The Mystery of Promise | Pastor Chris Kouba

Well, let me add my word of greeting.

My name is Chris Cuba.

Uh to Pat's earlier.

I am the lead pastor here at United City and so grateful uh that you've come to be with us today.

And uh what great, amazing worship uh that we got to experience this morning already so far.

God has just continued to go before us.

Got a big announcement.

I'm not gonna be able to tell you exactly who just quite yet, but we've got a worship pastor that is gonna be coming in just a few weeks, which is gonna be pretty exciting, gonna be coming to join our team, which is very, very, very exciting.

And God has gone before us yet again.

Uh and it's just pretty amazing how he continues to provide for us.

I mean, that just now, that that that beautiful lady right there that was singing in such an incredible way, Sharon Diaz, that is Pastor Eliel Diaz, our Spanish pastor's wife.

That wasn't even her first language, and she sounded that good, right?

I mean, that's that's pretty amazing whenever you consider that and just the entire team and Landon and Rosa, and of course Josh has just done such a great job.

Uh, you may have noticed a couple people who aren't here that a lot of times are.

Uh one, at our keys, we had George, who is usually there, uh, who was not there, and then MJ, uh who also sings for us quite a bit, was not there.

And the reason is they got married this week on Thursday night, which is pretty awesome.

And so that's just what we do, all right?

If you get involved at United City, you might meet your spouse, okay?

That's how this works.

Uh, and so we we certainly are excited for them.

And when they come back, you guys make sure just to express your excitement and appreciation for them and this new journey in their lives.

An unbelievable, awesome, and talented couple for sure.

Uh, I want to invite you to open up your Bibles to Romans chapter 11.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 11.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

And I want to take this opportunity to greet all of the men at the Ramsey Unit and all of the women at the Plain State Correctional Facility.

It is so good to be able to bring this message to you and excited to see how God hopefully can use it in your life.

I want to ask you a series of questions.

How do you respond when you don't understand?

What do you do when God doesn't make sense?

Have you ever been there before?

When what we know of and about God doesn't match what we can comprehend or maybe explain.

Let me just tell you, if you've ever kind of gone there and begun to think about the divine, you're gonna quickly get to that place.

That place where words no longer do justice for what it is that you're trying to consider.

When you consider the divine against the backdrop of the finite, you're gonna have a gap.

Where you, when you consider deity next to your humanity, it's inevitable that you're gonna get to the place when all the things that you hear are beyond all the things that you mentally can grasp.

This is where we find ourselves in the book of Romans.

We're continuing and finishing up our series this morning called Into the Mystery.

We've been looking at the book of Romans.

We looked at it all of last fall.

We're gonna look at it all the way up through Easter of this year.

And this morning, we're gonna be finishing up this section that's one of the most confusing passages of Scripture in Romans 9, 10, and 11.

If you remember, Romans chapter 9 talks about the doctrine of election.

Romans 9 · chapter mention

It talks about God's sovereignty in the issue of salvation.

It basically says this: it is God who has the authority and the ability to choose those whom he will save.

It's a hard truth to hear, it's a difficult truth to comprehend.

Last week we looked at Romans chapter 10, which is all about human responsibility.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

We learn that it says in Romans chapter 10, verses 9 and 10, that if you believe in your heart and you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.

Romans 10:9

There's no qualifiers on it.

It says it implies that if you hear the message, you can respond and you are held accountable for whether you say yes and receive it, or whether you say no and reject it.

In fact, in verse 13 of Romans chapter 10, it says, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

So you have this idea of God's sovereignty in Romans 9.

You've got this idea of human responsibility in chapter 10, and this creates the mystery of salvation.

It's difficult, it's hard to grasp and fully understand.

The context of all of this has been the issue of the relationship between the Jewish people and Gentiles, that being non-Jews.

You see, the God says in his word back in Genesis, all the way in verse chapter 12, and as well as in verse 15 and throughout the rest of the Old Testament, that he has established a chosen people, a people called the Israelites.

