We're made in the image of God, albeit a fallen image at this point in humanity, to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. Now, it does not say that God determined the vessel's honor or dishonorability. He's made the vessel. What you do with that vessel afterward, who is that up to? Well, if the potter decides to keep the vessel, then it's up to him. But if he sells the vessel, it's up to him. If he sells the pottery, which he's going to do, then it's up to the possessor. What are you going to do with that?
Are you going to make it a bowl for salad or a spittoon? And now here's Pastor Rick in Genesis chapter 20. He'll begin there and then continue in Romans chapter 9 on this edition of Cross Reference Radio. Did he not say to me, she is my sister, and she even herself said, he is my brother.
And here's the part. In the integrity of my heart and innocence of my hands, I have not done this. So he's saying, I'm not sinning. I didn't commit anything wrong. I'm in a bad sin. I was framed.
It's kind of a thing. There's the responsibility of man. He was acting upon supposed innocence. But God then replies, and God said to him in a dream, yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart, for I also withheld you from sinning against me.
Therefore, I did not let you touch her. Then he goes back to Abraham. Abraham, you made a mess here. Go pray for him. I guess you don't see the irony of the whole thing. The man that created the mess had to still pastor.
Oh, I don't want to be in that spot. And the man that could have blamed the pastor had to submit so many lessons in the scripture about how God does business. Anyway, the responsibility of man, and of course, the sovereignty of God, they go hand in hand. But indeed, oh man, who are you to reply against God?
Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? And he's chopping them down. He is saying to them, who are you to set terms for God? Blocking the Gentiles because you want them to have Sabbath days and circumcision and not eat things. Who are you to interfere with the prophecies that have said this was coming?
That's how he's dealing with them. You don't dictate the terms. To contradict God. Here it says, who reply against God in the New King James Version.
In the Greek, it's a single word. And it means contradict. It's not just talk back to God.
There's nothing wrong with talking back, but to contradict him is a problem. You can ask God questions. He invites us. Come, let us reason, though your sins are red as scarlet.
I will make them white as snow. Peter, he decided he was going to contradict Christ. All these might forsake you. I'm not going to forsake you. And you're not going to the cross either. And what did Jesus say?
Get behind me Satan. You're not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of men. That is a defiant question or reply. And so Paul is saying to them, who are you to contradict God? And that's the Scriptures coming in. So Jesus says, ask, seek, knock, and it will be open to you. The invitation is there. When Paul was converted, who are you, Lord?
What do you want me to do? So of course we can ask questions, but don't hold your breath on waiting for the answer. I've learned that. Sometimes God will, you'll find out. So will the thing formed say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this? Because if you can say that, then it's God's fault. You made me like this.
Don't go blaming me. What if the king had said, well, you made me this way. So it's not the place of the created thing to hand off the blame to the creator.
The opposite is actually true. Ezekiel 28 verse 14 concerning Satan. I said I'd get back to Satan. Well, here we are. This is what God says of Satan. You were created.
Back up. You were anointed, the cherub who covers. I established you. You were on the holy mount of God. You walked back and forth in the midst of the fiery stones, and he continues to develop that. And yet he becomes the devil. But God says, when I made you, I made you beautiful, and I established you. You say that, Judas Iscariot. Jesus established him, sent him out to do miracles and to preach the gospel, to preach the kingdom.
And yet what did he do with it? James said, let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. God does not inject the evil, but he uses Satan and the way he uses Satan by not writing a script for him, but controlling the script that Satan writes. No villain can blame God for being a villain. Psalm 139, verse 14, I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. That's the Christian view.
Not, you know, I will blame you because you made me this way. The matter is one of sovereignty, which they were resisting, and why, again, they did not heed their own scriptures and found themselves on the outside looking in, and that's what Jesus said. When you see the righteous in the kingdom and you yourselves left out, it'll be your doing. Verse 21, does not the potter have power over the clay? From the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. Now let's stay consistent with the metaphor of the potter.
