Living Hope Church

Pastor Phil Steiger: On Christ, the solid rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.

If you would turn with me please to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 9, here in just a couple of minutes. We're going to start reading in chapter 9, verse 19. We're going to read a sizeable chunk of Romans chapter 9. We're not getting all the way through that chunk, but it's one kind of great big thought in a lot of ways.

Now, as we get started here in this particular passage of Scripture, this section opens up with an important question. And it makes me think. I think we realize that people ask all kinds of questions about God, and it's natural to do so. This great and glorious and almighty Creator being, who also is somehow not just the one who is superintending every molecule of the universe, but the one whose eye is upon his children who walk this earth, whose kingdom is coming. All of these great, grand, and glorious things about God so often raise questions in our hearts and minds.

And as the Apostle Paul has been working through the kinds of topics that he deals with in chapter 9, in chapter 9, especially as we just kind of read through it in one great big swath, there are things in here that quite frankly are hard to understand. Some of you know that the Apostle Peter in one of his books refers to the Apostle Paul, and he just literally says, "And some of the things that he writes are hard to understand."

Well, here we are, right in the middle of one of those sections. Already in chapter 9, we've run across one of those questions. Paul raises it because of the topic raises it, and so often the human heart raises this question as well. That question earlier was, "Well, is God unjust? Is there unrighteousness in God? If he does all of these kinds of things, I'm having a hard time understanding, is it the case that God himself is unrighteous?"

We cannot trust him in his goodness. Is that the case? This next section begins with another big, common question. If God does all of this kind of stuff, then why am I responsible for my actions? If God loves Jacob and hates Esau. If God shows mercy on some but hardens some hearts, then he's responsible for all of it, not me. That's an interesting question.

Now, let me just kind of as a as a sidebar, mention something about questions and conversations like this. If someone ever asks you that question or a question like this, and that question is asked in honesty, friends, that's an open door to a very real conversation about God. If someone is honestly working through these questions, then they come to you, they come to me, they walk into the doors of a church because they've got these kinds of things in their mind, and it's honest. So often that's because the Holy Spirit is at work inside of that heart. And it's an open door to a real conversation.

But some of us have also experienced the other thing. Some people will ask that question, and it's smarmy and dismissive. And they ask it as if, "You have no answer to a question like this. This is why I don't believe in your great big spaghetti monster in the sky," right? If someone asks a question like this, and they're smarmy and dismissive, just don't don't even waste any more energy on that conversation.

But don't be afraid by these kinds of big, important, sometimes off-putting questions. I mean, after all, the Apostle Paul is raising them inside of the biblical text for us. So what Paul does with this question is he uses it to launch even further into the foreknowledge, the holiness, the sovereignty, and the goodness of God. So he takes us further into that very kind of topic.

As Paul continues in chapter 9, we've seen this already in this chapter. Paul keeps reaching back into the Old Testament to remind us of some of the stories of the Old Testament, the characters, the things that God says, to remind us of some of the things that the prophets say. He hasn't done that very much in Romans so far, but now that we're in this topic, here in chapter 9, the Apostle Paul keeps going back into the Old Testament to make sense of these things that talk about both the judgment and the mercy of God.

So Paul isn't the first one to have to answer this kind of question. He isn't the first one who has to wrestle with the existence of an all-powerful and all-knowing, all-good God. We are not the first ones to wrestle with these kinds of things.

But friends, let me tell you, if we pay attention to the word of God and we let it speak, both Old and New Testament passages, there is a powerful amount of wisdom, and dare I say it this morning, even joy in a passage of Scripture like this. I hope you're ready for this. Because we're done, I'm going to pray, we're going to close. We're out of here.

Romans chapter 9 has these incredible things for us, and I think we pay attention to them. We see God in these great, great lights. In our passage of Scripture this morning, the kinds of things that we're going to deal with, these these thoughts are going to hold them together for us. And the first is this, there is a God, and you are not him. That is a great place to begin. Yes, thank you, Jesus. There is a God, and you are not him.

Paul is going to confront us with this very fact and basically say, "Who are you to question God? Who are you to question God?" He exists. He's different than maybe you think he is, and you are not him. Inside of that truth is this unshakable reality that when we come to terms with who God is, there is an unshakable foundation of trust that you can have in this great and glorious God. So there is a God, and you are not him.

