Always the Plan: God's Sovereign Choice

What should we say then? Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not! For he tells Moses, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then, it does not depend on human will or effort but on God who shows mercy. For the Scripture tells Pharaoh, I raised you up for this reason so that I may display my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in the whole earth. So then, he has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and he hardens whom he wants to harden. You will say to me, therefore, “Why then does he still find fault? For who resists his will?” On the contrary, who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” Or has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor? And what if God, wanting to display his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath prepared for destruction? And what if he did this to make known the riches of his glory on objects of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory—on us, the ones he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As it also says in Hosea, I will call Not my People, My People, and she who is Unloved, Beloved. And it will be in the place where they were told, you are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God. But Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, Though the number of Israelites is like the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved; since the Lord will execute his sentence completely and decisively on the earth. And just as Isaiah predicted: If the Lord of Hosts had not left us offspring, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah.

It was a cool but sunny November morning in 1989. Out of the Whitehouse walked the President of the United States, George H.W. Bush. He approached the Podium to give a thanksgiving address. While Presidents of previous decades had received the gift of a live turkey to prepare for Thanksgiving, and this year was no exception. This particular morning, he brought a caged Turkey to the presidential address - joking that the turkey seemed a bit nervous. The crowd laughed as they knew the fate of the Turkey and the anticipated roasted feast that large bird would provide. But Bush did something that had never been done before. He issued that caged turkey a Presidential Pardon. That turkey would not end up on the table, at least not in 1989. Every Year since 1989, Presidents have given the Presidential Pardon to a turkey. Now, If you would, imagine with me this scenario. It is November, its cold enough to snow in Spokane but there probably isn’t any because winter has been weird the last few years. You wake up, have your coffee, and perhaps you are off to work. Then the News Stations start furiously putting out reports, there is outrage. Can you believe it?!?! Trump didn’t pardon the Turkey! How Could He? Is he heartless? Does he even care about tradition? How does he think turkey murder will Make America Great Again?!?!? And what people will forget is the nature of a Pardon. A Pardon is not owed, it is a gift. It is a gift solely in the hands of the giver, in this case, President Trump. And people will forget that THEIR TURKEYS WERE NOT PARDONED, and they will savor every bite of that turkey and mashed potatoes covered in gravy.

But if we take a step back, if we stop and think, that kind of outrage, that indignation, that opposition is how many people react to the idea that God would choose on whom he will have mercy and on whom he will not. Just as the president does not pardon all turkeys, neither does God have mercy on all people, as Paul tells us here in Romans 9. And some will bristle at the idea that God would grant a pardon - or a chance to accept a pardon - to everyone. How unfair! And that is the core objection Paul addresses in this portion of Romans.

Getting into the Text (9:14-29)

Paul begins to answer objections to what he has laid out and explain God’s purposes of election and of understanding Who Israel is.

Main Points:

God is not guilty of injustice in election

God chooses AND humanity is accountable for their sin

Salvation has always been based on God’s gracious choice

God is not guilty of injustice in election

Question: “Isn’t it unjust if God chooses and it's not my choice or my works?” v14

Here’s the Short Answer: Absolutely not!

Last week, Kyle preached on verses 6-13 in which Paul is explaining that God has been faithful to his people, even though the apparent rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the majority of the Jewish people might make you think otherwise. He explained that God selected Abraham of all the peoples of the earth, that God chose Isaac, out of Abraham’s 8 sons by 3 different women. And Isaac was not the oldest. And of Isaac’s children, Jacob was chosen as the one to whom God would fulfill the promises. This was before either had done anything, and in fact was in-spite of the things Jacob would do, as even his name can mean, as in the footnotes of many Bibles, “He Cheats.” Just think about that for a second. God chose a man named “HE CHEATS or HE DECEIVES,” who cheated his brother out of all his blessings of being the first born. Later, in response to his uncle’s trickery and deceit, Jacob then treated his uncle with trickery of his own. This man was not particularly upstanding, at least until later in his life. But that is just like God. He saves sinners, rebels, and cheaters and changes them, changes US.

