Oh, I've got the coffee in the
back. I'll get it. The one in the back kills you. I have a full 10-pound C-pack. It's behind you. I like your dress. I love the color. Yeah. Thank
you. You're pretty good at that one,
too. I know. I know. Play the news
for us? I mean, I did that without even using the house. Well, maybe
you can play the news for us. I'm sure I can. But I don't want
to. You don't want to? You don't
want to show everything you can do? You know, usually I get paid
high dollars for that. No one likes that. Trying to
save money for the church. Because you charge it. You charge
it. You charge it. I throw in some
money. Well, I guess they're getting
Lissy to work, and then... Does everybody have a pencil? I have a pencil here. I did, I did. Good morning, everyone. Let's
begin our morning service by starting by singing 209, grace
greater than our sin. 209. ? Formless grace of our loving
God ? ? Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt ? ? Yonder on Calvary's round-out
morn ? ? There with the blood of the Lamb was shed ? ? Grace,
grace, God is with us today ? God's grace, grace that will
pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace
that is greater than all our sin. Sin and despair like the sea
waves fold, Threatening the soul with infinite loss, Grace that
is greater than grace untold. points to the revenues of mighty
growths. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace
that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace,
grace that is greater than all our sins. Aren't you the same that we met
on high? What can avail to wash it away?
Look, there is flowing a crimson tide Wider than snow you may
be today Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that will
pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace
that is greater than all our sins. Praise. Will you this moment His grace
receive? Grace, grace, God's grace, a
grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace,
a grace that is greater than all our sin. Let's sing 326. More about Jesus.
326. More about Jesus would I know,
more of His grace to others show, more of His saving boldness see. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. More about Jesus. More about Jesus. More about Jesus. with my Lord, hearing His voice
in every line, begging each faithful, saying, I More, more about Jesus. More of His saving boldness see. More of His love who died for
me. More about Jesus on His throne. For his kingdom sure increase. For his coming Prince of Peace. More, more about Jesus. More, more about Jesus. For his saving policy. Thank you. I'm going to be reading from Luke chapter
12. Luke chapter 12. starting at
verse 22. Luke 12, verse 22. And He said unto His disciples,
Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what
you shall eat, neither for the body what ye shall put on. For
the life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.
Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which neither
have storehouse nor barn, and God feedeth them. How much more
are ye better than the fowls? And which of you with thinking
thought can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not
able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for
the rest? Consider the lilies, how they
grow. They toil not, they spin not, yet I say unto you that
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
If then God so clothed the grass, which is today in the field and
tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more will he clothe
you, O ye of little faith? And seek not what ye shall eat,
or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all
these things do the nations of the world seek after. And your
Father knoweth that ye have needed these things. But rather seek
ye the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto
you. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good
pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell that you have and give alms.
Provide yourself bags which wax not old. A treasure in heaven
that faileth not. Where no thief approacheth, neither
moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also. I'm glad it's not where your
heart is, there will your treasure be. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for bringing
us together. as brethren, and we ask that you'd be with us
this hour, that you'd bless us with your Spirit, that you'd
be with Brother Eric as he brings the message. We ask that you'd
give him what he needs today and in his studies in the future.
We ask that you'd grow us in grace and love and knowledge
of your Son. We pray for the brethren that
couldn't be here today. We ask that you bless them where
they are. We ask all this in Christ's name. Amen. All right, we're gonna be in
Romans chapter nine, Romans nine, and we'll be looking at verses
17 through 23. Romans nine, 17 through 23. And I wanna speak to you this
morning about the sovereign mercy of God, God's sovereign mercy. What do I mean by God's sovereign
mercy? What I mean is that God, determining
within himself without any outside influence, having no input from
us, that is by our works, our thoughts, our words. God's not
looking to any of us for what we do or don't do, but rather
God within himself is determining and choosing whom he wills as
it pleases him. Reading from Ephesians 1 verse
11, we're told that it's in whom also we have obtained an inheritance. We've been given or we've received
according to God's sovereign good pleasure, we've obtained
an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of Him
who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. That excludes your will and my
will. It's according to God's own will
that He chooses. And why would He do that? Why
would God do such a thing as that? That we, we that believe,
should be to the praise of His Lord. We're not going to be the
ones glorified in this salvation. It's going to be God who is praised
and glorified for the salvation of His people. It's God who first
trusted in Christ. He's the one who committed you,
His people, who've done nothing worthy of yourselves to earn
this righteousness It's according to His good pleasure
He committed us to the trust and the care of the Church's
husband, His bride's husband, Jesus Christ, to provide all
things necessary for you, to bring you to Himself, to stand
you faultless before His throne, adorned as a bride for her husband. It's a sweet and beautiful picture.
