Father, we always need your Holy Spirit, every second of every day, but sometimes, Father,
we think we can just go on our own steam.
So, Father, we thank you so much for hard words like Romans 9 that remind us and open
our eyes to how we need your Holy Spirit to come into our lives, to lead us and guide
us into all truth, to inwardly free us, to reveal our hearts to ourselves in the context
of your existence and your reality and your power and your great love for us.
Father, thank you for Jesus and his death upon the cross.
Thank you, Father, that he is your power for salvation for all who believe.
And thank you, Father, that as we put our faith and trust in you, in your Son, Jesus, that
you make us vessels of mercy built for your glory.
And so, Father, we ask that your Holy Spirit would move in our lives, in our minds, in
our wills, in our hearts very deeply to draw us closer to you this morning.
And this we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Please be seated.
So, quite a text.
I'm going to say just, first of all, it's interesting and hopefully, you know, because I only use an
outline when I preach.
Sometimes I forget what I'm going to say in the sermon.
Or I get it out of order, out of place.
But the very, very first crisis of faith that almost made me stop being a Christian was connected
to a question that this text deals with.
I had become a Christian and given my life to Jesus in November.
And it would have been the spring of the following, like the following, you know, about six months
later, in conversation.
I was in the context of evangelizing.
I got into a conversation with two men who really pressed in on me a certain couple of
objections about the Christian faith that all involved whether or not I had free will
and whether things were determined.
And it rocked me.
It was the first time in my young Christian life.
I doubted whether, in fact, I had a severe doubt, season of doubt as to whether or not
the Christian faith was true.
And I wondered if I had to walk away from it.
And those same questions of free will and determinism are touched on in this text.
And I'll return to that in a moment.
But some of the issues which this text touches upon are perennial issues that worry us and
that people who think deeply about things try to think deeply about things which this text
touches on, do we have free will?
Like that's not just a Christian question.
It's a human question.
And it's a human question because there, in fact, most systems of thought deny,
when you look at them very, the way most, I don't want to insult people,
but most Canadians don't have a system of thought.
I mean, that's just a fact, right?
And that's fine, you know?
But most systems of thought, when you press into them, lead you to the conclusion that
there's no free will.
And yet at the same time, what every person thinks about, at least at some times, is that
the deep human desire for freedom.
There is a deep, persistent human desire for freedom.
And it's funny because we maybe don't think of this, but we want freedom in the context
of some order.
And there's other things that we want about that freedom, but there's this deep human
longing for freedom, which is why we sometimes wonder and worry about whether we have free
will.
It's the same thing that goes on in our culture right now, where many people are very concerned
about the huge economic and other types of climate forces which seem to want to overwhelm
human beings and take away their freedom and take away their liberty.
And it's because we have this deep desire for freedom and liberty that texts like this that we just read
sound a bit scary and frightening.
So we're going to look at it.
And just one more thing.
I should have said this first.
Just ask those of you who, well, actually, it doesn't matter if this is your church home,
and I'd ask your prayers for me this coming Wednesday evening.
Our ministry at the university church on Wednesday, they're going through the book of Colossians.
And when Daniel first told me about this, I knew that in Colossians there was a very,
very another text of terror.
Slaves obey your masters.
Wives submit to your husbands.
Which on the University of Ottawa campus, of course, those are completely non-controversial
statements.
And as just as they are in Canada.
So I volunteered to preach on it.
And now the hour of truth has come.
That will be this Wednesday evening.
I will, in the ground floor of the university center with who knows who passing by, I will
look at the book of Colossians and what the Bible teaches on those topics.
And I would deeply desire your prayers for me.
That I will do it in a way that is true to the Bible and honors and glorifies God.
So I ask your prayers for it.
Now let's look at this question here.
So turn to Romans because that's where Laurie just read.
And before we read chapter 9 verses 1 and following, we're going to just go back to what happens
just before chapter 9 to sort of set the stage.
Because Paul doesn't jump into the problem of free will and determinism first.
He starts with something else.
Last week we looked at predestination.
And so Paul's already getting people used to this idea.
And in fact, in an odd way, Paul talks about this whole issue.
But in a way that at first we don't realize that there's something about God's sovereignty
at work because we like the basic promises.
And it's one of the greatest passages in the Bible.
It's a passage that's well worth us memorizing.
And we're having on a mirror or something so we can meditate upon it regularly.
And chapter 8 verse 31 goes like this.
Christ Jesus is the one who died.
More than that, who was raised.
Who is at the right hand of God.
Who indeed is interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long.
We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come
nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What a text.
And it's hard for many people not to read that text and have their spirits lifted.
But there's two types of things that also go on with this text.
The first is, your spirits are lifted and then you go home and you get a bit bored
and then you waste three hours looking at pornography.
