September 18, 2006 Romans 11:33-36
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Out of all of the questions, “who, what, when, where, and why,” one of the most difficult questions to answer is the question “why?” What, when, who and where questions are often dry facts that can be answered in a matter of seconds. Take for instance the Hurricane Katrina. You know who did it. You know when it happened. You know what happened. You know where it hit. But the big question is why? Because of global warming? Because God is angry with America? Or is there no specific “why?” Was it just a result of living in a sinful world? That’s the tough question.
God often gives us the answers to the easy questions when He tells us about Himself. He tells us who created the world. He tells us when Jesus rose from the dead - three days after He was buried. He tells us where He gave Moses the Ten Commandments. But we often have a difficult time getting an answer for our “whys”. That’s what Paul addresses today.
There’s a Reason for God’s Answer to Your Question
I. The question
When Hurricane Katrina did recently hit people naturally wanted to know “why”? Some claimed it was President Bush’s fault for not signing the Kyoto Treaty against pollution. Others claimed it was Satan’s fault. Reverend Phelps and the Westboro Baptists said that God did it because he hates America. Sometimes that reason just can’t be determined. Sometimes, even when God does explain the why, it is hard for us to swallow. I think for instance of the command that God gave the Israelites. Deuteronomy 7:1-2 1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations -- the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you -- 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. My mind naturally asks the question, “why? Why didn’t God allow at least the infants to live? Couldn’t they have brought the foreign infants up in the faith?”
Another judgment that has raised questions in my mind was when Ananias and Sapphira had tried to cheat the Lord. They had sold a piece of property - but instead of deciding to give all of the proceeds to the Lord, they decided to only give a portion of it to the Lord. So when they brought their offering to Peter, they lied about how much they had given. As a result, God first struck Ananias dead on the spot, and then He struck Sapphira dead as well. I look at that situation and say to myself, “wasn’t that kind of harsh?” Why would God act in such a way? Maybe you’ve had similar questions.
Even in every day life these questions come up almost every day. When your little eight year old cousin is found to have a brain tumor, you naturally ask the question. When you even come down with the flu for a day or two, you want to know why. It happens all the time. Why would a God of love allow this to happen to a little child? Why would a God of justice decide to save a known murderer and allow him into heaven why he takes the greatest humanitarian and sends him to hell?
II. The answer
It’s not as if God leaves us completely in the dark. He gives us some answers to these questions. For instance, He told the Israelites why he wanted them to completely annihilate the Canaanites - so that there would be no chance for them to fall into idolatry. And we can often times search God’s Word and find reasons for why God does what He does by applying God’s principles to situations. For instance, in the case of Ananias and Sapphira we could use our Bible based reason that God was sending a message to the rest of the believers by putting them to death - and maybe they still went to heaven since it may have been a sin of weakness. God wants us to search the Scriptures to look for these answers.
Sometimes the answer is found in the result. When the Israelites didn’t completely annihilate the Canaanites, what happened? They ended up falling into idolatry just as they said. Joseph may have wondered why God allowed him to be sold into slavery. But God’s wisdom showed through when he ended up the king of Egypt and saving thousands of lives. When Job ended up with humility as well as two times more than he started with, it all seemed to come out in the wash. It reminds me of a poem written by a Confederate soldier - who came to realize that God was wiser than he -
I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey...
I asked for health, that I might do great things.
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things . .
I asked for riches, that I might be happy.
I was given poverty, that I might be wise. . .
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God . . .
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things. . .
I got nothing I asked for - but everything I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am, among men, most richly blessed!
Sometimes when we search God’s Word we can find some satisfying answers. But how often is it that we are still left with questions. Life doesn’t always end up neat and tidy - as it did in the case of Joseph and his family. Sometimes wives are left to fend for years and years alone after they lose their spouses. Sometimes couples spend a lifetime yearning for a child while thousands of others are given children they never wanted in the first place. Things never come together or end happily ever after - at least not physically. Many people - even Christians - die lonely and disheartened with life on this earth. It’s at times like this - when things don’t work out as planned - that we tend to cry out more and more - wondering to God, “why?”
It’s kind of strange, isn’t it? Dogs are content with their dogginess, and sheep with their sheepishness, but not human beings. When God does something that is beyond our understanding, we stomp our feet at God and demand to know “why?” We accuse God of not caring or being unloving when He doesn’t answer us the way we want Him to. At the least, we want some answers - thinking that God owes us an explanation. In the back of our minds we wonder if God really knows what He’s doing. Even with these doubts, we sin against God. You might compare it to a husband and a wife that has been married for 34 years. The husband goes away on a business trip, but he can’t tell her about it due to company policy. So the wife decides to hire a private detective to check up on him. Such a move would be a slap in the face to the husband, a vote of no confidence. We do that to God even when we look at him with a questioning glance.
When we ask such questions, we certainly aren’t the first, and we won’t be the last. Job asked similar questions of God. If you remember the situation, God had allowed the devil to take Job’s sons and daughters, sheep, camels, oxen, donkeys, and servants as well. After all was said and done, Job demanded God to answer why He had done this. When God didn’t answer, Job’s friends tried to come up with an answer. All three of them came to the conclusion that Job did something to deserve it. They couldn’t figure out why God would allow punishment to happen to an innocent man. When the story finished - Job had to make a sacrifice to God to atone for the wrong conclusions that his friends came up with.
