Oh, the depth of the riches and 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 them?” For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:33-36).

Next Sunday I will preach my final sermon as the pastor of Lockwood Community Church. With only this and one more sermon to go, I am tempted to talk about our time here, to reminisce about all the good things, to warn you about the future, to laugh at the happy times and weep at our parting. I want you to know how we feel about you and how grateful we are to know you.

As I say, I am temped; but I’m not going to give in to the temptation. I will focus instead on the greatness of our God. Karen and I are finishing up. Our God is continuing on. He is the One you must love and trust. It is to him that your gratitude is due. I have made more mistakes than I know or could possibly recount. He has made none. So, I want to talk about him. I want to help you lift your eyes to him, and your hearts, to trust him and serve him.

Romans 9-11 is an extended parenthesis in the ongoing argument Paul is making for the goodness of God and the greatness of the gospel. There is a reason for this parenthesis. If God is so good and the gospel is so great, why do so few Jewish people – the covenant people of God – believe it? God made promises to his covenant people, many promises, based on his inviolable word. So, what happened? Has God’s word failed? That is, has God failed to keep his word?

It might look that way. Israel’s God had allowed them to be conquered and exiled from their land. And ever since they had returned, they had been a subjugated people. First, they had Babylonian overlords. Then Persian. Then Greek. Though there was a brief glimmer of hope, darkness closed in again with the coming of the Romans, who tyrannized and oppressed them for a hundred years.

So, how can it be said that God kept his word? If he had, would things have worked out like this? That is the objection that Paul feels compelled to answer in Romans 9-11. He lets us know that is what he is doing right at the beginning of this section when he writes, “It is not as though God’s word failed” (Romans 9:6).

But if that is the case, Paul, you have some explaining to do. What’s more, God has some explaining to do. Where was God when Israel went into captivity? You say that captivity was the punishment for idolatry, but if God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why did he allow his people to ruin their lives and corrupt their minds with idolatry? He could have stopped that before it started. Why didn’t he?

And as long as we are demanding an explanation from God, there are some things closer to home that we’d like to know. Where was God when a child, heart of his parents’ hearts and love of their lives, died? Where was God when our job got downsized and marriage troubles ensued? Why didn’t God stop our teenager from ruining her life with that drug dealing delinquent who got her pregnant? Where was God then?

Paul is not here trying to answer questions about God’s action (or inaction) in our personal lives, but what he says about God and his faithfulness to Israel speaks to our situations too. Paul’s answer – and this is an overly simplistic summary – is that God took the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness into account from the beginning and incorporated it into his plan. He did not stop them from selling their soul through idolatry, but he wove their redemption into his plan.

So, what about the drug dealing hoodlum – is he part of the plan? Yes. In ways that have nothing to do with you and your daughter and in ways that do. What about the failure of a marriage? God took it into account. He wove it into his plan. He didn’t cause it, any more than he caused Israel’s idolatry, but it did not stymie him for a second. Paul’s answer is that God is bigger than you know or can possibly imagine. His will is not something separate from us that we can be part of or not, like an optional excursion on a Caribbean cruise. We are a part of God’s will, whether we like it or not. His plan incorporates our choices, even our sinful, stupid ones, even our rebellion.

His plan is not some single strand of divine will that might be severed. It is not a single strand but a network. It is not one line of action but a trillion trillion lines, simultaneously incorporating all the actions of his creatures and the accidents of nature. Think of the Russian nesting dolls, the Matryoshka dolls that you have seen. One doll conceals another within it, which conceals another, and another, and another. God’s will is like that. The very personal thing that happens to us is located within a larger aspect of God’s will, which is located within yet a larger aspect of his will. We live somewhere in the nesting dolls of God’s will and, if we are Christ’s, we are perfectly safe there.

That does not mean that bad things might not happen to us. In fact, in this terribly broken world, bad things will happen to us. It is guaranteed. But it does mean that nothing can happen, absolutely nothing, that God cannot incorporate into – has not already incorporated into – his good, gracious, glorious plan for us and for all creation. There is no obstacle that will prevent God from achieving his good purpose.

