Sept. 3, 2017 Calling All Vessels by Pastor Josh Sheldon

We will attend ourselves this morning to verses 19 to 29 in Romans chapter

9.

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?

Will 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 honored 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 the 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 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 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 Gomorrah.

This is the word of the Lord.

You know, there's sort of a boogeyman out there in Christendom.

He hides behind email names, he lurks on discussion boards that are hosted on the web.

He's sort of like those prank calls you get where you're hearing a recording but it sounds like a voice and they're just trying to get you to say

yes so they can record your yes and then say that you have agreed to purchase something you didn't ever agree to

purchase.

It's sort of like those calls.

This is IRS, Internal Revenue Servants, telling you that we have much

felony complaint against you for tax fraud that you committed and all those sorts of things.

I've never actually met this boogeyman.

I've been told his name.

I'll take the word of men more traveled, more knowledgeable than myself that he actually exists.

But he's out there, apparently, and his name is Mr. Hyper -Calvinist.

There's a man out there called Mr. Hyper -Calvinist and he seems to cause a lot of trouble.

Phil Johnson wrote a short article about him and he's got a five -point definition which is fairly common.

He put it in this article.

Here's Mr. Hyper -Calvinist.

He is one of these five things, any one or all of them, denies that the gospel call

applies to all who

hear it, or he denies that faith is the duty of every sinner, or he

denies that the gospel makes an offer, offer in quotes, of Christ and

salvation, that he offers mercy to the non -elect, or he denies that there's

any such thing as common grace, or he denies that God has any sort of love for the non

-elect.

And according to Phil Johnson, him quoting this long -held idea, if you are

any one or more of these five things, you are that lurking

boogeyman, Mr. Hyper -Calvinist.

I'm not sure Mr. Hyper -Calvinist actually exists.

I've never met him.

I've read a couple of quotes where they say, see, this was Hyper -Calvinism, and I didn't quite see it.

I have good, dear friends, brothers whom I love quite strongly, who would hold

one or more of these positions, and I don't consider them hyper -anything.

But there's this idea that there's a hyper -person out there, someone who goes over the top.

And what the hyper -person does, what the Hyper -Calvinist does, apparently, is so overemphasize

God's sovereignty as to virtually deny man's

responsibility.

He would come to a passage like what I just read in Romans 9, 19 -29, and he would conclude something like this,

well, God makes vessels as he will, and once it is made, it will inevitably and

inexorably proceed to its predetermined, its predestined fate.

There's nothing to be done, especially pleading with them to believe the gospel.

Hallelujah, praise God, let's do something.

Our passage would rail against this Mr. Hyper if he actually is.

He detracts from God's glory here by giving too little thought to the miracle of rebirth.

To just what God's Spirit actually does when he makes a sinner able to believe, makes you want to believe.

I want to look at these 11 verses, and with the Spirit's help, with God's blessing, I want to see what they actually say.

And what it is about these vessels, these vessels predetermined by God for these two purposes, these noble and these

ignoble purposes that God determined in advance for them.

And does that necessarily give us a fatalistic view of salvation?

Does it decrease the energy with which we plead, we beg, we offer, we

preach, we proclaim, we live out the gospel in order that those who do not believe in the Lord

Jesus Christ might come to him?

Do we have warrant for such a thing in these vessels God has made?

Verses 19 to 21 here, first of all, have a question and an answer.

We'll take that first and we'll go through it fairly quickly.

And then verses 22 to 24 sort of redirect the questioner's thought

process.

And finally, verses 25 to 29 bring the prophecies of Hosea and

Isaiah to bear on the question.

So look again up at verse 19, and the question we started with,

why does he still find fault?

For who can resist his will?

The question is, how is it then, how is it that God holds us accountable, given his

sovereignty, given his irresistible will,

that he is the sovereign God who made all things, how does he hold us accountable if it is he

who, in his power, in his design, in his sovereignty, made me thus?

I mean, Romans 1, 18 to 25 famously lays sin at our door and says sort of, here

it is, you did it, you did sin.

And God's self -declaration in the very heavens showing forth his glory and his handiwork is

enough to have convinced you that he is as real as you are and you are morally accountable to him,

his eternal power, his divine nature, against which your sin is exposed.

Romans 5, 12 to 21, it pegs sin's intrusion to Adam and then attributes what he

did by way of descent to us all.