Or you go home and you start working on your income tax
and you cheat on all the numbers to give yourselves a better return.
And then later on in the evening it strikes you what you've done
and you start to doubt the text.
And that God actually means it.
Or that he can actually do it.
The other thing that happens with a text like this
is that some of us, when we sit listening to the text,
we put our arms back like this and say,
Oh yeah.
You know, everybody else is getting all excited
but we're like a hard rock on a stream
and the water is just flowing over us.
It's not doing anything to us.
And inwardly, we say,
Oh yeah, that's not true.
If that was true, what about Israel?
What about all those promises that God made to Israel?
God made all those promises to Israel
and none of those things have come true.
Gotcha.
And so Paul,
who he's been around the block a few times
in evangelism and conversations.
He's been a Christian for 20 some odd years
and he's been an evangelist to Jewish people, to pagans.
He's been all over the Roman Empire.
And so he knows that there's these types of objections
that go on.
Both those good-hearted people
who've now had a,
or maybe it's not,
or have had maybe a financial crisis
or a health crisis
and now we start to doubt Romans 8.
Or all along we just sort of sit there
and think,
No, no, no.
I know a few things about the Bible.
I've heard you preach a few times
and I know that that's just not true.
Look at Israel.
It didn't happen.
So Paul,
in chapters 9, 10, and 11 of Romans,
he's going to deal with a series of objections,
both about free will and determinism
because there's a large part of Greek philosophy
believed in fate,
that there was no such thing as free will.
And there was another school of Greek philosophy
that just believed in fundamentally randomness.
Some of you might have heard the saying,
You can't step into the same river twice.
That was said by a Greek philosopher prior to this.
And so Paul's aware of that.
And so he's aware of that
there's a series of objections.
He's going to deal with it 9, 10, and 11.
And so we're starting to look at these objections today.
And so let's look now at what Paul actually says.
Let's just read the first five verses.
So mindful of these things that go on in our mind,
of doubting that what God has just said in Romans 8 is true,
what Jesus has accomplished on the cross is true,
that the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is true.
And we have these doubts.
So what does Paul go to?
He goes like this.
I am speaking the truth in Christ.
I am not lying.
My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit
that I have great sorrow
and unceasing anguish in my heart.
For I could wish that I myself were accursed
and cut off from Christ
for the sake of my brothers and sisters,
my kin according to the flesh.
They are Israelites,
and to them belong the adoption,
the glory, the covenants,
the giving of the law,
the worship, and the promises.
To them belong the patriarchs.
And from their race,
according to the flesh,
is the Christ,
who is God over all,
blessed forever.
Amen.
So now this is a very, very curious move on his part
for two reasons.
The first thing is that we see
that this is not,
what Paul is about to talk about now
isn't just a dry intellectual matter.
You know,
it's not like there's a couple of physicists
arguing over quantum mechanics
or something like that,
although I've been told
they can get very heated
over some things like that,
you know,
but, you know,
the rest of us would look at it and say,
why are you getting heated
over something like that,
right?
But this isn't a dry academic question.
For Paul,
this is a deeply emotional question.
He's deeply emotionally involved in it.
It breaks his heart
that so many people,
like him,
Jewish,
and like he was
before he became a Christian,
devout Jews,
have rejected Jesus.
It breaks his heart.
It's not a merely intellectual exercise.
It's not just playing games with words.
And the second thing,
which is very interesting,
and as we'll start to see in his answer,
he does something which we human beings
often don't do.
Often,
under the pressure of our emotions
and our breaking heart,
our broken heart,
we change our theology.
And in a sense,
we act as if God is clay
and we're the potter.
And I'm going to return to this idea,
and we can change God
so that our heart is broken less.
But Paul is not going to do this.
In fact,
he's going to double down on the issue.
Because I think actually,
and this is the conclusion I've come
after wrestling with this text all week,
is that everything in Romans 9 is true.
And to deny parts of Romans 9
only actually lead you
into other trouble,
problems,
which we just haven't thought about,
which are actually far worse.
But the main thing here
is to see that it breaks Paul's heart.
So how is he going to now start
to try to address this question?
Okay,
you said all these wonderful things
about how nothing can separate us
from the love of God.
What about Israel?
Isn't that an example
against what you're saying?
Some of you over the last couple of weeks
have asked me,
what about friends of ours
who were Christians
or seem to have been Christians,
but now are living a life
completely far from God?
I'm not going to talk about that question.
Paul talks about that in chapter 11.
So in two weeks' time,
I'll talk about that.
But for now,
Paul is asking,
what about Israel?
Has God kept his word or not?
Well, let's look and see what he says.
Romans 6, 9, 6 to 13.
