There is no injustice with God, is there? Does the fact that God chose mean that He's the grace to you with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. The story is told of a boy who looked out his window one morning and saw his puppy in the yard and watched horrified as his father shot and killed the dog. Only years later did the son learn that his dad had been protecting his family from a severe rabies outbreak in the area. His dad had actually demonstrated love by what he did. But you can learn to trust in that love, as John MacArthur is showing you in his current study. It's called, simply, the love of God.
And with today's lesson now, here's John. And when you come to chapter 9, you are introduced to a most important issue with regard to God's saving love. And that is how God's saving love mingles itself with all other of God's attributes, which must be considered in line with God's saving purpose. And I'm going to show you seven attributes of God that have to work in harmony with His love. First, He is glorified in His sovereignty. He is glorified in His sovereignty. Verse 6, It is not as though the word of God has failed.
Here's the reason. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel. Secondly, God is glorified not only in His sovereignty, but He is glorified in His judgment or His justice. Paul anticipates what somebody is going to say here. Verse 14, what shall we say then? What are we going to say about this? Are we going to say, huh, God's not fair.
Huh, that's not fair. That's what he's assuming. This imaginary objection is a real objection to anybody who thinks this thing through and he imagines and it's sort of an imaginary objector there throwing these questions which he answers all throughout the book of Romans.
It's part of his polemic style, part of his dialogue and progressing logically through his presentation. And here he assumes the question, well that's not fair. It's not fair for God to love Jacob and not Esau. It's not fair before they were born for God to choose the younger over the older. It's not fair for God to choose Isaac and not Ishmael. It's not fair.
And it's even more not fair because they didn't have anything to do with it. Is God not fair? His answer in verse 14, there is no injustice with God, is there?
And then he adds in the Greek, me genoita, the strongest negative in the language. No, no, no, no, no, such a thought is madness. Does the fact that God chose mean that He's unfair?
No. Fair sends everybody where? To hell. Justice damns everybody. And furthermore, God would never do anything unfair. He can be accused of being selectively gracious but not unfair. Fair? You don't want fair, my friend. I don't want fair. I don't want justice.
I want mercy. God could never be accused of being unjust or unfair, though He could be accused, and willingly so, of being selectively gracious. Genesis 18, 25 says, Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?
And you say, Well, wait a minute. Is He fair if He saves some? Yes, because He has provided a sacrifice for them in the person of Jesus Christ which satisfies His justice. Their sins having been paid for by Christ, justice is freed from its obligation and grace can be granted. Furthermore, whatever God does is the definition of justice, right?
It's not like an earthly judge. God always does right, and whatever God does is what right is. Whatever God does is the definition of justice. And you can be sure of this, that for those sinners to whom God is gracious, a sufficient satisfaction of God's justice has been made, and that's what happened on the cross. Psalm 119, 137 says, Righteousness is Yours, O Lord, You are upright in all Your ways.
Jeremiah 9, 23 and 24 says essentially the same thing. But we look at God and we say, It's not fair. It's not just, and we're shouting up there with our puny minds.
We don't understand what's fair. We don't understand what's just except from a fallen perspective. You see, whenever you question the justice of God, it's a display of a carnal mind. It's a display of a limited knowledge.
It's a display of pride, and it's perhaps mostly a display of weak faith. God knows exactly what He's doing. You may see the condemnation of the ungodly as unjust, and it isn't. God has a holy purpose that's beyond what you could understand. The Lord knows His own motives. The Lord knows His own purposes.
Don't question it. Madness, He says, no, no, no. God is not unfair. God has satisfied His justice, and God does what's right. Number three, God's love is in accord with His sovereignty and His justice. And thirdly, God's love is in accord with His mercy. Verse 15, and here's the point. He says to Moses, I'll have mercy on whom I'll have mercy. I'll have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So it doesn't depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. You know what He's saying here? Look, I'll be merciful to whoever I want, and it won't depend on them.
It's purely my decision. That's exactly what He's saying. You say, what was behind that? Well, verse 15 is a quote from Exodus 33, 19. Moses went to God. He said, show me your glory.
Put yourself on display. Well, you know, God could have put Himself on display a lot of ways. God could have said, okay, and Moses is gone. God could have burned him to a crisp, sent him to hell. That would have displayed His glory, wouldn't it?
