Sermons About Reprobation
OUR ROLE IN GOD'S PLAN
Today’s sermon will be hard. Hard to preach. And perhaps hard for you to hear. There is great controversy about it. Because it is clear what Paul was saying. If you look at it literally. But many -- if not most -- commentators don’t look at it literally. They paper it over, bending to fit whatever they want to believe. Rather than simply believing what it says. So let’s read it. Romans 9:14-24. And as we read, I want you to please listen for two things. The first is election. That has been a source of debate and trouble throughout church history. The second is reprobation. That is the opposite of election – the doctrine that God rejects some persons to eternal condemnation – in a similar but opposite way in which he selects others for salvation. Hard topics, both. Here we go. And watch for two things. Election. And Reprobation. What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden. One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists His will?" But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' " Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath—prepared for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory— even us, whom He also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
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