Good evening, if you would open
your Bibles to the book of Romans Romans chapter 11 Romans 11 Look
at verse 33 Romans 11 33 Oh, the depth of the riches,
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are
his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who hath known
the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counselor? Who
hath first given to him and it shall be recompensed unto him
again For of him and through him and to him are all things
To whom be glory forever amen I'm gonna try to be really simple
tonight. I That's hard for me because I
have a tendency to just make everything complicated. Things
that are going smoothly, I somehow kind of figure out a way to make
them a little tougher. And I want everybody in here
to see how basic this message is. And I don't mean basic in
the subject matter. I just mean basic in the outline.
And I'd be happy if you can say when I'm done, anybody can understand
that. Anybody can see that so I've
got three points to my message the first God is God The second
point is man is man and the third one is God is the only hope for
man and The first word that almost always
comes to my mind when describing God is holy. Now I don't know
if that's because on the front of this book that I was given
when I was really young it says Holy Bible. I don't know if that's
because that's just a word I didn't understand as a kid very well
and every time it was said it kind of registered in my mind
like what exactly does that mean? Or, if that I've heard many men
use that word to describe the Lord and our God. But, however
that is, it is the first word that comes to my mind. And the
word holy means sacred, pure, blameless. And holy is used throughout
scripture to describe God. Turn to Luke chapter 1. Okay, look at verse 35. And the angel answered and said
unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power
of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also, that holy
thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son
of God. In describing him, the word holy
is used before he's born. In the same verse it also says
the Holy Ghost. Now, the only person who can
be called holy is God. And the word holy is used for
the Holy Spirit, for the Lord Jesus Christ, and for God, for
the Trinity. And then the word holy is used
throughout the Scripture to describe many different words, many other
things, such as a holy kiss, A holy promise, a holy place,
holy commandment, holy calling. And when the adjective holy is
used properly, it means that it's about God. 1 Corinthians
16.20 says, all the brethren greet you. Greet you one another
with a holy kiss. Now how can you do that? A holy
kiss is one between two people who God has saved. Hebrews 9.12
says, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his
own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained
eternal redemption for us. A holy place, no matter where
it is, is simply a place where God is, God was, or God is being
worshipped. And in 2 Timothy 1.8, let's turn
to that one, 2 Timothy 1. And look at verse 8, 2 Timothy
1 verse 8, Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our
Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions
of the gospel according to the power of God, who hath saved
us and called us with a holy calling, according to our works,
but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us
in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest
by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished
death and hath brought life and immortality to light throughout
the gospel. In verse 9, a holy calling. Why
is it a holy calling? It's because He's the one who
made the call. And we didn't have to read all
three of those verses for that, but it's important because those
are great verses for point number 3, God is the only hope for man.
Now, there are other things used, other people described by the
word holy. It says, holy apostle and holy
nation. And why are those words used
with the word holy beside them? That's because those are His
people. They're His apostles, His nation. Now look back in
our text at verse 33, back to Romans 11. O the depth of the riches both
of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Paul starts off with the
phrase, O the depth. It's a description of how deep
the wisdom and knowledge of God is. How it penetrates every layer. How it rushes into every hole
and crevice. How it goes from the very top,
wherever that is, to the very bottom, wherever that is. In
our next point, man is man, we will see more, but we can't understand
even the size of the attributes of God, let alone the attributes. Does that make sense? We can't
actually grasp the words, oh, the depth. His attributes are
so great that we can't really wrap our minds around how big
they are, how perfect they are. I feel that Paul is conveying
with this phrase, oh the depth, that he is in a way lamenting
or wishing that he and we could understand just how vast the
wisdom and knowledge of God is. In a way that he's saying, oh
the depth, oh the depth of the riches. Now riches here doesn't
mean money, but in the same way that our pastor brought out last
week, It means that an abundance or a value, and it is great. Oh, the depth of his riches and
his spiritual riches and moral riches. Now, let us first see
the punctuation at the end of this. It says, Oh, the depth
of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. There is
an exclamation point at the end of that. Now, whatever is said
here is supposed to be read with an intensity of emotion and or
loudly. And I think that fits both of
these really well. This is so important that it
has to have an intensity when we read it. And to read it loudly,
we should be shouting this from the mountaintops to let everyone
know. Now, we preach that God is in control. And I cannot overstate
the importance of these two things, the wisdom and knowledge of God,
to that. We preach that God is in control.
