Astounded by Who God Is
(Romans 11:33-36)
1. The Dunning Kruger effect is so important for us understand. It is, in a way, defined in detail in the book of Proverbs. Even Shakespeare caught on to it when he wrote, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
2. As Brett Hamil puts it, “The Dunning-Kruger … describes a phenomenon in which the incompetent labor under an illusory superiority because they lack the capacity to accurately assess their performance relative to others. In layman’s terms: Dumb people don’t know they’re dumb and in fact think they’re smarter than you.”
3. This quip demonstrates the Dunning-Kruger effect is action: “Have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? I read this online article about it, so now I'm basically an expert.”
4. This explains why so many of us think we know more than the experts. It also explains why those who are truly humble remind themselves of this defect in us.
5. When we fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, we don’t know that we don’t know. We are aware that we do not know everything about a subject, but we think we know everything that matters. It is, in essence, a distillation of pride and arrogance. We all fall prey to it. Myself included.
• There are two perfect ages, 4 and 14. At four, we have all the questions. At 14, we have all the answers. Part of us, however, stays in the 14 mode.
6. This, in turn, can blind us to our spiritual and theological ignorance. Many Christians, for example, think they understand the Trinity, but really hold to a heresy known as Modalism. Others think God created mankind because He was lonely and sad. This is explains why many long time believers have not matured, and they are not even aware that newer believers are soaring past them.
7. To really understand God, we must begin by acknowledging that we cannot. At best, we can understand something about God, but only something. And that something is what He has revealed about Himself.
8. Isaiah 55:8-9 readd, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
9. God condescends to explain Himself in ways we can understand; when we begin to understand, we become overwhelmed.
Main Idea: Right Theology – if embraced and allowed to permeate our minds and hearts – produces right worship and a right attitude toward God. The Spirit can then use this right theology and attitude to coax us along to surrender ourselves to Him.
I. God’s Sovereign Omniscience Should So Impress Us that We BOW Down Before Him (33-34).
The One God is three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is personal, meaning He has intellect, emotions, will, and creativity. He is relational: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to one another as Three Persons.
A. His wisdom is both RICH and DEEP (33a).
King Solomon was the wisest man in the world, but the little bit of wisdom He had came as a gift from God. Like a grandparent giving his 4 year old grandson a quarter, it wasn’t much – but to the receiver, it was a fortune.
B. His KNOWLEDGE is as deep as His wisdom (33b).
Knowledge focuses upon the facts, wisdom is the proper use of knowledge.
Some people believe time and space have always been. But everything is created, including time and space. We saw implications of that in Romans 8.
Today, some scientists are beginning to realize that time is more like a book; it is all written out, but we experience it as through reading through it. God is outside that book, and He sees and knows all the contents of it at once.
See 1 Samuel 23:9-13, where David asks God what would happen if they attacked a certain city…. They would lose, so he did not.
C. His judgments, as sovereignly demonstrated, are UNSEARCHABLE (33c).
• It is not that they are illogical, but to us they may be. We simply don’t understand because it is too deep for us.
D. His pathways are BEYOND tracing out (33d).
E. God has a MIND, but no one can FATHOM it (34a).
• The Lost Sea near Sweetwater Tennessee – 500 feet deep was as far
F. No one is capable of ADVISING Him or CORRECTING Him (34b).
• Some rabbis were so arrogant that they believed God took advice from them.
• Job tried to correct Him; he asked to take God to court and declared he would win.
• You might feel like God has treated you unfairly; it can feel that way, especially if we are reaping problems we didn’t sow. But God does not operate in the way we think he should operate.
Application: The kind of worship that overwhelms us comes from Bible study, and the kind of Bible study that pleases God sometimes overwhelms us.
II. God’s ASEITY (35-36)
A. God is SELF DERIVED.
B. He NEEDS nothing from His creation.
• God did not create us because He needed company and was sad.
• Modern understandings of time help us better understand eternity past.
C. We really cannot GIVE God anything (the best we can do is RETURN a portion of what He has given us) (35).
D. He can never be in DEBT to us. This means we can never CONTROL Him.
1. False religion, even some evangelicals, think they can control God.
2. In the Middle Ages, for example, there we as strong belief that manipulating the physical world could alter the spiritual world. Charms, crosses for vampires, etc. Even the idea of the mass goes along with this way of thinking.
E. Since God is the UNCREATED source of creation, all creation is VULNERABLE to Him (36).
• He is the source of all things (from Him)
• He is the agency of creation (through Him)
• He is the reason why creation came to be (to Him)
F. We AFFIRM that He is worthy of all the glory.
Since this glory is reserved for Him alone, it explains why we should worship no one but Him. Only He, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is worthy.
