Is predestination really in the Bible? Yes.

In Romans 9, Paul answers hard questions about God's sovereign choice using the picture of a potter and clay. Dr. Toby Holt explains what predestination is — and why it is good news. When people object, "Why does God still find fault?" Paul replies, "Who are you to reply against God?" Does the potter not have the right over the clay? Holt explains that God's saving choice rests on His mercy, not our merit, and that this humbles our pride while securing our hope. Election is the work of a wise, good God.

Questions this sermon answers:

1. What is predestination? It is God's sovereign choice to save, set on His mercy rather than our merit. Romans 9 grounds it in God's right as the Potter over the clay.

2. Is it fair for God to choose? Paul turns the question around: who are we to argue with God? The clay has no claim on the Potter, yet God acts in mercy, not injustice.

3. Why is this doctrine good news? Because our salvation rests on God's unchanging choice, not our shaky performance. What God begins by grace, He will surely finish.

"Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?" — Romans 9:21 (NKJV)

Speaker: In Romans 9, Paul answers hard questions about God's sovereign choice using the picture of a potter and clay. Dr. Toby Holt explains what predestination is — and why it is good news. When people object, "Why does God still find fault?" Paul replies, "Who are you to reply against God?" Does the potter not have the right over the clay? Holt explains that God's saving choice rests on His mercy, not our merit, and that this humbles our pride while securing our hope. Election is the work of a wise, good God.

Since God is in charge of everything that he has made, it is reasonable to ask him.

When we look at someone born blind, when we look at someone with polio,

when we look at sin and death and all these things,

when we see how the wicked reign in our culture,

it's reasonable to ask that if God is God, if God is in charge,

if God is good, if he is sovereign, if he is just, if he's all those things,

then how in the world can he allow this wickedness to exist?

How can a man be born blind?

As Jesus walked past this blind man, his disciples had this question.

Specifically, we read this in John 9.

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.

And so his disciples asked him,

rabbi, who sinned?

Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

See, what they did was they assumed he'd done wrong, or his parents did wrong,

or there was some error on their parts.

And because of that error, because of that sin, this condition had befallen this man.

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

And Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents,

but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

So the disciples wanted to assign blame somewhere.

They saw something bad.

They saw a deficiency.

They saw this health condition.

And so their first reaction, again, was to blame the man or his parents

and to say the fact that something terrible had happened

was a consequence for some choice that they had made.

Now let me stop there for a moment.

This is brutal.

This is the most brutal theology.

And the reason why is because it makes the victim of hard circumstances.

It makes the victim of pain.

It makes the victim also the cause, also the source of the very circumstances that have befallen them.

And it says that every pain you've ever experienced is your fault.

Every pain you've ever experienced is your fault.

And if it's not your fault, it's your parents.

If you have a small child diagnosed with cancer, I've been through this a number of years back.

If you have a small child diagnosed with cancer, how would you like to be told that your child's condition is a function of something you did?

Or worse yet, it results in something they did.

This is brutal theology.

This is both wrong and it is cruel.

And yet even Christ's disciples bought into this.

This is a pervasive mentality.

You look at a leopard on the street, you say, well, the leopard did something.

Otherwise, he wouldn't be a leopard.

Right? Am I right?

That's what they would say.

That's what they believe.

Even Jesus' own disciples believe this.

And yet Jesus stops them in their tracks and says, no.

He says, no, this is not the case.

It is neither that this man sinned nor that his parents sinned,

but that the work of God, the glory of God might be manifest in him

in a way that would not be possible if he was not suffering from this condition.

Now, folks, don't accept any of what I just said, generally speaking.

It's our tendency when bad things happen is to blame the victim, so to speak.

We don't want to blame God.

We don't want to assign the responsibility or the volitional act

of someone being born blind to God because we say,

He wouldn't do that, he's loving, right, he's good.

We don't want to do that.

And so again, people fashion workarounds, theological swerves around the real issue.

That's what the people in Christ's day were doing.

Now, other folks, what they'll say is, okay, well, God is just as surprised when something bad happens as we are.