This Israelite people are a people that he has chosen to give special privileges to.

Meaning God's special favor with the Jewish people wasn't to the exclusion of everybody else.

It was just a way by which he would get that message out.

Problem was the Jewish people saw themselves as hoarders of the blessing instead of conduits of the blessing.

They began to make up extra rules along the way as to who was in and who was out.

And the entire goal was that they established power and control, both in a religious perspective, but also as a result of that, a political perspective.

So Jesus comes along, and when Jesus comes, he begins to throw the whole system up on top of itself, and he now allows and says things that God now will not only bless the Jewish people, but God also will bless those who are non-Jewish, those who are Gentiles.

This is causing there to be a lot of confusion, as you can possibly imagine, because it all along been with the Jews, and it leads us to this verse in Romans chapter 9, verse 6, which kind of implies a question that is being dealt with in the next three chapters.

Romans 9:6

Romans chapter 9, verse 6, but it is not as though the word of God has failed.

Romans 9:6

The reason he has to state this is because the question is implied.

Well, God messed up, it didn't work out.

He had this whole plan and it failed.

Romans chapter 11 begins to pick up this theme, and Paul identifies how God built his church through Jews.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

The apostles, for example, the disciples, early disciples, were all Jewish people.

But he not only has done that, he has also preserved a remnant of people who, despite being Jewish, were not being set aside, but instead were always going to believe in Jesus.

He then goes on to describe in Romans chapter 11 how the promises given to Israel will still one day yet be fulfilled, and that one day he will bring back the nation of Israel to himself.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

This is why I personally believe theologically and otherwise that we should support the nation of Israel, because I believe that those who bless God's people will be blessed.

And so, in light of that, I believe that even though the church is now in this age, it does not mean that all of the promises that have been given to the nation of Israel have been fulfilled in the church or have been put aside completely, but I believe that one day these promises will yet be fulfilled.

And that will be the greatest evangelization moment in all of human history when God brings these Jewish people back to themselves.

I realize that what I'm telling you is difficult.

I realize that it may be confusing and certainly beyond how you normally would think that God would choose.

It seems like he could make a simpler way to go about bringing about his salvation history.

Paul ends the chapter in Romans chapter 11 with what is called a doxology.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

Doxology is like a chant, it's like a song, it's like a statement or a saying that you would say, and it's meant to try to make your mind and your heart go towards something when you can't understand what's in front of you.

Basically, what happens is that Paul gets to the end of the chapter, he's not really sure how this whole Jew-Gentile thing is exactly supposed to work, and so he teaches us through this doxology how we are to respond when we also find ourselves in a position when we can't fully understand God, or maybe we don't even agree with what he is doing.

Let's begin reading in Romans chapter 11, verse 33.

Romans 11:33

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways.

For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?

For who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

For from him and through him, and to him, for all things.

Amen.

In this text, I want you to see three ways that you're supposed to respond to God when you don't understand it.

First thing is this you have to know that God is God.

You have to know that God is God.

When you consider the things of God, naturally and most importantly, you should be stopped in your tracks and realize if you're gonna go there, you are entering into holy ground.

Look at the very first word.

Oh.

When you start talking about God, when you start going there about God, you need to be prepared for some oh moments.

Oh is like saying, hey, hey, you're not gonna believe this or or wow or or whoa, or you need to hear this, whatever it is that you might say in order to gather and garner attention.

When you start talking about God, you need to be prepared for oh.

One way of describing it is the word all.

Paul David Tripp writes a book called All, and he says it like this.

I came to see that I was wired for all.

That all of something sits at the bottom of everything I say and do.

But I wasn't just wired for all, I was wired for all of God.

No other all satisfies the soul.

No other all can give my heart the peace, rest, and security that it seeks.

When you venture to understand God, to comprehend God, to begin to consider God.

You better be prepared for awe.

You better be ready for oh.

Look at what it says there.