Romans 3, 23, all will sin and fall short of the glory of God.

No one can escape this.

And with all this, there's verse 116 at the beginning of this book, the theme of the entire book of

Romans, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to

everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

So the question, the question itself is a good question.

If that be true, how do you explain my need to believe, my need to have faith?

If God chose Jacob over Esau before they were even born and then raised up Pharaoh only to destroy

him, it sounds like I haven't a chance, that I'm just a pawn on God's chessboard

except that the square that he has me on, he won't move me off of.

And if he has me on a square for salvation, hallelujah, I'm going to be saved, and if he has me on a square for perdition, there's

nothing I can do about it.

He made me this way.

So how, preacher, how, Christian, how, believing friend, believing

parent, believing child, do you hold me, the unbeliever, accountable for my sin if

God acts in this way?

That's the question.

And a lot of how we look at this depends on the way we take the very question.

How do we take the question?

Martin Luther wrote here in sort of a typical way, he says the Apostle quotes this

question in the sense of those who contend against God in a wicked and arrogant way.

So Martin Luther, the great reformer, he sees this question as somebody who's saying,

why does he still find fault with me?

Who can resist his will?

Sort of a snide, in -your -face sort of way, sort of why would he dare find fault with me if you're saying

he is the sovereign God, speaking to God with derisive and disrespectful

tones.

F .F. Bruce takes a different tack.

He says this, Paul has been misunderstood and unfairly criticized through failure to

recognize that it is the God -defying rebel and not the bewildered seeker after God whose

mouth he so preemptorily shuts.

I think F .F. Bruce got it right here.

Given all that has come before, the question is a fair one.

It is posed by an interested and respectful listener.

And so the answer is sort of like this.

If you are here and you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you do not have a personal faith

in him as the only answer for your sins before God.

If you are here in that condition and you want to hear why God holds you accountable,

how the sovereign God who determines all things can hold you morally responsible for your

sins, God willing, I will give you part of the answer, not the full answer, nobody

can.

But from these few verses, if you are here saying, who does God think he is

charging me with sin, I have less answer for you other than

who are you, old man, to answer back to God.

But God willing, we will take the apostle's answer to this question, we will take

the approach that the question is being asked by a sincere seeker, someone who

has been tracking along all these chapters of theology in Romans and is saying, wait a second,

I have a question proffered to you respectfully.

Tell me, Paul, how is it that God, this sovereign God who determines all things,

who makes me as I am, who raised up Pharaoh as a

display of his might and his glory and his power, cast him down to display

all that, tell me, Paul, how is it he holds me accountable?

I want to understand this.

So if we take it that way, if we take it F .F. Bruce's way, then Paul's response is instructive, it's not

incendiary against him.

If we were asked cynically, implying that God has no right, I think Paul would have gone in a different direction.

The question is not what right has he to do so, but rather, on what basis does he find fault?

So but who are you, old man, to answer back to God?

That's a necessary prelim to the answer, even to the respectful questioner.

Because we need to understand, before we look to God's word, to get instruction for ourselves from

God's word, that God is sovereign and God is not to be questioned in that way.

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 honored use and another for

dishonorable use?

Paul doesn't quote exactly an Old Testament scripture there, but the metaphor

of God as the potter, as God is the one who, in his sovereignty, puts

the lump on the potter's will and designs of it what he will, is certainly

a metaphor that has Old Testament hinges throughout.

And I want to look at two of them with you this morning.

I, with most commentators, believe that one or both of these is what Paul has in mind when he speaks in

Romans 9 of the potter.

So turn first to Isaiah chapter 29.

Isaiah 29 and verse 13.

The first verse here you will recognize from Matthew 15, which is the one that Jesus quoted to the

Pharisees when they came to him and said, why is it your disciples disobey the tradition of the

elders by not washing their hands?

And this is the first thing Jesus quoted to them.

It applies also to Romans 9, 19.

So here's Isaiah 29.

And the Lord said, because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me

and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men, therefore, behold, I will

again do wonderful things with this people with wonder upon wonder and the wisdom of their wise men

shall perish and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.

Ah, you who hide deep from the Lord your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark and who say, who sees us,

who knows us, you turn things upside down.

Shall the potter be regarded as the clay that the thing made should say to its maker, he did not make

me, or the thing formed say of him who formed it, he has no understanding.

