Well, join me in your Bibles
tonight in Romans, the ninth chapter. Our text tonight comes
from Romans 9. And kind of the impetus for this
study began about 33 years ago on a Wednesday night much like
this. And our pastor up in Alaska that we had in that church that
we belonged to up there asked me if I would fill in for him
on Wednesday evening because he had a wedding commitment.
And I said, sure, I'd be glad to. So this is back in the days
before Zoom and before tape recorders and digital and all that stuff. So there wasn't any way to really... I guess we could have recorded
it. Anyway, I had my outline that I used for my message. Whenever
I filled in for him, I always just left him a copy on his desk. And this particular lesson that
I did for Wednesday night came from 1 Thessalonians chapter
1. in v. 4-5, it says, Knowing,
brethren, beloved, your election of God for our Gospel came not
unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost,
and in much assurance, as you know what manner of men we were
among you for your sake. Now, the theme of the The class
that I taught that night wasn't really about election. It was
about the gospel going out in word only or in the power of
the Holy Spirit. So in that lesson, I brought out that we don't control
which way that goes out. When we preach the gospel, we
deliver the gospel, and our responsibility is to deliver
the gospel as we received it, intact, without taking anything
out and without adding anything, but just deliver it as it was
meant to be delivered. And then we leave the rest to
the Holy Spirit because it says, It has to go out in word and
in power and in the Holy Ghost before it's effectual. As it
mentions in Hebrews chapter 4, the gospel was preached unto
us as well as unto them, but unto them, the children of Israel
in the wilderness. it was ineffectual in them not
being mixed with faith. And so we have to have that extra
added external application from the Holy Spirit to make that
effectual. And we can't really do it. And kind of one of the reasons
that I brought that message was because the religious folks up
there were pretty much in the habit of beating up the congregation
and saying, your family's going to hell because you're not witnessing
to them night and day, and not getting in their face, and you
need to be witnessing to them all the time in everything you
do. And I said, no. You know, if you preach the gospel
to them one time, then it's up to the Holy Spirit. It's out
of your hands then. Whether you preach it to them
one time or a thousand times, it's irrelevant. If they ask
you a thousand times, then go for it. But if you just try to
force it on them all those times without the aid of the Holy Spirit,
it's just going to have the opposite effect. And everybody just kind
of mopped their brow. How wonderful. I said, yeah,
just deliver the Gospel, and then it's out of your hands. And Paul was kind of that way
in Romans 9. He was like a lot of us. He had his family and friends
that were Jewish. And he says, oh, I wish I could
be a curse from Christ for my kids' sake. If that would be
the thing that could deliver them, but we know that that's
not the case. But that just shows you how deeply
he felt about his family and friends. That's no different
for us today. We feel the same thing. But back
to the story. The pastor picked that, I left
the outline on his desk and he picked it up and he got to the
E word, knowing your election. He never read another thing.
He didn't read any of the points in the outline that talked about
how the Gospel is delivered and who, namely the Spirit, has power
over that. I got fired. We got thrown out. It just went ugly from there
on. I just was kind of flabbergasted
that somebody would hate a truth out of the Bible that much that
they would take that exception to it. The doctrine of election
is just unpalatable. It's highly offensive to people
that are unbelievers. It just is. There's just no getting
around that. They brought in some hired guns
from Texas to come and at Saltus. It just got awful. And what kind
of brought this to my mind was when Wayne Boyd was up last week
and he and I were talking about it and how different it is to
preach the Gospel to people that believe. And they believe the
doctrines of grace. And these things are not offensive
to them. They're wonderful things to them
because they know that what Jesus said in John. He said, no one
comes to the Father but by Me. And He says, and no one comes
unless the Father which sent Me draw him. There has to be
those supernatural things that occur. We know we can go out
there and preach the Gospel, or we can go down to the post
office like this fellow downtown every day and hold our sign up. It's probably ineffectual because
most of the time he doesn't have anything scriptural, just some
opinion pieces that he has. Anyway, how wonderful it is to
be in a place where it's a word that's not hated. And people know that that's what
makes the difference between us and anyone else, or everyone
