Alright, Romans chapter 9. Romans
9. Let's start at verse 14 and read
through verse 24. What shall we say then? Is there injustice in God's part?
By no means. For He says to Moses, I will
have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on
whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human
will or human exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture
says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose, I have raised you up
that I might show my power in you and that my name might be
proclaimed in all the earth. So then he has mercy on whomever
he wills and he hardens whosoever he wills. You will say to me,
then, why does he still find fault? For who can resist his
will? But who are you, O man, to answer
back to God? Will what is molded say to its
molder, why have you made me this way? 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? 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,
in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy,
which He has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He has
called, not from the Jews alone, but also from the Gentiles."
And we'll stop, because then he goes into Hosea. Now there's
two or three examples that need to be brought out here. Just
like last week, we saw the example of what? We saw the example of
Rebecca's kids. We saw the example of Abraham's
children, his two sons and the two sons of Rebecca and Isaac.
We saw that because of God and his sovereignty in election,
which always deals with individual human beings, his purposes for
them, An election being tied to His foreknowledge, which is
an immutable, eternal love and kindness toward or favor toward
someone. God's foreknowledge is not about
what He knows. God's omniscient, so God doesn't
need to know things beforehand. Foreknowledge is about His love
and affection. We proved that through Scripture some months
ago. Then we see election is the purpose of God through which
He shows and reveals His love, and election is the decree of
God before the foundations of the world. Ephesians chapter
1 teaches that after the counsel of His own will, God has elected
His people to be holy and blameless before Him. Now some people argue,
well, election is His process. No. Redemption is His process. His decrees are certain and true. Election is at every time dealing
with the salvation of a specific and particular people whom He
has loved eternally. Thus, those He does not love
eternally, or those He does not love eternally, are called the
reprobate. They are the ones God hates eternally. There is a ridiculousness where
people try to mold God into something that He isn't, from a cultural
or humanistic philosophy, where they would say, well, the hate
there means to love less. No, it doesn't. It means he had
no attention or care or affection for Esau. He had no care or attention
or affection for Ishmael. He had no attention or care or
affection for Pharaoh. And that's the argument that
Paul uses here. If we look back and we see what
is said there in verses 12 and 13, she was told the older will
serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob I loved,
but Esau I hated. And then that is why the question
is asked, what then shall we say? Is there injustice on God's
part? You see, there's a natural inclination
in the natural man. What has Paul already argued?
There are several things about the natural state of man in Romans
that Jesus deals with and Peter deals with. James also does the
same teaching, John in the same way. The apostles are in unity
with all of the attributes of God and all of the aspects of
the gospel. But one of the things that he
says about the nature of man is that man by nature, by nature,
remember, are objects of wrath, he tells the church of Ephesus.
And then men by nature are hostile toward God in mind and deed and
heart. So that when we see people in
their natural state, that means their ungenerated state, before
they are born again by the Spirit of God as he wishes after the
counsel of his will, John 3, that every in every respect, where people
come to try to get close to God, or to explain God, or whatever
it is that they might say, want to serve God like the Jews, that's
why we have all these examples in Scripture, is that they're
hostile toward the reality of the trueness of who God is. So
that means as God has revealed Himself through Scripture, and
Scripture alone, according to Hebrews 1, through Jesus Christ,
and that is given through the Word, the words of the prophets
and the apostles, then only those who are regenerate, only those
who are born of the Spirit can have now a new mind, not a mind
that is hostile to God, but a mind that is warm, a mind that is
affectionate, a mind that is understanding, a mind that doesn't
hear the truth of God's sovereignty and go, oh, I just don't like
that stuff, or oh, this is just not the God I know, which we've
all said before, to the point where we can say
this is the God that I trust in. This is the message of the
cross and the sovereignty of God to give peace to me, peace
with Him through Jesus Christ the Son. I have been chosen by
God with no cause of my own, with no future sense in which
I am worthy of any type of salvation and God has elected me and I
have been given grace upon grace upon grace. So let's talk first
about this example of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is told that the reason
he lived is so that God would raise him up from birth to childhood,
to manhood, to his rule, so that God's name would be made much
of throughout all the nations. As the stories were told over
and over and over again, the God of the Israelites destroyed
Egypt. The God of the Israelites sent
plagues upon Egypt. The God of the Israelites, after
He commanded what they would not do, gave no mercy. And even so, continued to harden
the heart of Pharaoh. Some people say, and we can rightly
understand it this way, that part of the ways in which God
hardens is this, or the way in which God hardens is that, but
God does not give us that information. But we can see that there's one
instrumental reality when it comes to God's hatred for certain
individuals. And that His hatred for them
is actively involved in a hardening of their heart. And while they
may have some type of warmth toward God in some way, when
they start to see the reality of His power, they hate Him even
more. When they see that He's merciful, they despise Him just
the same. And God is actively working in
that way, powerfully, to not just leave people in a state
of fallenness, but to put people in a state of reprobation. So
when we understand these things then in the way that it's taught
to us about Pharaoh, we have to recognize that God's love is tied completely
to His election and that God is just and righteous in this
work. That God is not just leaving people in their state of guilt
and thus making them the effectual reason that they are dead and
going to be judged, but God then in His righteousness also actively
works in that way. Now this is a controversial thing.