Moses

But Paul doesn’t stop there. He’s used the Patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – to demonstrate that God chose a people to save for himself, but that the choosing is not simply bloodline, for “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Neither is it the case that all of Abraham’s children are his descendants.” Just because one is a physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in other words an Israelite, does not mean that this one TRULY belongs to God as the child of the Patriarchs. And now he is continuing on through Israel’s history to show God’s choice, starting with Moses and the covenantal establishment of the Nation-State of Israel.

READ ROMANS 9:15-16

“I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

Rather than a direct Western explanation of the justice of God, he cites the passage in which God tells Moses about his own freedom to choose. While Paul was focusing on God’s fulfillment of his promises in the previous section, the recounting of this part of Israel’s history takes on the purpose of demonstrating God’s freedom and defending his Justice as he chooses a people for himself.

Notice that this is not arbitrary in the sense God would condemn this innocent one, save that wretched criminal. No, God declares that he is dispensing MERCY on whom he will have MERCY. This is an incredibly important thing to notice. In a sense it is a call-back to Romans 1-3, that everyone is deserving of wrath, there is no innocent man, woman, or child in the spiritual sense. No one seeks after God, so God must have mercy in order for anyone to be saved. And since we are all deserving of Judgment, whenever God does not show mercy, he never engages in injustice.

Paul continues his thought in verse 16, So then, it (salvation) does not depend on human will or effort, but on God, who has mercy.

This is an echo of Jesus’ teaching in John 3 where tells us that Salvation is a work of God. Let’s turn there.

READ JOHN 3:1-8

John 3:1–8 CSB

There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to him at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

John 3:16–18 CSB

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.

As we see in Jesus’ teaching, Salvation is a work of God that we cannot predict nor control, like the wind. The New Birth is not of human will, but the will of God (Election as Paul says here) and we see that though all who believe are saved, humanity is already condemned. For there is no one good, no not one. No one seeks after God.

This understanding of the text of Scripture is not new, not novel, and in fact it is part of the Baptist tradition. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 sums up the teachings of Scripture on Regeneration in this way:

Regeneration, or the new birth, is a work of God’s grace whereby believers become new creatures in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance and faith are inseparable experiences of grace.

As Jesus said, we see the effects of spiritual rebirth, the first of which are repentance and faith, but the work of God changing the heart comes first. Without God choosing and acting to give us new birth there would be no repentance, no faith, no salvation. “I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

Pharaoh – The foil to Moses

But Paul does not stop at his mention of Moses and God’s freedom to show mercy. He speaks of another man: Pharaoh.

Pharaoh complete the couplet he began with Moses, and he’s using this as a pattern to teach us. Just as Paul implied Ishmael as the opposition, the one not chosen, and Isaac as the one chosen; Just as he explicitly gave Jacob and Esau as another chosen-rejected pair; He gives this new one: Moses and Pharaoh.

This one is a bit different, but interesting because both men were raised in the same house, even though Moses was an adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Still, God chose to have mercy on Moses, rather than the princely and kingly man he grew up with who would become Pharaoh. Instead of choosing the man with the institutional power to accomplish the purpose of freeing the people of Israel, God chose Moses. And Paul gives us an explanation of God’s choice by quoting Exodus 9:16 “I raised you up for this reason so that I may display my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in the whole earth.”

While this certainly gives us an explanation of What happened with Pharaoh, it also gives us a look into God’s purposes in election. While we will address those purposes more thoroughly later, what we need to think about now is that this statement supports the argument that God is not acting unjustly - he shows mercy and hardens whom he chooses because he is accomplishing a plan, he is working all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose, as we read in Chapter 8, verse 28.

God chooses AND humanity is responsible

After this answer, Paul anticipates one last objection, again on the subject of justice. Let’s read this section.

READ ROMANS 9:19-24

Again, Paul starts out with the objection. But how does Paul Respond this time? He doesn’t open with an explanation, but with a rebuke. It’s a rebuke to an attitude of indignation, While the objection is slightly different, it’s still essentially the same objection: THAT’S NOT FAIR! A FAIR GOD WOULD NOT CHOOSE SOME AND NOT OTHERS!