But what about Satan, our adversary, the devil? Satan himself is within the nesting dolls of God’s will. God did not make him rebel, but God incorporated his rebellion into his beautiful and perfect will. Satan cannot stop God. He is an ant in the way of a bulldozer. He is a wisp of fog that disappears forever in the blazing sun. He is not God’s rival – God has no rivals.

Satan is, of course, more than a rival to us – at this point in our development. But God has incorporated him and his opposition into the plan. What is the plan? The all-encompassing version of God’s plan is to sum up all thing under one head—Christ himself (Eph. 1:10). That will include transforming human beings into Christ’s image (Romans 8:29). And then all things will be wonderfully subjected to God and God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). Nothing can stop this plan. Not the devil and certainly not some drug-dealing delinquent. You can’t stop it, and neither can I.

But that is hard for us to believe when our daughter is going out with that hoodlum, when the future is threatening, and we are gripped by fear. It is so easy for us to panic, to try to wrench control and force things to go our way. We can see this dynamic at play in the history of Israel.

Near the end of Judah’s monarchy (you can read about this in 2 Kings) King Jehoiachin rebelled against the Babylonians, was deposed, and his uncle Zedekiah assumed the throne. Zedekiah vacillated between submission and rebellion, between seeking God and trying to take things into his own hands. Several years into his reign, Zedekiah also rebelled. The Babylonians attacked and laid siege to Jerusalem, which went into lockdown for two years. Food supplies ran so low that some people resorted to cannibalism. It was an unimaginably horrible time.

Just when the City reached the point of desperation, the Babylonians broke through the wall. The army fled out the gate on the other side of the city, but emaciated as they were, the Babylonians quickly caught up with them. It was a slaughter.

A ruthless Babylonian official was deployed to Jerusalem to finish the work. He ordered all the principal buildings destroyed and burnt to the ground. He had the city walls demolished. He took from the temple all its treasures, including the brass sea, the altar, all the sanctified serving utensils of gold and silver and sent them to Babylon. Then he set the temple ablaze. When he was done, there was nothing left. The temple, the pride of Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism in the world, was gone.

People had not believed this was possible. They did not believe God would ever allow the temple, his dwelling place on earth, to be harmed. Now it was gone. God was gone. Life made no sense.

Those who survived were forcibly removed from Israel to Babylon. Families were torn apart. The depth of anguish was too profound to plumb. There would be no more happiness. No more faith. Just hateful masters. Just slavery.

How could this happen when God had promised David that he would always have an heir to reign from his throne? The Babylonians forced Zedekiah to watch his sons, heirs to the throne, executed, and then had his eyes gouged out. The commander wanted the brutal death of his sons to be the last thing Zedekiah would ever see. David’s line was being decimated and God’s promise appeared to be in jeopardy.

But remember the former king, Jehoiachin? He had been deposed and taken to Babylon, where he was held as a political prisoner for more than three decades. But when a new Babylonian king came to power, Jehoiachin was released. He was given the status of a royal visitor and ally. His family flourished in Babylon.

When the exiled ended, Jehoiachin’s family returned to Israel to be part of the resettlement. That family would live in and around Jerusalem for the next six hundred years. One branch of the family settled in Bethlehem.

You remember Bethlehem, right? What was it that the prophet had said about Bethlehem during the reign of good King Hezekiah, 140 years before all this horror? “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2).

God’s master plan was in full motion before anyone knew there would be a war, an exile, or a return. But God knew. He knows everything. Paul, some 700 years after Micah’s prophecy, wrote: “…when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law…” (Galatians 4:5). God preserved David’s line through Jehoiachin and sent his only begotten son to Bethlehem, just as he promised. This is the untraceable, inscrutable wisdom and knowledge of God.

But that was then. That was Israel. What about us? What about us when a child dies, when a marriage fails, when a teenage girl gets pregnant? What about us when our world seems as dark as night? Where is God’s wisdom? Why isn’t he doing something?

He is doing something, but we, like the Israelite exiles, cannot see it. Here is Romans 11:33-35 again in a paraphrase: “God’s resources are endless. His wisdom never runs out. He knows everything there is to know. His judgments are inscrutable. His ways are impossible to understand. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor?”

