Chapter 9. It's so funny, for
some reason last week when I was going through this, I thought,
oh, I'll finish this up in two weeks, never gonna happen. Romans 9, it's
gonna be one of those, it's gonna be one of those long, those long
seasons. But then, you know, we get to
Romans 10, it'll go a little quicker, et cetera. But I don't
know how many more weeks we'll be in Romans, but we'll just
sort of take it as it comes. Tonight I have entitled this
message, several different things, but something along this idea
that divine election and divine rejection support the authority
of Scripture and are supported by the authority of Scripture.
We as protesters, as Protestants, we come to the place where we
hold to one of the pillars of our historical faith and that
is sola scriptura. Of course, that is something
that comes from the Word of God itself in that all Scripture
is breathed out by God and is useful and profitable that makes
the man of God successful. But it had to be restated, and
every time you turn around, it has to be continually restated.
We see evidences of a failure to believe in the sufficiency
of Scripture, even by those people who say they believe in the what?
Inerrancy of Scripture. There's a lot of people, yeah,
I'm a Christian, yeah, I'm a believer, yeah, I believe in the Bible,
yeah, I believe that it's not having error, yeah, I believe,
I believe, I believe, but in that same breath, they will come
around and argue with you about what it actually says. then they
will argue hermeneutics. They will say, well, that's your
interpretation or that's your understanding or that's the way
you read it. Now we know that the two scientific
terms related to interpretation are known as exegesis and eisegesis. Exegesis is that we get the meaning
of a text out of the text. Eisegesis means that we read
into the text what's not there And most people eisagee scripture.
I'm not to say that all of us don't have some bias or presupposition. We don't have some prior learning.
We all have things traditionally that we've thought about, have
been taught. We all have things that emotionally
or even psychologically that we may not agree with, philosophically,
that may come into the flavor of our interpretation of scripture.
But the word of God is written in such a way that it leaves
no room for manifold interpretations. The Bible says what it says,
and it says what it says in context, which is where the meaning comes
from. And there's always an argument, it seems like, lately, when I
say lately for a thousand years, where people want to create a
God that loves all people, that saves all people, that blesses
all people, but yet we cannot find that God in any passage
of Scripture. And that's a problem for some
folks. It was a problem for the Pharisees,
that God would not love them in all of their glory. It's a
problem for religious people today. It's a problem for self-righteous
people. It's a problem for Baptists.
It's a problem for Methodists. It's a problem for non-denominationalists.
It's a problem for Biblicists. It's a problem for all human
beings if indeed they are not born of the Spirit. And so as
we come to this text and look at it, we're gonna be verse six
through 13 today. We need to recognize that what
we're about to have shown to us is not open for interpretation. As a matter of fact, the way
Paul explains what he does through the examples that he uses, which
is Rebecca and her twin boys, and then, oh goodness, Isaac. and Sarah
and Abraham. He's doing so to eliminate any
human bias. Paul is expressly positing through
didactic literature, he's actually teaching very clearly and dogmatically
that God doesn't care, nor does he make his choices based on
the volition, will, desire, essence of a human being. and that election
by definition is salvation for God's people. I've been typing over the last
few weeks, I've been putting up on Facebook about two hours
ahead of time what we're studying on Wednesday nights because some
people weren't showing up because they thought we'd canceled service
because I took a break out of Romans. So I'm like, well, I'll
just make sure that I announce we're still having church. And tonight, I put up what we
were talking about. Of course, one of my brothers
comes up and says, oh, you're not skipping Romans 9? And that
was a joke. It's not necessarily an inside
joke. It's an outside joke. Everybody skips Romans 9. When
you look into even some commentaries, And you look at people who teach
out of Romans, and they're always wanting to talk about Romans
1, and they're always wanting to misapply Romans 3, and they're
wanting to teach the youth about Romans 12, get their butts in
shape, straighten their lives out. But nobody ever really touches
Romans 9. Except, of course, Calvinists
and high Calvinists alike, they love Romans 9. As a matter of
fact, Romans 9 is the only chapter in the entire letter, according
to some of them. There is no Romans 1 through 8 or the rest
of the chapter, the rest of the letter. It's just chapter 9.
