Two passages of the Word, firstly in the
Letter to the Romans, chapter 11.
Letter to the Romans, chapter 11, and thus
33.
All the depth of the riches, both of
the wisdom and the knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways
past tracing out.
Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 3, verse
8.
Unto me, who am less than the least
of all saints, was this grace given to
preach unto the nations the unsearchable riches of
Christ.
So, with the enablement of the Lord, we
are going to move in these deep waters.
Seek to discover a little of the unsearchable
riches of Christ.
The depth of the riches, wisdom and knowledge.
The apostle who used these words, striving against
the limitations of language, to give expression to
something of what he had come to realize
as to the Christ, as to the salvation
in Christ, into which he had been brought.
He does use these many superlatives, straining to
find what is unsearchable, inexhaustible, unfathomable,
infinite wealth or riches, all the depth.
This man was able to speak in this
way just for one reason.
And you and I will never be able
rightly to use such language unless we go
the way that he went.
In order to find things which are deep,
you have to go into the depth.
You never find deep things in the shallows.
You have to go down and down, very
low.
And that in itself explains the Lord's dealings
with his people.
It is the answer to the cry of
the heart in deep and dark and difficult
places and times.
Why?
If we could but realize it, we should
hear the answer coming back, that you may
discover and appropriate spiritual wealth.
These riches do not lie on the surface
at all.
They are the hidden treasure of dark and
secret places.
And wealthy souls are ever and always those
which have touched something, if not all, of
the depth.
In the walk with God, here is a
man whom you know by many things that
he has placed on record.
A man who had many otherwise inexplicable experiences.
His catalogue of sufferings and adversities of every
kind is written for us, largely in his
second letter to the Corinthians, half a chapter
taken up with the things which befell him.
And in other places, too, he makes references
to his sufferings in Christ.
And if ever a man had reason to
ask why, it was that man.
Why, Lord, are you letting me spend a
night and a day in the deep, being
again and again and yet again thrashed with
rocks, imprisoned, dealt with treacherously by my own
brethren, and so on and on.
Why, Lord, I'm devoted to you.
I have a heart for you.
I am not seeking my own ends, but
yours.
I'm utterly committed to your interests.
There are many who are not so committed,
and they don't have to go the way
that I'm going.
Why, for such a man, with such a
devotion, such an abandon to the interests of
his Lord, suffering more than any other man,
perhaps of the whole apostolic company.
Not one of us will measure up to
this man's sufferings, although we may sometimes think
that ours are just about the limit.
But very few, and I imagine there are
very few in this little company this afternoon,
have not had times when they've asked the
big why as to the strangeness of the
Lord's dealings, the Lord's ways with them.
Does it not strike you very possibly, thus
very significant, that such a man, such a
man, cries for language to express what he
has seen in the Lord Jesus, and says,
Oh, the depth of the riches, both wisdom
and knowledge, how unsearchable.
I'm tossed by the hour.
To me, not the greatest of the apostles,
to me not the greatest saint, to me
not as one more than any other, but
less than all, the least of all saints,
to me, was this grace given to preach
the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Riches.
A man whom we know because for two
thousand years the church has been drawing upon
the riches which he reached and received through
trials.
Riches which are coming to us from that
man.
Still, to today, perhaps now, may be so.
Today, for that reason, it may sound discouraging,
but there is no other way.
Some time ago, one of my visits to
India, I came down in the flying boat
on the Persian Gulf, and as I stood
on the Gulf of Persia, the confluence of
the Euphrates, I looked out and saw the
pearl fishers way up there in the depths,
spending their long, patient hours seeking goodly paths,
a lonely and perilous business, for there, as
I saw, just leaping out of the water,
sharks looking for prey.
And then that night, after dark, I went
into the Persian market, the bazaar, through the
narrow aisles between the stalls, and I saw
displayed on those stalls a glorious purse and
other gems, almost priceless.
There they were, being brought in from the
depths, polished and displayed.
And then as I boarded the flying boat
to go on to India, a pearl merchant
came on with his cabinets of gems and
pearls.
These were bound in iron, with strong padlocks
on them, and as that sheik sat in
his seat, he kept his eye on those
cabinets and would not take his eye off
them all the time until we landed.
