Romans 11:33–36Scripture
Everybody turn your Bibles to Romans chapter 11. As we close out Romans this morning, we're looking at verses 33 through 36. I'll give you a moment to find your way there with me this morning while you're looking that up.
Oh man. I wanted to have a moment where I could share with you just as a family, and so we've been very intentional about unplugging. We're actually recording the service, but we're recording it just for the workers that they might be able to listen back, and so we'll share with them, but we don't plan to put anything online, and there's a couple reasons for that. One is that I have something that's personal to share and it's really just for you. It's not for everyone else, it's not for those who were with us who aren't with us, it's not for those who are out there, it's really just a message to you. I'm going to share some things that I think are very important on my heart, just in my personal time with the Lord as we work through Romans 11. I think we'll be good to share this morning, so that's kind of what's going on with that.
I did say family service, people were calling going, are we bringing our kids? And, you know, children's church almost got shut down and I'm like, no, let's not do that. But I just wanted to share from my heart to yours what I'm learning. No, I'm not leaving the church, so don't worry about that. Not that, just, you know, I just have some very personal things I want to share, and it's just been stirring my heart a long time, and so I wanted to share those.
Goodness gracious, I was kind of starting to hear myself going, oh my gosh. Anyway, Romans 11, I think we'd be remiss to not start off with Scripture, ultimately that's the most important thing we do on Sunday mornings. Verse 33 says,
Point 1God's depths are beyond our questions
"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" Even though we try to scrutinize them, that's what I wrote in my journal, it's not a word, but I mean, I don't know how many of you are very diplomatic about how you do it, but you have some questions when you stand before the Lord one day. Just FYI, you will not remember them in his presence, all the whys that you have accumulated over the years. Why did you allow this? Why did you allow this pain to hit my life? Why did you not save me from this? Why did you make me the way that you made me? Why did you put me in that family? Why did you allow my marriage to end in divorce? Why did you allow me to be raised without parents? All the whys, you'll forget them in his presence, because you'll be stricken with his depth, with his knowledge, with his wisdom, with the unsearchable glory that exists all around him. "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?" P.S., any gift you can come up with, it's all his already, so to say that you could give him something would indicate that there is something that exists today that is not already in his possession, that he owns. It is literally, any gift you give him is giving him something he already possesses. It's silliness. It would be like your kid grabbing the keys out of your purse and handing you the keys and saying, "I got you a car." Well, that's nonsense, I bought that car, I own that car. Isn't that cute? That's kind of the way God feels about that. Who can get him a gift that he may be repaid? "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." I want to say this because I'm not going to have time to really get into this, I kind of want to drill down on something else that I think is valuable, but I think this is interesting: "for from him and through him and to him." Not to
Point 2Everything is from, through, and to him
You, not for you, not through you, but from, for, through, and to him. So FYI, Jesus didn't die for you.
Jesus died for God, and you were a benefactor of his obedience to God, but it wasn't for you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 5:49
Jesus died for God. That's how he could stay on the cross when you were acting crazy, when they were killing him, because he wasn't doing it for the people. Now, I think this is fitting today and it should help us, because sometimes there are people in the church who check out when the people turn against them. The reality is, if you've lived any amount of time, you will be faced with the reality of who it is you serve, because there are people who are going to be so nasty and do some nasty things that's going to make you want to walk away from it all. But why do you do what you do? Jesus did it for God. Why do you do it?
If you serve men, you will be discouraged and disheartened.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 6:39
If you serve the Lord, he is faithful, yes, and he is good, and he will never leave you or forsake you. So you can be utterly forsaken in this world and utterly not be forsaken by Christ. But who do you serve, and who do you worship, and who gets the glory? And really that is the story today, isn't it? It is being faced with the ultimate reality, and I think we fail in the church to do this, that the vastness of who he is, his goodness is so wide, it is so deep that you cannot even search its depths. And I'm afraid in the church we have preached a god that is too small, and that is not grand and it is not great, and when we are faced with life's
Hardest difficulties and you worship a small God, it breaks people, because he's too small for us.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 7:54
I grew up in the church, like literally, my parents lived there. I remember running the hallways of the church as a young man. I grew up in my grandfather's church, he was the pastor. Yes, when I came to service I was bored too, listening to him babbling about things that I knew nothing about. And quite honestly, tell me a story or something that will get me excited. But even in the midst of all the boredom of sitting there in pews, mind you, pews with no cushions, they test your holiness from day one, like it's just straight wood. So that's what you had, wood pews and your mom's nails that impaled you when you fell asleep. That's what church was for me. But even in the midst of all of that, there was just something that happened one Sunday where God captured my heart. I don't even remember what my grandfather was preaching, something or another about Christ, but God took me at the age of five. Oh, I remember it like it was yesterday. So I grew up in the church and began to sense that I was supposed to be in ministry, and trust me, it wasn't because my grandfather was, and his grandfather was, and his grandfather was, and his grandfather was, and his grandfather was. That was the reason I didn't want to do it. I remember my grandmother would pinch my cheek every Christmas, which was annoying, and say, "Oh, you're going to be a cute little pastor," and I would turn red and say, "I refuse to be a pastor." And I had every intention of going into art, and then, watch this movie, Emma, sorry, you know, this is a little bit of a life story, you're getting a broad stroke, you need to understand kind of where I am.