The second thing that's going to help us with this passage of Scripture is this. The judgment of God is not surprising, the mercy of God is. That's what's surprising. We tend to get really upset at the topic of the judgment of God. And it's because by and large, you and I tend to think that, "Well, we're basically decent people."

Somewhere in our sin-broken software, in the backs of our minds, we think, "Well, I'm a pretty good person. I'm not nearly as bad as that other person is. I've tried really hard today. So it makes me angry that there is a God who thinks he has the right to judge someone like me."

But that means I have reality by the wrong end of the stick. What the word of God has already told us, and Paul has already made clear to us, is that all of us have sinned and are worthy of judgment, and it is God who makes a way of mercy and salvation for people even like me.

Let's read our passage of Scripture this morning. I'm going to read verses 19 through 29. Don't worry, we're not going to get all the way through that. But it does, it acts like a unit. So I want us to hear the whole thing together. Friends, this is the Word of the Lord.

"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 has 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, 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?"

"As indeed he says in Hosea, 'Those who were not my people, I will call my people. And her who was not beloved, I will call beloved. And in the very place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," there they will be called sons of the living God.' And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, 'Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sands of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved. For the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.'"

"And as Isaiah predicted, 'If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have become like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.'"

There's a lot going on inside of this passage of Scripture. But as I've mentioned, it begins with this pair of questions. And it leads us into further into what Paul has to say about the sovereignty of God, his greatness, his power, his glory, and then our responsibility as well. He begins with, "Who who will say to me then, 'Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?'"

You go back, you remind yourself of some of the things that he's talked about already. God had told Rebecca that her youngest son would serve the older. This was before they were born. Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. We read the story of Pharaoh, and in that story, we hear that God has hardened Pharaoh's heart and that God had that Pharaoh had hardened his heart against God. And the text itself says, "God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and he will harden whom he will harden."

Paul then anticipates the very next natural question. "Well, what is all of this about then? Because no one can resist the will of God." So to begin making sense of this question, inside of this passage, we need to remember how Paul set up chapter 9 back in Romans chapter 8. We keep reminding ourselves of this particular passage of Scripture because I think it is so critical to our understanding. Romans chapter 8, verse 29, "Those whom he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son."

So we speak continually of the all-knowing God that we serve, his foreknowledge. God is powerful enough to literally not just know all things, but know all possible things. God knows what will be done, God knows what could happen as well. He knows all of those things. So God knows what Phil will choose, God knows what Phil might choose in the future as well given different circumstances.

And this makes an incredibly important point for a passage of Scripture like this. Foreknowledge is not the same as control. Foreknowledge is not the same as manipulation. To know something ahead of time is not the same thing as to cause it to happen.

So we lay that greater topic aside, but this right here in this passage is important for us. And we we understand this to be true even inside of our own lives and our own sort of circumstances. If you imagine that person that you know and you you you can think to yourself, "Well, if I walk into the room to them right now, in this situation, in this tone of voice, I'm going to put it like this, I'm going to say something to them, I know what they're going to do."

They still did it. You just sort of knew that it was going to happen. You know the sun's going to rise in the east and set in the west. Does that mean you cause it to happen? It doesn't mean you cause it to happen. And so it is with God as well, who in his infinite power and glory, literally knows all things from the beginning to the end.

So God, so Paul keeps making this point in this passage. We need to keep reminding ourselves of it that the same is true of God. And Paul keeps walking this line for us. God is sovereign, he's the sovereign ruler over all things. And we are responsible creatures. We are responsible for our reaction to God. We are responsible for our moral lives and decisions and tongues and emotions here in this world.

God is sovereign and we are responsible. And we're going to discover that even when we dig back into these Old Testament passages that Paul referenced, those passages make exactly the same point. It's incredible stuff.

"But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?" Now, what I've done for you so far, I've sort of given a good way to begin that conversation. Someone asks you a question like that honestly, you can start talking about the difference between foreknowledge and manipulation. To know something is not the same thing as to control. That's a good way to sort of lead into that conversation. The Apostle Paul, however, has no time for that conversation. His answer is far more direct. And his answer is this, "Who on earth are you to ask God any question at all? To complain about anything that God does."

