You Can Choose to Be a Vessel of Honor or Dishonor - David Bercot

What about the illustration of the potter and the clay? So it seems like that's saying God molds us to however He chooses, and we really don't have any grounds, or we don't have any say in it. Um, like, how—yeah, like what do we do with—what do we do with imagery like that? Is that extrapolating too much into that imagery? Is that putting our perspective on something else? Um, yeah, explain that. I think reading that, again, I think it's reasonable. You know, if someone reads what Paul says there and, uh, that, oh, he's just saying that we're nothing but clay and God does with with us what He wants. But I'm saying you could conclude that.

But Paul, it's not what Paul says. You will say then to me, why does he still find fault for who has resisted his will? No, oh man, but who are you to answer back to God? So this isn't an Arminian that, you know, Paul is talking about and and God is saying, who are you to answer back to me? These are the Jews. Okay, so a lot of Romans, one reason it's a hard book to follow, in part of it, uh, Paul takes on the persona of an unbelieving Jew. Other parts, he carries on a dialogue with an unbelieving Jew. And, um, but he doesn't lay all this out. It's crystal clear. I think most people reading it realize, you know, in part of it, he's dialoguing with a fictional person, you know, but he just—he'll be doing that.

And then the next verse, of course, it weren't verses, but the next sentence, he's suddenly somewhere else. Again, Origen's illustration of he's taking you on this tour of this, you know, palace. And, and yeah, he just goes from room to room, and you only see a little bit of it, and then you're in another room before you know it. So, no, oh man, but who are you to answer back to God? So the Calvinists would read the old man that Paul is talking to as being, well, like I say, an Arminian, someone who believes in free will. No, he's talking to this unbelieving Jew who's saying God has been unfair, you know. And Paul is saying, you know, who are you to answer back to God?

We as humans can pry, can ask questions about God, but there's a limit to how far any of us are entitled to to pry into why God does this or that. I mean, there's a lot of things that as a fallen human, I would think, well, if I were God, this is what I would do. And, you know, we wouldn't have evil on the earth. We wouldn't have this or that. Yeah, but God's ways are different. They're higher than ours, so much higher that we're not going to comprehend everything he does. Now, it doesn't mean that we can put wicked things on God and just say, well, you don't understand, but we're not going to fully understand all of his ways.

And he's just saying, you know, um, who are you to, um, you know, form this or that? So you're complaining as a Jew, um, that God is being gracious to the Gentiles, but who are you to complain? God can be gracious whoever he wants. He can take these Gentiles, you know, John's words were, he can raise children to Abraham from these stones, you know, in the same way here, he can take these Gentiles and make them into a vessel that is is worthy. Now, the key, uh, thing on this one that the early Christians point to is 2 Timothy 2:20 through 21. And this is such an illustration of why you never just take one passage of scripture without looking at the whole picture, because Paul says something very similar there, um, where here he says, uh, why did you make me like this?

Out of the same lump of clay, he makes one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. And it sounds like, oh, okay, he just arbitrarily does this. But then in 2 Timothy, this is still Paul. He says, now, in a large house, there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and clay. Some are for honor and some for dishonor. Almost the same things he's saying in Romans. But now listen, therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and suitable for the master's use, prepared for every good work. So there he says, if we cleanse ourselves of the wickedness, then we can be a vessel of honor.

Aha. So yeah, the early church, when they read Romans 9, they also read 2 Timothy. They say, you know, look at the other part that Paul says. He uses the same illustration, and he's showing, no, we do play a role in this, that if we cleanse ourselves from wickedness, we leave those things behind, God can use us. Now, the other aspect of that is we're not going to do all of that on our own power. God, you know, plays a key role in bringing us to faith. Jesus said, no one can come to the Father unless, or no one can come to me unless the Father draws him. And he said, without me, you can do nothing.

So there's the early Christians would have seen not monergism, which is what Calvinists say, that there's only one force, mono, the all of the force energy comes from God. We do nothing. The early Christians would have said, no, it's synergism. It's God's power, and it's us responding to God's power. Not because it has to be that way. God could God could do the other, but it's not God's nature. He wants people who love him. So he gives us the opportunity, but he knows in our fallen nature, without his help, we would never make it without him drawing us, him giving us power. On the other hand, he doesn't do it all for us. We still have to believe.

He's not going to do our believing for us. He's not going to do our obeying for us, but he will give us the power to make it possible to do both the believing and the obeying. So it's the two things working together that we see when we take the whole Bible and not just, you know, select verses, that it's it's man has a role and God plays a role, you know, in our salvation.