Or, When Pots Talk Back
Scripture: Romans 9:19-23
Date: February 19, 2023
Speaker: Sean Higgins
It is really remarkable how much men are driven by dissatisfaction. It’s not a discussion too far removed from the law of diminishing returns, which means that the gains, or our appreciation of the gains, get smaller even as the requirement of our investment of money or energy gets higher. God created us with the privilege of His likeness (Genesis 1:26), but it didn’t take much for the serpent to convince Eve it was better to be God (Genesis 3:5). God made us to have dominion taking stewardship for Him, we decided we’d just rather have the dominion. God promises to glorify His people by grace, we want the glory without all the humbling transformation He works to get us there.
We prayed for our daily bread, the Lord gave it to us, we gave thanks, and now we want security for a month, a year. We didn’t know what to do, we asked the Lord for wisdom and guidance, He provided direction and a fruitful outcome, and now we’re dissatisfied that we still have to be so dependent on Him. We acknowledged that we needed Him…once, why do we have to go through all of that again?
The remedy is not poverty, as if being destitute fixes dissatisfaction. Scarcity makes some steal and profane the name of God. But riches have their own dissatisfaction ditch, causing some to “be full and deny [God], and say ‘Who is the LORD?’” (See both sides in Proverbs 30:7-9). We’re not good at consistent contentment. We’re not good at maintaining perspective on reality, and knowing where we’re at on the map. Men are bad at being men, meaning they are bad at not being too big for, or bitter about, their britches. Stated otherwise, men are bad at remembering they are not their own.
The end of the broader context in Romans 9-11 is a doxology: praise God from whom all blessings flow, Almighty God who has never needed or asked for man’s counsel. His judgments and ways are infinitely and eternally glorious (Romans 11:33-36). And when we are being transformed by His mercies, we learn not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought (Romans 12:1-3).
And in the more narrow context of Romans 9, Paul has drilled in on some critical issues of covenant and hope and world history, of some men who receive mercy and others who receive wrath. Can we trust what God has promised? Is God unjust to limit who His promises are for? Is God fair to find fault with those who aren’t chosen for salvation and who sin in ways that He uses for His own glory? We are close to getting back to a discussion on what’s happening with the Jews (addressed again in verse 24). But Paul has brought us to some ultimate questions about what it means for God to be the God of men.
Last Lord’s Day we spent a good amount of time setting up this question. You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” (Romans 9:19). The concern is about God’s sovereignty over sinners before it is a question about God’s sovereignty toward sinners. If God chose Pharaoh to be a supervillain in the story because Pharaoh was already a villain, then the fault was in Pharaoh. And if the fault was in Pharaoh, then Pharaoh did everything Pharaoh wanted to do, and God sovereignly responded. Pharaoh’s will was the problem.
But the actual question in verse 19 assumes both that Pharaoh did God’s will and that God held Pharaoh responsible for Pharaoh’s fault/will/sin that God purposed (verse 17). God hardened Pharaoh not because Pharaoh deserved it (though he did), but because God wanted to.
It’s reasonable to want to know how this works. It’s a question you might expect in philosophy class, and actually, it’s even more a question you might expect in theology class. Philosopher’s were largely sticking a licked finger into the wind to find their direction, but those who have God’s Word, like the Jews who had God’s law and even the Gentiles in Rome who had heard the first three chapters’ worth of this epistle would ask about God’s fault-finding. In Adam we all sinned (Romans 5:12, 14), so we all sin and fall short of God’s image (Romans 3:23). We all deserve death (Romans 6:23). But Paul is showing that there’s something bigger at play, and that the will of man is not the determinate will in the universe.
So there are a number of answers, and I hope to point out any leftovers next week. But we dare not miss Paul’s own answers, or perhaps it is more accurate to call verses 20-23 his two responses.
In this critical moment, Paul answers a question with a question, actually three questions. Immediately he writes, But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? (Romans 9:20) There’s good reason from reading the Greek text to understand the question in verse 19 as coming from a hostile witness. A translation following the original word order might be, “O man, on the contrary, you are who (or who are you), the one talking back to God?” It indicates that the man he has in mind has put himself forward to make claims about things above his pay grade.
My parents called this sort of argumentative attitude “talking back.” “Are you talking back to me? Don’t talk back to me.”
If you have an ESV, NASB, or KJV edition with cross-references, they all look to Job 33:13 for the phrase “answer back to God.” In Job 33 the younger man Elihu has already rebuked Job’s friends for a chapter and turns his rebuke to Job directly. Elihu tells Job that Job’s criticisms/accusations against God are wrong. In particular, Job has complained that God won’t give an account for His actions. Elihu’s rebuke was a feather compared to the weight of the heavens that lands on Job. Through the rest of Job, the main refrain from God is that Job has no place to question God. God Himself interrogates Job:
Finally Job repents from his complaints against God’s sovereignty.
“I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.”
(Job 42:2-3, 5-6 ESV)
I had a very edifying conversation recently that pointed out that since Job is probably the oldest book in the Bible, the questions Job asks—his fear of the Lord that turns into frustration in the midst of great loss—are the questions that set up the rest of God’s revelation in Scripture. God is God, God writes the story, God is not accountable to us, and yet also God is merciful to many.
God is the sovereign Potter. The next two questions use the pot/Potter analogy.
Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? (Romans 9:20–21)
There are at least three relevant passages from the prophet Isaiah about the place of a pot.
Of course people are not mere pots. Human beings are crowned with glory and honor, given dominion so that all things are under our feet (Psalm 8). We have wills, thoughts, affections, consciousness, conscience, intelligence, breath, life. We mean more than a pot, so we regret more. It doesn’t feel like we’re pots. But we have none of those apart from God. And in a discussion of power, we have none of our own. All we have is derivative and dependent. The cosmos is the result of God’s ultimate power and God’s elective purposes all the way down: gender and geography and generation, height and hair color, human humility and hard-heartedness. The closest we come to controlling things is complaining. Ours is pretend power; His is ultimate.
Back to Job, Elihu begins, “Behold, I am toward God as you are; I too was pinched off from a piece of clay” (Job 33:6). Compared to the bottom side of tree bark, we rock. Compared to the foolishness of God, our wisdom and strength is like a piece of cast off bisqueware/clay, fired once, without even a coat of glaze, and more fragile than ever.
Paul used the honorable and dishonorable vessel analogy in his second letter to Timothy (2 Timothy 2:20-21), but there the illustration is about life in the church and how to cleanse oneself to be set apart for honorable use. Here the illustration is of God’s power as Potter, period.
All three questions in verses 20-21 are the obvious kind, the kind you use to those who are committed to missing the point. They are questions that put proud pots in their place. God does make vessels for different purposes, but a pot acting pompous over other pots is a dishonorable pot (especially if that pot is a reprobate teaching Calvinism). What that sort of pot dumps stinks. Being elected for salvation, for honorable use, is not about the inherent glory of the pot.
This is yet another question, a longer one, that grammatically ends in verse 24 but rhetorically ends in verse 23. We’ll consider God’s ultimate purpose next week.
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. (Job 1:21-22)
It wasn’t until he thought he knew better than God that Job got himself in trouble. Let’s avoid trouble with God, and trust Him to use us as vessels of mercy to cause the right kind of trouble for His glory.
Beloved, some of you are weary. Look to His mercy. Some of you are feeling good and ready. It is by His mercy. All of us are called as jars of clay for His honorable use. Let the surpassing power and mercy of God pour out.
[May you be] strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. (Colossians 1:11–12, ESV)