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In Romans 9, Paul is speaking of the glory of God’s sovereign mercy, he also writes of the glory of God’s sovereign wrath. This is usually where people begin to raise issues with the doctrine of unconditional election. But Paul never made it a barrier to his evangelism, but saw it as a boulder that crushes human pride! He begins the conversation in Romans 9 speaking of Israel and of God’s choosing of Jacob over Esau (before either were born or had done good for bad – Romans 9:11-12). Paul, anticipating a heckler responds back, “What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means!” (Romans 9:14). His response? God is God and you are not.
Paul gives yet another case study, the Exodus. He draws his readers back to Moses and Pharaoh. Similar to what he does in v. 22-23, he begins by speaking on God’s mercy. It depends not on human will or exertion but on God’s who gives mercy verse 16 tells us. He even quotes from Exodus to further prove his point! He then turns to the other side of the coin- God’s severity. He quotes from Exodus 4:21 to say, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” God’s purpose in the life of Pharaoh was to show his wrath and power through him. This would proclaim his name in all the earth!
Pharaoh was an example of what happens when you rebel against God and God let him rebel. He freely let him pursue what He wanted- disobedience. Disobedience through a hard heart always gives way to further hardening. In fact, Romans 1 makes clear that the judgment for a hard heart is a harder heart. Hard, disobedient, hearts are, apart from God’s grace black holes of God’s judgment, never emptying. Such is the severity of our sin! And God choosing to judge and further harden the heart of Pharaoh’s heart is an example of us of God’s severity and provides a basis for our message. The darkness of our sin only makes his mercy shine brighter! This provides a foundation to declare the sinfulness and emptiness of sin. It also provides a foundation for declaring the judgment of God against sin, without which we cannot understand the mercy of God in Christ!
In fact, later in Moses account of Exodus, God makes this clear to Moses, saying, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord.’” - Exodus 10:1-2
Moses is told to preach to Pharaoh “for” God had hardened his heart. For means because. His hardening provided a basis for him to do so. This text gives us two primary reasons which we have seen throughout. First, Moses is told to speak so that God might show signs. Signs of his power. The plagues. He wants the Israelites to know that He was the Lord of power! Second, Moses is told to speak to show “how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians.” Speak so that I might show the severity and vanity of sin! Pharaoh was a test case of the life in the pursuit of sin! It doesn’t end well. It ends in judgment. Pharaoh is what happens when one tastes the bitterness of hatred for God and doesn’t taste deep of humility and kindness of God. This is even given as a foundation for teaching the future generations of Israelites! Flee to God’s mercy where is may be found! The sovereign judgment of God gives the basis and foundation for preaching the bad news- which gives way to the glorious news of God’s mercy and rescue!
Paul continues this theme as he continues in Romans 9. He writes in verse 22-23,
What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory
He juxtaposes God’s judgment with God’s mercy showing that God has created a world in which both of these will be displayed to the glory of God. The darkness of judgment makes mercy look brighter. While many will want to point a finger at God for the dark side of unconditional election, they will not rest in the brightness of God’s unconditional mercy. Unconditional election does not just show us the severity of sin, but it shows us the glories of mercy. He chose to extend mercy so that we might know the riches of glory. Those whom He has chosen are the vessels of mercy, and He has chosen for us to know riches. The greatest riches in all the world is the glory of God through redemptive history. Ephesians 1:3-6 brings this truth to the forefront,
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
He chose us before the foundations of the world. He chose us knowing all we would be, past, present and future. Charles Spurgeon said it this way, “I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me I should never have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards; and he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.”
God’s predestination of us should lead us (the vessels of mercy!) to gaze upon God’s glory and to fall before Him in worship. We are predestined according to the purpose of His will for the praise of His grace. Sovereign grace leads to praise. We treasure His mercy more when we recognize that it wasn’t a response to foreseen faith, but solely out of His kindness. We proclaim what we treasure. Treasuring His grace empowers the proclamation of grace. 1 Peter 2:9 further brings this out when he writes, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
We have been chosen to proclaim His excellencies. His excellency is declared in His sovereign mercy and His sovereign judgment. Once we wrap out minds around what we can of God’s eternal rescue plan through our election, our purchase through Christ, our calling, our eventual glorification, it will stop our mouths. Not from declaring His gospel, but from declaring our supremacy. How are we to talk back to God? He is the potter, we are the clay (Romans 9:20-21).
Paul continues in Romans 9 to give further hope. In fact Romans 9 is sandwiched between two heartfelt pleas and desire for men to be saved! Paul wished himself a accursed that others may know the riches of mercy (9:3)! His hearts desire and pray that men would be saved (Romans 10:1)! Paul could feel this evangelistic agony not in tension with the doctrine of election, but precisely because of it!
The doctrine of election gives the hope that even the greatest outcast to be saved. Paul continues in Romans 9,
even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea,
“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’
and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’”
"And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” - Romans 9:24-26
God’s vessels, his chosen ones, are not a select few, but a multitude from every tribe on earth. It was not just the Jews who had the covenant, and the worship, and the Old Testament, (9:4), but God even chooses and calls and saves the furthest from God! God calls the Gentiles. The ones who were not his people are now His beloved. This gives us hope that even the most vile, God-hating, resistant people we know can be offered the gospel. We don’t know who the elect are, and this is exactly why we must declare the gospel to everyone we know! No one is outside of rescuing power of God. Those who freely rebel against Him can be rescued if His Spirit draws. The hope of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 is extend to all whom we share-
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
“Such were some of you.” There is much hope found in these words. We pray, we anguish, we labor, because God is sovereign and uses these means to accomplish his saving purpose! All things will be conformed to the “purpose of His will” (Eph. 1:11), but He has chosen the proclamation of the word of truth to be the means by which he rescues sinners. God’s sovereignty does not empty the use of means, but fuels the use of means. Sovereign grace fuels the proclamation of the gospel.
In fact, this is the last point that needs to be brought out. Not only does sovereign grace fuel gospel proclamation, but it fuels long term gospel endurance. We can endure the trials of life and ministry as a Christian because God ensures the success of His Word and the accomplishment of His mission. Sovereign grace fueled Paul in Corinth when he felt hopeless to see results the Lord came to him in a vision. Acts 18 records this event
And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. - Acts 18:9-11
He tells Paul to continue to endure in ministry because He was with him, He was sovereign to protect him and because He was sovereign to save those who are “His people.” God can save whom He will save, and this empowered Paul to stay for 18 months teaching the word of God. Election empowered this. Election fuels the fire of Paul’s passion to see souls saved and keeps it burning through the long restless nights of ministry! So election will do for His people today and for endless ages to come. The words of Issac Watts echo the cry of a soul gripped by the doctrine of election. May it be our song as well.
How sweet and aweful is the place, With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays, The choicest of her stores!
Here every bowel of our God, With soft compassion rolls;
Here peace and pardon bought with blood, Is food for dying souls.
While all our hearts and all our songs, Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues, “Lord, why was I a guest?
“Why was I made to hear Thy voice, And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come?”
’Twas the same love that spread the feast, That sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to taste, And perished in our sin.
Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come;
Send Thy victorious Word abroad, And bring the strangers home.
We long to see Thy churches full, That all the chosen race
May with one voice, and heart and soul, Sing Thy redeeming grace.
- Issac Watts. "How Sweet and Aweful is the Place" 1707
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