And he delivered them to the merchants in
India, valuables, precious things from the depths.
They were costly because they had cost.
They were valuable because there was painful and
lonely vigil behind their obtaining.
Pearls had been associated with securing them.
This is a parable.
This is what Paul is really talking about.
Pearls, the loneliness, the long drawn-out vigil,
the sufferings and the afflictions to obtain the
riches.
And that, not for himself, but for the
Church.
He says, I fill up that which comes
short of the sufferings of Christ for his
body's sake, which is the Church.
I say there is no other way for
us to do more than talk about and
read about and use the language of the
riches.
No other way for us to possess them
than to go into the depths and find
them, the unsearchable riches.
Does that sound like a contradiction?
You have them and they're unsearchable?
You have them and yet they're too deep
to lay hold of?
Sounds like that.
But Paul simply means all the meaning, all
the value, all the wealth that is here,
only a little of which we may know
in this life.
All that wealth is really beyond us, too
great, past finding out.
Well, that is where we begin.
But we don't end there.
We're going to look, as the Lord will
help us, at some of these riches, these
unsearchable riches.
And if you at any time care to
look into your New Testament with that word
in hand, riches, you will see how it
is connected with different things.
The riches of this and the riches of
that.
The riches of another thing.
The riches are of.
Well, the riches of his grace.
The riches of his glory.
The riches of his inheritance in the saints.
The riches of full assurance of understanding, and
so on.
These are many-sided riches.
I don't know how far the Lord will
lead us.
We can begin where the riches do begin,
where we have to begin.
The riches of his grace.
There's another word linked with that.
Riches of his grace and goodness.
Despises thou us, the apostles, the riches of
his grace and goodness.
That word itself will always be beyond us.
We may as well settle it now, throw
up our hands in utter despair, right at
the beginning.
You and I are never going to fathom
that depth, comprehend that fullness, understand that
grace.
I don't hope for a moment to be
able to plumb the depth of that word.
Here, we can only just dip into these
depths of riches of his grace and goodness.
And we have a very hackneyed way of
defining grace.
It's been put into a phrase, and we
throw it off, and we don't get very
much further than that.
Asked what is the meaning of grace, the
traditional answer is, grace is unmerited favor.
Yes, it is.
It is unmerited favor.
That very definition does introduce us to the
basic character of grace.
But it's weak.
It's a weak definition.
Unmerited favor.
Yes, thank God for that.
But what do you mean by that?
You have no merit, and God just comes
to you because you have no merit.
Nothing to merit, grace.
But I want to say to you, dear
friends, that it's more than that.
It's worse than that, on one side, on
our side.
Grace does not only come to where there
is no merit.
Grace comes where there is a great deal
of demerit.
Demerit.
That's stronger than no merit.
No merit may be negative.
Demerit is positive.
Everything that is not only without merit, but
of the nature and character that is perfect
demerit.
You and I are not only without worthiness.
You and I are worse than that.
Everything, everything positive that we should not be.
If you turn again to the man who
is speaking this way, not only does he
say to me, Who am less than the
least of all sin?
He said, I am the chief of sinners,
of whom I am chief.
That's positive.
Not only less than the least, but positively
the chief of sinners.
I prosecuted the church.
I gave my consent to the murder of
his beloved servant Stephen.
And he'll tell you a great deal more
about his demerit.
Not only his lack of merit.
Everything that was there, that was an offense
to God.
And that stood, if it could stand, if
anything could stand in the way of grace,
it was there.
But you see, grace just means that demerit,
not only no merit, but demerit does not
set grace aside.
Grace is just grace.
Whatever the conditions, however great the demerit, that
is grace.
You and I as Christians have got to
learn that.
All this, as we shall see perhaps as
we go on, is something that perhaps the
Christian has to reckon with even more than
the unsaved.
Say that and leave it for the time
being.
But if you and I are really moving
with God, you and I are coming more
and more to the place where we do
say from the depth of our being, but
for the grace of God.
For me, a Christian, after all these years,
but for the grace of God, I will
not be saved.
I will not get through.
