Lesson 43b & begin 9:22-33 Lesson 44a
Romans 9:17-21 · Mike Doyle · Nov 24, 2019
Romans (2018-21), No. 91
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926191716043

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're in lesson 43. I know a lot of you came up and got 44, but we're not done with 43. Maybe to bring you up to speed here, let's do this. We've been studying Romans, and we are in chapter 9. I'm going to read the verses for you here. Chapter 9, 10, and 11 of Romans has more to do with, not so much with what's going on with you as a believer, but has to do with the nation of Israel and all of the blessings that God had given to the Gentiles in the church. Did He turn His back on the Jews and just dismiss them? And so 9, 10, and 11 deal with that subject. And we were down to verse I'll start at 18.

So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. And you will say to me then, why does he find fault? For who can resist his will? On the contrary, who are you, O man, who asks back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this, will it? 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? What if God, willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

So what we're dealing with is things like God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. And we've talked about Pharaoh, we've talked about a lot of different viewpoints. And the issue is, is God sovereign? The answer, yes, He is. But did He give man what we would call free will? Yes, He did. So when we get to question seven in this instance, then you have to answer the question, why does He find fault? For who can resist His will? Who can do that? So why does he find it? Is that a legitimate question that the writer can say, why does he find fault for who can resist his will? In other words, how can he condemn me? It's one of those answers that there really is no answer to.

And if you have an answer to that question, can you put God's sovereignty and man's free will in the same paragraph and explain it? Is God sovereign? Yes. Do you have the ability to believe or not believe? Yes, you do. But, whosoever will may come, but why are you in Christ? How did all of you get in Christ? Because you got real smart one day and learned the truth and went for it, right? God had nothing to do with that.

Right? It's just your own whatever. your right circumstances at the right time in the right environment so how do you explain the human will and the divine sovereignty it just seems to lead to no answer does it or does it not okay thinking about that the point Paul is insisting on is that God is sovereign and what we don't understand about God or especially those who are asking questions like that That God's sovereignty, I'll put it another way, God's desire is to always bless His creation. Always. Every human being, He wants to bless them. On Wednesday night we're studying Genesis and that's all I see in there is how men are such idiots and God is always looking for a way to bless them, no matter what they do.

So if you start with the premise that God's sovereignty and His focus and His energy is focused on blessing people, then for a man to stand up and say, well, you know, he wants to bless me, but what if I'm not one of the called? What if I'm not one of the called? Why should I even care? Should he care? Can you answer back to God? The point is that if you say to a sovereign God who's trying to do nothing but bless you, Well, where's my role in this? And why should I even be worried about this? Because I couldn't resist your will if you called me, and I can't resist your will if you didn't call me.

So I'm just going to stay and smoke my Marlboros and wait for the end. Or vape the... what is that vaping stuff that's going on now? So the writer gets down to using the vessel of clay and the potter. Can the vessel say to the potter, no, I don't like the way you're making me, remake me another way?

Can he say that? He can say it. Does it matter? Can a human being as an implement or a utensil be used by God for a special purpose? And can the human being say, no, I don't want to be that way? Tom? I'll give you a quick answer to that. There's a little song that says, He's Still Working on Me. If you're familiar with that one, it tells a whole lot about that attitude. Yeah, it does. It does.

Use the example of Pharaoh. It says that he's hardened Pharaoh's heart. So he chose Pharaoh to harden his heart to make an example to glorify himself, right? What was the issue with Pharaoh? Did he choose Pharaoh to harden his heart or did Pharaoh harden his heart continually and the Lord turn him over to that?

What do you think? What he said. That's brilliant. You need to get back on the web. The predisposition for man, born in Adam with a sin nature, is to always be hardened towards God. Always that way. That's the way the sin nature operates. So when this incident with the Jews and Pharaoh and Egypt and all of that starts up, what does God do? He has a specific purpose that He wants to carry out, yet He knows that Pharaoh's heart is hardened by Pharaoh. And so when He says, I want my people to go, and these circumstances happen because He says no, Pharaoh is hardening his own heart towards God, right? And then God says, OK, that's enough. We're moving forward now. I'm not going to solicit you any longer. I'm going to leave you where you are. Not that God hardened his heart. It says that he did, but all he did was withdraw his grace towards him.