We say that you have to rest in Him. We strive to have faith
in Him. And these traits are pivotal
to that. Now, our God is omniscient, which means He has complete,
unlimited knowledge and perceives all things. And since He knows
all things and He is holy, everything He does is wise. It's kind of
circular, how these things all go together to make Him holy
and powerful. Now, He devised salvation's plan,
He chose a people, He sent His Son to die, and He cried, He
is our substitute. And in order to believe those
things, you have to believe in His wisdom. You have to believe
in His knowledge. And if you don't believe in His
wisdom, then you will question each one of those things. He
devised salvation's plan. Well, it could be a little different
than that. He chose a people. We're not
quite sure how many or who it is. He sent his son to die to
do his part. He cried, it's finished for what
he had to do, but we'll get more. He is our substitute, at least
that part of it. I'll take care of some of it
too. You have to believe in his wisdom or you will question those
things. And this is a great divide between
those who believe in the gospel and those who don't. They believe,
people who don't believe in the gospel, in some way or shape
that they are smarter than God. You would never catch anyone
who would say that. But actions speak louder than
words, and in some way they think that. Or they at least think
that God needs their help, which is then diminishing his wisdom
and his power. But, what is the only time that
you ever offer anyone help? There's only a few reasons to
offer anyone help. First, when you think that you're
up for the task, you find yourself worthy to participate. Or, worse
than that, you think you can do it better, or they can't do
it without you. Many people treat salvation like
a game that most of us know and have played. They treat it like
the game of Jenga. Jenga is a game, if you don't
know, it is little pieces of wood and you stack three and
then three and three and three all the way up until you make
a tower out of it. And the rules are you take turns taking one
piece away from the tower. You can't touch the top layer
and you keep doing it and the person who loses is the one who
pulls a piece and the whole thing falls down. People playing this game think
or people who don't believe the gospel think they have a part
in salvation They think that they built the foundation They
chose which piece goes where it goes They think that they
put their own salvation together And then once it's completed,
then they start pulling pieces out of it that don't quite fit,
or it doesn't quite go with what they're thinking. Or maybe somebody
comes up to them and tells them something, and they think, well,
I better take this piece out of here, or they're not going to believe
that, or they're not going to agree with me. But they keep doing
those things until one day, to their total surprise, the whole
thing falls down and collapses. Then they quickly try to grab
all the pieces and build it up again, but they find out both
that there is no second chance and that there was no way for
them to ever build their own salvation in the first place.
Instead, they will at that time see the rock of salvation with
no seams, no pieces, and no holes. There's no teetering, there's
no wavering, there's no place of weakness where it might fall.
It will be one single structure made from wisdom, mercy, love,
and sacrifice. They will see salvation is not
something that is built. Salvation is a person, the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's why this verse has two
exclamation points. It is so important that we read
it, we understand it, but above all else, we believe it. Look
at verse 33, ìO the depth of the riches both of the wisdom
and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways
past finding out.î We truly glory in His judgments and His ways.