The clay has to respond to the potter. The metaphor is from Isaiah, twice in Isaiah, and once in Jeremiah 18, which is one of the most beautiful passages of scripture concerning God's care, and God saying to Jeremiah, you see all this judgment coming? You see all this evil around you? I'm not twiddling my thumbs.
I'm still doing stuff. That's the point of Jeremiah 18, one of the main points. Anyway, had this metaphor been applied to a loveless God, then we are left with a different God and a different Bible. But this metaphor is applied to a loving and merciful and sovereign God, and his love is not unjust because love is not unjust, 1 Corinthians 13. Speaking of love, he says it does not behave rudely, thinks no evil. We have no right to say, well that is beautiful, and I accept that. I'm going to try not to behave rudely or think no evil, but God can be rude and God can be, no he can't.
That would be a double standard, and that's not the truth. The truth is that God does not behave rudely, and he thinks no evil. He is aware of it, he knows all about it, but he does not concoct it. He says here from the same lump of clay, so the metaphor is saying that we're created with equal ingredients, not talents, but we're made in the image of God, albeit a fallen image at this point in humanity, to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. Now it does not say that God determined the vessel's honor or dishonorability. He's made the vessel. What you do with that vessel afterward, who is that up to? Well if the potter decides to keep the vessel, then it's up to him. But if he sells the pottery, which he's going to do, then it's up to the possessor. What are you going to do with that?
Are you going to make it a bowl for salad or a spittoon? Honor or dishonorable? He's saying God is in control of the whole thing. The honor or dishonor remains up to the one in possession of the vessel. 2 Corinthians, we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power of God may not be of us.
Why not? Because we're vessels filled with the Holy Spirit versus those not filled with the Holy Spirit, such as Caesar Nero. Nero wasn't filled with the Holy Spirit. He was filled with the evil spirit.
Christ made quick work of the unclean spirits that had filled the lives of so many people around him. What we allow God to do with us makes a difference between honor and dishonor, and that's what we read in 2 Timothy 2, but in a great house that you can say the church. There are not only vessels of gold and silver. I'm gold.
I just want to claim it for anybody else. Okay, that was six-year-old-ish of me, but the vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood, clay, some for honor, some for dishonor, but it doesn't say how they get there. Well, we know how they get there. The Scripture does say the honorable vessels are metaphor applied to those seeking the filling of the Lord. The dishonorable are disinterested in God's filling. Luke chapter 5 verse 38, but the new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both will be preserved. What do you put in them?
How do you do it? God could not pour into Pharaoh honorable things. Instead, Pharaoh poured out from his own self dishonorable things called persecution, Korah, and his dunce colleagues, Dathan and Abiram, On. They rebelled against Moses in number 16. God didn't pour that into them. God is pouring into the Gentiles his prophetic work.
Will these Jews allow it? Many of them did. Barnabas did.
Silas did. Verse 22, what if God wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had prepared beforehand for glory? Well, that's exactly what happened between Pharaoh and Moses. What if wanting to show his wrath, God wanted to show his wrath.
He took the opportunity. Okay, Pharaoh, you're going to be that way. I knew you were going to be that way, and you're going to get the wrath. And that's why they perished when the sea closed up around them after letting God's people pass through. So Paul is making a point and not establishing a doctrine. He injects a hypothetical here. Again, anticipating their objections. He's anticipating that the Christian Jewish Christians in Rome will read the Roman letter that's all about salvation in those first eight chapters, and when they're in discussion with their unsaved Jewish brethren, these arguments are going to come up.
And so he is heading them off at the pass. What this is not saying is that God picked who he wanted to damn. That is not what this is saying, but the hypothetical is, well, what if God wanted to demonstrate his mercy and his goodness? Remember, were it not for the fallen Eden, the angels would have never gotten to see what God's self-sacrificing love is all about. Who else has he died for on a cross? When the angels rebelled, he just booted out the rebels, and he retained the angels that remained righteous. It is not until Calvary did the angels say, wow, he became a man, suffered all sorts of things like a man, and then let him kill him in a very nasty way. God made his glory known.