You say, why do you say that? Because just prior to Moses asking that question, God had killed 3,000 sinning Israelites, wiped them out. And you know what? He spared all the rest, and all the rest were a lot, a lot. God killed 3,000, and He spared the rest. And then He went to Moses and asked Moses to do this task of leading, and Moses says, I'm not going to do it until you show me your glory. And then God said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
What do you mean? Well, God says, I have the prerogative to destroy like I killed the 3,000. I have the prerogative to spare the rest. You want to see My glory? It just so happens that I choose to show you the glory of My mercy. I was merciful to the rest, and I'm going to be merciful to you, Moses. And it has nothing to do with what you want.
Isn't that amazing? Verse 16, doesn't depend on the man who wills. It has nothing to do with what you do or achieve, but on God who has mercy. Mercy doesn't come because somebody wants it. Esau ran for the blessing, didn't get it. Ishmael desired the blessing, didn't get it. God says, I give My mercy to whomever I wish.
I demonstrate My saving compassion to whomever I desire, and I desire to give it to you, Moses. You know? Thank you. Amen. Hallelujah. Oh, glory.
And that ought to be our attitude all the time, right? God loves, but His love is connected to His sovereignty, His justice, and His mercy. It is also connected to His power, number five...number four, I'm sorry. It is connected to His power. Verse 17, His love cannot be manifest apart from His power. So in verse 17, He...going on in this marvelous insight, He goes back to the Old Testament, reaches back to Exodus chapter 9, for the Scripture says to Pharaoh, this is the Lord speaking, for this very purpose I raised you up to demonstrate My power in you and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.
Wow! So then He has mercy on whom He desires and He hardens whom He desires. Do you know what that says? That says, God raised up Pharaoh.
What do you mean by that? Pharaoh's...God allowed Pharaoh's mother to bear Pharaoh. God allowed Pharaoh to be born into the royal family. God allowed Pharaoh to live long enough to get to the throne. God allowed Pharaoh to get to the throne, develop his power at the throne. And then when God got Pharaoh at the throne, God made sure that Pharaoh's heart was hardened so that he would put up a fight, a fight which when confronted with the power of God would give God the opportunity to display Himself, right? What would have happened if...if Moses had gone in and said, Hey Pharaoh, let my people go.
And Pharaoh would say, Yeah, sure. I mean, we'll grease the wheels. What do we need to do? Get you guys out of here. You've been here enough and you've been really great.
On your way. You wouldn't need to part the Red Sea, would you? Wouldn't need to drown the whole Egyptian army. Certainly wouldn't need the plagues.
You wouldn't need frogs and boils and locusts and dead cattle and all the firstborn dying and wouldn't have the angel of death passing over. No, God hardened Pharaoh's heart because God wanted to put everything on display. God raised him up for that purpose. That's part of God's glory. See, that's part of who God is. That's part of the character of God. And again I say to you, His love does not exist unmixed.
He will love, but that's not all. God is love, but He's not all love and nothing else. And He is glorified in His power and He wanted to put His power on display and putting this immense power on display, by the way, from a standpoint of the Scripture, it is the greatest single display of power prior to the cross itself. And that's why it became the touchstone of God's redemptive power. And that's why Jews to this day still celebrate what great event?
Passover. It was the greatest indication of God's power on behalf of His people. He literally broke the back of the greatest power in the world, Egypt, opening a sea and closing it, immense power. And as a result of that, what it says at the end of verse 17 came to pass. His might was proclaimed throughout the whole earth. Everywhere, everybody heard what the God of Israel did.
You remember even in an encounter with the Philistines, the Philistines got worried because they remembered the God of the Israelites who had drowned the Egyptian army. God wants to put His power on display. He'll raise up a man to put His power on display and that man's heart will be hardened. Exodus 4.21, God said, I will harden his heart. And so God is going to display His power. And in order to display His power against resistance, there's going to be resistance. And so God's going to design resistance. It's not apart from the will of Pharaoh, for Pharaoh hardened his own heart it says as well. God doesn't overpower the human will.
The human will is responsible. And that's why judgment is just as we'll see in a moment. Moses was a Jew, Pharaoh was a Gentile. Both were sinners. Both were murderers.
Did you know that? Both of them were murderers. Yet Moses was saved and Pharaoh was lost. God raised up Pharaoh for the purpose of revealing His glory through His judgment power and He raised up Moses to reveal His glory through His grace and mercy and deliverance. God raised up Moses so that He could show His delivering power. He raised up Pharaoh so He could show His destructive power. Pharaoh was a ruler.
