The Riches Of His Glory

Children’s Bible Page 1231.

When I was in Bible college, me and other guys would sit around our dorm rooms debating hot theological topics like Calvinism, predestination, and election.

And certain guys were just known for their willingness to fight you if you did not believe just like they did on those matters.

A former pastor of mine would warn us of having that kind of attitude toward theology.

He called it having theological body odor.

You may be right about the doctrine but the way you fight about it really stinks.

Well, I want you to know as your pastor stands up here and preaches through Romans 9, I seek to preach the Word with clarity and conviction, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t still have my own questions about how all this works or how all this fits together.

Paul’s teaching on God’s sovereignty in salvation through Romans 9 leads to some difficult questions.

And that’s okay.

But I want to point out to us how this section of Scripture begins, and how it ends.

Because if we keep in mind how the section begins and ends, I believe we will have our hearts and minds shaped the way God would have it through these passages, and it is certainly not to fight with other people like we did back in college.

Remember last week, the passage began with Paul sharing how much sorrow and unceasing anguish He feels when he considers how so many of his own ethnic people, the Jews, have rejected Jesus and the message of the gospel, which is an example to us of how we should cultivate a passion for sharing Christ with the lost and praying for their salvation.

At the end of this section, in Romans 11, the passage ends this way:

Romans 11:33–36 ESV

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

So, the passage begins with a passion for the lost, and the passage ends in praise for a God who saves and whose ways are higher than our ways, and whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

So, it only makes sense that there are going to be things about God that we mere humans do not understand fully.

That’s why He is God and we are not.

After Paul conveys his love for his own ethnic people and his sorrow for their rejection of the gospel, we saw last week, He then answers the question:

Does that mean the word of God has failed?

Weren’t all of God’s saving promises for His chosen Old Testament people, the Jews?

If very few of them are believing the gospel and very few are being saved, doesn’t that mean that God’s promises have failed?

But, we heard Paul state clearly: No! It is not as though the word of God has failed.

Then, he went on to show that God had always planned to save a remnant of the Jews down through history by His own sovereign choice and unconditional election.

And Paul knew we would respond to this: Well, then is there injustice on God’s part for sovereignly choosing to love Jacob and hate Esau?

Paul responded: By no means!

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

He then uses Pharoah as an example of one whom God hardened his heart in order to display His power through.

Which leads Paul to ask another question He knew we humans would ask:

Let’s pick it up in verse 19:

Romans 9:19–29 ESV

19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 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? 22 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, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? 25 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.’ ” 26 “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.’ ” 27 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, 28 for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” 29 And as Isaiah predicted, “If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.”

1. God Is In The Right To Make Us As He Chooses

When we consider that God shows mercy to whomever He wills, and He hardens whomever he wills, the question becomes: Then why does God still find fault? For who can resist His will?

In other words, how can God hold someone accountable for their hardness of heart if it was God who hardened their heart?

Now, I would expect Paul here to back off a bit and start explaining how we have free will, but he doesn’t do that! I’m not saying the free will of man does not exist, but that’s not where God has Paul go in this passage.

Instead, when the question is raised how God could find fault with those who cannot resist his will, how does Paul respond?

Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?

In other words: what right do you have as a mere man to question God in this way?

Now, there are times in the Bible where a genuine question to God is honored by God, but this is not one of those times.

It is like in the Christmas story in the gospel of Luke when the angel came to Zechariah and told him his wife would have a child, and Zechariah asks

Luke 1:18 ESV

18 And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”

And God rebukes Zechariah and makes him mute for a time because Zechariah did not believe the Lord’s words.

Zechariah’s question is not honored because it came from a heart of unbelief.

Zechariah asks, “How shall I know this?” Well, you will know this because God is the one who said it.

In contrast, when the angel told Mary that she would become pregnant with Jesus, Mary asked:

Luke 1:34 ESV

34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

Mary did ask a question, but it was not a question of if what God said was true.

Mary received God’s word as true and asked how in the world is the thing going to happen?

Here in Romans, God has already made extremely plain that mankind is responsible for their sin and rebellion and justly deserve punishment, so to ask why God finds fault with man is to question the truth of God’s word.

So Paul replies: You have no right to ask that question.

Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”

You see, it is sometimes tempting for us to question God and his ways when we cannot understand them fully or they seem offensive to us,

But Paul is making clear here that the Creator has complete freedom to create however he chooses.

This passage reminds me of the Old Testament book of Job.

And after Job had suffered much suffering that He could not understand, he questioned God’s justice.

And instead of God explaining himself, God begins to question Job.

Job 38:4–7 ESV

4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, 7 when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

And God goes on with questions like these for the next 124 verses.

And at the end of God’s questioning, Job says that He could now see God clearly and see himself clearly, and he repents of his questioning of God.

Now, Job doesn’t mean he got his questions all answered about his suffering. Far from it.