Now singularly we struggle with things all the time that happen
to us in the Lordís providence, but they are perfect. And any
peace that I or you have is in the knowledge that everything
He does is for His glory and for our good. We should be in
awe that everything going on around us is for our good. Just think for a second. Everything
going on around us, every single part of our lives is for the
good of His children. That's amazing to me. We should
be in awe of that. That doesn't mean that we understand
all his judgments. When it comes to understanding
and comprehending the counsels and purposes of God, I find myself
unable and totally unworthy. No matter how hard I try or the
length of time I spend, I am reminded that the Spirit of God
is the only way that anything is revealed to me. And though
I know so little, I am reminded when I talk to people away from
here that I have been so blessed to have been shown the little
piece that I have. And it used to bother me, and
it probably still does some now, when I'm having conversations
with different believers, and they can quote a scripture that
I don't know, or they say a verse and I can't remember it, or they
make a point, and I thought to myself, especially after you
preach, and they make a point, and you're like, I spent all
this time, and they thought of that, and at 30 minutes I was
standing up there. It really did bother me. But over time,
my perspective has changed some on that. And having children
now, it definitely has. And in preparation, I thought
back for a moment. And I thought about my prayers
that I've had for my children. And I can't recall and don't
think that I ever prayed a single time for my kids to have great
understanding. I don't think I've ever prayed
once for them that they would be a great teacher or preacher.
I don't remember ever saying to them, I really hope they can
quote a lot of scriptures. I simply remember asking for
them to be saved. And Lord willing, one day will
come when my prayers for them can be a little bit more like
my prayers for us. I can ask for the Lord to teach
them more like I asked for him to teach me more. I asked the
Lord to help me to see his wisdom to praise his judgments. I asked
the Lord to help me see his glory and to give him all the glory.
But I also then think Maybe my prayers for me and you should
be a little more like my prayers for my children That the Lord
would just save us Now this verse is a proclamation
of the greatness of our Lord his infinite wisdom and knowledge
and his righteous judgments and his perfect ways and And let
me tell you a little story that I thought of when I was thinking
of his perfect ways, how we don't always understand them, we can't
comprehend them, and things happen. When I was probably around 10,
my sister, who would have been about 12, played the piano. And
she was good at it. She took a lot of lessons from
a lady in our church, and she practiced really hard at it.
And she had a recital coming up that was going to be at our
church, because the lady who taught her was in the church,
so they used it. And it was going to be on a Sunday afternoon.
And she was one of the last people going to play because she was
one of the better students and she had a song that was tough
that had been prepared for her or had been picked for her by
her teacher and she'd practiced for months and she had it. I
mean she had it. It was down. And I heard her
play it a lot. She played it all the time and
I didn't want to hear it anymore. But of course I had to go to the recital.
So we're sitting there on a Sunday afternoon when all I could be
thinking about was doing something else and it was her turn to go.
So she got up there and started playing and was doing really
well. Part of the way through, she missed a note or two. And
you could tell. The piano was sitting sideways,
so everybody can see. You're back, it's sideways, so
everybody can see. And I'm sitting on one of the
front rows, and I can see her face, and I can see she might
have made a mistake. And that compounded a few seconds later,
and she hit another one, and she hit another one, and she
finally got to a place where she just had to stop. She just
had to stop for a second. And when she did, you could see
it, she was doing everything she could just to not just lose
it right then. And she started playing again,
and played the rest of the way through and got through. When
it was over, she came and sat down, and you could tell she
just was an emotional wreck. And so, being her little brother,
I was used to picking on her and things like that, or at least
trying to and saying mean things and stuff, but I felt so bad
for her, I didn't want to say anything. I knew this was not the time to do it.
So, we went home, and a couple hours later we went back to church
for Sunday night service. The woman playing the piano,
Carol Lee, had played the piano forever since I knew it. And
we were sitting on the front row right beside her. And we
started, song leader called out the hymn, she started playing
it, and you could tell that it wasn't the right tune or something
was wrong. And she was so good that she
tried to fix it in the middle of it, started something else
to try to match it and go in, and that didn't work either.
