some groundwork that I want to lay, and I want to warn you slash challenge you to engage your thinking for a moment, because really what I'm going to be covering is, in my estimation, the most important thing that an unbeliever or a believer could ever consider, and that is who their creator is. And so I want to start by just making some important points. Some of these are in the form of a question, but the first question is how did God create? Now if you think back, God spoke, right? And it was so. So from page one of scripture, the very first thing we see is that there is something significant to language. And this is a thought that, when it was shared to me, it was something I never thought of before, but it was extremely profound. If you think of things from an origin standpoint, The war on origins, you know, you've got evolutionary theory over here, and you've got biblical creationism over there, and sometimes you have some middle grounds that Christians have had a hard time answering the claims of science, and they end up accommodating certain evolutionary theory. But asking this question is crucial in how did God create? And he used language. If you think of things on an origin spectrum for evolution, How do they account for language? They can't. And so when we talk about things on a debate between atheism and creationism or Christianity, whatever, what have you, they're using the very things that God created. And so we're going to kind of build on this argument as we go through. But the next point that I want to make is God speaking things into existence. creating things by his speech tells us that words have meaning and meaning originates with God. And so to put it another way, without God, if you take God away from the equation, everything is meaningless. Everything means nothing. There is no meaning apart from God. And so on the flip side, everything means something because of God. It's from the very foundation of creation. Not only that, but God's word is the standard of meaning. So not only did God speak and things were created, but his speech, his word, his revelation becomes the standard. So now we're getting into what is called epistemology, or in other words, the study of knowledge and truth. Have you ever asked that question? What is truth? I had such a hard time in Bible school when I read that part in the gospels when Pilate asks Jesus, What is truth? I used to think, man, that is a phenomenal question. What is truth? And I want to propose to you that there is only two answers to that question in its basic form. Truth is what God says it is, what God establishes, or it's what we as creation want it to be. And if it's what we want it to be, then it becomes subjective, right? And that's where we're at in society today, but it's nothing new. It's been recycled. So this point that God's words have meaning and meaning originates with God and God's word is the standard of meaning. This destroys neutrality between DVP as divine viewpoint. And human viewpoint. Fix, okay. And so this is demonstrated at Princeton. Now, what in the world am I talking about? So at Princeton, I don't know if you knew this, but all the major Ivy League colleges were, at one point, seminaries. And if you ever look at the rules of code of conduct for Harvard, for example, it is more intense, spiritually speaking, than any theological seminary or Bible school that you see today. It is more intense than Frontier School of the Bible, where we got our training. They were required to read their Bible every day and to memorize verses and et cetera, et cetera. At Harvard, it was a seminary. And so Princeton was one of those seminaries. And I want to read this excerpt from one of my mentors, Jeremy Thomas, talking about this principle. He says, basically in the early 1900s, the fundamentalists at Princeton, so the Christians at Princeton who were professors and believed in the fundamentals that God's word is authoritative, They lost to the liberals. These fundamentalists resigned and left Princeton. They had no seminary. They lost libraries and everything. So they went to Philadelphia and set up Westminster Theological Seminary. Those scholars began to re-evaluate what went wrong at Princeton. Why did we lose it? Why did the non-Christians ace us? Why did they win? And several of the men on that faculty came to the conclusion that we Christians were not scriptural enough in the way we were defending the faith. The liberals had argued that there's a genuine area of neutral ground, that the Christian can be over here and the non-Christian over there, and this neutrality exists between the battle lines. Does that make sense? So to illustrate this, maybe, Here is kind of the logic of these Princeton fundamentalists. What they were doing is, OK, there's a person with a divine viewpoint or a biblical worldview, and then there's someone with a human viewpoint, a human worldview, over here. And there are two train tracks. And basically, their logic was saying that through conversation, there's this neutral ground in between, but we can persuade the tracks to join. And both, mind you, have the same idea. that the atheist was saying, we can merge the believing track and we can persuade them to see logic, to see reason. Now the issue with that is they realize there is no neutral ground. And so what came out of this was what is called presuppositional apologetics. In my estimation, not to give you a full seminary course on apologetics, but presuppositional apologetics is, in my estimation, the most effective because it accounts for scripture. Whereas the other ones, I think they're well-meaning, well-intended, but they don't start with the most important presupposition of all, and that is God's Word is authoritative. Scripture nowhere argues for the existence of God, it assumes it. And that's essentially what these professors realize, is that we need to not argue for the existence of God, we need to assume it and defend it based on what God's Word says. And they've found success in doing that. So with that, there's another example