Flat Earth: At one time everybody believed, comfortable theory that seemed right. Globe makes no sense to me. When evidence countered that theory people became upset. GOD IS FLAT: safe, easy, and comfortable ideas of God which are predictable and securely locked in our own little theological boxes which are in fact places we have attempted to cram Him. ROMANS 9 is designed to kick the sides out of the box.
*Misinterpretation of God’s Word and misreading of His actions are timeless activities: JEWS(pharisees) and doomsday predictors today.
Jews assumed an inside track on God and that they were better than other people – That is the problem with many of us today. Has the Word of God failed?(9:6)
(1) Paul #1 point is that salvation does not depend on national privilege. The Jews had all these privileges(9:4-5) and still missed it in mass.
(2) Paul’s #2 point is that salvation comes through belief in a promise that is encased in the sovereign choices of God.
(a) Choice of Isaac as promised seed 9:6-9
(b) Choice of Israel as promised nation 9:10-13
God’s Word has not failed but has been fulfilled in the choices of God.
*Paul anticipates further questions: Is God unjust? How would you answer that question?
Chicago Street Meeting: passing out tracts. Most graciously accepted but one man took tract, read title and threw to the ground ‘Four things God wants you to know’. He screamed, “there are a few things I would like God to know! Why so much sorrow and tragedy in world? Why innocent suffer? Why Jesus is only way? Why rich go free?
ANSWER: Not the neglect of God but the sin of Man There is no injustice with God, is there? MAY IT NEVER BE! A fact that need to be established in our minds.
WHO IS GOD?
1. He is not unjust! Gen 18:25 Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is right? God is by nature holy and just.
a. Election has nothing to do with justice but with Free Grace. Nobody deserves God’s mercy.
2. He does give mercy: (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’.
a. Paul uses Moses and Pharoah to show how God can work in two different lives so closely connected.
1) Both were sinners, even murderers, same school system. Both saw God’s wonders, one was saved and the other lost.
2) Moses found Mercy: he was a nobody, the original fugitive, living in the desert, God’s mercy saved him and gave him a name that became known throughout history. He was given authority over the greatest king in the world.
3) Mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve. If we all got what we did deserve the results would be disasterous.
4) Moses was rusty, couldn’t talk well, smelled like the sheep he spent his time with…..but God chose him.
So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.(16) None of us would have sought a relationship with God without His work of mercy in our lives. Rom 3:11 There is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God.
3. HE USES SINNERS (17) For the Scripture says to Pharoah, ‘For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.’
a) Pharoah was a sinner in the league with Herods and Hitlers, with Stalins and Jezebels. He was a man with a heart contrary to God’s will and God allowed him to continue to resist and God used that resistance for His own glory. Rom 8:28 God allowed Pharoah to do what all men have done by nature, resist God.
b) PROBLEM VERSE: (18) So then He has mercy on whom He desires and hardens whom He desires.
1. To use Pharoah God actually moved him further along in a destructive direction that he was already moving in.
2. 17-20 times it states that Pharoah’s heart was hardened.
(a) ½ of those times Pharoah hardened his own heart before it was ever hardened by God.
(b) God did not take a tender young Egyptian child and make him a divine monster from childhood. Before God ever acted on Pharoah’s heart his will was set. To the froward God will show Himself froward.
Heb 3:12 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.
Heb 3:15 Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me’
(c) Pharoah killed and oppressed thousands in his wickedness, when Moses, God’s Messenger came declaring the Word of God and demonstrating the power of God Pharoah resisted the truth and hardened his heart. God’s used that rebellion for His own purpose.
The same sunlight that melts the ice hardens the clay.
(d) Where is that line of ultimate resistance that we can cross where the only use left for our lives is a destructive example of where resisting the will of God leads.
3) Some this morning are hardening their hearts: Sunday School, service(bah, reject truth of God: If you go to hell you take all the blame but if you go to heaven you give Him all the glory.
WHO IS MAN? (19) You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’
*Accusations and bitter charges against God are not new: If God made me this way then why does the Bible condemn my behavior.
1) Based on wrong assumption: God didn’t make you that way.
2) Paul’s makes the point: Who are you to question God?
