sermonette: The Vessels of Wrath
God's Judgments and Ways
David C. Grabbe
Given 06-Oct-18; Sermon #1455s; 19 minutes
In Romans 11:33, Paul exclaims, Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the
wisdom and knowledge of
God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. This verse is at the end of a 3 chapter section. In which Paul describes God's decisions, some of which may seem unfair to us, as we will see. Remember that Psalm 34 and verse 11 shows that the proper fear of the Lord must be learned. It's not something that we have by nature. In the same way, a true concept of God is also something that must be developed and that often involves great mental wrestling. When God reveals Himself, our concept of Him begins at a very shallow level, and we cannot fathom either the depth of His
love or His abhorrence of
sin. Because of our prejudices, we recoil at some of what is recorded, such as God's commands to Israel to destroy even women and children of idolatrous nations. Maybe we struggle with the story of Job and how God allowed
Satan to strike a righteous man with multiple calamities, any one of which could leave a man a broken shell. We may have a hard time with God flaying of Uza when he was just trying to help. And he was involved because of King David's
carelessness. Perhaps we are shocked when the God of mercy executes Ananias and Sophiara seemingly without mercy. Truly, God's judgments are unsearchable. Please turn with me to Romans chapter 9, where we find the beginning of the section that some of what Paul was referring to. Romans 9 will begin. In verse 22. Says what if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much long suffering 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, even us whom He called not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles. This speaks about vessels of mercy as well as vessels of wrath. Our object today is to understand the vessels of wrath, but along the way we may have our concept of God further honed, and hopefully we will grow in our respect and awe of Him. A for some background, chapters 9 through 11 of Romans is a lengthy discussion about Israelites and Gentiles. Specifically, Israel rejected her Messiah. And consequently has been rejected by God but not completely. Israel is largely blind now, and God has grafted in Gentiles to His olive tree in part to provoke the Israelites to jealousy. The major theme winding its way through chapters 9, 10, and 11 is God's sovereign election of some and not others according to His will rather than personal merit. And so God chose
Isaac over Ishmael, even though Ishmael was Abraham's firstborn. God chose the fund where
faith was involved rather than carnal fins. And then God chose Jacob over Esau before either one had drawn a breath, and Jacob was a real scoundrel before God intruded. Now if you look back to verse 14, we will start leading up to the vessels of wrath. Romans 9:14. He says, What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not, for he says to
Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, For this 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. Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills, he hardens. Now Paul mentions mercy 7 times in these 3 chapters, and this gives us the foundation for understanding God's judgment in this section. The emphasis on mercy reminds us of the sinful state of all mankind. If men were righteous, they would have no need of mercy. Yet, as Paul wrote earlier in the book, all have sinned. With Protestantism run amok and becoming even further watered down, many forget the seriousness of sin and its consequences and tend to think that God is somehow obligated to give grace to everybody. But God certainly is not under any obligation to His creation, and the fact that we are still breathing is a testament to God's mercy, but not something that we can ever take for granted. When we acknowledge this position of absolute vulnerability before God and that each of us stands only because of His favor, it is easier to accept that there is no unrighteous unrighteousness when God extends mercy to some and not others, for none of us deserves it. He redeems some, but there is no injustice when he does not redeem others. Human nature perceives unfairness in this because it does not accept that when one sins, one forfeits any claim on life, including its quality. If God extends mercy to one and not another, there is no injustice, for the second sinner receives exactly what he deserves. Now Paul refers to the Pharaoh in verse 17, and in verse 18 he mentions God's hardening. God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and this too may seem unfair, as though God had taken away Pharaoh's freedom to choose. But the reality is that God had for, excuse me, Pharaoh had forfeited his life long before, and there was no injustice in God extending the life of a dead man walking to do His will. Every second Pharaoh lived after his first sin was borrowed time, but human nature perceives injustice because it thinks so highly of itself and so little of God's perfection. As he works things out that we cannot wrap our our meager minds around. There was no moral superiority with the Israelites in Egypt. You can read in Ezekiel 205-9 that the Israelites were unrepentant idolaters while still in Egypt, and God nearly destroyed them right there. In fact, when you combine Ezekiel 20 with half a dozen other references of Israel in the wilderness, it appears that the Israelites may have had idols in their houses even while they kept the
Passover. God had mercy on one nation while He hardened another and its ruler, and yet both were committing idolatry. God passed over one and destroyed the other. Yet the Egyptians cannot claim injustice because they got exactly what they deserved. In verses 19 and 20 Paul moves into a pretty controversial area. Verse 19 in the contemporary English version reads, Someone may ask, how can God blame us if He makes us behave in the way He wants us to. And this is a logical question based on what Paul had just said, in contrast to God's mercy and God's hardening. If he hardens hearts, he can also have mercy and soften them. Proverbs 21:1 says the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, and he turns it. Think about what God does to call and convert us. He opens our minds and He gives us the faith to properly respond. That faith is a gift, and it opens the way to salvation. Even a people as sinful and carnal as the Israelites in Egypt had the faith to pass through the Red Sea, but that faith was a gift. God provided the experiences and the plagues and the Passover and turned their hearts so that they could respond in the right way at that critical juncture. It was part of His mercy that He did not extend to the Egyptians. The same principle applies to spiritual salvation. Later in this book, Romans 14:4, Paul is talking about God's servants, and he says to his own master, he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand. In other words, even though God does not create