And she stopped about a line or so into the song and just
said out loud, said, I'm sorry, I messed it up, we gotta start
over, I can't get it. And if you'd have seen the look on my
sister's face, was just sitting there, just like, it can happen
to anybody. She was so excited that someone
else messed up too. And separate from the few of
us in my family, and I'm sure Carol Lee, because we probably
told her right after that, because it helped my sister so much,
there's a lot of people who don't have any idea Any special thing
about my sister messing up in that recital and then Carolee
doing the same thing but in the Lord's way He provided that and
that comforted her so much and she plays the piano at church
now and the Lord's providence in his perfect ways so many things
happen that we see and they seem like they are a disaster and
They seem on the surface like nothing could have gone worse
for me, and we just can't see the big picture. We look through
a glass dimly, but sometimes I feel like it's the dirtiest
glass in the world, and I can barely see anything on the other
side. But his ways are perfect. Now, the concordance helps us
to better understand the last part of this verse, his ways
are past finding out. It says in there the stress or
the importance is on the fact that God's ways are not ways
that leave a trail behind, or they are unique for each situation.
Now there's a reason why His ways don't leave a trail behind
for us to follow, because we would try to follow the trail,
because we would lose track of where the glory goes. We would
spend our time following off that trail and forget where the
Lord is and focus on Him. He's the reason and He's the
glory. And let me give you a little example of that. I have a friend
that has a family member that's very sick with something going
on, had to have a surgery. And genuinely, I pray that everything
worked out for them. I did before it happened. And
I had the surgery and it went very well. And after it was over,
I read something, and someone at the end of it exclaimed, you
know, so happy, you know, the power of prayer, the power of
prayer, and kept saying that. And that statement is very true. The power of prayer is great
if you're praying to the Lord Jesus Christ and the true and
living God. But the next point, man is man,
we'll see even more of this. To them, the Lord had done something
great for them. Yet we find ourselves following
the path and saying how great it is that we prayed for this
to happen. And I don't mean anything negative
about these people, and no one in here knows them or anything.
That's not why I say this. But I couldn't help it, and when
I'm preparing, that happened a couple days ago. And when I
saw it, I just thought to myself, no, no. Give the Lord the glory. And I'm guilty of this kind of
thing all the time, but that's just an example of why we can't
see everything clearly sometimes, because we just run the wrong
direction. We take things and we just keep going. And the second
thing that that one said is they're unique for each situation. I struggle with thinking about
the Lord thinking about me as an individual. I don't know if
I'm the only one who does that because I've never really expressed
that or thought as much about it. But I think all the time
of the Lord looking down upon us or being with His Spirit,
being with us when we're having a service and all those things.
But it's a struggle to think about me as an individual being
of enough importance that He could be thinking about me. And
that everything going on around me is according to His specific
design. Because he is so wise that every
situation is different. It says it's unique for every
situation There's no pattern to it. Everything is different
with everyone Why why is everything different? Why is it so unique?
Because if it wasn't we would spend our time and our energy
trying to figure out the pattern trying to do the things that
happen to that individual that got them where they are and instead
of glorifying in the Lord, the same thing as the other. Yet,
with all the differences, everything he does, so every single thing
is unique. He has so much wisdom that every
single thing he does for every single one of his children is
unique, and they're treated that way. Yet, with all those differences,
everything he does is still just, it's still right, and always
for the good of all of his sheep. Now look at verse 34. For who hath known the mind of
the Lord? Or who hath been his counselor?
Apart from the Spirit of God we wouldn't know or understand
anything in this entire book. His words in it are very plain
and they're recorded for anyone to read. Everyone has seen this
book at some point or heard about it, read about it, it's very
simple. Yet people keep misinterpreting it They adapt it, or even worse,
change it, and they move it around to their own liking. I talked
to a woman the other day, and she quoted a verse of Scripture
amidst the conversation we were having. And when she said it,
I genuinely had to stop myself from laughing, because I was
so thrown aback by it that she said it. But I held it in, thankfully,
and I remember saying, oh, where is that? And she told me the
book and the chapter and the verse. So I pulled out my phone
to look at it, because I don't trust myself to have a clue what's
right and what's actually written. My mind could go somewhere else.
