Romans 11:33-36

³³ Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

³⁴ “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
³⁵ “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

³⁶ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

There are a few important truths that one needs to understand before we are willing to submit to the God’s Word as the guide for our life.  One main one is found in verse 33:  we must believe God’s ways are “inscrutable”.  This word means “unable to be searched out” or when put within verse 33 we are taught that God’s ways are unable to be figured out.  What does this mean?

Well, we know that it does not mean that God wishes to be unknown by his creation since John 1:18 says that Jesus came that we might know God.  The Father sent Jesus in the flesh that we might know Him.  He wants us to know Him!

So in what way is God “inscrutable” or “unable to be searched out?”

My answer would be that God is “inscrutable” to the purely natural human mind.  There is no man, woman, or child alive that can “figure out” God’s ways with purely natural reasoning.  The Scripture teaches this very thing over and over.

1 Corinthians 2:14 says that “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”

Another verse that speaks of God’s ways as beyond our ways is found in the book of Isaiah, chapter 55:

⁸ For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

We, as created humans, cannot formulate our own views of what God is like, how he acts, or what he intends for us. We must first hear from Him about these things in order to have Godly opinion, views, and direction.  God does the informing, God calls the shots, God is One with the correct viewpoint….always.  We do not get to decide how God wants to be know, He does.

This is why the Scriptures are so important to us.  God has decided that He would speak to us through His Word, otherwise known as the Scriptures or the Bible.  The Bible tells us that men were “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21) as they wrote the words of Scriptures.  God speaks to us today primarily through this written word.  God does the talking, we do the listening, receiving, learning, knowing, trusting, and obeying.  We should always be submitting to everything the Scripture says in all areas of life.  As a Christian wanting to know God, I am not allowed to pull ideas of what God is like from my own imagination, but should be consistently drawn back to what God has revealed in His Word.

This concept covers all areas of the Christian life, from how we are made right with God to how we should respond to God to how we should respond to others.  Some of the Scripture is historical record, some is moral law, some is poetry, but all of it reveals to us God’s ways.  We cannot chose some to obey and some to reject.  If it’s in His book, we want to follow it.

This leads us to our next preaching series. In March, we are going to be preaching a series called God’s Design for His Church.  As we dig into Scripture, we see that God not only wants us to know how to relate to Him individually, but He wants us to know how to relate to Him in the context of community; How we relate to Him together.  And what we find in Scripture, as always, is God’s design is the best design.

The preaching schedule looks like this:

March 3rd        God’s Design:  Male and Female

March 10th      God’s Design:  Church Leadership- Elders

March 17th       God’s Design:  Paid Elders

March 24th      God’s Design:  Caring for One Another and Serving the World

Since Bend City Church is still in its infancy as a local church, these topics are incredibly important.  We want so much to be a local church that gets our direction from His word as we (hopefully) grow in maturity.  If you consider Bend City Church your church home, or even if you don’t, I invite you to join us as we look as God’s Design for His Church.  I trust you will be incredibly encouraged to know that God has a plan for His church.  Hope to see you there.- Shane