Romans 9 – An Exegesis to Share

Let's look at Romans chapter 9 and let's start off with the context and specifically beginning in verse 1.

Paul says, I'm telling the truth in Christ. I remember, back up, hold on a second, I apologize. Romans chapter 9, again, chapter and verse division is not a part of the original text of scripture.

And so what have we just had? We've just had the golden chain of redemption, Romans chapter 8. And in fact it might be well to to go back and to remind ourselves of what has come before.

We know that God causes all things to work together for good. To those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed, the image of his sons, that he would be the firstborn among many brethren.

I just stopped long enough to challenge in the minds of anyone who thinks this term foreknew as a verb is the same thing as the noun to simply have foreknowledge that you are wrong and that you need to look at the text of scripture and realize this is an active verb.

This is something God is doing and every time God is a subject and this is the verb in the

New Testament, the object is personal, it's never actions. To simply say God knew who was going to believe, there is no example of that statement in the

New Testament. It's not there. It's not an untrue statement, but it doesn't answer anything and it doesn't tell us what it means for God to foreknow someone.

It says God foreknew Christ. Does that mean just God had knowledge of what Christ would do? No, this is an active verb.

It's something that God does. So for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed, the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren.

And these whom he predestined, he also called. And these whom he called, he also justified. And these whom he justified, he also glorified.

Here's the golden chain. God's the one doing every single verb. Foreknew, predestined, called, justified, glorified.

God does each one. It is the exact same audience in each one. Those whom he foreknew, he does all the other things that result in their glorification.

It is a certainty and it is all to God's glory. Now we know, for example, that one of those things is justification.

And we know that the Bible says we're justified by grace, we're justified by the blood of Christ, and we're justified by faith.

So obviously, the means by which these things then come into play, they come into our experience, are included in God's sovereign capacity and power to do these things.

And so having said this, then, verse 31, what then shall we say to these things if God is for us, who is against us?

Notice those terms that are used there, us. Follow the pronouns.

Follow the pronouns. He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things?

If the us here is all humanity, you're going to be forced into a position of absolute universalism here.

You will not be able to affirm the existence of those who are saved and those who will be lost.

Who is the us in Romans chapter 8, verse 33? Who will bring a charge against God's elect?

God's elect. God is the one who justifies. Justifies who? Justifies the elect.

Who is it that's justified in the golden chain? Foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified.

Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus, he who died, yes, rather, who was raised, who is the right hand of God, who also does what?

Intercedes for us. The work of atonement and intercession, they're both the singular work of the high priest.

Those for whom Christ dies, he also intercedes for them, and so I ask all of those who are just absolutely wedded to this idea that Jesus' death must be for every single individual, does that then mean that Jesus stands before the throne of the

Father interceding on the behalf of every individual who will be in hell for eternity?

And if that is the case, does that mean that his intercession is fruitless? That can't be the case because Hebrews 7 says that it's his intercession that makes him able to save the uttermost.

So is there a disagreement in the Godhead to where the Son wants to save someone and the

Father does not? Certainly not. So this is a singular work of God.

It is a perfect work of God. He intercedes for us. It's the same us all the way through.

This is God's elect. Who will then separate us from the love of Christ? If you're going to make this us someone other than the elect of God, then you have the specter of God loving the non -elect throughout eternity, savingly.

He wants to save them, but he is going to be eternally frustrated. The eternally frustrated God, the eternally unhappy God.

Is that truly what we see being presented in the Scriptures? I don't believe that it is.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Just as it is written, for your sake we are being put to death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us.

And that obviously is a redemptive love that is being referred to there. For I'm convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ, our

Lord. So there's the context. Here is the cathedral of Christian revelation in Romans chapter 8.

And as soon as he says this, it becomes very, very clear that the Apostle Paul knows that as soon as he makes these overarching statements of God's victory in Christ, and the elect in Christ, and the perfection of the salvation, that immediately one of the first objections that's going to be raised is,

But Paul, don't you realize that if what you're saying is true, and we look around us and we see the vast majority of the

Jewish people reject your message, they reject Jesus as Messiah.