The point here is that the one who was made, man from clay or as Genesis 2, 7 has

it, man from the dust.

He has turned things around by thinking that his maker, that is God, that is the potter, thinking that his

maker is just like he himself is.

That he, God, doesn't know or see his sin.

So why does he find fault?

He finds fault because he is your maker and he is aware of all that you, the pot,

does or has done or, for that matter, will do.

Why does he find fault?

Because he's your maker and he's aware.

So turn now please to Jeremiah chapter 18.

Jeremiah 18.

If in Isaiah 29, God the potter is simply

a metaphor that Isaiah uses to make his point to Israel, in Jeremiah 18

the prophet is sent to actually visit a potter, an actual potter, and there he's going to

hear the word of the Lord.

So Jeremiah 18, I'm going to read the first 11 verses of that chapter.

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, arise and go down to the potter's house and there I

will let you hear my words.

So I went down to the potter's house and there he was working at his will, and the vessel he was making of clay was

spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel as it seemed good

to the potter to do.

Then the word of the Lord came to me, O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done,

declares the Lord.

Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand.

O house of Israel, 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 that I intended to do to it.

And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my

sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I intended to do to it.

Now therefore say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, thus says the Lord,

behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you.

Return, everyone, from his evil way, and amend your ways and your

deeds.

He says return.

In Hebrew, it's shub, shub, which is to repent.

The way it's always explained, exactly right, means to turn 180 degrees, go the other

direction.

Return, repent from your evil way, and amend your ways and your

deed.

So why does he still find fault?

Because the potter has full right and authority to judge sin and to bring

judgment for sin as he sees fit.

The potter here is God.

What he is making is individuals.

The potter here is God, and just as he makes individuals, so he forms history itself.

He has right over everything.

Why does he find fault?

Because of his rightful authority to judge sin and to then bring judgment

upon sin as he sees fit.

Now doesn't all this dovetail well with how the Lord chose one, Isaac, over Ishmael,

to be the bearer of the promise?

Is it not perfectly consistent with a God who determines which unborn twin, which is Jacob that he

chose, he will favor over his brother Esau?

Now we see that the potter is the one who fashioned Egypt and her king, Pharaoh, and all

for the sake of his people whom that king finally gave back to God.

God the potter fashioned Israel.

God the potter fashioned Pharaoh.

God the potter fashioned history so that Pharaoh, whom he fashioned, would let

go Israel, whom he fashioned, to follow the course to

the promised land which he fashioned.

Paul is answering throughout Romans 9 how God saves individuals.

How God saves the person.

How God saves you if you will but repent of your sin.

That's the question that is really going through all this.

How God saves one sinner.

Well Jeremiah joins Paul, both of them firm against Mr. Hyper, by saying, Thus says the Lord, I am

shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you.

And here Mr. Hyper, if he actually exists, is exulting.

See God the potter is sovereign and free and there's nothing you can do about it.

Eat, drink, and be merry and wait for the maw of hell to engulf you.

But Jeremiah would plead with us, finish the verse,

read the rest of it, return, I told you a moment ago, Shob, repent,

return, everyone, every individual, you sinner,

you, repent from your evil way, amend

your ways and your deeds, read the rest of it.

I'm shaping disaster, nothing you can do about it.

What is Jeremiah talking about?

Well in his context, in his day, he preached under King Zedekiah of Judah, the last king of

Judah.

Babylon is virtually at the door.

Disaster is coming, turn from your evil way, amend what you

have done to bring this disaster upon yourself.

God as a potter is only a metaphor and all metaphors can be stretched only so far.

Even divinely inspired ones can only hold up to a few questions before they completely fall apart and lose all

their meaning.

The metaphor of the potter in no way absolves mere humans of the responsibility to

repent, to not sin.

What is the lump?

It is the hole from which the individual is drawn.

If Paul were teaching anything close to the idea that we can only wait and see in the end what God made us and then the

whole drive of the Christian life is meaningless.

The apostle says pursue peace and holiness,

pursue constantly, go after with all your effort, pursue peace with others and holiness without which no one will

see God.

What sense does that imperative make?

If there's just pots that are going on to an end,

what sense does the call to repentance make?

Much of what Jesus said in John chapter 6 which Dale just read to you, if we're supposed to just cringe

through life and wonder what pot we are, it makes no sense, it's almost gobbledygook.