The awe of God is meant and is supposed to be the depths at the beginning of the verse and the heights at the end of the verse of God.

First, he mentions the depth.

The word depth is meant to cause you to think about the deep oceans with depths that are so great that you can never go all the way to the bottom.

You know that if you've ever been in a very large body of water that is very deep, and you were to be so foolish as to try to dive down and swim as far as you possibly can, eventually you will be forced to turn back because the pressure that exists in your ears will be so great, it will be warning you danger is about to happen.

And as a result of that, you will turn back around.

But let's just say that you were foolish enough to think that somehow you are beyond the warning that has been given to you, and you go and swim past that place.

Please hear me, your eardrums would rupture and you would die.

Here's what I want you to see: God exists below that.

Like that's the depths of our God.

He hangs out where we're not allowed.

He hangs out deeper than we could possibly ever imagine.

Look at the description in verse 33.

A few aspects of his depth.

First, his riches are deep.

Oh, the depths of the riches.

Last year I set up some checking accounts for my kids.

I was tired of them asking me for money, and I realized that they make money doing babysitting and other stuff.

And so I'm like, you need to be able to have it to where you can spend your own money.

Let's let's do this.

So we we we set up checking accounts for them, and so I went and took them all up to the bank and we set all these things up, and it's great.

It's it's a great thing we have now set up.

That being said, I I did not realize uh that I would be subject to as many notifications as I am now that I've set up these checking accounts for them.

Uh you see, they've clearly got some sort of metric that they obviously have set up, and it's clearly based upon history and all of these things, where basically, if somebody has this uh less money than is necessary in their checking account, not that they're overdrawn, but that there's the potential for being overdrawn, what it does is it sends a notification to my phone alerting me through the app that this has now happened.

They also will then send me an email alerting me that this is the case.

I will get a personal text message saying, you need to check on this.

Your daughter has less than this amount in her account.

And in addition to that, I get a phone call from an 800 number alerting me that this is the case.

Now I'm sitting here and I, of course, calling, hey, what's going on?

Here she goes, I know, I know, I got them all too.

There's clearly been some sort of measurable thing along the way where they want to make sure that they don't overdraw because then it would be a problem for the bank.

And so, in light of that, they have four different notifications, not to tell me that they are overdrawn, but that they're might be overdrawn if you don't do something about it.

Please hear me, folks.

God doesn't need a notification.

He's good.

Like there's not gonna be a moment when his riches are gonna be like, if you don't be turned things around, if you don't slow down, then guess what?

There's not gonna be enough to give out.

You're gonna be overdrawn.

What does this look like?

Romans chapter 2, verse 4.

Romans 2:4

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience.

Now knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

Please hear me.

We'll talk about it in just a moment.

His riches definitely imply money, but his riches aren't just limited to money.

His kindness, his forbearance, his patience, deep well.

Romans chapter 10, verses 12 and 13, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Romans 10:12

This isn't a first come, first serve thing, and you're gonna run out.

This isn't the fastest 100 to go and claim it, they get the prize.

It's available for everybody.

Which is why we gotta keep sharing this message because guess what?

God isn't gonna run out of his salvation.

Philippians chapter 4, verse 19 says, And my God will supply every need of yours.

Philippians 4:19

That's a pretty big statement.

According to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Nothing's gonna be overdrawn.

The depths of his riches go on and on and on and on.

In addition, it says, Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom of God.

Wisdom is not just information, wisdom is information that is applied.

It's when you take something that's good and you actually like live it out.

There are a lot of people who are really high IQs, but they're not very smart.

Right?

These are people that may test really well on a test at school, but they can't do basic like life skills, right?

What he's suggesting here when he talks about wisdom isn't just wisdom, meaning you know a lot of things, but instead it is the fact that you live out principles that you know in your life.

It's the idea between being book smart and being street smart.

Wisdom is being street smart.

But true wisdom doesn't just come from the ups and the downs of life, true wisdom comes from God.

