We Want to Thank God Today for Not Being Fair
Romans 9:19-21 · Mike Doyle · Aug 11, 2024
Romans (2022-25), No. 085
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261936122053

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

in order to kind of understand the verses we're gonna talk about today, you kind of have to back up a little bit and come forward with them. So I was prepared. I'm usually not, but I was this time. So I wanna read, starting in chapter nine of Romans, verse 14. And I'll read down to 18 and then, The verses we have today are 19, 20, and 21. You know, sometimes I remember to do this and sometimes I don't. Well, I just remembered this time. I ought to have Bob remind me every week, because this needs to be done.

Let's take a minute and just quietly with the Lord, and if you need to reconcile with him about anything, it's a good time to do it, and then we'll start. Okay, Romans 9 verse 14. Question, what shall we say then? Is there no injustice with God? Is there? May it never be.

For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it doesn't depend on the man who wills or on the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth. So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. So that brings us to these verses that we're gonna cover today.

You will say to me then, how does he still find fault? For who resists his will? On the contrary, who are you, old man, who answers back to God? The things molded, The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this? Will it? Or does not the potter have the right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and the other for common use?

So it's interesting, these verses are true because we have a sovereign God. If they were true, if the only thing that God ever did was be righteous and holy and true, then we would wanna thank Him for that, or would we wanna thank Him for not being fair? You know, we talked about that last week. I think we need to thank God for not being fair, because if He was only fair, we all go to hell. So he has this characteristic of mercy and grace.

And so it's important for us to understand that he is a merciful God and he has made provision so that he could bless man. But if you're a non-believer or a Jew in this case, and you listen to God, you say, well, if that's the case, I have a question.

Why do you still find fault in me? If you're a God of mercy and a God of love, who has resisted your will? Two questions here. Why do you still find fault? And who can resist your will? Sounds like a reasonable question. Has resisted is in the perfect tense, which means it's completed in the past with abiding results going into the future, and what it really means to set oneself against, to withstand or resist or to oppose permanently. Use of the perfect tense here speaks of a process of standing against God's will, which has come to a finished end. In other words, all mankind has already decided about God's will, that how can he find fault with me? The one who is able to do it and resulting in a state that of a confirmed and permanent stand against God, Kenneth Weist. I don't think we really realize early on in our Christian lives the world's focus is permanently, permanently against God.

So God can advance in his agenda with the Jews, and that's the framework of these three chapters we're going through, 9, 10, and 11. He can advance through his framework with the Jews any way he chooses. provided it lines up with his righteousness. God is not unrighteous. He always acts righteously. So we're in a situation here where, gee, I hope God is going to give me a break. Well, he doesn't give you a break just because he decides.

He doesn't take our sinfulness and sweep it under the carpet. the object of these Jews established in the frankness of which the mercy of God as well as the hardening had been maintained by Paul in the previous verses regarding Pharaoh. So if you read the verse that, well, Pharaoh, I've raised you up for the very purposes to show my power and to spread my name. And a person, a Jew would look at God and say, well, how can you, if you're that powerful, how can you find fault in me? You know, if that's really what you did with Pharaoh, which it is.

Man has an unbroken will and it imposes itself into this kind of thinking to resolve all questions of good and evil and feed them into God's purpose. By the way, what is God's purpose? Do you know? I learned a really interesting thing on you guys that are in on the Wednesday night We were talking about that this last Wednesday, and thanks to Andrew, he recommended that we have a review, that if dispensational theology is all about glorifying God, Reformed theology is all about rescuing man. So when you say, Man's will is unbroken in what respect?

Glorifying God. They compete. We compete with God and we think somehow we have a standing. But this is a mere human deduction which loses sight of God's moral glory as well as the responsibility of the creature. You don't see God's glory and you don't see your own responsibility. So, When we say, why does he still find fault?

Who can resist his will? Without a doubt, the purpose of God does stand, and there's no creature which does not, in the end, serve his will. Doesn't seem that way, but it always works out, so it's serving his will. Even Satan. Little as he intends, it only shows it best when he seems most to succeed with his lies and destructive power in hindering and persecuting those who are precious in the Lord's eyes.