What is the call to believe the gospel, the commandment that all men are

commanded, all men everywhere, God almighty, the potter commands you

to believe the gospel, to repent and come to Christ.

Paul's point is that the pot, whichever pot you may think you are, and there's nothing in the

Bible that actually reveals it to you so we can look at ourselves in the mirror and say, well I'm this or that pot, we don't get that.

Nothing Paul says takes away your responsibility to repent.

That's what this is all about.

God saving the individual, you, sinner, coming to Christ,

repenting of your sins.

No we can't just say, well I'm this pot or that pot and there's nothing I can do about it.

Romans 2 .1 would thunder against you, therefore you have no excuse, oh man.

The potter has every right to do what he wants and you have every duty to hear, to believe, to repent.

You have the commandment of God to believe this gospel.

Don't hide behind Romans 9, 19 -29, say well I'm this or that pot

because brother, sister, friend, visitor, unbeliever.

You don't know.

There is nothing in the scripture that says I, John Jones, whatever,

am this or that pot.

You're commanded to repent.

Not to wonder which one of these vessels you are.

You are commanded to repent.

So we can move to verses 22 and 23.

What if God, I'm in Romans 9 again, I know we've been skipping around a bit this morning.

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.

Now you know what we would call this today?

We would call this redirecting.

We're rephrasing the question.

He says why does God feel if I'm false?

It's sort of like, thanks for your question, it's a good one.

Have you considered the possibility?

Have you even thought that maybe this is what God is doing?

Which of course he is.

But have you thought about it this way?

We're still talking to a respectful questioner.

Not thumbing your nose, why does God?

Paul, how does God hold me accountable?

Have you thought about this?

God's whole purpose in his molding of men in history is so that his mercy might be made known.

Keep in mind that he has made vessels for just that purpose, to be recipients of his mercy, all the while

rightly holding the other pots responsible, which all the more magnifies his mercy.

Last week, when we had that business with Pharaoh, and God's declaration of

his name to Moses, well in Exodus, in chapters 33 and

34, when he declares his name to Moses, he says, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and compassionate,

forgiving iniquity, clearing,

and then he goes on and says, he by no means clears the guilty, but visits the sin to the

third and the fourth generation.

But which part of it did Paul quote?

His mercy and his compassion.

Have you considered in your question that God is doing all this

in order to be a showcase of his mercy?

He's a wrathful God.

God is wrathful against sin every day, says the psalmist.

We don't deny that.

God hates sin, and God hates sinners, does not love the sinner, hate the sin.

That's silliness compared to what the Bible says.

God's wrath against sin is something that we can barely imagine, because we can't imagine how holy he is,

and yet, what is it he wants to reveal here?

Mercy, compassion, repent.

You must repent.

Have you considered that God's whole movement in history, this whole idea of the

potter is to showcase his mercy?

Have you even thought about it?

You know, there's a novel I read as a kid, and I can't remember the name of it.

It wasn't a great novel, but it was okay, and it had to do with this wagon train.

And along the way, this man's wife dies of a disease, and this other woman loses her whole family to other

things that happened.

And so they team up, and they're going through, and they get stuck in a winter storm, and they can't go on any

further, and they're running out of food, and they're starving.

So the man takes his rifle, he says, I'll go see if I can find something.

You watch the kids, and they're not her kids, of course.

Well, make a long story short, she finds some mushrooms, brings them

back, slices them up, puts them in the frying pan with some lard, seasons them up.

The savor is driving the kids crazy.

They're so hungry, they're actually starving.

And what does she do with the mushrooms?

Well, she ate them all.

She ate all the mushrooms.

She told the kids, you stop staring at me with those mean eyes, just go to sleep.

I just want you to go get some rest here in this freezing cold.

Of course, they hated her for it.

What was she doing?

Have you considered?

Have you considered that they might have been poisoned?

And because of my love for you, I ate them first.

And now that I'm alive in the morning, we'll all have some.

We need to think in that kind of terms here, what Paul's saying.

Have you considered?

Have you thought?

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and make known his power, has endured with patience vessels of wrath

prepared for destruction?

We don't always know what people who love us are up to, how much less God.

There's actually some evidence that the vessels prepared for wrath prepared themselves.

They prepared themselves for wrath by their sin.

So Mr. Hyper, aside, if this is correct, and the manuscript, the exegetical basis is not

terribly, terribly strong, so I'm just tossing it out for something to think about.