Moses was a slave. Yet Moses got mercy and compassion because God willed it that way. God is sovereign. God is holy and must punish sin. God is loving and must save sinners. But if everybody was saved, it would deny His holiness. If everybody is lost, it would deny His love. And so He's glorified through all His character. Number five, He's glorified in His judgment. Verse 19, and somebody's going to say right now, wait a minute. You're telling me He hardened Pharaoh's heart. You're telling me Ishmael was rejected and Esau was rejected and Isaac and Jacob were chosen. You're telling me God has mercy on whom He wants and compassion on whom He wants and hardens whom He wants.
Now let me ask you a question. How in the world can He find fault with me then? Because I don't have anything to do with this. If this is all predetermined sovereign destiny, if this is all something that's going on up there in heaven, if God is the one responsible for the hardening of the sinner, how does He hold the sinner responsible? If it's all determined by God, how can the sinner be punished? How can we be blamed?
Verse 19, you will say to me then, Paul says, why does He still find fault? In other words, how can He find fault with us then? I mean, if He's doing it, how can He hold us responsible? For who resists His will? I mean, if He's determined at all, how can you hold us responsible?
I love the answer. On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? Don't you dare accuse God of holding you responsible for something you're not responsible for.
That's the implication. That 20th verse really comes out of Isaiah 45, 9. Is man to question God? Human reason must submit. Man is a sinner. He loves his sin. He chooses his sin. He rejects God. He rejects Christ. He rejects salvation.
And he dies in his sins because of his own rejection. And yet at the same time, it is God's sovereign will. But because it is God's sovereign will, listen carefully, it is no less the responsibility of the sinner. That's why every gospel invitation is given to the sinner to repent. Jesus is not in heaven begging God to add a few more names. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit begging men to repent.
The responsibility is here. When people are sent to hell, it is because they believe not. It is because they repent not.
It is because they love their sin. The fact that it's been established by God demonstrates the glory of his nature but does not dispossess man from his responsibility. And I know that is a very difficult thing to resolve.
In fact, it's so difficult to resolve, I can't resolve it. And neither can you, but God can. I'll tell you one thing, I'm not going to question him. And that's the issue of verse 20. Who in the world are you answering back to God?
I mean, you poor, depraved person with a feeble mind. Just because it doesn't seem to make sense to you, you're going to answer back to God? Verse 20, the thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this?
Will it? And he's borrowing from Jeremiah 18, the picture of a potter. Verse 21, doesn't the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? God has his own purposes. God is the potter.
He makes the pots whatever way he wants. You can't argue with God. You can't question God. Because there's a purpose behind everything he does.
He makes one pot for honorable use and another for common use, that's his choice. Listen, the purpose behind what God does is not to satisfy the curiosities of human reason. The purpose behind what God does is not to satisfy the desires of depraved intellects. The purpose behind what God does is to glorify himself. And if he chooses to be glorified in judgment by making a vessel that is not honorable, that's his choice. He is glorified in his own judgment and we have no right to answer back and say, well how can you judge us and hold us responsible when you're the one making the decision? His judgment manifests his glory. It is a just judgment.
You are truly a sinner, truly a Christ rejecter, a God rejecter, a God hater, a lover of iniquity and that's why you go into punishment. God can harmonize that perfectly with his sovereignty even if we can't. God is glorified then in his sovereignty, his justice, his mercy, his power, his judgment. Number six is wrath. Verse 22, what if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? Now there's a lot in that verse.
Let me just grab the last phrase. What if God wanted to demonstrate his wrath by producing vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? So what? It's not for you to question.
It's not for you. You see, if you have God's perspective on this, it's simply that God is glorified through his wrath. David in the imprecatory Psalms, pray, God, kill the unrighteous. God, kill those ungodly. Kill those people that are persecuting me. Kill those people that are blaspheming your name.
Oh God, destroy them. And we read that and we say, oh, he was a righteous man and he loved holiness. That's because we don't know anybody he was praying about, right?
If I come into the pulpit on a Sunday morning in my prayer and I say, oh God, all the unrighteous that detract from your name, just kill them all right now. You're going to go, ah, you know, be aghast because you're somehow emotionally involved with that group. What I'm pointing up is we don't get so exercised over this issue of vessels of wrath unless we get emotionally involved in it. And the issue here is that God has sent angels. Once those angels fell, there was no redemptive plan, there was no recovery, there was no salvation, there was no forgiveness, no mercy, no grace. God does not display grace to angels. Holy angels don't need grace because they're holy, right? Holy angels don't need mercy because there's nothing about them that's pitiable.