Instead, He came to realize: who am I a creature to question why my creator has done what He has done?

Verse 21 - “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?”

When a potter sits at his bench and has his clay mound sitting there and all his tools ready, you know who get no say in what the potter is about to make? The clay.

And after the potter makes whatever they make, the clay doesn’t get to argue and say, “Well, why did you make me like this?”

The potter has every right to use his first lump of clay to make a beautiful decorating vase.

And then he also has every right to grab another lump from the same pile right after and make a toilet bowl.

Now, no doubt, it is a difficult thing to imagine God creating some people for salvation and eternal life, and creating other people for the very purpose of eternal punishment.

But, where ever you fall in your understanding of all this, in order to be within the realm of biblical faithfulness and orthodoxy, you must agree that God knows all things from beginning to end, and you must agree that God does not save everyone, but instead “narrow is the way that leads to eternal life and few find it,” so God created some people knowing they would be condemned to eternal punishment and hell.

Since this is the case, the question becomes, “Well, why? What possible reason would God have for such a thing?”

2. God’s Great Purpose Is To Display His Glory

Verse 22-23 is the key to understanding this entire passage.

Verses 22-23: 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?

I want you think about how these two verses encapsulate the great purpose of God that we see throughout the Scriptures.

We see at the beginning of Genesis that God created all things and that God created mankind as the pinnacle of His creation.

Mankind was the only creation that was created in the image of God.

Meaning mankind can know, perceive, relate with, and worship God in a way that none of the other parts of creation can.

Romans 1 tells us that the other parts of creation are actually purposed by God for mankind to be able to perceive God’s eternal power and divine nature.

Psalm 19:1 ESV

1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

So, the purpose of mankind is to see and perceive of the greatness of the glory of God in order to worship God by finding all of our needs met and desires satisfied in God alone.

God is so good and generous and glorious in order to create creatures who can bask in his glory, love His glory, and reflect His glory back to him, that is the great purpose of mankind.

It is why John Piper has popularized this phrase: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Our worship is finding all of our needs met and desires satisfied in God alone.

So, what I want us to do is consider God’s people back in the time of back in the Old Testament time when they were slaves in Egypt, and Pharoah was the kind of Egypt.

It is the very event Paul himself uses in this passage back up in verse 17, so it is the most fitting of events to illustrate the truth of verses 22-23.

When God’s people, the Israelites, were slaves in Egypt, they were not clearly perceiving all of who God was.

Instead, they were complaining and grumbling to the Lord. They were not finding all their needs met and desires satisfied in His great glory.

Instead, they were under the heavy hand of Pharoah, King of Egypt.

Then, God sent the man Moses to go before Pharoah and demand that Pharoah let His people go free.

And Pharoah refused, and he made the peoples’ labors even harder.

So, God began to display His great power and divinity over Pharoah to his people by sending great plagues on the land of Egypt.

And Pharoah time and time again refused to let the people go.

And God, instead of just squashing Pharoah like a bug the first time he hardened his heart against God, God was patient with him, and sent another plague and another plague, but as Pharoah hardened his heart, God participated with Pharoah in the hardening as well.

And finally, after 10 awful plagues that brought Pharoah and the Egyptian people to their knees even to the point of all the first born sons being killed, Pharoah finally said, “Go, get out of here Moses, you and all of our people.”

God had displayed his great power over the greatest powers and gods of the other nation to His people, then he set his people free.

Yet, soon after the people left, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart once again to the point that Pharoah took his grand army to pursue God’s people and bring them back into slavery.

And as God’s people stood trapped with the Red Sea on one side and the greatest army in the world coming from the other side, God again displayed His power and glory to his people by parting the Red Sea and leading his people through to the other side on dry ground.

When Pharaoh’s army saw it, they pursued across the path through the sea as well, but once all of the people of God were standing on the other side of the sea, God caused those great sea walls to collapse and to destroy Pharaoh and the great army the world had ever seen in one instance.

Can you imagine God’s people standing husbands, wives, children overlooking the great sea as God had just saved them from their great enemy?

Can you imagine the sense of God’s glory and power and wrath and mercy and grace and love toward his people that they perceived in that moment?

Verses 22-23: 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?

For what purpose did Pharoah and his army exist?

For what purpose did God show patience to Pharoah time and time again, although he rightly deserved the wrath of God leading to destruction?

Why did God finally destroy Pharoah and his army in such a powerful and dramatic display right in front of God’s people?

Here’s why:

In order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory.

Can you imagine how God’s people were perceiving in their hearts the riches of God’s glory and mercy toward them as they stood there and did nothing to help God, as God alone destroyed their great enemy who was hellbent on their own destruction?

An enemy they had no chance to overcome or overpower?

Now, while the greatness of God’s glory and power and character was displayed to God’s Old Testament people at the Red Sea that day, we know that for many of the people, the awe and wonder of the glory of God did not fully remain.