This is described as something that has been called open theism in recent years.

This idea that, well, God is God, and yet when bad things happen, he's just as shocked, he's just as surprised as we are.

His jaw drops and that he has to kind of help us after the fact.

But he doesn't necessarily know the end from the beginning.

Now, that absolutely undermines, it undercuts the sovereignty of God.

And yet, for some people, it preserves this idea that he didn't know when something bad happened.

It means that when a loved one is stricken with cancer, that, well, God didn't know.

And therefore, it's a way of people letting God off the hook.

People want to do almost anything other than to say that a volitional God sometimes allows bad things to happen to bring about good ends.

People do not want to make this conclusion.

Disciples looked at a blind guy, and they were trying to figure out why.

And again, they said, well, whose fault?

Who sinned?

Not for a moment did they ask, is this part of God's plan?

Who sinned?

Jesus says, none of the above.

It wasn't him.

It wasn't his parents.

It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Now, I told you that the theology here is going to get dense fast.

So what Jesus seems to be saying here is that this man's condition was not God's way of punishing him,

which would be more understandable to us, right?

Rather, he's saying that God deliberately decreed and purposed this bad condition,

this deficiency in this man, in order that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Now, if you think through the implications of this, this is a tough pill to swallow,

which is why so many folks are not.

It's why we have something called Arminianism.

And the reason that it's such a tough pill to swallow is because Jesus seems to be saying

that bad things exist in order to bring God glory.

That's, in effect, what he's saying here.

And to our ears, that can sound like vanity.

It can sound like, what?

God allows something bad to point people to himself

so that he'd look all the brighter by contrast?

That's what this text means?

Is that what you think it means?

Well, we're going to unpack it as we go through it.

Look at Romans 9, verses 17 through 18.

Once again, I'm going to reread these verses, we'll work through it,

and we'll hope to come to some answers and conclusions by the end of our study.

Okay, verse 17.

For the Scripture says to Pharaoh,

for this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show my power in you,

and that by my name, my name may be declared in all the earth.

And verse 18 says this,

therefore, he has mercy on whom he wills, and on whom he wills he hardens.

What do you do with that?

Let me stop there for a moment.

He has mercy on whom he wills, and on whom he wills he hardens.

If you come to this text with certain views of man's free agency,

if you come to this text with certain views of what fair is and what is not fair if you come to

this text from any number of presuppositions that exist in the culture around us what do you do with

that I have raised you up oh Pharaoh that I may show my power in you that my name may be declared

in all the earth you exist for my glory though you knew it not oh Pharaoh therefore he has mercy

on whom he wills and whom he wills he hardens before we look to answer what in the world this

means let's do a quick refresher on Pharaoh is the bad dude the bad egg the bad guy from the

book Exodus he was a stubborn hard-hearted ruler remember how hard his heart was he ruled with an

iron hand he oppressed God's people remember God's people where he they were the slaves to Pharaoh

and Pharaoh was such a tough guy that when the slaves were consigned to make bricks to build his

various buildings he was such a tough guy that he would withhold the necessary ingredients to even

build those bricks in the first place. This was the nature of Pharaoh. Now with that said, how in

the world did Pharaoh ever come to oppress God's people? How in the world did Pharaoh ever get so

powerful to begin with? Arguably, he was the most powerful man on earth at this time. How did

Pharaoh, a guy that bad, that wicked, come to reign and rule and have this sort of power if God is

really in charge. If God is sovereign, and furthermore, if God is good, why Pharaoh? Why

Pharaoh? Is it a cosmic outlier? Was God at the beach that week? Was God on vacation? Was he not

paying attention when Pharaoh kind of crept into power? Not at all. In fact, in this text, God takes

ownership of Pharaoh's reign. For this purpose, I have raised you up. God says, of my own volition,

this guy came to power.

Again, what do you do with that?

I'm curious as you think this through.

Some of us have thought this through before.

Some of us just maybe knew.

But what do you do with that?

It's in the book, right?

It's in the book.

