As we come to look at the Apostle's answer to the statement made in the 19th verse of the

ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, I'd better read once more, that verse and

the verses that follow.

Thou will say then unto me, why doth he yet find fault?

For who hath resisted his will? Nay, but,

o men, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed, say to him that formed

it, why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel

into honour and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power

known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory and the vessels of wrath fitter to destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory

and the vessels of mercy which he had afore prepared unto glory, even us whom he have called

not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.

Now then, the objection is put in verse 19 to what the apostle had previously

been teaching, and he deals with it. You remember that he first of all rebukes anybody for making

such a statement and for being so foolish as not to realize that he's only a man and that he

is speaking about the almighty God and his actions.

He drives it home by reminding us still further that our relationship to God is the relationship

of the thing formed to the one who forms it, plastic material to the artificer.

And he takes it even further. He says that our relationship to God as full humanity is the relationship of a lump of clay

to a potter.

And so he not only rebukes anyone who feels inclined to query and to question the righteousness

and the justice of God in choosing

some to salvation and in punishing the others, he rebukes it and he indeed ridicules it

...