“Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?” (Job 11:7) As we continue in our study of the attributes of God, we touch on one this week that is all-encompassing of all of God’s other attributes, yet stands alone. It’s a word I have mentioned while preaching; perhaps you made note of it. God is inscrutable.
Unless you listen to a lot of preaching or read a lot of old theology books, you may not be familiar with this word. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines inscrutable as “not readily investigated, interpreted, or understood.” A simple way to understand this word would be to think of that feeling you get when you see someone, a child or practical joker, up to something strange and you wonder, “Now, what are they up to?” Their motives are hidden in that moment. It’s interesting the amount of times I’ve heard people ask this about God. Many times even I have asked, “Lord, what are you up to?”
Paul writes in Romans 11:33, “How inscrutable his ways!” To the Corinthians he writes, “Who has known the mind of the word so as to instruct him?” (1 Corinthians 2:16) The prophet Isaiah wrote, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” (Isaiah 40:28) The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, in a severe rebuke of the false prophets of his day (and ours!) who were filling people (who were rebellious to God) with “vain hopes” that would God look away from their sin and not bring judgement and destruction on them because of it (a heresy still existing today), and God asked, “For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord to see and to hear his word, or who has paid attention to his word and listened?” (Jeremiah 23:18)
The inscrutability of God should remind us that the secret things belong to the God, but the revealed things belong to us (Deuteronomy 29:29). For as much as His word speaks to His inscrutability, God has still provided a way for us to know Him and for sinful man to be reconciled to Himself. We may not (we don’t) always know what God is up to, but through faith in His Word, we know that He is good and has worked out salvation for His people through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Go Deeper:
Read Job 11:7-12 for more on the inscrutability of God.
Give God glory! Though inscrutable, we can know Him!
Grace & Peace,
John
(You can reach Pastor John at jwhite@thevillagemi.com)