And this,
in some ways,
Romans 9, 6,
it's the key,
but you realize
that when he starts to prove it
from the Bible,
it opens up cans of worms.
But Romans 9, 6 is the key.
But,
it is not as though
the word of God has failed.
For not all who are descended from Israel
belong to Israel.
Just pause a second.
A few years ago,
when I was in a debate
around a controversial moral issue,
and part of that controversial moral issue
was that,
was text in the Old Testament,
mainly New Testament text,
but Old Testament text.
And so,
a person who was arguing against me
tried to argue
that in my own personal life,
I hadn't kept
all of the commandments
around being a priest
in the Old Testament.
And they thought they'd got me.
And I began my answer
by saying,
I'm not a priest.
Which,
at the time,
in that Anglican congregation,
shocked them.
And I,
and then I went on to explain
that I'm a presbyter,
not a priest.
And those Old Testament things
don't apply to me.
It's just a matter of looking
at the Bible more closely.
So what Paul is going to say here,
he makes his general statement,
but it is not as though
the word of God has failed.
For not all who are descended from Israel
belong to Israel.
And now Paul's going to prove it
from the Bible.
He's going to prove
that this is what
the Old Testament actually says.
That just because,
biologically,
you can trace yourself back to Abraham,
or biologically,
you can trace yourself back to Isaac,
or biologically,
you can trace yourself back to Jacob,
and so therefore,
you were Jewish.
Well,
it is not as though
the word of God has failed,
for not all who are descended
from Israel
belong to Israel.
Verse 7,
and not all are children of Abraham
because they are his offspring.
But,
here he quotes the Bible,
through Isaac
shall your offspring be named.
Then he says,
verse 8,
this means that it is not
the children of the flesh,
in other words,
mere biology,
who are the children of God,
but the children of the promise
are counted as offspring,
God's promise.
Verse 9,
for this is what the promise said.
And now he's going to quote
the Bible again.
About this time next year
I will return,
and Sarah shall have a son.
Just a bit of an aside.
He takes the narrative part of Genesis
as if God is speaking.
Just a little aside.
It's all the way through this
is how the Bible understands itself
is it's God speaking.
It's his words.
And that verse 10,
and not only so,
but also when Rebecca
had conceived children
by one man,
our forefather Isaac,
though they were not yet born
and had done nothing
either good or bad,
in order that God's purpose
of election might continue,
not because of works,
but because of him who calls.
She was told,
now we quote the Bible,
the older will serve the younger.
As it is written,
he quotes the Bible again,
Jacob I loved,
but Esau I hated.
Now, not to get carried away with it,
Esau I hated,
it's called a Semitism.
I probably didn't say that word right.
It's a figure of speech
when translated literally
sounds really, really weird
and even hateful,
but it's just a figure of speech
back from the time
that the Bible was written,
and it means rejected,
not chosen.
You think about it,
sometimes in movies
they have like a computer
or a robot or an alien
who spends time with human beings,
and the robot or the alien
is always getting confused
by figures of speech.
You know, like when you say
the person's a few bricks shy of a load
or a person has a screw loose
or something like that,
and then they'll have the robot
look in the person's head
to see where the screw is
that he can,
or she or it can,
you know, straighten.
It's a figure of speech,
but it means completely rejected.
That's what hated means,
completely rejected.
Now, it's a little bit of,
it's still a bit of a text of terror.
It brings up this idea
that you have Isaac and Ishmael,
and God chooses Isaac,
but not Ishmael,
and then you have Isaac's twin boys,
and God chooses not Esau,
one of the twin boys,
in fact, the natural leader
by the natural culture,
the natural order of things.
God doesn't go along
with the natural order of things.
In a sense,
what God does is
he deconstructs natural order.
He deconstructs cultural expectations
of how things should work.
He, in a sense,
demythologizes the myths
and the gods of our culture
about how things should work,
and he chooses the younger one,
Jacob,
over the older one,
the natural one,
the reasonable one,
the logical one,
the obvious one,
the cultural one.
He doesn't choose that.
He chooses the youngest.
But in both cases,
they're chosen
while they're in the womb.
Why?
Election.
He calls them out.
Election is a,
what it basically means
is it would be as if,
I don't know,
let's say some terrorists
have surrounded this building,
and there's a bomb,
and we're all going to die.
And then the police say,
outside,
as a matter of good faith,
could you release four people?
And they call out,
you, you, you, you.
Off you go.
The rest stay here
to be bombed and die.
Election means called out,
chosen out.
That's what it means.
So on one hand,
you say,
okay, you know,
oh, Paul,
this is where we as Canadians,
let's just be honest,
for a second as Canadians,
you would say,
Paul,
why didn't you just stop
at verse six?
Like,
if you had just stopped
at verse six
when it just said,
but it's not as though
the word of God
had failed for not all
who are descended from Israel
belong to Israel,
say, okay,
good enough for me.