But if that is a right understanding, then God

still remains totally sovereign and free, and our responsibility is magnified.

Finally, I want to go to verses 24 to 29.

Even us whom he 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 is not beloved I will

call beloved.

And every 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 also predicted, if the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have become

like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.

Even he who called us, just that first part of what Paul says, is proof enough that God intended some to

know the gospel and believe in his son Jesus.

As he had done with Abraham in chapter 4, and then

in chapter 9 with Isaac and Ishmael and Jacob and Esau and Moses

and Pharaoh, Paul grounds what he says in prophetic history, citing

twice each from Hosea and Isaiah.

And these two prophets actually were contemporaries of each other.

If you read the prologue to both of these prophecies, their ministries were under the same kings, Uzziah,

Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, with Hosea adding the detail that it was during the reign of

Jeroboam II of Israel.

There's other similarities between these prophets.

Both prophets warned of impending judgment, Assyria in the north against Israel, Babylon to the south against

Judah.

Both men were living parables of the word that they spoke.

Isaiah had to walk naked for three years to show how unrepentant Judah would be stripped and humiliated

if repentance was ignored.

And Hosea married and loved a prostitute as a sign of God's patient love, his joy

over repentance, and his readiness to restore and to love once again.

So as we did before with the potter, I want to turn to where Paul did.

So go first to Hosea chapter 2 and start at verse 14.

Hosea 2 verse 14.

To a backslidden people, God says this,

Therefore, behold, I will allure her

and bring her into the wilderness and

speak tenderly to her.

And there I will give her vineyards and make the valley of the Korah a door of hope.

And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth and as at the time when I called her

out of the land of Egypt.

And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my Baal.

For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more.

And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heaven, and the creeping things of the

ground.

And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land.

And I will make you lie down in safety, and I will betroth you to me forever.

I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in

steadfast love and in mercy.

I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.

And in that day, I will answer, declares the Lord, and I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth.

And the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel.

And I will sow her for myself in the land.

And here, finally, is the part quoted in Romans.

And I will have mercy on no mercy, and I will say to not my people, you are my people, and he shall

say, you are my God.

Paul, of course, changes the last part to beloved, not my people.

He uses beloved.

That's a whole lecture in itself, but the meaning is the same.

Those whom God rejected, I will not have mercy.

Hosea had to name his son that, Lo -Rumah, no mercy.

Lo -Amin, not my people for the other son.

And here, the prophet speaking of a place where God will reverse that.

You are my people.

You are my son.

You are the beloved.

And you'll be called sons of the living God.

Excuse me.

In the exact context of vessels made by Potter, made by the Potter for certain

predetermined purposes, here is the promise of God to call them my people

after having punished their sins.

If you read the book of Hosea and you miss the impassioned emotions, you need to read it again because it's unmistakable.

What is Paul saying here?

That the pot that is made for ignoble purpose, even though, as I've said, you can't know if you are that one, you are

commanded to repent, has no more responsibility.

Why does God still find fault?

Why does he find fault?

Because he shows mercy.

Why does he find fault?

Because he offers repentance and restoration constantly.

In 2 Chronicles 36, when the author is explaining how the final

disaster, the one that Jeremiah was warning Judah against, how it came, he speaks of how God woke up

early every day.

God doesn't wake up, we know that.

He rose early every day and sent his prophets to warn.

Why would he do that?

Against a fatalistic understanding of the scripture.

Because they warned, they pleaded, they offered.

They were ambassadors of Christ in the way we should be.

Saying, God will forgive if you will but repent.

Over and over and over again.

Here, with this famous passage in Romans 9, about the potter's freedom, which he is

absolutely free.

The very prophet that he quotes to prove his point

is pleading with Israel to repent and be restored.

And even then saying, I don't know if you or you or you will, in fact, repent.

But there's a day coming when God will take this, not my people, say you are my people.

Not beloved, say you are beloved.

No mercy and I will show mercy upon you.

Ambassadors for Christ indeed.

Stay in Hosea, Hosea.

Flip back one chapter to chapter 10 or chapter one.

Even the little I said a moment ago is enough to season this one verse I'll read without a lot of comment.

Chapter one, verse 10.

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered.

Right after, if you're reading Hosea, this is right after the prophet's prostitute wife gave birth

to a son named, not my people.

What does the prophet say immediately after the son's name, not my people?