else. So 33 years here, it is 33 years
later, and Wednesday night. So I get to talk about election
all I want, because everybody here loves it. I chose Romans chapter 9 because
it's kind of a watershed scripture on this, because Paul, writing
by the Spirit, by the purpose of God who directed all his steps,
addresses the main fundamental arguments of the opponents of
free grace. I mean, he asks the questions that he knows are going
to be on the minds of those people that are going to be opposing
him. And they were like he was, you know, the Jews. Jesus was
no Messiah to them. So he writes things that are
like, what do you say when someone asks you this? And then he gives
the scriptural answer from the Old Testament, which is what
they had to work with then. So he poses each question that
he knows full well is going to be put forth by those who count
on their own devices instead of the grace provided by Christ. The fundamental objections are,
and boy this is the thing that separates everyone in grace,
is the sovereignty of God, is actually believing that God is
actually sovereign. And that means absolute sovereign. Not just sovereign about this
or sovereign about that. Or He begins this and then kind
of lets things roll on their own. He's absolute sovereign
and absolute ruler of everything. And then another objection is
that the true nature of man as a result of the fall leads to
a series of errors and mischaracterizations of God, of His righteousness
and of His justice. They think that he would approach
those things as they would approach them, and they don't understand
why he would approach them from his position as being the sovereign
that gets to decide how he wants to approach them and not in compliance
with their wishes. So those truths are really offensive
to the unsaved, to the unregenerate, and so as a result, They try
evasion and contextual misrepresentation to what those words in the Bible
say in plain expression that are clear and spoken truly plainly
and easily understood. You know, when the Lord first
introduced me to sovereign grace, I thought, well, that's right
there in the Bible. Why wouldn't just anybody just understand that
and know that? And then you go through this
phase, well, if I define those words, if I have them in my message
and I define them, well, in Strong's Concordance, it says predestination
means to mark out beforehand. Prohorizo is the Greek word for
that. It means to mark out beforehand
and to set a goal. a destination or a place or an
election. We have elections all the time
here and everybody understands that election means to choose
someone, but they only get really upset about it when God is the
elector, the person that does the choosing. And foreknowledge,
well, God had a crystal ball and he foreknew who was going
to believe or he knew who was going to repent and turn around
and all those misrepresentations of how those things are in actuality. You know, the 8th chapter of
Romans, and Mike just mentioned briefly here a minute ago in
828, 829, 830, 831, whom He did foreknow, them He did predestinate
to be conformed to the image of His Son. And over more than
that, he says, whom he did predestinate, then he called, and whom he called
he also glorified. So every one of those things
describes an action that God takes, and the person is just
the affected recipient of it. That's plain as day. But you
have to really rest those scriptures to come up with some of the contortions
that they put those through. And it's so wonderful to just
go someplace and be able to say, well, this is what it means.
And everybody says, yeah, that's pretty clear. So here he uses
again the process of anticipating objections that Paul does, stating
them and then answering them, answering that objection from
the scriptures. Let's go back there to... when he closes out, we just love
those. My good friend up in Alaska always
said, Romans 8.28-30, he says, it's called the golden chain
of redemption. And then when he gets to verse
31, he takes the same tactic and he says, well, what should
we say to these things? What's your question? If God
is for us, who can be against us? And then he says, another
question, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
There's that E word again. the ones that God has chosen,
it's God that justifies. Then he says, who is he that
condemneth? Well, nobody can condemn because
Christ died and is risen again, that makes intercession for us.
Then he says, who can separate us from the love of Christ? And
then he says, no one, absolutely no one. And none of these things
that he lists here, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine,
nakedness, perils, And he says, as it is written, so there's
a direct reference to the Old Testament, that here's where
I got that answer from. He says, as it is written, for
thy sake we're killed all the day long, we're counted as sheep
of the slaughter. And so he goes on through the end of the chapter.