It's controversial because it's not the cultural gospel. It's
controversial because it's not the gospel of the American church. It's controversial because it
is only appealing, once we see the reality of it, to the new
mind. And even though we have been
born of God, beloved, we still have a flesh, as we see in Romans
7, that is constantly trying to choke us. trip us, punch us,
thump us in the nose, fling a booger on us, or whatever it is that
would be offensive, and I'm not making light of sin, but in that
sense of the flesh it seems like it's always nagging, it's always
doing something to cause us to be tripping over the sovereignty
of God. Whether it be our standing before
Him and the righteousness of Christ, or whether it be our
assurance before Him even though we have sinned, or whatever it
may be, even as believers we're in a war. But God is faithful. The question on the table now
back to the text is, is God in just? Is this fair? Of course
it's not fair. It's just there's a big difference.
Can things that are just be fair? It depends. That's not only just,
but it's righteous. So God cannot be put on trial
for what is fair because what is fair comes to the bar of humanity. We decide what might be fair
within our own circles of influence. We decide based on how we establish
our own laws that may even be contrary to God's law of what
is fair. Some people think it's not fair
that some children get to live while others get to die. For
example, watering my lawn today. I thought, how wasteful am I
to water a little spot of grass and a couple of plants. How wasteful
when there are many people across this great world, this vast world,
great not as in amazing, but in this vast world that have
no water. But it's not wasting water. Water
is not destroyed. It doesn't disappear to never
be water again. It just changes forms. Water
doesn't leave the planet. The molecules that make up the
water aren't turning into something else. I don't see cats coming
from the sky. And I thought, wow, what an incredible
illustration. While we have such an abundance
of water, and it cannot be lost, and it cannot be moved, and it
cannot be erased or destroyed, we have so much, we water our
grass so that it looks pretty. While some people could live
a year on what I pour out in laundry or showers. And the kids are thinking, yay,
no more baths, now you need to bathe if you can. But why is that the case? Why
is it not fair for us to bathe just because someone else has
nothing to drink? I think it would be incredibly
selfish if it was our neighbor and we were watering our grass
while they thirsted to death in front of us. Get off my grass.
Don't die over here. But that's not the case. It's
not the case to call God to the table of the fairness of what
we think is fair when it comes to how He operates out of the
counsel of His good and righteous and just will. But there are
several things that we need to see in this text, and I'm not
going to be able to fully deal with all of them. And we're going
to finish up chapter 9 most likely in two Wednesdays. If we were
to preach this and deal with it, we would stay in this probably
three to five months just in this chapter. Seriously, there's
a lot here. But for the sake of what we're trying to do midweek,
I want to continue the pace that I'm going. The answer for most people who
question, well, this is just not fair. Paul answers that,
by no means. Some of the manuscripts would
be translated, God forbid. God forbid that he would be unjust
He would have injustice in the way He operates. That is not
possible. It is not possible. And the answer
to that is that God, let me give you the whole reality of what's
happening here, God does as He pleases with whom He pleases
for His purposes and His pleasure with no respect to who we are
or what we do or what we think. And many a philosopher throughout
the ages have come to the complexity of that dichotomy and said then,
what is this God and who is this God? Now here's the answer to
that. The whole idea of Elohim, God, being the High One, whatever
language we use in the word, it is the highest of all ones. That's what God means. So he's
the highest of all ones, and he's the creator of all things,
that he can do everything he wishes, and it's always right
because all that is in his character nature is holy and righteous
and just. But in the philosophy of humanism,
that does not hunt there. As my father would say, that
dog doesn't hunt around here. Not about this, but about anything
that he doesn't like. He's the patriarch of the family.