The children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea.

Isaiah chapter 10, verse 20 is next.

In that day, the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck him,

but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel.

In truth, a remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob to the mighty God.

And here's Paul's quote.

For though your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return.

Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness.

You can see the similarity with Hosea.

Isaiah chapter one, verse nine.

Dale read this to you a few moments ago.

If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have become like Sodom and become like Gomorrah, in a

word, destroyed.

Abraham had elicited back there in Exodus 19, God's promise to save anyone righteous that he found

in Sodom.

And as the psalmist says, there was none, no, not one.

So they're destroyed.

We're not clay.

We are sentient beings made in the image of God.

We're not pots.

We are morally responsible people who choose to sin.

We choose not to believe.

And God is right to judge men, to judge those pots for that.

He is right to judge you for that.

The metaphor of the potter in no way absolves mere humans of the responsibility to

repent, to stop sinning, to turn from their wicked ways, to turn

from their evil practices, to follow God's ways.

We are not absolved of it at all.

People are not pots.

It's only a metaphor.

And every metaphor, as I said, can lose all its meaning if we stretch it too far.

Jesus preached the good news to vessels destined for destruction and for glory, didn't he?

Both.

In Mark 10, verse 21, the rich young ruler, Jesus loved him and said, what you lack

you'll never have.

You're a vessel made for profane use.

You are by God's design and decree a chamber pot to be used as a toilet and then disposed of.

Is that what he said to him?

No.

He told him this is the Lord God, Jesus Christ himself.

He told him the gospel in relation to the law that he knew and understood, and then told him what he lacked, what

he himself was responsible to do by faith in the gospel.

He was to sell everything and follow him, to follow Christ.

You know, if there is a bogeyman out there, a Mr. Hyper Calvinist, I'm not quite sure I believe

in it.

But if he's out there, we can say, compare yourself to Jesus because Jesus was not that.

Jesus, just in that one example, thinking of all that we just went through with the pots and

the potter's freedom, and the responsibility to repent, was that rich young ruler

saved?

You and I don't know.

We don't get a clue from the scripture.

He left sad.

Did he think about it the next day and then repent of his sins and run and find Jesus?

We don't know.

Did he stay in his sins?

We do know that whichever pot God, Jesus' father

made him, that Christ called him to repent.

Christ called him to the gospel.

In Matthew 11, verse 4, there's John's inquiry.

Are you the one who was to come or should we look for another?

He says, go and tell John what you hear and see.

The blind receive their sight in the lame walk.

Lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear.

And the dead are raised up and the poor have good news preached to them.

And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

Our Lord, Jesus Christ himself calls all vessels his father has made to

himself.

I fear that too often Romans 9, 19 to 29, this

beautiful exposition of God's sovereignty in the metaphor of him as the potter

and we as the pots that he determined beforehand he was full right to do whatever he will.

I fear that too often it's used as cover for your

absolute responsibility as a moral sentient being,

you made in the image of God to not repent.

When the very Old Testament hinges that Paul uses to found his argument,

the prophets Isaiah, the prophets, especially Hosea, but both these prophets calling Israel to

repent.

And God saying, if I have decreed evil for this nation and they turn to me, they come back to me, they

repent of their sins, I will forgive them.

That's the point of the pots and the vessels.

That's what Paul's saying throughout.

So don't look at it and run for cover.

You who do not believe in Jesus Christ, you who have heard these things and failed to

repent.

God commands all men everywhere to believe this gospel, to repent and believe this

gospel, you are commanded by God.

And you don't get to answer back to God and say something, and I'm gonna paraphrase now, like, well, I happen to

know which pot I was made.

You don't, but you must repent.

You must repent of your sins, flee to Jesus Christ and there find forgiveness.

And that's what Romans 9, 19 to 29, and I would argue the whole book of Romans

is about, amen.

Heavenly Father, we thank you again for bringing us together for the day that you've given us and for this word.

I pray, Father, that those who have heard what I've said, as it is your truth,

Father, as I've reflected your gospel in your son, Jesus Christ, that you by your spirit would

bring true faith and repentance, that you would do the work which only you can do.

And Father, let's pray that you strengthen us by this word, that you show us more of your

glory, that we reflect you better and better as we live out the gospel that you've given us.

Thank you, Lord, for the repentance that you've granted and for your spirit which attends with us.

In Christ's name, amen.