And so it's His praise and His glory. When you think of Revelation,
and you think of the hosts of heaven praising Him, right? The four beasts there, the seraphim,
and all the angels, and all the people of God, 10,000 upon 10,000
upon thousands upon thousands, praising and glorifying God. They're not singing their praises. They're not singing what we've
done for the Lord. We're singing praises and glorifying
His name for what He's done for us. So it's important that we
emphasize the glory of God in the salvation of His people.
We emphasize the glory of God in the salvation of His people. In other words, this isn't some
arbitrary doctrine that we can take or leave, that we can choose
whether we want to hear it or choose whether we want to believe
it or not. No, the scriptures declare to
us that God is sovereign in mercy. And so it's critical to the glory
of God because it exalts his name and it takes us, all of
us, and puts us face down in the dirt, puts our mouth in the
dust. Our words are dried up and there's
nothing we can say to God, but we know that He does all things
according as it pleases Him. Now, the reason why one of the
fruits or evidence, one of the good things that comes about
of preaching God's sovereignty in election is that it tends
to unsee a deep-rooted bitterness in man. It uncovers what we are
by nature. It stirs up a hatred in the flesh
of man, in his natural heart. It stirs up that hatred and enmity
which man has for the God who created him. it makes it known,
it evidences that no, we're not good, we're not perfect and right. Our works aren't perfect before
the Lord, and there is nothing worthy in us that God should
save us or have mercy upon us. And, you know, we preach the
sovereignty of God, we preach his election, we don't ignore
it, because ignoring the fact that that enmity is in all men
and women by nature, that doesn't make it go away. That doesn't
make it so that it isn't so. It's there. The hatred that man
has naturally for God as Creator is there already, whether we
acknowledge it or not. And so it's better that we preach
God in truth, according to how He's revealed Himself in the
scriptures, that it may be dealt with today. Today, while it's
called the day of grace, let it be dealt with. If we've got
a problem with God, we want to know it now. and beg Him for
mercy and for forgiveness that we would know Him that we would
be cleansed and have that enmity removed from us by His hand of
grace by His work of grace for us lest we should die suddenly
and meet God and stand before Him face to face with our Creator
in all His perfection and holiness and we in all our nakedness and
shame we don't want to be standing before God in that way We pray
and beg that the Lord have mercy upon us. Now, I've titled this
message, The Sovereign Mercy of God. The Sovereign Mercy of
God. And we're first gonna look at
God's sovereignty, and then we'll come back to the objection of
man, objections to the sovereign mercy of God. All right, so going
back a little bit into where we were last week, in verse 17,
Paul gives us an example of how up, whom He will, and God lays
low, whom He will, according to the time and pattern as He
determines for it to be done. Verse 17, Romans 9, For the Scripture
saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised
thee up, that I might show my power unto thee, and that my
name might be declared throughout all the earth. And so what the
Lord has shown us is that those whom He raises up and those that
He puts down low isn't only limited to His children, to His children
of promise, but all the inhabitants of the earth are under His rule,
His command, His dominion. He raises up whom He will and
He puts down whom He will. And the reason why is that this
shows us that according as it pleases God our
Father. It shows us, it demonstrates,
it reveals to us God's power. It's according to God's power,
working in all things, all things. He's doing as it pleases Him.