But now you go ahead
and tell us
and try to bring out
in the story
what's going on
with Isaac,
the election
called out.
You've just made it worse.
You know,
it's very,
very interesting.
In some ways,
all of the book of Romans
is an extended meditation
from a verse
in the book
of Habakkuk.
We'll look at Romans
1, 16 to 17
in a moment,
but when it says,
the righteous shall live
by faith,
that's a quote
from the book of Habakkuk.
And in Habakkuk,
it's the same type of thing.
Habakkuk is complaining
to God about what's going on,
about all of the evil
that's going on in Israel
and why doesn't God
do something about it?
And God says,
good news for you,
Habakkuk.
I've answered your prayers.
I'm going to have,
I think it's Assyria,
I'm going to have Assyria
invade and punish you guys.
And Habakkuk goes,
whoa, God,
one second,
you can't do that.
That's the wrong answer.
Like,
and why on earth
would you do that?
God, Assyria is worse
than Israel.
Okay,
so it's the same type of thing
that's going on here
that Paul gives an answer
and if we're honest,
we go,
whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Okay,
can we,
I wish we could now replay,
just rewind that
because you've actually
seemed to have made it worse,
not better.
Here's the thing
for us to understand.
Andrew,
if you could put up
the first slide.
we are a chosen people,
not a choice people.
This,
if you don't understand
this idea,
then nothing in this text
is going to make sense,
but it's what the text
is saying.
It's still a very
frightening text to us
because it makes us feel
completely and utterly naked.
But you know how
choice means,
you know,
you see these things,
you know,
in the food sections,
they talk about it
all the time.
If you ever read
the food section,
the citizen,
they'll talk about
in these real hipster,
high-end restaurant
type places,
how,
you know,
or you see it in movies,
they go down to the market,
they don't just sort of
pick the cheapest
10 fish they can find,
but they pick the
choice fish
and the choice vegetables
because the person
who goes down
is an expert
at recognizing
the choice bits of meat
and the choice herbs
and the choice fish
and the choice vegetables,
and because of their
expertise and skill,
they identify
what is choice
and then they bring it
back to cook
for discerning people
like us.
Well,
I go to McDonald's
so it wouldn't be
for people like me,
but,
and so it's very,
what the Bible
is going to,
what Paul is going
to try to have
completely and utterly
removed from our mind
and from our spirit
is any sense
that I am choice.
there's something
about me
just a little bit special.
You know,
maybe it's because
of my background
and upbringing
or maybe it's because,
I don't know,
have you heard
how I can harmonize
when they're singing
up front or
have you heard
how I can pray
or have you heard
how I can preach
or have you heard
how I can lead
or have you heard
how I can parent
my children
or have you heard
how it's deeply
within us
to start to desire
that we are choice
and the Bible
is not going
to ever explain
to us,
it's going to say
that it's not random,
it's going to say
that it wasn't as if
God just was going,
okay,
baby's being born,
yeah,
another baby being born,
you know,
eenie, meenie,
miney, moe,
catch a tiger,
okay,
pick that one,
catch a tiger
by the toe,
pick that one.
It's not,
he's not saying
it's random.
At the end of the day
and the purposes of God,
nothing about
why you or I
were chosen
is revealed.
But what God
wants us to know
is it's not because
I'm choice.
It's not because
I'm choice.
Now,
this at first
is very,
very,
very frightening.
If it wasn't for the gospel,
it would be deeply frightening
because,
you see,
at the heart
of all religion
and spirituality
is an attempt
to be choice,
an attempt
to put God
in some type
of an obligation
or lock
to do things for us
because we are choice.
I am choice.
Why am I choice?
Well,
I prayed the sinner's prayer.
I've learned how to speak
in tongues.
I can recite
the Apostles' Creed.
I go to church.
I tithe.
Therefore,
you have some obligation
to me.
I've done something
to contribute
to this relationship
and you have some
obligations to me.
And the Bible
wants us to completely
and utterly lose
any sense of that,
that there's nothing
at all about me
ever being choice,
that it's all about
God doing what
I cannot do
and what you cannot do,
which is to make us
right with him.
He does it all
with nothing left over.
And,
you know,
on one hand,
we feel terribly naked
if there's not
something choice
about us
or not something
that we can do
that would make us choice.
But at the same time
that we feel naked
about it,
we don't want
to acknowledge
how much religion
and spirituality
makes us anxious
and makes us false
and makes us hurtful
and spiteful
and arrogant
towards others
because that's always
what religion
and spirituality does.
and it doesn't matter
if your spirituality
is Anglican spirituality
or green spirituality
or left-wing spirituality
or right-wing spirituality,
it makes you
and me hard-hearted
and it makes us insecure
because what happens
if I fail?