He doesn't like it. Doesn't work. Whether it's fair,
just, or unjust. But God is not a human being.
God is not a created being. God is the ineffable everything
that makes and owns everything. And that is really the answer.
And for we who have been born of God, we come to rest in the
fact that God does as He pleases. And it is good. And it is pleasant
for us. And it is good for us. And it
is joyful for us. And we see the Holy Spirit cultivate. That's something you'll learn
this Saturday. The Holy Spirit cultivates this knowledge into
a place of constant conviction that we are certain of His goodness. But it doesn't work, does it?
for unbelievers, for false conversions, for people who are religious
but not saved, for those who have all sorts of different thoughts
about Christianity or the Bible and they read it with such a
blindness and we look at them and go, why can't you see this?
Because God has not granted them the eyes to see. That is the
answer when people look at me and they're all doe-eyed or evil-eyed
or whatever eye they want to give me and say, I just cannot. see this type of God, and I say
that only if God grants you sight will you ever see. God does as He pleases with His
mercy. God does as He pleases with His
compassion. And He does so, look at this
text. I will have mercy on whom I have
mercy. I will have compassion on whom
I have compassion. That means God will do what He
wants to do. And it is right. We may not like
that, we may not fully apprehend the depths of that, but it is
what Scripture says, and Scripture says of itself, it is the final
authority of all the revelation of the glory of God in all perfection. So we cannot create a new God
and say it is this God. And if you don't like this God
and want to use pieces of the puzzle of Scripture and say,
oh, I like pieces of this God, then call your God what He is,
an idol, false God, no God. God says in Isaiah 46, there
is no God but me. And I do all that I wish. I do
all that I do and all that I desire to do. It will come to pass.
That which I decree will come to pass. All that comes to pass
is that which I have decreed. I will send a bird where I want
him to go and I will send a man wherever I want him to walk. So God does as He pleases with
His mercy and compassion. He gives it without merit. He
gives it against human will. He gives it against human action.
He gives it against human power. Look right there. So then it,
what? God's election. That's the subject
here. Election depends on God's will
to give mercy and compassion to whom He decides and chooses
and wills to give mercy and compassion to. It does not depend upon human
will. And there is a big difference.
See, I would love to take a sermon and deal with human will and
exertion from the text here of Romans and other places like
Galatians and Ephesians and Philippians, Colossians. But it'd take a couple
of hours. For the sake of that, just take
these sound bites and prove them yourself. Don't take it from
me. There is no such thing as free will, nor has there ever
been, but there has always been something called free agency.
And a free agency acts and moves and operates. in a free sense,
but his will is bound by the condition of his nature. And
even before the fall, Adam was not free, because he was bound
by the condition of his nature, a created being of God. There is no power of man, there
is no volition of man, there is no will of man, there is no
desire of man. People in their unconverted state
who say that they sought after God have never truly found the
God of truth. Because the God of truth would
find them and show them differently. In 1 Corinthians 1, one of my
favorite passages of scripture as a younger man, not even early
college days up until probably five years into the ministry,
1 Corinthians chapter 1, for consider your calling, my brothers.
Not many of you were wise according to the world's standards. Not
many of you were powerful. Not many of you were of noble
birth. But God chose what is foolish
in this world to bring to shame that which is wise. And God chose
what is weak in the world to bring down and bring shame to
the strong. God chose what is low and despised
in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing
the things that are, so that no human being might boast in
the presence of God. Because of Him, you are in Christ
Jesus, He says, who became to us wisdom. from God, righteousness
from God, and sanctification from God, and redemption from
God, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts, boasts
in the Lord. I had a friend of mine who's preached
on this text over the last three weeks on his Sunday mornings,
and the Sunday before he preached an hour and 21 minutes. And I'm like, yes, I no longer
hold the record in my circle. But he made the comment, if we
were to look and see the life of Jacob and Esau, we probably
would have loved Esau. The man had a top A personality.