I watched this story, Emma, which I probably shouldn't be proud of that I was watching that, and I was really touched by that movie, and I love how the fact that so much of their life was about building relationships with people. I thought that was amazing. Although I was 99 percent introverted, I thought that would be fascinating, that would be the existence of your life, is just to build relationships with people. My mom had been pushing me, you know, encouraging me to consider the possibility of ministry. She kind of saw me wrestling with that, and I would tell God, no, this will never happen, just so you know, no. After that movie I told my mom, I was like, hey, it would be so cool if you would get rich and my job would be just to live off your inheritance and build relationships with people. She goes, there is a job where you can build relationships with people. And I was like, shut up, and I went in the other room. I had a full scholarship to Chicago to do art. I was interning with a company that worked for Disney and made puppets for Disney and things like that, and I had my whole plan paved out, and probably one month away from starting college I just made a shift and decided to go to Nashville to be in ministry, and the story began there. Oh, I hated those classes, oh, they were awful, and the people that went there, oh man, what happened to the Emma story? Like, these are not my people. Like, i'm a Christian, but this is just weird, this is just weird church people. And so, a couple years in school, I met Brook and we got married and we started a ministry position in Atlanta and she got pregnant, and you guys know the story, just listen. Our marriage from the beginning was strings of hardship and difficulty, one after the other. She was popping out babies that were ten pounds and I was popping out kidney stones that were, well, they felt like a thousand pounds. We were just having babies, cars being broken into, houses being broken into, me running people off from breaking in our house with crowbars, with guns. It was a wild ride from ministry position to ministry position. I used to say because God told me to go, now I realize it's because I would just get bored and would just go place to place, fired from some positions, halfway worshiped at others, knowing that one day I would like to start a church. We started Echo Church 12 years into ministry, we started Echo Church, and boy has it been a wild ride. And I remember saying things like this, I'm going somewhere with this, just hang on for a little bit, I remember saying things like, I'm going to do great things for God. Oh, it's going to be great. I think I even remember saying out loud one time, it's going to be grand, the things we will accomplish for Christ. I had a number that I said that, before I die I want to plant ten churches. I mean, we planted three ourself, three of them were planted from people leaving our churches because they hate me. I didn't realize that was part of God's plan. I wanted to be great, I didn't want to tick everybody off and have a church grow to 500, have 200 people leave and start another church because they didn't like the person leading this one anymore. It broke my
Point 3God produces weakness so we see his greatness
Heart. Then I realized, I'm not so great, and my greatness can't be the cause for my course. There's something at work here, and I believe that
There are not great men and great women, there are only weak and feeble and broken men and women and only one true great God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 15:08
See, when your ambition is to be great, then the only cause for God accomplishing his work is to make you great. Do you know that God's name can be great even when three groups of people leave your church and start another church? Did you know that God's name can be made great that way, and he can accomplish his will, because it's not about your greatness, it's about his?
And I believe that God is producing weakness in us, it is his main goal.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 15:59
Oh, I don't like it. I don't like it. There are some of you here today, I read in an article this week that since 2021 it is almost one in every three, it's one in every 3.5 teenagers, since 2021, have seriously contemplated taking their life. One in every 3.5 teenagers, because we are void of true hope. We live in a world that beckons young people to find and discover their greatness, and we serve a little God. So when hardship comes, the very thing which I believe God is doing to produce weakness in us that we may see him as great, we get so disillusioned by it that we question God, we doubt him, we neglect him, and the very thing he is doing that we might see him as great causes us to abandon him completely. There are some of you here today that are currently or have recently experienced divorce. I've seen my sister go through that, break her heart and leave it in a puddle in ways that is hard to explain, and you ask, from an onlooker, what are you doing, God? There are people who have lost a parent recently, either to death or to emotions, and you look to God and you ask what are you doing exactly? There are hardships that you face every day. The stress and anxiety level of people today is so grand that people turn to medicate themselves, whether through illegal drugs or legal drugs, that there is no way to cope with life because they are so hurt and broken. When all you care about in life is how deep and how wide and how wonderful you are, pain is more painful. I don't like the way we talk about men today. I certainly don't like the way that I used to talk about myself. We say things like, "He was a great man of God," or "That's a great man of God," or "that's a great woman of God."
