Is God Right

Scrab our bibles, scrab our bibles, and turn with me to Romans chapter

nine. Thank you, brom Romans nine. If you don't have a Bible

with you, just raise your hand. We're passing those out. And if

you didn't get a bulletin on your way in, that's gonna be helpful too,

because there's sermon notes on the back of that and you can track along.

So just raise your hand and keep keep it up, and we'll find

you with a bible and or bulletin. And then turn with me to Romans

chapter nine. We're going to be in Verses fourteen through twenty nine. We've

been in a series in Romans. As a church, we've been working through

the letter of the Apostle Paul to the church at Rome. And here we

are. And if you haven't been a part of our congregation as we've been

doing this, then you get to join us in that. And here you

are, and so glad you are, so welcome Romans chapter nine. Brother,

why don't you come and read our sermon text for us? And then

we are going to jump right on end Romans nine fourteen through twenty nine.

Romans nine fourteen through twenty nine, What shall we say, then is there

injustice on God's part by no means? Or he says to Moses, I

will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on

whom I have compassion. So then 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 whomever he wills, and he hardens

whomever he wills. 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 is 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 Hoseah, those

who are not my people, I will call my people, and her who

is not my beloved, I will call my 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 sand 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 been like Sodom and become like the moral This is the word of the

Lord. Amen. It probably wouldn't surprise you if I told you that a

lot of people have a problem with God. Maybe those who don't believe in

God, which I guess is sort of ironic to not believe in God and

have a problem with him. But then there are those who may be going

through a certain sort of suffering of a season and are struggling with the idea

that God being in charge of everything you are still experiencing, seeing what you're

experiencing. And then there are those trusting in what Scripture says, believing in

who God is, when coming face to face with the idea of God's sovereignty

in salvation, that ultimately and foundationally God has prerogative over showing his mercy or

showing his wrath to anyone can be such an affront to our sensibility of individual

autonomy, a sort of a profound, inviable free will, that most of

us, when confronted by what Scripture teaches about God's sovereignty and salvation, respond

with some version of huh, that can't be right? Is that right,

which, taken to its logical conclusion, can eventually become Is God right?

I know? I did. I felt that way when I first became a

Christian twenty five years ago. I had come to believe and trust in Jesus.

I was still very skeptical about the Bible, and I thought the idea

that God chose whose eyes he opened with faith was preposterous. It couldn't be

true, or if it was true, then it was ugly, but scripture

has shown me something profoundly different that not only is it true, it's beautiful.

And that's what I hope to persuade you of this morning from scripture,

that you would see and you would trust God's sovereign grace as just and as

beautiful, and that you would respond to it with humility and worship. That's

what I hope for us this morning. And to do that, we are

going to hear from the apostle Paul as he addresses the very issue. And

he addresses the issue by answering two basic questions. Number one, is God

unjust? And he addresses that two different from two different accounts of scripture from

the Old Testament. And then he answers this second question, why does he

find fault? In other words, if he's in charge, if he's sovereign,

if he's in control of all things, including every crevice of the human

art, then why does he judge? And he answers that in three different

ways. And then lastly, this morning we'll consider how we should respond to

all of that as we look at is God right? So he gets started,

is God unjust? Is God unjust? I mean, Paul has just

finished this paragraph in his letter where he reminds his readers that God sovereignly chose

Jacob over his brother Esau. And here's the important part, before before either

was born, before either had done anything good or bad, Paul says,

for God's own purposes, he says. So he's highlighting that God has his

own prerogative in who he elects in his redemptive work. And so Paul immediately

senses the objection that we all intuitively feel, and it is that fair?