How do you process this?

Again, was God just not paying attention?

Or was he indifferent to Pharaoh's reign?

Well, Romans 9 says the exact opposite.

In Romans 9, we see that God was not only aware of Pharaoh's rise to power,

but that God himself raised Pharaoh up.

Specific says, for this very purpose, I have raised you up.

Meaning, I have an end objective for why I did what I did.

For this very person, I have raised you up, that I may show my power in you.

That I may show my power in you, that my name may be declared in all the earth.

What do we make of this?

Isn't God effectively saying that Pharaoh's reign and rule were made possible by God's own sovereign decree and volition?

There's no other way to read this.

The answer is yes.

It's exactly what this means.

This is not a euphemism for something else.

That's exactly what God is declaring here.

This is unambiguous.

I have raised you up.

The fact that you are in power is because I put you in power is what this verse means.

Now, again, given what a bad guy Pharaoh was, why?

What God, why?

There must have been so many better leaders, right?

I mean, even in Egypt, there had to be guys that were less cruel than Pharaoh.

Why?

Why, oh God?

Why would you raise up such a monster?

Now, speaking of monsters, do you remember Goliath?

Goliath was a monster in every sense of the word.

He was not only a bad guy in terms of what was in his heart,

He was literally just a beast of a man.

There was nothing like Goliath.

Well, Goliath was not a cosmic outlier either.

Goliath was not an accident.

Goliath was raised up by God every bit as much as Pharaoh was.

Goliath was raised up that through his death, through his destruction,

God would be glorified.

He was raised up just as David was raised.

Now, David was raised up for different purposes, right?

We know his purpose was ultimately to become king, was to save his people from the Philistines,

was to reign and rule, and that through his seat, ultimately, Christ would come.

God had a purpose for David, but here's the thing.

He also had a purpose for Goliath.

And when Goliath died, the whole world at that time was aware of the consequences of this.

When Goliath's head hit the ground, the echoes haven't stopped reverberating ever since.

God is glorified to this day.

Every last moment we talk about Goliath.

Every time we talk about how he was conquered.

Every time we talk about how this beast of a man was overcome by a small boy with a sling and faith.

God's glorified.

Nebuchadnezzar, same story.

Cyrus, same story.

Pharaoh, same story.

I've raised you up, O Pharaoh, to show my power in you.

Because when you are overcome, when you are conquered, the whole world will know that there is a God in Zion.

Through your existence, O Pharaoh, I will be glorified.

Now, isn't that essentially the same answer that Jesus gave to those who wanted to understand why this man had been born blind?

Isn't this the same answer?

Remember what he said about the blind man.

He said it was not this man who sinned, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

In other words, he's saying, look, I know what I'm doing.

My father knows what he's doing.

The fact this man is born blind, it is not the bad thing that you believe it is.

In fact, through the healing I will now provide for him.

This story will be relayed until the end of time

as a demonstration of grace and what I've come to do.

Remember his miracles bore witness to who he was?

He came to give sight to the blind.

Were you not blind at one point, but God has given you sight, spiritual sight.

This event, this condition that this man was born into,

was not an accident, and God absolutely intended it to bring about good ends.

And through the benefit of retrospect, we can see those ends.

We can look back and say, yeah, I can see how God is glorified through this man's condition.

But the disciples couldn't see it then.

There are things going on in your life that you do not understand.

There are things that have happened in your past that you wonder, where was God?

He is every bit as much on the throne then as he is now and ever will be.

And he appoints bad things to bring about good ends.

And if you doubt that, look to Calvary.

What happened on Calvary?

The most wicked, evil thing that has ever happened on this globe happened on Calvary.

In it, God brought the greatest good out of it.

God can and does appoint bad ends to bring about good fruit.

You won't necessarily see it in that moment.

But our call is not to understand all things.

Our call is to faith.

Our call is to faith.

But we need to start with some correct presuppositions about who God is and what he does.

We need to understand he really is in charge.

When you say the word sovereign, let's not gut that word of all its meaning.

Let's say what it is.

