Does God Deserve to Have the Right to Choose?

This week, we are examining the strong emotions and questions that come from the timeless truth that the sovereign God is free to choose some and reject others. Yesterday we looked at a famous story from the Bible that revealed that God’s freedom to choose some and reject other is just because no one deserves to be chosen. God sovereignly chooses to confirm and set into place the selfishness and rebellion that is already present in some. And God sovereignly chooses, by His gracious and transformational activity, to melt and bend some hearts to Him. But no one deserves that grace. But that raises a second potential question that the members of the church at Rome could have, which Paul addresses in Romans 9:19:

You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"

Now this question, if it were asked today, would sound something like this: “Well then how can God blame me? How can God hold me responsible if He is the one who makes it impossible for me to respond? If God is the one who hardens my heart, they why is it my fault?” We see Paul’s response to this question beginning in verse 20:

On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.

Well, I really wish Paul would let us know how he really feels. “So do you want to talk back to God? Who do you think you are, anyway? Are you in any position to question your Creator? And it is here that we see Paul reveal for us the reality that God’s freedom to choose some and reject others is just because He alone reserves the right to choose. The sovereign God alone reserves the right to choose some and reject others. First, God reserves the right to choose based on His position as Creator and sustainer of the universe. Paul unpacks this timeless truth through the word picture of a potter and clay. Just as a potter creates some objects that are viewed and used in a way that results in honor, there are other objects that are created that are used in a dishonorable way.

In Paul’s day, pottery was used extensively and in a variety of ways. Some pottery was created to hold things of value and was thus viewed with honor, while other pottery was created to hold trash and was viewed with dishonor. Paul’s point here is that as Creator, God reserves the right to choose some of His creation for rescue and honor in the relationship with Him that they were created for, while rejecting others to the dishonor that comes from eternal separation from God.

Second, in verses 22-24, we see Paul explain that God reserves the right to choose based on His purposes to bring Him glory. While God could just as easily resolved to make known His right and just response to selfishness and rebellion, He instead chose to bear up under and put up with humanities selfishness and rebellion, even the selfishness and rebellion of those that Paul states were vessels of wrath prepared for destruction. In other words, even those that God was going to reject; God decided to put up with their selfishness and rebellion while they lived here on earth.

Now a natural question that arises here is “why would God put up and allow people to act out in selfishness and rebellion, when He already knows that He is not going to choose to rescue them, but is going to instead reject them?” If that question is running through your mind, I want to let you know that that is a great question to be asking. And Paul answers that question for us in verses 23: “And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory.”

Here is a great picture this morning to help us understand what Paul is communicating here. When you shop for a diamond ring or piece of jewelry, have you ever noticed the background that those diamonds are placed on? Diamonds are most often placed on a black background, because the dark black background provides the starkest contrast possible and is what most prominently reveals the splendor and majesty of the diamond. Paul’s point here is that just as a stark black background most prominently reveals the splendor of the diamond, the selfishness and rebellion of those whom God has chosen to reject provides the most striking and stark background that reveals the splendor and majesty of God’s grace towards those whom He has chosen to rescue.

You see, God reserves the right to choose based on His purpose to bring Him glory. And God reveals the glory, the splendor, and the majesty that He is so worthy of by choosing to rescue both Jews and Gentiles, whom Paul states have been chosen beforehand by God to receive the forgiveness of sin and the relationship with God that they were created for as a result of God’s activity through Jesus life, death, and resurrection. Paul then explains that God also reserves the right to choose some based on His message that is recorded for us in the Bible, which we see in Romans 9:25-29:

As He says also in Hosea, "I WILL CALL THOSE WHO WERE NOT MY PEOPLE, 'MY PEOPLE,' AND HER WHO WAS NOT BELOVED, 'BELOVED.'" "AND IT SHALL BE THAT IN THE PLACE WHERE IT WAS SAID TO THEM, 'YOU ARE NOT MY PEOPLE,' THERE THEY SHALL BE CALLED SONS OF THE LIVING GOD." Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, "THOUGH THE NUMBER OF THE SONS OF ISRAEL BE LIKE THE SAND OF THE SEA, IT IS THE REMNANT THAT WILL BE SAVED; FOR THE LORD WILL EXECUTE HIS WORD ON THE EARTH, THOROUGHLY AND QUICKLY." And just as Isaiah foretold, "UNLESS THE LORD OF SABAOTH HAD LEFT TO US A POSTERITY, WE WOULD HAVE BECOME LIKE SODOM, AND WOULD HAVE RESEMBLED GOMORRAH."

In these verses, Paul reminds the members of the church at Rome, and us here this morning that the fact that God alone reserves the right to choose is revealed repeatedly throughout the Old Testament. First, in Romans 9:25-26, Paul takes a section of a letter that is recorded for us in our Bibles called the book of Hosea and explains that God’s promise of rescue not only applied to the Jewish people, but also applied to Gentiles. Paul’s point here is that the Bible predicted and proclaimed that God reserved the right to choose and rescue those who were far from God, but were not Jewish by nature.

Second, Paul quotes a section of a letter in our Bibles called the Book of Isaiah to remind the members of the church at Rome that God had previously proclaimed that while there would be a large number of Jewish people, the vast majority of those people would be rejected by God as a result of their selfishness and rebellion. In Isaiah 10:22-23, God proclaims that only a remnant, or a relatively small group of survivors, would be rescued from the transcendent danger that selfishness and rebellion presented to them. Paul then quotes a third section of the book of Isaiah, which is Isaiah 1:9, to remind followers of Jesus throughout history that God had predicted that it was only God’s gracious choice of a small group of survivors from the Jewish people that kept them from being totally destroyed as a result of selfishness and rebellion.

Paul’s point is that God alone reserves the right to choose; and that is clearly revealed through the message and teachings of the Bible. Tomorrow, we will see Paul provide a third reason why God’s freedom to choose some and reject others is just.