Then he gets to chapter 9 here, where we are today. And he says,
I say the truth in Christ. In verse 1, I lie not, my conscience
also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great
heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish
that myself were accursed from Christ for my brother and my
kinsmen according to the flesh who are Israelites to whom pertaineth
the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving
and the law and the service of God and the promises. And now
we come to the message here tonight is about
election and he uses four examples of election here. to back up
what he just got through saying in chapter 8 and chapter 7 and
6 and 5 and 4 and 3 and 2 and 1. And so he said, my brother and my
kinsmen, they think that just because that they're physical
descendants from Abraham that they're in, that they're guaranteed
certain things. And he says, whose are the fathers? And of whom, as concerning the
flesh, Christ came who is over all. So he's talking about the
fathers. He's saying Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all the patriarchs,
Moses, all the ones that they looked to through time to say
that this is where my my security lies. I'm in from those guys. And he says, so not as though
the word of God had taken none effect, for they are not all
Israel which are of Israel. So he makes a division right
there. He says there's some Israelites there that are They're unbelievers. They do not recognize the Messiah.
They didn't recognize Him in the Old Testament. They didn't
recognize Him in the wilderness. They didn't recognize Him from
the garden on. And before they were called Israelites,
before Abraham, He says, they are not all Israel, which are
of Israel neither, because they are the seed of Abraham are they
called children, but in Isaac shall thy seed be called. So
now he's made a distinction and he says, okay, he's talking about
election here and he says, Isaac is the promise, is the seed of
the promise. and Isaac is the elect, and the
others are the non-elect. So those that come spiritually
through Isaac are the elect, and the others are not. That
is, they which are, in verse 8, they which are the children
of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children
of the promise are counted for the seed. Well, you know, when
we go back to the Old Testament, We look at Isaac and his half-brother. One of them was children of the
flesh. Ishmael was a child of the flesh. He was not even from
the same mother, and he was procreated in a most natural way. But Isaac
was a promise. The Lord went to Rebekah and
said, you're going to have a son, and he is going to be the seed
of promise. And so Sarah is what I was looking
for, because that's in verse 9 here. For this is the word
of promise. Let's back up and finish verse
8. That is, they which are the children
of the flesh, These are not the children of God, but the children
of the promise are counted for the seed. For this is the word
of promise, at this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son."
So that's the Lord speaking there and saying this is what's going
to happen. And not only this, Not only that
one, those two, Ishmael and Isaac, one chosen, one not chosen. In
Galatians, I think it says, we're not children of the bond woman,
but children of the free. And a direct reference to that
situation there. And not only that, but when Rebekah
also had conceived by one, even by her father Isaac, for 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,
the Lord said unto her, there's two nations in thy womb. and
the elder is going to serve the younger. And you can go back
and look at that in Genesis and review that happening there when
she gave birth and all the things that went on with that. And it
was said to her, the elder shall serve the younger. That's what
God said. As it is written, Again, a reference to the Old Testament
there in Malachi. Jacob have I loved, but Esau
have I hated. What should we say then? So here
he goes back to the question postulation thing. He says, okay,
so we've established that God said these two things to these
two women and have produced two results, the elect and the non-elect
in both cases. He says, so what should we say
then? Is God unrighteous because he made that choice? Is God unrighteous
because he said, I've decided to choose these and not those? So then we go back to the Old
Testament. He says, well, he said to Moses, I'll have mercy
on whom I'll have mercy. I make that choice. And I'll
have compassion on whom I'll have compassion. And if you go
back and read that, he says, in whom I will, I'll hardeneth.
So the question then, the truth comes back to sovereignty again,
which is the other detestable thing to the people that are
not saved is that they don't like God being sovereign and
making a choice like that. They like to think that they
have a voice in their situation. They want to have some control
over their destiny, over their actions, and they generally make
that up as they go because Anybody with any real sense of truth
knows that you fail on a daily basis. And so you would say,
well, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be good. And then the next day, they say,
well, starting Thursday, I'm going to fly a ride. I'm not going to sin anymore.
And you always fail at that. And there's no hope in that,
because it's failure after failure after failure. But the natural
man can always rationalize that, saying, well, God will understand.
God will look at my circumstances and say, well, he didn't have
a lot of choice there. He was kind of forced to do those
things or say those things. And it really doesn't come down
to that. It just comes down to unbelief.