He is in charge.

He decrees the end from the beginning.

This is elsewhere in Scripture.

He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Ancient of Days.

Nothing escapes his notice.

He's not at the beach.

God is in charge.

If you don't start with that presupposition, there's not much else in this book that I can teach you.

If you don't start with the understanding that God means God, that God is in charge.

Now, when Jesus says that this man was born blind, the works of God might be displayed in him,

it suggests to us that sometimes God will decree things that we don't understand

in order to provide a backdrop or the context or an opportunity for his glory.

And again, do you agree with that statement?

Some of us do not.

The world around us doesn't.

That flies in the face of what people want to believe is the free agency of man.

They don't want to believe God had some say or even a consuming say in Pharaoh's course of life.

Why not?

Because they say that's not fair.

To some, everything we're saying right now will sound counterintuitive.

And that's including a lot of places with crosses out front of buildings.

But it is what Scripture says, so we need to come to terms with it.

And it's not unambiguous when it says it.

And we dare not do a theological swerve to deprive this text of its meaning.

Rather, we need to come to terms with it.

Way back in Proverbs, Proverbs 16.4, we read this,

the Lord has made all for himself, even the wicked, for the day of doom.

It wasn't just Paul who cooked up this theology in the back of some parchment somewhere.

This has always been the message of Scripture, Old and New Testaments.

Now, again, we don't have to like the implications of these verses.

And there's no one in this room, myself included, who can pretend to understand them in their entirety.

But even if you don't understand them, you can't deny that they're in the book.

And if you start with the premise that the book is inerrant in what it says,

then you need to have a reckoning with these words, these unambiguous words.

All right, let's look at verses 19 through 21 as Paul builds on things.

Verse 19, you will say to me then...

Now he's going to paraphrase the argument that he knows people have.

In other words, he's going to say, look, I know I just said something tough.

And I know that you don't like it.

And let me paraphrase what your response to this hard truth is.

So verse 19, you will say to me then, why does he still find fault?

Why does God still find fault for who has resisted his will?

In other words, people are going to come to Paul and they're going to say, wait, wait, wait, wait a second.

You say that Pharaoh had really no say in his trajectory, in the outcome,

that he couldn't have deviated from this plan, that he wasn't a free agent,

that he wasn't autonomous, that he wasn't these things.

They're going to say, Paul, Paul, get a hold of yourself.

Get a hold of your senses.

That's not right.

That's not fair.

If he has done that, if he has signed the trajectory of a Goliath from the womb to the tomb,

if he has done this indeed, then how in the world can the same God still blame Goliath,

still find fault.

Is that not a question we might be thinking about this?

Well, Paul anticipates that that's what's on our minds.

Paul anticipates it.

Just to assure us that what he's just said is true,

He's even going to phrase the counter-argument here.

You will say to me then, why does he still find fault?

For who has resisted his will?

But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God?

Doesn't this echo everything we read in the book of Job earlier this morning?

Who are you, O man, to apply against God?

Will the thing formed say to him who formed it,

why have you made me like this?

In other words, you want to defend poor Goliath and say it can't be.

You couldn't have assigned this end to him.

That's not possible.

If you want to defend poor Goliath, will the thing formed say to him who formed it,

why have you made me like this?

Verse 21, does not the potter have power over the clay?

This is a rhetorical question, but it's one everyone should have an immediate answer to.

The answer is yes.

Does not the potter have power over the clay?

Or is the clay autonomous to the will of the potter?

I'm no good at any form of arts and crafts, but even I get that.

You got a slab of clay sitting before you, you're the one who molds it.

The clay doesn't tell you what to do with it.

The clay cannot assert its will over you, the one who is molding it.

And that's the analogy that we see in this text.

Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

Is this not the prerogative of the potter?

Again, Paul is responding.

He knows.

He knows that people are going to accuse him of being unfair.

He knows people are going to accuse God of being unfair.

And he just says, he stops the presses and he goes, look, God is not weighed on our scales.

Who are you, old man, to question one who's made you?