Now, he does that to force us into the rest of this conversation about the glory and the power of God. He gets into the deeper issue, and that deeper issue is, he is God, I am not. It is not even possible that I can become God. It's not even possible that we can somehow become God. He is, I am not. You are not, we are not.

So Paul is pressing this truth again upon us. Do I really know who God is? Do I understand? Do I actually understand that God is not a great big me in the sky? He's not a great big, "Well, I imagine the best person that I know," and God's just sort of 100 times that in the sky. That's not who God is. God is fundamentally different from any and every and all human beings. God was there before all of time and creation, and by the word of his mouth, he spoke all things into existence.

He is the one who names all of the stars in the sky, who spins the galaxy. He is the one who came up with gravity for Pete's sake. He is the one who holds together the molecules, the atoms, and the subatomic particles in this universe. Tell me, human being, can you do that? So Paul is saying, "Who are you to talk back to God? Who is Phil to talk back to God about who he is and what he does and how he does it?"

God is utterly different, and we need to come to terms with that. The more I spent time with this passage of Scripture, that very first question, "But who are you, O man, to answer God? To answer back to God?" It reminded me of an entire book of the Bible in the Old Testament, because this is how God handled Job's complaint against God.

Now, we're going to read a little bit of the very end and right near the very end of the book of Job. But so we can understand what we read at the end of the book of Job, we need to set the book up just a little bit. There in those first two or three chapters of the book of Job, Job is a righteous man. He's a wealthy man. He is a blessed man in every earthly sense of the word. And he's known to be a man who worships God, and offers sacrifices for his family.

And then everything is taken away from him. Everything on this earth is taken away from him. And the question that is posed is this. Job blesses God, he worships God when all is good. Will Job worship God when everything is wrong? When everything is taken away from him?

So that's where we find Job when a few of his friends show up. And they sit around the campfire with him so to speak. And they start to talk to him about what's happened and why it's happened. The vast majority of the book of Job, we get Job and his friends conversing back and forth. And a lot of what Job says is a combination of wisdom and trust.

And then exactly the way you would imagine it to be. It's got a lot of that in it, but then it's also got a lot of fear and confusion and anger. These are the words of Job through the book, in the middle of his book. As his friends talk, his friends are an interesting group of people. What his friends say are by and large a mixture of dubious things all the way to heretical advice. So that's a lot of the book of Job, trying to make sense of what's happened here with this great and glorious God and the life of Job.

As you're reading through that book, God at the end of the book shows up, and God begins to talk. And it's incredible. The scene itself is dramatic, because when God shows up, he shows up in a whirlwind is when he begins to talk. And you get this sense as if through this book, the wind is sort of growing and growing and growing and growing to the point where human voices can no longer be heard. God is shutting everybody up so he can talk.

And then God begins to answer Job, and God's fundamental answer to Job and all the pain that he has gone through is, "Are you God? Were you there when I spun the universe into existence? Were you there when I limited the sea and the land and laid the pillars of the oceans? Were you there when I strung together the Pleiades, the bear, and his mother? Were you there when I formed the Leviathan in the deep? Answer me, Job. Answer me, Job. Are you God?"

So here's part of that conversation. In Job chapter 40, the first two verses, "And the Lord said to Job, 'Shall a fault-finder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.'" Shall someone who is just a human being, broken and sin, who cannot see tomorrow for today? Can someone who is a fault-finder and full of fault himself tell the almighty creator of all things, the glorious, righteous God, what to do? Tell me, you answer me this question, Job.

And here's how Job responds. "Then Job answered the Lord and said, 'Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.' I know I've pushed this, but now I'm done."

"Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, 'Dress for action like a man. Get ready for this, Job. I will question you, and you make it known to me. Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?'" It's another way of saying, "Will you make yourself God over me?" It's the same thing that Paul says here in Romans chapter 9, "But who are you, O man, O woman, to answer back to God? I am not God, and I cannot accuse God of evil. It's literally not in his character."

To continue to make the point, the Apostle Paul reaches back into two of the other Old Testament prophets. They're there in the middle of verse 20. He says, "Well, what has 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?"

