Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

Main Idea: God is transcendent, beyond our comprehension, and God is immanent, He’s with us. He’s Immanuel: God with us.

Text:

I’m going to begin the sermon today with a joke, and even if you don’t understand the joke, I want you to laugh really loud as if you got the joke. Okay? Here we go.

Why did the professor cancel his lecture on epistemology? Because he didn’t know if he really knew what he was going to say!

Now, how many of you knew what the joke meant? How many of you had no idea what I was talking about? That’s perfect! Many of you didn’t know what the joke about epistemology meant, and yet you laughed. Why would you do that?

Maybe it would help if I shared that epistemology is the philosophical study of how we know things. With all the information in the world, and with all the uncertainty about that information, we might wonder if we can know anything for certain at all, but epistemology attempts to say, “Yes, we can know things, and here’s how.”

You might say, “Well, yeah, of course we can know things.” We can know that the sky is blue and we can know that we’re alive, and we can know that I’m talking to you right now. But then the philosopher would respond, “Well, how can we really know these things?” Science tells us that our brains are composed of nothing more than electrical impulses, and we know now how to manipulate electrical impulses, so it’s entirely possible that you consist of a brain in a laboratory with scientists merely manipulating us to make us think that we’re alive and that we know certain things. We could be living in a computer simulation, rather than in the world as we know it.

Wrestling with this topic, the famous philosopher Descartes stated, “I think, therefore I am.” In other words, something dead, non-existent, or manipulated cannot think for itself, so the very fact that we can think suggests that we’re alive and free. So building up from that basic idea, Descartes reasoned that he could trust that what he experiences is reality.

But from a Christian worldview, it’s even more simple than that. I don’t want at all to discredit Descartes because he was a brilliant Christian philosopher, but the fundamental reality for the Christian isn’t found in “I think, therefore I am,” but rather is found in the simple fact that God is. And because God is who He says He is, we can trust that He made us in such a way as to know things, like the world we live in, and even more importantly, that we can know Him.

Ecclesiastes 7:23-29

I have tested all this by wisdom. I resolved, “I will be wise,” but it was beyond me. What exists is beyond reach and very deep. Who can discover it? I turned my thoughts to know, explore, and examine wisdom and an explanation for things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity and folly is madness. And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a trap: her heart a net and her hands chains. The one who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner will be captured by her. “Look,” says the Teacher, “I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find out the explanation, which my soul continually searches for but does not find: I found one person in a thousand, but none of those was a woman. Only see this: I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes.” (Ecclesiastes 7:23-29)

Father, we confess that we’ve often thought of ourselves as so incredibly smart. In our foolishness, we’ve boasted about our wisdom. Help us instead to be in awe of Your wisdom, and rest in Your plan for us. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

I had a teacher in high school who would say that between him and his brother, they knew everything. And he sure knew a lot. He seemed to have a well-formulated opinion on just about everything, and you could ask him just about anything and get a fairly logical response. But whenever someone asked him something he didn’t know, he would just say, “Oh, that’s something my brother knows.”

I used to think that it was kind of egotistical of him to present himself as a know-it-all. But I learned that he was actually quite humble. Whenever he said, “Oh, that’s something my brother knows,” what he was really saying was, “I don’t know, and I don’t have an opinion on that, so I’m just going to keep my mouth shut rather than sounding like a fool.”

I think most of us could learn from that. Most people today seem to have an opinion about everything, and we’re expected to have an opinion about everything. And we typically love to share our opinions, and argue our opinions, in order to prove ourselves right and the other side wrong. But what if, instead of always taking sides, especially when the situation is unclear, we simply said, “I don’t know.”

Verse 23.

I have tested all this by wisdom. I resolved, “I will be wise,” but it was beyond me. What exists is beyond reach and very deep. Who can discover it? (Ecclesiastes 7:23-24)

For the first six chapters of Ecclesiastes, Solomon, who calls himself the Teacher in the book, examined life and all the things we usually seek meaning from in life. In 1 Kings, we read that Solomon asked God for wisdom, and God made him the most wise man on the face of the earth. And so we read here that Solomon applied this wisdom to understanding and testing the meaning of life. The most wise man declared, “I will be wise,” but after he sought to understand life through theology and philosophy and epistemology, he came to the conclusion that he couldn’t, saying, “It was beyond me.” He didn’t know.

Solomon, the most wise human on the face of the earth, stated that he wasn’t wise enough to understand how everything works together. He seemed to have found the limits of human reasoning.

There are many things that we can discover through science and reason, like how the world works and even the existence of God and some of His qualities. Some of these things are obvious in the world, as Paul writes about God in Romans 1:

For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. (Romans 1:21-22)

It’s obvious when we look at the world around us, that God is the Creator, just as it’s obvious that every watch has a watchmaker, and behind every building is an architect. Some things are obvious. And even if many people deny the obviousness of these things, that doesn’t mean they aren’t obvious, it just means that they’re denying what’s right in front of them.

But when it comes to other things, even if we can get a glimpse of them through reasoning, Solomon wrote, “What exists is beyond reach and very deep. Who can discover it?”

It seems like most churches and most pastors, including myself, typically preach in such a way that puts forth at least the appearance that we have it all figured out. And most of Western Christianity seems to put God in a box and say, “This is who God is. Here are all of His characteristics. We have God figured out.”

[God’s Attributes]

God is loving, caring, kind, sovereign, compassionate, our shepherd, giving, ever-present, faithful, our refuge, merciful, gracious, strong, our healer, forgiving, powerful, good, the One who saves, righteous, our helper, and the One who makes all things new. We have it all figured out, right?