And you're just staring at me because either you're tracking and you feel it too,

or I've lost you already. That's going to be a long morning for

you. He raises it. In verse fourteen, he says this, what

shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? And his answer

is no, And he points to this account of God's interaction with Moses from

Exodus. He says this by no means, for he says to Moses,

I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion

on whom I have compassion. So what's going on here? Paul's talking about

a time where Moses he beseeches God. He says, God, I want

to know who you are. I want to see your glory. And God

says, here's what I'll do. I'm gonna show you myself. I'm gonna

show to you what of myself. I can show you what you can get,

what you can comprehend, what you can see and still live. I

am going to reveal myself to you as you should understand me. And he

says this, I will say my name Yahweh, which means I am who

I am, and I will declare this before you. I will have mercy

on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I

will have compassion. This is what you need to understand about me. This

is my essential character. That I am who I am. I am the

uncaused cause, I am the unmoved mover, and I am the giver of

unmerited grace by my own initiative. In other words, God is who God

is, and he runs his universe the way he runs his universe, and

that's not unjust. It's his universe. It's actually a beautiful thing for God

to be God, and it's his mercy. It's not unjust for God's mercy

to be lavished as he deems wise. In fact, we want that because

he is lavish and he is wise. It is beautiful for God's mercy to

be entirely God's mercy. And so Paul's conclusion about this is in verse sixteen.

So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God,

who has mercy. So it depends it depends the foundational thing that determines

who receives compassion and who receives mercy depends not on human will, not on

free will, not on human exertion, not on man's works, not on

our ingenuity, not on our insight, not on our wisdom, not on

our specialness, goodness upbringing, not on our decisions, but on God.

That's what it depends on, what is foundational, not on a person's will.

That is strange to hear for someone who has heard for weeks on end

when I was a kid, I have decided to follow Jesus. Not that

there's anything wrong with that song, because anyone who has followed Jesus has decided

to follow Jesus. That's not untrue. And so this may be a good

place to talk about the doctrine of concurrence, the doctrine of concurrence is that

God is entirely in charge of his universe. He governs and controls every hair

and every leaf. Scripture makes that perfectly clear. And also we have moral

agency. We make real decisions and make real choices about real sin and real

righteousness. We act, and God is also in control, and both of

those two things are simultaneously compatible and true. And how those things are compatible

is mysterious, but not usually objected to. As those who trust what scripture

has to say, we trust that God is in control, and we trust

that He has told us how to live, and we are responsible and culpable

for living that way. What gets objected to, though, is when Scripture

says, although we make real moral choices, at the end of the day,

in the final analysis, when you get down to the bottom, God's

sovereign power and wisdom is the decisive factor in all things, including how we

respond to God. And to make that point, the Apostle uses another Old

Testament account. Look at verse seventeen, for the scripture says to Pharaoh,

for this very purpose, I have raised you up that I might show my

power in you, that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

So now Paul makes use of this account of Pharaoh being confronted by Moses by

being confronted by God through Moses, as Moses said, let my people go,

and Pharaoh stubbornly refused. And Pharaoh saw himself in this tug of war

between himself and the God of Israel, and he would not do it,

He would not relent. And really, the whole account is really is an

example of concurrence on display, because if you read the plague narrative from Exodus,

throughout the narrative, you hear this refrain, but with variations, goes

like this, but Pharaoh hardened his heart, But Pharaoh's heart was hardened,

But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart over and over again in these variations. So

did Pharaoh harden his heart or did the Lord harden Pharaoh's heart? Yeah,

you know the answer. We've been doing this what ten years. In other

words, it's a mistake to read the plague narrative as merely a tug of

war between the will of God and the will of Pharaoh. It is that,

but it also shows the purposes and power of God on display through allowing

Pharaoh to keep wanting what he wanted. Pharaoh thought he was simply resisting God,

and in one sense he was. But from God's perspective, Pharaoh wasn't

resisting God. In the ultimate sense, he was proving God's point for him.

Right, God's power will be shown, God's name will be proclaimed.

And I think we have to ask, are any of us acting like Pharaoh

now in any area of our life, resisting God? Thinking we're so independent,

so astute. As Romans has made clear from the very beginning of the

letter, the last thing you really want is for God to finally turn you

over to what you want to Let you keep wanting what you want, and

your resistance to God is not really just a tug of war with God.