Now Paul here in Romans 9, he spoke of Pharaoh, when God delivered
His people, Israel, out from their slavery, where they were
in captivity in Egypt, in the darkness of Egypt. And so the
Lord is delivering his people from that slavery in Egypt. But
we also have other examples where the Lord does this. This isn't
the only example. We think of it often because But we saw recently in our study
in Isaiah, Isaiah 37, verse 26 and 27 says, this is the Lord
speaking to Sennacherib, king of Assyria, and he says, hast
thou not heard long ago how I have done it? And of ancient times
that I have formed it? Now have I brought it to pass
that thou shouldest be to lay waste defense cities into ruinous
heaps." And what he's saying is, I already declared this long
ago. Long before you ever came along,
I determined that Assyria would become powerful and Assyria would
come right up to the neck of my people in Jerusalem. I determined
that. And therefore, it is coming to
pass. And he said, therefore, their
inhabitants were made of small power. They were weakened. They were brought low for you
to be able to advance your kingdom and to come up out of your banks
and overflow them and flow into the lands around you. They were
dismayed and compounded. I destroyed their wisdom. I made
it so that their generals weren't talented and didn't know what
to do. I made it so that they became
confused. They raised the grass before be grown up. And so the
Lord's saying to Sennacherib, the only reason why you have
success there on the battlefield is because I've determined it
beforehand to be so. And the reason why they fall
before you is because I've determined it to be so. So the Lord raises
up and the Lord lays low whom he will. And we also see that
there's another reason that the Lord gives us in this passage
why we declare His name, that He is sovereign in His mercy,
that He does according to His will and good pleasure, it's
that His name would be declared throughout all the earth, that
all would come to hear and to know who the true and living
God is. And so what the Lord has shown
us is that He is sovereign, doing as He pleases. He's not doing
what we believe. should be done. He's not doing
what we would have to be done. He's doing what pleases Him. He's sovereign and He determines
what shall be and what shall come to pass. And so, all the
inhabitants of the earth who hear this, those who are remaining
in darkness and don't have the Spirit of God, they hate this
truth. They want that kind of power.
They think God's unfair for doing that. Fallen, sinful man thinks
it's wrong that God should be able to do what he wills. What
about me? What about what I think? What
about what I want to happen and what I think should come to pass?
What about what benefits me? That's where sinful man is. And so they hate God who is perfect
and holy and the one who is sovereign over everyone else, doing and
determining that which pleases Him. those who have the peace of God
ministered in their hearts, they're thankful, they're thankful, we're
thankful that God does according as it pleases Him, because we
know that He'll never do that which is wrong, He'll never do
that which is evil, or unjust, or unrighteous. We're told in
Psalm 145, 17, that the Lord is righteous in all and perfect. And so anytime that
we speak of election, understand that this doctrine of election,
God choosing whom He will, it's founded upon the very fact that
He is sovereign and able to do and effect whatsoever He's pleased
to do and work. And so it's righteous and holy
because God is doing it and He's holy and righteous and perfect
and everything He does. Now, Man's gonna do that which
is in his heart to do. Man's gonna do and work out what's
in his heart to do. If he's determined to do that
which is wicked, he's gonna do that which is wicked unless the
Lord intervenes and prevents it from happening. And that's
what the Lord does. He's the one that's sovereign,
and so he's only going to permit to occur and to happen that which
shows his power and declares his name throughout all the earth. And that's true even when we
don't see it. That's true even when we don't
understand it. We wonder, why did this happen? This seems meaningless
or so random. And that crime over there is
so horrible and so horrific. How can anything good come out
of that? And yet the Lord is able to do
it. The Lord is able to do it. We
don't understand a lot of the things that happen, but that's
okay because we know that the one who is sovereign and good
and perfect and holy in all his ways is in control of all things. You know, one of the greatest
preachers of his time and even to today, William Huntington
was the product of infidelity. He was the product of a man who
had the rule took another man's wife and laid with her, and she
had a son. And all the family's children
hated him, on both sides, hated him, and he was despised. And
yet, what a faithful, God-fearing preacher he was. And he preached
grace faithfully. He didn't look to the law for
any righteousness. And he was very clear on, we're
saved by grace, all the way back there in I think it was the 1600s
and he was very faithful, very clear and very honest with the
truth of God's salvation by his grace. Now we're told in Psalm
76 that surely the wrath of man shall Israel after he let them go,
but God prevented it. He allowed it to go so far to
the point where his name was glorified in the earth, and then
he stopped Pharaoh and destroyed his army. He allowed Sennacherib
to do many great works in conquering his enemies, and yet when he
came up to the neck of Jerusalem, just like God told him that they
would back when Hezekiah's father Ahaz was king, he came up to
the neck of Jerusalem, and then God stopped it. he prevented
it, allowing it to go only as far as it pleased him to go. And so, you know, Israel there
was, when you look at that and their history, they were greatly
troubled. They had a lot of troubles and
