The God(ness) of God: The God of Glory – Week 4
This sermon is week 4 of The God of Glory section of our “The God(ness) of God” sermon series. It is an exegetical treatment of Romans 9:19-29, addressing the themes
the creature versus the creator, the glorious purpose of God with evil and hell, and the family of God that gets formed from his mercy. This sermon was originally preached May 11th, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
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Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets
Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36
The God of Glory
Week 4 – Romans 9:19-29
I. The Creator vs. the Creature (19-21)
II. The Glorious Purpose of God (22-23)
III. The Family from the Gospel (24-29)
Introduction
Good morning. Well, first of all Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s here. We love our moms and are a church who cherishes being part of Jesus’ family and because of that we cherish our natural families. Our moms are a great blessing from the Lord, so thank you moms for being our moms and loving us and our children.
Well we are in the middle of our sermon series titled “The God(ness) of God” from Romans 9-11. We took a break from it last week for a special time of extended singing and hearing stories from 4 different people. It was a blessing to hear from each one of them about how the gospel is working itself out in the center of each of these person’s lives. So thanks again to those of you who shared, we’ll do another one of those Sundays in another couple months.
Alright, so let me refresh us for a second of where we are in our study and then we’ll read and pray over today’s portion of Scripture that we’re going to look at. The book of Romans is a book of the Bible about how God is great and glorious, and how is shown to be so through sending his son Jesus into the world. That is good news to us creatures who haven’t loved or known God as we ought, and the message of Jesus is that if we put our faith in his person and work on the cross to take care of the consequence of hell for not loving our maker, Jesus will save us and change us and we will know his great love and forgiveness. Romans 8 ended by telling us that when such a thing truly happens in your soul, nothing can happen in this life to separate you from God. His love in your heart is secure…not sickness, demons, or even death can come between you and the love of God in Jesus.
So the first 8 chapters of Romans were spent working out all the details and implications of that. Now when Paul, the human author of Romans came to chapter nine, he had an issue to deal with. He was writing to two main groups of people, Jews and Gentiles. Gentiles are anyone is not a Jew, I’m a Gentile by birth, a Jew by Jesus, but that’s for later. Here’s the issue, God, in the first half of the Bible made a bunch of promises to the Jews, now Jesus comes along and says he is the fulfillment of all those promises and now everyone needs to believe in him and a lot of the Jews are like what?! Are God’s old promises not good anymore and if not then how can we even believe in this new promise? You guys get it? So Paul’s got to talk about why we can trust the gospel offer of God changing and saving everyone who puts faith in Jesus.
Here’s what he has said so far. First, it’s grace not race that counts. Paul’s uses the Jewish Bible, the Jewish Scriptures to show that it was never race, it was never their bloodline, the color of their skin, the name of their nation, or their family heritage that made God even offer his promises to them…it’s was purely his grace. He told two stories to show that was true. The story of Abraham and the story of Abraham’s grandkids. In both cases God determined to come to them and save them prior to any response on their part, and in the case of Abraham’s grandkids the Bible says, God decided that before they were even born!
We spent a whole week on that and those stories. But that brings up some questions then, if God decides who he is going to love and save before they are even born, then isn’t that not fair? Paul was smart, he was a lawyer, he knew we’d be thinking that. See, look at verse 14, “What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part?”
To answer that question, Paul first flat out denies the charge by saying “By no means!” And then he condescends and tells two more stories to illustrate, the story of Moses and the story of Pharaoh. In the story of Moses God has mercy and compassion on him and in the story of Pharaoh he didn’t. In the story of Moses we learned two things. One, that God is a gracious and compassion God, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness, that is who he is as God. Two, we learned that justice is about a consistency and consistency is found in God’s passion to do everything for his own name and glory.
