You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who
can resist his will?" 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to
God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me
like this?" 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out
of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for
dishonorable use? 22 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, 23 in order to make known the
riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared
beforehand for glory.

One of the great advantages of being a pastor and laboring to
understand God’s word and exult over it in preaching is that
I must stand before people week after week whose children have
died, or worse, are spiritually dead; whose spouses are critically
ill, or worse, spiritually hard; whose health is failing; whose
jobs are in jeopardy; whose finances are strapped; who battle
depression, or love someone who does; and who know from experience
that the world – the real world where they live – is
shot through with sin and suffering and futility. I say it is a
great advantage to me as a pastor who is called to understand, and
teach, and exult over the word of God, to do it in this context of
life.

It’s an advantage because I can’t afford to play any
academic games here. I can’t endlessly suspend judgment on
crucial teachings. I can’t be neutral about great realities
that matter in people’s lives. There’s too much at
stake every week for us to entertain ourselves with trivialities or
platitudes. Life is hard and you don’t come here to hear me
speculate, or give my opinion, and offer pep talks to divert your
attention from your problems.

And it’s an advantage because in this context of real,
live people of all kinds in real pain every week, the big truths of
the Bible either help or they don’t. And a pastor hears about
it. It is a great blessing to me to do theology in the public
context of a covenant community of suffering people. The problem of
pain, and the problem of evil, and the truth of God’s
sovereignty are never far away.

Testimonies of God’s Sovereign Goodness

I now have about 125 entries in my filing system under the
title, "sovereignty of God." Many of them are letters. Letters from
you and letters from people around the country about the practical,
powerful, precious effect of the truth that God the Father of our
Lord, Jesus Christ, is absolutely sovereign over all suffering and
sin.

One of the reasons I don’t shrink from the vision of God
in Romans 9 is because after almost 30 years now of teaching and
preaching from the conviction of God’s supremacy and
sovereignty in all things, I believe that it is not only biblically
faithful, but also profoundly practical and faith-sustaining and
life-giving. I have seen the sheer absolute
holiness and majesty and sovereignty of God over all evil and over
all human willing and acting become an anchor for storm-tossed
souls, and a refuge for the frightened, and a rock of stability
when all else seemed to give way, and a hope when the most precious
earthly things had been lost, and a confidence that the worst of
miseries really will be turned for good.

One mother of a 22-year-old college son who has not awakened yet
from a coma for over two years after a skiing accident (that my son
Barnabas was on), wrote to me, "Your statement, ‘In reality
our pain and losses are always a test of how much we treasure the
all-wise, all-governing God in comparison to what we have
lost,’ brought me to my knees again. It has been very hard to
give my ‘treasure’ back to the Lord. As you say,
‘This is a very precious discovery, because it enables us to
repent and seek to cherish Christ as we ought.’" Isn’t
that amazing!

One of the reasons I mention some of these letters is to help
you realize that people’s responses to the truth of
God’s sovereignty over all things are often not what you
think they will be. The fact is: the views of God that you or I, in
our limited experience, think are needed in a painful situation,
may not be what is needed at all. Have you ever been surprised,
like I have, at how amazingly and powerfully relevant the sheer
absolute God-ness of God is! It turns out to be exactly what some
people need when we think: surely what they need is some soft,
non-theological, emotionally-gentle cushion. To our amazement, we
find them saying, though they may not even be able to articulate
it, "I am so deeply shaken to the utter foundations of my being
that nothing but a massive dose of divine majesty and sovereignty
will do me good."

I have had a father say to me in March, after three horrible
months of revelation concerning the abuse of his daughters by an
uncle, that it was the truth of God’s absolute holiness and
sovereignty, preached in January, that was the rock that got him
through the last three months.

I met a young woman from India a few years ago who thanked me
for the truth she had heard in something I had said and asked if
she could write to me. When she was born a treatable disease was
misdiagnosed, and she was paralyzed. By age 14 she had had 21
surgeries and was cruelly treated by other children calling her
"crippled." She became a Christian in high school. She married, had
four miscarriages, and her second child died in her husband’s
arms at two months. She closed the letter,

I have read many books on suffering, but they are often so
man-centered and... nullify, or at least diminish the glory,
majesty and sovereignty of God. It is radical thinking to say that
God wills and ordains our suffering and not just passively allows
it, hoping to make the best of it for us. As I have grown in my
walk, I can see that nothing in this world happens apart from the
sovereign will of God."

Facing the 21st Century

Have you ever considered – I am asking you to consider
– that what is coming to us in the 21st century may be so
catastrophic, so unprecedented in this country, that everything we
ever knew of earthly securities will fail, and that this God, the
God of Romans 9 – the God that, in our three centuries of
American security and comfort and luxury could be so easily
marginalized – that this God may be precisely the God
perfectly suited to take on the challenge of Islam, and shield us
from false teachings within the church, and be big enough to give
you hope when the whole world seems to collapse and then rise in
rebellion against Christ? Are you sure that your inherited God is
the Biblical God? Is your God big enough and majestic enough and
sovereign enough to be the God of the 21st century and of the world
that we see developing around us?