I thought I was choice,
but I just wasted
three hours
looking at pornography.
I just cheated
on my income tax.
I just went out
and I had a next,
you know,
just half a glass
of wine too much
and I spent the whole time
slandering everybody
I knew
and putting everybody down.
I can't be choice.
And religion
and spirituality
makes us profoundly
insecure
because we have to maintain
that type of choiceness
and because nobody
can maintain
being choice,
we become arrogant
and we put up
these barriers
in front of us
and around
to keep us from people
and we do things
to put people down
and look down
our noses at them
and so it either
creates a type
of insecurity
or it creates arrogance
and pride
which comes from insecurity.
The Bible wants
to deliver you
from pride
and arrogance
and from insecurity
and from religion
and spirituality
and from being irreligious
and unspiritual.
He wants to deliver you
from this.
God calls.
I am not choice.
I'm chosen by God.
Here's the next thing.
Andrew, if you could put
up the next point.
I freely call out to God
he who first called me.
I freely call out to God
he who first called me.
Now, it's in Romans 10.
Next week's sermon.
This week's sermon
is going to really emphasize
this aspect of God's calling me
and making it look like,
and not making it look like,
really bringing us to this sense
that God calls
every human being first
with no exception.
And yet,
somehow God's call to me
enables within me
a type of freedom
for me to call out to him.
Romans 10 is going to talk
more about this
human side
of human responsibility.
That's next week.
Romans 9 is emphasizing
he calls me first.
He calls you first.
You know,
1 John chapter 4,
this is love.
Not that we love God,
but that he loved us
and sent his son
as an atoning sacrifice
for our sins.
It's a deep biblical message.
He calls first.
I freely call out to God
he who first called me.
The Bible holds
these two things together.
that God is completely
and utterly sovereign
and that we have
significant freedom.
And that God wants us
to be free.
In a sense,
only the Bible,
when you read it,
only the gospel,
only Jesus,
and understanding
that he died upon the cross,
that he is the power of God
for salvation,
only this teaching
is the answer
to our longings
and yearnings
to be free.
And the more
we become of God's,
the freer we become.
The more we bow
to Jesus
through grace,
the taller we are.
The more we let ourselves
be carried in his arms,
the stronger we are.
The more we surrender
to the Holy Spirit,
the freer we are.
The more we hecho
before we beam
the more we amen
the more now
and the more we leave it.
that question for us. Paul anticipates it. Let's look at what he says. Verse 14. What shall we say
then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to Moses, now he quotes the
Bible, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
One second. Once again, okay, let's just be honest Canadians for a second, okay? Don't we wish as
honest Canadians he just stopped with verse 14? Come on, don't get off all your pious stuff, okay?
Honest Canadians said, okay, just answer 14. No. Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't say that. Oh, no.
For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I
have compassion, and inwardly we groan. So then, verse 16, it depends not on human will or exertion,
but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I have raised you up
that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
So then, he has mercy on whom ever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
And most of us wish he'd just stopped with verse 14, if you're honest. But we should be glad that he
goes beyond. Here's the first thing, if you could put up the next point.
No one is owed eternal communion with the living God. Everyone deserves eternal separation from the
living God. That's what the Bible teaches. In other words, that's partly why Paul is saying the actual,
absolute last thing that God is, is unjust. The issue here isn't whether God is unjust, but whether or not
God will show mercy. Because God is completely and unfailingly just. And as part of God's justice,
well, people who don't want to be in communion with God, at the end of the day, he says to them,
thy will be done. And if you think about it for a second, let's just think about some of the
objections to this. If you think about it for now, and let's say all of a sudden God promoted you to be
his coach. And so you coach God to have mercy on all. And so you get to, and you go around and you go
to all of the mosques in the city. And you go to all of the places where people are doing yoga right
now. And you go to all the coffee shops right now. And then later on tonight, you go to all the bars.
And you tell them, good news, I'm coaching God. Every one of you is now in full communion with God.
It's going to kick in at midnight tonight. And I've worked it out for you.
How do you think that would go? Do you think they'd all come up and say, oh, thank you so much?
Do you think all the people in the bar would come up and say, oh, thank you so much that you forced
me to be in communion with God? Do you think all the people in the mosque would come? Oh, thank you so
much that I'm not going to be with Allah and Muhammad, his prophet. I'm so glad. No. What do you think
would happen? Like, how's that plan going to work? It's not going to work at all, is it?