Proverbs chapter 2, verse 6 for the Lord gives wisdom.

Proverbs 2:6

From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

Wisdom is one of those things that we all want.

Wisdom is one of those things that we all need, and it comes from the Lord.

There exist even some people in life who you may learn from, but eventually you will outgrow.

Pretty excited about this.

The Raptors in the second, uh the Division II of ABA basketball, they won the championship yesterday at 10 o'clock.

I know you were all nervous about that and excited about that, uh, but it happened.

My fifth grade son, Griffin, he won the championship.

This is exciting because I've basically been Griffin's coach and I've been almost all of my kids' coaches most of their lives, and I've been in a lot of championship games, but I've never actually won one.

And it has been bothering me for a long time, all right?

And I'd love to tell you that I was the coach sitting at the end of the bench when the buzzer beater literally yesterday, a shot went up, it hit the rim, it ball goes up, time is expired, and then it goes down into the hoop.

We win the game by one.

It was absolutely awesome.

We're running on the court, we're cheering, we're celebrating, but I was not doing that as the position of the head coach.

Because I decided this year that I needed to be the assistant coach.

That being said, I'm still gonna claim the victory as though it was mine.

Because here's the problem.

I know that along the way, in the coaching of my kids, as much as I love to be with them and as much as I love to coach, their skill outpaced my wisdom.

Like they got to the point where I couldn't help them as much anymore.

Like they needed somebody else to speak into their lives, and obviously it worked because they actually won the championship, and that is what they need most.

James chapter 1, verse 5.

James 1:5

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

Let me translate.

There's not gonna be a time when you're gonna need another voice that's smarter than God's.

There's not gonna be a time when you're gonna read your Bible and you've hit the ceiling of all that you can know and all that you can do.

Instead, it says there if you want to be smart, not just smart in your mind, but you want to be smart in your life, then you go and ask God, and He is glad, looks forward to.

He gives it without reproach.

He just hands out wisdom, and he gives you the opportunity to be the recipients of it.

Never needing another voice smarter than his.

This is why I can read God's word year after year after year, and I find treasures of wisdom as though it was the first time that I've heard it.

This morning in my time with the Lord, I read about the Ten Commandments.

I have preached on the Ten Commandments, and God convicted me beyond belief about my covetousness.

Here I am, I have so much, God has given me so many things, and all I do is complain about what I still don't have.

I've preached on that, I've read that before, but guess what?

This day, as I began to read that, God slapped me upside the head.

And the question for me now am I just gonna To have information, or am I going to apply this and have wisdom?

In addition, it says, Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

You see, you are limited in what you know.

But you're not only limited in what you know, you're limited in when you know it.

Have you ever been in a situation to where you make a decision based upon the information that you have at that moment?

Maybe it's a life-altering decision, and you say, I'm going to go this way, only later to discover a day or a week later, new information that would have radically changed what you would have chosen to do had you known it at that time.

What I want you to see is this God is not only all-knowing, he also knows it when he needs to know it.

The word is omniscient.

Psalm 139 says, This, O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways, even before a word is on my tongue.

Behold, O Lord, you know it all together.

Later in Psalm 139, it says that God knows every single day that was prepared for you before you were born.

He literally knows everything.

He knows everything past, present, and future.

He knows everything actual, everything potential, and everything hypothetical.

He knows all the things that you already know, all the things that you don't want anyone else to know, and all the things that you could ever know if you knew enough to actually ask and know them.

Oh the depth.

Not only his depth, but he then moves on to talk about the height of God.

The phrase he uses, how unsearchable are his judgments.

It's scary today for me to think about just how much our kids know and have access to, my kids in particular, than certainly I did at their age.

We'll be sitting around the house, we'll be watching TV, we'll do whatever, and they'll ask me a random question.

Now, who won the World Series in 2004?

I don't know.

What year was the first Captain America out?

I have no idea.

How many people live in the city of Umble?