It takes, as I understand it and see
it, a great deal more grace for me
now as a Christian than it did to
save me at the beginning.
Now that may seem strange to say that.
But I'm returning to it again.
For are we not discovering what we didn't
know even at the beginning, the presence of
the demerit in ourselves?
But that is just the character of grace.
That is what grace means.
Grace has no meaning unless that is true.
And then let us note this other thing
about grace.
Grace never recognizes any debt.
Grace is not a payment of any debt.
Grace is not in our debt at all.
God is not dealing with us in grace
because he owes us something.
It's only another way of speaking about absence
of merit and presence of demerit.
No, no one has a claim upon the
grace.
This God is not our debtor.
Grace doesn't recognize any such thing as being
in debt and having to pay its way
with us.
Grace, and here is our superficial language again,
grace is free grace, free grace.
It is not something with which God is
trying to pay us back for something.
It's all the other way around, isn't it?
We are the debtors.
God is the creditor.
And grace is just grace.
There is nothing else to say about it.
It's just his free, spontaneous movement without any
obligation, without any obligation.
That is the basic nature, character of grace.
When we realize that, when we realize that,
the demerit about ourselves, and God is under
no obligation to us, and then we just
make grace abound where sin abounded, grace does
so much more abound, then we begin to
understand what the debt of the riches may
be.
We are introduced into a realm that is
beyond us, isn't it?
Beyond us.
And any soul that has not come to
the time and state of just wandering in
amazement at God's voluntary, spontaneous, free, unmerited
favor, any soul who has not come there,
hasn't begun to know the meaning of such
words as the riches of his grace.
That can never be a wealthy soul.
So much for the present, at any rate,
about the character of grace.
But you know that grace is always set
over against wax.
And although we are so familiar with this
truth, let us just dwell upon it for
the moment, upon wax and grace.
See, this represents a change, a complete change
and rebuttal of position.
Of position.
Grace changes place with wax, or changes the
place of wax.
Grace does not obliterate wax.
Grace does not say there are never to
be wax.
Grace will demand wax, and if it is
rightly appreciated, will get much more, much better
wax than any before.
But grace does just change the place of
wax.
You see, wax, the wax of the law.
What were the wax of the law, are
the wax of the law.
They are the wax in order to get
married, are they not?
To get married.
The idea?
To get married.
To obtain marriage, to pay God back with
your marriage.
So look at the scribes and the pharisees.
Oh, how abhorrent, obnoxious was their behavior,
their activities and pretenses to the law of
Jesus himself.
Merit by works, giving God something for his
enrichment.
Yes.
Works of the law to obtain merit, with
which merit to give as currency to pay
God.
Putting God into our debt, making him our
debtor, and we doing all these things, you
see, to get ourselves out of discredit, discredit,
and give our credit to God.
Works of the law.
In order to obtain merit, to present to
God our merit.
Works in that place for merit.
When grace comes in, you see, grace puts
the works in another place altogether.
Takes it out, takes them out of the
first place and puts them into the last
place.
And instead of law being first, it's grace
first.
It's grace first.
Instead of works for merit being first, it's
just God's own grace.
Without any works whatsoever to obtain any satisfaction
and pleasure of God.
And then what?
All works haven't been ruled out of the
universe.
When grace has come in, you and I,
if we have really grasped the meaning of
grace, we'll work more than anyone else has
ever worked.
But now, the works of appreciation of grace,
not to obtain it, not to merit it,
but the works of thanks to God for
his unspeakable gift of grace.
Changes the place of things, puts things right
round the other way.
Someone has put this into a rather cryptic
phrase.
Works do not justify, but the justified person
works.
That is quite true.
I labor, said the apostle, more abundantly than
them all.
I labor, said the apostle, more abundantly than
them all.
And that was true.
That was true.
But was he seeking merit?
Then he had no right to talk about
grace.
But he's the man who does talk about
grace.
And he labored more abundantly than all because
the overwhelming grace of God to him.
The position was entirely with us.
Not law and works to obtain favor, but
works of love and devotion because our favor
obtained.
Complete with us.
Now then, what about God's work of grace?
And we'll begin this part and leave it
for the time being.
