SERMON XV – William Elbert Munsey
” WHY HAST THOU MADE ME THUS ? “
” O, man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shalt the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?” — Romans ix. 20.
ALL that is said about Jacob and Esau, can be interpreted by simply explaining the phrase, ” Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” It is strange, that this passage of Scripture should be so misinterpreted, when the design of Paul in the connections of the passage is so apparent. He is speaking of God’s call of the Israelites as the chosen people, and not of the Edomites. The Israelites were the descendants of Jacob, the Edomites were the descendants of Esau. God’s call of Jacob was one to the privileges, position, and blessings of an outward, corporate kingdom ; and had no respect to the inward character of Jacob or Esau, to the influences of the spirit upon either of them, or to the everlasting destiny of either of them. God had promised to bless the world through Abraham’s seed, and He was compelled to choose between Abraham’s seed — and God took Isaac. He could not take all. So with Jacob.
But is not the record, ” The children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her (that is Rebecca the mother of Esau and Jacob), The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated ? ” But this record shows that God’s election of Jacob as the father and .representative of His chosen people, over his brother Esau, had no reference to the ” works,” or char- acter, or personal destiny of the men themselves, but rested in the prerogative of God to select between the two — the prerogative of God to call whom He saw fit — and not to call by His Spirit to personal salvation. The record is that Jacob the younger was preferred to Esau the elder.
As to the Lord hating Esau, the word hate does imply the idea of abhorrence. But let the Bible explain itself : It is said in Genesis : ” The Lord saw that Leah was hated by Jacob.” In the verse preceding, it is said, Jacob ” loved …. Rachel more than Leah.” This explains the word ” hate ” — Leah was less loved than Rachel. In Luke, Christ says, ” If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life, also, he cannot be my disci- ple.” In Matthew, Christ says, ” He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Again in Matthew, Christ says, ” No man can serve two masters : for either he will hate the one, and love the other.” The love cannot be equal, yet love of mammon for the sake of the love of God is possible.
The Lord preferred Jacob to Esau, and it had nothing to do with their personal salvation. Really, Esau in many essential respects was a nobler man than Jacob. Jacob was guilty of fraud, and then ran away, yet Esau forgave him upon his return. But it is said in Hebrews that after Esau sold his birthright, “when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” This does not mean that God rejected him, that God would not permit him to repent, or that God would not pay any regard to bis tears. No, the blessing grieved after by Esau was the blessings and prerogatives of him being the oldest child o£ Isaac, and which Isaac had given to Jacob, and Isaac would not change his mind about it — he would not revoke the blessing pronounced upon Jacob, though Esau begged him to do so with tears. Isaac would not change his will — testament. God was in the matter however, and Esau had sold his birthright, and he ought to have stood to the bargain, although Jacob was worse than he, in taking advantage of his brother. If, however, God did really hate Esau and consigned him to eternal pun- ishment, before he was born, and that without reference to Esau’s works ; then Esau had the right to ask God, ” Why hast thou made me thus ? “
As to the case of Pharaoh, God brought upon him but the judgments he deserved. God did not fit him for de- struction, but he was already a vessel of wrath ” fitted to destruction.” Then the destruction is but temporal, and was accomplished in the Red Sea. Not a word is said about personal salvation, or damnation. God in carrying on the progress of the world, has overthrown many kingdoms and kings, brought them to entire destruction, without sending the kings to hell. God is establishing a historic and visible church, and He treats of the enemies of that church upon the same principle. There is no more evidence that God damned Pharaoh than that He saved all the children of Israel in heaven, because Israel was the external type of the coming spiritual church.