a lot of hard times throughout their history. And it's a picture
that we see in our own lives, right? We have some years that
are very good and prosperous and and seem cruel and seem to be
all against us. And everything we do and set
our hand to do goes wrong. And we just wonder, why can't
I do anything right? And everything I do seems to
just bring upon me all kinds of ill and I deserve it, right? And you look at that and then
you get all caught up looking at ourselves and our sins and
wondering what we're doing. And all we can do is cry out
to the Lord confess our sin, because we're
always sinning, but it's all in the hands of the Lord. He's
doing as it pleases Him, and we seek through these things
to know Him, and as it pleases Him, He lets us know. And some things we don't never
know, right? And we see many evil things,
even in the news today. When you look at the headlines,
and you look at the news, and you think, what is going on? It's madness. The things that
people, want and are pushing for and accepting, or the fact
that we see that there's all kinds of weird things going on
and we feel powerless and don't even know what to do to correct
it, right? There's people calling darkness
light. I like darkness. They're calling
good evil and evil good. Everything that they say, it's
like the opposite of what they say. It's all full of vile and
hatred, and it's just the root and the product of sin. And it's
all around us, and we're wondering what's going on. I don't know.
Maybe the Lord's just...but whatever He's doing, I know that it's
all working towards the end. I mean, we know when we read
the Scriptures that there's coming a day when it all comes to a
head and all the armies of the earth come together to war against
God and his bride, and our God, Christ, is going to destroy them
all. He'll just wrap the whole thing up, making it a short work,
and he'll have accomplished his salvation with his people, and
those that are without will be destroyed. And it's all according
to his good pleasure and it all has to come there and it's going
to come to that point when the time that he determines and how
he determines it to be, it'll be. And so whatever we see going
on, we know that the Lord's in control and these things have
to come to pass. You know, we do what we can do
through voting or through just speaking the truth and declaring
the truth, but knowing that it's in the Lord's hands to dispose
it as He wills, according to His purpose and pleasure. Now,
regarding our God's sovereignty, if we're going to speak in the
name of God, if we're going to be His ambassadors, as Paul declares
that we are, the Church is, we're ambassadors of God. We speak
in the name of God, declaring If we're going to be faithful,
we have to speak of His sovereignty over all things. We've got to
declare that He is sovereign, even when we speak of the sacrifice
of the Lord. We're declaring that God determined
that. God worked that purposely, perfectly,
according as it pleases Him. Peter, when speaking to the Jews,
said in Acts 2.23 that Christ being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, The Lord asked, hast thou
not heard long ago how I have done it, and of ancient times
that I have formed it? God's saying, I've determined
this thing to be so. He's the Lamb slain before the
foundation of the earth. He was already determined that
he should work this sacrifice for his people and save them.
And so accordingly he says, ye have taken. You did that which
was in your heart to do, and by wicked hands have crucified
and slain." So all these things, they display the power and the
glory of God. That's how His name is to be
determined. That's why we speak of God who
is sovereign and perfect and right in all that He does, because
He alone is the sovereign God. Now, the importance of God's
sovereignty is that it explains to us why is it that some believe
and some don't. Why are there those that believe
and why are there those that don't believe? Why could there
be twins born of the same father and mother, born at the same
time, in the same household, hearing the same things, and
yet one believes and one doesn't believe? Because but God, but
God, who is rich in love and mercy, for His great love wherewith
He loved us, God determined it to be so. by grace are you saved,
according to His good pleasure. Now, He says in verse 18 of our
text, Romans 9.18, Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will
have mercy, and whom He will, He pardoned. So it's all in the
Lord's hand. And if the Lord didn't, what
we see is if the Lord didn't sovereignly choose out for Himself
a remnant, then none of us would be saved, and this world wouldn't
even continue on as it has, we'd all be lost. And that's because
man's heart, man's mind, his thoughts, his actions and deeds,
they're all corrupt. And it's only by the light of
God, which He reveals in the person and work of Jesus Christ,
that's how we come to know Him. It's only by the Lord revealing
Himself to us through the Son that we know and understand the
power and the glory of God in salvation. We're told that God
is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit
and in truth. But the fact is that men love
darkness rather than light. And the reason why is because
their deeds were evil. That's the condemnation. Light
has come into the world, the Lord Jesus Christ, God pulling
off the mystery, the shroud of darkness and the mystery making
known to us His will and purpose to save His people, to save a
people for Himself in His Son Jesus Christ. He's determined
whom He will save, and He makes it all known. Many hear the truth,
but only His people hear it in spirit and in truth. Only they
are given life by the Spirit and believe in the Spirit, trusting
that God has done this. Many hear it, and they hear it
plainly. They hear the truth of God and
salvation, but how few believe it. And that's because their
deeds were evil. That's the natural heart of man.
