Our God Is Not An "Awesome" God

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 14, 2014

Romans 11:33-36

Our God Is Not An "Awesome" God

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When you stand before Christ on that Last Day, what should you say about Him? That you're in awe of Him? That He's awesome? That He's awful? Your choice of words about Him when Time ends will probably depend on how you speak about Him in these times.

Today our word to consider is awe. It is a word that we use an awful lot in the word awesome. Awesome means someone who is awesome. It's good to be awesome. You want to be around awesome people.

When you say that someone's awesome, you're reacting to information about that person. You're reacting to an epic act they accomplished that was awesome. You're reacting to their awesome personality and their awesome kindness. There are awesome facts about them that confirm their awesomeness to you.

Is our God an awesome God? Do you want to hang with Him? Do you know of an awesome epic act performed by Him and Him alone? Yes, yes, and yes.

But consider Paul's song of praise at the end of Romans 11. Listen carefully and think about these words.

³³Oh, the depth of the riches

of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable His judgments,

and His paths beyond tracing out!

³⁴Who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been His counselor?

³⁵Who has ever given to God,

that God should repay him?

³⁶For from Him

and through Him

and to Him

are all things.

To Him be the glory forever!

Amen. Romans 11:33-36

Do these words sound like He wants to hang around with you?

No, they don't. You've never searched God's judgments and figured them out. You've never found God's paths and mapped them out. You don't know His mind or ever given Him good advice. He doesn't owe you a thing. He created the galaxies and the constellations. He created lightning and oceans. He created mountains and canyons. He created all these things that can kill your body. And He has given us His good, just, and awful Law that condemns you to die, body and soul.

God's perfect otherness forces you away from Him. We will never find His ways by our own ways, by our clever methods, or by our efforts to grow.

But He has found you. He has searched and traced you out and He knows your mind. Yet in His mercy He has chosen to be your Redeemer and sent you His Counseling Spirit to save us. We have never given God anything good, yet He gives us all good things. Above all He gives you His Word and Sacrament. He gives you Himself.

Our God is an awe-inspiring God. Awe is both the awful knowledge that you are a wretched sinner and the awfully wonderful comfort that God sent His Son to only die for wretched sinners.

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.