That's the main issue. So he said to Moses, I'll have
mercy on whom I'll have mercy and I'll have compassion on whom
I will have compassion. That's the word of God. In verse
16, he says, so then, because of what it says, just what we
just read. So then, it's not of him that
willeth, nor him that runneth, but God that showeth mercy. For
the scripture, then he goes back to the Old Testament again and
he says, He tucked Moses in the crack of the rock. Moses said,
show me your glory. And then he tucked him in there
and he says, I'll have mercy on him. I'll have mercy and whom
I have compassion, I'll have compassion. And then he talks
about Pharaoh. For the Scripture saith unto
Pharaoh, even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I
might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared
throughout all the earth." Well, we see that over and over and
over again. The Bible is, well, who did sin, this man or his
parents, that he was born blind? And Jesus says he wasn't. His blindness is not a result
of his sin or his parents. It was a determined issue by
God the Father I might display His power and make it known throughout
all the earth. The same principle there in the
New Testament as in the Old. He raised up Pharaoh for the
same purpose and hardened his heart, and hardened his heart,
and hardened his heart. Even when he kind of relented
a little bit, he hardened it some more and then he chased
after him and then he drowned them all. So, therefore, Hath
he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardeneth."
Sovereign, absolute sovereign in that decision making according
to his purpose and according to his will. Okay, so then we get to the next
question. He says, well, thou will say
unto me, why did he find fault for who hath resisted as well?
So if God didn't choose me, it's not my fault. If I don't do what he said, he
didn't choose me then. But you know, people don't really
say that. They don't believe in the choosing
part to start with. And so they're not going to question
somebody they don't believe about something that they don't believe
happened. So why does he find fault in me? And we know the hired guns they
brought in from Texas to assault us said, you darn Calvinists. You just think that if you believe
what the Calvinists believe, that everybody's just like a
puppet on a string, and they can't move on their own. They
have no free will. They just dance around on the strings as
God directs them. We were just trying not to ratch
at that point. But again, he goes to the Old
Testament. And he says, well, here's what's
written in the Old Testament. Thou wilt say unto me, why doth
he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
He says, no. Oh man, who art thou that replyest
against God? Shall the thing form, saying
to him that formed it, why have you made me thus? They don't
ever say that. It's an illusion there, but he
says, hath not the powder, power over the clay of the same lump
to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? There
we have the election principle again. The ones that he elected. to himself through Christ are
the vessel unto honor and the other, the non-elect unto the
dishonored. And the non-elect, the dishonorable
ones, they want nothing to do with God. That's why the scripture
says that the natural man is enmity against God. He doesn't
want anything to do with God. And if he has some inkling of
God, he wants it on his own terms. He wants it just like Cain, the
very first instance that we have of that, where Abel brought firstlings
of his flock and did a sacrifice. And Cain says, eh, I'm not doing
that. I'm not going to go ask my brother
and buy one of his sheep and take it over here and do the
thing that we were instructed in. I've done this. This ought
to be good enough. And if God doesn't like that,
well, so much for him. So he brought his produce from
his garden and stuff, and God says, no, that does not represent
the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. And
he had not respect unto Cain's offering. Well, then Cain got
really mad and slew his brother. And we know how the rest of that
went. But he never blamed himself.