No clue.

And every time I give one of those responses, that's a normal natural response, I don't know all this stuff.

Well, ask Siri.

Ask Alexa, right?

And so literally, what you can just do in that moment is just like, Alexa or Siri, how many people live in Umble, right?

My iPad just went crazy just now, just right here, okay?

You can just ask Siri, whoever the Siri person is, and it will literally tell you the information.

It is absolutely insane how much information that we have access to, and because of that, along the way, we got this impression that somehow we are owed an explanation to any question that we may ask.

Not with God.

You don't get to do a Google search and figure out why he's doing what he's doing.

Serious speaking to us.

Here we go.

Because here's the thing.

Sometimes you can look at the situation and you can look, and maybe it feels like you're experiencing judgment while at the very same time God is accomplishing victory in your life.

You want to know how I know?

Look at the cross.

It looked like he was losing, but he was actually winning the whole time.

There's other times when you can look at somebody's life and you can see blessing upon blessing upon blessing upon them, and you look at that and maybe you covet that in your heart, not realizing that it is actually a trial sent by God for their good.

What this shows us is that we don't know.

Isaiah chapter 55, verses 8 and 9 say, For my thoughts are not your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8

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.

Verse 33, how inscrutable his ways.

Our way of thinking says, if I do good, then God always rewards me.

If I experience anything bad, God must be punishing me.

God says, I have accomplished my greatest feat through what appeared to be the greatest defeat.

1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 27 and 28.

1 Corinthians 1:27

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are.

First thing you've got to know God is God.

And number two, second thing that you must do is this.

Embrace I am not.

First thing you gotta do is know that God is God.

The second thing you've got to do is embrace I am not, you are not, I am not.

One of the reasons why we so often struggle when we can't understand God, one of the reasons why life seems confusing, and we find ourselves at a place where we may even be questioning God, is because we forgot this super important point.

God is God, and I am not.

Paul proves this.

The rhetorical questions.

You know what a rhetorical question is?

It's a question that's so obvious, you're not really supposed to answer it.

Let's read them again in verse 34 and 35.

For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?

Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

The questions are not meant for you to be like, oh, that's me.

Yeah, that's me.

I do that.

No, no, no, no.

But he's telling us, first of all, the first question God doesn't need your advice.

You ever felt like you needed to help God out?

You felt like you're like, man, if he just knew the politics going on here, if he just knew the relational dynamics and like kind of, you know, they don't like each other.

I don't, I don't, I don't think that's a good idea.

If he just kind of knew what could happen, if he just would kind of move things this way, then he would be way better off.

We have a few pilots in our church.

And uh I want you just to think about these pilots.

These pilots fly these incredibly large uh uh machines.

Uh these pilots are incredibly skilled, they have gone through a number of hours of trials in order to be approved to be pilots.

After they become pilots, there's a lot of continual educate education that they have to go through and remain current on their pilot license.

I mean, these guys are very highly skilled and trained to be able to take off, to be able to fly that plane and to be able to land.

How foolish would it be for me to go on the Xbox and to play a game that has me flying a plane on that Xbox and then somehow go and fly that plane successfully on the Xbox, go and land that plane, and for me to go up to one of these pilots and tell them, I can do your job.

How crazy! Because of the fact that I did it on an Xbox doesn't mean that I can do it with a 737.

I've got to wonder if that's how God feels whenever we start telling him what he should do.

Like he's patient, he's kind, but he probably also is like a pilot would be to me.

That's cute.

It's like the story of Job.

Job for sure had some questions about his life and his situation.

He wanted to know why his life experienced so much turmoil and so much pain and so much struggle.

So it says there towards the end of Job chapter 39 that he begins to ask God to answer himself, to give an explanation for what it is that he has done.

Job 39 · chapter mention

And while he discovered is that while he was trying to summon God for a deposition, it says that God shows up in a whirlwind with a series of questions asking stuff like this: Where were you when I made the world?

