Knowing the Unknowable

2 Chronicles 6:12-21
Ephesians 3:10-21

I get tired, sometimes, shoveling sand against the tide. But when I read these two passages of Scripture that we shared this morning – one about Solomon’s dedication of the temple and the other about Paul’s dedication of the Church of Jesus Christ, I am encouraged. Here are two high-profile leaders consumed by the drift of the church toward legalism and the urgent fear that the non-essentials of worship would condemn the worshipper.

Very soon after the death of his father, David, the newly-crowned King Solomon was worshipping at the Tent of Meeting, where we are told he was offering a thousand burnt offerings. We don’t know how – maybe in a vision – God appeared to Solomon and invited him ask for whatever he wanted from God. Here was Solomon’s answer:

You have shown great kindness to David my father and have made me king in his place. Now, Lord God, let your promise to my father David be confirmed, for you have made me king over a people who are as numerous as the dust of the earth. Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?

This is an affirmation by Solomon of the sovereignty of God – an acknowledgement that only God could enable him to lead this people. Listen to God’s answer to Solomon:

Since you have not asked for wealth, riches or honor, nor for the death of your enemies, and since you have not asked for a long life but for wisdom and knowledge to govern my people over whom I have made you king, therefore wisdom and knowledge will be give you. And I will also give you wealth, riches and honor, such as no king who was before you ever had and none after you will have.

Despite his good intentions, however, and despite God’s granting him wisdom and knowledge, he was not wise enough to overcome the lusts of his flesh. We are told that he had some 900 concubines. He permitted idols to be worshipped by his pagan concubines and their offspring.

Solomon had everything anyone would want in this life. And yet, he could not see God’s sovereignty clearly enough to keep from retaining some sovereignty over his own life. If he couldn’t do it, how on earth can you and I do it? We may imagine the extent of God’s hand in the universe, but we are incapable of believing it enough to conduct our lives as though God sees and knows everything we do. We sin; therefore we are!

It may have been the riches and honor that corrupted Solomon. Had God given him poverty, it probably would have been poverty that would have corrupted him. Solomon is historical proof that human wisdom and human knowledge are not enough to defeat the human desire for power over our own lives.

Our belief in the sovereignty of God is a matter of degree. The more we believe, the easier it is to discipline our lives, but whatever discipline we may exercise is way short of holiness. What is tragic is to see the Church of Jesus Christ letting it all go in favor of manipulating world events according to our own dictates.

The more we think we know about what God is doing, the less we believe in His sovereignty. Those who have nailed down the plan of God tend to be the very ones who use power and influence to make sure that God’s plan is being carried out. In our day, they are the theocrats who want to throw away the Constitution and replace it with the Bible.

The more you have doubts about what God is doing and when He is going to do it, the more likely you are to trust His sovereign power to work things out. The more sure you are of what He is doing, the more likely you are to decide to become God’s little robot on earth – using your sales abilities, crashing through other peoples’ boundaries and imposing your worldview on those who are seeking.

It is possible that Solomon might have been better served had he asked for average intelligence but a seeking heart. As it was, his reign was so awful that the kingdom was divided after his death.

We shared together the riveting testimony of Bryan Gallant, whose two children were killed in an automobile accident when the family was headed home from church. After years of recovering from grief, what Bryan had to tell us was that God’s purpose in that accident was to break him in order that he might yield to the sovereignty of God. God was breaking Bryan from his self-sufficiency – from his zeal for doing God’s business under his own power. His message to us was a simple one that tears at the core of who we want to be: “Stop doing things for God, and let God love you in order that He might do things through you.”

That is the struggle of the Christian. Most of us here this morning have been broken by something – divorce or death of a loved one or failure or rejection. Some of us have been broken by all four. What that means is that God needs to hit harder for some than for others in order to get the message across. Still, as I look back over my life, what I see is a constant battle between what I want to do and what God wants to do through me. Letting God love me is a very difficult thing for a type-A personality like myself. So we churn away and push against God’s patience because our view of His sovereignty is too small.