Then he goes on to use this analogy.

He says, look, you look around rocks and trees and oceans and stars and all these things.

They didn't come about by happenstance.

God didn't just wander on the scene after these things were all made

and have to play by the rules of a creation that he did not form.

Rather, he has formed everything that you see, everything you touch,

the molecule of air you breathe came from his will, his volition, his paintbrush, so to speak.

Does he not reserve the right to do that which he wills with that which he has made?

That's a rhetorical question, but if you come up with any other answer than yes,

you're flying in the face of the unambiguous teaching of Scripture.

He has that right.

And what's more, he asserts it.

It's not just a matter that he has the right to do it, but he asserts that right.

And that's what we see in the text.

Now, does that sound fair?

Does it sound fair to raise up Pharaoh with the objective of destroying Pharaoh later on?

If I'm Pharaoh, the answer is probably no.

I'm probably like, gee gads, this is dreadful.

What a terrible truth it is.

Let's say that you have a loved one who has perished outside of the faith.

What reckoning do you have to have with this passage?

Well, I already know what it is, because I've experienced this with loved ones I've lost.

The reckoning is this, that God didn't choose them unto salvation.

And that is a hard pill to swallow.

And so some swerve it.

They either ignore this text, avoid this text, or interpret it to mean something it flatly does not.

In order to have a right theology, as you go out in a darkened world,

you have to come to terms with what the book says.

Whether you like it, even whether you understand it or not.

But the minute you start redefining it or ignoring it, you've gone astray.

The history of our church says, and when I say the church,

I mean the history of the church with a big C,

way back to the times of the creeds and confessions,

say there was many tough pills that people never swallowed.

And there are whole wings of modern Christendom

that have not come to terms with what this means.

But I tell you this, you strip God's sovereignty out of salvation,

you are depriving him of glory that is his due.

And that is a big part of the reason you don't mess with this text.

You do not want to strip God's glory from his volitional, intentional act

of raising the dead unto new life,

of looking at someone who is flatlining spiritually

and of his own volition, breathing new life into that one.

Because the other implication, the other direction you will go

is you will say that man breathes new life unto himself

and causes his own trajectory to unfurl at his own feet.

And that cannot help but take a chisel to the sovereignty of God

and therefore the glory of God.

Do not err in this way.

Do not read this text.

It means something other than it means.

In any case, again, verse 19 is a look at the text here.

Again, Paul paraphrases the concern that folks have.

How can God find fault with Pharaoh when Pharaoh just did what God had set him up to do?

And they say this is not fair.

How could a good God, a loving God, possibly have set up Pharaoh to fail, so to speak,

or at least to perish in his sins?

Did God really ordain Pharaoh to this unfortunate end?

And if he did so, then why?

And again, that's a reasonable question.

I'm not sure on this side of glory we'll fully understand it.

For some of us, we'll make the first hurdle.

We'll say, I agree he did it.

I can't interpret this text to mean anything less.

I'll agree he did it, but why?

I have no idea.

And if you come and ask me after the service today and ask me why,

I will shrug my shoulders and I'll say, I do not know,

because some things pertain to the mystery of God alone.

Verse 20, Paul's answer, though, to the essential question is to the point.

He says, God is under no compunction to form every part of creation with the same utility in mind.

Because God is God, he is well within his rights to make one vessel for honor and one for dishonor.

You know, you go out these doors, there's going to be a bunch of flowers.

Our wonderful groundskeeper, Thelus, keeps them all up.

And even Thales will tell you this, that some flowers are more beautiful than others.

Some flowers are more beautiful than others.

Some things out here are weeds, due to being simply picked up.

Not all the flowers in the created realm are equally beautiful.

Not all stars in the heaven are equally bright.

And not all people, not all people are made for the exact same purpose, utility, and outcome.

This is also true.

I just suggest that God has to, in order to achieve our standard of fairness,

that he has to put everyone on the same footing

in order to preserve our self-made ideas

of what autonomy and free will are,

it chisels away at the very meaning of this passage.

It chisels away at it.