He had it all going for him. He didn't want to hand me down
from anybody. He didn't want to hand out. He was a made man of
his own accord. He did it all. He didn't need
anybody. He refused everything that was his by law and by birth. He just didn't want it. Jacob
was a liar, deceiving snake in the grass. Never doing much except to help
himself. So we, I thought about that as
he said that, you know what, I probably wouldn't have liked
Jacob either. But God loved Jacob. God hated
Esau. Before the foundations of the
world. And the reason these men's lives
looked the way they did is so that the world, in the fairness
and the judgment of their lives, would look at Esau and say, that
was the guy to look after. And they'd look at Jacob and
go, don't be like this guy. The very name Jehobas, which
is what my Greek name comes from, James, means to supplant her.
The guy that takes what's not his. so that before they were ever
conceived, in order for God's decree of election to stand,
He said the younger shall serve the older. Why? Why did this take place? Why is election, predestination,
in effect, in full force? Because it is after the counsel
of God's own will. He gives mercy. and gives life, and He hardens
and causes death. How is man guilty then? Paul
asks. There's no injustice. Man is
not off the hook. What's going on? Why does God
still find fault if this is true, if He's sovereign in this work? Because men are guilty before
they are conceived as sinners. Did you realize that? And I'm
going to say this, and we can always qualify what I mean when
I say these things, but this issue of the fallen nature of
all human beings, indeed headbutts the gospel of sovereign grace
to a place when people double down on the goodness and the
innate freedom of humanity against the instruction of Scripture,
I fear they're lost. Man is guilty as sinners before
they're ever conceived. All humanity is guilty. Remember
what I said last week, there are two groups of people here.
Those who are in Adam and those who are in Christ. Those who
are in Jacob, well let's put it the other way, Esau or those
who are in Jacob. Those who are in Cain, those
who are in Abel. Those who are in Pharaoh, those
who are in Moses, who are all pictures of Christ. What's the
bottom line? Your righteousness is either
the obedience and righteousness of Jesus Christ, or your righteousness
is guilt before God by which you will be judged. You will
die on your sins if Christ is not your righteousness, for He
died and you with Him, beloved. Man is guilty. The next argument. This is not new philosophy, is
it? The next argument. Then who can resist His will?
Why are we guilty if we can't resist His will? How does God answer this? He
answers it just like He answers Job. Question, question, question,
question, question, question. And God says, Who are you, O
man, to talk back to Me? I have said this is who I am. I have said this is what I do. And it is just and righteous
and glorious. Who do you think you are asking
of me to explain myself? God doesn't have to explain Himself. I've recently been in conversations
with several families, not locally. I mean, they're within driving
distance, I guess. And two of them have come to
the place where they hate me because they hate that answer. How do you justify God's love
with Romans 9? Paul says it. The love of God
has not failed. I am in the love of God and I
am a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin. Remember his ethnic resume of
Philippians. circumcised on the eighth day,
given the name of Saul, the first king. Parents are Jews of all
Jews. I'm a zealot. I'm a Pharisee. But it's all garbage. It's all
worthless. It's all nothing. The countless
view of Christ and what I've gained in Him. For to live is
Christ and to die is much far better. That's what it says.
I get so much more to die. But to live is also Christ. So
whether I live or die, I live this life by faith in the Son
of God who gave Himself for me. Before that, He says that He
is not alive in Himself, but it is Christ who lives in Him. Who can resist His will? Who
can resist your will, O God? God says, who do you think you
are? That which I have made, talking back to me and asking
why. See, the deal is that God is not on the hook for being
unfair, because God is God. And even in a common sense system
of justice, it is so righteous to condemn those who are guilty
of sin. And it is so righteous to save
those when the sinless one has taken away their guilt and their
punishment. That's why Paul argues so passionately
as he does in Romans 3. The whole world, according to
Romans 2, is guilty before God. But God's righteousness is displayed
apart from the law. The law is a shadow to the righteousness
of God. The righteousness of God is displayed
perfectly in the giving of Jesus Christ to be propitiation. Jesus took guilt on Himself and
we are forgiven. God's Word says here, cannot
the potter take the same lump of clay and make pots for whatever
purpose he wants out of the same lump? Imagine that. I'm going
to mix my clay and I need a flower pot, or I need a vase, or I need
a dish, or I need a decorative plate, or I need a poop pot. Or a bedpan. Or a vomit bowl. Or a hog trough. Or something to shoot at the
range. Same lump of clay. Some of these
vessels I will take and set apart and look at and say, look at
this that I love. Look at the painting that I did on that plate.
