How many of you are really good at making stuff?
I see some wives pointing to the husbands.
! Look, how many of your dad was awesome at making stuff?
!
Maybe working with wood, metal, something else.
How many of you were awesome at pottery?
Nobody?
Okay.
Well, we have unlocked a skill.
Maybe we'll hold a pottery class here at the church.
We can all get good at it together.
I'm not either.
I'm terrible at it.
I think I tried when I was a kid one time.
We did some kind of pottery type deal.
I couldn't make anything very well.
That's just...
You know, when you're really good at something,
is it frustrating to watch somebody else try to do what you're good at?
Anybody?
Yes.
See some heads nodding.
There's that level of it, right?
When you see a master potter, would you guys put the next slide up?
Check this out.
They're really good at their craft.
They're very skilled at it.
They know exactly what they're doing.
When I get a hold of a potter's wheel, it doesn't go well.
Yes.
Thank you.
I'm not going to say that that's my creation.
I'm not going to say it's not.
Anyway, Isaiah 64 at verse 8 has something to say about this.
Ready?
Let's get back to it.
You are our father.
We are the clay.
Can we say that together?
Ready?
You are our father.
We are the clay.
Let's keep going.
And you are the potter.
We are all the work of your hand.
We're talking about fathers today, and our mind should go to our heavenly father.
And the interesting thing about that is one of the names he calls himself in the scriptures
is the potter.
And if he's working with clay, he says, you are the clay I'm working with.
Guess what?
His creation doesn't come out looking like this.
Now, at times, through the process, it might be ugly.
It might not be attractive because it is a process to make something.
But in the right hands, something beautiful can come from what the potter is working with.
So, we've been talking throughout the book of Romans as we've been studying Paul's letter
to the churches in Rome that we call Romans.
We've been talking about different subjects.
Last week, we talked about how Jesus saves.
Can we say all that together?
Ready?
Jesus saves.
How many of you believe that this morning?
Just wave at me.
There you go.
Today, we're going to talk about a slightly different truth about our heavenly father and
about the son of God, Jesus Christ.
And we're going to study the purpose that the potter has for our lives.
So, would you turn with me to Romans chapter 9?
We left off in verse 30.
We got into chapter 10 some last week.
We're kind of working our way backwards through Paul's letter or epistle called Romans.
So, we're going to pick it up in verse 29 and then work back to the beginning of this chapter.
The last several weeks, we've been in this series called When in Romans.
This is one of the most influential things Paul ever wrote.
Paul wrote so much of the New Testament.
And this is one of his keystone pieces of literature that he ever penned.
There are some truths that I think we can take away from Romans chapter 9 beginning in verse 29.
So, if you're there with me, we're going to pick it up in verse 29.
Tell you what, let's go from verse 25 down through 29.
Ready?
Would you stand with me in honor of God's word if you're able to?
We won't stand for every scripture reading.
But just here at the beginning, this is something they often did in the Old Testament.
When God's people would be reading from the scriptures.
And we can do that again now.
So, verse 25.
This is what he says in Hosea, the prophet.
God speaking through his prophet Hosea.
He says this.
I will call, quote, not my people, quote, my people.
So, he says, I'm not going to call those who are not my people.
I'm not going to call them my people.
He says, and the not beloved I will call beloved.
Isn't that interesting?
There's a contrast here.
Verse 26.
In the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, there they will be called the sons of the living God.
So, he's saying these are the people who are not my people.
I could not call them my people.
But there's going to come a day when they become my people.
Anybody have a guess who he's talking about?
Us.
The Gentiles.
It was the Jews first, right?
They were his people.
But then, we, back then, were not his people.
But he says there's going to come a day when you get to be the people of God.
The sons of the living God.
Verse 27.
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel.
Even if the number of Israel's sons are like the sand by the sea, only a remnant shall be saved.
For the Lord will bring judgment on the earth, complete and decisive.
As Isaiah said in an earlier passage, if the Lord of hosts had not left us seed, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah.
Now, we've been wiped out, right?
If you know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, they were completely wiped out.
So, he's going back to the prophet Isaiah.
We went back to the prophet Isaiah just a minute ago.
And we're going to pick it up with this first truth.
The potter welcomes everyone.
Thank God the potter welcomes everyone.
Let's thank him right now.
God, we thank you that you are a God who opened the door for not just the Jewish people, but all peoples to come to you and become your people.
Thank you for welcoming everyone.