An Objection Against This Vision of God

In Romans 9:19, Paul hears someone raise an objection to his
vision of God. They say, "Why does he still find fault? For who can
resist his will?" Paul had just said in verses 17-18, "For the
Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘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.’ 18 So then he has
mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills." It
was this last phrase that raised the objection. If he hardens
whomever he wills – if God has the right to decree who will
become rebellious – then "Why does he still find fault? For
who can resist his will?"

Paul has portrayed God as absolutely sovereign. He decides who
will believe and undeservingly be saved and who will rebel and
deservingly perish. Before they were born or had done anything good
or evil, he loves Jacob and gives Esau over to wickedness and
destruction (9:11-13). He is free and unconstrained from influences
outside himself when he decrees who will receive mercy and who will
not (9:15-18).

Why is this right for him to do? He has given answers in verses
14-18 and now he gives two more. I will summarize them very briefly
and do very little defending on my own. I will let them stand and
read one very powerful summary quotation from Jonathan Edwards that
has helped me see the enormous implications of this passage.

First Argument: The Qualitative Difference Between Potter and
Clay Makes Foolish the Criticism of the Clay

First Paul argues that a potter has the authority and right over
the clay to make a wide range of vessels from the same lump. Verse
21: "Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same
lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use?"
The argument here is basically: Potters know more than clay about
what is wise to make. I say this because Paul asks in verse 20,
"Who are you, O man, [that is, a mere man, a mere piece of clay] to
answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder,
‘Why have you made me like this?’" In other words, the
argument
is simply this: we humans don’t know enough to
elevate our values and our standards and our insights to the point
of judging God and saying: You used your sovereignty in an unwise,
unrighteous way. That’s argument number one. There is an
infinite, qualitative difference between potter and clay that makes
it foolish and wrong for clay to criticize the choices of the
potter.

Second Argument: The Purpose Is to Display God’s Glory
for the Vessels of Mercy

The second argument goes deeper. I think it is the deepest
argument in all the Bible for why God is right to unconditionally
choose whom to love and whom to hate, whom to show mercy and whom
to harden, whom to make a vessel for honor and whom to make a
vessel for dishonor. The deepest reason this is right, Paul says,
is that it displays most fully the glory of God, including his
wrath against sin and his power in judgment, so that the vessels of
mercy can know him most completely and worship him with the
greatest intensity for all eternity.

I will read it to you from verses 22-23 and you decide if you
think that is a fair restatement of Paul’s argument. "What if
God, desiring to show his wrath – [it is wrong to insert
"although" before "desiring" the way the NASB does, saying
"Although he desired to show his wrath . . ." That’s a
paraphrase that gets the meaning exactly backward. It’s wrong
because we know from verse 17 it is not although God
desired to show his wrath and power that he raised Pharaoh up and
endured his rebellion through 10 plagues; rather it is
because he desired to display his power and wrath that he
dealt with Pharaoh the way he did (Exodus 7:3; 8:10; 10:1; 14:4)]
– 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, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory
for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for
glory."

The Three Purposes in Verses 22-23

There are three purposes mentioned and the first two serve the
third. First (v. 22) God acts to show his wrath against sin –
that he is a holy God who hates sin. Second (v. 22) God acts to
show his power in judgment. Third, (v. 23) all of this
self-revelation is to make known the riches of his glory (including
his holy wrath and mighty power) for the vessels of mercy. In other
words, the final and deepest argument Paul gives for why God acts
in sovereign freedom is that this way of acting displays most fully
the glory of God, including his wrath against sin and his power in
judgment, so that the vessels of mercy can know him most completely
and worship him with the greatest intensity for all eternity.

Edwards on Why God Ordained That Evil Be

Now listen to one whose insight and understanding of these
things is far beyond mine, Jonathan Edwards, answering the question
why a good and holy God would decree that there be hardening and
evil. Listen carefully. Think hard. This is not the Bible. This is
a man who I believe understood the Bible correctly on this
point:

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine
forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth
of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of
his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be
proportionably effulgent [=radiant], that the beholder may have a
proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be
exceedingly manifested, and another not at all. . .

Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his
authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be
manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had
been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would
be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would
not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his
goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they
could scarcely shine forth at all.

If it were not right that God should decree and permit and
punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness
in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence,
of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of
God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be
pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he
bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired, and
the sense of it not so great . . .

So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the
creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for
which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness
consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if
the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature
must be proportionably imperfect. (Jonathan Edwards, "Concerning
the Divine Decrees," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh:
Banner of Truth, 1974), p. 528)

Summary

So I ask, "Is God less glorious because he ordained that there
be real evil and real guilt and just punishment?" Paul’s
answer is, no, just the opposite. God’s glory will shine the
more truly and brightly for having decreed and governed this
universe as we know it. The effort to rescue God from his
sovereignty by denying his foreknowledge of sin or by denying his
ultimate control over sin is destructive for faith and hope and
worship. It is a great dishonor to his word and his wisdom.
Christians, if you love the glory of God, look well to the teaching
of your church and your schools. Test them. But most of all look
well to your souls.

May the majesty of God and the weight of his glory and the grace
of his dying and rising Son rest upon you. Amen.