Now, if you’ve dealt with kids, when they object to an instruction they are given, you might explain yourself, but not always. Sometimes they will get a rebuke for questioning the order they were given - Especially if you already explained why. That’s essentially what we get here. Paul has already explained that God is not just. He is showing mercy, not doling out punishment to the innocent. So Paul issues the rebuke with great authority and force. Leaning on his Apostolic authority, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in his own writing of Scripture, and the testimony of Scripture itself, Paul enlightens the objector that he is not opposing Paul, but God himself. “Who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I cannot imagine what it might be like to have my pastor, let alone an inspired Apostle to look me dead in the face and say, rightly, “Don’t back-talk God” That would be so intimidating, so humiliating, and quite frankly reminds me of how God treated Job, “Who is this who darkens my council? Who is this who speaks without knowledge?” That is how severe this rebuke, this scolding is from Paul.

But it is so like Paul, and so like God, to still give us an answer, even as he’s rebuking those who would be questioning the goodness of a God who would choose the people on whom he will have mercy.

His answer here is to make the point that GOD IS THE ONE WHO IS TRULY FREE.

He says,

Romans 9:20–21 CSB

On the contrary, who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” Or has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor?

His rebuke asserts God’s right to do as he pleases with his creation, because HE MADE US. And this concept isn’t new. Just as he used the Patriarchs and Moses to explain that God has always engaged in choosing a people for himself, he continues to move forward in the history of Israel by citing the prophets. This particular language of the Potter and his freedom to do with his vessels as he wishes is found in Jeremiah 18, in particular.

And as he continues his explanation-rebuke, He begins to divulge the reasons for what God is doing:

Romans 9:22–24 CSB

In this he is not using the “what if” in the sense that communicates, “I don’t really know for sure, but maybe God could be up to this?”

Paul does know, and he’s communicating quite clearly that God does choose with a particular end-goal, a purpose in mind: The revelation of his own attributes: namely his Justice and Wrath, juxtaposed with his Mercy.

And part of the reason why it is a rebuke is because he already explained this as he talked about God’s use of Moses and Pharaoh. Let’s look back at verse 17:

Romans 9:17 CSB

For the Scripture tells Pharaoh, I raised you up for this reason so that I may display my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in the whole earth.

These two sections give us a window into what purposes God is accomplishing in choosing on whom he will have mercy on whom he will pardon:

Display of his power (Plagues and wonders to show God is greater than man and false Gods)

The display of his judgment (His exercise of power and punishment of sin in this life and eternity)

The proclamation of his name in the earth

This happened as the nations heard of what God did to Pharaoh

This news even reached Canaan and Jericho knew of it

This causes Rahab to seek God’s favor rather than oppose God. SALVATION AND GRAFTING IS THE RESULT FOR RAHAB AND HER FAMILY

Some might argue that God hardens in response to human behavior, looking at the narrative of Exodus. Therefore, God is a gentleman who honors our choices and doesn’t force anything on us.

There may be a chronological aspect to this, which is correct. But we need to remember that Paul is interpreting what happened. His view is more important than my reading and chronology work, because he was carried along by the holy spirit. It is true that Pharaoh hardened his heart and God hardened his heart. It can be true that God did not choose Pharoah for salvation and Pharaoh did exactly as he wanted - according to his human nature by birth as described in Romans 1 and Romans 3. Even if this is hard for us to wrap our minds around, this is what the Holy Spirit-inspired Apostle is telling us.

But how can this be? How can God be just if he makes some as vessels of wrath and some as vessels of mercy? What if we have a hard time with Paul’s response and it feels insufficient? Why does he rebuke instead of giving a really thorough explanation that feels more satisfactory?

Well, I heard something recently that I think will help us think through this. I was listening to a pastor addressing the issue of Lament, and in particular looking at Job and Jeremiah. Both men endured great suffering and even cursed the day they were born - in other words, they did not simply question, but condemned the plans and purposes of God, seeing themselves as better judges.