Does that not mean that God's Word has failed? And so in Romans chapter 9 we begin,

I prefer the NIV or New King James that point, who is God overall blessed forever.

I think it's a reference to the deity of Christ, but we're not going to spend our time on that. Today, he here enumerates the great benefits that have been given to Jewish people.

And he says that he could wish himself to be accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brother and my kinsmen according to flesh.

And people immediately go, well obviously Paul could not have believed that God is sovereign over all things, and that God has a plan.

If he could then say these words, well that only shows that you're assuming something that's incorrect.

And that is, since we don't know the identity of the elect, we are not called to function on the basis of that knowledge, that it is our desire to see people bow the knee before Christ.

And we can have just as strong a fervor for the proclamation of the gospel and the calling of people to bow the knee to Christ as anyone who thinks that it's just up to man.

There is no reason, there is no logical or rational reason to say that to believe what

Paul is going to say in the rest of Romans 9 or what he just got done saying in Romans 8 destroys your evangelistic fervor.

It can be abused in that way, but it does not of necessity follow that it must be that way.

So he says all these things about the Jews, and here then comes the key, and I would challenge anyone who wants to try to turn

Romans chapter 9 into something that's just about nations and national privilege and things like that.

You must answer a simple question. You must answer what the relationship between the later text that you're going to limit to nothing but nations with no personal application.

You must explain why this entire section begins with verse 6 and the issue that it raises.

What does verse 6 say? For it is not as though the word of God has failed.

Remember? He raises these objections. Paul was an apologist at heart.

He recognized the need for the defense of the faith. He even said that he was set for the defense of the faith, and he knows what people are going to say to his preaching, and they're going to say,

Paul, if what you're saying is true, then the word of God has failed because the majority of your fellow

Jews don't believe this message. The Messiah has come, and they don't accept him. So he says, but it is not as though the word of God has failed, for they are not all

Israel who are descended from Israel. Now there is the key.

I suggest to you that all of the attempts, and there are so many, and they take so many varied forms, to make the rest of Romans 9, to separate as far as possible from anything to do with personal salvation cannot show a consistency between this statement and the rest of the chapter.

Because think about it. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel. The only way to understand that is of individuals.

It can't be of nations. It's not saying they're not all nations of Israel who are descended from the one nation of Israel.

It doesn't make any sense. It is very clear that he's addressing individuals who are descended from Israel.

And he's going to talk about Isaac. He's going to talk about Esau, Jacob. These are individuals.

And he's answering the question, look, when you talk about the promises to Israel, you need to recognize that from the very beginning

God has been free in the matter of those to whom he gives his promises.

And he's going to take the Old Testament scriptures and he's going to use them to demonstrate, look,

I am not out of harmony with those scriptures. What I am preaching is in harmony because this freedom that God shows, now being shown in taking the gospel to the

Gentiles and those who are predestined to eternal life believe. He is gathering a people, making them all one in Christ Jesus.

This freedom that I say God has to save Jews and Gentiles in Christ Jesus is a freedom he has claimed from the beginning and which is illustrated over and over and over again in your own scriptures.

And so you don't have the foundation to object to me, this is Paul speaking, on the basis of the promises given to Israel, for you need to recognize that they are not all

Israel who are descended from Israel, nor are they all children because they're

Abraham's descendants, but through Isaac your descendants will be named. God had the freedom to define to whom the promises would be given and it's not just a genetic relationship and the only way to understand any of these things is to recognize that we are talking about the promises relevant to salvation, not just something about national privilege and national service and issues along these lines.

And if you say that, if you go to, we'll see it's nations in her womb and things like this and he quotes from something that was about nations in Malachi 4.

There is a simple principle of exegesis, you start at the beginning and go to the end. If you have to jump down the context someplace, create your foundation and then read it back and it ends up making mincemeat, mashed potatoes out of what comes before so there's no consistency, there's no flow, then we've run into another indicator of one of your traditions.