that my mentor Jeremy Thomas gives. He says, let me give an example of how this works in a practical scenario. So consider Adam and Eve. After Satan talked to Eve, what had he talked the woman into doing? That's the question. Here's Eve over here. She has one claim, right? God says, on the day you eat of this fruit, what's going to happen? You'll die. And then claim number two, Satan says, no, you will not surely die. So she's got two claims of truth. How does she know what is true? Well, what does she do? She tests it. And when she tests it, she's asking the question, how do I tell which one is true? And she ate of the tree. And what did she find out? Essentially that God's word was true, right? She disobeyed and she died. Dying, you shall die is the literal rendering. And so the question, what was wrong with her methodology? What was wrong was that she presumed that she was the final authority. She took it upon herself to determine what is true. And what I want to present to you today is the biblical perspective is that we are creation and God is the creator. He stands not above us, but outside of creation. He's the only uncreated being. Now this is a segue into the passage that we're talking about, and this has been on my heart all week, that I want you to see this. Because what this is called in theological terms when we come to chapter 11, 33 through 36, is a doxological insertion. And I was kind of joking with Michael. It's almost like Paul, as he's writing the Book of Romans, he had what's called an emmanuensis, a secretary that would write down what he's saying. And it's almost like he's just rattling off all this doctrine in chapter 1 through 11. And all of a sudden, he just sits back in his chair and he says, oh, the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God. I think it's Gaius, I don't remember who it is. Wait, do you want me to not write that? And Paul's like, no, no, no, write that, that's good. But it's that he just can't help himself to sit back and praise his creator. Because the doctrine that he's been teaching has so impressed him. And I want it to impress you as well. Not because of me and my ability to present it, but in in what Paul has presented and what God is wanting to accomplish in your life to show you that he is the creator, he is the standard, and yet he loves you so intensely based on the testimony of Paul in this book thus far. So God's Word being the standard, it destroys neutrality. There is no neutrality. There is no middle ground. We are not the arbiters of what is true. God's Word is true. And you either fall on this side of the fence that rejects it, and as Paul says in Romans 1, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, or we accept it. Now, that's not just believer and unbeliever. Believers are guilty of the same thing. For the longest time, I was guilty of the very same thing. I would try to explain, well, okay, God's Word says this, but what about these scientific theories? I mean, they have a lot of Evidence they are very persuasive and obviously they're much more intelligent than me Now the other thing I have to say about this is we can't we have to get it out of our heads that the Bible is unscientific It's not and there's brilliant Christians that have shown through creationism that there is very powerful evidence that suggests that what the Bible is saying is true And so if we start with God's word and we work out from there, we develop a biblical worldview. So human viewpoint takes a closed eye approach to God. Now this is in response to, there's two responses to God's word. You either have a closed eye approach or an open eyed approach. Now what is the closed eye approach? Well, the thought is of a child having a tantrum, right? I can't hear you. And they think that if I can stop my ears and close my eyes, It all disappears. Does it disappear? No, it doesn't. And we can see the foolishness of a child doing that, right, as an adult. But did you know adults do the same thing? It just looks differently. We suppress the truth and unrighteousness, and we run from God, we hide from God, but is God still there? You bet. And it's any number of things that we could do it, right? It may be drugs. It may be alcohol. It may be insert planks. All of these things are built around distracting us from what we already know is true. And that is in Romans 1.18, God has revealed himself to us. We know that God exists. Everyone knows that God exists. But the problem is we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So recognizing this is really where you begin to understand why Christianity has struggled to answer the claims of atheism is where We're not playing with the right set of cards, so to speak. We're trying to argue for the existence of God, and we can't do that with people who are automatically assuming that God does not exist. Now, that's not to say that there's not some good arguments that may persuade someone who has rejected God, but I found it to be much more effective to, instead of arguing for the existence of God, assuming it, and graciously and lovingly reminding them that you know God exists. And it's not a lack of evidence. It's a lack of faith. They have rejected God. And so I think our role as a Christian, we provide evidence, right? We can answer their questions for the reason for the hope that is within us. We can give a defense for the faith. But what I constantly find myself doing is, but at what point are you going to believe? Because that's the bottom line. At what point are you going to accept what you know is true, that God exists? And the sad part is I think a lot of people run from God. The main reason is because they're afraid of his judgment. But what's the good news? Jesus paid it all. That's why we have to be sharing the gospel. Yes, God exists. Yes, God is going to judge sin. But you know what? He's also given us tremendous news. And that's his son, Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. And anyone who puts their faith in Christ alone for salvation receives eternal life. And so arguing