What this pastor explained was that is totally normal and acceptable to be PERPLEXED or CONFUSED about what God is doing. We do not know all things. We are little people with a very limited capacity to understand and a very limited sphere of influence. To cry out to God to ask for understanding and relief from our troubles is never sinful. But to stand over him and his purposes as Judge, that is sinful, for it communicates that we believe we would make a more wise and more loving God than...GOD.

You see, Paul already dealt with the question about whether it would be just. He already dealt with that question, that honest intellectual error. He is correcting the very fleshly, very human tendency to see things based on our experiences and to make ourselves the highest authority.

One Theologian captured this kind of pride in a personal story:

When he was young and in his undergraduate or seminary studies, he was writing a paper on a particular subject and he couldn’t conceive of a sufficient counter-argument to his conclusion. So he claimed one did not exist. His professor’s response was this, “You think too highly of yourself. Just because YOU cannot conceive of a sufficient counter-argument does not mean no one can.”

Another way to understand Paul’s response is to think of things from the perspective or a parent or employer. How many times SHOULD you have to give an instruction for it to be taken seriously? ONCE. But in our sin, we can be hard-headed. We can say, “Oh, its not that important. I’ll get to it later.” Or, “Well, I haven’t been asked again” or “I haven’t been disciplined yet, so I am just not going to do it.” How many times should Paul have to teach us on this subject, have to address the objection to explain that God has total freedom and remains just in his judgment and in saving a people FOR HIMSELF? ONCE! Thanks be to God, that in his kindness he does repeat so many truths all throughout Scripture, even as Paul demonstrates here in Romans 9.

So, a point of application for us today is this: If you have found yourself pushing back against the idea of God choosing for himself a people to save, and choosing not save others; If you find yourself offering the same objections that Paul is addressing, like I once did, then surrender. Submit to the teachings of the Apostles inspired by the Holy Spirit. I know I had to. I remember when God showed me I was the man arguing with Paul. But, in reality, I was arguing with God. That was uncomfortable, humiliating really. I realized the problem was with me, and I didn’t like the idea of a God who uses his power IN ALL THINGS. I could not fully grasp how the sovereignty of God and man’s responsibility could simultaneously exist. This is part of why we have objections to these things as humans. We are fallen, finite beings that cannot fathom how a being could have total control over something and at the same time, that which he has control over does exactly what it wants.

But the fact that we should surrender and accept this understanding of the text is common to many churches and the SBC. The Baptist Faith and Message speaks on the doctrine of Election:

Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. It is consistent with the free agency of man, and comprehends all the means in connection with the end. It is the glorious display of God’s sovereign goodness, and is infinitely wise, holy, and unchangeable. It excludes boasting and promotes humility.

So, if you find yourself not merely struggling with but rejecting the doctrine of Election, particularly as stated in the Baptist Faith and Message, In light of Scripture and the guidance of the Baptist Faith and Message, and other historic confessions of faith, submission to the Scriptures and the Baptist Doctrine is the safest course of action.

But let’s return to the aspect of dealing with the difficulty of understanding this teaching. Much of what we understand in life we attempt to understand through experience, and the closest experience to the kind of relationship between God and man is the relationship between parent and child. When our children are born they are helpless and completely dependent, and as they grow, like mine, which are 2 and 4, they clearly have a mind and will of their own. Now, I can physically dominate them when I desire. But does that mean I actually have total control over them? No. That just means I can exert enough influence, give them strong enough incentive to do what I am telling them. But if they don’t want to eat their vegetables, I can’t actually make them chew and swallow the food, and I sure don’t have the skills or tools to give them veggies through an IV, so that’s out of the question. And this inability to be in absolute control over your children only gets magnified as they grow, particularly in the teenage and young adult years. They will eventually be able to physically fight me and dominate me, and by then I’ll have lost any illusion of control over them.

And that’s really the closest we can get to experiencing a kind of existence in which we have total control and the one over which we have control does exactly what they want. So, we cannot identify with God experientially. This is part of why it can be so hard to understand the concept of election. It starts with a unique God, which we cannot fully comprehend, with a level of control we cannot comprehend, and creatures doing exactly what they want, which is pretty easy to understand as we see kids sneak chocolate at 7:30 in the morning or take a toy from brother or sister. Personal experience there.