Yes, when you have to use a completely different methodology of exegesis, that means we've run into one of your traditions and you are not actually subjecting yourself to the

Word of God at that point. So, we continue on with verse 8. That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.

That's God's freedom. Could God have done it differently? I suppose so, but that's not the point.

His point is, we've always recognized this to be the case, that it's not just the children of the flesh who are the children of God.

Yes, there are all sorts of Jews who reject what I'm proclaiming in Christ, but that doesn't mean that the promises were for them, the promises have always been for that elect remnant anyway.

And you want examples of this? Well, let me give you some examples of this and he gives a number of examples for us in the next few verses.

For this is the word of promise, at this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son.

This is in regards to Isaac, of course, and not only this, but there was Rebecca also, when she conceived twins by one man, our father

Isaac. Now listen carefully here, listen to what's said. For though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad.

Now, see, the people are going to say, and Mr. Craig is going to say, these are nations. And yes, both were fathers of nations, that does come later, but that's not the point the

Apostle makes. And if your application makes the Apostle's application senseless and useless, then you are not adequately handling the text.

Notice what it says, for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad.

Who had not done anything good or bad? The twins. As nations? No, as individuals.

His point is he is going to take away any ground of boasting on the part of man.

And what is the time frame to which he's referring here? To the period of the pregnancy of two historical individuals.

For though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works, but because of him who calls, it was said to her, the older will serve the younger.

So the point that he's making here, and he's belaboring the point, you notice how he's belaboring it?

He says they had not done anything good or bad, so that it was not because of works.

So you've got twice, they hadn't done anything good or bad, not because of works, not because of actions, not because of what they did, but on the other hand,

God's purpose according to His choice would stand because of him who calls.

So he repeats himself in essence. He almost stutters to make sure that we understand the contrast he's drawing here.

It's a contrast we're going to see later. The contrast is between what men do what men accomplish over against God's free purpose to do as he chooses with his creation.

Now if you find the very same concepts being repeated 5, 8, 10, 12 verses down the road, that probably means this whole section hangs together as one.

If you don't see that, then you might want to ask yourself the question, why does my interpretation have multiple parts of Romans 9 that have nothing to do with each other?

If your interpretation cannot give us a consistent interpretation here,

I would suggest it's because it's wrong. It's not allowing the Apostle to speak. So you have these two contrasts, what man does, what

God does. And the whole point is these words, the older will serve the younger, were spoken while the twins were still in the womb, so there can be nothing in their actions that determines

God's choice. And yet what is the heart and soul of Arminianism? What is the heart and soul of synergism?

If you don't like to be called an Arminian, fine, I'll call you a synergist.

What is the heart and soul of synergism? That there is God's purposes and man's purposes and they have to cooperate together.

And the whole point of verses 10 through 12 is that isn't true. The point is that these words in verse 12 were spoken to the twins' mother before the birth.

Now the irony is what Mr. Gregg's going to do, and I'm going to let him play his whole thing so you can hear it.

We'll get to it, don't worry. What Mr. Gregg's going to do is he's going to say, see this proves it can't be individuals because Esau never served

Jacob. Now you first hear that and you go, ooh, that's interesting.

I mean, Edom did serve Israel so that must mean it's nations. That would turn

Paul's entire argument on its head. It would have nothing to do with his point here, would it?

That would take the end of the sentence and make it completely irrelevant to what just came before.

The point is not Esau's service to Jacob, and I would argue he did because he sold his birthright and therefore once you sold your birthright you by nature are a servant to the one who has a birthright, but that's not the point.

The point is these words were spoken that there is going to be a reversal of the birth order and the whole connectedness of these two twins by God's sovereign choice and this happened before the twins were even born.

That's the whole point, okay? So what are we seeing here? We are seeing here the freedom of God and the fact that it is not man's actions that determine these things but God's will.

