The Glory of God's Patience

Tonight we're going to focus on Romans 9 verses 22 through 24, but I want to start back at verse 14 to get a little bit of context. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on who I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy for the scripture says to Pharaoh for this very purpose, I've raised you up and I might show my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. So then he has mercy on whom he wills and he hardens whomever he wills. He will say to me, then, why does he still find fault for who can resist his will? But who are you, old man, to answer back to God? 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? And this is what we're going to focus on tonight. What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? Now, a quick note here, when you're asked to speak, Don't just look at the dates like I did, but actually look at the passage. Although I think this somehow this got snuck in, they switched me from a psalm to this. This is a very rich passage. The first time I prepared this, I had a 45 minute talk on predestination, double predestination, unconditional election. We could talk about God's wrath, power, glory, mercy. We could even go into the debate on infralapsarian and superlapsarianism. And I would encourage all of you, when we go to have pizza, ask Asher about these things, because he is dying to explain lapsarianism to you. But because I love you, I've narrowed it down to hopefully 15, 20 minutes. And that's why you're going to love me. So tonight I want to meditate on God's patience. Why is God patient with vessels of wrath? The answer comes in verse 23, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy. Now, does this mean that God is patient so that the unsaved can pile more and more sin and condemnation upon themselves so that God's judgment can bring him more glory? Or does it mean that God is patient with evil in order to show His unending mercy for His own by delivering them from evil? And I think without a doubt the answer is yes. Let's look at Pharaoh for a minute. It seems to me, or to start it another way, if I were God, it would have been a lot more efficient to either just destroy Pharaoh and his people immediately, or just miraculously lift the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and plop them in the promised land. Now, there would have been no roaming through the wilderness, no complaining about food or water, no need for manna, no need for quail. Moses would have been able to enter the promised land if that had happened, but I'm not God. So let's look at his plan. Moses, a poor public speaker, is called by God to represent him before Pharaoh. God hardens Pharaoh's heart so that he cannot respond to God's call to let his people go. God executes multiple judgments on Egypt, and only after 10 of these judgments is Israel freed. And I'm just going to run through a few of these judgments. The fifth plague, which was the death of the livestock. I want to read Exodus 9, 4 through 7. But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die. And the Lord set a time saying tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land. And the next day, the Lord did this thing. All the livestock of Egypt died, but not one of the livestock of the people of Israel died. And Pharaoh said, and behold, not one of the livestock of Israel was dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go. Then we look at the seventh plague, which was hail, Exodus 9.26. Only in the land of Goshen, where the people of Israel lived, was there no hail. The ninth plague, darkness, this is Exodus 10.23. They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days. But all the people of Israel had light where they lived. And then the 10th plague, the death of the first born. This is Exodus 11, 6 and 7. There shall be a great cry throughout all of Egypt, such as there has never been or ever will be again. but not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel." Henriksen, in his commentary on Romans, makes the following observation. It was exactly God's great patience with Pharaoh and his people, his delay in pouring out upon them the full measure of the punishment they deserved, that provided the opportunity to make known the riches of God's mercy, lavished on Israel of that early day. If Pharaoh had been immediately destroyed, who would have become aware of God's mercy towards Israel? But as the ten plagues followed each other one by one, that mercy became increasingly evident. If you think about, as we read through the Old Testament, how many times do we read a call to remember what God did in bringing Israel out of Egypt. I think this call is a two-part call. I think to the faithful, it's a call to remember how God faithfully delivered them from the persecution of Egypt. But I think it's for the faithless, remember what God did to Pharaoh and his people. In this story, I think we see God through his patience, glorifying himself by demonstrating both his wrath and power on Pharaoh and Egypt, and his mercy towards Israel. So, two questions here. Do we as Christians see God glorified when he demonstrates patience towards the most evil of our society? Question number two, do we trust in his sovereignty and unlimited power to make all things right Or do we question God's will and think we know better, sort of the way I thought I knew better in how to deal with Pharaoh? Now, we could stop right there and go get pizza, but God doesn't just show his patience towards vessels of wrath. If we are meditating on patience, on God's patience, we have to also consider how God is patient with vessels of mercy. And let's look at Paul to begin with. Keith has said this, and O'Brien has said it in Sunday School also, that Paul never got over being saved. If we look at 1 Timothy 1, 15 and 16, Paul writes, The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of who I am the foremost. But I have received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. Here, Paul is giving us a personal illustration of what he wrote about in the passage we're looking at tonight. Paul's quite aware that he was chosen by God and Christ from before the foundations of the world. He wrote that in his letter to the church at Ephesus. But he also knows how he had been allowed to go his own way, full of self-righteousness and evil until God called him into the light. Paul had zealously