Who are you to charge God with being unjust? Let’s examine your credentials. (20a) On the contrary, who are you O man, who answers back to God?
a) FINITE: knowledge is limited, understanding is small
b) FRAIL: limited strength, short lives
c) FOOLISH: prone to blunders, do things that seem right but end up being extremely hurtful. God is infinite in knowledge, infinite in power and majesty, mighty, wise, knowing all things from beginning to end.
There are mysteries we do not reckon on, objectives we cannot discern and resistance that we know nothing about.
JOB: Not a skeptic or athiest but a devout man who loved God. He had terrible boils, lost his family and wealth and had three so called friends and a wife who tortured him emotionally. God finally appears in chapter 38 and asks: Where were you when… earth…stars…heavens…sea Do you understand…rain…. Lightning….springtime? After 3 chapters of that Job says, ‘God, you are not in my league, I repent and PUT MY HAND OVER MY MOUTH.
1. MAN IS A RECIPIENT OF GOD’S CREATIVE WORK (20b) The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it. (21) Or does the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
a. Nobody tells the potter what he can do with his clay.
GARDENER: right to move plants around? Ask plants permission? FARMER: right to send some cattle to slaughter and keep others at home?
HOUSEWIFE: right to kill a fly that comes into your kitchen?
FAMILY: right to buy and eat a turkey for thanksgiving.
Men exercise this kind of sovereignty so do we deny it to the One who created the universe.
b. The potter molds the clay, He doesn’t make it. We come into God’s hands sinful, sin that God didn’t put there, and he molds our lives and uses some for honorable or for common use. Some of us are vases and others are pots. BILLY GRAHAM IS A VASE, GUY MCGRAW IS A POT!
James 1:13-14 Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.
c. No potter makes vessels to destroy: Potter’s Field where broken and marred are thrown.
Jer 18:1-10 ‘pot was marred in potter’s hand; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him’. Haven’t totally resisted His will but who you are is not what God originally intended. Something wonderful missed out on.
2. WE ARE RECIPIENTS OF GOD’S REDEMPTIVE WORK
a. God endures defiant sinners that He might show His glory to those who are recipients of His mercy.
(22) What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience VESSELS OF WRATH prepared for destruction? (23) And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, (24) even us, who He also called, not form among Jews only, but also form among Gentiles.
b. Vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy. God endures one for the sake of the other. One is prepared for destruction and the other is prepared beforehand for glory.
1) prepared(22) is middle voice. The object initiates the action that it also receives. Reflexive action. ‘Fitted or prepared themselves for destruction. Made themselves ripe and ready for judgment. God did not make them that way but God endured them with patience and even used their rebellion for His own good and for the good of believers.
2) Prepared beforehand ordained ahead of time for glory. When God’s grace impacted their lives they cooperated with His work and responded to His call.
3) Some are hardening their hearts this morning
WHAT DOES GOD DEMAND OF MAN?
1. HE DESIRES A RELATIONSHIP
a. With Gentiles (25) As He says also in Hosea, ‘I will call those who were not My people, My people,’ and her who was not beloved, beloved.’ (26) And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people’, there they shall be called sons of the living God’.
b. With Jews (27) Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, ‘Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved; (28) for the Lord will execute His Word on the earth, thoroughly and quickly’.
c. With Sinners (29) And just as Isaiah foretold, ‘Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left to us a posterity, we would have become like Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah’
1) Apart from God’s protective work over His people none of us would have made it, none would be saved.
SITES OF SODOM/GOMORRAH: no more desolate sites on the face of the earth: sea in which nothing lives and around which nothing will grow.
2. HE DEMANDS FAITH (30) What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; (31) but Israe, pursuing the law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. (32) Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone,
Are you lost or saved? What is your spiritual condition? Have your responded to the Spirit’s work in your life to draw you to God’s salvation? Are you lost or condemned? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH JESUS?
You walk down a path and come to a BIG FLAT ROCK in the middle of the way. Two things you can do: stumble over it or stand on it. Only a remnant of the Jews were saved because they stumbled over the rock trying to be saved by works instead of standing on the rock of Christ Jesus: seeking His mercy and finding His grace.
(33) Just as it is written, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and he who believes in Him will not be disappointed’.
You show me anytime anywhere that anybody came to Jesus with repentant hearts and He didn’t save them, it will be time to close our Bibles and walk away. Whoever will call upon the name of Jesus will be saved. 10:13