So it was said to her, the older will serve the younger just as it is written, Jacob I loved but Esau I hated.

And again immediately you'll see that comes from the minor prophets, that comes from Edom, that comes from Israel, it has to be nations.

But again what is the flow of argument of the Apostle? How would that have anything to do with the statement not all those who are descended from Israel are

Israel? It would have nothing to do with it at all. The point is that even though, and as I've said many times, if what bothers you about Romans 9 .13

is Esau I hated, if you really understood the depth of your own sin and the holiness of God, what would blow you away about Romans 9 .13

is not Esau I hated, it would be Jacob I loved. And I suggest to you if Esau I hated bothers you, you don't understand the holiness of God and you don't understand the deadness of man in sin and you don't understand how absolutely repugnant the sinner's heart is to a holy

God. What should amaze you is Jacob I loved, not

Esau I hated. But the point is, the point is that it was

God's choice as to how he responded to the two and it was not based upon some looking down the corridors of time to see what these guys are going to do.

Which in essence just simply makes God the great responder, not the free sovereign

God of Scripture. We don't even need to get into the arguments about what it just means loved less and blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Don't even need to get into that. The point of the whole statement is God was free to treat

Jacob with grace and Esau with justice. That's the point.

Okay? Now, verse 14. What then shall we say? I love this.

The apostle knows what the objections are going to be. And I can't tell you how many times

I've been dialoguing with people trying to explain to them the sovereign freedom of God and what happens? They raise the exact same objections that the apostle himself raised.

And if you are raising the same objections the apostle raised to himself and then answered, guess what?

That means you're on the wrong side of this thing. Unless you reject the Bible. Okay, that's fine.

But if you don't reject the Bible and you say what I believe is in harmony with the Bible, my suggestion would be if you're objecting to the apostle, you might want to get on the other side of the conversation.

Okay? So what shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there?

Now see, it's right here that people go, wait a minute. If God can freely choose who he is going to save and who is going to be gracious, then that's not fair.

There's injustice with God. And so how does Paul respond to this?

May it never be. Nobody gets injustice. Did Esau get injustice?

No. He got justice. What did Jacob get? He got grace.

He got mercy. That is outside the categories of justice. Nobody gets injustice. No one will ever get injustice.

There is no injustice with God. And how does he demonstrate this?

For he says to Moses, now get a deep seat in the saddle because this is going to blow you away a little bit if you've not spent some time with this.

For he says to Moses, I will have mercy. Now literally, and I love to point this out to folks,

I've seen lights go on when people see this, because in English, we don't have a verb for mercying or compassioning.

I just made those up, but they are not proper terms. But it's literally for, for he says to Moses, I will mercy whom

I will mercy and I will compassion whom I will compassion. These are things that God does.

It's not just I will have an attitude of mercy toward. That's unfortunately how we end up having to bring it into English because we don't literally have a verb called mercying.

But we need to have one because there is one in Greek. And so this is something that God is doing.

God will mercy whom he mercies and he will compassion whom he compassions because if it's going to be

God's mercy and it's going to be God's compassion, it can not be demanded. If you can force

God to do it, then it's not true mercy and it's not true compassion. And so he takes us back to Exodus 33 in that that tremendous section where God in his freedom reveals himself to Moses in a way he's not reveal himself to anyone.

He did not have to do that. This is an action of his grace, his mercy. He reveals himself to Moses and in that context says,

I will mercy whom I mercy. I will compassion whom I compassion. And that means it is of God.

It is God's freedom that is in view here. And if we don't see that, we're going to miss the whole thing.

What is the apostolic interpretation of this text? So then, so then, it is not of the one willing, neither of the one running, but of the mercying

God. That is a literal rendering. Not good English, but I'm trying to point out the parallels that exist here.

Therefore, it is not of the one willing. And I it amazes me when

I when I see people. I think it was Norman Geisler in Chosen but Free. He can look at this and say, here we have the free will of man.