So I pulled it up and looked at it. And it wasn't even remotely
close. I mean, if she hadn't told me
that was the verse, I wouldn't have believed it. I might have
picked the one before or after, more likely, than that verse.
The words were all changed. They changed words that were
so simple it doesn't make any sense. And all of that because
we just don't understand things. We don't have any idea what is
actually being said if the Spirit of the Lord doesn't teach it
to us. We just can't get it. We just can't grasp anything.
And the second part, or who hath been his counselor? When all
things are fixed according to his sovereign will before the
foundation of earth, who was there? God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. Nobody else was involved, nobody
else had any part, nobody can change it, and nobody can get
in the way, and that's the only reason why it's perfect, because
it was just them who did it. We all know that none of this
can be changed, but I ask that I am not a person that attempts
to counsel God. Thankfully, I feel like I've
been taught enough that I don't sit around and Do the obvious
meaning of that that I don't try to tell God what to do But
I do things all the time that are trying to tell him what to
do. I Complain about things something happens and I think well, I wouldn't
have done it that way, you know I would have done it a little
differently, you know, probably worked out a little better and I just
pray that the Lord would keep me from doing that in so many
ways. Let me instead do the opposite and ask for His counsel. Ask Him to guide me. God is too
great for me to describe. I can't even comprehend His majesty
and His glory, and through this effort of trying to give all
these details, I'm just thankful in all these things about him.
I'm thankful he's holy and his wisdom and all those things.
And in Revelation 11 verse 17 it says, We give thee thanks,
O Lord God Almighty, which art and wast and art to come, because
thou hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned. Love
taken to thee thy great power just has the power and takes
it and reigns with it I don't want a God that is described
so often as a God that has some power and Rain sometimes I want
a God who has all power and is reigning in every single thing
now the second point of this message man is man and And I
won't spend nearly as much time talking about, man, there's not
a need to dwell on this point. I could probably take about ten
seconds and say a couple words and say, let's move on. Because
I'd like to get to the good news that's in point three. And really,
I'd actually like to skip this part because it's really not
that much fun. But you can't skip it. It's too important.
You have to have a glimpse of the contrast between man and
God to appreciate God. You can't appreciate how special
something or someone is until you've seen the other side. When
my sister was really little, she went over to someone else's
house. And they ate a sandwich, and she sat there, and she said
to them, or she didn't say to them yet, she was amazed by this
sandwich. It was so good. And she came
home, or she told the people, she says, what is this? And the
lady didn't have a clue what she was talking about. And she
said, it's just bread. And she said, it's white bread. And the lady looked at her and
said, yeah. And she goes, I don't think my mom knows about this
stuff. We have to see the contrast between God and man to understand
that. Because she didn't know about
the white bread, the wheat bread was fine to her. But once you
have the contrast, it's easier to see. So let's just give a
couple little quick things about who is man. Man chose the one
tree in the garden that he was told to leave alone. Man was
told for hundreds of years a flood was coming and the only safe
place was in the ark and eight people chose to go in. Man was
spared from poisonous snakes by simply looking at a snake
on a pole. Yet they decided to worship the
snake on the pole instead of the one who brought them the
remedy. Man arrived at the promised land after being freed from bondage,
eating bread falling from the sky, and drinking water from
a rock. But when they got to the city,
they were scared of the people that were there. Man thinks he
can offer a worthy sacrifice. Man thinks he can hide from God. Man thinks he is worthy of salvation. And man doesn't think that he's
a sinner. And if you start at page 1 in
this book and you went through it and decided to write a list
of all the things that man does, it wouldn't be pretty, but it
would be very long. We do so many of these same things,
and I don't mean we as in people who don't believe. I mean we
as in us. We do so many of them, but we
keep getting a little more cunning and a little more deceitful to
ourselves. We are getting really good at
hiding these things, or at least convincing ourselves we don't
do it, kind of in the way I described earlier about counseling God.