You will really prove God's point about the rebellion of the human heart. Don't

harden in that. Don't harden in that. Let me persuade you to do

what Pharaoh would not do, and that is throw yourself on the mercy of

God. And you ask, well, how do I even know if I

can, if God's in control of everything. Well, here's what Scripture shows

us. Our embrace of the mercy of God is the evidence of the mercy

of God. Our embrace of the mercy of God is the evidence of the

mercy of God. He would not be unjust to turn you over to the

way you've been going, to let you keep wanting what you want, and

he would not be unjust to earn you around and to change your desires in

his mercy, because it's his mercy to give either way. God is right

and God is beautiful, but it will be the humble heart that sees his

beauty. So I pray for you humility and not hardness. But all of

that raises another possible objection, and it goes like this, why does God

find fault? In other words, if God is in control ultimately, I'm

foundationally yeah, okay, so the concurrence and we do have moral agency.

But God is still all to and foundationally the sovereign. If he's in control

of even every crevice of the human heart, then how can he judge?

How can he judge? Paul brings it up. He senses the objection.

He says, you will say to me, then why does he still find

fault? For who can resist his will? As verse nineteen, and Paul

addresses this question three ways. The first two ways he embeds in this metaphor

about the clay and the Potter, And then the third way he uses a

couple of Old Testament references. Again, the first way he answers the question

why does God find fault? Is this? God is God? God is

God, And Paul says, to accuse God of injustice is like clay accusing

the potter of mishandling it. It's kind of it's absurd for a piece of

clay to stand there, arms of kimbo or shaking its finger and saying,

I don't know what you're thinking. I know you don't know what I'm thinking.

It's preposterous. But more than that, depending on our tone and our

insistence on an answer, we risk putting God down in the defendant's chair and

putting ourselves high up on the judge's bench and insisting on that place, which

is kind of ironic since the objection is about God's right to judge. To

continue insisting upon staying on the judge's bench. Yeah, it's audacious, it's

inappropriate, and that's Paul's point, and we'll unpact that in a second.

But I think we should understand that the initial impulse to want to judge this

is not all bad. The capacity for moral judgment is God given. It's

good. Yeah, we're flawed and we miscalibrate it a lot. But if

we sense that people could be treated unfairly, it is right for us to

feel indignant. Right that that's a god given impulse. We shouldn't want to

seek anyone, any of God's creation, treated unfairly, so we should we

should not quiet the impulse about fairness. That's right, that's good. But

here's the thing. God doesn't treat anyone unfairly, he said, So he's

proven how far he'll go to show mercy and compassion. The question is,

will you trust how vastly bigger is God's wisdom, even beyond categories of things

that you can assess, or will you insist on shrinking God in your mind

into someone you can judge, because you will find that that thinking is not

biblical and it will not pan out to be beautiful either. So, as

Paul addresses this question, why does God find fault? The first way he

answers that is that God is God. But the second way that he answers

that is, and God will be glorified. God will be glorified God Verse

twenty two and twenty three. He says 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.

God is glorified in his power and judgment and his patience in that judgment.

Like Pharaoh, I will make my name known. I will show my power,

and I have Pharaoh, I have, I have shown patience. The

world can see both my power and my patience. And God will be glorified

in his judgment, and God will be glorified in the riches of his mercy.

Ultimately, God will be glorified through judgment, and God will be glorified

through mercy. He will be glorified. John Piper said, this is the

deepest insight the Bible gives into the sovereignty of God. God will be glorified.

We may rebel, God will be glorified. We may repent. God

will be glorified. We may scoff. God will be glorified. We may

believe and trust and love, and he will be glorified. And it is

right, It is right for God to be glorified, like it is right

for the planets to revolve around the sun. God should be glorified because he

is, in truth glorious. And to want a world in which God is

not glorified is to want a world that is nothing but dark. And in

the end we will see the riches of his glory, and we will say,

you were so wise and so merciful, and so just and so patient

with us all and nothing you ordained was failing, and nothing that you ordained

was flawed. And it's glorious to give glory to him forever. Why does

God find faults? God is God, God will be glorified. And the

third way that Paul addresses the question seems like a bit of a shift,

but he basically says this God is being consistent. God is being consistent in

that he both woos and spares. That is his character of steadfast love.

