God’s Gracious Choice
Romans 9:6-33
October 27, 1996
by J. David Hoke
Once most people thought that the world was flat. It looked flat, and we were comfortable with that. Then someone came along who said that the world was round. They said that it was one of many planets suspended in space. That troubled people. Many good folks thought that they had evidence from Scripture to indicate that the world was flat. It took quite a while for people to understand the truth. When they were willing to part with their comfortable and simplistic view, they also found that there were Scriptures which, if looked at objectively, would validate such a theory. In fact, they saw that the work of God was greater than they had supposed. But it took a while, because it ran counter to the wisdom of the day.
We are secure in knowledge which is simple, which is not very complicated or complex. We like to put God in a simple theological box where we can understand Him, where we can see exactly what He is doing, and feel content and secure in that knowledge. But when we come to certain truths of Scripture, we have to grapple with other realizations about God’s plan and purpose for our lives. This is especially true when we come to this section of Romans. In chapters 9, 10 and 11, we come face to face with the sovereignty and purpose of God in election and predestination. Now, I am not altogether sure that I really understand God’s predetermining process and His sovereign choice. But when we see God’s plan, revealed in Israel, we cannot avoid grappling with this important subject.
We Gentiles are here because of God’s sovereign choice. We are here today because God willfully set aside a people he had previously chosen in order to bring in a people like us. So, if we are going to enjoy salvation, we are going to have to deal with God’s sovereign act of choosing some and not choosing others. But it is not very clean and tidy. It makes us grapple with God; His nature, His justice, and His fairness.
Grappling with God’s Rights
Paul has just described his heartbreak over the lost condition of Israel. Now he begins to describe the reasons why they are in the condition of being set aside by God. He does so by answering three questions with which we all grapple. These three questions pertain to the nature, character, and attributes of God.
Paul says, It is not as though God’s word had failed.(v. 6a) You may ask the question, "Is God untrue?" Did God lie to us? If God chose the people of Israel and now has set them aside, what’s up? Did God lie to them when He chose them and told them that they would be His people? Is God untrue? The answer is No! He goes on to explain why.
For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: "At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son."(v. 6b-9)
Abraham had several sons. Although the two most famous are Ishmael and Isaac, there were also Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah, the six sons born to him by Keturah, the woman he married after Sarah died. Ishmael was born before Isaac, these six men after Isaac. But only Isaac was the child of promise.
You see, before Abraham had any sons, God had promised him a son through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed. But God was not acting quite as fast as Abraham wanted, so there was a plan devised by Sarah to get a son. Sarah gave Abraham her handmaid, and by Hagar he had a son. He thought that he would be the son of the Promise. His name was Ishmael. Yet, God came back to Abraham and said, "No, it is not through Ishmael, but through Isaac your descendants will be named." And so God brought forth the reality of His promise by causing a son to be born to Abraham and Sarah, who were physically impotent at that point in their lives, because God wanted it to be not through human ingenuity and capacity, but through the power of His supernatural working according to His promise.
Isaac also had a couple of sons. In verses 10-13 we read, Not only that, but Rebekah’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, "The older will serve the younger." Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." (v. 10-13)
Here we find Jacob and Esau. Esau became the father of a great nation, as did Jacob. But God chose Jacob before he was born. He was made the recipient of promise because of nothing other than the choice of God. This reveals that it is not by posterity, nor is it by works, it is by the promise and the sovereign elective choice of God.
This brings us to a second question. In verses 14-16 we read, What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.
And he points to Moses before Pharaoh as his illustration. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. (v. 17-18)
Twenty times in Scripture it says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Sometimes we think, "Well, that is not fair." That is the very question Paul is seeking to answer: "Is God unjust?" How is it just for Him to harden our hearts and then to blame us and condemn us for having hard hearts?
As you study that illustration of Pharaoh, I believe you will come to the conclusion that God only allowed Pharaoh’s heart to be permanently set in his evil ways, the way which Pharaoh had chosen. In other words, God does not harden our hearts against our will, but he allows us to have our own way, even when it is abject rebellion against the Holy God of the universe. God lets us choose, even to the point where we become set, irrevocably set, in our way, and that is what happened to Pharaoh. God gave Pharaoh opportunity after opportunity to let Israel go, chance after chance. The question is this: "Did Pharaoh deserve even one chance?"