But Solomon was saying, “I don’t have it all figured out!”

It’s interesting to me, however, that the branch of Christianity called Eastern Orthodox approaches what they know about God just a little bit differently than we do. Now, I’m definitely not saying they have it all right, and of course, they still recognize that God has certain qualities, but Eastern Christianity is much more likely to say that our understanding of God’s qualities only give us a glimpse of who God is. We can’t figure God out! God is far above our comprehension!

Now, that’s not to say that God is unknowable. Because while God is beyond us, He also makes Himself known to us. That’s what Jesus did. In John 14, Philip said to Jesus:

“Lord, show us the Father, and that’s enough for us.” [And] Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (John 14:8-9)

This is an amazing statement. In fact, this whole conversation reveals a whole bunch about us and God. Being Jewish, Philip knew the Father. He knew that God was big, and holy, and righteous. And, being a disciple of Jesus for three years at this point, Philip knew Jesus’s personality and upright character. He knew that Jesus loved him, and that Jesus cared even for the hurt, the poor, and the sinner. And he also knew that Jesus knew the Father in a much more intimate way than he himself had ever known God, and he longed to know God more. He longed to know and be known by God. So Jesus responded, “Philip, it’s Me.”

You see, God is transcendent, beyond our comprehension, and God is immanent, He’s with us. In fact, He’s Immanuel, which means “God with us.”

What I’m saying is that we need more than reason to understand who God is and what His purpose for us is. Reason only gets us so far. We need revelation. And the Bible’s revelation of God shows us that God reveals Himself to us in such a way that we can know Him for certain. Because Jesus is the revelation, the revealing, of God.

And even though Jesus was revealed 2,000 years ago through His birth, life, death, and resurrection, there are still so many who don’t know Jesus because we like to cling to our sin. Verse 25.

I turned my thoughts to know, explore, and examine wisdom and an explanation for things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity and folly is madness. And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a trap: her heart a net and her hands chains. The one who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner will be captured by her. (Ecclesiastes 7:25-26)

So if you read 1 Kings, you also find that there was a period of time in which Solomon chased after pagan gods, which are really no gods at all, because he was tempted by pagan women. Lust and adultery are extremely powerful temptations for many people, men and women alike. And even if that sin in particular isn’t tempting to you, we are all enticed by various sins and the result is the same: we’re captured by them and trapped by our chains so that we’re enslaved to wickedness. We think that sin is fun, and that pursuing the pleasures that this world offers us will make us happy, but we actually find that pursuing sin turns us into slaves to sin.

I find it absolutely absurd how our culture today demands complete conformity to liberal ideologies about gender and sexuality, when once again, those things are biologically clear to everyone. God made us male and female. But now even many medical professionals are deviating from this clear reality. It’s unthinkable! And I think it’s exactly the kind of thing that Paul wrote about in 2 Corinthians, which says:

In their case, the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4)

It’s like our whole world is just going along with an ideology that they don’t even understand.

And it’s not just limited to those kinds of issues. Our world is confused when it comes to all sorts of things, ranging from what social justice means, to the value of each human life, and to the worth of people from the womb to the tomb. And these aren’t just things that the people out there get wrong. In our sin, we often also rationalize doing little to nothing to help the poor and hurting in the world.

But if we explore these things carefully, as Solomon did, we see that wickedness is stupidity. Sin, which is any deviation from God’s moral code, makes no logical sense, not from a Christian standpoint, and not even from a secular standpoint. Sin consumes us, makes us blind to what is truly good, and robs us of true meaning. And if we keep pursuing sin, and therefore keep turning away from God, we end up in a place more bitter than death.

That’s hell. Solomon wrote about it as if sin itself is a living hell, worse than death, and I think we all know the kind of thing he’s talking about. We often think about hell as a place unbelievers go when they die, but the Bible actually describes hell as a state of being that begins here, and extends into the life to come, and is rescued out of only when a person humbles themselves before God.

King David prayed in Psalm 86:13,

For your faithful love for me is great, and you rescue my life from the depths of Sheol. (Psalm 86:13)

According to the Bible, we were all trapped in hell until we believed the gospel. And even while we were trapped in hell, God’s faithful love for us was still great.

Listen, all I’m saying is that God is bigger, greater, more loving than we often think, and that His love for us never ends.

And yet, instead of trusting in Him, we seem to prefer trusting in ourselves. Verse 27.

“Look,” says the Teacher, “I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find out the explanation, which my soul continually searches for but does not find: I found one person in a thousand, but none of those was a woman. Only see this: I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes.” (Ecclesiastes 7:27-29)

So in his search to find meaning in life, Solomon discovered that women, that is, the foreign women who led his heart away from God, were not the answer. And even though he discovered that God is beyond understanding, he did discover something about himself in relation to God. God made him upright, and then he turned away from it.

God made Adam in His own image, and Adam sinned. God gave Solomon wisdom, and Solomon acted unwisely. God blesses each one of us with life, and we choose death.

And because of our choices, God made a choice, and it was entirely unexpected. We would fully expect for God, being holy and righteous, to condemn us for our sin. But God demonstrated His love for us in that even while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

Once again, although God is unreachable to us, both because of His nature, and our limitations, and even because of our sin, God not only made Himself accessible to us, but gave Himself to us. With all the uncertainty that we might have because of the greatness of God and the abundance of our sin, we might wonder if we can know God at all, but in response, the Bible says to us, “Yes, you can know God, and here’s how.”

Jesus said:

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

Jesus made a way when there truly was no way. Jesus is the way. So while we may not be able to perfectly know God through our reasoning, we can know God and be known by God by grace through faith in Jesus.