God uses those who hand Him the resources for either good or evil. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Romans. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about how God uses sin. about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Romans Chapter 9 with this edition of Cross-Reference Radio.
Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law, for they stumbled at the stumbling stone. I stopped short of quoting Isaiah for time purposes, and that's what Paul is going to do to make his point. The ruler of mercy, ruler of mercy is the name of this message, and I know many of you have mentioned to me how much you like Paul's letter to the Romans, and you also know that it's not high up on my list as books of the Bible go.
There are other books that I'm more attracted to. However, it was brought to my attention by the Lord that many years ago, when my mom was nearing the end of her days, that I wanted to make sure, of course impressed upon my heart by the Lord, that her salvation was intact. I was led by the Lord to read scripture to her, and the Lord reminded me it was the letter to the Romans.
And I would read, I read the whole letter to her, and I would stop periodically and say, Mom, do you believe that? And so, it is just, you know, it really doesn't matter what your opinions are as far as what's, you know, Isaiah of Paul, I'm of Apollos. It's all the Lord, every bit of it, and I was just really delighted that the Lord reminded me of that. Well, that just goes to say how powerful a document this is, and in many ways, it brings us the gospel from a direction the gospels themselves don't give to us.
That's not an insult at all. That is the Holy Spirit doing what he does best. Looking at the 14th verse, what shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?
Certainly not. Well, he's anticipating to his previous statement in the 13th verse, Jacob, I have loved, Esau, I have hated, and he's giving that in the context of God's prerogatives to judge and to show mercy. He knew that there would be those and were those assailing his doctrine, saying, well, you know, Paul, he has a doctrine of unfairness. He has a doctrine that allows gentleness in and damsels those that have the scriptures.
He knew this stuff was going on. Towards the end of this letter, it makes it very clear that he has the Jews in mind in this particular ninth chapter as we know it. So Paul rules out Yahweh's violating his own sense of justice.
That's how this verse starts off. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?
Of course not. God is righteous through and through. If you've got a problem with God, you have the problem.
And the flesh, of course, we will come to those places in life where we struggle. We ask God questions and we don't get answers. We have to oftentimes live through the things that have come our way, but he does not abandon us. God did not choose Jacob over Esau without reason. He did choose Jacob over Esau. He chose Israel over the nations, and he has his reasons, and he makes them known to us they're in the scriptures. Nor did he call the Gentiles now at this point in history to salvation.
That's the connection that he's making. Well, now it's time for God to call in the Gentiles. He has the right to choose as he did with Jacob and Esau. Incidentally, had God hated Esau and his people, he never would have blessed and protected them as we read in Joshua 24 verse 4. Although this went beyond just, this had to do with what they did with him and their behavior, the descendants of Esau engaged in abominable acts, and God saw it coming, and he took steps to avoid being associated with the descendants of Esau. God is righteous and sovereign, and Paul backs up this statement with a barrage of scripture verses from their Bible. Exodus 19, Isaiah 1, Isaiah 10, Isaiah 29, Isaiah 45, Isaiah 64, Jeremiah 18, Hosea 1, and Hosea 6.
So when you see me quoting verses in cross-referencing scriptures, well, you see where the pattern comes from. In this case, God's sovereign rights to choose, to show mercy or not, which would be judgment. In his sovereignty, God is just.
He is rational, he is loving, he is gracious, and he is merciful. And now he is embracing the Gentiles on the grounds of faith, not ritual, and he's doing it out loud. And the Jews are having a big problem with this.
Not all of them, but many of them. are really struggling with this. And Paul, that's what he's dealing with. Had Paul given up on the Jews, he wouldn't even be having this. We wouldn't have the 9th, 10th, and 11th chapter of Romans. In verse 15, to go ahead and develop his point, he says, Now, if you're not really digging into the scriptures, that may sound harsh.
It may sound subjective. And it's not. He's quoting Exodus 33, verse 19. That's that section of scripture where the Jews violated the second commandment. And they shaped a golden calf.
And they said, No way. And Moses, of course, is on the mountain at the time. The people were down below, partying over this golden calf, and God sent him down to deal with it. An interesting note about Joshua, the man who succeeded Moses, is that when Moses threw down the law and broke the tablets in wrath, Joshua witnessed it.
And, you know, that's just part of his learning experience. And that's just a sign No, it really doesn't have much to do with what we're talking about, but it's attractive to me, because it's a very human side of our faith. It contributed to Joshua being the man that he was.
And as the more you read scripture, the more you pick these things up, and the more you pick them up, the more you can apply them, become usable, more usable to God. So, in Exodus, both Israel and Pharaoh, zooming in on these two characters, rebelled against God. They were subject to God's judgment.
And that's what Paul is going with all of this. God would have been right to punish both of them. Both Pharaoh, for the persecution of God's people, and his obnoxious defiance against God in the face of astounding proofs. And he could have judged Israel for their breaking the second commandment, and so many other things they were doing wrong also. And yet, God is righteous, and he granted mercy to Israel, but judgment to Pharaoh.