There’s another illustration that I’d like to share from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair. In that Story, Eustace and his friend Jill have set out on a quest to find King Caspian’s long-lost son who went missing many years ago. He had been taken and held captive in a secret kingdom far underground under the spell of a witch. And as Eustace and Jill descended further and further underground and came into contact with the witch, they found it harder and harder to remember the world above. Trying to bring them completely under her spell, and keep them captive forever, the witch asks them about the world above, and they begin to speak of the sun. She asks them to describe this figment of their imagination. The children see a lamp in the room and say it is like that lamp, but it stays in the sky, and its brighter. Her response is this: See, you can’t even tell me about your fictitious sun without pointing to the lamp, to something real.

Again, this story highlights why it can be so hard to understand that God is choosing on whom he will have mercy, and everyone does exactly what they want. There is no one like our God, and no relationship in existence like God’s relationship to his creation. But we must not fall under the spell of our flesh, of our physical eyes, of our own interpretation of our experiences, of human philosophers or even human theologians as they object and say, “A god who truly chooses apart from man’s actions or foreseen actions cannot be just. A God who chooses and makes vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy cannot justly hold people accountable for their actions.” On the Contrary, HE is God. We are not. He is wise and unique. We are foolish and common. It is not a surprise that this is a concept that may be difficult to grasp. But it, like the rest of Scripture, even if we struggle with having a full grasp of the concept, we must accept the teaching by faith because God has revealed it.

Salvation has always been based on God’s gracious choice

And this brings us to our last section of today’s text. After dealing with the objections to the fairness of God choosing a people that he would have mercy on, Paul continues his march through the biblical history by quoting the prophets to demonstrate that Salvation has always been based on God’s Gracious Choosing. Let’s back up to verse 22 and read through 28

READ ROMANS 9:22-26

Romans 9:22–26 CSB

And what if God, wanting to display his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath prepared for destruction? And what if he did this to make known the riches of his glory on objects of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory—on us, the ones he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As it also says in Hosea, I will call Not my People, My People, and she who is Unloved, Beloved. And it will be in the place where they were told, you are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God.

Just as God chose to show mercy upon and choose Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the people of Israel, God revealed in the prophets that he would be saving Gentiles. He proves this with Hosea.

The Story of Hosea is both tragic and beautiful. For Hosea, a Prophet of God, was told to marry a prostitute and start a family with her. So he married a prostitute, Gomer, and Hosea started a family with her. and God instructed Hosea to name his children names for the purpose of Prophecy and warning the nation of Israel about the impending judgment. To one of these children, God gave the name Not My People, and another Unloved. So, Paul is keying in on this family telling the church in Rome, particularly the Jewish believers, “God has been showing us this plan throughout redemptive history! He chose the patriarchs, he chose you, and he has chosen these Gentiles among you. It is not as though you were chosen by God and they have been brought in by faith. No, you are both children by faith. You both are children by God’s own choice,”

This highlights is that this salvation according to God’s choice in showing mercy on whom he chooses has been the case since the beginning. And if we think about God’s redemptive plan, we see this intention, this trajectory: God begins with one man, who becomes the father of a mono-ethnic people, who by faith live according to God’s righteous ways, and put the goodness of God on display such that the nations see the righteousness of God and come to worship him. We see this with Abraham and the people of Israel, and they failed to live righteously and draw the nations to God. But they were to serve as an example that man on his own strength cannot do this. We need more than a mere man to be the father of God’s people, we need God himself: we need Jesus. Jesus came living the righteous life that we could not and dying the death that we deserve to bear the wrath of God and give us his righteousness even as he took our sin, that we might live with Him forever. And he rose from the dead and returned to heaven leaving behind a group of 120 Jewish disciples - a mono-ethnic people, who then by the power of the Holy Spirit and pressure of Persecution took the Gospel outside of the land of Israel and God has been drawing men to himself from every tribe tongue and nation. This plan of bringing in the Gentiles was always the Goal of God. It was, as Paul recalled God’s purposes for Pharaoh was to have his name proclaimed in the whole earth. Election is central to God’s accomplishment of saving a people from from every tribe tongue and nation.