Mike. Thinking about it, I think of his all-knowing. He knows all things. He's out of time. he can see everything and know everything. So I ain't got no question about his sovereignty. Well, I think that the natural mind looks at God's sovereignty because the main ingredient of the sin nature is I'm going to put my throne above yours.

I need to be recognized. I need to have some sort of status in this equation. that God and I need to work out a deal because I'm relative. And God's attitude is, is that, well, I'm the creator and I did all this to demonstrate my glory and to bless you. And you resist me by having an attitude towards me of, wait a minute, I want some input into this. And he said, why don't you just receive my grace? Why don't you just receive the blessing that I have for you? rather than negotiate from your darkened position to something you think you want. Do you see that premise?

So to come to the realization as a believer that the sovereignty of God is a positive thing for us, that He desires to bless us way beyond what we could even understand, is a good thing. You know, God doesn't want us from the Adamic coming from Adam to negotiate with him about what the blessings are going to be. Because we will always pick second best. And we will always pick something that will destroy us. So, why would a man refuse the Gospel? Why would Christine refuse the Gospel? In God's infinite wisdom and knowledge, God reads with unerring accuracy the operation of the human heart. I'm talking about you. Man looks on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looks at the heart.

Man says, if I am not one of God's elect, an object of His mercy, then I cannot do right and God shall not blame me. So this writer says, I asked an intelligent man in western Michigan. If you're from Michigan, it's a problem. If you had believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and he burst out and said in a loud voice saying, if I'm an elect, I'll go to heaven. If I'm not elect, there's no use in my worrying about the question.

I rebuked him sternly and said, God commands men that they should all everywhere repent as much as he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained." Oh, judgment. So, think about the argument here. What is man trying to do? He's trying to say to God, well, you don't have the right to judge me. You don't have the right to say anything to me. I have a right.

God commands are God's enablings. You ever think about that? If God commands you as a believer to what Vern used to call the logical imperatives, right? If He commands you, does He take a step back and fold His arms and say, well, let's see how you do? What do you think?

He gives me the ability to do it. That's right. His commands always have the enablement in it. They always do. He created man to have that ability, right? Yes, He did. So the enablement is always based on the fact that the enablement comes with your dependence on Him. He set it up that way. Because none of us, well, maybe some of you guys in the back row, back where Courtney sits. People might think that they're responsible for their own salvation, but they're not. It's God who saves. But they believe, which enables God to bless them.

I wonder, have you guys brought up chapter 1 in Romans in regards to this already? I've been out, so I was just curious. Because there's a disposition that man is in already. They've already exchanged the worship of the Creator for the worship of the creation, right?

So that's where they are. And that's where each person is. And so, when they ask that question about election, they are, at that point in time, worshiping the creation. And they have a belief system, they have a faith. That's right. They're operating according to that worship system. Sure. Right? Right.

So, it's interesting to keep that in mind, in the sense of when someone is presented the Gospel and they reject, it's not a, let me think about it, right? We talked about... Well, they've made a decision, if that's what they say. They've already decided. They've already made a decision at that point.

Can they change their mind after the Lord's turned them over, even in chapter 1? He gives them over to all those degrading lusts it talks about. Can they still change their mind? So God doesn't necessarily remove His grace from them, but He pursues them, but He allows them to pursue their worship of creation, right?

Yeah. I think part of this is in answer to the question Can man refuse the gospel? If the answer is yes, he can. Why does he? You know what the simple answer I think is? He loves sin more than he loves God. That's the simple answer. Now you don't want to stand before God and say, hey, I like sin a lot more than I like you. But that's really what it comes down to. And I marvel at the Ten Commandments. The first commandment is that I'm the Lord thy God and I shall not have false gods before me. You ever think about who the false god is? Who is it? It's me. It's Bob Eccle. It's you. It's Regan. Well, it isn't Courtney.

This person who refuses the gospel, how does he or she define sin? Yeah, that's a good question. You said they're choosing sin rather than the Lord. Yeah. So how do they define sin? Mike. Who is it? I think Darby says, sin is the self-will which sprang from unbelief that doubted God's Word. Well, look at the first human being. There's no sin. What's that? Some people don't think.