It's the natural mind of man to hear it and to despise the
truth of God and salvation. And so darkness is there raining
in their hearts, raining in their minds, and they will not come
to God. But we know that there is a people
that comes to God. There is a people that hears
and does believe. falls down on their face and
cries out to the Lord for mercy. But he that doeth truth, Christ
said, they cometh to the light, that their deeds may be made
manifest, may be made known, that they are wrought in God,
that God has worked in them. They didn't do it of their own
selves, of their own volition, of their own so that by His work and His power
we hear it in the Spirit, we hear it by the ear of faith,
we believe Him and call upon Him and follow Him all the days
of our life. Then there's others that hear
it and are left in hardness and darkness to the things of God. Now, we're told that man is the
one that hardens his heart. And then we're told also that
God hardens their heart, right? Pharaoh, we read it this way
in Exodus 9, 34, when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail
and the thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more and hardened
his heart, he and his servants. and the heart of Pharaoh was
hardened, neither would he let the children of Israel go as
the Lord had spoken by Moses. And so it shows us that in us,
already there's a hatred, there's an enmity. There's not people
out there crying and begging for God to save them, and then
God just hardens them up and says, no, I'm not saving you. No, he's showing us that all
are already hardened and in darkness in their heart. They harden their
heart, and then we see how God hardens them up, that hardens
their heart, all the more in it. They have a hard heart, and
He doesn't show them grace the way He shows some grace, and
He hardens them up in their hardness, but they've already hardened
their own hearts. They're already hardened in darkness.
Exodus 10.1 says, And the Lord said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh,
for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants,
that they might show these my signs before him. And so, What
God is showing us is that it's a fearful and terrifying thing
to fall into the hands of the living God, and yet we say these
things, and what does man do? What does man do when he hears
it? He shows that he is hard and hates the truth of God, rather
than falling down and saying, my God, have mercy on me. Deliver me. Would you have compassion
upon me, Lord, and save me and deliver me from this hardness?
Deliver me from that death and that darkness that I'm naturally
born into? Have mercy on me. No, he says,
I hate that. Huh? That's terrible. How could
God do such an unfair thing as that? That's awful. And then
be hard in their heart, and then receive them that hardness, unless
the Lord determines to deliver them from it. So, God is justified
in what He does. There's not people seeking righteousness
and seeking for mercy and compassion of the only one that can give
it and God saying, nah, I don't want to save you, I don't like
you. No, He's showing us clearly that all hear it and that they
don't want it unless God in sovereign grace and mercy turns that apart
and delivers them out. In other words, being objects of his mercy and
grace. Alright, now as we move further
here in the study, we come to see some of man's objections.
Alright, so this is our second and final point here, objections
to sovereign mercy. And this is the third of the
objections that Paul had in Romans 9. The first one was in verse
6, when he said, it's not as though the word of God hath taken
none effect, for they are not all Israel, which are of Israel. And that goes back to when Israel
heard the Gospel, hearing of how God had sent his son Jesus
Christ to save his people among the Jews and his people among
the Gentiles. And Israel heard it, the majority
of them heard it, and looked around and said, well, if he's
the Messiah, if this Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, as you
say, why do so many of us not believe? Why do we reject him?