Well, it's not a new thing, and there are other places where it exists also. He has reason, and he has made it known, and here it is in Luke 13. I tell you, unless you repent, you will likewise perish. There's the key. Repentance.
You want to be elected into the kingdom? Repent, for the kingdom of God is drawn near. Now, one other thing about this metaphor, potters don't make pottery just to slam it on the ground.
They sell it to people who want to take the pottery out to the range and shoot it up, but they themselves won't do that. But they retain the right, verse 22, wanting to show his wrath to make known his power, and I've already mentioned Pharaoh and Balaam, and I think we have covered that. Read Psalm 81, verse 12. So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart to walk in their own counsels.
That pretty much answers the hypothetical question Paul is giving us. God endured, he says, with much long suffering, the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. Well, he endured. How many times did Moses and Aaron have to go back to Pharaoh?
Well, ten incidences, but it covered a period of time, a long period of time. Well, God was enduring. Endured with much suffering, the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. Those determined to reject God have prepared themselves for wrath. They are therefore predestined for wrath.
They have done it. They got on that flight. God did not shove them into the plane going to hell. God did not make them such vessels. Acts 17, verse 30. Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent.
Well, what about all those in between? None of your business. And if it were, God would have told us. But we understand. He'll do right.
I'm not worried about it. Mary said to Jesus, listen to him, I can't tell you all the details about what he's going to do with our lack of wine, but I know he's going to do something, and whatever it is, it's going to be remarkable. And I've sent you to him, now I'm out of here. And it was just a remarkable moment in history when Jesus says, woman, what do you want from me? And it was a signal saying, I'm much more than your son, according to the flesh. That's what was in his address to her.
Instead of saying, mom, even as a grown man, I go, mom, come on. But things change there with him. So an affliction in hell, this is an affliction of hell, that those in hell will all be irrelevant. What an affliction that will be. Can you imagine in this life? There are people in their lives because they feel such an irrelevance.
God is the antidote to that. You're not irrelevant. I died for you. You mean something to me.
Yeah, you might be at the bottom of the barrel right now, but you're still just as valuable to me now as you ever were. God moves on to eternity with or without people. Potters make the vessel, then it is up to the one who takes possession of that vessel to decide what to fill it with. A Gentile can receive Messiah poured into them. Acts chapter 10 verse 45. And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished as many as came with Peter because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.
They became vessels of honor. So just as Paul uses all of his verses to make his points, I'm using all these other verses to make points about his points. God is vocal about desiring mercy. In Matthew 9 verse 13, here in Hosea 6 where he's quoting, For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, but the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. And Samuel makes a similar statement, but that's obedience. Anyway, which he prepared beforehand for glory. So God prepared the salvation for those who again would receive and not for those, what part of that does not make sense? When you tell somebody, listen, he's God Almighty, he dictates the terms.
Why are you having a hard time with these terms? And that's what Pharaoh, Moses essentially was saying, you know, Moses and Aaron walking back from doing these incredible signs in front of Pharaoh, saying to each other, can you believe how thick-headed that guy is? How does a guy like him get on the throne? I mean, he's just as dumb as all dirt. Just like, well, my favorite Looney Tunes statement, dumb as a sack of hammers or wet mice. Verse 24, even for us whom he called not of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles. That's a thorn in their side.
You and I just read that very casually. That grated on them like, oh, there he is again with these Gentiles. Remember we talked about the hatred that they had for Gentiles coming in without becoming Jews. Christ, I mean, it was so against him, the hatred. In the first three chapters of Mark, he delivers three people from three different ailment. One was a paralytic, one was demon-possessed, and the other had a handicap.
