The Beyond Understanding God
Romans 11:33-36
June 7, 2020 anno Domini – Redeemer
Who is your God? He is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Explain that to me. There is no explanation beyond this – the God of Holy Scripture is three persons in one God. He isn’t three parts making a whole. He isn’t like water that exists in three forms – gas, liquid, and solid. He isn’t three different revelations over time. Every explanation of the Trinity that slides into parts and wholes and forms and fractions is a false confession. That’s why the Athanasian Creed is lengthy – after the enemies of God claimed Jesus was not fully God (that’s how we got the Nicene Creed) they went after the Trinity.
Today’s Epistle reading is overloaded with Trinitarian treasure. There are three sets of three. There are three depths – riches, wisdom, and knowledge. There are three rhetorical questions. “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been His counselor? Who has given a gift to Him that he might be repaid? And finally there is that threefold declaration about everything that is and will be – From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. Saint Paul records this triple triple doxology, this Word of praise for the incomprehensible Trinity who has incomprehensible mercy for you.
Beginning in Romans 8 Saint Paul wrote about his own people the Jews. God blessed them uniquely by choosing Abraham and his descendants to be His own people. God chose them and stuck with them – when they grumbled in the wilderness, when they didn’t believe on the edge of the promised land, when they wanted Kings like the other nations on the block, when their Kings did evil in God’s sight, when they killed the prophets. Even when He kicked these rebellious punks out of the house and punished them with exile, He still welcomed His Israel back and preserved a remnant. Through that remnant, the stump of Jesse, a little Jewish boy was born to Mary a descendent of King David, a descendant of Abraham.
Jesus of Nazareth is the final King of Israel establishing an eternal Kingdom. He is the last High Priest making the final and complete sacrifice for the sins of the world. He is the final prophet, proclaiming the last Word of God regarding your salvation.
Jesus was from Israel and He came for Israel – but they would not have Him. They did not believe Jesus was God’s Son. They did not want the freedom of forgiveness. They wanted the power of slavery. Since God is love He never forces anyone to believe, even His chosen people. He let them go. Their hearts grew even harder until they killed their God on a Friday outside Jerusalem on a cross.
This is where the judgments of the incomprehensible God become unsearchable and His ways inscrutable. God decides to stick with Israel – not the Israel according to the flesh, but the Israel according to faith in Jesus. His mercy is for Israel but bigger than Israel. The Father will save every Jew who repents and believes in Jesus’ death for forgiveness and the Holy Trinity will have mercy on every non-Jew – that would be all you Germans, Swedes, English, Irish, African, Asian. All you folks who have no blood of Abraham in you. The Lord is so full of mercy that He will graft Gentiles like you into the true Israel of God – the Church.
St. Paul was a great Jew. He knew the Old Testament thoroughly. He was of the Tribe of Benjamin and a Pharisee. He was such a great Jew he even killed Christians, but then by the mercy of God this chief of sinners became a child of God, part of the Israel of faith. This same Paul, a Jew above Jews, is made an Apostle and preaches that Gentiles could now belong to Israel.
Is it any wonder Paul declares, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. That word depth is bathos – like a bathosphere – those little metal bubbles they take way down deep into the oceans to explore. Oh the depth of the riches of God in Christ Jesus His Son. When you see it, when you hold it by faith, there is no end to it. In Christ there is forgiveness deeper than your sins. In Christ there is life not governed by calendars and deadlines, sickness and death, but a life so deep into eternity you will never see the end of it. In Christ there is a resurrection that will pull you from the deepest grave you have dug for yourself.
Oh, the depth of God’s wisdom. God’s wisdom is so deep it looks like foolishness. God chooses old Abraham and barren Sarah to be parents. He lets Jacob steal Esau’s birthright and take over Christ’s family line. Judah who would be a great, great grandfather of Jesus (with dozens of greats in there) was seduced by his daughter-in-law whom he thought was a prostitute. God’s greatest foolishness is the cross – that God would offer His perfectly good son for Abe and Sarah and Jacob and Esau and Judah and Paul and you. His great foolishness continues in that His salvation does not come with gold or silver or a great list of accomplishments , but He delivers Christ with His simple Word through the prophets, evangelists, and pastors, with water, bread, and wine.
Oh, the depth of God’s knowledge. One thing that always amazes me is the knowledge in the world. I’m sure I own over a thousand books and I’ll never know what’s in them. Many of you know things about business and work and hobbies that I’ll never know. God knows it all – it is from Him. And yet at the very bottom or the very top of that knowledge is this – everything God knows and did He did for this purpose – that you would know Him in Christ and He would know you as His child through baptism.
This is what leads Paul to Doxology – the depth of God’s riches, wisdom, and knowledge reveal the depth of His love for all humans, for Jews and Gentiles, for Germans and Swedes, for whites and blacks.
In light of what’s been happening in Minnesota and around our country I think this text is timely for us. There was great animosity between the Jew and the Gentile in Biblical times, but Christ undid that. Sin causes division. Christ alone brings peace. It is important for us to remember that there is only one race in the Bible – the human race. Every human being is created in the image of God and the Son of God became a man to redeem every human – that includes the man who died unjustly at the hands of another and it includes the man who killed him. Christians put an end to slavery in the Western World because they looked past skin color and language to behold another fallen human, created in the image of God and redeemed by the blood of Christ. If Christ’s sacrifice is big enough to cover my sins and adopt a bastard like me and a child of the devil like you into the Father’s household, then we should confess with word and deed that all human life matters, from conception to death, from inner city to the backwoods, Asians, Africans, and Americans. The nature of the Trinity is incomprehensible, but it is His mercy that is truly beyond understanding. He is not only merciful to you but to all humanity. In the name of Jesus. Amen.