Look at what I made. And some of them I go, I'm going
to poop in this. I'm going to throw it away when I'm through. That's
what Paul's giving. That's the analogy that Paul's
making. I don't know about you, but our porcelain thrones at
our homes, we don't really spend much time except to clean them
out every now and then. Do you decorate it? Do you polish
it? Do you talk to it? Put little
seasonal decor on the back of it? Do you store what's in it
after a couple of days so you can get the full use out of it?
I know you flush that stuff at me. If it doesn't work, you replace
it and throw it away. This is the reality of God doing
what He wishes with His people and it is just and it is righteous. Those who for honorable use,
God saves in Christ Jesus and He has loved them eternally before
the foundation of the world. With no respect whatsoever to
who they were or what decision they would make or what actions
they would do. He does not care. and for dishonorable
use. And he throws it out. And through all of this, you
might say, then why? Because God's glory is revealed. Look at this latter part of this
text. Who are you to talk back to God? Why are you going to
say to the one who molded, would the pot say, why did you make
me this way? I'll do what I want to do. What if God, verse 22, Desiring to show His wrath on
what? Sinners. Guilty people. And to make known His power.
Now who's in view here? Pharaoh. It's the exact same thing that
he just said about Pharaoh. I'll raise Pharaoh up so I might
destroy him and show my power and then flush him when I'm through.
And it's good that God did it. It's righteous that He did it
because God is just. Pharaoh's guilty. And so is James
Tippins. The only difference is that God
has foreknown me before the foundation of the world and applied my sin
to his son and applied Jesus righteousness to me. But what if God is our show's
wrath to make known as power has endured with much patience
vessels of wrath? That's like not flushing, right? And having to travel and you
see that stop and you're going, oh yes, we need to have a pit
stop. You walk in there and it's like a murder scene in the bathrooms.
You'd be better off to go outside and fall down a hill and run
into traffic. Because of how filthy some of
these bathrooms are. It ought to be a crime. It's terrible. Y'all know what I'm talking about.
Imagine having to tolerate that. Imagine the king of a foreign
or sovereign nation driving through and just stopping in a place
like that. It's the reason they fly. And he walks in and, I shall
not use this facility. I mean, you know, having to tolerate
that. Imagine God having to tolerate
vessels of wrath with much patience that are prepared for destruction.
Now I'm going to say this right here, and I typically don't jump
on somebody's cupcake like this. I'm not even going to give you
a name, but there is a very famed theologian who takes verse 22
and says that human beings prepare themselves for destruction. I've never seen a pot pop out
of a lump of clay. What is that? Get a lot of rain
down in South Georgia, you get that red clay. I lived on a clay
road as a kid, teenager. Sometimes that Mustang, I mean,
I was three inches from going into the pond. And out of all
that clay, after hours of rain, I never saw a birdbath just... Never saw clay pigeons pop out
of there, so we could go to the range with them. It's a second
range reference tonight. I never saw a bowl. I never saw
a toilet. I never saw anything but mud there and clay there.
It takes a Master Creator to bring into existence and He makes
it either into a vessel of honor and glory or He makes it into
a vessel of wrath. God makes the vessel for its
use. Man does not make himself an
object of wrath. I will suggest that that man
needs to really check his theology. So if you ever hear that, you
know it's Harrison. And it is Harrison. but he endures with much patience. Vessels of wrath prepared to
destruction in order..." Why would he do that? "...to make
known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he
has prepared beforehand for glory." Before they're ever made, like
Jacob and Esau. Before they're ever known by
this world. Before their parents were ever
born. He prepared beforehand. By faith you have been saved. Not of works. By grace you have
been saved through faith. And this is a gift of God that
you may not boast. For you are God's workmanship
created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared before
the foundations of the world for you to walk in. Glory is
believing in the glory of God and redemption. Verse 24, Even us whom He called
See, God prepared us for glory. Who are we talking about, Paul? Us! That's what He says. Us!
Even us! We who are alive today and writing
to you, you Christians in Rome of Jewish descent and Gentile
descent, us, all of us, even us who are in Christ, He called
before the foundations of the world for glory. See, this is security. This is
security. This is eternal assurance. This
is eternal security. Election is secure. Jesus, we
haven't heard in John 15 yet. We will be one day. You did not
choose me, but I chose you and I appointed you that you should
go and bear fruit. So we know the difference in
the election of these people and the purpose of the work of
these people. Election is not what Jesus wants
them to do. Election is Jesus taking them
and saving them. because of God's sovereign predestination. That you would go, bear fruit,
and your fruit should abide. What is that fruit? Believing
in me, that is the fruit, so that whatever you ask in the
Father's name, He may give to you. John 17, 6, I have manifested
your name, He prays. In the High Priestly Prayer.