Take the cross for example. It's really plain there. It's unanswerable example of God's purpose. The cross would seem to be the greatest travesty in history. to crucify the Son of God, but it was God's plan that that happened. And so when you understand it and you walk with the Lord, you understand the cross is really, how can everything centers in the cross and comes out from there?

Everything changes at the cross. But should this question weaken our moral judgment of the creature's sinfulness? Can I go to God and say, well, God doesn't really matter. I mean, the tone of the question, deny the fact that Satan and man are responsible for all they do against God and that both must be punished for it. Pretty harsh.

Peter accuses the men of Israel with the guilt of crucifying the Messiah that he says in Acts 2.23, him being delivered by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, there's God's will at work, you have taken and by hands of lawless men have crucified and slain. You did this.

How different is the holy and perfect word of God. Everything in its place, not one side only, but both sides, God has a determinate counsel and foreknowledge of everything that happens, and not only on a grand scale, but in your life, and in my life, every little thing, because you belong to him. So the Jew played their evil part, and so did the Gentiles in the crucifixion. Together, however, at odds in thoughts and feelings about each other, Jewish against Gentile, they both demonstrated their character of guilt before a holy God. By displaying the very same facts, they fulfilled the prophecies and gave opportunity to display the holiest judgment of God. The cross is a display of that.

And the accomplishments of the work of grace, just like he did But just like he did to Pharaoh when Pharaoh refused God's request, six times, God sent Moses to Pharaoh and said, look, let my people go. And six times, Pharaoh hardened his own heart and wouldn't let him go. What that turned out to be is six opportunities for God to demonstrate his power. If Pharaoh would have said yes on the first one, God would have had one point to demonstrate his power, but he said, Pharaoh said no six times, and then after that, God hardened Pharaoh's heart up to 10 plagues. So the purpose of that, as we talked about a lot last week.

Consequently, their growing reasoning is wholly false. The question itself is false. The test of man served to discover his evil condition. The fruit of his departure from God was dishonored by him, starting with Adam, when all was very good to them. I can't imagine any better circumstance for a man than Adam had in the garden. Didn't he? I mean, what was it? He had nothing, he had everything he needed. And even then, man turned against God. whose very new trial only served to demonstrate with increasing evidence the depth and extent of sin and the impossibility of redeeming the flesh.

Now, I know that you secretly harbor in your heart that your flesh is redeemable, but mine might not be. The flesh is not redeemable. Why do you think we were crucified with Christ? So that the flesh would be put out of business. The sin nature would be not able to act.

So the wisdom of God is that he can and does turn all that man pursues in his unfeeling recklessness to aim of his purpose, but when this is altogether independent of man's will, which is always and indefensibly evil. We think sometimes that my viewpoint is superior to God's viewpoint. Yet he's been planning and putting things together long before you came on the scene. And the problem is we don't have the capacity to understand God's will at first.

Not only is God free to censure man, but he's gonna judge man for all by the Lord Jesus in the last day. In the last day. Now, I'm gonna pick on John Calvin for a minute. John Calvin says in covenant theology that those who perish were destined to destruction by the will of God.

That's his belief. True statement or not? He said it, that's the only part of it that's true. The rest of the statement isn't true. But Scripture never speaks that way. The language of the text usually cited in support of such a judgment, when closely as well as fairly examined, invariably avoids such a thought, however close it may seem to estimate the truth. And truth it is, but the expression of the heart anxious to gather an excuse for its own willful evil, and it pleads against judgment from the irresistible will of God.

Miles Stanford said one time, the problem with John Calvin is that he punished, or he redeemed a man, but he let the man go free. He could do whatever he wanted. What the cross really says is the man didn't go free. He was crucified with Christ. So scripture never says that sin was God's purpose. You won't find that. It's not there. Man having fallen under sin is the platform where God does display his ways, his counsels, and even displays himself.

God did not make any man to do evil, but from all, man being evil after Eden already, he does choose according to his sovereign will and show mercy to some and not all. though all may be no more guilty than some may have been. I'm not any less guilty than a mass murderer. I'm not any less guilty before God or more guilty than anybody else. See, that's why the premise that I'm thankful and you're thankful that God just doesn't do everything fairly.

Because if he did, we're all toast. We're not gonna make it. So because of the cross, because God was satisfied about the sin nature, now he's in a position to show mercy where he will, but nobody deserves it. Nobody deserves it. So you have to start, I think, with that premise.