In the second story, about Pharaoh, we get to see a practical example where God does something for his glory. The Bible says God raised up, that’s from a baby to adulthood and emperor status, God raised up Pharaoh for the very purpose that God’s power and name might be made known throughout all the earth, in how he destroyed Pharaoh and the supposed gods and his kingdom and part of that process was God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. So verse 18 ends by saying, “So then he (God) has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”
That brings us to today, beginning with verse 19, where Paul anticipates our response and then answers. So let’s read our text and pray over it.
Lord God thank you for putting difficult passages in the Bible, passages which really make us think and challenge our faith to the core. God I pray that today, through these words of yours, you would open our eyes up to see the greatness of your wisdom and your glory. Would the glorious nature of the gospel shine forth so that we might be able to trust in Jesus and be saved. Help us, humble us, hear us, remove all hindrances today. In the name of your Son Jesus, Amen.
Well, I won’t lie to you, this is probably the most difficult passage I have ever preached on. It is not difficult because it’s hard to decipher what the text is saying. There are other passages in the Bible which are like that. But not this one. One of the best tools of interpretation that you can use in learning how to read the Bible right, is what a text seems to be saying is usually what it is saying. The plain and simplest meaning of a text is usually right.
What makes many passages difficult is not the words themselves or that the author has said something confusing, but it is us. We bring baggage to the Bible which often makes it hard for us to understand and accept it because it doesn’t fit our framework or way of thinking and so we try to force it into our worldview and it just doesn’t work.
And this passage of Scripture is particularly difficult in that regard, because it drives deep into the recesses of our sinfulness as human beings, who in our core have this problem with God and have this tendency to rise up and either challenge, ignore or dismiss God.
Since this passage evokes such sharp reactions from the human heart, the result is there are just tons and tons of opinions about it. Too many for us to deal with, I’m sorry. We’ve developed a reputation for going slow in our study of the Bible, I mean we’ve spent three years now in Romans so far, just getting to this point. Knowing this about us, one of dads of a dude in our church whose a pastor, said I was cheating you guys by only spending a month in Romans 9. So sorry if you feel cheated. We could seriously spend the next year going down all the rabbit trails people have created from not accepting the plain meaning of this passage of Scripture.
The good thing, is if we accept this passage of the Bible for what it is and actually consider what it is saying, it actually answers, with phenomenal brilliancy, some of the deepest and most perplexing philosophical dilemmas that exist. So here’s the plan, I’m not going to spend a ton of time following all the rabbit trails today justifying every minuet turn of interpretation, we’re just going to deal with the plain meaning of the text under three headings, “The Creator versus the Creature,” “The Glorious Purpose of God,” and “The Family from the Gospel” as they come up in this text.
The Creator versus the Creature
Let’s look at the first section here, “The Creator versus the Creature.” Paul’s first response to the question that comes up in our minds from our hearts is to put us in our place. Now I admit there is probably a soft version, that’s a little more gentle less defiant and emotively explosive and then there’s the harsh angry reactionary version. I think that the version I most identify with, so I’ll read it that way. Well, if God hardens whoever he wants, has mercy on whoever he wants to, and decides that before we’re born, then why does he still get pissed at us for sin! He’s planned it that way! I don’t know about you but that how it sounds to me. But maybe you hear the soft version, that’s okay, both are legit.
Now Paul’s first response comes back almost just as intense. It’s mother’s day and reading his response kind of reminds me of the times when I was disrespectful to my mother and my dad would says, “How dare you to talk to God like that! Go to your room right now!” It kind of sounds like that to me…”Who are you, O man, to answer back to God.”
But to be honest I really don’t think Paul has an angry tone here. Paul isn’t writing out of anger or out of a state in his life where he is fighting against God and God’s will for his life, he gave up fighting, he was humbled, and then God began to use him to reach people and start churches and write books of the Bible all to bring glory to God through the gospel.
Paul is writing as a pastor who cares for his people and wants them to understand and to love God. So he gives an illustration. “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?”