And fallen angels don't get any. So if God is to manifest what is true of His nature and grace and mercy and pity are true of His nature, then He's going to have to have a creature that He does redeem that needs to be redeemed, that needs mercy, grace, and pity, and that's why we came along so He could put Himself on display in that realm. But the only way that's going to make any sense is to put His wrath on display by contrast so you understand what His mercy and His pity and His grace mean. Just because God is gracious to some, we can't assume in our own minds that therefore somehow He has to be gracious to everybody else.
That's not how it is. God acts in His wrath. He prepares vessels of wrath beforehand because His wrath is going to be a way to manifest His glory. He's glorified in His wrath. Lastly, He's glorified in His salvation. Verse 23, All this He did in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory even us. He's glorified in salvation. He displays His glory in His sovereignty. He displays His glory in His justice, His mercy, His power, His judgment. He displays His glory in His wrath, and He displays His glory in making vessels of mercy, which He saves.
What a marvelous thing. So God will be glorified all across the spectrum of His attributes. Don't be concerned, beloved, now, and I'll close. Don't be concerned with the mysteries of God's determination. Don't be concerned with trying to solve all of the mysteries of the nature of God.
Don't be concerned with your own condition. Don't be concerned with what God is doing in planning all of this. Be concerned with what awaits you in an eternal hell.
Don't be concerned with trying to unscrew the unscrewdable. Be concerned with repentance, and remember that Jesus said, Him that comes unto me, I'll in no wise cast out. Remember that Jesus said, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. The responsibility for repentance and faith is on you. That's all that should concern you. The issue of election doesn't become an issue until conversion.
Then we know you are elect. Whosoever will, let him come and take the water of life freely. Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. These are the invitations the Bible extends. That's John MacArthur continuing his study on the love of God.
Along with teaching here on Grace to You, John also serves as Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Now John, it can be challenging to understand how God's love works in concert with His other attributes, you know, like His justice and His wrath. But as you said briefly today, we shouldn't be too concerned with trying to solve all the mysteries about the nature of God. But instead, what we need to be concerned about is our own spiritual condition. So talk about that a little more for a minute. Yeah, you know, one of the ploys that unbelievers use is creating conundrums in their mind about God.
I've seen this with talk show hosts that I've interacted with. Their excuse for not believing is creating in their mind a contradictory God. Well, God couldn't do that, or God wouldn't do that, or He doesn't have the power to do that, or that can't be a good God.
Why do little babies die? I've had that conversation so many times. Agnostics and atheists reject the truth by creating in their mind a God that they can't believe in. And that's a false God. That's the God of their own creation to sustain their own unbelief. That's a damning, foolish thing to do.
But it's a convenient thing to do. If you can dismiss God as contradictory or claiming something about Himself that's not true or as evil, or you can deny the perfection and the deity of Jesus Christ in some way, you can satisfy your unbelief intellectually. That's a fool's effort. I think what's far more important than fussing about how you can dismiss the God of the Bible and the Christ of the Bible is looking into your own heart and seeing your own condition. And even Christian people can get caught up in these questions. It's much more important for you to look at your own spiritual condition. Forget about trying to figure God out to satisfy you. Take a look at yourself.
I've written a booklet, and we've been distributing it for a number of years. It's called Examine Yourself. Examine Yourself. It's a very fast test you can give yourself to answer the question, Do I belong to God? Am I saved? Am I a Christian?
Or am I self-deceived? The booklet, Examine Yourself. We will send this free to anyone who asks.
We want you to have this. Test yourself to see if you're in the faith, the Bible says. Examine yourself.
This little booklet will help you do that. Free of charge again. Just let us know you want a copy of Examine Yourself. We'll get it to you. And this is a great booklet to put in the hands of someone who you know is struggling with doubt. Ask for your free copy of Examine Yourself when you contact us today. Call our toll-free number, 800-55-GRACE, or go to our website, gty.org.
And if you'd like a few extra copies for friends, this booklet is available for a reasonable price, and shipping is free. Again, to get your free copy of Examine Yourself, call 800-55-GRACE, or go to gty.org. Also, at gty.org, you'll find thousands of free resources that will multiply your intake of biblical truth. That includes 3500 of John's sermons, and the popular blog series like The Anatomy of the Gospel, or episodes of this broadcast you may have missed.
All of those resources and much more are available free of charge at gty.org. And thanks for remembering that Grace To You is supported by listeners like you. If you have benefited from these daily broadcasts and you want to help others benefit in your community and beyond, express your support when you call 800-55-GRACE, or go to gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson, inviting you back tomorrow when John continues his series on the love of God. Be here for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.