To the people whom you gave me out of the world. Does that echo
John 6? To yours they were, and you gave
them to me, and they have kept your word." You see? God's election puts people in
the covenant of redemption. And if you're not in the covenant
of redemption, you won't see redemption. Nehemiah, you are
the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur, the
Chaldeans, and gave him the name Abraham, which means the father
of many. You found his heart faithful before you, and you
made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land
of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the
Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise,
for you are righteous. See, election is secure. It is
what God does. It is His means. It is the foundation
of all the means that He uses for salvation. It is from which
all the means flow, is what I'm trying to say. The last question
that I want to answer tonight, though there are many that we
should come to try to think of so many times, and some of you
have asked this question of me. How do I know that I am elect? Am I chosen by God? Now there
are many people who give you demonic doctrine as to look in
the mirror. and to test your affections.
They'll give you all sorts of tests that aren't found in Scripture.
And they'll say, oh yeah, if you stop cursing, you know you're
in the Lord. Or if you love to go to church,
you know you're in the Lord. Or if you don't drink, smoke,
cuss, or dance, or date girls who do, you're probably in the
Lord. And all these other things. Oh, you must desire obedience.
Then you know you're in the Lord. And these are all wrong. That's
what happens when you don't. What happens when you just want
to get even? What happens? What happens when
the person, even our children, parents, that we love with all
our heart, we just want to thump them in the nose a little harder
than legal. Just, you know, just enough to
make it go. Where's our heart then? Is it
seeking after God? That flesh that continually trips
us up and chokes us out, wants us to fight. What does Paul say?
Paul says, it is Christ who saves me from this body of death. It
is the promise of God. It is the salvation of God. It
is the election of God. It is the work of God. This is
not a way to know that you're elect. What does the Bible say? And I'll start with John 6 because
it is one of the greatest evidences that we see there. All that the
Father gives to me will come to me. Pay close attention here.
Have you come to believe in the sovereign grace of Jesus Christ
for His elect? You have come to believe. You rest. You know. You're convinced. Faith! That is the only task we have,
that we believe, even in the midst of our sin, that Christ
is our righteousness and that He took our guilt and God satisfied
His wrath on Jesus. And some people say, well, you
know, anybody can say they believe that. No, they can't. It's hidden to the self-righteous, from the
self-righteous. All the Father gives to me will
come. Whoever comes to me, I will never
cast out. So we see the other side of that.
Somebody can come up and say, I believe in the grace of God.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A month from now, I don't believe
in that junk. Jesus says, for I've come down
from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who
sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should
lose nothing of all that he has given me. But all that he has
given me, I will give eternal life and raise them up on the
last day. For this is the will of my father, that everyone who
sees the son Believing in Him will have eternal life, and I
will give Him eternal life and raise Him up the last day. I
added for clarity to that text, for those of you who know it
by heart, John 6, 37, 38, 39, 40. And there's tons of texts, but at the time
we have, there's another text. 1 Thessalonians 1, verses 4 and
5. For we know, brothers, we know, brothers, beloved of God, Beloved by God, that he has chosen
you. See, that's a that's a good statement.
We know brothers who is who are loved by God, that he has chosen
you. How? Because our gospel came to you
not only in word. What does he say? We didn't just
come teaching. We didn't just come do sessions
and conferences. We didn't just come say, blah, blah, blah, gospel,
gospel, gospel, and everybody thought, yeah, that sounds good.
Let's get on board. But in power. And in the Holy Spirit. And with
full conviction. You see, God regenerated his
elect in Thessalonica who were lost and far from Christ. without
hope in the world, as Paul would say to the Ephesians. And the
gospel of grace was preached to them, and in the teaching
of the scripture, they came to have full conviction that what
they were hearing was not just true, but it was the only applicable
and effectual way they could stand righteous before God. They
trusted not in themselves in any way, but trusted in Christ
alone. And you know what kind of man
we prove to be among you for your sake. What's the outcome
of it? What's the outcome of election?