They don't want it. They don't want it. It violates our freedom. It violates our longings and our
yearnings. But some of you might say, okay, well, George, what about the hardening part? Like,
couldn't, like, what does that mean? Next point, please. Everything in my being saved comes from
God. Everything in my heart, in my hardening comes from me. You can see this in the text,
and we're going to see it in a moment where Paul even doubles down even more with this potter and
clay text. That, like, see, this is the thing about, remember his anguish at the beginning of the story,
but rather than allowing his, here, in a sense, what Paul is doing, and we don't recognize it,
what we see here, Martin Lloyd-Jones has this fantastic phrase in the book of Romans, we see
logic on fire. Logic on fire. His broken heart, rather than making him want to try to be like a
potter and making God like the clay and change God, it makes him plunge into God and to realize even more
fully the greatness of the gospel and the greatness of what it is that God has done for us and is doing
for us in the person of his Son. And we see here that in this text, when it talks about the hardening,
we'll see it again in a few moments, that everything in my being saved comes from God,
but everything in my hardening comes from me. It's an asymmetric relationship. Sorry, I had to throw in
one big word because, you know, I went to university and got a master's degree and all that, but
that's how it works. If you go to the going deeper in the bulletin, I give you the text from Exodus that
shows that thing in the story of Pharaoh and God in the book of Exodus and Moses. And that's what Paul
is going to say at, we'll see it with the potter and the clay, that God prepares the clay for glory,
but that the clay that's being made for destruction isn't prepared by God.
In a sense, the world, the flesh, and the devil, me and my buddies do it to myself.
Could you put up the scripture text that we've been looking at every week, Romans 1? Could you
guys say this with me? Remember, those of you who haven't been here before, that Romans 1, 16 to 17,
which concludes the quote from Habakkuk at the end, it sort of summarizes the entire book. And let's
read it together. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation
to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in the gospel, the righteousness
of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
You see the importance of I am not ashamed of the gospel?
If Paul is going to make clear to us that the heart of the gospel is a power of God for salvation,
not a power of God for salvation to those who are choice, therefore it's sort of a bit on me as well,
actually. But to really understand that being made right with God is going to involve God.
When it says the righteousness of God, there's a double meaning there. It means that God is going
to act in a right way. God has to act in a way which is completely and utterly just.
But God is going to act in something. He's going to go not only, he's going to be just and never stop
being just, but he's going to be merciful as well. And he, while being right, will do something to make
us right with him. And he is going to do it all. He is going to do it completely and utterly. He is going
to foreknow. He is going to predestine. He is going to call. He is going to make right. He is going to
glorify. He is going to do it all. And as we start to understand what he is going to do it all means,
that it means that I am not choice but chosen. Then once we start to realize the consequences of
that, we start to be ashamed of the gospel because it doesn't sound Canadian. It won't play well.
It won't play well in the graduate seminars at the university, in the director's offices,
in the federal government, in the coffee shops, in the hipster restaurants, and even just your
local Tim Hortons, wherever, or even the homeless shelter maybe where you can just get a cup of
coffee for free. And we end up wanting to be ashamed. But Paul wants us to understand that when it says
it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, he means the power of God for salvation
with nothing left over, nothing excluded. It's all God.
You see how once this grips you, it completely deconstructs and demythologizes religion and
spirituality. That once this grips us, there is the possibility to, in a sense, to start to lose our
profound sense of insecurity that our favor with God depends upon our religious performance or
religious emotions or our religious feelings. Or in terms of how good we are at raising our kids or
how good we are at relationships or how good we are at making money or how healthy we are or how good
looking we are or how people think about us or whether we get a PhD or any of those other things
which make us profoundly insecure, that as this grips us, as this grips us, I am chosen, not choice.
It is God's power of salvation that is going to be at work in me, not my works, not my actions,
not anything. It profoundly starts to maybe make us relax, to give us the courage to look at things
in the past that have deeply wounded us or things that we've done that are deeply evil. It can start
to actually relax us and to say, what is it within me that drives me to look at pornography? What is it
within me that drives me to want to, in my speech, constantly put people down? What is it within me that
drives me to want me to have the most expensive consumer gifts? Why is it that I feel this huge
compulsion to buy yet another pair of $150, $300, $500 sunglasses? Why do I need seven pairs of $500
sunglasses? I don't have that, by the way. I'm just trying to think of something that some of you might
struggle with. Literally, that's not my issue, expensive sunglasses. But I understand why some
people are driven to it. But some of you might say, okay, George, just one more thing about the
problem. You know what? I'm just going to have to go over time today. So I'm just going to have to go
over time. I think I just have to go over time. That's life. What about the problem of mercy?
Remember, what does it say here? I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. He has mercy on whomever he
wills and hardens whomever he wills. I've already explained the hardened mercy. Here's this subtle way
that we want to make an obligation on God. Imagine for a moment, imagine that we're in the United States,
we're all Americans, and President Obama is just about to leave office because fill in the blank
has just won the president and he or she is about to become president next day. And many
presidents do this just before he leaves. He puts a whole pile of presidential pardons in.