Paul in this passage, part of it, he's quoting from the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 29, verse 16. And then he makes reference to another of the Old Testament prophets. He quotes Isaiah, and he refers to a story in the book of Jeremiah, in Jeremiah chapter 18. In Jeremiah chapter 18, God with his prophet Jeremiah, he makes use of the image of a potter and the clay.

And he's making use of exactly this kind of point, that God as the potter takes this lump of clay, and because of what is in his mind and in his power to do, he's able to form and shape that lump of clay into what he wants to make it. And then the image is this, how silly is it then for us to imagine that little pot, how many of you made ashtrays for your parents when you're kids and they didn't even smoke, right?

How silly is it for that little ashtray to look at you and go, "Why did you make me like this?" God is saying as the potter, "I am the one who has this design in my mind. I am the one who sees all things. And so I'm going to mold and shape these things the way that I want them to be."

And so it is with us. Before we read parts of Jeremiah chapter 18, I think some of our hearts and minds need to settle in on this for just a second. God has made you the way he made you, and God has made you when he has made you. There is power in the design of God at work inside of our lives. Friends, we can find peace and purpose in who God made us to be, and when and where he puts us. We can find peace and purpose in that.

When instead of straining and groaning and being frustrated at what God has done, not getting clear answers on those things, we can instead settle ourselves into the reality of a good and gracious and powerful God who's made you the way he made you. He's given you the things he has given you. He's put you here and now. As much as you might rather be someplace else or some when else, some other space and time, this is where God's put you.

So find what God wants for us. Because so often we long for other things. It's a form of envy. Something else out there is better than what it is now. I don't understand why I'm here and not over there. It's the old, "grass is greener on the other side" kind of syndrome. When we have that, we're sort of wrestling against God and the way that he has made us. We struggle against God's creation.

And one of the ways in which we are watching the enemy make use of this in profoundly destructive ways, friends, is in the trans and the queer agenda. That you were born in the wrong body. That's literally not how you were made. God's design is not right for you. All of that. Now individuals deserve mercy and love and kindness and goodness, but the agenda itself is designed to destroy how God has built us.

God is the potter and we are the clay. Coming to terms with God's design for us can free us to be literally who God created us to be. But we get hung up, and we get hung up for all kinds of different reasons. Paul actually uses the language in the next couple of verses. God makes some vessels for wrath and God makes some vessels for mercy. He's quoted Isaiah. He's referred to Jeremiah and the story of the potter and the clay.

Well, doesn't that sound like the knockdown, drag out, God sends some people to hell and God brings some people into heaven? Let's go to Jeremiah chapter 18. Just after God is kind of walked this image through with Jeremiah, that the pot has no right or power to tell the potter how he's made it. And God talks about he's made some for destruction and some for honorable use. He says this in Jeremiah 18, verses 7 and 8.

"If at any time, I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster I intended to do to it." Yeah, I made them for destruction, but you know what else is possible? There's a path of salvation and mercy. And if they turn from their evil and wicked ways, then I will remold that thing into a vessel of glory. Isn't that incredible?

There is always hope. There is always hope to the very last breath. There is always hope. Paul himself later in life comes back to this image. He uses the same vocabulary when he writes Second Timothy, the last book that Paul writes. In Second Timothy, chapter 2, verses 20 and 21, Paul puts it like this.

"Now, in a great house, there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay. Some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work."

In the next couple of verses, Paul says, "So, put away this sin, this sin, this sin, this sin, get rid of all of that dishonorable use in your life. Because if you want to be a vessel that is used by God in glorious and honorable ways, you know what? Respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Put your faith in Jesus. Put your eyes on Jesus. Put your heart on Jesus Christ."

So the question is posed, the question is posed to me, the question is posed to you, no matter who you are or where you are, "Do you want to be a vessel of honorable or dishonorable use? Which do you want?" Because it's possible to be right with God and used the way he wants to be used.

Paul sees his life as exactly this story. He's already told Timothy in First Timothy chapter 1, "But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost," and he just went through telling Timothy, "I did not know a worse sinner than me." "As the foremost sinner, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life."

Don't get angry at God if you refuse his offer of salvation. Don't get angry at God if you refuse the offer of mercy and grace that he gives. He's offering forgiveness, he's offering life, he's offering an end to the old way of thinking that pulls life apart. And if we reject him, don't get angry at him.