All right, let's look at verses 22 to 24 now.

Verse 22.

What if God, wanting to show his wrath

and to make his power known,

endured with much long-suffering

the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

You see God's volition in this?

He endures the vessels of wrath that were prepared for destruction,

that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy,

which He had prepared beforehand for glory.

Even us who He has called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.

Let me ask you a thinking question before we go any further.

Has God always been just?

Good answer.

Yes, absolutely He has.

Now, was he just before there was ever a creation?

Yeah.

Was he merciful before there was ever a creation or anyone to give mercy to?

Yeah.

Was he forgiving from eternity past before a molecule of this earth existed?

Yes.

See, we believe that God is unchanging.

Remember, we say he's immutable.

He doesn't change from day to day.

And because of this, we have hope.

He's going to shift on us and be a different God tomorrow.

So God is unchanging.

And his characteristics have always been there.

It's not like God next week is going to form a new characteristic or a new attribute.

The attributes that he has, he has always had,

and the attributes that he has are infinite in measure.

This is just what God is.

So God isn't changed.

God's always been just.

He's always been merciful.

He's always been forgiving and the like.

With that said, what would be required?

Presume you're back in eternity past.

There isn't a flash of light in all of creation.

There isn't a molecule anywhere to be found.

What would be required if God is just and merciful and forgiving?

What would be required in order for him to be able to exercise these qualities that he has?

What's required?

He has certain qualities.

What would be required for him to exercise them?

Well, in order for mercy, in order for forgiveness to be exercised,

there must be those whose needs make it necessary.

See, in order for certain attributes of God to be manifested,

there must be a backdrop by which those attributes are necessitated.

I wish I had more time to read that through a few times so you could write it all in the sidebar here.

I'll say it one more time, though.

In order for certain attributes of God to be manifested,

remember His forgiveness and even His wrath and justice and all these things,

in order for certain attributes that God has always had,

in order for them to be manifested,

in order for them to be demonstrated,

there must be a backdrop by which those attributes are necessitated.

There has to be a reason.

God's just. He's always been good. He's always been charitable. He's always been merciful.

In order for him to manifest this mercy, there has to be those who require it, right?

In order for him to manifest his wrath, his justice, which he's always been a just God,

there must be those whose needs require it.

If you ever wondered why evil exists, you've never been closer to the answer than you are right now.

God allows and God ordains certain things to exist

because they provide a necessary backdrop by which all of his attributes are exercised and made known.

And that's exactly what Paul is saying in verse 22.

That's not conjecture.

That's exactly what he's saying in verse 22 when he says this.

What if God, wanting to show his wrath,

wanting to demonstrate a quality he's always had against injustice,

what if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known,

endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction

that he might make known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of his mercy.

In order to demonstrate attributes that he's always had,

there must be a context in which he can demonstrate them.

You see this?

This is what he's saying.

This is what Paul's saying.

He's saying, what if God wanted to show all this?

What if God wanted to show wrath and to make power known,

endured these wicked people, endured these wicked circumstances,

endured sin and death, even to the point of the cross,

in order that the greatest good would come.

The greatest imaginable good.

The sacrifice of his own son to save the lost and the dead in their sins and trespasses.

And to pour out riches of his glory on vessels of his mercy.

The attributes that God has had from eternity past required a context in which they were to be demonstrated.

What if God wanted to show these things?

This is Paul's argument.

And you don't have to like the implications of this verse.

And many don't.

But you can't deny that that's what Paul's saying.

Let me ask you, how would God's wrath and mercy be known,

or expressed or demonstrated, apart from situations that required it?

It wouldn't, is the short answer.

In order for God's grace to be demonstrated,

grace that he's always had, charity, mercy, forbearance,

that he's always had,

there must first be a need for that grace,

and for recipients who require it.

In order for God's wrath and justice to be exercised,

there needs to be pharaohs and Goliaths to fall under it.

In order for God's sacrificial love to be manifested,

there must be those whose salvation hinged upon the sacrifice.