Clay and pottery, were not only illustrations used in Scripture by the prophets, both Jeremiah and Isaiah, but it was a very common and picturesque cultural illustration. It probably doesn’t work so well for us because we don’t see clay and potters and pottery wheels very often these days in San Diego unless you happen to have gone to a rich high school that had a pottery class you could take as an elective. I took that class, we all made bongs and ash trays. It was great fun. J But in the first century, when this was written, clay and pots were big business and that was a good trade to be in. If you went to the mission valley mall you would most likely see a potter working with a piece of clay on a wheel.
So Paul takes this picture and says look, does the piece of clay tell the potter, how to shape it, what sort of thing to make it into? The obvious answer is no. It’s a piece of clay, in the potter’s hands, to do whatever the potter wants to do with it. What Paul is getting at here is a Creator vs. Creature distinction. We are creatures. We can create things but only because we are made in the image of a great Creator who designed and created everything. It is a major class distinction.
The same issue comes up in the book of Job. The oldest book written in the Bible. If you’ve never heard the story of Job, he’s this dude who loves God but then all this bad stuff happens to him. He loses his house, a few of his kids die in a tragic accident, he gets a bad disease, his wife leaves him, and all the while his closest friends, rather than being friends and comforting and supporting him, they just berate him and tell him he must have really done something wrong to piss God off, so why doesn’t he just repent and then everything will get better. This goes on for like 30 some chapters, back and forth.
Finally, Job cant’ take it anymore and he starts questioning God. Literally suing him and calling him into a courtroom, he wants to put God on the stand because he thinks God has wrong him. All along Job is demanding God to answer him, but God has been silent. Then finally at the end of the book God shows up and answers him. Listen to some of God’s words to Job.
This is Job chapter 38. “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements, surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, 7 when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, 9 when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, 10 and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, 11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’? (Job 38:2-11)”
God continues on like this for four chapters!
“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are (Job 38:34-35)?’ Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with a mane? “Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high? (Job 39:1,19, 26-27) Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his? “Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity; clothe yourself with glory and splendor (Job 40:9-10).
Pretty humbling eh? Kind of sounds like Romans 9, “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God.” After God finished, it says Job repented in sackcloth and ash. He said, I uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know (Job 42:3).” That’s how we need to be.
The fact that these kind of questions, like “that’s not fair” and “what about free will” …the fact that they rise up in us shows us the defiance that is deeply seated in our hearts. That we would dare question and challenge God, shows our depravity. Humanity is so prideful, to think that we know better than God. Never. It’s the very thing that we need to be saved from, the consequence from turning away and defying the true and living God.
The Glorious Purpose of God
Let’s move on and talk about “The Glorious Purpose of God.” The next two verses are clearly not needed after what Paul has already said. We could end the sermon there and it would be enough. But Paul, wants to make things as clear as possible for us so that you might confidently put your faith in Jesus and trust him for his mercy and the promise of glory.
Verse 22 and 23, “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.”
Now don’t get sidetracked by the, “what if” here. Paul is not just postulating and throwing out some potential theory that may or may not be true. It’s not that kind of what if. It’s the kind of what if, which emphasizes the freedom of God to do as he chooses. You see God is the only one who has a truly free will, unconstrained in any way. God can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to or for whoever he wants, for any reason he wants, and whatever he does is good, because he always acts for his own glory.
Now I know that is a little hard for us to wrap our heads around. So I’m going to appeal to Jonathan Edwards first for some help here. I’m going to paraphrase him because he wore a wig and I think when dudes used to wear wigs it must have made them talk funny for some reason. So this is some wig talk from a book Jonathan Edwards wrote called, “Concerning the Divine Decrees.”
In it he says, it is right and good that glory should shine forth and be full, so every beauty and greatness of God ought to be manifested. It would be wrong for one aspect of his glory to shine and not another. So it is necessary that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice and holiness should be made known and that couldn’t be unless he determined that there would be sin so that it might be punished and shown to be truly horrible and evil. So evil is necessary, so that creatures who come to know the true happiness of God’s love, know how great that love is.
