A Letter to A Young Man, A Tale of Two Ants
... as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” Romans 9:33
Romans 9:1–33 – Romans: The Righteousness of God
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost – August 6, 2023 (am)
Have you ever eavesdropped on a conversation? Say for example you are in a line at the grocery store, and you overhear a mom or dad having a serious conversation with their son or daughter. Innocently and unintentionally to be sure, you have been given a pretty rare gift, a window into that particular mystery that we call a ‘relationship’. Similarly, whenever I attend a funeral, I try to find a moment to thank the family for allowing us a window into a life and family dynamic, a window that is graciously opened to allow us to peer into. It is also a literary device. Books like “Letters to Phillip” and the fictional novel “Gilead” are built around the idea that the reader is listening in on a conversation that is not meant for them. We see that in scripture as well. In John 17 for example we read Jesus’ high priestly prayer and are given a window into the relationship between the Heavenly Father and his only begotten Son. Similarly, the epistles to Timothy and Titus are personal and directed at Paul’s much loved fellow laborers in the gospel. We see the same thing in the book of Proverbs. Well, this morning I’d like you listen in on a conversation between me and a young person here in this place, whom I will call “Charlie.” I have asked his permission to allow you a front row seat to a response to his question, or more precisely to an observation that he posed to his parents a few weeks ago. It is going to require some set up so lean forward a bit, cock your ear and listen in!
In our exposition of Romans there are some pretty hard things with pretty powerful implications, and nowhere more forcefully expressed than in chapter 9. I’ve distilled them down to three related and pointed bedrock propositions:
11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
21 … 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? 22 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,
It feels like there are thunder and lightning in these propositions! And so there is a lot to process. In fact, hearing them isolated can make us pause and pull out our “not fair” cards. But this young man rolled up his cognitive sleeves and actually tried to work out the implications, and that is no small thing. Here is what he said to his father.
“Okay, I think I get it. God is the boss. And in fact, if he sees a couple of ants crawling around the sidewalk, and he decides to take his foot and squish one of them … well, that’s his business. He has every right, yes?”
Or to put it another way he might have said something like this, “Okay, the right of way upon which the sidewalk sits belongs to God. He owns the Portland cement, as well as the barge that carries the cement up the mighty Mississippi river! He owns the sand, the re-bar, the calcium chloride, and the water that makes the concrete that becomes the sidewalk. He owns the very ground upon which the sidewalk sits. He owns the ant and the anthill, and the tunnels that the ants build. He even owns the programming elements that cause the ants to seemingly wander around… And at one level they do not wander aimlessly. Rather, they move in a way coordinated and determined by this creator God that we worship according to scripture … So, of course he can step on an ant! And we frankly have neither part nor art in the matter!” [The first way is probably a little more clear actually!]
I have concluded that a response from scripture to Charlie’s conclusion might be of some use to us more broadly and I am aware that I am privileged to hold the floor for a while and address the topic he has raised. First of all, Charlie, there are a number of really good things about your observation. It shows an engagement with the words of the apostle Paul about a complex and profound proposition, one that will necessarily turn our understanding of the world in which we live, upside down! It is also good that you took the time to articulate the implications, to care enough about the subject to put your observation into words. This is not a small thing, and it causes me to praise the Lord for you and the young and the seasoned among us who grapple with what God’s word really says!
[I am reminded of Eugene Peterson’s book titled The Pastor: A Memoir, where he describes his people, the ones who have been in his shepherding, pastoral care for 30 years … “They are well educated; they are theologically grounded. They know their bibles. It’s just that they aren’t all that interested.” Ouch! And I praise the Lord that you are not among that number!]
Also, your observation is actually and essentially true! The great creator God has the clear right to do as he likes with his creation, and we have no standing to claim otherwise.
