Reflections on Lord’s Day 44 of 2019: “The Potter and the Clay”

On 11/3/2019, the sermon preached by Pastor Joe Rosales was based on Romans 9:14-29.

The pastor commented on the use of creeds and confessions, which reflect order and consistency. Some don’t like order or being tied down by a coherent system of doctrine, but when you ask them what they believe about the Bible or the doctrines it teaches, they will inevitably recite to you a statement of faith, likely an incomplete and inconsistent one.

The doctrine of predestination, of sovereign election, is offensive to many today, including church folk. And there are many perverted notions of fairness, ranging from socialism, communism, and Marxism, to Arminianism or synergism and the doctrine of free will, that are completely at odds with Scripture.

Many have trouble with the doctrine of hell too. How can a good God predestine people to hell? That’s like asking, How can a good judge send criminals to prison? The amazing thing about God is not that he sends people to hell, for we’re all natural-born sinners in rebellion against a thrice holy and just God who deserve nothing but hell; it is that He, out of his sheer grace and mercy, decided to save any of us!

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (‭‭Romans‬ ‭5:6-10‬ ‭NKJV‬‬)

The pastor also clarified the meaning of an often misinterpreted passage: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (II Peter‬ ‭3:9‬ ‭NKJV‬‬). This does not mean that God desires all men to come to repentance, but that He “is longsuffering toward us”—toward believers, and desires believers to come to repentance. Even so, “these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead”” (‭‭Acts‬ ‭17:30-31‬ ‭NKJV‬‬).

But just because God commands all men to repent doesn’t necessarily mean He desires all men to repent. God ultimately neither loves nor desires all men to repent because He hates and hardens the reprobate:

For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, “For this very 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. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” 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?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 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, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? ‭‭(Romans‬ ‭9:17-24‬ ‭NKJV‬‬)

The pastor warned against people who attempt to reconcile difficult doctrines prematurely, like the Trinity or Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, since these doctrines are often considered “mysteries.” He admonished us to stick to the Scriptures, and if the person you’re discussing this with continues to object, then use Paul’s retort: “But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God?” (Romans 9:20). A biblical mystery, however, is something that God obscured in the Old Testament but reveals or explains in the New:

Unbeknownst to the people of Moses' day (it was a "mystery"), marriage was designed by God from the beginning to be a picture or parable of the relationship between Christ and the church. Back when God was planning what marriage would be like, He planned it for this great purpose: it would give a beautiful earthly picture of the relationship that would someday come about between Christ and His church. This was not known to people for many generations, and that is why Paul can call it a "mystery." But now in the New Testament age Paul reveals this mystery, and it is amazing. (George Knight, qtd. in https://thorncrownministries.com/blog/2017/08/08/review-of-when-sinners-say-i-do)

And while Paul does rebuke his opponents, he continues to demolish their objections in verses 21 and following. He answers them squarely with some of the strongest statements in the Bible. I appreciate the wisdom of men like Gordon Clark, who unabashedly deals with the problem of evil, and A.W. Pink when it comes to harmonizing difficult doctrines, which is why their writings are classic contributions that build up the church:

This is, admittedly, the most difficult branch of our subject. Those who have ever devoted much study to this theme have uniformly recognized that the harmonizing of God's Sovereignty with Man's Responsibility is the gordian knot of theology.

The main difficulty encountered is to define the relationship between God's Sovereignty and man's responsibility. Many have summarily disposed of the difficulty by denying its existence. A certain class of theologians, in their anxiety to maintain man's responsibility, have magnified it beyond all due proportions until God's Sovereignty has been lost sight of, and in not a few instances flatly denied. Others have acknowledged that the Scriptures present both the Sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man but affirm that in our present finite condition and with our limited knowledge it is impossible to reconcile the two truths, though it is the bounden duty of the believer to receive both. The present writer believes that it has been too readily assumed that the Scriptures themselves do not reveal the several points which show the conciliation of God's Sovereignty and man's responsibility. While perhaps the Word of God does not clear up all the mystery (and this is said with reserve), it does throw much light upon the problem, and it seems to us more honoring to God and His Word to prayerfully search the Scriptures for the completer solution of the difficulty, and even though others have thus far searched in vain that ought only to drive us more and more to our knees. God has been pleased to reveal many things out of His Word during the last century which were hidden from earlier students. Who then dare affirm that there is not much to be learned yet respecting our inquiry! (The Sovereignty of God, https://reformed.org/books/pink/index.html?mainframe=/books/pink/pink_sov_08.html)