And then he showed them. Well, you're stumbling over Christ,
but God hasn't failed, because not all Israel is Israel. Look,
there was Ishmael, and he was rejected, but Isaac was the chosen
one. And then in Isaac, we see Esau
and Jacob, and God loved Esau. He hated Esau, but he loved Jacob. He loved Jacob and had mercy
upon Jacob, who showed himself to be a cunning, deceitful man,
and was not, but there wasn't anything good in him that God
should desire him and save him, all right? The second objection
being in verse 14, what shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness
with God? And he simply said, God forbid. Nope, there's no unrighteousness
with God. He's just to pass by whom he
will, and whom he wills, he shows mercy. When he passes them by,
he shows someone who's helpless and has no claim to righteousness
or goodness of their own, and yet God stops and shows them
mercy and grace, and washes them clean of their sin and their
filth and the blood upon them, and He takes them to Himself,
and He nurtures them and cleanses them and provides for them for
His own grace and mercy's sake, right? And then the third objection
is in verse 19, Thou wilt say then unto me, why doth he yet
find fault for who hath resisted his will? And if none can resist
the sovereign will of God, why does he yet find fault with us
who are sinners? Why does he find fault with us?
Paul gives a few reasons here in the next few verses. Now,
I don't expect unbelievers, those who hate the truth of God, to
hear this and go, oh, okay, I get it all now. No, they're still
gonna hate it. They're gonna say, that doesn't
satisfy me. That's not good enough for me. But the children of God,
who are the recipients, the passive recipients of His grace and mercy,
we're thankful that God is sovereign and able and willing to save
any of us. All right, so here, he says in
verse 20, Nay, but O man, who art thou that replies against
God? In other words, when you read
the scripture, When you know that God is sovereign and you
read the scriptures, you see over and over and over again
how that God himself is sovereign. He shows himself, declares himself
to be the sovereign God, doing whatsoever pleases him. He shows
himself to be righteous and just, and he shows us that man is the
one who's corrupt and sinful. Man's the one who's rejecting
God. Man's the one that's saying, I want nothing to do with that
God. I like the God here of my own imagination that loves me
and approves of me and likes my works and needs my help, needs
me to do something for Him. That's the God that I want to
serve, right? That's the one that man loves. But God has shown
us that man is the one who's corrupt, and He's the one that's
righteous and good and faithful, and He does that which is right
and holy, all right? And so if God has shown Himself
in His Word that He is sovereign, He's made it clear in His Word,
then why do we fight against it? Why do we resist it? Why
do we not bow to the fact that God is sovereign and able to
do what pleases Him? Then our hardness of our heart,
what we see when those that hear it if you notice, the enemies
of the truth, they always side with those that are in the camp
of the enemies of God. You ever notice that? They get
so angry because automatically they put themselves in the camp
of those that are cut off from the Lord. They just assume that
they have no part in God, so they get angry. Like I said,
not having him crying out to the Lord, have mercy on me, they
immediately put themselves along with Pharaoh and Sennacherib,
and I don't like that. Are you? How do you know? Who
of us knows what God has determined? Why don't we hear the truth and
fall down before the true and living God? Well, because naturally
we're in darkness, and we're dead to the things of God, and
we're natural-born enemies of God. There's an enmity there
that unless God destroys that enmity, unless God puts it away,
which He does through His Son, Jesus Christ, that's where we'll
remain, in that enmity. And so we see that the heart
of man is naturally hard. As Christ said to the Pharisees,
the best of the best of the best in religion, the Pharisees, John
540, and ye will not come unto me that ye might have life. That's
the will of man. I will not come except God destroy
that enmity, destroy that sin, break open the Come out, come forth sinners,
show yourselves. He says, show yourselves. Come
on out. And he gives us the power and
brings us out of his own power and glory. And so man lets himself
continue in that hatred and enmity of the sovereignty of God to
show mercy to whom he will. Now God, we find out, is perfectly