We don't tell Him He needs to do something. We just complain
about what He's done, which is the same thing. Now, there are
a lot of people, and I mean a lot of people, that spend a large
part of their time trying to find a different way to salvation.
Man will take anything, any way possible, to salvation. as long
as two things happen. One, it's not in Christ, and
two, they get the glory. And worse yet, these same people,
they will do anything they can to drag you and I or anyone else
with them. There's a great article in the
bulletin today that tells about testing a message with the Word
of God, that you don't just assume that because where someone's
preaching or who they are that they're preaching the gospel.
And I've heard an illustration used before of a man's message
or what someone believes as being a stick. And when we look at
a message and we look at it by itself as if it's a stick, it's
really hard to tell with some of them if it's straight or not.
Now some are just crooked as can be and it's obvious. Others,
when you hold it up, you kind of look around and think, ah,
that's pretty straight. The only way to tell if a person's message
is correct is you take the straight stick and you hold it up next
to it. If the two of them are identical,
then that person is preaching the gospel. If there's one ridge,
if there's one notch, if it's too long, if anything's wrong
with it, it's not the truth. You can't take anything out.
You can't add anything to it. You can't change anything. It's
got to be the same. Now, it is very sad that salvation
is free, yet man will do anything he can to pay for it. You've
heard the thing before that if we advertise in the newspaper,
if you had a million dollars and brought it here tonight and
you would get salvation, we couldn't find enough parking spots in
this block to fit them in. But if you advertise salvation
is the free grace of God, no one's going to show up that didn't
already come. It's sad that salvation is for sinners, yet everybody
wants to pretend they aren't a sinner. It's sad that salvation
is already complete, yet man wants to do it by himself. Salvation
is a gift, yet man says that he bought it. In the thesaurus,
an antonym or a word that is the opposite, looking up the
word God, the opposite of that is evil. Maybe the best way to
describe man is the opposite of God. Now to the good part. The third
point is God is the only hope for man. I could have added the
word salvation and made this point. God is the only hope for
man's salvation, which is the most important hope that we get
from the Lord, and we will get to that. But we need to be much
broader about it. Think about something you want
in your mind. I really want you to do this.
Take a second. Think about something, anything
that you want, anything you want. Have you got it? The only hope
you have to get that thought in your mind is from the Lord. I don't care if you said I want
to go to McDonald's on the way home and get an ice cream cone.
I don't care if you said I want to get all A's this year in school.
And I don't care if you said I want to be saved. It's all
dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ. Hold on a second. Did you just
say that I can't do anything without God? Yes. But you didn't
mean that I don't have my own will to make a decision to have
an impact. No, that's exactly what I meant.
And why would we be okay being dependent on the will of God
and not having one of our own? Why? Here's an illustration,
kids. What is the best part of your
birthday? And we can think back of when
we were kids. The best part is getting presents.
We all want presents. So if I gave you a choice, on
your next birthday, you can save up your own money, not anyone
gives you money, but actually, like, earning it, like, go get
a job and try to earn the money. And you can't actually drive
to go get it because you don't have a license and no one can
take you. You have to do it all on your own. Or you can let the people
who love you go spend their own money and buy you presents. Well,
obviously, which one sounds better? You want all the presents from
everyone else. Now, of course, We want the gifts from everybody.
But how do you know that you'll get good gifts? I don't ever
remember one time as a child thinking to myself, I'm not going
to get anything good. I never remember thinking that.
Why? Because the people who bought
the gifts, they watch you all the time. They know you. They
talk to you. And most importantly, they love
you. And because we want to make sure we get exactly what we want,
we also ask for certain things. All of that illustration comes
back to salvation and that we don't have anything to offer.
That story isn't exact because in that situation you might have
saved up a few dollars and you might have some part. But all
of that is just a simple picture of how the Lord takes care of
His children. He is constantly watching over
them. He knows them and He loves them. He will give them countless
gifts and presents and we should ask for things that we want.