Paul said, ” Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus ? ” If that means that God condemned Esau and Pharaoh to eternal punishment, before the birth of both — that he hated Esau before he was born, and that he raised Pharaoh for that purpose, or that God from a mere prerogative in Himself condemned any othei man, or set of men, then all the condemned have a right to challenge God’s Justice, and to ask the question, ” Why hast thou made me thus ? ” If formed for eternal condemnation, they have the right to ask the question, and if possible resist the power of such a God. That God who made Esau, should hate Esau before he was born, and send him to hell, and then try to hush Esau’s mouth in asking a reason for it, by the sentence, ” Who art thou that repliest against God ? ” is irreconcilable with any idea of Justice possible to conceive of in any mind. If this, in defiance of all our ideas of- justice, be justice with God, then we can never form any idea of any moral quality, and we are unprepared to under- stand any requirement in the Bible. If this be justice, then lasciviousness may be chastity, as far as we can form any idea of it.
Justice always implies two parties, and that these two par- ties have rights, and its essence is to regard these respective rights in the adjustment of the relations between the two parties. God could have no justice if there was no being in the universe but Himself, and if God can be said to have justice there must be other beings in the universe beside Himself, and if the recognition of rights upon the part of both parties is essential to the idea of justice, then both parties have inalienable personal rights. God the Creator, with respect to the creature, has rights ; but the creature has rights too. God’s rights with reference to man are not absolute. The end for the creation of every intelligent creature is not absolutely in God Himself. God has no right to make a thinking, feeling man, for the purpose of making that man unhappy in order to show forth His power in doing so ; — and He has not done it.
Man with respect to God has rights.
1st. Because he has the conditions of a distinct personality — he is of himself a person. If he is saved, it is he who is saved, not God ; if he is lost, it is he who is lost, not God. He may Lave de- rived his being from God, and he may depend on God to uphold his being, but if he is a person distinct from God as a person, he has rights.
2d. Because man being intelligent has a will. Will is no mere faculty but the whole of the mind. It is the highest condition of the mind. It is that state of executive mind, with reference to moral alternatives, when the mind makes character. Man has the power of willing — the power of choosing to act in accordance with God’s will, or the power to rebel against God, and act contrary to God’s will. Such an intelligence can own something of itself — it has rights. If a man has the power to endorse God, or to reflect upon God, such power must arise from the mind’s consciousness of personal rights — rights which the Great God must either respect or trample upon. God cannot make an intelligent, accountable being, without that being possessing, in virtue of his constitution as God has made him, and can only make him, personal rights.
3d. God accords to man such rights in what He has done for man in redemption. He sent His Son for the express purpose of reconciling the world unto Himself ; and after the scheme of reconciliation is complete, God submits it to man for his acceptance or rejection, and sends messengers to explain its provisions, and to show that it is just to man — that it has respect to the rights of man, as well as to the rights of God. The whole thing is a covenant between God and man, and all covenants recognize rights upon the part of both parties.
4th. That under God the creature has rights, is evident from the appointment of a Judgment day. The appointment of such a day is not necessary to the apportionment of rewards and punishments, but that men and angels may see the reason of God’s Judgment in every case, and endorse the decisions of the Divine Justice. God treats every man as if that man was a king — and a king he may be.
God and Christianity, while requiring every man to submit to the will of God — which every good man conscious of his own ignorance and weakness does — yet they do not require an abnegation of man’s manhood, but an intelligent submission to God’s will. Some men have false ideas of sub- mission to God’s will. When God’s will is Clearly revealed we have the right to press the matter, as shown in the cases of Abraham’ sprayer for Sodom, Jacob’s wrestling, Job’s order of his cause, Elijah’s prayer, Moses’ prayer for the Israelites, and the prayer of the Syrophenician woman. Man has a right to question God, to ask, ” Why hast thou made me thus ? ” if God made him for the purpose of damning him in hell ; if God made his salvation depend upon conditions which were never presented to him ; if God held him accountable for opportunities he never had ; and if God made his salvation depend upon any human ordinance which could not be available under all circumstances — for instance, baptism by water.