He never says, well, God didn't choose me, that's why I had to
kill my brother. He just was angry and he did it. Because
that was his nature. And so hath not the potter power
over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor
and another unto dishonor? What if? So that came out of
Isaiah and Jeremiah, the potter thing. I'll look those up for
you. I have them in my notes that
I haven't looked at yet. I'm just winging it here. He said, what if God, willing
to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with
much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction,
and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the
vessels of mercy which he had aforeprepared unto glory." Right
there is a pretty powerful statement about God's activities and his
sovereignty and election. Now, this is, I think it's probably,
this reference is probably about Noah and the the vessels of mercy going in
the ark, the eight. And Peter kind of has some references
to the long suffering of God when in the days of Noah in chapter
one, verse three, I think. But he had he had mercy on the
vessels which he had aforeprepared unto glory." Well, that's what
it says in Romans 8, 28. For whom he did foreknow, them
he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. Whom
he did predestinate, them he called, and whom he called he
also justified, and them he justified and glorified. And Ephesians,
if you want to read Ephesians, first chapter of Ephesians pretty
much repeats that whole set of circumstances. And so he said,
He makes a connection here that's found in the Old Testament as
well about Christ being a light to the Gentiles and not just
the Jews, which that was another argument the Jews always put
up with. We're not to have anything to
do with anybody that's not a Jew, anybody that's not of the 12
tribes, we just don't. And even the people that are
half-breeds, like the Samaritans, we don't want nothing to do with
them. And the Scripture did say that they were not to intermarry
with other people of the land and stuff. So they took that
to heart. Probably the only thing that
they really paid much attention to. But in verse 24 he says, He's talking about the vessels
of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, even us,
whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. So as he's writing this epistle
to the Romans, there's Jews there, and there's also Gentiles there
that are receiving this letter. And then we find out later on
in another scripture, when he's closing out a letter and he says,
the household of Caesar saluteth you." So you know that some gospel
got delivered there and it came in not only in word only but
in power and in the Holy Spirit. So he introduces that the Jews
are part of the election too, not just the or the Gentile, not just the
Jews only. As he saith also in Hosea, I will call them my people,
which were not my people, and her beloved, which was not beloved,
and it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said
unto them, you're not my people, there shall they be called children
of the living God. So he just keeps bringing up,
he's brought up Moses, he's brought up Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and
Hosea, and now he goes to, Isaias also crieth concerning Israel,
though the number of the children of Israel be as of the sand of
the sea. Oh, there's a lot of them. He
says, a remnant shall be saved. So out of all those, it's like
in the wilderness that he made a march around 40 years till
that whole generation died off. They were not one of those people
got to go into the promised land except the spies and that was
it. Not even Moses. He got to look
at it, but he didn't get to actually enter in. So he said, I'll call them my
people, which were not my people. And Esaias cried concerning Israel,
though the number of children of Israel be as the sand of the
sea, a remnant shall be saved, for he will finish the work. Another sovereignty issue comes
up here. God finishes the work. Christ
finished the work, not the people. and cut it short and righteous,
because of short work will the Lord make upon the earth." That's
how he views it from an eternal, infinite standpoint. This is
going to be a blinking eye to him. As Isaiah said before, except
the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed. Now he's talking about
election. If I would have just let everybody
make up their own mind whether they wanted to come to me or
not, whether they wanted to repent, whether they wanted to come seek
out the Lord. We'd have just been like Sodom
and Gomorrah. We'd have just been all destroyed. He said, except the Lord of Sabaoth
had left us a seed, we had been as Sodom had been made like unto
Gomorrah. So he says, what should we say
then? What do we say about that? That the Gentiles, which followed
not after righteousness have attained unto righteousness,
even the righteousness which is of faith. Yes, one of the
interesting things is that The Jews had all the benefits. They
had all the law. They had the prophets. They had
the actual Lord God Almighty appearing to them in a cloud
and in the fire and speaking to them through various prophets
and Moses. And the Gentiles had none of
that. They were just floating around in this heathen abyss
of their own making. They had nothing. They had none of
the advantages of the Jews, who didn't take advantage of the
advantages that they had. So what do we say then about
the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness? because
they are going to say, well, how is that fair? God is our
God. We had Him all the way from the
beginning, and now you're saying that the Gentiles get Him too?
They've attained righteousness, even the righteousness which
is of faith, and faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the Word
of God, and faith is a thing that's brought into the Lord's
people by the Holy Spirit. It's not something that they
come up with by themselves. It says in Ephesians, by grace
are you saved through faith. And that, not of yourselves,
it's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So,
in Ephesians 119. even our belief. We believe according
to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ
when He raised Him from the dead. So even we can't come up with
faith, can't come up with belief. And in our natural condition,
we're at enmity. So what would hinder us from
just choosing God? It's kind of like Adam in the
garden. He could have chose God. After
his sin, he could have said, I'm sorry. I sinned." But no,
he went the other way, and God had to come to him and come to terms with it. So the Gentiles being included
in the election, but Israel, and he brings up Israel again,
the national Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness,
hath not attained to the law of righteousness. They said they
kept all the law, they said they kept all the sacrifices, but
they didn't. Wherefore, because they didn't
seek it by faith, but as it were by the works of the law, for
they stumbled at that stumbling stone. They didn't see Christ
in all the Scriptures. Search the Scriptures, for in
them you think you have eternal life. That's where they were.