character by fiat, He does create character. He gives understanding, and He develops righteousness through the experiences He causes and the teachers He gives us and the circumstances He creates that build our faith and help us to become more like Him. He just does not do it all at once, and he requires that we continue to seek Him and not just float along. God can perfect us, but the real issue is whether we truly want it. God has the ability to bestow such great favor throughout a person's life that it results in salvation and glorification. That is how sovereign He is. But this is also a dangerous truth because human nature will use this as an excuse to neglect its obligations and blame God. And this is why Paul anticipates the question, how can God find fault if it's in His hands to make us righteous, to make us stand? Indeed it is in His hands, and thus our human nature may try to blame God for our sins, since He has not perfected us yet. Now that may sound like irresistible grace or some other licentious theology, but we will see the other side of this in a moment. So Paul continues in verses 21, 20 and 21 to remind us that we have no standing to question God's decisions or workmanship. We can never call him into account for what he does or does not do with his own creation. Just if it would be ridiculous for a clay clay pot or porcelain vase to question the workmen who made it. So also we have no right to disagree with God over our physical or spiritual state. God chooses to make some lives one way, and other lives another way, and He is beyond reproach in every decision. As Jesus told Peter, If I will that He, John, remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me. And how we finally get back to verses 22 and 23 in the vessels of wrath. Verse 22 says the vessels of wrath are prepared or fitted for destruction. Along these lines, Romans or Proverbs 16 and verse 4 says, the Lord has made all for Himself, yes, even the wicked, for the day of doom. He's not saying that God created wicked people or that He created people to be wicked, but that He is preparing wrath for those who are wicked. The lump of clay is defiled humanity, and it does not deserve anything good. However, God shows mercy to some of the undeserving, while He prepares others for ends that are dishonorable, that are inglorious. God could have shown overwhelming favor to Judas Iscariot, the son of Perdition, to keep him from starting down the path that he ultimately chose. But instead God prepared him for a dishonorable role. That's sobering to think about. In verse 22, wrath is contrasted with the riches of glory. In verse 23, wrath is the fate of those who are not prepared for or given the riches of glory. And so who are the vessels of wrath? In short, anyone who is not a vessel of mercy is a vessel of wrath. The typical New Testament usage is to contrast wrath with eternal life. We'll see some examples of of this, but first there is a qualifier. The verses we will see do not mention when the wrath falls or the different harvests. In other words, the timing is not shown. But what Romans 9 does is it classifies, it classifies mankind into two broad groups those to whom God has shown mercy by bringing them to Christ, and those whom God has not shown mercy, who are vessels of wrath unless or until God shows them mercy. Again, this may seem harsh to us, but Paul is leading up to something, and he prepares by making the point in stark terms that God is righteous in whatever he decides. And with that in mind we will see three scriptures that show that true belief in Christ and all that follows it is what keeps us from wrath. First, please turneth me to John chapter 3. We'll go through these quickly without comment, but John 3 in verse 36 says, Christ says, He who believes in the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe the sun shall not see life, but the
wrath of God abides on him. It doesn't fall immediately, but it is resting on him. And then I Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 9. For Thessalonians 5:9, Paul says, for God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord
Jesus Christ. And finally back to Romans this time in chapter 5. Romans 5 and 9. He says much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. And this is also the sense in Ephesians 2 verses 1 through 4 which teaches that prior to God's mercy we were dead in trespasses and sins, and we were children of God's wrath. It was like a sword hanging over our head until God made us alive together with Christ. And so returning to Romans chapter 9. In verses 22 through 24, Paul continues his rhetorical questions to drive home the point that
God's will is really the only thing that matters. He has prepared the vessels of wrath for destruction, but if he suffers their continued existence rather than destroying them immediately, we dare not disapprove. We are undeserving recipients of His mercy, and that's the thing that separates us, and so we must accept the timing of His judgment. And to get to Paul's main object in these chapters, if God justifies the Gentiles by faith rather than by the Old Covenant, what man who is alive only because of God's mercy can tell God that he is doing it wrong? God is free to provoke the Israelites this way, and as Acts 15 shows, some of them wouldn't accept it. So Paul is defending the way that God is working with the Gentiles, but later he turns things back around so the Gentiles wouldn't fall into complacency. The Israelite branches had been broken off because of unbelief, and Gentile branches had been grafted in. But Paul also warns the vessels of mercy, as we will see over in Romans 11, if you turn there. Romans 11. Breaking into verse 20. Paul says, do not be haughty, but fear, for if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. Therefore, consider the
goodness and severity of God on those who fell severity, but to you goodness, if you continue in His goodness, otherwise you also will be cut off. The verses we have seen today should impress on us the great and undeserved favor we have received, but they should also remind us of the foolishness of taking God's mercy for granted, as Paul says here, we too can be cut off if we do not continue in His goodness, if we neglect the salvation that He has begun in us. God has both goodness and severity. Even one as blameless and upright as Job had an extremely difficult time accepting
God's sovereignty. Yet Job's blamelessness and uprightness were themselves products of God's work in Job's life rather than things that Job had brought about. But God was not finished creating Job, and so He also gave Job financial ruin, loss of children, painful
affliction, a foolish wife, and terrible friends. God judged that Job needed these things to sharpen his concept of God. They were part of God's mercy as God prepared Job for glory. There is much that we do not understand about the way God deals with His creation, and so we can certainly agree with Paul here in Romans 11 in verse 33. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out.