We are all born in sin, and that is one of the things we forget. We don’t deserve anything from God. If we get what we deserve, we get eternal damnation. Pharaoh chose 10 times to reject and rebel against God. He was a sinful being, not only by nature, but by choice. And to say God hardened his heart is simply to say that God allowed him his own will.
Question number three is, "Is God unfair?" One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" (v. 19)
In other words, if God can harden your heart and set you in your ways, then why does He blame you for doing only what He allows you to do. A lot of people have trouble with that. God COULD kick the Devil out of the universe. God could heal every person who is sick, all over the world. God could eradicate the evil that happens every day. He could do that. But He doesn’t. And some people say, "I don’t want to serve a God who allows evil when He could eradicate it."
Notice the answer: But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— (v. 20-23)
You might not be a lump of clay, but we are all undeserving of God’s grace. And you see, what God is doing is not condemning, with a wave of His hand, people who deserve heaven. God is choosing out from among those people, who are all deserving of hell, a people for Himself. Evil is not God’s fault. God is not the author of evil. He is not the author of tragedy. He is not the author of sickness. He is not the author of Satan’s work. He is not the author of sin and rebellion. And so, we are not to be accusing God of unfairness and of being unjust because He has allowed others to be set in their own ways. We ought to be thanking God that we are numbered among those that are chosen. No one can accuse God of being unjust.
Grasping God’s Grace
Now, He comes to the conclusion of the matter. What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. (vv. 30-32a)
You see, the real conclusion of the matter is that it is not because of our goodness, it is not because of our birth, it is not because of how much we work, it is by the gracious choice of God! And the world looks at that and says, "That is foolishness." Their eyes are blinded. They don’t understand.
Some time ago there was a biased documentary on PBS called "Thy Kingdom Come?" In it they interviewed Paige Patterson, then President of Criswell College He was asked about Mother Theresa. The interviewer posed a question like, "You are telling me that if Mother Theresa has never really had a born again experience, that she is going to go to hell, even though she has done all of these good works." Essentially what Patterson said was, "You’re right. If she has never had a time in her life where she has seen her own sin and surrendered to the Lord, then all the good works she does will not earn her heaven." Now that was presented in the program to portray him as narrow. It is a perfect example of how the god of this world has blinded the eyes of those who don’t believe. God said, They stumbled over the "stumbling stone." As it is written: "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." (v. 32b-33)
It is not how many works we amass, it is in Whom we believe. People are ever stumbling over the stumbling stone. The stumbling stone is this: You can’t earn you way to heaven; You must deal with a Person to inherit eternal life. Israel was attempting to believe in principles and to work their way in. The good news is that it is not by works, but it is by faith in a Person, Jesus Christ.
Now, there is nothing wrong with good works, but good works need to accompany faith. Good works need to be a result of faith. Good works must be rightly motivated, not by our own selfish desire to be good or to do good things, because you can do a lot of good things out of a selfish desire, can’t you? A desire to be known as a good person, a desire to be seen as a humanitarian and as a benevolent person in the community motivates many. A lot of people do good works from wrong motives. All of the good works in the world will fail to get you into heaven.
It is by faith in Jesus that we are saved. Jesus plus nothing equals eternal life. There is no other way. You see, that is the stumbling stone for Israel, and it is the stumbling stone for others as well. People will join churches, people will do religious works, but that is not what makes you a Christian. It is faith in Jesus Christ. It is so simple. And yet so many people reject it outright. Why? Because I can do works on my own terms. I can decide I’ll do this and I won’t do that.
But when you commit your life to a living and sovereign Lord, then it is no longer salvation on my terms. The question then becomes, "Will I surrender my life totally without reservation, to a Person who is alive to control my life today, the person of Jesus Christ?" You see, then it becomes a demand that I lay my life into His hands and say, "Lord, you lead me now. Whatever you say, that’s what I’ll do. Not on my terms. Not my will, but Thine be done." It is a far greater thing to surrender your life to a Living Lord than merely abide by set of principles. But that is precisely what we are called to do.
The bottom line for everyone is that our only hope is to trust in the mercy of our sovereign Lord. Salvation is of the Lord, based on His gracious choice. The good news is that He has given us the greatest sign of His desire to show mercy in the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross. We can trust a God like that.
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