Thank you for your heart of kindness, of welcome, of warmth, of hospitality.
I pray that we would learn today from you that you are molding us.
You're shaping us to become more like you.
It's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
You can be seated.
Thank you for standing.
By including the Gentiles, which is what he's talking about here in this passage, the potter reveals that his ultimate design for the family of God is an expansive one.
It's big.
It's not small.
Sometimes we get it in our heads that, man, there's hardly anybody like us.
There's hardly anybody that really loves God out there.
Most people are faking it.
Most people are just seeking their own interests in life.
There's hardly anybody who's really trying to become like Jesus.
God says his people have always been around, and his people are only getting larger.
He's expanding the family.
I think it was three weeks ago or so we talked about the idea that the church that we see today, not just our church, but all the churches that love and follow Jesus out there across this world that we call the church,
that's not a replacement for God's people of Israel that we read about in the scriptures.
It's an expansion.
And Paul talks about in the later chapters of Romans that we've already covered, he talks about that very thing, that God has opened up the doors for anyone to come in to his family now.
So it's an expansive community that God is building, built on divine invitation rather than exclusivity.
You ever notice how man is very exclusive?
How many of you have flown on an airplane recently?
How many of you have tried to board in an earlier boarding group than yours?
You're not that dumb, right?
You know it wouldn't work out well for you.
You'll see the exclusivity of man when they're, you know, I'm sitting there waiting for boarding group five to be called,
and they got to go through their pre-boarding and their one-star alliance or whatever, and their better-than-you group,
and, you know, all the people that they got to work through that paid money or they're just naturally VIPs.
I don't know.
But for some reason, they get to get on the plane longer, earlier than we do,
and that means they get to sit on the plane longer than the rest of us do.
So there you go.
But yeah, man is exclusive.
He's really good at not letting you into his club.
Man's like, nope, this is for us alone.
God says, I'm not like that.
I want to invite everyone to come to me.
Now, he knows, according to his foreknowledge, who will come and who won't come.
And he went ahead and out of his grace gave the opportunity for life and breath
and an opportunity to turn to him even to those who he knew would never turn.
Even to those who he knew would never come to him, he still gave them his creation and life and an opportunity.
But he welcomes everyone.
By welcoming the nations, the potter, God, Jesus, fulfills his masterpiece, creating a diverse.
Think about it.
It's part of the issues that Paul's dealing with in the church in Rome, right?
The Jewish traditions from those Christians and then the non-Jewish Christians who don't have all those traditions that they had
and they're trying to come together.
Well, they're diverse.
They're bringing different points of view, different thought processes.
But they both share a common love for Jesus.
So a diverse, but his goal is a unified family that mirrors the universal reach of God's love.
So the potter welcomes everyone.
Number two, the potter is merciful.
The potter is merciful.
You and I get to experience that mercy every day.
How many of you are glad?
Let me put it this way.
How many of you would join me in raising your hand and saying,
I'm glad that God has been merciful to me?
You know what being merciful is, right?
Not giving us what we deserve.
You and I have messed up a lot in this life.
Guess what?
We still mess up today.
Just take it a little step further.
We're going to mess up tomorrow too.
None of us are perfect.
We're all human.
But God shows us mercy.
And we thank him for that.
He never doles out the punishment to us that is actually what we deserve.
He always extends mercy.
Sometimes we will have to suffer consequences on this earth.
Sometimes a lack of wisdom or following the design of the universe that God created
and going against God's created order will leave us in a place where we have to suffer consequences.
But for God's people, he almost always lessens that somehow.
He almost always gets us through to a place where we turn and say, wow, God, that could have been so much worse.
Probably should have been so much worse.
Thank you for having mercy on me.
And Paul's writing about this in verse 14.
Would you go back with me to Romans 9 and verse 14?
So he says, what are we going to say?
Is God unjust?
Well, I don't think we should say that.
Paul says, certainly not.
Verse 15.
He says to Moses, you see, I will have mercy on those whom I will have mercy.
I will pity those who I will pity.
Verse 16.
So then it doesn't depend on human willing or on human effort.
It depends on God who shows mercy.
He's going to use Pharaoh from the Old Testament as an example here.
He says, the Bible says to Pharaoh, or the word of God says to Pharaoh, this is why I have raised you up.
To show my power in you so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.
You go back and look at the story of Pharaoh.
He wasn't exactly proclaiming God's name.
But God used even his resistance to eventually accomplish his will on the earth.
Verse 18.