with someone who is, arguing with an atheist, for example, apart from the presuppositional apologetic, is much like this scene here. I don't know if you've ever seen this movie. But it's that you've got the atheist, la, la, la, la, la, I can't hear you. And then you've got, I forget the name, Harry or Lloyd, screaming, trying to get him to hear him. And obviously, that's not effective, right? It's not getting through to him. Rather, we need to start with the important presupposition that we know and recognize God exists, and how can we meet the needs of the people we talk to? Another point that I want to, and this is building, I promise, into the sermon, we cannot create a universal above God. Now, what in the world does that mean? A universal above God is, think of a quality, any quality, We as believers cannot fall prey, and this was something recently I've developed in my understanding that I was very wrong in. We can't put equality above God. So in other words, we think of goodness. If you take God away from the equation, does goodness exist apart from God? No. So creating a universal above God would say that goodness does exist. or whatever quality, you put God, man, and nature on the same level in that goodness or love or joy, whatever quality it is, God reaches out and attains that quality. That is basically pagan thinking. It is a rejection of the biblical testimony that God is the creator. He stands outside of these things. He's not defined by these. He defines them himself. He is goodness. And so developing that further, the appropriate way to look at this is that there is a capital Q quality, and that is the attributes of God, and those are infinite. And they are infinite in God. And this was mind-blowing when I thought about this, is that at any given moment, God is not one attribute in exchange for the other. He is all of them infinitely at the same time. Are we that way? If you're mad, what are you not? You're not happy. If you're sad, what are you not? You're not joyful. You're not at peace. If you're loving someone, you're not hating them. If you're hating someone, you're not loving them, right? We as humans can't, even though we're, there's a similarity, right? We're made in God's image. We share in the similar attributes of God, but they're finite. But God's attributes are infinite. So he can, he can display justice and wrath, but at the same time, perfect love. at the same time, because it's who he is. It's in his character. And that's why we have to be careful in trying to understand who God is. We can't read our definition of these words and these qualities into God, or you're going to run into error every time. Rather, we read God's revelation, which he has revealed himself to us, that we might know him. So we cannot create a universal above God, and we apply this to all of the attributes of God. Now, there are more attributes than this, but this was a helpful acronym. Sir J. Louie. If you want to think about the attributes of God, it's Sir J. Louie. Sovereign, righteous, just, loving, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable, eternal. What do all these things mean? Well, for God, it's a capital Q, infinite quality, meaning God is infinitely sovereign. And what I take that to mean is he is the king of the universe. He rules and reigns everything. Now does that mean he determines everything that happens? No, if you say that, if you try to read your thinking into it, well then you've just made God the author of evil. And that's problematic. But if you think of it in terms of he is infinitely sovereign and nothing happens apart from his will, and sometimes that's a permissive will, right, in regards to evil and Satan, And yet we share the same quality, right? A lowercase q. Are we sovereign? To some extent, yeah, right? God has given dominion to man. Granted, I think that was lost in the fall, but are we not still independent and autonomous? I think that's a resemblance of us being made in the image of God. What about the example of omniscience? Omniscience, God knows everything, right? What about us? Are we omniscient? No, but I think that there's an interesting parallel when you think about what are memories? We can remember something that happened outside of the immediate time frame that we're in, right? I think that's a mark of us being made in the image of God. It's finite, right? We're not perfectly omniscient, but being made in the image of God, we have the ability to remember and know and recall things that happened previously. And I think that's a beautiful mark of us being made in the image of God. What about omnipresent? God is everywhere at once. Are we omnipresent? No, but I think in a sense we can share in that quality. Again, thinking of memories, we can think of a place we've been, right? But God is there. Those are just examples of how God's attributes are infinite and ours are finite. And so All of this now transitioning into the text, we have to set up the question how the Bible does. And so there's two encounters that God does this that I can think of. And Paul quotes one of them. It's from Isaiah 40. But the other one is in Job. In other words, when you are having a hard time understanding something, these are great passages to go to to remember that God is the creator. And it's not one of those things that, well, you just be quiet and like it. That's not what these passengers are doing. But Job, if you know the story of Job, he was faced with immense suffering and he didn't know why. He had some friends that tried to help him, but some of that wasn't very helpful. And so what did Job do? Eventually he finds himself crying out to God. And how does God answer him? We'll turn in your Bibles. I know I said Romans, but go to Job for a moment. Job 38, and notice verses 1 through 4, says, Now God is not trying to be cruel here with Job. He's trying to give Job the proper perspective. And what I think Paul is doing in Romans is trying to give the Roman believers a proper perspective. And what I am trying to make my aim today to do for you, and what