I just go, what? No, we're here. We have the free will of God, not the free will of man.

It is not of the one willing. There is an ooh there. In fact, if I recall correctly, this was a verse where he said there was a

Greek term in here that's not even in this this particular text. Yes, this is the verse he said. Well, the

Greek term here is ek. There's no ek there. It is not of the one willing, nor of the one running or striving.

What do those two terms mean? It refers to human actions.

It is not based upon what man does. Now, by the way, I should have stopped after each one of these verses.

How do you insert nations in any of this? It is not of the nation who wills or the nation who runs.

These are singulars. These are things men do. It is not of the one willing, nor of the one struggling or striving.

But, in contrast, the mercying

God. The mercying God.

That's if you are not comfortable in having the final decision in salvation lying firmly in the lap of the mercying

God, I really question whether you understand the gospel.

Why on earth would you want the final decision in the hands of the enemies of God rather than the mercying

God? That's what I want to know. And is that what it's talking about?

Well, let's look at verse 17. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, and then we have another citation of the

Old Testament text, for this very purpose, God had a purpose.

It wasn't Pharaoh's purpose. For this very purpose, I raised you up. I did this.

Oh, but Pharaoh had all these choices. Yes, and for this very purpose, I raised you up.

Might go a little bit long today, because it's gonna be hard to stop. But, for this very purpose,

I raised you up. Now, folks, if you're zoning out, tune in here a second, because I've got to challenge any of you who are listening today.

If you want to understand what the scriptures teach about this, then you need to have the same priorities that God has.

And you have to ask yourself the question, what is most important to me? Because God said the reason he raised

Pharaoh up was to demonstrate my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.

And so, I want to ask every person who calls themselves a believing Christian in the audience today, where in your priority list is the demonstration of God's power and the proclamation of his name throughout the whole earth?

Nothing in there about the free will of man, is there? Nothing in there about making men feel good about themselves.

Nothing in there about meeting their felt needs. The demonstration of God's power and the proclamation of his name, those are not big priorities for the vast majority of people who call themselves

Christians today, so it shouldn't surprise us in the least. But the vast majority of those folks don't like what

Romans 9 has to say. God had a purpose.

He raised Pharaoh up. He used Pharaoh. Now, people, oh, how can he do that?

I just won't worship a God like that. Really? Was Pharaoh in Adam a rebel sinner?

Well, yeah. And so, God could have brought his wrath to bear against Pharaoh at any point and brought him to judgment for his sins?

Well, yeah. And so, because God does not choose to bring

Pharaoh to judgment immediately, but instead uses him to demonstrate his power and to make his name known throughout all the earth, that somehow makes

God unjust? Surely not. How does

Paul interpret this text? What's the apostolic interpretation? Well, this is just talking about how

God used Egypt. Well, you tell me. What does verse 18 say?

You can't cut out of your Bible. You got to deal with what it says. So then, those whom he wishes, he mercies.

And those whom he wishes, he hardens.

Yeah, it says hardens right there. That's, that, you go,

I don't want that in my Bible. But it's right there. Because we know that Pharaoh, his heart was hardened.

People, we go, yeah, but he first hardened his own heart, except before, look back at Exodus chapter 4, verses 11 and 12, before Moses ever stood in front of Pharaoh, God said,

I'm going to harden his heart. Yeah, but he wanted to harden his own heart.

Yes, he did, because he was a sinner. And all sinners want to do that. And God was actually restraining

Pharaoh from being worse than he was. But the point is, God had a purpose. And if your theology is such that God could not have a purpose, and Pharaoh could have gone, you know what?

I repent. So that God's entire purpose for the Exodus, the Passover, the picturing of Christ, the demonstration of his name and his power throughout all the earth, the despoiling of the

Egyptian gods, if your theology is, well, you know, God may have wanted to do all that, but all

Pharaoh had to do is repent, and it would have been just fine. Then I say to you, you're not talking about the

God of the Bible. You've made up a God in your own image. Don't call it the God of the Bible. Because the

God of the Bible needs to be defined on the basis of the Bible, not what you like about him.

