“Hard Hearts and Providential Pots: More on God’s Sovereign Character”
Romans 9: 13-29
God does not “choose” people for salvation according to race, religion, ancestry, or ability, but according to His Will and Calling: He called one twin brother, Jacob, but left the other, Esau. That does not make God’s Word ineffective nor does it cancel the most important task of the Church, which is to spread the Gospel, since God USES the Gospel and its “CALL” to bring sinners to repentance, belief and trust in the Lord Jesus.
About God’s Mercy
Our last study finished with Romans 9:13: “Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." We pick up on verse 14. These things being true: “What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!” (It’s almost a natural human response to immediately say: “What a minute! If God passes over some and not others, wouldn’t that make God arbitrary and unfair?” But Paul immediately comes back with another scripture example from Ex. 33:19.)
15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." (The point is that God is NOT inconsistent with His mercy and love. He is absolutely and perfectly Sovereign in all He does, including His election. God never violates His own Character or ANY of His attributes in His determining who will receive His mercy and who will not. We may not fully understand this or MANY OTHER works of God, but it is very important for us to remember and believe it. Many things about God and how He works will remain mysterious or secret to us because we don’t NEED to know. We DO know the mystery and the secret of HOW God shows His Mercy, that before had been hidden! We know that His Wisdom has been revealed to us in the Lord Jesus Christ becoming SIN FOR US. Jesus is God’s Mercy and Compassion FOR US.)
16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. (We DO KNOW THIS TOO: If it depended on Jacob’s effort or his OWN human will, Jacob’s DESIRE was to deceive; and so Jacob would have been lost, NOT loved. He wrestled with the Pre-incarnate Jesus, who touched him and made him dependent on Him instead of His own cunning, and called Him ISRAEL, “one who strives or prevails with God”, or “God “PREVAILS”, or “Prince of God”. God’s MERCY, His Salvation, is not initiated by human effort because human will is sinful! It is initiated by the perfect will of God.)
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." (Ex. 9:16) 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”
About Hard Hearts
Sometimes people will hear God’s will and harden their own hearts and turn from God, but we are told that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh. If you read the entire story about Pharaoh and the ten plagues against Egypt in Exodus 8-13, you have to shake your head in wonder: How could ANYONE CONTINUE to turn from God’s severe warnings time after time? What does it take for someone to turn from their wickedness and self-rule and submit to God’s authority? Don’t you have to wonder?
I think that is exactly the point! The human heart is sinful and hard in its natural fallen state, and WITHOUT God’s Mercy and Help to turn to Him, NO ONE would EVER turn to Him. It was NOT that God placed MORE EVIL in the heart of Pharaoh; it was that God REMOVED from him ANY HELP at all, so that EVEN WITH ALL THE EVIDENCE OF God’s Holy Wrath against him, Pharaoh was HELPLESS to turn to God in repentance, but God does not actively create unbelief. “Moses I loved; Pharaoh, I left out.”
The example in Romans 9:13 was: “Jacob I loved; Esau I left out.” In the Israel Exodus story, you have two people, Moses and Pharaoh. Both are sinners, even murderers. They were both equally worthy of God’s wrath and punishment, NOT OF God’s Grace. Moses received God’s calling and a heart to follow God, and Moses received mercy.
Actually, Pharaoh received 10 CALLINGS from God, but God did not work in His heart at all to bring him to repentance. God hardened his heart by withdrawing all of His Divine influence and Grace which ordinarily acts as a restraint toward sin. This allowed Pharaoh to follow his own unbelief without restraint. (It also says in Exodus 8:32 that Pharaoh hardened HIS OWN heart.) The result of a hardened heart and will WITHOUT God’s DIVINE intervention to draw one TO God, is that you CANNOT POSSIBLY turn toward God with a soft and humble heart but YOU WILL receive God’s wrath and punishment… Why?
Rebellion (sin) against God demands it. God saves some and not others, demonstrating HIS Sovereign Will and His Purpose and His Power in all the Earth. The unrepentant person ALWAYS deserves God’s wrath and punishment, and what does God deserve? God ALWAYS deserves Godly Glory! God has only to DO absolutely NOTHING to change a sinful heart, and the sinner receives what he deserves! Judgment! And God receives Glory because His justice has been served perfectly.
Look at verse 19: One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" (In other words, if God hardens hearts and HE initiates salvation, how can God blame anyone for unbelief if HE has determined a person’s destiny beforehand? You may be thinking that too? Are we offended by a God who would do this? Could it be that our picture of God is FAR too small while our view of man is FAR too great? Listen:
About Providential Pots
20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?" 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
If you were a Jew hearing this, you would recall Isa. 29:16: “You piece of clay: “You turn things around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made would say to its maker, "He did not make me"; Or what is formed say to him who formed it, "He has no understanding"? (This is a prevalent thought today in our culture, thinking that we are gods.)
Isaiah 45:9: "Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker - An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, “What are you doing?”
Or Isaiah 64:8: “But now, O LORD, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand.” (This should be our humble attitude.)
Or Jere. 18:6: "Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand.”
The example is clear enough and powerful enough as it stands: God is the Sovereign potter, man is mere clay. Potters form clay not the other way around. Clay doesn’t go out and find a potter in order to be formed. The potter chooses clay and then the potter chooses how HE, in HIS Infinite Wisdom, will craft some clay vessels for His salvation, and others for His Wrath.
God places HIS VALUE on whom He wills, and it is totally IRRATIONAL and downright ARROGANT for clay to THINK for a moment that, as mere CLAY, it have a voice in HOW God chooses to use some and not others. (The Sun does not provide warmth, the stars don’t shine, rain doesn’t fall, the world doesn’t spin except by the SOVEREIGNTY of God, so why should we think that God doesn’t have the right to save whom He will and that we would have a say in His choosing? The potter chooses how and for what purpose He will use you.