Well, if you define sin as missing the mark, J.D. and I, a few years ago when the kids were littler, to demonstrate this principle to them, what missing the mark was, we drew this bullseye on the wall down the stairs. Phil, there's a couple of holes probably still in there. And we made these little tiny darts for them with pins on them. Do you remember that?

And they had to stand back here. And they had to hit the target. Well, we purposely made the darts so that they wouldn't even get to the wall. And so as hard as they would throw it, like Luke Jenkins was winding up and he'd throw it as hard as he couldn't get about to here.

And that's what the mark is. And if you're going to be saved on your own, you have to hit the mark. You've got to hit the mark. Well, the problem is, nobody can hit the mark. So here comes God and says to you, if you believe me, I will save you. You just have to believe, I'll give you the gospel information, and if you believe me, then I will save you. Anybody. The message goes out to anybody and everybody. And man says, man says, you know what? I got this. I got this. Isn't that what we say? The man who turns down the gospel says to God, I don't need you, I got this. I can handle this.

A guy that Donna knows and Bob knows, a doctor in California whose kidney failed and he's on dialysis. He said to my friend, you know what the toughest thing about this is? All my life I've been faced with hurdles to overcome. School, medical school. He said, I've been able to conquer every one of them except this one. And my friend said, that's a good thing.

It's about time you learned that you can't fix everything. And that's what the Gospel message is. And that's where the sovereignty of God and the free will of man come in because the issue is you cannot save yourself because what's the standard on our bullseye on the wall what is the standard for salvation? what do you have to be able to accomplish to be saved? perfection if you're going to take it on yourself you have to be absolutely perfect Under the law, you have to be able to do it all. And even if you're able to do it all, at the end of the day, what have you accomplished? You still haven't hit the mark. Because why haven't you? What's the mark? Okay, who's the mark? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the mark.

Oh, and He's God. And He has His own righteousness. And if you could keep the law perfectly yourself, whose righteousness would you have? Mine. God says, it's not good enough. He's the righteousness. And you can attain His righteousness simply by believing. Man says, oh, that's way too simple. It's too easy. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And that's what He chose.

And that's what all men do until Even when they get it, they turn away from it. Because in order to be saved, you've got to have a savior. Oh, one of those guys. Somebody has to save you. And that's a very difficult thing to arrive at. So most of us become believers through that process. Well, we all become believers through that process. But spiritual growth is, well, now that I'm saved, I've got this.

Especially if I'm under a law system. I'll tell you what to do. You look at God and say, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. Well, gee, who told her that before? It was those Jews. They said, just tell us what to do, God, and we'll do it. He said, okay. How about 600? You all right with that? And if you break one, the whole thing goes. A quick thought, if you don't mind.

So, Bob, you asked how do unbelievers define sin. That's kind of interesting In chapter 1, the Bible tells us the mentality of the unbeliever, right? So, how they define sin is not accurate. So, we're told that they were made evident the eternal nature of God. Yeah, in Romans 1. And so, A, they know what sin is, to a degree, right? They may not know the fullness of what the Scripture says is sin, but they know the rejection of their Creator is wrong.

But they've hardened themselves so much to the degree that now it's like the jack-in-the-box. It keeps popping up, convicting them, but they've learned to sit on top of that jack-in-the-box to the point where it's not convicting them in the same way. So then they redefine it as relative to themselves, right?

My sin is what I believe is morally right and wrong. And that has a complete contrast to someone across the world that thinks that murdering young kids is okay. Well, relative to them, they think that's right. Then you get into a definition of sin that is based on your own personal sovereignty, but at the heart of that is the rejection of God as the Creator. And so, even though someone may say, this is sin and this is wrong, and I'm not a believer, but I'm defining morally right and wrong, they know in their heart who the Creator is and they've rejected Him. And so that definition is, in complete dichotomy and contrast, it's the one thing in their heart that they cannot stop wrestling with for the rest of their lives, right?

Yeah, I think so. Politics. Well, and politics are a way to show that, you know, that relative view of what is right and what is wrong. Sure. But I would argue that they don't even have the word sin in their mind. It's probably evil or something like that. Yeah, that they won't even, like, come to that concept that we hold.