But [and you probably knew that the other shoe was going to drop didn’t you, Charlie!], there are about eight things that I can think of about your conclusions that are dead wrong, and we are going to walk through them one by one. Let’s begin by taking a look at the troubling phrase, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated:
1. Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated:
Wow! That does at first glance seem kind of out of left field, yes? It’s not nice to hate people, right? Plus, hate is such a strong word. Paul here in vs 11-13 refers to the Old Testament book of Malachi where the people of Israel post captivity are positively incandescent in their contempt for their creator and the shepherd of their souls. Through the voice of the prophet, God levels an indictment against this people “but you say …” occurs a number of times and is in response to the shaking fist of their scorn.
But you say… How have you loved us?
How have we despised your name?
How have we polluted you!
What a weariness this is, and you snort.
For what reason have you not accepted our sacrifices?
How have we robbed you?
Listen to how the book begins:
The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi. 2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have You loved us?” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob; 3 but I have hated Esau, and I have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.”
It is worth noting that at this point in the post-exilic life of the nation, Edom [Esau] has migrated north and west from their land east and south of the dead sea, having been resettled on land that at one time had been allotted to Judah. Like you and me, Charlie, the chosen people of God can hold a grudge! Even against God! In fact, Charlie, I once had a conversation with a gentleman in our parking lot on a winter’s evening. As we were getting into our respective cars, he asked me this question: “What do you do if you find yourself unable to forgive God?” We may well wonder why Paul chose to quote this passage, but the context suggests that he is underscoring the unique status of God’s chosen people. Clearly the message for the people of Israel is that by faith they needed to view their hard circumstance through the lens of God’s unfailing love, and not to measure God’s love by the congeniality of their circumstances.
So, what does this have to do with our two ants wandering around the sidewalk. Plenty! Let’s concede first and very importantly that there are things that God hates, things that incur his wrath! Looking to incur the wrath of God? Try withholding the wages of the poor. Try abusing the widow and the orphan and the prisoner. Try undermining the sweet faith and innocence of a child. Try turning his house of prayer into a Ponzi scheme. Try taking the Lord’s name in vain by using it to turn a blind eye to injustice. Try making a mockery and a lie of your marriage! Try rejecting and scorning the gift of salvation freely offered. [see John 3:18]
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
God is indeed capable of truly ‘hating,’ but know this, that the God we worship is Holy and just … Let’s pause long enough to define the meaning the word “holy.”
“Holiness means ‘set apart’ from all that is sinful and imperfect. This description of character is not merely the absence of any evil but also includes the fullness of all good.”
26 For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. [Heb 7:26]
The Almighty—we cannot find him;
he is great in power;
justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate. [Job 37:23]
And I will make justice the line,
and righteousness the plumb line;
and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,
and waters will overwhelm the shelter.” [Is. 18:17]
Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you,
and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him. [Is. 30:18]
The holiness of God demands that the justice of his character will triumph. For a holy God, hate is real, and may burn white hot, but … it is never arbitrary. It is not rooted in a casual preference or a percolating but highly variable affection! He does not love Jacob more because he says things that tickle his funny bone! We do God a great disservice when we ascribe to him motives that more properly lurk in our own selfish and arbitrary hearts!
By the way, some translations substitute the phrase “prefer” or “love less” for the uncomfortable word “hate.” I frankly shudder more at the softened words or phrases, not because they seem suspiciously watered down, but because the actual implications of that kind of metric are truly frightful! Why? Because to prefer or to love less infers an arbitrary standard by which God picks the winners and losers. May that never be. The love of God is neither rooted in our worthiness, nor in some kind of inscrutable heavenly fondness. Rather it is rooted in the holiness and the justice, and the sovereignty of a great God of mercy.
2. Okay, now let’s take another look at your analogy for a moment. [And that is all it should take!] We are not ants, yes? And the difference is not measured in size or the fact that ants have an exoskeleton! The difference is rooted in the strange and divine creation that uniquely created men, not ants, in the image of God. The words that Jesus spoke in Matthew 10:29 may be helpful here:
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven.