And one of the people who he's given a presidential pardon to is a bleepity, bleepity, bleepity, bleep
guy who ripped you off and ruined you financially. Bleepity, bleepity, bleep. Fill in the blank.
Now, would you say, oh, isn't that so fantastic that President Obama showed mercy and left that
creepy, bleepity, bleepity guy off the hook so he doesn't have to bleeply, bleeply pay for what he did?
That is not what you would feel.
But it would be very, very different if after, if you heard about a story where somebody, and you hear about these things,
you hear about, you know, you heard about the gunman who killed all those school kids in an Amish community,
and how the Amish community forgave the fellow and urged a lesser sentence.
Doesn't it make a big difference if the victims are the ones who show mercy?
Because they've freely done it.
You wouldn't feel the same way if you found it afterwards that the Amish people only did it because Donald Trump
gave them $15 million if they would say they'd shown mercy, and you wouldn't think it was the same way.
It has to be free.
Mercy has to be freely given by the one who's been wronged.
And God is ultimately wronged by our sin.
And if God is compelled to show mercy to everybody,
well, first of all, some of us won't want mercy.
Go back to that earlier analogy about how do you feel about if you went to all the bars and the mosques and stuff,
and just all the Tim Hortons, how would they feel?
But God freely shows mercy.
Let's try to wrap this up.
What about the potter and the clay?
Are we puppets?
Has God made us puppets?
And does God, when he uses this analogy of the potter and the clay,
is he doing it just to shut me up and shut you up?
Let's read it.
It goes at verse 19.
You will say to me then, why does he still find fault?
For who can resist his will?
But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?
Well, what does molded say to its molder, why have you made me like this?
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?
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?
Notice, he doesn't say that he's, the Greek is very, very clear,
and even the English, doesn't say here that God prepared it for destruction.
That's not there.
There are some Christians who believe in something called double predestination,
and I think the Bible doesn't teach that.
I think it's wrong.
It doesn't say here that God does it.
Verse 23,
In order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy,
which he has prepared beforehand for glory,
even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only,
but also from the Gentiles.
And we'll just pause here.
Now here, just trying to wrap it up,
let's be honest about one of the things that drives us
in this entire problem with the text.
Because the Bible, as I've said time and time again,
the Bible helps us to see our hearts,
to be honest about our hearts,
without cynicism or romanticism in the context of the living God.
So what is it, partially at root,
that we have a problem with this entire text?
If you could put up the next point, Rebecca.
Rebecca, I believe that I am the potter and God is the clay.
But God's grace calls me into the real world,
where God is the potter and I am the clay.
This is a profoundly countercultural thought.
Most psychology wants to teach us that,
I mean, you know, there's whole systems of thought,
that God is just a concept that we manipulate,
or the powerful manipulate, or the weak manipulate.
It's in Nietzsche's thought, it was in Freud,
it was in behaviorism, it's in Marxism,
it's in basically most contemporary mainline churches' religion,
is that God is like a clay and we're the potter,
and we can manipulate these images and we can do whatever it is.
In the Anglican Church of Canada,
when it talks in the Book of Alternative Services,
in 1985 it describes, what is it that says the Bible,
is a repository of our symbols
that we use to talk about God.
And it says to something deep within us
that we want God to be the clay,
because you know what, I'm the potter.
I believe that I am the potter and God is the clay,
but God's grace calls me into the real world,
where God is the potter and I am the clay.
Next point.
Remember I said that my early crisis of faith
was around the whole problem of free will and determinism,
and one of the things that I eventually came to,
I didn't go to this text,
but I came to understand that first of all,
the guys who were challenging me,
that they weren't being intellectually honest.
It's an important thing for those of you
who are engaged in evangelism,
is that whatever objection a person has to the Christian faith,
that objection isn't just an objection to the Christian faith,
it's a problem for all philosophy.
And when I put the thing back on them,
they just got grumpy with me,
and they called me names.
But the fact of the matter is,
is that their argument that everything has a cause and effect,
and whatever I think I have about free will
is just a matter of cause and effect,
I said, well, that counts for your thought too.
Why are you exempt from that?
That's when they started calling me names,
telling me they were smarter than me and all that,
but they just all meant as they didn't have an answer.
But I started to realize this truth.
Only the loving, all-powerful, and sovereign God
can be the ground and guarantor of human freedom
in an ordered creation.
I know it's a big thought.
I just, those of you who are in university,
or those of you who are struggling with intellectual things,
this is a deep part of the Christian worldview.
It's why it is that it's within the Christian worldview
that science developed.
It's why it is that in the Christian,
it's only the Christian world,
every other system of thought
is going to lead you to a sense
that you must be determined and you have no free will.