Now that is my sort of introduction to these two verses and the dreaded and often paralyzing question of how God can be a good and loving God if he creates people that he knows and determines will one day go to hell. I mean these verses simply cannot be clearer. “Vessels” that’s carrying clay and potter analogy, “Vessels of wrath, prepared beforehand for destruction.”
Wrath is an unending pouring out of justice against sin and evil in an experience of forever being destroyed. That’s hell. That’s bad. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. But this text is clear. People will experience that and God planned that. These are what some theologians call “the reprobate” and this is clear teaching of double-predestination and supralapsarianism. This is supreme theodicy, the Bible at its best. Smashing philosophy books left and right. And if all those big words don’t mean anything to you then don’t worry about it. That’s okay.
But what I do want you to worry about, what I want you to get is why God does this. Paul could have interjected another knee jerk reaction from us here, where we might say, well, does that mean then that God is evil? The answer is no. One, because he is not the direct actor of evil. God is holy and perfect and cannot be in the presence of sin or evil. He is separate from it. He hates it. What’s verse 22 say, he endures it with much patience and wills to happen that which he hates. He does not do evil but ordains it to be.
God ordered his creation in such a way that evil would necessarily come forth. He put the tree in the garden of Eden. He put the snake there. He set the whole thing up. Vessels of wrath prepared beforehand for destruction. And in the greatest display of God causing or willing evil to be is in the death of his Son Jesus. God set the whole thing up. He planned the murder of his son Jesus on the cross. Isaiah 53 says it was the will of the LORD to crush him. Why?
The answer is simple and earth shattering. For love. That many might know the true greatness and goodness of his glory in being saved through his love poured out on the cross. Let’s get it from the text. Look at it. What is God’s purpose with hell and evil, verse 23 “in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.”
The riches of his glory for vessels of mercy prepared beforehand for glory! Listen, God’s goal is mercy for some who will be in his good glory forever! Mercy, is not getting what you deserve. It is never a right but a privilege. Everyone deserves hell. We all suck and are all messed up deep inside. We’re all fist shakers and head turners against and away from God. We all want to be him and be the masters of our own fate, our own destiny, our own will. But God planned beforehand to have mercy on some and receive them into his glory. That is amazing!
I’ll give you two hopefully helpful examples and then we’ll move to our last point for today. The first example is one from my life, other than the love of God, the deepest love I know. The love of my wife. So here’s the example, would my wife Amy, feel loved and feel special and cherished by me if I slept with a bunch of other girls all the time. You know girls from work, church, the bar, the neighbors, wherever? No. Part of Amy knowing my love is that I do not love other women in the way I love her. I am hers in a special way.
Now, a second example. We live in a beautiful city. San Diego. It may not be the North Shore of Oahu, but it’s pretty great. The beaches, the bays, the parks, the people… Now if every city was the exact same as San Diego and everyone lived here, would it be that special? No. Part of us knowing how great San Diego is, is that it’s not Kansas.
In similar ways, not exactly, but similar. Part of the joy of the vessels of mercy is in seeing what they are saved from. It’s part of what magnifies and demonstrates the great love of God. That we, undeserving creatures, get to partake in the riches of his glory. Wow. Why did God choose who he did to be vessels for mercy and others vessels for wrath. I don’t know. That is a mystery the Bible does not tell us. It’s certainly nothing in any of us. We are all undeserving. And that is what makes mercy mercy.
The Family from the Gospel
That takes us into our last point for today, “The Family from the Gospel.” The family who is made from mercy. Let’s read the last portion of verses for today, “Even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea, ‘Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’ And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” And as Isaiah predicted, ‘If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.’”
In these last verses, we return to the specific application of the gospel, why went into all these deep theological questions in the first place…because the concern is whether or not people can be saved by Jesus. Whether the offer is true and real and can be trusted by each of us individually.