God's work of grace.
What was true in the first material, natural
creation is true spiritually in the new creation.
And you know it so well, only needs
to be mentioned and at once you'll jump
to it.
There was chaos.
There was darkness.
There was the absence of God.
God moved in, dispelled the darkness, turned the
chaos into cosmos order, and got to work.
Got to work step by step and stage
by stage, upward, upward all the time, creating,
ordering, providing a beautiful earth.
A beautiful earth, now.
A wonderful place.
So is the description.
And then, when he could look upon all
his work and pass his verdict, the verdict
of an infinitely perfect God, so meticulous, so
exacting, who will never pass anything that is
imperfect, when he has finished it all, he
puts man right into the middle of it,
and says, there you are, that's your inheritance.
Your inheritance is what I have already done.
What you come into is something, not that
you have got to make, but I have
already made.
Not that you have to do, but I
have already done.
You begin your vocation in gratitude, where I
end my work, on your behalf, for you.
You can clearly see the corresponding truth in
the new creation.
It's not working unto something.
It's working after everything has been done.
You and I come into God's perfect work.
Of course, the simple form of preaching the
gospel is to speak about the finished work
of Christ, but do we understand these glib
phrases?
All that God has done in and through
and by his Son, Jesus Christ, in the
perfecting of salvation, of redemption, of his work,
so that the reception of his Son back
to heaven is simply because God has nothing
more to do so far as providing the
ground is concerned.
He could never have gone back to heaven
unless the work was full and final and
perfect.
If there had been one further touch or
stroke, he would not have gone back.
They would not have received him in heaven
if we may so speak.
They would have said, look here, you've left
undone something.
I have not found thy works perfect before
my God.
And he would have had to come back
again, but he didn't.
God had, in him, perfected and finished his
new creation.
And then he began with us, to bring
us into it, and say, look here, you
haven't got to work unto this.
You've got to inherit it.
Take possession of it.
Live in the good of it.
Learn to understand what you've got, and appreciate
it.
These are the works of God.
They're finished.
They're finished, so far as the law of
Jesus is concerned.
The works of grace.
If that garden of that creation is something
grand, beautiful and glorious, from the hand of
God, which wholly satisfies his heart, his Son
is more than that.
More than a symbolic creation, an earthly thing.
His Son is the final fullness of perfection.
And he gives us his Son.
Gives us his Son.
You and I have not grasped, and this
is where we are in so much trouble,
dear friends.
There's no doubt about it.
I would go as far as to say
that nine-tenths of our spiritual troubles are
here.
That we are listening all the time to
the accuser and the condemner when things go
hard, difficult, contrary and against us.
And the devil is saying it's because of
something about you.
Your demerit.
Something's wrong with you.
When you go and you plead for the
Lord, and say, Lord, what is it that
you've got against me?
You spend your hours pleading with God to
show you what he's got against you and
why it is.
What the thing is that he has against
you that is resulting in his dealings with
you in this way.
And so the enemy is just turning us
aside from this.
But while there's a work of grace going
to be done, and we've to come to
that presently, to conform us, to change us,
we are not now under judgment and condemnation.
We are under grace.
And Satan would never cease in this life
to try and undercut grace and bring us
back under law to bondage.
What you and I really do need, are
we seeing, is to grasp these unsearchable riches
of his grace.
The riches of his grace.
God's work is completed for us to inherit.
There'll be a battle, a tremendous battle as
there was with Israel in the land after
they crossed the Jordan, got through the death
of Calvary.
A battle in the land to get the
possession of our inheritance.
But does it not hackneyed again and so
familiar, that forever we get a foothold.
The Lord has said, I have given it
to you.
Every place that the sole of your foot
shall tread upon, I have given you.
I have given you.
It's secured in Christ for us.
Now there I must leave it for the
present, but I think although these are tools
with which we are familiar, the great truth
remains.
You and I are the Lord's own people.
Beloved of him, I've got to learn, more
and more deeply, the meaning of the first
thing.
The grace of God.
What grace really is, and what grace really
means, and with all, how deep, how vast,
how unfathomable and unsearchable, are what the word
calls the riches of his grace.