And it's only in the Bible that we understand
that there are lots of things that overwhelm our free will,
that we have viruses, there's Alzheimer's,
there's things that cause dementia.
There are huge forces,
and the Bible doesn't say that we have free will
and every single thing,
but it says we have significant free will
and that God made us for freedom.
He made us for love.
That in fact, at the heart of the Christian faith
is that from all eternity,
the Father has loved the Son
and the Son has loved the Father.
And that out of love of the Father from the Son
and the Son from the Father,
that out of that abundance of love,
that all creation came into being.
And that even when the creation fell,
out of the abundance of love,
a complete, self-sufficient, unending,
eternal, unstopping, unfailingly love,
that out of this,
that the Son willingly set aside
his glory and honor and divine prerogatives
and came to live amongst us
so that he could do for us
what we could not do for ourselves
when we decided that we would be like God
and therefore bent ourselves
and became addicted to the desire
to be like God
and to see God as the clay
and us as the potter.
And we who could not save ourselves
or help ourselves,
Jesus came and died upon the cross,
taking upon himself
our desire to be eternally separate from God.
And he took all of that upon himself
and he offered us
when we put our faith and trust in him,
a faith and trust in him
that comes because God first called me
and there's nothing choice about me,
but God called me
and I put my faith and trust in Jesus
and he is the one
who makes me right with himself
and I now no longer am a vessel for destruction,
which is what I want,
but when I put my faith and trust in Jesus,
calling out to God for mercy
to do what only he can do,
he makes me a vessel of mercy
to reflect his glory.
Only the loving,
all-powerful,
and sovereign God
can be the ground
and guarantor of human freedom
in an ordered creation.
Just seven and eight,
we'll do them really quick.
Seven,
this isn't to shut us up.
The potter and the clay thing,
that's not to shut you and me up.
Remember I said that it's,
you know,
earlier on that God's grace
calls me into the real world?
God's word silences my boasting
so he can have a conversation with me.
You know,
some of you have maybe gone to a supper meeting
or something,
you sat beside somebody,
all they do is boast.
Like how many of you like going to Facebook pages
where all they ever do
is talk about how wonderful their kids are
and how they're always successful
and they're always winning awards
and they're going from strength to strength?
How many of you say,
I want to check that page out
because they boast all the time?
I love going to that.
Okay?
Nobody does that.
God's silence is our boasting
so we can have an honest conversation
with us,
our need for mercy.
The final point,
by grace alone,
through faith alone,
in Christ crucified alone,
God has made me into a vessel of mercy
prepared for his glory.
By grace alone,
through faith alone,
in Christ crucified alone,
God has made me into a vessel of mercy
prepared for his glory.
Listen to what it says again.
In order to make known
the riches of his glory
for vessels of mercy,
which he has prepared beforehand
for glory.
Friend,
some of you might say,
God would never call me.
He's called you.
God could never do anything
out of my terrible,
crappy lump of clay.
He can do anything.
I don't care how God,
no matter how terrible you think you are
as a bunch of clay,
even if you think you're old,
wrinkled,
cracked,
broken,
disgusted,
whatever it is.
This is the wonderful thing
about the text.
God can take any lump of clay
and make it into a vessel
of mercy for his glory.
It doesn't matter
if you're 90 years old
or if you're a young person.
It doesn't matter
what your IQ is
or what your income is
or your educational attainments.
God can make you
into a vessel of mercy
for his glory.
He's calling you.
He does not tell you
these things in this text
to shut you up,
but to say,
Lord, have mercy.
You are the potter.
I am the clay.
I call out to you.
Make me a vessel of mercy
for your glory.
Please stand.
Father,
you know how deeply addicted
we are to believing
that we are the potter
and you are the clay.
Father,
you know that that's something
deep within us.
We thank and praise you,
Father,
that you have redeemed us
in Jesus,
even though we still
struggle with this.
Father,
we ask that you help us
to struggle with it more.
Help us, Father,
to be able to repent
at an ever deeper level
of this attitude
of our heart and our mind
that you are clay
and we are potter.
Father,
may your Holy Spirit
bring us ever deeper
into Jesus
in the mystery of redemption,
the mystery of what
you accomplished for us
on the cross,
that we might let go
and relax
and understand
that you are the potter
and we are the clay.
And we thank and praise you,
Father,
that you call us.
We thank and praise you,
Father,
that when you call us,
you make us right
with yourself
and that you are at work
within us
in the circumstances
of our lives
to make us
ever more plainly
and ever more clearly
into all eternity
a vessel of mercy
prepared for glory.
Father,
we thank you
for this great
and precious promise
and make us
disciples of Jesus
gripped by this gospel
living for your glory.
And we ask this
in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Thank you.