What's the outcome of all this sovereign grace? It is all. Let me change that. It is the
only thing that displays the worth of God's name to us. That we can enjoy intimately
with Him. For the world and everything in it has been made by Him. And
Paul says in the very first chapter of this letter that all men are
without excuse, for God has made Himself known, and His attributes
are clearly seen in the things that He has made, specifically
or namely His divine power. So we can see the glory of God
as a shadow, like Moses did, that walked around. Moses wanted
to see God's glory. Abraham wanted to see God's glory.
Jacob wanted to see God's. Everybody wants to see God's
glory. The only ones who can see God's glory are the ones
who are elect. And the only ones who are elect
are the ones who will be born again. And the only ones who
are born again will be granted faith. And then we can see God's
glory. Glory as the only Son of the
Father, full of grace and truth. For from Moses we received the
law, but from Christ we received grace upon grace. No one has ever seen God but
He, the one and only God who sits at His side and makes Him
known. So what's the outcome? Paul says it cleared in Ephesians
1, twice. To the praise of His glorious
grace. His grace and mercy and kindness toward us, His love
toward us is glorious. And when we see it, we just rejoice
and we say, thank you Father for saving me, not thank you
Father for changing me. That's not a bad thing to say
thank you for, but it's not where our hat is hung for assurance
or hope. Because in a snap of a finger, proverbially, God could
make that change undone. Not from a position of faith,
but when we think our lives are running in a godly way, oh my
goodness, the trip wire is liable to take our head off. to the praise of His glorious
grace. Paul closes out, he doesn't close, he segues into this discussion
that we're in today by stating we are more than conquerors through
Him who loved us, Jesus Christ, from which we can never escape
His love. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Not our
sin, not our failings, not our doubt, not our unbelief, none
of it. For if God is for us, then who
can be against us? No one can accuse us. We can't
accuse ourselves. And even when that happens, we
are still God's righteousness in Christ alone. No one will snatch us out of
the hand of Christ. And friends, that is the gospel
we need to proclaim. The gospel of free grace. That it is God
who gives freely His mercy as He sees fit. The gospel of sovereign
grace. And that God is ruler over His
own work. And He does everything without
any, without any, sense into what creatures shall do. What did Paul say? Because that's
an argument I get a lot in the last few minutes. I get that
argument. Then why evangelize? Because God is glorified in bringing
His elect to faith. And my heart beats for the elect
of God. I want to teach them and I want
to reach them. Who are they? Only God knows.
He will bring them to life. He will save them. He will raise
them up on the last day. And they will believe. And so we proclaim this gospel.
Paul said that many times in that same little discourse we
talked about earlier. But I do all that I do for the sake of
the elect. That it's grace, 2 Corinthians 4, I read this Sunday morning,
that it's grace continues to work and reach more and more
people to the praise of God and thanksgiving. I live for the
sake of the elect, those who God is reaching with His grace,
the elect of God. And we see that Paul also had
a heart for his kinsmen in the flesh, for some reprobates. Of
course, we love them. We pray that God may bring His
people home. But we cannot separate the teaching
of God's sovereign grace and His love for His people and the
teaching of God's sovereign reprobation and the hatred of those who are
not. And that both of these realities are God's sovereign doing. And that God is not just fair. He's righteous and just and sovereign
in these things. May our hearts be affixed for
the sake of the elect of God that we would proclaim the gospel
of free and sovereign grace. And I've run out of time, so
let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the truth of Scripture. Lord,
there's not enough time in the week, there's not enough time
in these moments that we have midweek to go through everything
the way I want. Father, you know the list that
I have of scripture that I wanted to go through. You know everything
that's rolling around in my head, but Lord, You are sovereign even
in the teaching of Your Word. So that which we've learned tonight,
even though it is significantly small in the scope of all of
this and many things have been missed, Lord, may You allow me
to see and pick up that which is necessary for our joy and
to cultivate our wisdom and maturity in Christ as we continue. Father, I pray for us. I pray
that you would take the gospel into all the corners of the world
and it would bring your people to faith, to the praise of your
glorious grace. Father, I pray for those who seem so utterly
against the truth, Lord. Father, we pray that they would
be saved. We pray that they would be elect.
But only You know, so God, we trust in You. Let us evangelize
in that heartbeat, putting all, all responsibility on You, Father. Not us, and not those who hear. We pray these things in the name
of Jesus. Amen.