God would be perfectly just to destroy everybody, but if he is pleased to spare whom he will, Who shall say to him, that's not fair? It would be to set up a claim of superiority over God, and it's really an attempt to judge him. Gee, the sin nature never tries to judge God, does it? Whenever a sinner is brought to Christ, the sinner feels and owns the just judgment of God. Even though such a recognition sanctions the execution of the divine sentence against oneself, I'm and you are saved by grace alone.

I did nothing to earn it. Faith is the one requisite and it's a non, it's the one thing a man can do he can't take any credit for. The credit is in who and what he believes. Arguments like this always presuppose that conscience is not yet searched out, and that's really true. We've talked this morning about prayer, and we were talking, we've talked in the last several weeks about how God has to go through this process with every one of us so our conscience doesn't excuse us or accuse us, but lines up with what God's will is for a believer. The will not bent, it presupposes a will not bent or broken before God. I mean, our constitution tells us we've got a will, we can do what we want, we're free, really.

You're a slave to sin is what you are, that's how free it is. There's no hint of unrighteousness with God or an explanation of the necessity of man sinning as part of God's purpose. Could this satisfy a repentant soul? Everybody who comes to Christ, especially a little later on in life, recognizes that I'm saved and you're saved by grace alone, only that. It was his grace that saved me. I didn't deserve any of it.

So verse 20 tells us, on the contrary, who are you, O man, who answered back to God, the thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me this way? First response, what right do humans have to question God about anything? Who are you to reply against God? Literally, who are you to answer against or make an argument of reply towards God? If you get honest with yourself, you ever argued with God?

You ever said to Him, it can't be this way. It can't be like that. I think, or I, or I something. But the response is, we don't have the right to question God. He's sovereign. The second question is, what right does a creature, the created being, have to question his or her purpose as determined by God? In other words, will the thing formed say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? God is our creator, and for believers, he is the owner. And thus, he has a right to show mercy to who he will, and he can harden others, and he's perfectly righteous in doing that. Perfectly righteous.

We talked about it at Sunday school this morning that I get kidded by Nick over here, because he doesn't ever want me to pray for him. Because if I pray a certain way, it's sure thing that it's gonna happen the other way. But he doesn't take it, Nick. account is the fact that if I can pray any way I want, I have that freedom, but I pray subject to God's will. And I understand that maybe the circumstances that are going on are beneficial in the long run and not quick fixable in the quick fix early run, that it works out better. So that's why, but he says, don't pray for me. I said, okay, I won't do it anymore. For the Jews, in such a case, to entertain the thought of unrighteousness of God is an ugly lack of memory. No kidding. Not only of their actual condition in relation to Him, but of their only hope of a sovereign mercy.

What's interesting about the Jews is that all that they learned, or all that they did before God, they conveniently forget it. Once before the Jews took the ground of righteousness and accepting the law, they told God, you give us, tell us what to do and we'll do it. They accepted the role, the responsibility. But before the tables of stone were even brought down from the mountain, what happened? They forfeited their privilege before God.

They forfeited it. Now, would you say that when they violated the most, fundamental precepts that God had called him to live under, that God would be purposefully, perfectly righteous to wipe out the entire Jewish nation. Wouldn't like it, but could he? Should he? If he was only righteous, he would have. How many did he wipe out?

3,000. Therefore, there's no hope for them unless he has compassion and mercy. Same with us. There's no hope for us unless God is merciful and gracious. They had demonstrated what they really were and very soon after they promised because of their self-confidence. Oh yeah, we can do that. Give us a king and tell us what to do and we'll do it. I learned this, another new thing. I'm always learning new things, really cool.

This week that God's covenant with Abraham with the promises and all that went to it was a lifestyle that he wanted them to live. The reason that the Mosaic Covenant came later was they didn't know what the rules were. So Moses, through God, gave them the rules. He said, this is how you should live if you're my people. And they said, oh, no problem, we'll do it. It lasted less than 30 days. You know, like last week, I really laughed.

I'm still laughing about the passages where Aaron is explaining to Moses why the people, you know, left good ground and began to worship the calf. And here's what his excuse was. Well, we had a fire. And they brought me all their gold, and I put it in the fire, and guess what? A calf came out the other end. Like, no responsibility, it's just calf showed up. That was his excuse. It rings so true with me. I've gone to the Lord a hundred times and said, a calf just came out. He said, oh really? Let's talk about that.