Paul continues the idea of God being the potter and humankind is the clay:
22 What if God, choosing (God’s intentional intervention) to show his wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects (vessels) of his wrath--prepared for destruction?
God did NOT CREATE evil. He does not make people sinful, but He could justly destroyed sin AND sinners. As a matter of Godly fact, the first time that a sinner commits a sin, God would be justified to destroy him. He would only be giving to him the justice that he deserves! The just penalty for sin is DEATH. When sinners choose to stay in sin and rebellion, and God chooses to allow them to keep on sinning, He allows them to earn their wages. What are their wages? They receive death, destruction as vessels of God’s wrath. They have been prepared for that purpose.
Some use their own futile line of thinking and say: What about a so-called “innocent” man in Africa who has never heard of Jesus? God would not send an innocent man to judgment, but according to God’s Word, NO ONE like that EXISTS on this earth apart from the imputed righteousness of Christ “There is none that is righteous, no not one. 11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." (Rom. 3:10) “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”(Rom. 3:23)
On the other hand: 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects (vessels) of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory-- 24 EVEN US, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
SOME God decides to shape into vessels or pots of mercy, to contain the grace of God in Christ, whom he prepared in advance. Why? Because it was God’s gracious decision as the potter to purchase SOME through the precious blood of Jesus. The clay didn’t have a word about it! You had NO WORD whatsoever concerning your physical birth, and you had NO WORD concerning your spiritual second birth. So, here is the bottom line of God’s Sovereignty and His election process: Some POTS receive the JUSTICE and eternal ruin, that they have both earned and desired, while others, by no effort of their own, whatsoever, graciously receive God’s mercy as HE ALONE creates them into vessels of eternal honor, and HE conforms them into the image of the Lamb of God slain for YOUR SIN. WE MUST have the highest view of God’s Sovereignty and the PREEMINIENCE of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Not enough proof you might say: Look at verse 25: As he says in Hosea: "I will call them 'my people' who are not my people; and I will call her 'my loved one' who is not my loved one," (Hosea’s wife, Gomer is depicted as the estranged bride of Christ, living in whoredom. God commanded that her daughter be named, “No Mercy”, and a son be named “Not My People”, and God added “for you are not my people, and I am not your God.” (Hosea 1:9) Then in Hosea 1:10 it says this in our text:
In verse 26: and, "It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.'" God saves some, people who you would NEVER think that God would save. He saves a small remnant by His Grace, but not all, and it was in the most unlikely of circumstances: “You are not my people” but they become “sons of the living God”, because that’s the way God graciously works. Those who have NO MERCY and who are NOT MY PEOPLE become my people.
27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. 28 For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality." Paul’s point here is that the scattering which Isaiah described, was a preview of the eventual rejection of the Messiah by Israel, followed by Israel’s own destruction. It is the LORD’S sentence that is carried out upon man’s sin and rejection, and only a remnant of the clay are reserved for God’s salvation.
29 It is just as Isaiah said previously: "Unless the Lord Almighty (of hosts) had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah." “Sodom and Gomorrah” became an expression for the ultimate in God’s judgment against any sinful people with unrepentant hearts. If the families of Abraham and Lot were not saved from the destruction of those cities, EVERYONE (all of future Israel) in those cities would have died, but God in His Grace saved a remnant. We ALL certainly would have met God’s judgment, and become destroyed pots if God had not spared us by His Grace.
We still live in a day of God’s Grace and longsuffering where the Gospel is still calling people to repentance and belief in the Lord Jesus, not because they are worthy of Grace, but because HE ALONE is Gracious. God still calls people to forsake all else and follow Jesus: that is the COST for being a disciple. God is still making SOME clay, a remnant, into vessels of honor and service, and allowing other vessels to live for a short time, but to experience His wrath eternally, NOT because He delights in judgment, but because they deny the Lord who made them and offers to save them in Christ alone. If we have been saved from that eternal wrath to come, our lives HAVE TO be demonstrating and exhibiting what would be an appropriate response of gratitude for God’s mercy to us because we realize that we, too, deserved death, but instead we have received grace. (and we won’t do that perfectly either, because we are still be conformed to the image of Christ).
God is Sovereign God, and I am not. Grace is what I needed more than anything, and grace is what God gave me, not because I deserved it, but because He chose to give it. Our mindset and heart-set is to God alone be the Glory, GREAT THINGS HE HAS DONE; for He gave me His Son.
OUTLINE
I. About God’s Mercy
1. God never violates His own Character in determining who will receive mercy. (vs 15)
2. Mercy is not initiated by human effort because the human will is sinful! (vs 16)
II. About Hard Hearts: God “hardened” the heart of Pharaoh.
1. WITHOUT God’s Mercy and Help to turn to Him, NO ONE would EVER turn to Him. (vs 17-18, Exodus 8-13, )
2. God does not actively create unbelief but withdraws all of His Divine influence.
3. When God does absolutely nothing to change a sinful heart…God’s justice is served.
4. Is our picture of God FAR too small while our view of man is FAR too great? (vs 19
III. About Providential Pots (vs. 20-24, Isa. 29:16, 45:9, 64:8, Lam 4:2, Jere. 18:6)
1. God is the Sovereign Potter, man is mere clay.
2. It is arrogant to think that as mere clay, we have a voice.
3. Some pots receive the justice that they have both earned and desired, while other pots graciously receive God’s mercy. (vs 25-26)
4. Only a remnant of the clay are reserved for God’s salvation. (vs 27)
5. We ALL certainly would have met God’s judgment, if God had not spared us.
Conclusion: Our lives should be an appropriate response of gratitude for God’s mercy.