Because it's easier to live that way. Yeah, I think if you ask most people, is mankind basically good or basically bad? They'll say good. And I would say the world system would say basically good with maybe a few flaws around the edge. So sin is not well defined by the unbeliever.

That's right. You got to come to the end of yourself to believe, right? And how does that happen? As Newell says, to be disappointed with yourself is to believe in yourself. But in John 15, John says that the Lord Jesus said, I'm going to send my spirit and he's going to convict the world of sin.

Right? He's going to do the convicting. Based on what premise? Because they don't believe in me. He does the convicting. Now, you talk to Mr. average person who's got his own moral system going. Has the Holy Spirit convicted that guy? Sure he has. Now, I don't know what the circumstances are. I don't know a guy who, a man or a woman who lives in, I don't know, somewhere that we don't think the gospel ever got to, can righteously say to God, hey, you know, I never got the message. Yeah, you did. I don't know how he got it to you, but he says the Spirit of God got it to you. What was the message? You're convicted because you don't believe. Interesting. And why, by the way, this wonderful free will we supposedly all have, what's it designed to do? Why do you have a free will? To believe. That's it. That's it. That's why you have it.

So God is so gracious The question nine was, so how does Romans 3.11 fit into this discussion? Interesting. 3.11 says, there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God. Oh boy. Does humanity understand anything about God? They only understand what the Spirit of God shows them.

And usually the conviction of sin, I think, from the Spirit of God is just to show you you're lost. You know, like I've told you a thousand times, I came to Christ at 35. My religious background was Catholicism. You know, He finally convinced me that I was lost. I wasn't persuaded for some time, though, that the answer was the Gospel. You know, I always was looking for, well, I tried this and this and this and this and that didn't work. I was fully aware of the fact that my sin nature and my ability to control it was out of control.

It took 35 years for him to persuade me about that, but he did. And so when the gospel was presented, all you have to do is believe in the person and work of Christ and He will save you for all eternity. That was a very tough thing. He will do it. You mean all of my efforts aren't any good or were not any good? Can't you give me another set of rules that might be easier? Or how about if I, you know, were of, I don't know, tell me I've done it all in turn from what my denomination told me to do and it didn't work and He will save me. And I began to understand Jesus is the Savior. He's the one that's going to save me.

I just have to depend on Him to do it. You know the saying, if any of you don't make it to heaven, you know whose fault it is? It's Christ's fault, not yours. It's His fault. Because He guaranteed to save you if you would believe Him. Did you believe Him? Yeah. End of story. You're saved. And then, of course, enter in the whole idea of living the Christian life. That's a whole other dependency thing that we learn. Let's see.

Adam sinning turned his back and fled from the Holy God. God had to take the place of the seeker. You ever notice that? God is always the seeker. Nobody seeks after God, not one, but God seeks you out. No human being has ever sought the Holy God, conscious of his creature's weakness and also of responsibility and guilt and filled with terrors of conscience, terrors directly demon wrought, or perhaps under the delusion that some god might grant him this or that favor.

It goes along with what you're saying. Man has built his temples and conducts his worship. Banish from your mind the idea that any human being has ever had a holy thought. This idea that man's good? No way. Somebody ought to send a text message to Rush Limbaugh, that's what he believes.

Or a holy thought or love for a holy God in his natural heart. Grace is the old phrase expressing the truth that God himself takes the place of the seeker, the convictor, the persuader, the giver, and the final perfecter of all man's salvation. He's the one. And if he wasn't sovereign, none of that would be true. You get that? If he wasn't sovereign, none of that is true.

So, his sovereign grace goes ahead of and brings into being all human responses to God. Who can resist his grace? Alright, last question in 43. Have we seen the reference to man as a clay before in the Bible? I forget the chapter. But it's quoted from here. Jeremiah 18. Where? Jeremiah 18. Okay, before that. How about Genesis chapter 3? How about Genesis chapter 2, 7? And then the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground. What do you think the dust of the ground is?

Clay. Yeah. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, plural, and man became a living being. But a couple of these other things are kind of cool. According to primitive ideas, man is regarded as issuing from the earth. The traditions of Libya made the first human being spring from the plains heated by the sun. The Egyptians declared the Nile mud, exposed to the heat of the sun, brought forth gems which sprang up as bodies of men. The subsequent divine operation endowed these bodies with soul and intellect, and the divine fashioner appears upon some moments molding clay wherewith to form a man upon a potter's wheel.