No, I don't believe there are great men or women. There are only weak men and women who see themselves as such and therefore put their faith in a great God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 19:20
God doesn't make great men.
I believe God spends decades cultivating weakness in men, only then do we see him as great and not ourself.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 19:32
I want to do this, I'll read it just one more time: "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? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him," notice that I'm not in here, my great exploits, planting churches and being great for him, "for from him and through him and to him are all things. To
Point 4Courage grows from seeing God's riches
Him be glory forever. Amen." There's a story about two martyrs. Mary was the queen of England, and at the time there was a Reformation and a lot of Protestants were breaking out of the Catholic church, and they had an opinion about things that were different than what were being taught, and Mary was a queen who was adamantly in support of the Catholic church to such a degree that anybody who spoke out against it or contradicted what the Catholic church was saying at the time, she would have them tortured and killed. She gained the name Bloody Mary because of it. It has become a thing of folklore in some sense, and you know what those are, we need not repeat the little behaviors that we do in the dark, but she was a true historical figure and she persecuted lots of people. There were two people specifically that she burned alive, their name and their story is renowned: Latimer and Ridley are their names. They were burnt on the 16th of October 1555 for denying the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Catholic church did not like this, nor did Mary, and they wanted them dead, so they tied them to a stake and they put wood up around them, some of which, the wood that was there and available to them was wet on one side, and the wet wood would not burn very well. Ridley and Latimer were both sentenced to be burned at the stake outside of Balliol College, Oxford, on 16th of October 1555. Ridley opened in prayer as he was being tied to the stake, and here is what he said: "O heavenly Father, I give unto thee most hearty thanks that thou hast called me to be a professor of thee even unto death. I beseech thee, Lord God, have mercy on this realm of England and deliver it from all her enemies." In order to speed up their death, ridley's brother thought he'd be nice and gave the men gunpowder to wear around their necks. However, the flames failed to come up that high because of the wet wood, and one side specifically was extra wet and never even came up past Ridley's waist. For four hours, it was reported that it was a slow burn, it was painful, it was torturous. It was reported that Ridley repeatedly said, and I quote, "Lord, have mercy upon me. I cannot burn. Let the fire come up higher. I cannot burn." Latimer would die a lot quicker, because on his side the wood was dry, and as the flames engulfed him all the way up to his head, he tried to comfort Ridley as he approached his own death by saying this: "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust never shall be put out again."
That is courage that I do not understand.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 24:42
I'm not certain that in our lifetime we will be burned at the stake for our faith. I'm not certain of that. Regardless, where does courage like this spring from in those things we face in our context? And you have pains and you have heartaches, and they are real, although they are not fire, and they hurt deeply. How do we sit in the midst of that pain and pray prayers like this? I think it starts with an understanding of the depths of the riches of God, that anything that you have here is loss in comparison to who he is, because he is that great. He is that great. Paul's understanding of this is what made him impossible to deal with. I mean, he was just impossible, Paul was impossible. They would come to him and like, we're going to throw you in prison, he's like, do it, I'll save all your jailers. He's just a punk, you just couldn't mess with him. Most people would be like, oh no, not jail. He's like, yay, jail, I'm gonna save everyone. And they're like, we're going to kill you, we're going to torture you and then we're going to kill you, and he's like, and I have it right here, I have what he said. He says, okay, well, I see, I don't consider the sufferings of this age to even be compared to the future glory, so after you're done torturing me, could you just kill me so I can go to glory? And they're like, this guy's weird, tell you what, he wants to die, we're going to let you live. All right, to live is gain. I mean, he just couldn't mess with him. Nothing you threw at him, you just couldn't. How is it that he was like this? "Oh, the depths of the riches of God!" You can throw me in prison, you can kill me, you can let me live, but all of that is small in comparison to the depths of the riches of God. That would be our heart's cry in the midst of our greatest pain. See, that gives you courage.
It gives you courage to face your greatest difficulty and hardship when you know that there's something greater than what you're currently facing.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 27:51
God is our inheritance. Everything here I've acquired, Paul says, I count it as loss, everything is loss.
