August 23 - Old Jacksonville Campus - Brandon Hiltibidal

[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you're guests with us, my name is Brandon. I look forward to having the chance to meet you. And today we begin a new sermon series that our staff and elders have been praying will be significant in the life and future of our church. We are beginning a series called Mine in which we are going to see and prayerfully learn to depend on the awesomeness and the generosity of God. How do we live in light of [00:00:34] Speaker B: the infiniteness and the kindness of God? [00:00:39] Speaker A: And to get us thinking in the right direction, I'm going to start out the series with some questions that could cause controversy. I hope we can do this peacefully. First, raise your hand if you know what the goat stands for. Pretty much everybody, the goat means the greatest of all time. And what we mean when we say someone is the greatest of all time is usually that they have both incredible ability and consistent dominance. For example, the vast majority of people believe that the goat of basketball is either LeBron James or Michael Jordan. Raise your hand if you think LeBron is the goat. We have a few. We have a few. Funnily, there was actually more in the 8 o' clock service where they skew older. So raise your hand if you think Jordan is the goat. Raise your hand if you don't care about basketball at all. Same thing in last service. Some people raise your hand twice so you know who you think it is. You also don't care. The greatest basketball player of all time is probably, as you just saw, Michael Jordan. Not only is he widely considered to be the most talented and driven of all time, but he also won the championship every time he got there. The greatest football player of all time at this point is considered to be Tom Brady. He was amazing and also consistently victorious. He won seven Super Bowls. Seven. Or who's the greatest musical artist of all time? Who thinks it is Elvis? There were some in the first service that thought it was Elvis. Okay? The Beatles. [00:02:32] Speaker B: Okay, wow. [00:02:34] Speaker A: Is it Taylor Swift? End of controversy. [00:02:42] Speaker B: All right. [00:02:43] Speaker A: Because regardless when we're talking about, when we're talking about these things, we're talking about people who are great and consistently great. But remember, goat arguments are fun precisely because they're so debatable. No one has ever been a perfect basketball player. No one has ever been an all powerful musician, right? When we ask questions like these, we are still comparing flawed and finite people to other flawed, finite people, right? [00:03:21] Speaker B: But I want us to remember this morning that there is one who has actually infinite capability. There is one being of perfect excellence, 100% consistency, unceasing faithfulness, one being of literal all power. [00:03:58] Speaker A: Saint Anselm was a theologian from a thousand years ago who perhaps invented the concept of the goat. When he said, when he called God the being than which no greater being can be conceived, God is that the greater than which cannot be conceived. He probably could have said that a little clearer. But what he was saying is that God is not only the greatest being in existence, he is the greatest being imaginable. God, the one true God, is the greatest possible being of all time. When you try to imagine perfections beyond his perfect perfections, there is no such thing that you can even think of. But we live every day in this finite, often broken life. [00:04:54] Speaker B: Our hearts need to remember that there is one whose greatness, whose power, whose dependability is incomparable because it's perfect, the greatest of all time, the one we depend on. He's the reason we live and move and have our being. And this is what Paul wrote about him in Romans 11:33, 36 [00:05:26] Speaker A: oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor, or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid for from him and through him, and to him are all things, to him be the glory for forever. Amen. God isn't just the greatest, he's the being than which no greater being can be conceived. God is the ultimate, the incomparable. And the question for us is this, how much is that going to impact our lives? [00:06:14] Speaker B: If God is what Saint Anselm and Apostle Paul say he is, then that changes everything about how we think about everything. [00:06:28] Speaker A: So these few verses are written by Paul at the end of Romans chapter 11. Many translations of Romans include a heading prior to this section, prior to these verses, labeling them a doxology or labeling them a hymn of praise. This is so cool. Paul writes 11 chapters of Romans 11 world changing, holy Spirit inspired chapters about our need for Jesus, about the power of the gospel. And then he breaks out into a hymn of praise. And what I want to do is to try to get our hearts even somewhere close to the point where Paul's was when he got here. And I'm going to do that by doing a flyover of the first 11 chapters of Romans. Don't be nervous. I'm going to do it very quickly. But I want to share the greatest hits of how Paul taught the good news of the greatness of God prior to this hymn of praise. That we just read in chapter one he started like this. For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and righteousness of people. For us to see the greatness, we have to start with that difficult truth. Chapter two says, because of your hardened and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath for when God's righteous judgment is revealed. But the word gospel means good news for a reason. Chapter three says, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed. The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. Chapter four. Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven, whose sins are covered. We are blessed. It's amazing. Chapter five. But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, we Christ died for us. My goodness. In chapter six he wrote, therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. We could skip straight to the hymn of praise right now, but chapter seven says, who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Chapter 8. Therefore there's now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. For through Christ Jesus the law, the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Chapter nine. Such good news, God says, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy and will have compassion on those I will have compassion. So then it does not depend on human will or effort, but on God who shows mercy. Chapter 10 shares salvation in one sentence. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And then after all that life changing truth, we get to the end of chapter 11 and Paul breaks out in a song. [00:09:24] Speaker B: Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. [00:09:30] Speaker A: For 11 chapters, Paul shares about Jesus living and dying in our place and how that saves us and grants us righteousness and sets us free and gives us access to God and gives us newness of life and gives us eternal life. And then he just starts worshiping. For from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be the glory. [00:09:57] Speaker B: Paul shares the most significant news in the history of the world and then comes a song reminding us that God is the most significant anything in the history of the world and everything there is is His. That's what we want to see together. Here at the beginning of this series, the beginning of this fall ministry season, our hearts need to see the supremacy and the authority and the unparalleled greatness of God and remember that that is who we depend on for everything, in every moment. We don't always live like that. We can tend to focus on our friends or our giftedness or our bank accounts, and on and on. [00:10:50] Speaker A: When we do that, we start depending [00:10:54] Speaker B: on ourselves or even the failing things [00:10:57] Speaker A: that are all around us. [00:10:58] Speaker B: But when we remember the greatness of the God, we can live in purpose and hope, grounded in true sufficiency. [00:11:11] Speaker A: So I want us to walk back [00:11:13] Speaker B: through these verses and see some things [00:11:15] Speaker A: that are true about the greatness of [00:11:17] Speaker B: God that will change how we think and live. First is to see this. Your God has all knowledge. Wow. [00:11:32] Speaker A: Did you notice that Paul makes three [00:11:34] Speaker B: assertions here about the greatness of God? [00:11:37] Speaker A: Paul says about our Father God. [00:11:39] Speaker B: Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Riches, wisdom, knowledge. [00:11:45] Speaker A: And then you'll notice that Paul asked three rhetorical questions that help put readers like us in the position where we reflect on how we compare to God in light of those realities. In verse 33, he gives three questions connected to three ways God is ultimate, that God is the greatest of all time. First, Paul asks, who has known the [00:12:07] Speaker B: mind of the Lord? Let's start there. Anyone in here know the mind of the Lord? Impossible. [00:12:18] Speaker A: It's impossible to truly know God's mind because God's knowledge is completely complete. [00:12:29] Speaker B: God knows literally everything. There is nothing to be known that God does not know. Because as this text is going to remind us in just a moment, everything that can be known only can be known because God made it and made it to be known before now. When was the last time that it hit you that if it is knowable, God knows it? Oh, the depths of the knowledge of God. Paul leads us to worship who can know the mind of the Lord? Those of you who are married, have you ever done the thing with your spouse where you try to learn something you don't already know? [00:13:14] Speaker A: It gets harder as the years go by. [00:13:16] Speaker B: Scott and I have been married for 19 years. [00:13:18] Speaker A: There's not a lot left. Some of you been married a lot longer than that. There may be nothing left. When I learned something new about Scarlet, I was like, oh, wow. How did I not know that eventually there's nothing because our knowledge is limited, right? It's finite. No one knows the mind of the Lord because it is unsearchable. The text says unfathomable Your God has all knowledge. [00:13:46] Speaker B: And is he who you're depending on? Your God also has all wisdom. Paul next asks, or who has been his counselor? This question is tied to the depths of God's wisdom. In verse 33. [00:14:05] Speaker A: God doesn't just have all knowledge. He has infinite wisdom. Meaning he doesn't just know everything. He understands how everything fits together. God always knows the right thing. He always makes the right decision. [00:14:17] Speaker B: If you could even call it a decision. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Cause that's probably not precise enough. [00:14:20] Speaker B: Because his essence is wisdom. He's the very source of knowledge and wisdom. He can't not be right. Who could ever be his counselor? I have a couple. I have a mentor that I've had for years. I talked to my one, my truest mentor Tuesday night. He's older and godlier and wiser than me. He's been discipling me for 18 years. He's absolutely brilliant. He pastors one of the biggest churches in the world. And do you know what he said to me on Tuesday evening? We were talking about church ministry. He shared several times that he made a decision that led to problems he didn't foresee. And then he said, I don't always know. He said that to me. I don't always know. Guess what? God's never said that. He's never thought that. Our God always knows what to do. His wisdom is infinite. [00:15:27] Speaker A: We have a father with all, and I mean all the wisdom. If at any point you feel like you don't have something to turn to, something to rely on, something to depend on. Where are you looking? Where are you looking? Hey, mom, do you have any wisdom for me? Maybe, maybe not. Hollywood. Can you give me wisdom? You may not think you're going for wisdom, but I bet you go for a lot. 24 hour news TikTok. [00:16:05] Speaker B: Listen, I'm not saying don't do these things. [00:16:07] Speaker A: I'm saying can you give me your algorithmically driven wisdom based on my wisdom? That's not a good plan. Whatever it is, [00:16:30] Speaker B: whatever you're depending on, the alternative is O, the depths of the wisdom of God. Your God also has all riches. Verse 33. Oh, the depths of the riches of God. [00:16:47] Speaker A: And that connects to Paul's third rhetorical question. [00:16:50] Speaker B: Who has ever given to God that He should be repaid? Could you give something to God that He would need to give back to you? You got nothing that isn't his. [00:17:01] Speaker A: We have a heavenly Father who owns it all. [00:17:05] Speaker B: Think about that. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Scarlett and I have gotten to go. Have gotten to go. [00:17:10] Speaker B: So many great dinners with so many great couples in our church over the last little over a year, it's been wonderful. One of the highlights was an older [00:17:20] Speaker A: couple in our church. [00:17:21] Speaker B: When I say older, like four decades older, you know, in our church, picked us up to take us to keepersol. [00:17:29] Speaker A: And we got in the car and the man said, this place we're going [00:17:32] Speaker B: to is beautiful, and the food is wonderful, and everything tonight is on me. He said, scarlet, we're gonna get appetizers, we're gonna get dessert. If you like steaks, get the steak. It's gonna be a great night. And I'm buying. And it was his birthday. I'm sure we've all enjoyed moments like that. It is a joy to experience the resources and the generosity of a gracious person. And no one has more riches and more grace than God. Our God is the Father of truly infinite resources. He owns the cattle on every hill and he owns the hills. The one we depend on is perfectly rich, perfectly knowledgeable, perfectly wise, the greatest of all time. [00:18:44] Speaker A: And all this comforting truth is grounded in the fact that God has all power. How massive is this? Paul then tells us that our God is the source of everything and the sustainer of everything. Look at verse 36 again. For from him and through him and to him are all things. So this is cosmological language. This is origin of everything language. This is. How could you really depend on anything else language to remind you of the cosmological argument that I taught you a few months ago? I bet none of you could quite say it back to me yet. But maybe after today that we. We said the cosmological. Our cosmological argument for the existence of God says that everything that has a [00:19:27] Speaker B: beginning has a cause. We know that because nothing can't cause something. Remember, nothing can't cause something. [00:19:32] Speaker A: The universe also had a beginning. We know that the universe had a beginning because to say that it didn't is the same as saying that the universe goes back in time infinitely. There'd be an infinite number of days before today. [00:19:42] Speaker B: But there can't be an infinite number of days before today, because today would never have gotten here. And it's today, which means the universe had a beginning. [00:19:49] Speaker A: So everything had a beginning, has a cause. The universe has a beginning. That means [00:19:54] Speaker B: God has to be the [00:19:55] Speaker A: cause, because any other explanation would in [00:19:58] Speaker B: and of itself need to be material, and it would need to have been caused by something that is uncaused, immaterial. So no matter what, we're always getting back to God. The uncaused cause of Everything, right? Guess what that sounds a lot like for from him and through him and to him are all things. God is the creator of everything. That makes him primary and causal. [00:20:33] Speaker A: God is what is called in philosophy, the necessary being. There's only one necessary being. Hold on to that thought. I think we've also talked about this before, but do you guys know that Jehovah, God's considered to be God's proper [00:20:49] Speaker B: name, means the existing one. [00:20:54] Speaker A: God is existence by default. God can't not exist. He must exist. And there was a time when he was all of existence. So in the chapel Tuesday night with a couple hundred students, we were singing that song, who Else Is Worthy, that [00:21:12] Speaker B: we just sang this morning. [00:21:14] Speaker A: And when we sang this, the line, you are the infinite God of the ages. [00:21:20] Speaker B: I had a moment where my mind tried to think about God's infiniteness again. And you guys have had these moments and it hurts your head. Our minds are not infinite. He is. It doesn't fit. But God, God once was all there was. It has to be that way. He was just there, nowhere or everywhere, completely to himself. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And that was existence. And anything else that exists. God existence from him, the existing one. [00:22:08] Speaker A: That means also necessarily that he is all powerful, right? Everything else has the option to not exist. And in fact, in one sense or another will eventually not exist. Everything has power only degree to the only to the degree that it's power. Because God lets it have power. Because he lets it have existence. God is by his very nature all powerful existence. Everything but God is created secondary and temporary. It would be very awesome if you leave today and start looking around at [00:22:48] Speaker B: everything in your life and be like, created secondary and temporary. [00:22:53] Speaker A: Created secondary and temporary. [00:22:55] Speaker B: My favorite chair in my bedroom, I [00:22:57] Speaker A: spend a lot too much time in it is created secondary and temporary. [00:23:02] Speaker B: It is also old and temporary. And I think about it almost every [00:23:06] Speaker A: time I sit in there to read or eat or whatever it is I'm doing. Because when I recline back, it creaks every time. [00:23:13] Speaker B: And the front right leg goes like this. [00:23:21] Speaker A: That's not going to work forever. One of these days I'm going to recline in my created secondary temporary chair [00:23:31] Speaker B: and it will collapse underneath me. And that is true of everything in your life. That is not encouraging. But what I'm trying to get you to see is that there is only one thing that will never collapse on you. Our Father is the source of all things. He is the necessary, the all powerful existence itself. [00:23:58] Speaker A: For from him are all things and through him are all things. God is the one who sustains everything that has existence through his existence. God keeps the sun the right distance [00:24:09] Speaker B: from the earth so that we're not consumed or frozen. [00:24:12] Speaker A: God keeps. God's the one who's in charge of keeping the rain falling and keeping the blood flowing and keeping the seconds and the minutes moving. He holds everything together. Only he could, only his existence. All the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. And to him are all things. That means that everything that he has allowed existence has existence designed with the directive to give glory to Him. And of course, that that's true. He's the only one who is primary and permanent. He is the indescribably ultimate. Even though I'm trying, He is the glorious center of the attention of the universe. Which means as the sun rises and sets, the name of the Lord is praised. As the tide rises and falls, the name of the Lord is praised. As existence begins and ends, the name of the Lord is praised. That's amazing. That's amazing. [00:25:09] Speaker B: And still more amazing is what's about to come. Because your God has all knowledge, all riches, all wisdom, all power. And somehow that God died to give you mercy. Even after all that we've said, saving [00:25:35] Speaker A: us is really the pinnacle point Paul was making in Romans 11. The God of all existence, rescuing us through his sacrificial love is somehow the biggest point Paul was celebrating when he wrote this hymn at the end of Romans 11. Paul was saying that of all the things we don't understand, God loves sinners. And who could understand that? Good luck. You see, Romans 11 is actually one of the famously difficult passages of Scripture in the Bible. Paul is writing about salvation, the whole book, but especially right before here. And scholars have been arguing as long as there have been scholars about what Paul meant about how God saves. As an example, I'm going to read you what comes right before this beautiful hymn of praise that we've just been looking at. Listen to this. You're very unlikely you're going to get [00:26:36] Speaker B: this as I read it. [00:26:39] Speaker A: I don't want you to be ignorant of this mystery. He wrote, brothers and sisters, so that you will not be conceited. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this will be my covenant with them. When I take away their sins regarding the gospel. They are enemies for your advantage. But regarding election, they are loved because of the Patriarch. Since God's gracious gifts and calling are irrevocable. As you once disobeyed God, but now have received mercy through their disobedience, so they too have now disobeyed, resulting in mercy to you, so that they also may now receive mercy. [00:27:20] Speaker B: For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may have mercy on all. That is obviously a difficult passage to get in one read. [00:27:32] Speaker A: And what really makes it hard to understand is figuring out how the concepts that Paul just put forth there fit with what he writes about in Romans 9. Go back and read Romans 9 and 11 together, but only if you want to be a little bit brain confused. I made a list of just some of the questions that theologians ask about the couple of chapters right before this hymn of praise. How does individual election work with corporate election? For that matter, how does election work? And what did the hardening of the hearts of the Jewish people have to do with giving grace to the Gentiles? What does that disobedience? How does it impact the mercy? And what exactly is irrevocable here? How does corporate imprisonment relate to the personal imprisonment? And how should we understand this imprisonment [00:28:15] Speaker B: in the first place? [00:28:17] Speaker A: I could try to take time to explain some of what some of the perspectives are about what all this means, [00:28:26] Speaker B: and we still wouldn't really understand it. But guess what we do understand. So that God may have mercy. [00:28:43] Speaker A: There's not a soul who has ever lived that can explain to you all the intricacies of a perfectly holy creator saving sinners through his own atoning death. [00:29:00] Speaker B: But we can know that God gives mercy. And we know how he gave mercy. He gave it at the cost of his own life. [00:29:14] Speaker A: That God, [00:29:18] Speaker B: the uncaused cause, the God of infinite knowledge, riches, wisdom, power, the [00:29:27] Speaker A: necessary One who made and sustains all of everything, put on a human body [00:29:35] Speaker B: to be tortured and killed on a cross so that he could give you mercy. No wonder Paul paused to write. Oh, the depth of the riches and [00:29:52] Speaker A: the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments. We can't possibly search it out, but we can depend on it. A little over a year ago, my [00:30:09] Speaker B: very first Sunday here, I told you [00:30:11] Speaker A: about how my daughters were asking me [00:30:13] Speaker B: all the time how much I love them. [00:30:15] Speaker A: And then I was supposed to answer [00:30:16] Speaker B: with quotes they assigned to me from the cartoon Bluey. You might remember that [00:30:23] Speaker A: before that, my girls used to do this thing where they tried to check my love by asking how far I'D be willing to [00:30:30] Speaker B: go to take care of them. I love talking about this because they would try to set me up like, [00:30:36] Speaker A: daddy, would you eat everything in that trash can? [00:30:40] Speaker B: And I would say, no way. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Which they would immediately follow up with, would you eat everything in that trash can? [00:30:46] Speaker B: If it was the only way to keep me alive. [00:30:50] Speaker A: And I tell them, of course I would. I'd eat that trash so fast if that was the only way to save you. Or one would say, daddy, would you [00:30:58] Speaker B: cut your arm off to save my life? I'd say, of course I would, beauty. I would do anything. You can count on me. I love you so much. And they always smiled real big like they felt loved, right? You know what? They don't know for sure. I can tell them I would do anything for them, but until I do it, until I. It's theory. Somehow the message of the cross is that we do know for sure. We know how the God feels about us. Without a shadow of doubt, The existing one loves us. [00:32:05] Speaker A: Because the book of Romans teaches that we didn't just need someone to eat [00:32:09] Speaker B: out of the trash can. We were dead. We were lost. [00:32:17] Speaker A: Remember? You were hopeless. And I can't explain to you everything about how he did it, but eternal God was broken to make you alive. You with your sins and your worseness that only you really know about. [00:32:39] Speaker B: To you dead in your trespasses, Paul writes regarding the gospel. God's gracious gifts and calling are irrevocable. You once disobeyed God, but now have received mercy, the greatest of all time. Our God is the uncaused, the existing one. Your God has all knowledge, all wisdom, all riches, all power and all mercy. How is that going to impact your life? That's where we're going to consider for the next three weeks. But for sure it leads us to worship from him and through him. And to him are all things, especially the worship of our hearts. So let's offer our hearts to God right now as we pray. Who has known your mind, O Lord, who could ever be your counselor? Who could ever give to you as though he should be repaid from you and through you and to you are all things God. We can't. We can't really understand it. But we do understand the best part. That God so loved the world that you gave your only son, that whosoever believes will not perish but have everlasting life. We get everything when we get you and God, I pray that you would help us to be people. Please, God, continue to make us a church that really believes that every breath and every moment and everything in this universe belongs to you and is to you. And that everyone needs to be invited into that joy. Man, we love you. And that's only possible because you, the great God, loved us first. You're the best. You're the best. We sing to you now, together. Amen. Let's stand and let's worship.