So then he has mercy on the one he wants and he hardens the one he wants.
You'll say to me then, so why does he still blame people?
Who can stand against God's purpose?
If God's the one showing mercy or God's the one doing the hardening,
then how does any of this our decision?
How are we involved at all?
Verse 20.
Paul answers it.
Are you a mere human being going to answer God back?
Surely the clay won't say to the potter, did you make me like this?
Doesn't the potter have authority over the clay so that he can make from the same lump
one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
Look around, y'all.
Look at your neighbor.
Look at the person sitting next to you.
Say, you came from the same lump.
It's a weird thing to say to somebody, right?
We all kind of came from the same lump of clay, okay?
We all came from the dust.
To the dust, we will return.
God says, the potter says,
I can make from the same lump a vessel of honor and a vessel of dishonor.
Verse 22.
Supposing God wanted to demonstrate his anger and make known his power for that very reason,
put up patiently, very patiently with the vessels of anger created for destruction.
Why?
In order that, in order to make known the riches of his glory.
This is the key here.
This is the reason.
This is the potter's purpose.
We had that as kind of a title of this talk today at the very beginning.
What is the potter's purpose?
He says it in verse 23.
In order to make known the riches of God's glory on the vessels of mercy,
the ones he prepared in advance for glory.
And then in case they weren't sure what Paul was writing about,
he includes them specifically.
He says, including us.
So we can say that.
We can lump ourselves in there.
Including us whom he called.
Not only from among the Jews,
but also from among the Gentiles.
God is not discriminating in his mercy.
He is indiscriminate.
He offers it to all of us.
And he's working on all of us.
And he realizes some of these vessels of clay that I'm trying to mold as the potter,
some of them are going to be vessels of honor.
Some of them are going to honor me.
Some of them are going to follow me.
Some of them are going to choose me.
And some are going to be vessels of dishonor.
And for those who will choose to be vessels of dishonor,
meaning they will choose to reject Christ,
he says, I will honor your choice.
And we see in Pharaoh's situation,
he hardened Pharaoh's heart,
knowing that Pharaoh was going to be a vessel of dishonor.
So, Jeremiah talks about this a little bit more.
Jeremiah chapter 18 and verse 1.
Can we read just a few verses together there?
Would you join me in turning over to the Old Testament
and the book of Jeremiah?
Jeremiah chapter 9.
We're going to read verse 1 down through verse 12.
As you're turning, I'm going to go ahead and read for sake of time.
If only my head were a pool of water.
Sorry, did I say 9?
I meant 18.
I'm looking at that like that is not at all what I intended to read.
So, sorry about that.
Go 9 chapters later, Jeremiah 18.
Here we go.
Jeremiah 18, verse 1.
The Lord gave another message to Jeremiah.
Here we go.
He said, go down to the potter shop.
Interesting thing that God commanded him to do.
Any of you ever woke up in the morning
and just felt like God was saying,
go down to the donut shop?
Yeah.
Go down to the potter shop and I will speak to you there.
So, I did as he told me
and I found the potter working at his wheel.
But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped.
Maybe like that picture that I showed you earlier.
So, he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over.
Verse 5.
Then the Lord gave me this message.
O Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to his clay?
As the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand.
If I announce that a certain nation or a kingdom is going to be uprooted,
it's going to be torn down, destroyed,
then that nation renounces its evil ways.
What happens?
I won't destroy it as I had planned.
This is something fascinating to learn about God the potter.
Verse 9.
And if I announce that I will plant
and I will build up a certain nation or kingdom,
but then that nation turns to evil and refuses to obey me,
I will not bless it as I said I would.
Therefore, Jeremiah, you go and warn all Judah and Jerusalem.
Say to them, this is what the Lord says.
I am planning disaster for you instead of good.
How terrifying would it be if someone came to you and say,
God told me he's planning disaster for you.
I'd be looking at them.
And then they just turn around and walk away.
Like, no, no, no, no.
Let's have more conversation here.
What do you mean?
Are you crazy or is there something to this?
Well, they do.
Coming from the prophet Jeremiah, he wasn't crazy.
There was something to this.
So I'm planning disaster for you instead of good.
So turn from your evil ways, each of you,
and do what is right.
But verse 12.
But the people replied,
don't waste your breath, Jeremiah.
Y'all, that's not a great way to respond to the prophet of God.
Don't waste your breath.
We will continue to live as we want to,
stubbornly following our own evil desires.
Verse 13.
