What Does It Mean to be a Vessel of Honor or Dishonor?

SPEAKER 01 : 0:05

So we’re slowly working our way through Romans 9 through 11, and carefully, I hope. And as you remember, this passage is about the salvation of Israel. How does God bring that about? Paul refers to election, not an election of the few. The whole passage reveals that all the world has been elected by the Trinity before the creation of the world. And God is then calling various ones. He doesn’t depend upon lineage or race or privilege, but he calls out of his own grace. So Paul then says, In other words, it’s not the willpower of a human being that saves him, nor the endurance, those who run, that saves them, but the will, the mercy of God. God has mercy on whom he will, and those he wills, he hardens. My goodness, then the readers that Paul is writing to say, well, why is God being unfair? Is he just? Well, the point is, Paul is showing us that God calls various people at different times because some become ready for mercy owing to the terrible circumstances of their lives and having come to an end of themselves. So he shows them mercy, and others are not yet ready, and they have to go through trials and various judgments until they come to an end of themselves, and they are ready. You see, that is what hardening is all about, as I’ve been pointing out in the last couple of days. Hardening is not God preparing them for hell and death. Saving some, choosing to elect some to have mercy on, and choosing the rest to have judgment on, and hardening them so that they will be prepared for destruction. No, not at all. God loves the hardened as much as he loves those who are soft and ready for mercy. but each has to come to that place and be brought to that place at different times. Remember what I said, that Jesus shows that he particularly provokes people to hardening. People harden themselves, and since that is a resistance to God, a suppression of him, God, therefore, hardens them further. For what purpose? To bring them to an end of themselves. Remember that hardening is the same as suppression, revealed in Romans chapter 1. What does God do for a humanity that suppresses themselves? He gives them over to their idols, verses 24, 26, and 28 of chapter 1. Why would he do that? To bring them to the place where they see that their idols are empty air, nothing, have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no voice to talk. They are wood and stone, and they are ridiculous. And, of course, we intellectuals, supposedly in the Western world, we don’t worship wood and stone. Oh, no, we worship ideas, and we worship science, and we worship things that give us a different dependency. the addictions of drugs and alcohol, food issues, pornography, and so on. So, you see, God knows how to bring us to an end of ourselves so that we call upon him for grace and mercy, and that is to give us precisely what we want. It’s a love. But it is a tough love. He cannot stop us from, or does not and will not stop us from doing what we want to do because he wants to redevelop or cause to re-emerge the image of God in us. And doing that does not call for simply putting the brakes on us and stopping us from doing everything that we want to do, but rather showing us the way so that ultimately we come to faith which brings wisdom. Faith which brings wisdom that tells us, no, the ways of the world, the ways of the idols, they are nothing. There is only one way that brings light and peace, and it is God himself. So Paul then goes on to say this, You will say to me then, Why does he find fault? For who can resist his will? That’s a misunderstanding of God entirely, of course. God is not some tyrant who is wanting to control every little thought. So why does Paul then say, Let me read it here, but you will say to me then, why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? But indeed, O man, this is what Paul then says, answering the man back, but indeed, O 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? Many of us do ask that, don’t we? we confront the Creator. It’s an issue of pride, of course, but God does not slam us down. God does not judge us. He allows us, He allows Himself to be insulted. And so many of us have asked over the years, over the decades, Lord, why did you make me this way? When Job asked these questions about God, God asked Job to look at the universe, to look at the stars, to look at the creation, to look at the wonders of how animals operate and how they live and how incredibly intuitive they are. And Job, as a result, was overwhelmed by the glory of God. And he said, I’ve heard of you, but now I see you. That’s where we need to get. We need to get to the place where we are humble, not a humble in the sense of cringing and have no right to ask questions, but we recognize our place. God is our creator and we are the creature. So, after a while of asking why did you make me like this and not getting any rational answers, we slowly come to the place as we trust God and that we bring ourselves to him and say, Lord, I don’t really know why you made me like this, but I’m willing to accept who I am. I’m willing to accept that you work through my weaknesses, through my woundedness, through my failures. The world is endlessly angry with God. The world is asking endlessly, why did you make me this way? Not in so many words, but the way we act towards the Creator. but the person who has finally come to trust him says, well, I don’t know the answer, and God didn’t give me the answer, but I’m willing to trust him, that he can work his love and his grace through my brokenness, through my woundedness, through my incapacity, through my abnormality. I’m willing to let his grace shine. But, of course, the people that Paul is talking to hadn’t got there yet. So what does he say? Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? Well, boy, that doesn’t appear to give the right answer, does it, to the people who are asking, Paul, why did God make me this way? Paul seems to have fallen into a trap. He’s given them an illustration that precisely makes their point, that we are just lumps of clay and God is using us. But no, Paul is a greater arguer than that. He knows how to debate things. and he’s going for a certain point, and let’s follow it carefully. Why does he say, does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honour and another for dishonour? Well, first of all, Paul is clearly unbending in relation to God’s sovereignty. He is not going to fall for the modern way of arguing, well, it’s not God who does this. It’s not God who sends us to hell. It’s not God who does all this. It’s we who choose. We choose the wrong way. And if we choose to go to hell, that’s our choice, not God’s. Well, that’s simply irrational and silly. because the Scriptures reveal God is sovereign over all that mankind does, and he will never give up on that sovereignty. He will not share his sovereignty with another. He will not offer an idol as an excuse for what he does. The fact is, God is in charge of making one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. But that is not talking about salvation. Look, some people have had an easy life. And God, since he is sovereign over the world, takes responsibility of that. for that. He has blessed those people with an easy life. Maybe they come from a good family. Maybe they come from wealth. Maybe they have a good intellect and can grasp things, and so they become good at school or university and land a good job, and they have nice families. But there are others, aren’t there, who have had it hard from birth, who simply can’t function very well, and get anxious and overreact emotionally to the normal troubles of life, so that their overreaction gradually moves them towards addiction. because they can’t stand the pain of their overreaction, and so they hide it and bury it and escape from it in drugs or alcohol or food issues. And so it seems from an early age that certain people have had disadvantages. We must admit that. That is making some vessels for honour and some for dishonour. That sounds incredibly difficult to handle. I am not a person who believes that God predestines some for life and some for death. Absolutely not. But what it says is that God has chosen to allow some people to have a different path from others. And that path of some seems easy, and for others it seems a terribly difficult path. But what is God doing by that? Well, it says in verse 22, What if God, wanting to show wrath and to make his power known, endures with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction? Well, be careful now, because you can misinterpret this as well. But read it carefully. What if God, wanting to show his wrath… Now, you know what’s going to come. He doesn’t show his wrath. Wanting to show it, he doesn’t show it. Have you noticed that? Most people haven’t. Listen again. What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much long suffering? So, long suffering is suffering a long time, holding back. God is holding back those people that he has allowed to be vessels of wrath. Now, everyone is in a state of suppression, even the man who’s doing well or the woman who’s doing well and has an easier life of it. They are suppressing God. Some have an easier life suppressing God, and others have a hard life suppressing God and go into all kinds of trouble and addictions. But the point is, God is revealing his long-suffering to them, both now and in the judgment. so that he can reveal how intimate his life and being are in relation to all of us who go through the most terrible journeys on earth until we find him, because it is he who is searching and finds us. More of this next time. Thank you for joining me today. Colin Cook here, and this is how it happens. And I hope you’ll join me tomorrow so that we can plow our way carefully through this fascinating passage and learn what God is doing. And if you’d like to join me at any other time, you can on your smartphone. 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