Great is the Lord! Romans 11.33-36

Great is the Lord!

If you could answer all of your questions about God, he would not be eternal.   If you could understand all of God’s thinking, he would not be infinite, and your thinking would not be finite.  If you could figure out everything about his ways, and what he would do next, then you would not need faith, whereas the writer to the Hebrews clearly stated that, “without faith, it is impossible to please God.”1

There is a reason that God’s ways are often called mysterious, because his ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts.2  Indeed, his thinking is beyond our capacity to comprehend—he is God, and we are not.  So, while Paul agonized over the hard-heartedness and the arrogance of the Jews’ rejection of Jesus, in the end, he trusted God.  He knew the Lord’s heart, and he trusted his ways.  He knew the holy Scriptures and the psalms which spoke of the Lord’s goodness. 

Paul has poured out his heart to the Roman church, showing his anguish over how many of his Jewish brethren had spurned Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah.  Yet, he highlights the truth of the sovereignty of God over all things. And then Paul the teacher, in a single breath, becomes Paul the poet, as he expresses the feelings of his heart and his own concrete thinking about God being the origin of all things.   

“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! (34) For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became his counselor’?3  (35) Or ‘who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again’?4 (36) For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”        Romans 11.33-36.

Oh yes, Paul knew the Scriptures!  In verse 34, he quoted the prophet Isaiah, and in verse 35, he quoted Job.  He anchors his Christian teaching to the Old Testament truths which he had studied and loved since his childhood.  Paul knew Job’s biography well--that though Job lost everything of consequence and value in his life, he trusted the heart of God.  “Naked I came from my mother’s womb; and naked shall I return.  The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”5  Ah, blessed be the name of the Lord.

What a charge to you and me—that whatever comes our way, we can say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Paul knew what it was to suffer, because he was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, imprisoned—and all for the cause of Christ; each time, it only served to make his commitment stronger.  There are times when the difficulties of life defy description, and any earthly consolation.  Our Lord suffered, and he knows our suffering; he does not leave us alone in it.  Rather, only he truly understands.  He is there with us in our pain.  When we do not understand, he bids us still, ‘trust in the Lord, and do good.’6   And then in the very next verses in Psalm 37, he invites us to move still higher, still deeper: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to him, trust in him, and he will do it.”7   For it is in him we live and move and have our being.8

So with Paul, join me and say aloud, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!  For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”  Indeed, great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised!9

Christine

podcast: 

1   Hebrews 11.6

2   Isaiah 55.9

3   Isaiah 40.13

4   Job 41.11

5   Job 1.21

6   Psalm 37.3

7   Psalm 37.4,5

8   Acts 17.28

9   Psalm 48.1