It is true of course that throughout scripture analogies are vividly portrayed between men and grass, men and the fading flower of the field, men and ostriches (!), men and ships tossed and torn upon the seas, men and the birds of the air. Yet, the analogy you pose presumes that just as you or I might step on an ant without even realizing it, so it may also be with the creator of the universe. And therein lies a fatal flaw in your observation. Quite the contrary, the God we worship knows every intimate detail of the ants and has orchestrated even their circuitous paths. Remember Charlie that we are not ants!
3. Scripture never, ever, demands that we pledge our allegiance to a god of caprice! Do you know what caprice, or capricious means Charlie? ... given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior.
By the mercy of God, even his wrath is measured, his love and protection are liberally given, and he takes no joy in the death of the wicked.
Ezekiel 33:11 "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways!
Lamentations 3:31-33
31 For the Lord will not
cast off forever,
32 but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
33 for he does not afflict from his heart
or grieve the children of men.
He knows the value of your ants and has even pronounced them an important part of a created order that he has called from the very beginning … good!
4. The ants are dead! This is an obvious one. Your analogy would be more true if the ants in your word picture were dead! If instead of stepping on an ant, God reaches down and picks up one, heals, restores, forgives and breathes new life.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. [Ephesians 2:1-2]
5. This God that we worship is not just a great big one of us. It is so tempting to recast God on our terms. After all, we may never have pulled the wings off a fly, but we have all surely stepped on an ant, yes? Of course. So, our presumption is that just as the potter may remove the vase from the wheel and start over, so God has a get out of jail free card when it comes to viewing his creation with scant regard. Quite the contrary, God is the potter who knows and cares about his medium exquisitely. And in fact, the very earthiness of scripture gives us clues about the value our great creator places upon even the ants! God is not just a great big one of us! You might want to think about it this way. If we are the clay upon the wheel and the potter knows that a flaw in our construction, say for example an air pocket, will result in our destruction in the kiln, what a mercy it will surely be to have the potter wisely scrape us off the wheel in order to remake and remold!
6. This one is a bit tricky Charlie, so listen carefully here! When we talk about God having the perfect right to squash an ant, that is strictly speaking a true statement, but we get no bonus points for proclaiming things about God that in normal contexts would be blasphemous! Here’s what I mean. We are the true anomalies of creation, people of flesh, with hearts of flesh [one would hope]. Yet we are image bearers who mercifully see through a glass darkly! [I do not wonder that the angels scratch their heads at the strangeness of these human beings that God seems to care so much about.] There are times and places where we would do well to bow our heads and blink back tears at the mysteries of this life, and certainly of the God in whom we are urged by scripture to place our trust. I remember many years ago now, when the youth group here as an exercise held a structured debate on whether and when babies go to heaven if they die! Does that make us cringe a bit? I hope so. Can we agree that we have reason to be careful before we pronounce God’s will for a sick or injured child? His ways are higher than ours, and we don’t even have the words to express ourselves in earnest prayer. Charlie, I praise God this morning that though we cannot know what manner of pain or unfolding joys the future may hold for you Charlie, we rejoice in this, that we know that according to his word He cares for you, that the Holy Spirit of God and the Lord Jesus Christ pray for you even when our own words utterly fail … and Charlie, the day will probably come when they will!
7. Let’s tackle a couple of additional things. When we pose hypotheticals, we are on dangerous ground. You might say that those who live by hypotheticals often die by them as well. They are perilous because they are crafted usually to pose moral dilemmas for which there is no real resolution. Hypotheticals are dangerous in that they may hide a patently false proposition behind a veil of empathetically fraught emotion. I am reminded of the tired old story of God being the operator of a railroad drawbridge, and the passenger train is approaching. Just as he is about to lower the bridge to allow the train to pass, he sees his son [Jesus] playing among the giant steel gears. He has to make a split-second decision to save the train or save his beloved Son, and he wrings his hands and weeps as he chooses to save the train at the expense of his child … There is so much wrong with this hypothetical that I will leave it with you to unravel the dozens of things recklessly misleading with it! Can we praise God this morning that we have a resource to draw from that has proven reliable, clear, and coherent, that does still pierce the heart and divide truth from almost truth?