Keeping the Law of Moses. Doing all the sacrifices. And
all those things. And thinking that they were good
because they lied to themselves and said, well, all these have
I kept from my youth up. Except for one through ten. But I'll work on those tomorrow. They sought it by the works of
the law, for they stumbled at that stumbling stone, as it is
written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock
of offense, and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. People are always trying to shame
you with religion. You're a Christian? Well, okay, if you need that
crutch. Okay, if that's what makes you
happy, you just go ahead and do that. I don't need a crutch
like that. I'm fine on my own. And you must
be really a weak individual if you need Christ. They don't even say that. If
you need religion, if you need to be that. But when the Lord
reveals Himself to someone at His appointed time, they just
said, Hallelujah! I was going to a bad place when
I was intercepted. Those are the things that we
come to grips with in the 9th chapter of Romans. Who does the
choosing? When did the choosing occur? Why did God choose some
but not others? Can man choose God? Well, the
Scriptures say, there's none that seek God. And when it means
none, that means pretty much none. Can man choose God? Well, the natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God. He doesn't receive them, he says,
neither can he know them. And that's a, can is a word that
speaks to ability. From your English class, you
remember. May means permission and can means ability. Neither
can he know them. He has no ability to know them
because they're spiritually discerned. He can't, unless a man be born
again, he can't even see the kingdom of God. So all these
things, all these truths, that we just read and all the backup
that we gave from the Old Testament, they're just words on a page
to them. They can't see the kingdom of God in them. They just read
them and say, it's just words. It doesn't mean anything. but
interwoven through all those things. We see the sovereignty
of God is exercising that sovereignty in election, not according to
merit, but solely based on his own purpose and pleasure. Because
it said, those children, before they were even born, before they
had done any works, good or evil, that the purpose of God, according
to election, might stand. It was said, the elder shall
serve the younger. So he takes away that argument,
But Robert Haldane in his commentary on Romans says, that is just
the typical evasion that they use when they come to a scripture
with a truth in it. They just don't go there. They
just avoid it. They use evasive tactics to just
skirt around it. And then they come up with some
wild, twisted version of their imagination to make it fall in with how they
conceive things to be. And I've had pastors say, this
is just high things that we're not talking about. These are
high things. And that just means I don't know
anything about these. And I don't like them. So we have these several examples
from the Old Testament that we looked at. Paul tells the same
thing to the Galatians. He says, Now we, brethren, as
Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then, he that
was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirits.
It's the same now. It's the same deal, that the
ones that are born after the flesh persecute the ones that
are born after the Spirit. Nevertheless, what saith the
Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the
bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So
then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the
free. So another classic example of
election, that the children of the bondwoman are not are not
the heirs, but the children of the free. And not just the physical
children, but the spiritual children. Jacob and Esau, Jacob have I
loved, Esau have I hated. Esau was cursed, the Edomites,
we've been looking at that off and on in Luke. Herod was an Edomite that redid
the temple. A person that God cursed from
the tribe, the people that God cursed. He said, I'm going to
make this temple the way I want it to be. And isn't that the
way religion does with God? They try to rearrange Him into
what they, their expectations and what meets with their their
ideas. He says, you thought I was altogether
one such as yourself, but I'm not. So we're about out of time, so we're
going to wrap up. Read Romans 9, 8, 9, 10, 11.
It's all good. something loved by people that
have been redeemed and see that that's the only way they would
ever come to Christ is because God the Father drew them. And
Christ said, all that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and
him that does come to me I'll not cast out. So until our next
time, next Sunday we'll be back in the Book of Luke. the power of darkness we're going
to look at there. So until next time, be free.