Men try to do the same things today. It shows you how predictably foolish we are. When something God’s Word says doesn’t make sense, they try to use their brains to explain it. It isn’t good enough to man to know that God created the world in six days. There has to be more to it. So he tries to explain it by saying that we evolved as the result of a great crash somewhere in the sky millions of years ago - or that six days of creation were actually thousands of years. When God says that He saves us only because of His mercy, that doesn’t make sense to man’s reason. So he says, “no! There must be some reason WHY God chose us! We have to do something to be worthy of God’s choice! He must have chosen us because He saw what good Christians we would be - yeah, that’s it.” When God’s Word says that three men survived in a fiery furnace, modern day scholars try to explain that they were dropped in a spot of the furnace that had no fire! They try to explain away God’s miracles. When we try to explain things that are beyond our comprehension, we get in trouble.
Look at how God answered Job’s question.
Job 38:1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said: 2 "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? 3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. 4 "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. 5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone -- 7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? 8 "Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, 9 when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, 10 when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, 11 when I said, `This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?
Notice how God dealt with this situation. He never even gave Job an answer to his questions. His answer was, “don’t question me! I know what I’m doing!”
III. The reason
Why did God deal with Job like this? Why does He often not give us reasons for what He does in our lives? Paul gives us basically three reasons that I could find in today’s text. Number One - Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" The simple fact is that often times we can’t understand! It’s like when a little child comes up to you and asks you, “daddy, why does it turn cold out?” Do you give him a long in depth explanation of the seasons, explaining that at certain times of the year this part of the earth is further away from the sun? Or do you just say, “that’s how God made it.” Sometimes you can’t go into an in depth explanation, because the child just can’t understand it at that point. And that’s what Paul says - God’s judgments are UNTRACEABLE! Our minds are not able to comprehend the how and why.
Then Paul proceeds with the second reason why God doesn’t always explain Himself: Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" This is a quote of God’s response to Job in Job 41. With this question Paul gets us to ask ourselves, “who of us has the right to question God’s judgments?” For us to even ask “why” insinuates that we think God owes us something. But what does God say in Romans 3:23? All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If God wanted to, He would have every right to say to us, “wasn’t it enough for me to give you intellect and reasoning ability? But now you want more - you want to question the one who gave you your reason. I cannot put up with you any longer! Now depart from me into the eternal fire!” That is what we deserve.
This is where God’s ways seem to be completely irrational to the human mind. Instead of giving up on the human race and just annihilating it and starting from scratch - He kept Noah alive through the flood. And then, He even sunk so low as to send His own Son to become one of these weak human beings. He even allowed His own Son to be mocked, flogged and crucified for the sins of the world. Instead of making us suffer for questioning His judgments, God decided to suffer for us and judge His own Son! He decided to love us when there was no reason to! Even when we reject Him, He never stops reaching out to us - taking every step possible to bring us back into His fold! Why would God send His only Son to die for a world of sinners who hated Him in the first place? Why would He blame His Son for what WE did and send Him to hell instead? Why would Jesus volunteer for such a thing - when He would know that a majority of the world would still reject His free gift? Who of us can really understand this judgment? Who of us can really comprehend such mercy? It’s beyond our mind and our sense of justice. Oh the depths of God’s love. He owes us nothing, including an explanation behind His actions.
The third reason that God doesn’t need to explain Himself is as follows: For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. All things are from Him and through him. The sun wouldn’t shine if God didn’t let it. The earth wouldn’t move if God didn’t move it. Nebraska wouldn’t win if God didn’t let them. Let’s take it a step further. Cancer, AIDS, and every other epidemic wouldn’t exist if God didn’t allow it or even cause it to happen. The devil would have no power if God didn’t give it to him. Hell itself would cease to exist if God didn’t keep the fire burning.
That’s hard to us to swallow, until Paul tells us “to him are all things.” You might compare it to a runaway train. Imagine that you owned a country - and within this country a train had gone out of control and was going to do a mass amount of destruction. But you had the power to direct the train. Instead of having the train wreck a palace or a nice building, you could use it to destroy an abandoned warehouse that needed to be destroyed anyway. You could use it to wipe out a decent building that you wanted to rebuild even better. That, in a sense, is how God controls evil. The evil seems out of control in this country. Yet all things somehow work out to God’s glory. As Paul said to him are all things. The devil, as evil as He is, somehow ultimately serves God’s purpose either to punish those who reject Him or to discipline His children. When we know this, we can be content when God doesn’t give an answer to our specific questions.
Paul understood that sometimes we may never know the “why” in this life. In 1 Corinthians 13:12 he said, Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. Instead of being frustrated over this, think of how glorious it will be then, on Judgment Day, for God to reveal to us His whole plan. Then we shall fully know why evil was allowed to exist - why Ananias and Sapphira were put to death - why our eight year old niece had a cancerous tumor! Our sinful nature will not hinder our knowledge. Our faulty reason will not get in the way of our faith. We won’t even necessarily want to ask why, because we will trust God no matter what He does. Look forward to that Day, and pray for the patience to wait for it. Amen.