These wonderful, amazing attributes that God has are meant to stand out

and to be demonstrated against the backdrop of all the hurts and pains in our fallen world.

That's the express meaning of verses 22-24.

Now, will that always be the case?

Again, I don't pretend that we can all understand the depth of what this means.

We are not God.

Paul doesn't even try to unpack this at the length that I'm trying this morning.

He just states it as is.

He knows that this is going to be impossible to wrap our minds around in its entirety.

So he doesn't even fully try.

But it is the meaning.

But will it always be the case?

Is it always going to work this way?

Is God going to perpetually allow evil in order for good to stand out all the brighter,

in order to bring himself glory?

Well, the answer is no.

No, this is a short season.

God hates evil.

He hates wickedness.

But he will bear it for this short season.

And he is long-suffering because he knows the good that is going to come out of this.

He knows the good that is going to come out of the hurts and pains that we've experienced to date and we will yet experience.

He knows even if we don't know.

But he will not abide this hurt and the pain and the sin and the death and all these things forever.

These things have a shelf life.

Evil things, evil people, evil circumstances will fall under his judgment.

Every last ounce of it.

Every last drop of evil will be judged and every tear we've shed will be wiped away.

God has appointed a short season for pains and hurts that we cannot fully understand in its fullness,

even if we can kind of extract some of the theology from Romans 9.

But whether we extract some or all, the point is this.

This is a narrow time frame in which this truth remains.

At least there's a narrow time frame in which this truth is applicable.

And the time is coming.

And it's never been closer than it is today when all the sin and all the stain of evil will forever be wiped away.

But you know what?

All the mercy that he showed us during the season of a fallen world.

All the mercy he's shown us will ring out through eternity.

It'll be worth it.

All the grace and all the love and the sacrifice.

What Jesus has done.

This lamb who was slain.

He will be glorified now into eternity in the future.

For having done so by we who are saved because he did it.

It's a short season of those things that were appointed.

Today, if you don't understand all this, join the club.

Today, if you don't understand all that this means, again, you're not alone.

If you don't understand all why God does what he does, man isn't capable of understanding all these things.

What does Isaiah say?

It says, as far as the heavens are above the earth, so high is God's ways and God's thoughts above our ways and our thoughts.

This is true.

God doesn't tell us why everything happens.

And furthermore, he doesn't owe us an explanation for why it all happens.

Nevertheless, he does impart truth to us that does shore up our faith during the seasons of hurt and pain.

He does, through passages like we read this morning, let us know that he's on his throne.

He reminds us that the bad things produce good ends.

And how many of us is this true for?

How many of us came to Christ or to His Word or to His church out of a season of hardship?

God regularly, we see this in our mercy ministry,

God regularly appoints seasons of hardship for folks

because that's exactly what they need in order to come closer to Him.

God consistently appoints difficult moments in order to bring about good ends.

He consistently allows the lives of His people to get topsy-turvy

because in these moments we're most inclined to look up and to see His face.

He knows what we need better than we know what we need.

And He allows these things to come on the page in order to bring about good ends.

Now, I'll close with something I said earlier.

If you doubt any of that to be true, if you doubt that God can bring good out of bad,

if you doubt that God willfully allows and decrees terrible things in order to bring about good ends,

and if you think for a moment that He's above the fray, that He doesn't subject Himself to any of this pain,

look to the cross.

Look to the cross.

We wonder why God allows bad things to befall us.

What befell Jesus Christ, the Lamb on Calvary?

God does decree things you can't possibly understand

that are very difficult for this short season

to attain some riches of glory beyond which we could ever imagine.

And the proof that he does so,

and that he's even willing to subject himself to this sort of pain

that we have had just a taste of,

is found in the pouring out of his own son's blood on Calvary.

If he can bring that sort of good out of the cross,

if he can bring eternal life right out of the jaws of death,

then he can certainly do it in the midst of whatever you and I are facing this week,

in the midst of whatever trials await us.

That's the promise.

That's the manifold promise in a sovereign God who has given us this text.

Let me pray for us.