Paul uses the word patience in Romans 9, the passage we read. He uses patience to describe God and we talked about his own story in what we just read in First Timothy 1. God is patient so that we might respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In verses 22 and 23, Paul's been talking about vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and vessels of mercy that are prepared for glory.

People who are on their way to eternal separation from God, on their way to eternal destruction are on that path because of their refusal to believe in Christ and so be saved. I'm going to lay something on you that some of you have probably never heard it put this way. But every now and then, I want to put a burr in your saddle so that you just can't sit down without thinking about this for a little while.

Let me explain it, let me give it to you and then I'll spend some time explaining it, and I'll let you deal with it. In the end, those who want hell will get it. In the end, those who want hell will get it. The first reaction to that is probably something like, "Well, who on earth would want eternal torment?" Nobody wants that.

Let's look at it from another point of view. If you don't want eternity with the Jesus Christ of the Bible, God will not force a single second of heaven upon you. If you do not like the God of the Bible, and you die in rebellion against him, God will not force you into his presence for a single second. If you do not like the idea of the exclusivity of Jesus Christ, that he is the only way to heaven, he will not force you to spend eternity with him for a single moment.

If the moral system of the Bible makes you angry, you will not be forced to spend eternity in the glorious magnificent of a perfect, holy, and righteous God. Why is there evil in this world? It isn't because God makes it so. It is because people choose to rebel against the design and the mercy of God. People are evil, God is patient.

The only reason you and I are breathing right now is the patient mercy of God. This is why. We're going to pick up somewhere here in the middle of this passage again next week. But I want to go to verse 24 and 25 so that we can sort of put a little bit of an end on these thoughts here. Paul is going to quote from the Old Testament book of Hosea, the prophet Hosea. So Isaiah, Jeremiah, we've talked about Job. We'll use a little bit of Hosea thrown into the mix.

"As indeed he says in Hosea, 'Those who were not my people, I will call my people. And her who was not beloved, I will call beloved. And in the very place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," they will be called sons of the living God.'" Hosea is a fascinating book. I'm going to imagine that most of us have not necessarily read Hosea in a little while.

Some of you I know are reading through the Bible in a year. Make it to some of these Old Testament prophets so that you can understand the story of Hosea. It's fascinating. Because it begins with God telling the prophet Hosea, "I need you to go find this woman of ill repute. Her name is Gomer. She's a prostitute. And you need to marry her and bring her into your home and start a family."

He does that. These children get born. She's unfaithful to him. And God says, "I need you to go back to her. I need you to ransom her from the sin she's found herself in again, and pull her back into the family." And God uses the story of an unfaithful wife and the children that are born to them to tell the story that God has married his people and his people have rebelled against him. They've been spiritually adulterous against him. They continue to turn away, but guess what God does. He keeps on ransoming us back to himself. That's the story of the book of Hosea.

So part of what is so surprising about that book is the amount, the sheer amount of mercy that is shown to sinful, rebellious, and broken people. It's the same story that we've talked about already in this passage of Scripture. People are evil, and God is patient. So here it is, friends, this is so important. It is not surprising that God judges sin. It is surprising, God shows mercy to sinners. That's what's so amazing about the grace of God.

We so often have it exactly backwards. We get angry because God judges when we should be stunned that he offers salvation. We should be brought to our knees. When in our sin, we know that there's a God who still forgives. There's a wonderful author, if you don't know her story, you need to get her story. Her name is Rosaria Butterfield.

A radical transformation and salvation in life. She repented from a lifestyle of activist lesbianism. Her life was touched by the hospitality of a Christian family in her neighborhood, and her life was radically changed. And she's a magnificent speaker and author. And she likes to quote the Puritans, and she likes to say this, "Our repentance is to the glory of God." Every time a sinner repents, God is glorified.

Because he shows mercy to people like you and me, to people who continue in sin. Paul told us in Romans chapter 3, "There is no one righteous, not a single one." But there is a righteous and holy God who loves his people enough to be patient with us, to call out to us, and to show mercy to the repentant sinner. This is the greatness and the glory of a sovereign God. Let's pray.

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.