Okay? And there's also something else that needs to be seen. It's whom he wishes he mercies, and whom he hardens, whom he wishes he hardens.

Singulars. This isn't about nations. The application was to Pharaoh.

For this reason, I raised you up. These are singulars.

Those are hard words. People don't like them, but they're there. And, you know, the final proof of what we're saying is true is real simple.

The objection raised in verse 19 is the exact objection that people raise to our exegesis.

This isn't the objection people raise to Steve Gregg, or to Dave Hunt, or Norm Geisler, because their whole exegesis is meant to try to get around the very issue it's raised in verse 19.

You will say to me then, here comes the objector again, and this is where at least Greg has come up with something really interesting.

I'll play it for you. It's a total spin on this one. You will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who resists his will?

This is all one statement of the objector. You can't divide this up into separate sections.

The objector is saying, well, if God is the one who mercies whom he wills and hardens whom he wills, then how can he still find fault with any of us for who then resists his will?

If it's his will that's behind the mercying, and if it's his will behind the hardening, if it's his will behind Jacob and Esau, if it's his will behind all of these things, then there's no grounds for him to find fault, because no one can resist his will.

Now Greg's going to say, actually, that only part of that is what Paul's referring to. We'll play it and respond to it.

It falls apart upon examination, but we will get to that later. Notice Paul's response.

Some people say Paul did not actually reply to this, that he just left it into the great...

and some good Reform men have said, you know, he doesn't really respond to the question. I think he does. I really think he does, because if you look at the text, now the translation is, on the contrary, who are you,

O man, who answers back to God? But the problem is, that's putting it into good English grammar.

The very first words in the response in the Greek are, O man,

O man, who are you, who is answering back to God?

And you see, when you fully understand the massive chasm ontologically that separates

God and man, then the answer is very clear.

The answer is very clear. Who are you, O man?

Who are you, O creation, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this, will it?

And this is what so offends people, is they just do not want to allow

God to be the potter and we are the clay. God has to be like you and me.

God has to be like us. He's just a sort of a super big version of us.

But that's not how Paul viewed him. The thing molded, that's you and me. Not just nations, we're talking creatures here.

The thing molded will not say to the molder, the one who formed it, why did you make me like this, will it?

Cups do not have the right to say to the one who made them, I think you should have made me taller, or I think you should have made me wider, or I think you should have made me out of porcelain rather than out of plastic.

Why did you make me like this? Does not, verse 21, the potter have the right over the clay to make from the same lump, same lump?

No foreknowledge here, no, I'm just going to do whatever my foreknowledge shows me I can do. No, that raises all sorts of impossible issues in regards to God's creatorship.

But does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump, one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

When the potter puts the clay on the wheel and says, start that thing spinning.

Can anyone tell the potter, well, now, you need to make all the same kinds of things from that, from that.

You can't, you can't make a beautiful fine vase and then make something that you're going to put your trash in.

No, you can't do that. No, the potter has the clay cannot sit there and say, I'm supposed to be made this way.

No, the clay is in the potter's hands. And the potter can make from that clay, vessels for honorable use and vessels for common use, as he is free to do because of his authority over the clay.

And this is what men do not want to believe. God does not have that kind of sovereign authority over me.

He has surrendered that authority to my free will. That's what they want to believe.

They don't want a God this powerful. They don't want a God who is the potter and I am the clay. And in fact,

Mormons especially are extremely offended by this kind of language and this kind of imagery.

And how could they not be if their God is, in fact, just an exalted man. But Christians, people who claim they believe the

Bible are just as offended by this message. Just as offended. I had people get up in a class

I was teaching at a large Southern Baptist church many years ago and leave the classroom simply because I read this text.

I hadn't even commented on it. I just read it. And they didn't like it.

What if God, although willing, verse 22, and we're going to try to wrap up here as soon as we can, but don't want to shortchange everybody on this one.