As Jesus said:

John 10:14–18 CSB

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. But I have other sheep that are not from this sheep pen; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

Jesus was, here, revealing to his disciples that HE HAD SHEEP THAT BELONG TO HIM AMONG THE NATIONS. He told them that the work of redemption through his death was the will of God for all his sheep, both Jew and Gentile. Again, this was the plan all along! God had always intended to save men, women, and children from among the nations.

And at this point, Paul returns to the theme of God’s faithfulness and the fact that God’s word has not failed as he quotes Isaiah:

Romans 9:27–28 CSB

But Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, Though the number of Israelites is like the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved; since the Lord will execute his sentence completely and decisively on the earth.

In this, Paul is demonstrating through the prophet Isaiah what God had said about Israel, that only a remnant will be saved. You see, what he’s highlighting is that it’s not as if God had chosen the whole of Israel for salvation but only some gentiles. It has always been that God has been saving a remnant, even from among the people to whom he gave the promises, the law, and the covenants. God made unquestionably clear through the prophet Isaiah what we see all throughout the history of Israel: Many would disobey and engage in idolatry or empty worship while only a few would remain faithful. One example I can think of in this is the Story of Elijah. In a moment of despair, Elijah cries out to God believing he must be the only man faithful to God in all of Israel, and what God reveals to him is this, “I have left seven thousand for myself who have not bowed down to Baal.” And Paul even brings up this conversation between God and Elijah in Romans 11 to explain that God has chosen and saved a remnant from among Israel. God’s plan has not changed. He has mercy on whom he will have mercy. There is no exception, whether Jew or Gentile.

But Paul is not done quoting Isaiah, for he quotes him again:

Romans 9:29 CSB

And just as Isaiah predicted: If the Lord of Hosts had not left us offspring, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah.

His point here is that God’s choosing, his sovereign mercy, is what preserves anyone in the first place. If all of us were left to our own fallenness, no one would be saved. Isaiah here is invoking the memory of the complete destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. The people were so wicked that God decided to destroy the city, and he told Abraham. Abraham began to negotiate with God. “What if there are 50 righteous people? Would you spare it then? For 50 righteous I will spare it. What about 40, 30, 20, 10? I will not destroy it on account of 10.” And there were not even 10 righteous people in the city, so God rained burning sulfur down on Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed the cities and their entire population. It is the total wickedness, and the total destruction of these cities that Isaiah is calling back to. Apart from God’s choosing, Israel would have no offspring and be just as evil as Sodom and Gomorrah and utterly destroyed by the wrath of God, just like those cities.

The point that Paul is emphasizing is this: All throughout the history of Israel, even the world, God has exercised his gracious choice. He chose Abel, and then Seth, not Cain. He chose Noah, not the rest of Humanity. Then, as this text tells us, he chose Abraham, not Lot or one of his other relatives. God chose Isaac, not Ishmael. God chose Jacob not Esau. God chose Moses, not Pharaoh. God chose David and not his brothers, he chose the prophets and not others in Israel. And God has chosen to save some Gentiles and a remnant of the Jews as offspring for Abraham.

In so many ways, Romans 9 is like Romans 3-4. As Paul established in Chapters 1-3, all men are in equal need of salvation, whether Jew or Gentile. In chapters 3 and 4 He demonstrates that Salvation cannot be by works because our works will never suffice. And it always has been by faith, starting with the example of Abraham. And in Romans 9 Paul does the same thing again. Salvation cannot be by man’s works or will, but by the will of God who shows mercy on whom he will show mercy, just as he did with Abraham. All throughout history, works have never been enough. Human will has never sufficed. Salvation must be a gift of grace through faith. It must be a gift of God’s own choosing, for mere human faith is will fall short and Israel would have no offspring (V29).

God has made plain the radical Sovereignty of God in providing grace, while not undermining the responsibility of man to repent and believe the Gospel (faith, sin, etc.). And as Pastor Kyle preached a few weeks ago that leads us to a place where all we can say is “Thank You. Thank You! I don’t deserve this. I can’t deserve it. I can’t even say I was humble enough to admit it. YOU CALLED ME. THANK YOU!”

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