God's been working on me all week, is trying to have the proper perspective. One of the most fundamental doctrines that you can believe is that there is a distinction between the Creator and creation. If you understand that, your suffering, your trials, your troubles, seem a little bit smaller. In some cases, maybe a whole lot smaller. If you recognize that the creator has you in his hand and you are okay. But if you view yourself as autonomous, you are the master of your fate and the captain of your own soul. Well, what happens when your soul and your fate start to suffer? You start to suffer, right? And you have an existential crisis. Rather, if we have a biblical worldview, we don't have that because we know who holds tomorrow, as it says. So we have, I want to just kind of skim through this to highlight the principles that God highlights for Job. Job 38 verse 8, what do you know about marine science? So it says, or who shut in the sea with the doors when it burst forth and issued from the womb? Does Job know that? No. Does God? Yes. Verse 12, who controls the universe? Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place? The implied answer is Job, you know nothing. So stop trying to answer these big questions when you don't even know the little questions. Now these are big questions in our estimation, right? But by implication, God mentioning these to Job, they're little things. Commanding the stars, nothing to God. After all, how did he create everything? He spoke. Did he strain? Did he have to really muster up the energy to accomplish that? No. He spoke. And so he's bringing these remembrances to Job. Verse 16. Who knows the unknown? Have you entered the springs of the sea or have you walked in search of the depths? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Or have you seen the doors of the shadow of death? Verse 19, where does light come from? Where is the way to the dwelling of light and darkness? Where is its place? Now, have you ever thought about that? Where does light come from? We may have a scientific answer, but even the origin of light, where does it come from? It comes from God, right? James, he's the father of lights, in whom there is no darkness at all. Verse 31, what controls do you have astrophysically? So verse 31, maybe, oh yeah. Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades or loose the belt of Orion? So what control does he have over the stars and the asteroids, astrophysically? Verse 34, what meteorological controls do you have? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds that an abundance of water may cover you? No. Verse 39, what do you control in ecology? Can you hunt the prey for the lion? Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions? By way of implication, what does God do? Those things, right? So God is controlling all things. And if you ever stop to think in the busy world that we live in, the immensity of God's creation, and how he's wired things, and it just it will blow you away to stop and consider. So, closing this section up, the way God sets the question up is that he insists that he is different. We are the creatures down here in creation. He is the creator, infinite in size, infinite in magnitude, and whatever quality we ascribe to him is not the same as the quality that occurs with us. In other words, there's no quality common to God and man in an identical way Similar, yes, but not identical. That's why one of my theological rules is similarity is not sameness. Just because something's similar does not mean it's the same. And we are not the same as God. We may be made in God's image, but we must not forget that he is the creator and we are creation. And that should be humbling for us. But yet, in light of what Paul has been talking about, what's the main argument of Romans? Justification. He's our creator, and we should be humbled under his might, but he loves us. He's a great creator. So we begin with the creator-creature distinction. That's numero uno. The creator-creature distinction will engage truth suppression response from the carnal mind. Now what in the world does that mean? Romans 1. So in other words, this is a warning to you. This is where we must start. We must recognize the creator-creature distinction. We must recognize God's Word as authoritative. But I warn you, if you do this, you will have trouble. You will have people fight against this. You may fight against this. Why? Because engaging with this truth causes that response of truth suppression. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And if you continue to do that, what happens? foolish, darkened heart. Not only this, but what we're going to get into in our passages, the incomprehensibility of God leads to worship. This is what happened to Paul. As he was thinking about his creator, it led him to worship. Likewise, the arrogance of man wants comprehension, which makes idolatry appealing. Have you ever thought about why would anyone worship idols? It's because you could wrap your mind around it, right? See it. You can smell it. You can feel it. It's tangible to you. And so you take comfort in that. You take comfort in the things you understand. But throughout scripture, what does God, He mocks these idols. Because how do those idols, how were they made? By hand. Who made those hands? God did. God is creator. Everything else is creation. So that introduction, the title of today's message is The Heart of True Worship. the heart of true worship. How do we have and develop a heart of true worship? There's three keys to experiencing true worship, and I want to start by reading the text in its entirety. It's a short text, so that's good. But in chapter 11, verse 33, Paul says, 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. And then he quotes from Isaiah 40, For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him? For of him, and through him, and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen. So after everything Paul's been saying, he can't help himself but declaring the magnificence of his creator. So there's