I want to see God at work here in this little church in a big way, don’t you? But if it takes a charismatic leader to make that happen, what that tells me is that God is not big enough and needs a used-car salesman to do the job – preferably one from the South. Because we don’t have that kind of talent here, thank God, if something is going to happen it will have to happen from within despite ourselves. That is going to require of us a different kind of faith, is it not? It will require of us a vision that is beyond the power of any of us to make it happen.

When you hear about these megachurches, you often don’t hear about God or Jesus. What you hear about is the pastor: “You should hear what so-and-so is doing with his church. They have 5,000 people on Sunday morning.” Who gets the glory – God or so-and-so? Because of our rebellion against God, we want to do it ourselves in our timing.

Paul, apparently, was a lousy speaker. And yet, he knew something of the sovereignty of God in full operation even though his converts kept drifting toward charismatic speakers. God hit him over the head with a two-by-four, blinding him so that he would listen. Paul then threw his credentials on the dung heap because they were not worth anything to the Kingdom. While many of us here have been broken, we have not been stopped in our tracks like Paul.

We are going to take a look this morning at Solomon’s and Paul’s sense of the expanse, or the bigness of God.

Solomon is dedicating the temple in Jerusalem. He stands on a bronze platform before what is called the “whole assembly of Israel.” Obviously, the millions of people could not be present, but somehow it was a representation of all the people.

The first thing he does is kneel down before the whole assembly and lift his hands to heaven. This is more than a gesture. It is a physical acknowledgement of the vastness of God and the relative insignificance of even the King of what was probably the most powerful nation on earth at that time. He bows to God’s sovereignty with these words: “O Lord God, there is no God like you in heaven or on earth – you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way.”

Therein lies the secret to being led by the Spirit of God – continuing wholeheartedly in His way. Solomon is not testifying to the power and greatness of Israel or himself. He is testifying to the power and greatness of God, knowing that to continue wholeheartedly in that frame of mind is to be assured that God will keep His covenant of love with us, his servants.

That is the lesson that we must learn and apply not only to our individuals lives but to the Church of Jesus Christ. God will bless His church and His people if they continue wholeheartedly in His way. The thing to remember is the word “wholeheartedly.” Not half a heart; not half our time and attention; not half a theology, but wholeheartedly – a whole heart! The KJV is even more specific on this point: “O Lord, there is no God like thee in heaven and in earth; which keepest covenant and shewest mercy unto thy servants, that walk before thee with all their hearts.

There is nothing there that indicates that we have to be right in our theology or even the direction of our walk. We walk according to what we know. Solomon makes it very clear that whatever we know is only a tiny fraction of God. He has this to say:

The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! Yet give attention to your servant’s prayer and his plea for mercy, O Lord. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence…Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.

Solomon is acknowledging before God that the temple made with hands is a reflection only of the foolishness of man and the accommodation by the Creator of man. It is a mere symbol that cannot possibly contain the living God. Yet, it is a very important symbol provided the people are wholeheartedly continuing, not in the worship, but in the way of the Lord. The temple is the place of meeting God for those who wholeheartedly seek His face.

To Solomon, even though he has just built one of the wonders of the world, God is so sovereign that He has to be invited to attend worship there and will do so only if hearts are wholeheartedly seeking after Him.

This little temple is not enough, is it? God requires of us that we be insecure in our sense of His vastness – so insecure that we are always looking for new glimpses of Him. That is the spirit of revival and the key to the presence of God here in this place. The great Solomon is on his knees, feeling very inadequate to dedicate this monument to human architecture, knowing that it means nothing outside a trembling spirit that seeks after God.

Whatever wisdom and knowledge God had given him, it was not enough to make him secure. In fact, it was his glimpse into the glory and majesty of God made him even more insecure, which is exactly where God wants us to be.