He says in verse twenty four through twenty six, even us vessels of mercy,

of even us whom he has called not from the Jews only, but

also from the Gentiles. As Indeed, he says in Hosea, those who

are 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 the sons of the Living God. Okay, so what's going on in

Hoseah. In Hoseah, God has come to the prophet Hoseah and said,

the people Israel are completely unfaithful to me. I have been their husband and

they have been a cheating They are completely given to other gods. They're completely

given to their own loves, their own pursuits. They want nothing to do

with me. They are unfaithful, and I want you to proclaim it.

In fact, I want you to marry someone you know will be unfaithful.

I want you to marry a prostitute, and in her unfaithfulness, I want

you to marry. I want you to name the kids that she has not

my people, and no mercy. That's commitment to the job. I want

you to put on display for this people Israel their unfaithfulness to me. Because

these people have cheated on me and mistrusted me. They've refused to acknowledge all

good things that they have in their life comes from me. And I'm gonna

make all the good things go away. They are not my people, and

I will show them no mercy. But then, but then, when I've

taken away all the distractions in the end, I will take them aside,

and I will speak tenderly to them again. I will woo her back to

me because I can't help loving her. And Paul is saying, if God

can woo Israel from that place of not my people and no mercy through his

work of sovereign judgment and through his work of sovereign tenderness, he can do

that with the people in this Roman church and with the people in this room

as well. That God's mysterious weaving of both judgment and mercy in the wooing

of people like me and like you is consistent with his holy character of steadfast

love, and it should melt our hearts, not harden us like the Judgey

clay. And then Paul uses this last Old Testament account from Isaiah, and

Isaiah says, though the people of Israel are like sand on the seashore,

though there's so many of them, when God brings his judgment, he's just

gonna leave a remnant left. But he will leave a remnant. In other

words, got to think like you're just as wicked as Soldom. You're just

as wicked as Gomora, and I would be perfectly just to wipe you out.

But in my mercy, I'm going to leave a remnant, because I

will show both my mercy and my wrath, so that even as he judges,

God consistently both wooes and spares. In other words, not only is

God the rightful judge, He's actually the kind of judge we want, just

and merciful, and it's beautiful. So how should we respond to all of

this? Three ways? Quickly, We should respond to this by seeing Jesus.

We should respond to this by seeing Jesus. But what I mean is

this, and so often this objection, these sort of philosophical questions that naturally,

very naturally impulsively come up, they take root, They take root and

become embittered many times because we start to conceive of God as a distant and

detached robot maker. Oh, he's in charge, but far from being a

removed sovereign that is somehow unaware of the impact of his judgments. He stepped

in to take them himself. He knows. If there's one person who could

complain is God unjust? It would be God himself and Jesus Christ, because

he took the wrath that only he never deserved, but he did it willingly

so that we would receive mercy. So if we don't see Jesus as we

talk about this, if we don't see the cross that put both justice and

mercy on display, we don't see the resurrection that promises life to all who

are united to Him by faith. We risk not seeing the price of mercy

or the promise of mercy. Because the resurrection is a promise to all who

will receive it. You don't know. You don't know if mercy is for

you. The resurrection is a promise for all who will receive it, which

leads to the second way we should respond to this, which is to humbly

repent. To humbly repent. And you say, well, how can I

Does in this chapter say that God is ultimately sovereign over repentance. Yeah,

and you know what the next chapter says, everyone who calls on the name

of the Lord will be saved. Call on him make your repentance. Your

humble repentance is the evidence of his mercy towards you. Call on him for

redemption, call on him to change your calloused skepticism. Every one of us

who have received saving mercy from God would tell you we started hard hearted,

but instead of turning us over to ever petrifying hearts, he mercifully softened us.

Bow your heart in repentance, and you will perceive the mercy of God.

Our last response worship. Worship. These deep truths about God should move

us to worship, whether we've been walking with Him for years or we've only

begun a moment ago. We can see who God is, justly sovereign over

every last hair and leaf in his universe, and he is glorious and he's

to be worshiped, so merciful that he kneels down and shows us undeserved kindness.

And he's glorious and he's worthy to be worshiped. We should worship the

God whose sovereign grace is just and beautiful.