three keys to experiencing true worship. Number one, the key to contemplate, verse 33. The key to recognize, verses 34 through 35. And the key to remember, verse 36. So the key to contemplate. First of all, contemplating God is overwhelming. We see this in Paul saying, oh the depth of the riches. In other words, he tried. He tried to contemplate the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. And what was his response? Oh the depth. I am far too deep. It's overwhelming to him. And I think that this can be taken in two ways. Number one, it could be taken in the immediate context, which is chapters 9 through 11. All of God's program and plan for Israel is what is on Paul's mind. Or, and I would prefer this, I think it's all of chapter 1 through 8, or excuse me, 11. all of it has just led to this mountaintop, climactic declaration of the glory of God. And so by way of review, Cycle number one, the universal need for justification. He established that everybody needs a savior. There's not a single individual that does not need the righteousness of God. And no one is saved apart from the righteousness of God. And by the way, no man can earn the righteousness of God. You can never be good enough because one sin, one trespass makes you unrighteous in the standard of God's righteousness. And so he got us lost. We're hopeless, right? Well, he keeps on going. The only means of justification. Jump back to chapter 4, if you will. The glorious declaration. Chapter 4, verse 5. But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. So how do you get the righteousness of God? Faith. And not just faith, faith apart from works. You can't earn the righteousness of God. Then we come to chapter five, the benefits of justification, and there's namely three. Chapter five, verse one, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. So we have peace, grace, and hope because of our justification. And that's the benefit package, if you will, to justification. Then there's the permanency of justification. If you look at chapter 8, verse 1, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Now that's not a conditional. It's not saying you have to walk by the Spirit, not the flesh, in order to have that true. It's adjectival. In other words, it's describing who the believer is. They are someone who is of the Spirit, not the flesh. And so the promise remains, there is therefore now no condemnation. Is there any condemnation for the believer? Not according to verse 1. In fact, if you weren't convinced, jump down to the verse 31. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall we not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died and furthermore is also risen. Who is even at the right hand of God who also makes intercession for us? Now verse 35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing should be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. So if everything he says wasn't enough, he said any created thing. So let me ask you a question. Are you a created thing? Yes. Can you separate yourself from the love of God? Never. What a glorious promise. If you have trusted in Jesus Christ, there is therefore now no condemnation. Do you see kind of the flow of thought that Paul is on? And why he would lead himself into this doxological insertion. And then in the recent past, we've been looking at the justification of the nation of Israel. Contemplating God's wisdom and knowledge. So what is the difference? Have you ever thought about what's the difference between wisdom and knowledge? For sake of time, I'll just give you my explanation. Knowledge is the understanding of something. It's knowing or recognizing the facts. Wisdom is the utilization of it. So you can be knowledgeable but not wise. How? You know what to do but you don't do it, you're not wise. But if you know what to do and you do it, what are you? Wise. And that's kind of how Jesus uses it, right? The one who built his house on the rock, he was wise because he knew what he needed to do and he did it. He was wise. Contemplating God's judgments are, Greek word, anek eruneta. This is a compound word. On is a negation. Ek is literally a preposition meaning from or out of. Eru na'o is to search or to examine closely. It's literally unsearchable. And I want this to really be impressed upon you that he's not saying that it's really hard to search out the mind of God. He's saying his mind is unsearchable. You can't. You lack the equipment. You are creation. He is creator. You cannot understand his ways. It would require us to be on the same level of justice and righteousness as God. And omniscience, right? We'd have to have the same level of understanding. So that's a hopeless thought, right? If God didn't reveal himself to us. He has revealed himself to us. Contemplating God's ways are anek iks nisatoi. It's another compound. on is a negation, ek, from or out of, iknos is footstep or track, so it's literally untraceable. In other words, you can't follow the footsteps of God, you can't trace His ways. Why? Because of unrighteousness, because of the creator-creature distinction. It would require us to be on the same level of holiness and fellowship. So, to summarize, God is creator, He's incomprehensible, He's unsearchable, He's untraceable, And that's the key to contemplate. We're out of time. Well, this is a perfect segue into chapter 12, 1 through 3. And so I think I will leave it for that. And we'll pick up with the key to recognize. And we'll just kind of flow these together. But again, please, the main argument, I want to at least read all of it in its entirety because starting in verse 33 all 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 has known the mind of the Lord has anyone no except for what he reveals or who has become his counselor a lot of people try right well God shouldn't have done it that way shouldn't have done it this way we try to be his counselor but we're not very good counselors who was first given to him and it shall be repaid to him. For of him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.