Title: Objection Three! What’s the Point?
Again, let me stress how pleased I am with our progress this far in Romans Chapter 9. Today we will come to a conclusion of sorts that we have been building to for the last four weeks. Today’s sermon will not finish out chapter nine (I hope that will come within the next two weeks) but today’s sermon will “finalize” Paul’s argument in a way, showing the REASON that God has prepared both vessels of honor and vessels of wrath out of the same lump of clay that is humanity.
What is the point, what is God’s purpose?
Let me first acknowledge that trying to figure out God’s purpose can be a really slippery slope. Often, the things that occur in our lives that at first seem bad, or pointless, often carry deep meaning for us later in life.
Today, of course, is Mother’s Day, and I’d like to share something with you from my relationship with my mother, who is with us today. This is an excerpt from a “Spiritual Autobiography” that was one my assignments during my first year at seminary. I recently came across is while trying to clean out my hard drive and I think it is poignant, both in light of mother’s day, and in light of us trying to grasp God’s purposes.
(Read excerpt)
You see, these things could have very easily be seen as negatives in both my mother and my life early on. But they caused, forced if you will, my mother to trust and depend on God, and when the time came, I was “taken back” as much to my surprise as anyone’s and called into the ministry.
Remember what thought we concluded with last week. “I am compelled by the Holy Spirit to trust God the most when I do not understand what He is doing.”
With that in mind, Paul does offer to us an explanation of WHY God has chosen to do what he has with humanity.
(Read vv.22-24)
In other words, what Paul offers is this explanation:
“Perhaps God wants us to understand his power, to understand his wrath, to understand his absolute hatred for sin. And the point of the lives of the vessels of wrath is to allow Him to show his absolute and perfect justice. In fact, he hates their sin, but he endures it, because it allows him to illustrate his perfect justice.
And, on the other hand, you have us, sinners just like the vessels prepared for destruction. But in us, God has laid forth another plan, a plan of mercy, a plan of forgiveness, a plan of glory. He endures our sin as well, but in order to illustrate His perfect mercy, we receive a different fate in the unearned gift of salvation through the blood of Christ Jesus.”
Two thoughts come to mind here.
Last week we talked about “fair.” Is God fair in his decision? You don’t want fair. Trust me. Fair is what the vessels of destruction receive. Fair is getting exactly what you deserve. Hell is fair. You want mercy. You want the gospel message. You want the blood of Jesus.
Now the second thought:
Would we really understand God’s mercy if we did not understand God’s Justice? If everyone was saved, it would be long before we’d forget that God is just, and feel that God is doing for us what He should, what he does for everyone, because, after all, what’s the alternative?
Many of you, who have spent any considerable time here at Heritage know that one of my theological “pet peeves” is replacing a characteristic of something with the whole of who or what that something is.
Nowhere is this more prevalent when someone says, “God wouldn’t destine some to heaven and some to Hell, because God is Love.
Yes, God is the perfect expression of Love. But that is not the entirety of His character. This is a debate that I have gone round and round with some of my closest family members for years. If you read the Bible (and again, let me stress that most people calling themselves Christians do not read the Bible) you will see that Love, perfect Love is part of who God is, but he is also Perfect Justice, Perfect Jealousy, Perfect Wrath, Perfect Righteousness, and so on.
How do we know these things: God tells us this is who he is in the Bible!
Therefore, the issues we’ve been discussing for the last month are not about how you feel about God, they are not about what you’ve been taught up until this point in your walk, they are simply about this: do you believe the Bible is God’s infallible word, and what does it say about salvation?