And for a reason. A simultaneous display of God's mercy and judgment in these two characters, in this one book, and Paul is going there. He's going to be quoting these sections of scripture to make his point about God rules mercy. And it is not random. Nothing is random with God. He is that great and awesome to be able to calculate everything.
Nothing gets past him. And this is evidence, this mercy and judgment in the death and resurrection of Christ. The judgment was the crucifixion. The resurrection speaks of our salvation and the mercy of God.
Notice that he does not give this in the negative. I will have mercy on whom I will have, or compassion on whom I will have compassion. He does not say, I will condemn whoever I will condemn. It does matter how we see our role as Christians. James and John, the brothers, disciples of Christ, shall we call fire down on them, Lord, for rejecting you?
They had to be corrected. That's not how we do business, Jesus said. That's not the spirit.
That's the flesh. We're looking to save people. We're not looking to condemn them. No, that does not mean we excuse sin or we dismiss the judgment of hell.
It does mean we are rooting for those who are lost if by any means we can share the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a mindset. Once you become legalistic, you can become very smug and drastically reduce your usefulness to the Lord. Mercy is an attitude of God. It is an attribute of God. Ezekiel said it this way.
God's speaking to him, but Ezekiel records it. You shall know that I have done nothing without cause that I have done, says the Lord Yahweh. I do things because I've thought them through.
I know them a lot. He hasn't thought them through. It's anthropomorphic, I mean, from our sense, but God just knows. So Romans 9, the punchline of Romans 9 is that God saves whoever accepts him on his terms, Jew or Gentile. This is where Paul is going. Paul is saying, don't have any of this stuff about you've got Bibles. And you're supposed to be all that because you have Bibles.
You are supposed to be, but you failed to be. We can say that to many Christians today. Revelation 22, 17, and the Spirit and the bride say, come. Now, when you're in the book of Revelation, you notice all the times that the angels spoke with a thunderous voice, with a loud shout.
I think we have every reason to believe that this is said out loud with the exclamations in Revelation 22, 17, and the Spirit and the bride say, come. And let him who hears say, come. And let him who thirsts, come.
Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely. That's eternal life. This is in operation right now in the dispensation of the church.
And it will continue into the great tribulation period. And it is one of the most glorious things about our faith. That God is no respect of persons. Anybody can come who will receive him because he rules over mercy.
He knows what he's doing. And when God was judging the Jews for their breaking of the commandment, Moses pleaded with God not to wipe them out. And God did not. But there was a judgment.
There was a judgment that day. And the Levites sided with God. And they executed his will.
But the nation survived. And that was the mercy of God. And he rules over it. God is ruler of mercy, not Moses, not man. We have free will, but our willpower will not get us into heaven. It is receiving what God has said.
And it is that simple. And anybody who's complicating it, I think, is making a serious mistake and missing out on the beauty of the simplicity of our faith as is handed down to us in the book of Acts. And so, God reminded Moses, I'm sparing the people, Moses, because I am merciful, not because you're more merciful than me. Verse 17, he continues, Paul does, because this all started in verse 1 with the Jews saying, hey, what about us with the Bible and how can the Gentiles come in without Bibles?
This is not fair. This is what he's dealing with, verse 17. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I have raised you up that I may show my power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth. Well, he's quoting Exodus 9, 16. Paul is, again, part of that barrage of scripture to back up his doctrine as we should have. Pharaoh is an example of willful opposition to God.
And so, where he says, of course, in the beginning of verse 17, for the scripture says, there's where Paul goes for his authority. He then says, for this very purpose I have raised you up, raised Pharaoh, that is tolerated him, that is used him and then finally judged him. And those three things, God allowed, God did not just simply choke Pharaoh out. He gave him ten clear opportunities to repent.
He came that close and he ends up dead on the seashores of Yam Suph, the Sea of Reeds. That's where his obnoxious defiance towards God took him. He was not created for destruction, but allowed to be an example of destruction.
Pharaoh's choices handed God all the resources he needed to make Pharaoh a poster boy for the ages to come on what a hard heart looks like. God uses those who hand him the resources for either good or evil. For example, in the negative, God uses Satan for his purposes, but God did not make Lucifer a devil. God causes no sin. I'll come back to that statement about God not making him a devil in a moment, but one of the stellar things about Job is that he did not charge God with wrong. Because God does not cause sin.
He may allow it, he does allow it, and he also uses it, but he does not engineer it. Job chapter 1, in all this, Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong. And if you were to say, well God caused the sin, then you're charging him with the wrong. When God saves, it is a sovereign act of mercy, which no enemy can block.
Somebody coming to Christ, Satan can't stop them. It's between God and them at that point, a shield around them. He will try, and that person can succumb, but it will not be something that you can blame God for. God gives enough rope for people to either hang themselves or pull themselves out with his assistance, because we can't save ourselves.