So this is what the Lord says.
Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?
Even among the pagan nations, they have more sense.
Think about Jonah and Nineveh.
He came and gave them the same warning,
and they had more sense than to say,
no, we're going to keep doing whatever we want.
My virgin daughter Israel has done something terrible.
Listen.
God does not leave us without a say in the matter.
God does not completely remove responsibility from mankind.
God.
How many of you believe that prayer moves the hand of God?
How many of you believe that prayer moves the heart of God?
How many of you believe that God responds to his people?
Well, we see that.
We see that in the scriptures.
We see that right here in his relationship with Israel.
And it's the same way he deals with us.
He's giving them a warning, saying,
listen, as I mold and shape you,
there might be a bad run here.
And I've got to squash whatever I'm making of you right now
back into a big lump of clay and remake you again.
But a lot of this is going to depend on how you respond to me.
I thank God that he didn't create us to be robots.
I thank God that he didn't just say,
I'm going to make you love me whether you want to or not.
And some of you, I'm going to make you hate me.
And we don't completely understand how God foreknew everything,
how he knew everything before anything was ever created.
But yet he also gave us a responsibility to turn to him in faith.
But we see seasons of faith in his people, Israel.
And we see seasons of faith in today's people, God's people, the church.
And then we see seasons of faithlessness,
seasons of not having faith,
both back in the history of Israel and their creator God,
and then also today in God's church and our savior.
We see seasons of both faithfulness to him and unfaithfulness to him.
And he's saying during those times,
I'm warning you what will come unless you turn back to me.
But if you turn back to me, then I won't do that to you.
Then those terrible things won't happen.
I will change my mind.
What a fascinating thing that God is literally saying,
faith can move me.
Faith can either make me respond in a positive way to you
and open up the windows of heaven and pour out blessings,
or the lack of faith can make me allow you
to suffer the consequences of that lack of faith.
And this takes us to the next thought.
There's no sense arguing this.
The potter knows best.
We've just got to rest that he knows best.
We've got to trust.
And whatever our next step is,
we turn to him in faith and say,
God, show me that next step.
The potter chooses the path of the promise to advance his mission.
And he demonstrates that his criteria for defining his covenant people,
we've talked a lot over the last several weeks about the covenant
or the promises that God makes with his people,
his defining criteria for who his promised or covenant people will be,
it's far wiser and it's more far-reaching than we could ever even understand.
And definitely we would ever choose ourselves.
So go back to Romans 9 with me and we're almost done.
Romans chapter 9.
We're going to pick it up in verse 6.
Paul writes,
Well then, has God failed to fulfill his promise to Israel?
No.
For not all who are born into the nation of Israel are truly members of God's people.
Get it?
It's not simply based on Jewish birth anymore.
It's based on faith in Jesus Christ.
So not all who are born into the nation of Israel are going to have faith in Jesus Christ.
They're not all going to be truly members of God's people.
Being descendants of Abraham doesn't make them truly Abraham's children.
Boy, that's a hard thing to say to a Jewish person.
Just because you can trace your lineage back, your family tree, you've gone on, you know,
Ancestry.com or whatever and you've traced it back.
Yeah, man, I come from the tribe of Benjamin or Judah or whatever.
I go back to Abraham.
He says,
That alone does not make you Abraham's children, so to speak, anymore.
The scriptures say,
Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted,
even though Abraham had other children too.
What this means is Abraham's physical descendants are not necessarily the children of God.
Don't get caught up.
Don't get misdirected here into saying,
Well, did I come from Isaac or not?
He's saying to the Jewish people.
He's saying the only point here is that it doesn't have anything to do with your physical lineage or family tree anymore.
Only the children of the promise are considered to be Abraham's children.
For God has promised,
I will return about this time next year and Sarah will have a son.
This was a promise that we read about with Abraham and Sarah and God.
And then he says,
This son was our ancestor Isaac.
When he married Rebekah, she gave birth to twins.
But before they were born, before they'd done anything good or bad,
she received a message from God.
And this message shows that God chooses people.
Watch this.
Verse 11.
According to his own purposes.
He calls people,
but not according to their good or bad works.
Why?
Because we're all going to have bad works.
None of us are going to be perfect.
We're all going to do bad stuff.
We're all going to make bad decisions.
He doesn't choose us based on being perfect or not.
She was told,
Your older son will serve your younger son.
In the words of the scriptures,
I love Jacob,
but I rejected Esau.