And by the third time, they plotted how they were going to kill him for this because he dared do it on the Sabbath. Are these people out of their minds? Yes. Yes.
And didn't make any excuses for them. Liberalism is a curable disease, but you've got to come to God. And liberalism has become synonymous with demonism.
Let's kill babies, let's perverse many sexual things that we can't. I mean, this doesn't stop. Well, verse 25, and he says, and we'll pick it up, there's a lot of speed here in a minute.
We're going to make it actually through this if I shut up and start getting back to it. And he says, I will call them my people who were not my people and her beloved who was not beloved. Verse 26, and it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, they shall be called the sons of the living God. Now, he's just telling these boys, I know scripture like you do. You want to have a, you know, scripture contest?
Okay, well, here you go. Hosea said this. Now, Hosea was talking about the people of God being strengthened. Paul expands it and says there's an incident of God in the scripture, and there are other ones, where he makes a place for them, and they will be sons of the living God. No Gentile nation was ever called a people of God, but the Gentiles as individuals are grafted in to being the people of God, and are now on equal footing with the Jews as individuals go. So the precedence for God rejecting unrighteous Israel is there.
They shouldn't be surprised. He's saying, yeah, God's going to take in these Gentiles. Wicked Jews have been rejected before, and they're going to be rejected now.
You don't get a pass because you're Jewish, and he's already covered this, but he now, again, he's answering their objections. Verse 27, Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel. Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. There's the passion of Paul for his people. Verse 28, for he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because Yahweh will make a short work upon the earth.
Of course, that's coming of Christ. Verse 29, and Isaiah said before, unless Yahweh of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been made like Gomorrah. So he's appealing to them. He said, look, don't make them, God is looking to save his people. He's not looking to judge and damn them, but they will be damned if they insist.
He's already made quick work of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he'll do it of anybody else. So he's quoting Isaiah chapter 10. Now, Sabaoth is an untranslated Hebrew word. Instead of saying, unless the Lord of hosts or multitudes, he uses the Jewish word, untranslated, which means, just tells us, he has the Jewish audience now in mind. He's zeroing in on his Jewish countrymen, and the Gentiles really are sort of like not a big part of what he's going after. It still affects them, because they were Jews that would still come up to them and try to get them to be Jewish first. And so he's shown that the Jewish history has a record of unfaithfulness, and God has not annihilated them, and he's not going to annihilate them, and we'll get that in the chapters to come. So as we've been in the first eight chapters, it's been about soul saving. These three chapters, it's about Israel and the dynamic between the Gentiles and Jews in the church. And so if you know that, I think it all becomes a little bit more clearer.
Everything I've taught has an anti-teacher out there that has a different view, and is there right to be wrong? And that's the way it is. You need to come to your conclusions based on what I said. Verse 30, what shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained to righteousness even the righteousness of faith, but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. I've been driving that home all chapter nine. Then he answers it, and we referenced this in earlier sessions.
Why? Why is this so, verse 32? 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. They still thought Messiah Christ could be ignored so long as we keep our Sabbaths and our diets and our other rules.
We're fine, and he is telling them, you're not. You have actually made your ritual more important than the righteous Messiah, and we watch that unfold in the Gospels. Verse 33, as it is written, behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense, and whoever believes on him shall not be put to shame.
Whether you're a Jew or not, and I tell you the cross is an offense to many, and there Paul is saying it, quoting Isaiah, applying it properly to Christ, so he sums it up with this. Israel stumbled over grace. They wanted a militant Messiah. They wanted a lion-like Messiah. God gave them the Lamb, not a lamb, the Lamb.
They wanted a throne, and God gave them the cross, the cross of Christ. So we close with this verse out of Galatians. Galatians 4.21, tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you hear the law? Do you who have Bibles, do you hear what it's saying? Are you heeding it?
Are you taking the time to get to the bottom of it? 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 crossreferenceradio.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, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick, we'll be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.