Listen, forever, you living forever, that really helps lessen the difficulties of it today. It does. If you could wrap your mind around 10,000 years in the future, I don't think you can, but if you could, how much smaller do things begin to seem to you today? Okay, you're like, yeah, well, it seems pretty big to me. Well, how many of you can look back five years ago and remember something that you thought was going to kill you, and you can see it as way smaller than when you did when you were living in it?
Oh, time has a way of making your greatest pain so insignificant.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 29:06
It just does. It just does.
Point 5Our pain is small inside God's timeline
Just hang in there, right? Let me give you a visual picture of this, and this is the best way I can do it. I'm going to start with one slide, the first slide is, well, no, that's not it. Here it is. Nope, that's not it. Let's see, I think I might have numbered them wrong. Go to number 11, because I think I numbered them wrong. Go to 11 first. Go to the last one first. There you go. Okay, sorry, I gave them to you wrong, sorry about that, Curtis. So here's the last 24 hours, right? Maybe some things that happened in the last 24. By the way, this graph was put together, this graph was put together in 2010, so when you see figures and you try to do math, for all you mathematicians in here, you're going to realize that the timeline might be off a little bit, like by a little bit, by 14 years, right? Because this was done in 2010 and I didn't have time to remake it. Well, I didn't want to spend time to remake it would have been insane, right? So pretend like this was 14 years ago. Last 24 hours, some things happen in your 24 hours. You sleep, there's a sleep section, it's a pretty big section actually of your life, right? Look at coffee, notice that's in there. I think that every good timeline tactician should put coffee in their timeline. The last hour of your day, and then look at now. Look at how small now is. Right now, here's what I want you to do before we go to the next slide. Notice that the colors will stagger and they will move on the timeline. What I want you to begin to notice is how quickly your 24-hour day, where all hell's breaking loose, notice how small it gets the further out the timeline you travel. Right, all right, because I think it'll help you, because we're wanting to get a picture of the vastness of God, because everything lives and moves and has its being in God. That's how wide and unsearchable he is. Did you know that time exists in God? That's the depths of his riches. So it's good for us to get a perspective of our pain in God and the vastness of him. Okay, so let's go to the next one. That's not it. So it would be, not sure what happened, maybe I did the numbering. Yep, that's it.
Okay, so you can see how the last 24 hours bumped down. You can see how small sleep is, but this is a week, so a 24-hour period looks smaller than in your week. Okay, so let's bump now. Watch the colors still continue down the timeline. I'm sorry for everything that I've done, it is my fault. Thank you. Last year, look at that, you can hardly even see the blue, sleep, 24-hour day. This is a year. See the blue, that is a day. See the red, that is a week, and a year. Oh wow, how that got small, right? That got small. All right, let's move on to the next one.
Oh wow, where's the blue? Can you see it?
Barely. Now, of course, this is a 30-year-old's life so far. All right, so a 30-year-old, this is how long, and look at some of the things that a 30-year-old in 2010 mind you, so get this right, look at some things that happened from 2010 to the start of this timeline. Internet becomes a thing. That's funny, because I mean that happened. That's crazy, right? Internet becomes a thing. Some of y'all don't even know how to live without internet. Some of you've been alive in internet land. I remember a day when the first interaction through communicating online was through AOL dial- up, that was your computer moaning its way to try to get signal. Yeah, no, I remember. I borrowed my grandpa's car when I turned 16 and he didn't have a tape cassette. See, all you have iPods and stuff now and you Bluetooth it through the air, you know, to your car radio. Like, I mean, if you were really cool, you had a CD player. If you were mega cool and rich, you had one that was up under your seat that was an eight-disc, and it would move the disc in to play it. That's all the rich people. And if you were mega rich, you had a big block, was a bag phone. You pulled your phone up, "Hello," with a cord in your car. My grandpa had that, he worked for Walmart. He would carry his bag out of his car to the other car, portable phone, but it was a bag, like a backpack you would carry on a plane, right? So I, but I had not even a not even a CD player, not even a cassette tape, but I remember the day we had an eight-track. It was a big old block this big, that thick, you would shove in there, you would almost need to have a hydraulic press to push it in so you can listen to music right in the car. Mobile phone becomes a thing. I didn't have a mobile phone till we were 23, we were married and had a kid, we got a mobile phone. You know how we used to get a hold of each other? Drive there and talk to people. "Oh, I need somebody to talk to. Here's a quarter, call someone who cares."
Yeah, right. So this is a 30, look at how many things happen in a 30-year-old's life. You know how many points in here you feel like you're going to die? Now, I kind of gave you a brief little snippet, I threw something out there, some of my pain and heartache in ministry, but do you guys know that the things that I am painful about is very me-centric, and
Notice that when you pan out and you begin to see a timeline that exists inside of God, the me disappears.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 36:22
You see that? It's amazing. I mean, you can't even see the blue anymore.
