel rich explanation anywhere in scripture and show you how it not only changes your relationship with God, it changes how you live. We'll send you a copy of Pastor Tim Keller's study through Romans chapters 8 through 16 as a way to say thank you for your financial gift of $35 or more to this ministry. To give, call us now at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or give online right now at JDCreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Don't miss tomorrow when we continue with two familiar verses from Romans chapter 12. Join us Thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.