The Peruvians called the first man animated earth. They didn't have the Old Testament did they? The Mandans of North America related to the Great Spirit molded two figures of clay which he dried and animated with the breath of his mouth. One receiving the first One receiving the name First Man and the other his companion.

So, gee, I wonder where they got all that information. That reminds me of, I don't know how many years ago, Don and I went, you know, any of you remember the Aztec display that came up from Mexico that was down at the Denver History Museum? We were the only city in the country that got that. And this was all about the Aztec culture from in and around Mexico City.

And they had gods, and guess what the ultimate deal was in front of their gods? Sacrifice. Oh, and human sacrifice. Oh, and a virgin. Where do you think they got the idea that sacrifice was part of this appeasement of God? That it took a death to appease God. Where do you think they got that? I don't think there was an email from Jerusalem.

They're all descendants of the family of Noah, and those people knew about the flood and were taught about it. Yeah, it's interesting how much the traditional stories of different cultures line up biblically, but with a few changes here and there. Everybody seems to know the story. Okay. So, end of 43, now going to 44. Did the buzzer go off yet? Awesome. We're moving along. Prophecy. So, I want you to read... Did you hear that beep? Yes. You know where it came from? My ears.

Read verse 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? And then verse 23. And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand.

So the first question is, what's the difference in the statement of verse 22 and 23? What is the difference? It seems like it's saying the same thing two different ways. It's not though. Verse 22 says the vessels of wrath were fitted to destruction. And verse 23 says, the vessels of mercy are previously prepared for glory. So what's different about those? Wrath and mercy.

The verb is not equivalent to foreordained. In other words, fitted by the adjustment of parts emphasizing the concurrence of all the elements of the case of the final result. Prepared is a more general term. In the fitted term, the results are indicated. In the latter term, previously prepared, the latter is in advance. In other words, fitting may or may not be in advance, but prepared previously is.

Do you see the difference there? Why is that important? Note, before prepared, while before is wanting in verse 22, it's fitted. In this passage, the direct agency of God is distinctly stated. In the other, the agency is left indefinite. In verse 23, it's a single act as indicated.

There is a process in advance. Do you get the difference there? Because they do look the same, don't they? Yeah. When it says he endured with much patience, that's what drew me. The vessels of wrath. Yeah. The vessels of wrath are fitted to destruction.

So the word fitted, let's think about what that word means and try to distinguish it from previously prepared. Would you say that previously prepared is something that's already done? finished. Would you say fitted is something that's going on now? This brought up a really interesting thought I just had. It's kind of a first one.

Wrath is not eternally past, right? But glory is. Glory is eternal past, eternal future, right? Because that's who God is. So wrath came as a result of what man did. So the beforehand fits because that's an eternal, glory is an eternal thing, eternally passed, right? So beforehand, is this too out there? Is this making sense? So wrath came in at a certain point in time.

It wasn't an eternal attribute that God, or it wasn't an action that God took eternal in the past. It was something that was a result of, and what's similar in both these verses is justice, right? What's different is how that justice gets carried out.

That's okay. Let's add another element. If you look at, like Psalm 58-3 says, the wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they're born, speaking lies. But that does not say they've been previously prepared. Go. You know, prepared, kind of the concept that God knows who's going to be written in the Book of Life.

Then it's an appropriate outcome for those to whom God pours out His wrath. Well, you line it up with Romans chapter 3, that none seek after God, no, not one. You have to start at the right place. But the right place is that none seeks after God, that all have fallen short of the glory of God. Mike, the Greek does agree. He's looking at the fitted, the perfect tense, so it's continuous going on, where the prepared is aristense. Which is finished, done. So it's a continuous fitting going on. Fitted for destruction, but prepared is perfect.

Well, I've got a couple more pages of notes on that, so we'll pick that up next week. Now, if you want to come back to a really good class, you're all welcome. We'll talk afterwards. We'll talk, but I won't listen. I feel like we're not welcome here.

Father how we thank you for your word and we thank you for the opportunity to study it and we do rejoice in the fact that you are sovereign and that you have nothing but thoughts of kindness and blessing towards us and we thank you we pray in your son's precious name amen