It's all about chapter 9. As a matter of fact, I know some
brothers that don't even know anything in the Bible except
chapter 9 of Romans and John 6. They don't have any idea what
the rest of the scripture talks about, and I'm being a little
bit jest in that, but not so much. Verse 6, But it is not
as though the word of God is failed. For not all who are descended
from Israel belong to Israel, and not all who are children
of Abraham, because they are his offspring. But through Isaac
shall your offspring be named. This means that it is not the
children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the
children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what
the promise said. About this time next year I will
return, this is God speaking, and Sarah shall have a son. And
not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one
man, our forefather Isaac, 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, she was told, the older will serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob I loved,
but Esau I hated." Now there's several hours of commentary that
I could chat about with this text. And so I've tried to keep
myself focused tonight because I have no clock. I can talk about
this same text next week. So I don't need to get it all
out in one hour or less. But I want you to understand
a couple of things. First is I want you to see that
Paul is using Old Testament election and the shadows and types of
God's purposes in human history to prove that election is by
His divine will and pleasure after his own counsel, no other
counsel. Also, it's the example given
to these Roman Christians who are worried in the very nature
of the question here in Romans 9 to begin with, well, what's
up with the Jews? They're all lost except for a
few. That was the consensus. Why are
all these Israelites refusing Messiah? God's a liar. He didn't
save His people. He did. It's not about ethnic
Israel. They're not God's people except
in a temporal way just like Pharaoh was God's person. Ethnic Jews and Pharaoh are equally
elected by the use of God temporarily. But we don't use the word elect
or elected or chosen in that way. Every time we see it, especially
in Paul's writing, in this context, it is always talking about God
choosing to save. It's not about God's plan, it's
about God's people. So we need to recognize then
finally that many people have a problem with election. Many
people have a problem with the term predestination. As a matter
of fact, I'd be willing to bet that most any normal, and I say
normal as in the status quo normal, Southern Baptist pastor, if you
get him in a room in front of some folks, especially some tithers
or deacons, and you say, hey pastor, tell us what a predestination
is, he will drool all over himself and wet his pants. Because you don't want to talk
about what the scripture teaches in certain circles and sometimes
I can just about be certain that they're not taught that doctrine
in seminary. They're taught in such a way
that leaves it open for interpretation. Even the Baptist faith and message
and the abstract of principles and all the different things
that we see in Baptist life, the 1689, the first one, and
then the one that actually had names to it, the second one.
They all deal with predestination and election in a good way, except
where they begin to add, in the 1930s and 40s, the language that
then became contradictory. Election is God's purpose of
grace, whereby He saves His people. You know, that's a summary. And
it's accepted, it only applies to those who accept Jesus Christ
in their heart. I mean, you know, stuff like that. Stick this in
there, stick that in there. But what we need to understand
is that many people get to the table and they start to get a
little jittery. And they get a question like I got in 2005
maybe. And it's always young people
who get me in trouble. It's always young people who
get me in trouble. It was young people who got Pastor Luke in
trouble. They asked questions. Why? Because you want to know.
There's nothing wrong with answering questions. And the question that I received
is, how is it that God is loving, but He would reprobate and send
people to hell? It's the wrong question. Because
it assumes that reprobation and judgment is not loving. The better question is this.
How is it that God, who is all-loving, in His justice and goodness,
ordained mercy toward elect sinners? Let me put it another way. How
is it that God, who is all-loving and just and good, gave mercy
to elect sinners? How is it that God, who is all-loving
and just and good, saved sinners at all,
any of them? See, that's the right question.
And we're going to look at this text here, 6 through 13, and
we're going to open it up just a little bit wider, and then
next week just a little bit wider, and then next week we're going
to move right on down into the very next question, is there
injustice on God's part? Which is verse 14. Well, there's not injustice on
God's part. God's Word has not failed. As a matter of fact,
we see that God calls into existence the choosing of His people. This
is the decrees of God. In Romans 4, 16 through 18, it
says this, that is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise
may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all His offspring. Not only
to the adherent of the law, but also to the one who shares the
faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. As it is written,
I have made you the father of many nations in the presence
of God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls
into existence the things that do not exist. In hope, He believed
against hope that he should become the father of many nations as
he had been told, so shall your offspring be. Now, I did not
expand that enough during that time of Romans 4 because I knew
Romans 9 was headed this way. And so what we see is that God
chose a people for Himself before the world ever existed, and that
every part of the Old Testament history, every part of God's
revelation of this electing salvation and redemption, even the birth
of Abraham's sons, were to show and to reveal God's sovereign
grace. Abraham and his wife were not
able to have children. And God promised him a son. What
could Abraham and Sarah do? She was barren and old. He was
old. Nothing they could do. But yet
God promised them a son. How many years between the promise
and the first son, how many years were there? You want to know?