content. He's perfectly content with those
whom He's set His love and affection upon. He's not crying and wringing
His hands up in heaven so upset because the majority of the world
despises Him, despises this truth. He's perfectly content. In fact,
Christ, when He prayed to the Lord in Matthew 11, 25, He said,
we read at that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, because hid these things from the wise
and prudent." And what prudent means is that they're so careful
and wise in practical matters. They've got common sense. And
the Lord says, you've hidden these things from those who have
common sense, who are just so practical and see things so clearly
and so right. And Christ says, Father, I thank
you because you've hidden these wonderful, deep, truths, made
them so clear and so plain, but even those who are the most sensible
people that we know, and so real and practical, and so wise in
so many ways, so just simply wise, but they don't get it,
and they don't hear it, and they don't believe it, but instead
you've revealed them unto babes, those who aren't so wise and
practical and sensible about things, those who are the off-scouring,
those who are the ones that are rejected, those of us that are
fools and just don't get it. We don't understand how things
are supposed to work. We don't get it. And that's when
the Lord is pleased to reveal, right? Who among us is the best
of those that we know, right? And we look at others. We look
at our family and other people who are just so much and reveal themself to us. All
right, so, and he says, even so, Father, for so it seemed
good in thy sight. Now, further on, Paul says in
verse 20, shall the thing form say to him that formed it, why
hast thou made me thus? Right, and the Lord's showing
us that all our works testify to us, right, that what he's
showing us in his word and what he shows us in our works is the
truth that we've all fallen in at. As it's written, Romans 3,
10 through 12, as it's written, there's none righteous, no, not
one. There's none that understand
it. There's none that seek it after God. We're not seeking
after God. Even those that are saying they're
seeking after God. They're seeking after spirituality or some God,
but it's not the true and living God. They've all gone out of
the way. They have together become unprofitable. There is none that
doeth good, no, not one. And that's because when Adam
sinned his creation when he created man and put him in the garden.
When Adam sinned, every one of us were stolen his lawns. He
had no children. Eve hadn't conceived any child.
All his seed in him corrupted. And when he sinned, we sinned
in him. When he rebelled against God,
sin entered into the world and death by sin. we all sin in Adam. And so this disease is all throughout
us. That's why there's an enmity
against God. But we've got nothing to complain
about to God because when God created us, it was for the purpose
of glorifying Him. He created us to know Him and
to glorify Him, to seek Him and to worship Him as God. In Revelation
4.11 it says, power, for thou hast created
all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." So
God does according as it pleases Him with the inhabitants of the
earth. But if you think about it, too,
that we're actually hypocrites against God, right? When we complain
about God being sovereign and ruling over all things, we're
condemning ourselves because we're hypocrites in that, because
Romans 9.21 says, Hath not the potter power over the clay of
the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? Don't we do the same things with
our creative faculties? Don't we make judgments about
the things that are ours? Don't we determine, today, I'm
going to do this, and I'm going to put that off. I'm not going
to do that. I'm going to do this here. This is what I need to
do and what I choose to do. All right? time and energy into and what
we don't invest our time and energy into. If you go down to
Nixa Hardware and you purchase lumber, a good amount of lumber,
or one of these places, these local places, and you buy lumber
and you take it home, don't you determine what you're going to
use that lumber for? Some things might be used for
chicken coop. Other things might be used just
as a little silk to hold up a tarp in the corner of the house and
then eventually be thrown down in the garden and you just walk
across it in the mud so that your feet don't have to walk
across the mud. You just decide it's going to
be this little piece of wood that I just step on all the time. Or you make a compost bin and
it holds all kinds of garbage and scraps from your kitchen.