For soon, many of the people were showing their unbelief and refusing to obey God’s word.

For this mighty outward display did not give all the people new hearts to love and obey God.

That is why God desired and purposed to show his wrath and make known his power while enduring with much patience vessels of wrath prepare for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory in an even great way through the events of sending His son Jesus, and Jesus being arrested, tried, crucified, buried, and resurrected to new life on the third day.

Throughout Jesus’ life, Jesus constantly experienced the hatred and unbelief of most the Jewish people, culminating in their evil plot to have Jesus killed at the hands of the evil Romans.

For what purpose did God allow His son to be laughed at, mocked, arrested, unfairly tried as a criminal, brutally beaten, inhumanly hung up on a cross, why did God endure with much patience these vessels of wrath who so hated our Lord Jesus and who were deserving of utter destruction?

Here is why:

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 called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles.

Because after Jesus suffered the full weight of the wrath of God due our sin on the cross.

He died and was buried.

And three days later, God displayed his great power toward us in raising Jesus from the dead.

And as we stand on the other side of the sea of God’s wrath and see our great enemy of sin, Satan, hell, and death conquered by our risen Savior Jesus Christ,

God’s people perceive in their hearts the riches of God’s glory and mercy toward them as we stand here and did nothing to help God, as God alone destroyed our great enemy who was hellbent on our own destruction.

But because Jesus not only defeated a human enemy but our sin and death, He gives all who receive His mercy a brand new heart of love and awe and worship of God in order to know and obey him as we bask in the greatness of his glory and his mercy.

God’s great purpose is to display his glory to all those who receive His mercy and glory in Him.

Our world lies and tells us that if there is a God than he loves and accepts every human the same as His beloved children.

God’s word tells us that God has set His love on those whom he foreknew and predestined and called and justified and glorified.

Listen, as totally offensive and unpalatable as this next statement I am about to make is to our culture, I pray it becomes incredibly sweet and lovely to God’s people:

According to God’s word: God does not love all people the same.

No, according to God’s word, God displays His great love and character and glory to his beloved people through finally judging and conquering Satan, sin, hell, the grave and all people who continued in unbelief and are vessels of God’s righteous wrath.

The final wrath of God toward sinners is yet another thing God uses to display to us just how great and glorious His mercy and love is toward those who believe.

No wonder, Romans 11:22 will call us to:

Romans 11:22 ESV

22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness.

Finally,

3. God’s Glory Is Shown In His Saving All Kinds Of People

Verse 24, which I referenced a moment ago, should be found very sweet to us.

After Paul has written: In order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory -

He then writes: even us whom he called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles.

Remember the context of our passage.

Wasn’t this whole idea of the beloved and chosen people of God a promise to ethnic Jews?

And since so many ethnic Jews are rejecting Jesus and God’s gospel, haven’t God’s promises failed?

No. No. No.

God’s purpose has always been to show His saving kindness to all kinds of people, not just ethnic Jews.

Verse 25-26: 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.’ ”

Now, in the book of Hosea, these verses referred to ethnic Israel, while they had rejected God to the point that He was rejecting them during the time of Hosea, He was promising that He would once again restore them to be his beloved people once again.

But think about it, Paul now uses the way in which God promised to make a people for himself out of a people who were previously considered not his beloved people in order to show that it has always been God’s pattern to surprise with grace those whom he previously rejected.

That’s why the Jews should not be surprised that God is saving so many Gentiles in His day.

Paul is saying that even Old Testament patterns teach that God brings into the family of God people who were once not considered part of the family.

In the same way, verse 27 shows us that the Old Testament itself argues that not all those who everyone just assumed were in the family of God were actually part of the family but,

Verse 27-29: 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 Gomorrah.”

In other words, God’s word has not failed for the ethnic Jews, neither by saving a bunch of Gentiles, nor by not saving a bunch of Jews.

For even in the Old Testament, it was always promised that only a remnant of Jewish people would be saved, and if the Lord had not chosen to save some of them, we would have been utterly destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Meaning, the Jews have no more right to salvation than the most wicked Gentiles, and the only reason why anyone is saved is by the great mercy and grace of God.

God’s glory is shown in saving all kinds of people, which is great news for us all kind of people who are sitting here today.

It is great news for every family member, coworker, neighbor, and friend whom you are praying for and sharing Christ with the hope that they will come to believe in Jesus and be saved.

In closing:

God’s word has not failed.

God will save all whom He will save from amongst all the nations and all who have been saved by God are to stand in hushed awe of His great power, wrath, mercy, grace, and love displayed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

All of God’s people, who make up the church of the living God are called to bask in the astounding love of God toward us who believe.

We are called to worship our great God from whom all our needs are met and our desires satisfied.

And we are to have passionate hearts to the lost and to pray and share Christ so that others might believe and receive.

To God be all the glory.

Let’s pray.

(Elder at couch)