They're not possible. But we can allow God to save us or not, and Pharaoh refused to let God be God. He decided everything he saw was not worthy of counting as valuable. Eventually, God will not interfere with man's resistance, which is the story of Balaam. It's the story of Judas.
God began by interfering with Balaam's wayward way, getting in the way of him using a donkey to say, Balaam, what are you doing? He did it anyway. And then, of course, God used the treachery to his glory of Judas Iscariot. Jesus could have went right out to the mob and just said, here I am, go ahead, arrest me. He did not.
He let it play out. He let Judas become the traitor that he was. Judas handed him the resources, fulfilling the prophecies, giving Judas again, as you've heard me quote often, a chance right up to the end by calling him friend. So God turns over people to the resources of their choosing. Romans 1, even as they did not retain God in their knowledge, there would be your atheists. God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. God says, fine. This is how he hardens the soul.
He backs off. 2 Thessalonians 2, and for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth because they had pleasure in unrighteousness. That's Pharaoh.
That's Balaam. And that's just a few scriptures, because there are many more that say the same thing in the Old and New Testament. And now we come to verse 19. Again, you have to see this ninth chapter in its overview format that Paul is answering why Gentiles are now coming in and Jews are now going away from God.
That's where they were in history at this time, and largely, we are there still. Verse 18, Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills to he hardens. Now, we think that there are those that will blame God for people going to hell.
That, to me, is something to preclude, to rule out of your thinking. That is not what the scripture said. I could not have read Revelation 22, 17. Whosoever wills, let him come. How can I come if I've been damned? Well, if everyone is saved, then God is not holy and he is not just. Universalism teaches that, oh, he's going to save anybody. Well, then where's the justice? You mean people getting away with evil, not repenting, remaining evil still, and they get rewarded? That's not just.
We cry out, there's no justice, and rightfully so. If, on the other hand, none are saved, then God is not loving and God is not merciful. But he is just, and he is loving and merciful, and he does invite and he does damn, and those situations where you don't have an answer for it, remember that you don't have the answer for it.
Don't fill in the blank and think you're going to get that one right. Default to shall not the God of all the earth do right. He will. What Paul is saying is election is by faith.
That is the solution. And Pharaoh had his chance, as did Balaam, as did Judas, as did any criminal in scripture that I can think of at the moment. I have to put that disclaimer there unless you get me later, and I hate being wrong. God had mercy. Here's an example of that election and that rejection. God had mercy on Rahab, but Balaam's mercy ran out because of Balaam, and we know why. And so the people of God slew him on the battlefield. And whom he wills, he hardens. Again, how?
By leaving them as they insist on being left. I don't want to hear your gospel anymore, Mr. Christian. I don't believe it. I don't want it. Leave me alone. So the demon said, what do we have to do with you, Jesus, as he was delivering a man from his handicap condition?
The sun can melt ice or it can harden clay. Which heart have you? Have you a heart that is just hardened against God?
Or have you had one that has confessed its sins and has melted in his presence and you're not resisting because we're talking about a hard heart? Through Ezekiel, God promises to give his people a heart of flesh and not of stone. Pharaoh, upon witnessing the actions of Moses' rod, swallowing up his magician.
I almost said musicians, but they could have been musicians who were magicians. Pharaoh witnessed that and he could have repented. He could have said, wow, now that is the God I want to serve.
And he did not. Depraved he was, but not totally. Otherwise, there'd be no need to harden his heart.
If he was totally depraved, there would have been no chance for him. But God, again, hardened his heart by simply withdrawing himself as insisted upon. Now Paul did not insist on God withdrawing from him as he was persecuting Christians and the Lord came after Paul and confronted him. Paul did not harden his heart.
That heart melted in the presence of the Lord. What would have happened if Paul said, no, I don't want to hear it? These people are violating Moses' law. Then he too would have been like Pharaoh. God does not create man in order to destroy them. God did not make Pharaoh wicked and he did not make him stubborn, but he used those two things. Those were the resources, some of the resources handed to God. God punished him for his defiance, allowing Pharaoh's evil nature to drive him to death, as I mentioned. Pharaoh now makes a fit example of those who refuse God's mercy and therefore, by default, subject themselves to his ultimate justice. And that's why we put so much energy into praying for lost souls, into preaching for lost souls, into having a church where people can come in and say, well, I could tell you this.
There's no weirdness going on. You get the word and you get to go home and you get to go home with whatever the Holy Spirit put on your heart and you get to do something with it. That now is between you and God. So, taking full responsibility for allowing a man to become what a man chooses to be, that's God. God says, you want to blame me for something? Blame me for letting people be what they insist on being. Do not blame me with jamming the gospel down their throat.
I stand at the door and I knock. And do not blame me for sin, which they were going to launch at Paul had he not given this defense. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to Cross-Reference Radio dot com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe on our website. You'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio. So make a note of it. Cross-Reference Radio dot com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.