Don’t think God is not doing anything just because you can’t see or understand what he is doing. His ways are impossible to understand. Imagine taking a ride with Jesus in a 1965 Cadilac Coupe Deville from New York to Los Angeles. A road trip with Jesus? Wouldn’t that be great? Of course, you think you know the way the Lord will take: I-80 to the Colorado line, I-76 to Denver, I-70 into Utah where you will pick up I-15 almost to San Bernadino, where you’ll get on 210 and follow it to 605 and then take Route 10 into L.A.

That makes sense. It is the quickest route. But God knows about a billion things you don’t know. He knows there will be traffic jams in Hoboken, Stroudsburg, Youngstown, Chicago, Des Moines, and twelve other spots, so he avoids them. He bypasses the hailstorm in White Haven. He knows there is a wonderful state park just off I-76 near Uniontown, PA, which you are going to love. And there is an ice cream parlor in Wooster, OH that he particularly likes. They have a dark chocolate ice cream with chunks of fudge, which Jesus says is the best in the world.

He also knows that a 74-year-old man and his wife are traveling to see their son who, unbeknownst to them, will die later this year. They will blow a tire on the south side of Bloomington and the man will have a heart attack while he is trying to get the lug nuts off. So, Jesus takes an alternate route that leads through central Indiana so that you can change a tire. And then, there is a waitress in a diner in St. Joseph, Missouri, a single mom with bills that are piling up, and whose ex is suing for full custody of their only child. She feels like she is losing her mind and really needs someone to give her hope – as well as a big tip – and you are just the person to do that.

Then there is the cow that got through the fence outside Severance, Kansas. It will get hit by a teenage driver if someone doesn’t do something first. And there is a poet in a coffee shop in Oklahoma City who will overhear one line of your conversation that will set his creativity on fire and someday earn him the title of Poet Laureate of the United States.

If you were to see that route plotted on a map, it would make no sense at all. But that is because you don’t know what the Lord knows. All you know is that I-80 is the most direct route between where you are and where you want to go.

In your own life, you usually have known the most direct route between where you are and where you want to be. But why doesn’t God take that route? Your whole life seems to have been a series of detours. Sometimes, you forced your way along your perceived route, but that didn’t work out any better, and maybe it was worse.

God’s ways, Paul writes, are impossible to understand. You will never guess them beforehand. You have a better chance of guessing the winning Powerball Lottery numbers. But should you guess the Powerball, you will not be as happy as you would be if you trusted the Lord, his wisdom, and his love.

Do you really think you deserve to be God’s counselor? Lots of people have applied for the job; none have been qualified. I have often given the Lord recommendations and sometimes he has worked them into the plan – that’s pure grace! But I could not be God’s counselor any more than a preschooler could counsel Albert Einstein on the development of the Theory of General Relativity. I can’t see a trillion things at once, things present, past, and future. But God does.

It is pretty arrogant of us to think that we know better than God. That arrogance is also displayed in the attitude that God owes us something. Paul will have none of that. Quoting Job, he asks: “Who has ever given to God that God should repay him?” There is nothing that you or I have ever done that has put God in our debt. There is nothing we could ever do to put God in our debt. He doesn’t owe us; he owns us. He made us. He bought us at a price.

But even though that is true, he treats us as his children, not his debtors. A child owes his parents everything. They have given him life, shelter, food, and love. They have worked untold hours for his benefit. They have sacrificed things they wanted. Yet, if they are good parents they don’t think: “Kid, you owe me big time—and I mean to collect.” They don’t treat him as their debtor but as their child, their beloved. That is how God treats us.

Look now at verse 36: “For from him…” He is the originator, the one who thought all this up, the one who made it – and us – possible.

“For from him and through him…” He is not only the idea person. He is the artist, the mechanic, the one who does the work. So, John could write, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3) Paul writes, “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities…” (Colossians 1:16).

“For from him and through him and for him are all things.” You and I were not only made by God; we were made for him. This does not at all diminish our value as human beings; it increases it exponentially. We will never be happy until we acknowledge this is true and are glad for it. You were made for God, not like a tailored suit for a businessman, nor even like a work of art for a collector, but like a beloved child for his parents or a bride for her groom. You belong. You are wanted. You are God’s.