Solomon’s temple was leveled in 584 BC, rebuilt and leveled again in 165 BC, rebuilt in the First Century by King Herod, leveled again in 70 AD and replaced with two Moslem mosques so that it cannot be rebuilt. But Solomon’s God continued to reign over nations and over the hearts and lives of the humble – those with a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart. David, you will remember, was always crying out to God for forgiveness or deliverance. That was because he continued wholeheartedly in God’s way, even though he sinned grievously. God called David a “Man after my own heart” because David was always after the heart of God.

Would the Church of Jesus Christ not be a light in the darkness if it remained in a state of seeking after God instead of pretending to speak for God?

The Apostle Paul continues in the same pursuit of God that plagued Solomon all his life. He writes from prison. You would not blame him if he said, “I’ve had enough of worrying about other peoples’ Christian lives.” You wouldn’t blame him if he just tired out. But no; Paul is worried that they will worry about him: “I ask you not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory!”

What he wants for the Christians at Ephesus is to know the unsearchable riches of Christ and the love of Christ that exceeds or surpasses all knowledge. Paul longs for us to know the unknowable. That is what it means to always be searching after God – to wholeheartedly continue in Him. Since we cannot know Him, we are always seeking to know Him. It is a matter of reaching for the unreachable – it is in the search that we realize how needy we are. When we stop searching; when we think we have everything pinned down, that is when we begin to tell others what they should be doing. That is when we find ourselves operating under our own power – trying to do things for God that He is patiently waiting to do through us.

It is a denial of the sovereignty of God.

Even from a prison cell, the most pressing prayer that Paul had was not for his own release or comfort. It was that we might know God, who is unknowable. The more we know about God, the more unsure of ourselves we become. The more unsure of ourselves we become, the more power and sovereignty we release to the Sovereign Lord.

But Paul doesn’t want us to just know that power; he wants us to use that power: “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Paul does not undertake this prayer lightly. Like Solomon, he kneels before the Father, knowing that it is only through the sovereign grace of God that we can know anything. What he wants for you and me is to live up to the level of our knowledge. We must use what we know, or what we know is does us no good.

This is it very simply. If we live by what we know, we will be able to experience a sense of the power and presence of God, at which point, we will know a little bit more.

Martin Luther did not always have it right. But he lived by what he knew, when everyone around him was going along in order to get along. The story is told of his good friend and assistant, Freidrich Myconius, who became ill and was expected to die shortly. He wrote a farewell letter to Luther on his deathbed. Luther read the message and sent this reply:

I command you in the name of God to live because I still have need of you in the work of reforming the church…The Lord will never let me hear that you are dead, but will permit you to survive me. For this I am praying, this is my will, and may my will be done, because I seek only to glorify the name of God.

Myconius, who had already lost the ability to speak when Luther’s reply came, soon recovered, lived six more years and finally died two months after Luther.

Paul wants us to be strengthened in the inner being so that we can live what we know. The inner being is the seat of influence in our lives. The strength that we need is a strength beyond human power and ability. Only through God’s power can we live up to our knowledge of Him.

Whatever you give your life to is where your heart dwells. All around us people are dedicating their lives to something other than truth – technology, building, oil, bananas, whatever. Life is too short to give it away to bananas!

Paul leaves us with a benediction of sorts. “Now unto Him (not us) who is able to do immeasurably more than all that we ask or imagine, according to the power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever Amen.

He describes God as able,,,

Able

Able to do,,,

Able to do beyond what we ask…

Able to do beyond what we think…

Able to do beyond all that we ask or think…

Able to do immeasurably beyond all that we ask or think…

What are your highest thoughts concerning this ministry here at the NMMH Church? Are we playing it safe? God is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or think. I challenge you this morning to begin praying your highest hopes for this ministry in the spirit that Paul prays – wanting for each one of us to know the unknowable.

This is a testing ground for my own faith, and it ought to be for yours as well. Pray that God will do immeasurably more than we ask or think so that we may know more of His power and glory and may increase in our thirst for the knowledge of the love of Christ.