The people not my people thing, is a quote from the book of Hosea. Here’s the story of Hosea. God told the prophet Hosea to go marry a whore named Gomer. God told him she was a whore and that she would cheat on him, several times. And God said he wanted Hosea to marry her anyway and on top of that take her back each time. Why? Because God said that is a picture of his grace and love.
All of us in a sense are like whores. We belong to God, he is our creator, we are creature. But we have not loved him as served him and honored him as we ought…we haven’t been his people. We’ve denied him and turned away from him and prostituted ourselves out and away from his love. But through the grace of the gospel we can be welcomed into his family and seated in places of honor in his glory as sons and daughters of the living God!
Jew, Gentile, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you have come from, or how bad of things you have done. God can have mercy on you and bring you into his family through the salvation his son Jesus.
And that is what we need salvation. See where it says “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as a sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved.” That means there is a lot of people who will lay claim to God and say they are okay. The Jews may claim it through birthright. Others may claim it through merely thinking they are a good person or that they are spiritual. But none of those things deals with the consequence of sin that we must be saved from.
Verse 28 tells us there is a coming sentence from the Lord that will be carried out and it is not going to be good. It will be something like Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah were two cites where God handed down judgment. How did he do it? Genesis 19:24 says the Lord rained down sulfur and fire from out of heaven. That’s pretty gnarly. The good news is that through Jesus we can escape that sentence and be in the special family of heaven. And that has effects for us not only in the future but here and now!
Conclusion
And this whole sermon has been pretty gnarly, so let’s conclude. How do you take everything we’ve said and looked at today and apply it to your life? I’ll give you three things, one for each of the main points.
First, from the “Creator Versus the Creature”: be humble before God. Remember you are creature. You are not the Creator. You are creature, so be humble. I’m reading through the book of Isaiah in my personal morning Bible reading. Every Christian ought to read their Bible every morning, so I do that. Here is a verse that stuck out to me. Isaiah 8:13 “The LORD of hosts, him you shall regard as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.” Be humble before God and fear him above all the worries and cares of this life. Whether it is money, or your job, or a potential mate, or a test, or whether things will work out for you or if it is what somebody might think about you. Don’t fear any of those things. Fear God and he will take care of you.
Second, from “The Glorious Purpose of God”: seize the glory of God. Maybe you’ve were sitting there wondering, or maybe hoping, “Man, I sure hope I’m not a vessel of wrath, that would sure suck.” There a good way not to be. Make all of your life not about you, make it about God, pursue his glory with all your might. Mercy comes through Jesus. If you want to be a vessel of mercy, really put your faith and trust in Jesus and live for him. He suffered on the cross so you don’t have to suffer eternally and can’t just receive mercy. So embrace Jesus. Draw close to him and the glory of God will begin to shine in your life in all kinds of ways. Allow the gospel of Jesus to change you and really take hold of your life.
Third and last, from “The Family From the Gospel”: become a part of God’s family. If you’re not a Christian yet, become one. We take communion together here each week as a family. It’s a piece of bread dipped in some wine, the grace of Jesus’ body, his perfect life, and the grace of Jesus’ death, his perfect blood given for us. It doesn’t make us Christians but rather each week we confess our sin and thank Jesus for the forgiveness of his cross. That’s the first step. Then there’s the second step, where out of that faith you start getting to know the other sons and daughters of God in this church. Get hooked up in a community group and start sharing some gospel life together in this city. It’s a wonderful thing, we really love each other and we’ll love you.
Okay, let’s pray. God, once again thank you for this hard text. I pray that we would be less quick to speak out against you as your people. May we have humble and submissive hearts not ones full of rebellion and defiance. Thank you God for sending Jesus so that we might have mercy. I thank you that you are a merciful God and have determined to show your glory to vessels of mercy. Thank you God for opening up your holy family to us, that we might truly be your sons and daughters, not just creatures but family members. Thank you for your church Jesus and how your love and beauty is so powerfully at work in it. Minister to your people now head pastor Jesus, Amen.