8. Finally, Charlie, never forget that we meet God on his terms not ours. Michael Horton speaks of our search for God as ‘meeting a stranger.’ What that means is that we will know only that which God reveals to us. We don’t somehow ‘overcome our strangeness’ through endless analysis or through somehow elevating ourselves to look out over the expanse of eternity from his vantage point … much as we would like to! Paul here in Romans Ch. 9 is proposing truths about God that will challenge us and crush us that we might look up, and then lower our gaze … and live.
Conclusion:
1. Lay down our arms.
One of the hard things about this chapter is that when we embrace these propositions, we give up much! We really do! If God owns it all, then we don’t! If God is in charge, then we are not! If God chooses according to the wisdom and goodness of his will, then our efforts at righteousness’ will fail, every time! But I confess that there is a sweetness in knowing that no fellow classmate will be able to wheedle a better grade by stopping by the prof’s office to schmooze their way into having their grade bumped! And this is so very important, it also means that our rest is real, that we may indeed run with undiluted joy and thanksgiving.
There are at least two other things that we give up in the consideration of these things. The first is to give up our pride and our autonomy. The second is something that the people Malachi was speaking to needed to hear. We must necessarily give up our grudges against the God who made us. Have you ever shaken your fist at God Charlie? The day may come when you may be tempted! For a number in this room, the question “how have You loved us?” echoes in the “not fair” canyons of our minds, just as it did for the bitter and angry people of a reconstituted Israel 2700 years ago!
That is the first and main take away this morning.
2. Children of promise:
In 9:8 the phrase ‘children of promise’ is used. It is extended not on the basis of pedigree, or tribal affiliation. It depends not on how long you have labored in the orchard! It depends on one thing, the mercy of God. Verse 11 states it so very succinctly, the mercy of God is extended not on the basis of works, but ‘because of Him who calls.’ What this means is that the mercy of God is expansive and vast and welcomes even the most unlikely sinner to draw near and be a guest, no! more than a guest but a member of the family of God.
I am reminded of the message I heard on the radio once, where the saved, unnamed thief on the cross enters paradise and is questioned at the door. “Where are your credentials?” Says he, I have none, but the man who hung there and died next to me said I could come!’ Indeed!
3. Not put to shame:
Chapter nine finishes with what amounts to a hymn of praise. [vs 25]
“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’
and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’”
26 “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”
Charlie, I have no particular word for the ants in your word picture, but I have a word for sinners like me and yes, like you too! God’s mercy is as real as his holiness and as powerful as his justice. Charlie, you might find this hard to believe but there are a great many people, and some in this room who do not know what it feels like to be part of a family, to know the security of having a place at the dinner table that will always be there for them. They surely do not know what it feels like to be ‘beloved’ in any meaningful sense. They know what it is to feel shame and in fact for some of them it will feel like that is the only thing they have ever felt! It is to them that the mercy of God speaks the loudest. For the one who by the gift of faith hears the good news and repents and believes, who surrenders to the only Savior this world has ever known, he or she will have been known forever as sons and daughters of the living God.
A little postscript if I may. The last verse in the chapter tells us that the greatest stumbling block to saving faith in Jesus is strangely not his judgement, not his fiat power to flatten an ant if he chooses, but astoundingly it is his mercy and tender, patient love that blows the doors off the hinges of our precious pride.
33 as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense;
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
By that mercy found in the gift of faith we may be sure that we will not be put to shame! Charlie if you are like me, these next verses will always be whispering to you even as you are inspecting the sidewalks beneath your feet:
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Charlie, you are greatly loved, in heaven and here on earth.
Amen.
NEXT SUNDAY: Are you now being perfected by the flesh?, Galatians 3, Wes Karsten