He has told us to pray and that He would answer. And what's better,
He knows what we want or what we need better than we do. In
Jeremiah 33 it says, I can't wait for all the things that
I will learn in that day that I didn't know about. I'm so excited about
it. When this third point, God is
the only hope for man, comes up in a message or a conversation,
and I don't mean the rounded off, the cushion the blow, the
wishy-washy message that is preached where salvation is left up for
interpretation or debate. I instead mean the freshly sharpened,
the no doubt, no debate, piercing spear that is the true gospel.
that says the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross bearing the
sins of a particular people that has a specific number determined
before the foundation of the world every name written and
spelled correctly in the book. He arose victorious over sin
and death achieving salvation for these people and your only
hope is that God wrote your name in the book and when the Lord
was on the cross you were in His heart. When that message
comes up In a conversation or while preaching with someone
who hasn't heard it before, I often see the same looks. The first
is either, how in the world can you believe that? Well, the simple answer, I believe
it because by the grace of God, He taught me and put it in my
heart. I didn't have anything to do with it. And the phrase
in that question that's wrong is, how in the world? Nowhere in this world will you
find anything to help belief. It comes from above. And the
second look is a red-faced look that is saying, I hate that. Why do I not hate the gospel?
Because by the grace of God, I've been taught the gospel.
I've been taught point one, who God is, point two, who I am,
and with that I went from hating the Lord and loving me to loving
the Lord and hating me. As Eli said, it is the Lord,
let him do what seemeth him good. And then look at verse 36, for
of him and through him and to him are all things. To whom be
glory forever, amen. I'm almost done here. Not only
did He create the world and everything and everyone in it, not only
does He preserve and support all things and everyone, but
all things in grace owe their origins to Him as their first
cause. Now all that means, anything
you do that you think's good, anything you do that's remotely
close to good, Anything that actually is good, he deserves
all the credit and he is the whole reason why you could ever
do anything that was possibly good. And it also shows that
he gets the glory for it. Now, whether you give him the
glory or not, he gets the glory. And I love that because I'm a
glory stealer. That's who I am. I love giving
myself credit. I love patting myself on the
back and any chance I get I tell myself mostly inside how good
I did and how great of a job I did or even better than that
when someone else does something I think to myself I could have
done it better. And I love it because I'm so happy that he
still gets the glory no matter what I do. It's all going to
go to him. Now to close let's get back to our eternal salvation.
I don't know if you guys have always done this, but when I
had a problem where I had two options, you take a line down
the middle of a piece of paper and draw a line across, and you
put one on one side and one on the other. And we can't make
a decision, so we're going to list the pros and the cons on
the two sides. So let's do it. Salvation is on the line, and
on the one side, we're going to put us, me, and on the other
side, we're going to put God. So let's start doing the pros.
Okay, God chose me. God created me. Christ died for
me. Christ paid my sin debt. Christ
rose victorious over death. The Holy Spirit taught me. The
Holy Spirit keeps me. God is love. God is holy. God
is powerful. God has wisdom. Oh, let's pause.
Let's go to our side. Okay. Now, I can't think of anything,
and I've had some time to think about it. So let's move to the
next step. Let's list the cons of each side,
so then we'll compare it. So we'll start on our side and
we'll say, well, I'm a sinner. I lie a lot. I'm deceitful. I'm proud. I'm proud enough that, you know,
sometimes I don't really want to say the things that are coming
to my mind right now that are negatives on my side. And then
there's no negatives on the other side. Now, with all of that,
that's a really childish way to look at it, but it's pretty
darn simple when you think about it. I hope that we can see by
looking at those two sides, at those two places, that salvation
comes from the Lord. And that's the only place. It's
not even something that if someone's honest with themselves, they
can find any positive on this side or any negative on this
side. We just can't do it unless we're
just totally deceiving ourselves. As long as we know that God is
God, man is man, and the only hope for man is the Lord Jesus
Christ and God. God is the only hope for man.