What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, see there's, see the consistency here?

Did you see before? Make my power known, make my name known. Here it is again.

What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath, and I simply ask again, everybody in the audience who calls yourself a

Christian, do you believe it is important for God's wrath to be demonstrated?

And for most post -evangelicals today, they go, what? What wrath? The church

I go to never talks about wrath. What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.

And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he also called.

Talk about tying this whole thing up. Called, the elect of God takes you right back to the end of chapter eight.

Not from among Jews only, but also among Gentiles. Now, amazingly, despite the clarity and the force of this whole text being taken together, people will come to this text and go, well now, now, now note something here.

When it talks about vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, it doesn't say that he prepared for destruction.

And some people will all of a sudden throw Satan in here. Well, see, it's Satan that prepared them for destruction, see.

Or they prepared themselves for destruction. What is the context?

Is not the exact preceding statement, verse, sentence about the potter and the clay?

If you want one of the most clear, compelling examples of how men will twist this text to their traditions, look at how many scholars will point out, oh, it doesn't say that he prepared them.

As if the preceding sentence wasn't even there. You have vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.

And you have vessels of mercy prepared beforehand for glory.

Now, if you don't like that, you've got to ask yourself the question, why?

Why? Do you really trust the sinner man to make the decision as to who's in which, rather than the mercying

God who is accomplishing his own self -glorification? Have you noticed something about this entire text, going all the way back to Romans chapter 8?

It's God who's doing all this. God's the subject. All the verbs,

God's doing them. It's all for his purpose and his glory, the demonstration of his wrath and his name and his power.

It's all about God and it ain't about us. And that destroys our ego.

And the very essence of human religion always has been, and always will be, the creation of structures whereby man can control the power of God.

And it is only in consistent, biblical, Christian faith that you find the freedom of God and the total dependence of man upon that free

God and his mercy and grace consistently proclaimed. And as any proclamation of this lesser biblical view is made, it will always be at this point that these lesser proclamations will depart because they cannot allow

God to be God. They cannot allow God to be free. The very essence of human religion is the assertion of the autonomy of the human creature and the subservience of God to that autonomous will.

The very essence of Paul's argument here is that it is God who is the autonomous will and we are his creatures.

And yes, there is sarcasm in these words because to talk about pots and vessels talking back, yeah, there's sarcasm there because that's foolishness.

And yet that is what the creature does when he demands that God answer the questions of justice, when

God has demonstrated his justice from the beginning. So there you have

Romans 9. And I would suggest to you that if you're going to reject what it says, you're going to have to demonstrate that I've somehow shifted my methodology of hermeneutics and interpretation.

I've somehow not followed the text along. If you come up with another understanding, if you want to say some sections are about nations and some sections are about people, then you have to demonstrate from this text, not some other text.

Don't go jumping off someplace else. If you can't give me an interpretation of Paul's argument here, if Paul ends up contradicting himself, where he's talking about this thing here and that thing there, so there's no compelling argumentation here,

I suggest to you, you are not truly under the authority of the Word of God.

You're putting your traditions first. So there it is.

And I understand the only way that anyone can like what

Paul says here is by an act of grace. An act of grace.

Yes, I am saying to anyone who's a Christian, you have to believe this. You don't have any choice.

This is God's revelation. But I also recognize that especially if you're raised with certain traditions being crammed into your mind, you're recoiling from this.

I remember a man who talked to me after a class once again, that same large Southern Baptist Church, and I had read from Romans chapter 9.

He was talking to me afterwards. He says, I had read Romans 9 and I thought, you know what?

I thought that sounded like predestination, but I knew he didn't believe that, so I just put it aside.

There's so many people in that situation. There's so many people in that boat. There's what the text says.

But please, whatever you do, don't just put this aside. Read the text.

Read it in its context. Allow it to speak for itself and recognize that the God who is described there is the

God who walks every page of the Scriptures. We'll see you next week. God bless.