I didn't see you there whenever I put the stars up in sky.

What makes you think you can question me?

Simply put, God is God.

And you are not.

You know, it's interesting.

Every week we get up here and we uh give an offertory, meaning this, we appeal to you to give.

Many of you may hear that and you may think, man, there they're there they really need money at the church and all of that.

And what you don't realize is this God doesn't need you to fund his projects.

He's gonna build his church with or without you.

So what you need to understand is that we are making that appeal and that plea for you, not for God.

We're doing that because if you come to this place of recognizing the key to all biblical stewardship is this reality.

God owns it all.

All of it.

He's letting you borrow it to see how you do with it.

He could take it away in seconds.

But he also is trying to see if he can entrust you with even more.

Psalm 24, verses 1 and 2 says, The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

Psalms 24:1

The world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.

We owe God everything.

He owes us nothing.

This is seen most vividly in salvation.

We deserve punishment, we deserve separation from God.

Instead, we get his perfect righteousness.

2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 9 says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

2 Corinthians 8:9

It is because of Jesus that we are rich.

He doesn't need our good works, his poverty is greater than our richest day we will ever have.

But because he's so gracious, we get to be rich.

God is God, and I am not.

What does this lead to?

The third point I want you to see is this your response should be worship.

Your response should be worship.

You need to know that God is God.

You need to embrace that I am not.

Your response must be worship.

In one sentence, all of human history is led to make sense.

In one phrase, everything is explained.

In one expression, the unfolding of history comes together.

Don't miss it.

Romans eleven thirty-six.

For from him and through him, and to him are all things.

To him glory forever.

Amen.

All things are from God.

He is literally the source by which all things exist.

He is the creator, the one who made all things.

Psalm chapter 33, verse 6.

Psalms 33:6

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their hosts.

I love that verse because here's what it implies: God created all things, and it wasn't even hard.

Wasn't even difficult.

No straining.

Just said a word and it happened.

Look at Psalm 33, verse 9, for he spoke and it came to be.

Psalms 33:9

He commanded and it stood firm.

You can watch a lot of late-night religious television, and a lot of people will stand up there and they'll make some big, bold claims out there.

They'll begin to say, if you just speak this into be, then it will happen.

And every once in a while they will get something right.

But over and over and over again, what you will begin to discover is that those things ultimately crash.

But what does it say about our God?

For he spoke and it came to be.

Those mountains are in the exact location that he wanted them to be.

Those seas are exactly what he desired them to be.

Everything in creation is from God.

Every decision is from God.

Proverbs 16 verse 33.

Proverbs 16:33

The lot is cast into the lat, but it's every decision is from the Lord.

It's not only from Him, it's through.

This is so encouraging.

Even the hard and the difficult things, even the things that you can't understand, even the things that you wish were not, all of those things have been passed through God's hand.

Romans chapter 8, verse 28.

Romans 8:28

It says, and we know that for those who love God, all things, not most things, all things work together for good.

Those who are called according to his purpose.

This means that I can worship regardless.

I can worship in spite of.

Finally, all of this is to him.

We live our lives as an expression of praise to God.

To him be glory, to him be honor, to him be praise.

To him who is worthy to him, through him, and for him be glory.

Amen.

What an incredible message.

Hey, if you made a decision today to give your life to Jesus, we'd love to know about it.

We'd love to celebrate with you.

We'd even love to pray with you.

And so if you made that decision, would you text next to 55498?

And someone from our team would love to follow up with you.

In the meantime, I would love to pray with you even right now as God continues to do things in your heart.

And so, Jesus, we love you so much.

We say thank you for the truth of your word.

Thank you for still showing up in people's minds.

Jesus, I bring that you continue with your hearts in your mind.

I bring peace to mind.

Jesus, we can just do that.

This has been an incredible service.

It's been so funny.

And we'd love to see you either in person or online right back here next week.

Services are at nine thirty in the winter.

We'll be at a fantastic weekend to see you soon.