So over the years, the people had repeatedly gone on an ondologist rebellion against God. And at length, they were swept away by God. Now, I thought I would talk a little bit about, a little bit about some of the greatness of the Jewish nation and how they would promise God things, they wouldn't live up to it, and then God would come and he would chastise them through captivity and things like that.

First there was Israel by the Assyrians. The Assyrians took the Jews away out of their country. And when you take a Jew out of your country, what have you done? You've taken a promise away from them. Because the land is one of the promises. And then Judah was taken out by the Babylonians. And now the returned remnant that was in Israel at the time of Paul living, who ruled Israel when Christ was on the earth? It was the Romans. It wasn't the Jews. It was the Romans.

And all are now guilty of rejecting the Messiah. So here their Messiah shows up and now they've rejected him. So as well as arguing with God's grace, to the Gentiles. So they're arguing, how can you bring the Gentiles in? The verses we've covered over the last few weeks. Well, you have to be born a Jew in order to be a Jew. And so the answer to that is real simple. Do you Jews want to accept Hagar as one of yours? No, no, we can't accept her, she's not. Well, she's one of Abraham's offsprings. Oh, but we can't have her because she doesn't come from the line of Jacob. So how about Esau? Isn't Esau son of Abraham?

Yeah, well, we don't want him. He's not of the pure line. So what we discovered from that was that being a Jew is a matter of faith, not a matter of ethnicity. So it's plain then that man is ready to do the most self-righteous things when he has the least reason for it. Not this man, but Barabbas.

We'll have no king but Caesar, answered the chief priests. They didn't have any faith then. They demonstrated that their faith was null and void, and absurd would have, absurd would it have become, these people at such a time to ask, is there unrighteousness with God? The nerve of those people. They reject their Messiah. God sets the nation of Israel aside, want to question his righteousness. Sounds like a sin nature to me. On the contrary, O man, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?

Again, the thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me this way? Will the thing made say, why have you made me this way? The challenge, God would not any longer find fault. How can you find fault in me? That's really what they're saying. I know you're God, and I know you've done a lot of really great things for us, but you can't find fault in me. Yeah, we rejected your Messiah, and yeah, we didn't keep the Sabbath year, and yeah, we, but how can you find fault in me?

What they do is they blocked out moral government and denies the difference of good and evil. They blur the lines. The daring which disputes against God and practically defies his right to condemn wrong proceeds from an assumption that he is bound to save everyone alike, or at least not punish anybody. So much for the worth of human reasoning when it comes, when it does not surrender to the word of God. One of the reasons about why we spent so much time studying God's word is we want to find out what he really means and what he really says. The fall is ignored and its ruinous consequences.

God did not form man as he is, but he formed him good and upright. He warned him, he told him. He gave them a test of the inevitable issue if they disobeyed. Every human point of view on the ground of unbelief is as false as it is also forgetful of the majesty of God and the due attitude of the creature towards him. I don't think, if he wasn't God, he wouldn't have the patience that he has.

The godly boldness of this language is exceptionally free from the swerving to the right or the left. It would be easy to prove by countless witnesses how prone the best and wisest of uninspired men have been in error. That's a real easy proof. Even with his divine word before their eyes to guide them.

Why do we have in Christianity so many different schools of theology and viewpoints. Because most of them, if not all of them, are some creation of man's wisdom, rather than just going into God's word and finding out what God has to say. But it's easy to slip on either side. The hard thing is to hold only to the truth of Scripture. That's the really hard thing. And not to speak where it is silent. Paul doesn't say that God has exercised the right which he beyond any question possesses, but his divine title to do his rights is kept in its integrity.

Last verse, I love this verse. Or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump One vessel for honorable use and another for common use. I like the New American Standard uses the term common use. I have a friend that's a pastor in Georgia. He doesn't call it common use. He calls it, what did he call it? Chamber pot. You kind of have to know what a chamber pot is.

The divine potter has a right over human clay. It's a great place to be in. Now, Jeremiah 18, two through six, says, Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will announce my words to you. And then I went down to the potter's house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hands of the potter, so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.

Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, I cannot, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does. Let me back up. He says, 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 you are in my hand, O house of Israel.

And Genesis 2.7, God called man dust. Well, what is clay? It's dust.

Genesis 3.19 says, the nations are as a drop of a bucket and are counted as a small dust of the balance.

Isaiah 40.15, behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales. Behold, he lifts up the islands like fine dust.

Yet, here is an atom. one piece of small dust, replying against God, saying, what right has he to do this with me? When you think of it in that scale, a piece of dust, saying to the Lord who made him, what right do you have to make? Excuse. God is love, he so loved the world, all of that is true. But God is God and all the nations are, as you read in Isaiah 47, teen, all the nations are as nothing before him. They are regarded by him as less than anything and meaningless. How seldom those who talk of rights seem to think that God doesn't have any. They are absorbed in themselves.

Rights are to be respected. His ought to be the top of those whose sovereign will gave us being and created all things, all things. So if we count ourselves entitled to do what we will, with our own, what can you say of him to whom belong ourselves and all that we have? How can you say I have right to abort babies? I can do with my body what I want.

His right then over man is over every other creature and every other creature is unquestionable. at a right which unbelief disputes only because it's never seriously thought of the matter. Never has really taken God for what God means, who is he? Unbelief yields to a spirit of manifest outrageous presumption and rebelliousness. There are no rights if the creator doesn't have any. You don't have any rights if he doesn't have any rights and he hasn't accrued to you some if they exist at all. His rights must be absolute over us as creatures. We Americans think that because we have this constitution and we're free, it means that we can do whatever we want.

It's like getting on the express lane of the toll road I think Colorado and think that means I can drive as fast as I want. So you go out there, the speed limit, these guys are going by you at 40 miles faster than you're going. And you're going the speed limit.

So, couple of observations. It says infinite wisdom and knowledge of God reads with an airing accuracy the operation of the human heart. Totally. He sees the heart. Man looks at the outward appearances, but Jehovah looks at our hearts, and that's where he judges.

Man says, if I am not one of God's elect, the object of his mercy, then I can't do right, and I should not be blamed for that. That's a pretty easy out. But no one will dare say to God in that day, I could not come to you because I was not one of the elect. for that would not be true. The reason you refuse to come will be found in the fact that you love sin, not that you're not elected. God says, whosoever will. He means that. And the door is open to all. God means whosoever and that is the word for you, sinner, not election, it's whosoever will. which is God's business, not yours.

That which man has said may be correct human reasoning, but in contrast to God's sovereignty, your reasoning is out of place and irrelevant. We talked about prayer this morning and getting the, in concert with the Holy Spirit so that we know what, can find out what God's will is about any sort of pleadings we have with him so we can pray that way. And it's a really interesting thing because it allows a believer, thanks to God's graciousness, to be in intimacy with God about circumstances. You go to him, you recognize that he's, you're one of his sons and he will tell you through your prayer how he wants you to pray. And so your reasoning or your human thought about the matter may be changed, totally changed. Like when I pray for Nick.

We have neither right nor power to call God to account in any matter. We don't have that right. If God didn't elect, none would be saved and there is none that seeks after God in Romans 3.11, not one, not one. Men are lost not because they're hardened, they are hardened because they're lost. And they are lost because they are sinners. God is not responsible for sin, he's under no obligation to save anybody. Ever think about that? The Lord Jesus dies on the cross to pay the penalty for sin. The cross was really the solution to the whole issue of sin.

And when he's resurrected and he's standing there before the father and the father is pleased with what he did, at that point, there's no covenant that says, well, now you have to save men. There's no agreement there. But he says, I'm gracious, I'm gonna offer the benefits of what I did on that cross to you if you will believe me. But it wasn't obligatory on his part like the covenants are with Israel, no obligation.

So, have we accordingly considered ourselves made and formed man, owing our very existence to the creator? Our only, Proper attitude is one of faith, not questioning. So let's close. Father, how we thank you for you. We thank you, you are the God that you say you are. You're sovereign. You're powerful, all-powerful. You are the potter. And you made and designed us in a way that we would be most blessed by being under your will and agreeing with you about every issue and circumstance that ever is brought up, that you have already determined how and when you were going to bless us. We are thankful for that. And we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.