persecuted Christians, including at least in a passive role, participating in the murder of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. But instead of striking him dead, which would have been a lot easier for a lot of those early Christians. God was patient with Paul, allowing him to become, in his own words, the foremost of sinners. Then in God's perfect timing, he called Paul to faith in the Jesus that he had been persecuting. Whereas with Pharaoh, God patiently allowed him to pass sin upon sin so they might more fully display his wrath and power with Paul. God patiently allowed him to pile sin upon sin in order to demonstrate the vast difference between the filth and horror of Saul's life and the grace and mercy that Paul received in Christ. In both of these circumstances, God's actions are good. They both bring God glory. But in the case of Paul, the actions are also gracious. Thinking back through the study of Genesis that we've been going through on Sunday mornings, we see God's patience over and over again. Adam and Eve, God warned them not to eat of the tree of knowledge or they would die. But after that fateful event, Adam and Eve didn't immediately drop dead, nor did God charge into the garden with a legion of seraphim and strike them down. God patiently came to them the way he always had. walking quietly. Now, he did pronounce judgment on them, for they have sinned, but he also promised to deliver Jesus Christ, who would be wounded by Satan, but who one day would destroy Satan and his works. Think about Abraham. Abraham was 75 years old before he set out for Haran, and before that, he had worshipped false idols. Even after God called him, he repeatedly sinned against God and doubted God. Think about Ishmael. He gave his wife to another man twice. And yet God was patient with him and faithful in his promise of making Abraham the father of many nations. Sarah, Sarah laughed at God when he promised her a child. And yet he was patient with her. And within a year or about a year at 90 years old, She bore Abraham Isaac. And what about us? How has God been patient with us? I realized as I was writing this, a lot of you don't know my testimony. So I'm going to share a little bit of it with you. I grew up attending a Presbyterian church. I was active in the youth group and for a while sang in the choir. If you asked me, I would tell you that I'm a Christian, that I was a Christian. I had Jesus in my life. He was right there sitting on the top shelf of my closet with a little sign around his neck that said, in case of emergency, pray. I was very interested in going to heaven, but I had no interest in Christ. I was a nice kid. I was fairly well liked by my fellow students and teachers, and I did well in school. I was president of the National Honor Society. I was voted most talented in my school, in my high school class, and I was considered a leader in my school. I played multiple sports throughout my years. In the community, I was one of those kids people would call if they needed their house taken care of while they were gone. I was just like so many other nice kids out there. For six days and 23 hours a week, I thought about myself and my fleshly desires, and God was something. And note there, I said something, not someone. God was something I thought about for exactly one hour on Sunday morning. But God was patient with me. I left for college and found that I was even more capable of taking care of myself. I did well in school, played water polo, worked on the rescue squad and cared less and less about God. God blessed me through a man named Doug, who would be my roommate for all four years and introduced me to Sherry. I talked to Doug several years ago, and he said that he didn't think he was exactly a great ambassador for Christ at that time, but God used him to plant seeds in my life. But I continued to rebel and God was patient with me. I went to dental school, and at that point, I think I would describe myself as a deist. I believe that there was a God. that he created or at least started the creation of the world. But I didn't think he had any influence or effect in the world and especially in my life. My words were becoming more coarse, my attitude more self-centered, and my behavior more destructive. I'm not going to get into specifics because I don't want to be tempted to boast in my sin, but I think it's pretty safe to say that at this point I wasn't a particularly nice person anymore. But God and for that matter, Sherry, were patient with me. I came to Charlottesville and started my career. Sherry and I got married about two years later and about two and a half years later, Dalton was born. My focus was being a great dentist, a good dad, and if there was any time or energy left, a husband. I had absolutely no interest in God or the things of God, and why should I? I had accomplished everything I ever wanted to accomplish and had done them well. Then God irresistibly called me to repentance. And the date's very easy to remember. September 11th, 2001, when the terrorists struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and that lonely field out in Pennsylvania, I was struck with a sense of helplessness and loss like I'd never felt before. I watched those buildings in New York collapse. I watched the people jumping from the windows to escape the fires. And all I could think about was what if I'd been in that building? At that point, I realized I wasn't in control of my life the way I thought I was. My sin, my self-righteousness, my blasphemy, my opposition to God all became visible to me as if someone had turned a light on in a darkened room. We soon started attending Jefferson Park, but my attendance was sporadic and God was patient with me. I finally professed faith in Christ and was baptized in 2003. And I've grown in knowledge and love of Christ ever since. I have experienced a lot of ups and downs, periods of great spiritual growth, periods of spiritual dryness. And God continues to be patient with me. So as Paul Harvey used to say, now, you know, the rest of the story and maybe see why God's patience is what I was drawn to speak of tonight rather than some of those other topics. So I'm going to close with a few application points. To those of you here that are Christians, God is patient for a reason. You are not in hell today, even though we all deserve to be, because he was patient with you and led