Right? Or it becomes your steps or it
becomes the framing of your house. You determine what you're going
to do with these things and you think nothing of it. Well, isn't
God who created the earth and all the clay here who determined
what would be rocks, what would be trees, what would be the beasts
of the earth, what would be men, and of those men and women, whether
they would know him or not? Doesn't he determine and do that
which is right according to his own self to display his power
and glory in whom he will? What we find, though, is that
at the root of God's election, because again, none of us should
have been saved, none of us are worthy of His grace and mercy,
but we find that the root of God's election is His sovereign
choice of love for His people. And so the whole reason why this
world is even sustained, and why this world even continues
on as it is, is because Peter worded it. We're going
to read what Paul says, but before I show you that, I'm just going
to show you the way Peter worded it in that popular verse in 2
Peter 3.9, which confuses so many, but he
says, "...the Lord is not slack concerning his promises, some
men count slackness, but is longsuffering to us-word." And the proper understanding
of that verse is to carry the us-word throughout the whole
verse. He's longsuffering to us, the
church who he's writing to, the church scattered, right? He's
writing to the church, not willing that any of us should perish,
but that all of us should come to repentance. You just carry
that through and then you understand what that verse is saying, that
God has a purpose, a people that he's determined to be kind and
merciful and compassionate to. And that's what we see here what
Paul is saying here in verses 22 and 23. He asks, What if God,
willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured
with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction,
and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the
vessels of mercy which He had aforeprepared unto glory? Next week we'll probably look
a little more at the fact that God is a God of wrath against
sin. Sin must and shall be punished. But we see in Christ that he's
a God of love and mercy, and that he will show his love and
mercy for whom he will. He will be compassionate and
loving to them. And then the rest remain hardened
and in darkness, They get angry, and they throw
their temper tantrums, but it only shows that God is just to
harden their hearts, because they show that their hearts are
hard already. But the children of God, we rejoice
in the salvation. We rejoice in the salvation of
God because He, in that love and mercy, when we did nothing
to deserve, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, in the likeness
of the sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. For His love for His people,
condemned sin in the flesh, putting it away by burying it in His
own body. And He laid down His life, dying
the death of His people in their room instead. He became their
surety and their sacrifice to put away their sin and to make
atonement, to reconcile us to the Father. We that were of Adam
and that inheritance of his corruption and darkness and deadness, full
of sin and enmity against God, He put that away for you that
are His people and gave you faith, revealing that fruit of faith
in you, drawing you out of that darkness into His loving grace
to know Him, to call upon Him. We that are but fools and have
nothing to glory in or boast in, God in mercy, for his own
name's sake, showed us mercy and compassion. So I pray that
the Lord will warm your hearts with that thought, that you rejoice
in that, and that when you have opportunity to speak, don't be
afraid of declaring his election. Don't be afraid of declaring
him sovereign, because it does stir up in the heart, and it
does reveal to people our sickness of sin, our death, and how desperate
we are for God to have mercy upon us. That's why so many,
they hear of Christ, and they think that the power's in their
hands. They're usually fine with that Jesus. Oh, I can take him
or leave him? Great, I have no problem with
that guy. And they hear the God like that,
but when they hear that, God's the one who's in control. That's
when they become afraid, because they realize they're not in control.
And we are dependent upon the grace and mercy of God toward
us. So I pray the Lord will stir up your hearts and drive you
to the arms of Christ, that he show himself merciful to you. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for your grace and mercy, that you are sovereign over all
things. Lord, that you are merciful,
and that you do that which is right and perfect. Lord, have
mercy upon us. Call us out of darkness. Lord,
deliver us from death. Drive us to your Son, Jesus Christ,
that we may know the true and living God. that we may cast
off the idle gods of our mind. The shame and that which is wicked
and idolatrous, Lord, deliver us from that. Turn us to the
true and living God. Pour out your spirit upon us.
Lead us, Lord, by your spirit and paths of righteousness. Lord,
your name save us. It's in Christ's name that we
pray these things and give thanks. Amen. Let's stand and sing a closing
hymn. 514, marching to Zion. 514. We have loved the Lord, and let
our joys be known. Join in a song of sweet accord. Join in a song of sweet accord. And thus surround the throne. And thus surround the throne. We're marching to Zion, beautiful,
beautiful Zion. We're marching upward to Zion,
the beautiful city of God. And those we used to sing who
never knew our God, The children of the Heavenly King, The children
of the Heavenly King, May speak their joys abroad, May speak
their joys abroad. We're marching to Zion, The beautiful,
beautiful Zion. We're marching onward to Zion,
The beautiful city of God. The hill of Zion yields a thousand
sacred streets Before we reach the heavenly fields Before we
reach the heavenly fields Or walk the golden streets Or walk
the golden streets We're marching to Zion, the beautiful, beautiful
Zion. We're marching downward to Zion,
the beautiful city of God. Let our songs abound and every
tear be dried. We're marching through Emmanuel's
crown. We're marching through Emmanuel's
crown. Prepare our worlds abide. Prepare our worlds abide. We're
marching to Zion, the beautiful, beautiful Zion. We're marching our work to Zion,
the beautiful city of God. Thank you. I heard a nice little
sweet voice singing.