Now, notice, I want you to notice a couple things. Notice the yellow, that's the 21st century. Notice the gray, notice the gray here, right? The gray is a year, the gray is a year. Notice what happens to the gray when we go to the next slide. Go ahead. And there we go. So now we see the gray is moved down, it's so much smaller, but this is a 90-year lifespan. I mean, look at what happened in a 90-year lifespan for people. First man on the moon, that seems like ancient news. All of these things happen in 90 years. Think of the magnitude of what 90 years is. This is an extended lifespan, I think it's like 80 years now with medication and health care and things of that nature, but if you live 90 years, you can't even see a year in that. Look how small the 30 years is, that's the yellow and the gray. Look how small the third, it's just no, 30-year life span, and the green. Okay, so go to the next one. Watch these, gray, yellow, and green, is it green or red? 1865 to the present, right? Look at this, look how even, look at the, it's crazy, it's just crazy how much smaller.
Go to the next one. Women get a right to vote, that's crazy. And then we go in here, look, you get a bigger picture, 1776 to the present. More things are being out of the timeline and you are becoming smaller and smaller. All right, go to the next one. You guys are doing great, by the way. 1492 to the present, you see how much smaller everything's becoming? You can't even hardly see the gray anymore.
Is it gray or tan? But you can't see it, so it doesn't matter, right? You can barely see it over there. You can barely see it anyway.
Look at all the things that happened, Shakespeare, the made-up words, anyway. Go to the next one. 1 A.D. To present, one year after death to present. Look how small your life span has become. So small. One more. Your lifespan's gone visibly. 3,000 B.C., 3,500 B.C. To present, it's going all the way back to the beginning till now. So listen, let's put it in perspective this way. 6,000 years, you can't even see your lifespan in the realm of 6,000 years. You will live forever.
Forever. Oh, the depth. So you think in terms of your life when you qualify and classify the depths of God, but his depths are greater than your lifespan. When you think of riches, you qualify and quantify riches based on what you have seen in your lifespan, but your life becomes invisible in the depths of who he is. I'm trying to help you get perspective here on this. That's 6,000 years. Can you imagine 10,000 years? Can you imagine 1 million years in a timeline? You'll live forever.
Forever. Oh, they left me. Forever. You'll live forever. They hurt me.
This is why people can have immense courage while being burned in their lifetime.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:43
How? Because they have glimpsed at the depth of his goodness. There's a man by the name of John Newton, you should look him up. He wrote "Amazing Grace," I think. I think so, I don't know. John Newton, cool guy. Anyway, if he didn't, I don't know. Ebony, is it right? Okay, I don't know. Yeah, Ebony grinned to the side and I didn't know if it was, you're an idiot, or yes, because she would know. She would know, so I was just checking there. No, anyway, so I'm right. Ebony says I'm right, so I'm right. All right, but John Newton is quoted, you know, he wrote "Amazing Grace," great man, but he wrote this, and I'll close: "Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate worth millions upon millions, and his carriage should break down a mile before he got to the city, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way. A whole mile from where it broke down, what a fool we should think him if we saw him wringing his hands in frustration and blubbering out the remaining mile, 'My carriage is broken, my carriage is broken,' as he makes his way to his millions. What a blubbering idiot he would be." You see it?
You're on your way to unfathomable riches.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 43:53
You have inherited what your eyes cannot see and your ears cannot hear and your mind cannot imagine, and you're wringing your hands over your small difficulties and broken carriages. The problem is not that we don't have the courage to deal with pain, the problem is we don't know how grand the God is that we serve, because I believe
There's infinite courage in the hearts of men who know the God that they serve.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 44:34
Now, I'm afraid that in the church today, specifically in America, we have preached a god that is too small and man that is too big, and we have caused people to slip into an attitude of desperation that causes them to want to end a life that is headed to unfathomable riches. Lord, we love you very much. Fix our eyes on you. Fix our eyes on you. I'll close with this. Most of you know my story, so I will not belabor it long, but there have been moments of total paralysis because I have thought of God as too small and my problems as too grand, and then I'm reminded by this song, one of the dearest songs of my heart: "When I cannot feel, when my wounds won't heal, Lord, I humbly kneel, hidden in you. Lord, you're my life, so I don't mind to die, just as long as I am hidden in you."
And ladies and gentlemen,
He's so vast, he's so deep, you are hidden in him.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 46:17
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