you to repentance. Because God is patient with us, we should show patience. Paul only mentions patience three times with respect to God, but he mentions it six times six times as a character that Christians should have. It's mentioned as a virtue in ministry, and it's mentioned as a fruit of the spirit. We need to remember that that's a fruit of the spirit that we all are to have, not a spiritual gift that some of us have. This patient should obviously be applied to our families, our church, our workplace, and with our neighbors. But I think especially we have the Coppedges here this morning, the Collins here tonight, I think we should also remember that patience should be applied to our evangelism. Our job is first and foremost to faithfully present the gospel. We should also live a life that one is a witness to our thanks thankfulness for what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. And as Keith mentioned this morning, should also our life should also be a continual act of worship for who God is. But. Then we need to be patient and wait on God. We have to guard our hearts and resist the temptation to try to affect a change in somebody's heart through our own actions or feel discouraged when we don't see immediate results. If you are a Christian, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you are a vessel of mercy. As John Piper put it, You were called out of spiritual deadness and sinful darkness by mercy, through mercy and for mercy. By mercy, because in our rebellion we didn't deserve to be made alive and reconciled to God. Through mercy, because every influence that worked on us to bring us to Christ was a mercy from God. And for mercy, because every enjoyment that we will ever have for all of eternity will be a merciful enjoyment. Remembering this should produce in us a sense of humility unparalleled in the world. If you truly understand what Jesus Christ has accomplished for you, if you truly understand the depravity that ruled your life and the hate towards God that defined you before you were converted, you'll never think more of yourself than you do of the unsaved. We were once just like them. And it's only because of Christ's atoning work on the cross imputed to us because of and in spite of our filth that we can call upon God as Father. Now, to those of you that are not Christians, God's patience is great, but it's not eternal. God's wrath has been withheld by his patience, but it's building up like rushing waters behind a dam. And one day those floodgates are going to be opened. God was patient with Pharaoh for a time, but in the end, he judged him. Repent and put your trust in Christ. There will come a time, maybe soon, maybe years from now, when either Christ will return to earth to claim his final victory or you will die. Either way, God's patience is over. All of us will stand before God. You will stand there for the creator and sustainer of the universe alone, as every sin, even sin you aren't aware you've committed, are shown to you. When this indictment is over, before God pronounces judgment and commits you to an eternity of pain and suffering in the fires of hell, God will simply ask, why? You might say, but I was never told about you. And God's simple but powerful response will be, did you see the flowers growing in the meadow? Did you see the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the stars in the sky? All of my creation is a testament to who I am. You have no excuse. You may say, but I had a terrible childhood. I was a victim of drug and alcohol abuse. My spouse didn't love me enough. I had a terrible job. God's answer will be not one of the sins you're being held accountable for anybody else's, but yours. You have no excuse. Maybe the excuse is, but I never really knew what you expected of me. God will ask, didn't you own a Bible? Did you ever bother reading it? Didn't you go to a church where the gospel was proclaimed? You have no excuse. But for those of us in Christ, we won't need an excuse as we stand trembling before the God of the universe as the indictment against us is read. We will not be alone. Jesus will stand there with us and proclaim to the father that we need no excuse. Jesus will say this one is mine. I have already paid the penalty for these sins. You poured out your wrath on me so that this one can be spared and we will enter into paradise to praise and worship our God forever. Paul's example, as well as my own, demonstrates God's patience leading to repentance. But you still must repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ. If you don't, it is guaranteed that you will face God's judgment in the end, regardless of how much you doubt or scoff at it now. The Westminster Shorter Catechism states, man's chief end is to glorify God. We can also say that the chief end of God is to glorify God. And this passage tonight demonstrates one way that he accomplishes this, and that's through his patience. I want to close with a quote from James Boyce, God's chief end is to glorify God, for since God is all powerful, this end will certainly be achieved. It will be achieved in every detail of history and in the destiny of every individual. Every person who has lived or will ever live must glorify God either actively or passively. willingly or unwillingly, either in heaven or hell, you will glorify God. Either you will glorify him as the object of his mercy and glory, which will be seen in you, or you will glorify him in your rebellion and unbelief by being made the object of his wrath and power at the final judgment. In fact, if you are rebelling, You are glorifying him even now, because even now his patience is displayed in you by his enduring your sin for a time, rather than sending you to hell immediately, which you deserve. Let's pray. Gracious Father, you are the God of the universe, the God who has made all things, sustains all things and is glorified by all things. And we have all rebelled against you, but we give thanks tonight for your great patience with us, your patience that leads us to salvation through your son, Jesus Christ. Father, we plead with you tonight on behalf of the unsaved that your patience would be continued towards them and that your grace would be bestowed upon them so that they may enjoy your riches of your mercy for all of eternity. May your name be glorified throughout the earth forever and ever. In Christ's precious name we pray. Amen.