But if God makes every man’s salvation depend upon conditions in reach of every man — judging him only in proportion to his opportunities and talents — whether he lives in Christian or heathen lands, and that there is a future ahead full of compensations for the disadvantages a man suffers here on account of his race, and the necessary means employed to develop the race, though it might involve affliction to some : if this be so, no man has a right to protest against God — he has no right to ask God such a question. If God makes every man’s salvation depend upon these conditions, then man’s right of protest is gone. But there are mysteries and difficulties remaining. Why are you born and raised in Baltimore, in sight of churches, and another man raised and born among brutal cannibals ? Why do you have parents who dress you and send you to church, why do I have pa- rents who let me go in rags and give me no religious instruction ? Why am I subject to certain measures of discipline ? We have no right to ask God, ” Why hast thou made me thus?” Eternity will explain. ” Clouds and darkness are round about him, but Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne.”
Job was afflicted. To all appearances he was a good man. Why was he thus afflicted? It almost seemed a reflection upon the very character of God. Job and his three friends were discussing the matter. Eliphaz, one of the three friends, one night went to bed. He fell asleep thinking of the whole matter. His thoughts shaped themselves into visions, which gradually faded away and a deep sleep came upon him. During the night, a great fear came upon him, he was seized with trembling, and all his bones shook. A cold air passed over his face — a kind of breathing — there was a chill in the room, and the hair of his flesh stood with horror. There was an awful presence, a spirit, in the room, and it was night. It seemed like a misty shadow growing out of the darkness, standing near him, cold and formless, yet dis- tinct, and it fixed its eyes on him, and one of the folds of its pale robe formed itself into a ghastly hand, and a shadowy finger pointed into his face, and in a low voice, more felt than heard, it said, ” Shall mortal man be more just than God ? ” — as if it had said, ” Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? ” Life is strange. God’s dealings with men are mysterious, but many of the reasons are discoverable, if we would take the trouble to do it, and others of them we can- not understand. But God is righteous and good, and righteousness and goodness we can always trust.
Is God good ? Goodness always implies the idea of love and mercy. Many people have such strange ideas of God. They use God as something to frighten children with. God is good. Look how He has made us — the adaptation of the world to us shows His goodness. See that beautiful maiden with rosy and laughing face, standing on the misty hills every morning, looking with a merry and kind eye over sleeping cities and stirring farmyards. She is the dawning day, and the light of her eyes wakes all the birds, and her delicate touch leaves a diamond crown upon every dewdrop which nestles in the heart of the rose, hangs pendent from every spire of grass and blade of corn, and dances on the quivering leaves of every giant oak. She is God’s daughter, and a daily messenger of the Divine goodness.
See the angels open the splendid portals of light, and see the king of day come forth as a strong man to run a race. See his fine eye as its golden light flashes through the woods, and every bird sings as if its little heart was breaking with joy, and every running rill sends over laughing pebbles wavelets of rippling silver. See him climb the orient and stand on the keystone of the magnificent arches which have measured all the days since the fingers of God sent the earth spinning upon its axes long ages ago. See him at evening go to bed* in amber clouds, and his great eye grow red as sleep steals upon him, till the dark spirit of the night shades his face with -her sombre robe, and evokes with her wand a thousand* beauties to compensate for his absence. In all his daily journeys he has but one language, ” God is good.”
The mysterious beauties of the night tell the same story. See the deep fathomless Space above you. It is night. The moon is shining and the stars are gleaming — oh, how lovely ! See the constellations : — There is the Argo Navis in full sail through the ocean ether to Colchis for the golden fleece. You can almost see Jason on the deck, and hear the lyre of Orpheus. There we see Perseus with the awful head of Medusa in his hand. There we see Cepheus and Cassiopeia, the father and mother of Andromeda, and Andromeda her- self, sweet virgin, chained on the rocks, and waiting to be devoured by a monster. There we see the beautiful and yellow hair of Berenice, streaming in the constellation of Leo ; the milk of Juno ; the magnificent Orion with his belt ; and the sweet daughters of Pleione who seem to sing around the Throne of the Great Eternal. The planets, the stars, the moon, are but expressions of God’s goodness.