We don't have time to get into that whole story
and tie it into what we're talking about today.
But Paul references it here.
So you should go back and read that story of Jacob and Esau.
Are we saying then, verse 14,
that God was unfair?
Of course not.
The potter knows best.
He knows which lumps of clay
are eventually going to bring him honor or not.
He knows what your potential is.
And even though there might be seasons of life
when you don't follow him by faith,
like you should.
I'm not going to ask for specifics,
but how many of you have seasons of life
when you would love to go back
and follow God a little more closely?
Yeah, I got both hands up.
Okay.
You might be in a season like that right now.
But listen,
the potter's not done with you.
He's in the transforming business.
And I thank God that he is.
And finally,
the potter is always faithful.
He'll never turn his back.
On those vessels of mercy,
even though
there might be times
when they seem faithless
and he's got to ball that thing back up
into a lump of clay and start over again,
he will start over again.
He's always faithful.
Now go to the beginning of Romans 9, verse 1.
With Christ as my witness,
I speak with utter truthfulness.
My conscience and the Holy Spirit confirm this.
We need to listen.
Okay.
Paul's introducing this thing as most important.
So pay attention to what he has to say.
With Christ as my witness,
I speak with utter truthfulness.
My conscience, the Holy Spirit confirm this.
Here we go.
My heart is filled with bitter sorrow
and unending grief for my people.
Who were his people?
My Jewish brothers and sisters.
I would be willing to be forever cursed,
cut off from Christ.
Like he's saying,
I'll give up my own salvation
if they would be saved,
if that would save them.
Of course it wouldn't.
We're all responsible to God ourselves.
They are the people of Israel,
chosen to be God's adopted children.
God revealed his glory to them.
He made covenants with them.
He gave them his law.
He gave them the privilege of worshiping him,
receiving his wonderful promises.
And now verse 5.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob are their ancestors.
Christ himself was an Israelite.
As far as his human nature was concerned,
then he couldn't just leave it there.
Christ wasn't just an Israelite.
And he is God,
the one who rules over everything
and is worthy of eternal praise.
Amen.
So if you believe,
and you can say with Paul,
yes, Jesus is God.
He rules over everything.
He deserves all the glory and praise forever.
Then you have faith in Jesus Christ.
And that faith makes you right with God.
That faith will save you.
That faith earns God's mercy.
There's nothing you could do to earn it.
It's only the faith
that responds to the call of God,
that unlocks your status
as the people of God.
So,
we are the vessel.
He is the potter.
The purpose of the potter
in working with us
is to bring glory
to the maker.
The purpose of the potter
is to reflect himself.
When you're trying to make something
out of pottery
and you don't know what you're doing,
the product you end with
reflects you.
And everybody looks at it and says,
oh, wow,
that guy doesn't know what he's doing.
If you're a master potter,
then the product you end up with
reflects you.
What God is saying
is that he's transforming you
into something of beauty
that will reflect him.
So don't get down on yourself.
Get to praising Jesus.
Get to praising the potter.
And get more faithful
to him
because of his faithfulness
to you.
Say, God,
you've been standing by me
through bad decisions,
through good decisions,
through good times and bad,
through seasons of happiness
and seasons of depression,
through success and failure.
You have stood by me.
And I'm here to testify
that Jesus is in the transforming business.
Yes, Jesus saved me.
Jesus saved me from my sin.
He forgave me.
He promised me an eternity with him.
But Jesus also transforms.
He doesn't just check you in the box.
All right, he's good.
He's one of my kids now.
Now go and live your life
and sell your wild oats.
He's in the transforming business.
He wants to change us
little by little.
And that's not a sprint.
It's a marathon.
So can we say this together?
Ready?
Jesus transforms.
One more time, church.
Jesus transforms.
How many of you believe that
with all your heart?
Jesus.
How many of you can say,
God has transformed me?
How many of you can say,
God is still transforming me?
Yeah, me too.
Would you bow your heads with me?
God, I thank you that we are the clay
and you are the potter.
I thank you that we are not the potter.
If it was completely up to us
to shape our lives how they need to be,
we'd be lost without hope.
Thank you that you are the potter
and we are the clay.
And sometimes,
rolling us back into a lump of clay
and starting over again
is exactly what we need.
But through this journey of life,
you are molding us
and shaping us
into becoming your people.
We are already your people
by virtue of accepting you by faith.
But you're still making us.
You're still reworking us.
We give you the glory for it.
That's what it's all about.
Thank you.