Thirteen years. And so hope against hope is one
thing to see the miracle of you're going to have a son in your old
age. Oh, Lord, thank you. But that wasn't their attitude,
was it? They're like, you must be crazy. That's sort of what
they said to God. You must be crazy. Sarah laughed. And then I think 13 years of
unfaithfulness on part of obedience on Abraham's part, yet he believed
God even though he took matters into his own hands and so did
Sarah. They say, hey, here's Hagar. You take this maidservant
and have a child with her. Thirteen years later, there's
Ishmael. But he's the offspring of Abraham,
but he's not the son of promise. He is not the elect one. He was
not. God's promise son. So then he wasn't the seed of
Abraham. We see the prophet Isaiah, oh I wish I could just stop here
and just go through Isaiah 49, but we see this prophetic word
about Jesus in Isaiah's prophecy. into the incarnation or about
the incarnation of Jesus being made into flesh. Jesus, I said
this years ago and it sort of got popular for a while, but
you know, Jesus created Mary and the womb inside of her and
created Himself a body and He was born. That's crazy stuff. That's a really weird thing to
think about. But the scripture says, the Lord
has called me from the womb. This calling into existence.
This is the plan of God. This isn't the newfangled, new
age, not so new idea that words are... what put the Spirit or the faith,
and they just sort of create. This is the point. The point
is that God ordained it, God decreed it, God created it. God
created and elect people for Himself, and that's the only
way anybody's going to be saved. That's the point. in every iteration
of this covenant is supposed to be seen eternally and spiritually. But what happens in the flesh
of humanity, until we are born of the Spirit, we look at everything
from a temporal position. That's why eschatology, the study
of last things, is such a disaster. There's a good way of putting
it. It's a disaster. Because you've got creative minds,
and they're not all alike. You know how inquiring minds
want to know? Creative minds are all over the place. It is
not good. God calls into existence His
people. He calls them to life. He does
so justly. And in the next few weeks, we'll
get into all the details of how that looks. In Isaiah 48, God
says, Hear me, listen to me, O Jacob and Israel, whom I called. And everywhere through Israel's
history as a people, as a group, as a collective, we always saw
two things that were absolutely certain. We saw a large group
of people rebel. and bring down everybody else.
And we saw God, in spite of that, save a remnant and destroy the
rest. That's a picture of election.
It's a picture of election. And people say, well, no, no,
no, those people that He saved had a heart toward Him. That
isn't what God says. God says none of them had a heart
toward Him. God says through Ezekiel that all of them had
defamed His name, each and every one of them. But God puts in
them a spirit to long for Him. That's the rebirth. So in the
Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve fell into death, the Spirit
of God regenerated them and gave them faith in Jesus Christ that
day. And that's the way God has been
working as long as He's been saving human beings. And if you
know, He did not save Cain, but yet Abel, was elect. It is not the nature of man,
as we'll see in a minute, that matters to God. It is the counsel
of His own will. God would save His remnant just
like God will save His elect. See, and the question on the
table, as I've already mentioned and lost my train of thought
and got on that, is God's Word failed? Has God failed? Is God
a liar? Has His promises failed? Did
He not do what He said He was going to do or could He not do
what He said He was going to do? But God's Word stands true. God's Word stands true and it
teaches clearly that God is not a liar. Because this is no failure
on God's Word and this is no failure on God's promises. Everything
God intended and everything God has promised has come to pass
and will come to pass. And God has promised to save
His people for Himself, save His people from their sins. He has promised to do this and
this is the picture This is the picture that we see throughout
the narrative of history. God saving His people, even in
the lineage of Christ, even in the giving of the Christ and
bringing Jesus, Messiah, through His electing work, through His
decisive work, through His redemptive work, we see that election stands. But there's things that we need
to understand about the human condition. All men are dead. And when God calls His people,
they are no longer dead. They are alive. This text illustrates
that. That God's purposes are fulfilled
in Christ and they proceed from the pleasure and counsel of His
own will toward and only toward those He elected before the foundations
of the earth. And the only way that one is
saved is that they are no longer from the flesh, but have been
what? They've been made alive by the
Spirit. We see the evidences of salvation
because of the work of God in regeneration, the granting of
faith, and that faith is pointing to Jesus Christ and the finished
work of redemption. that comes from the decree of
election. And it's only going to be applied
to, well, let me say this, it is only applied to the children
of promise. See, the Spirit will seal and
bring alive, save, the way we use that word, only and all of
those for whom Christ died in the covenant of grace. The children
of promise, verse 8, as we see there, are those who are counted
as offspring spiritually, not physically. There's no matter
what the shadow is, the shadow is the shadow. And I'm talking
about in that context. My hand, when I put it up here
and these lights shine, the shadow of my hand is on my Bible, but
my hand is not on the Bible. And when the hand gets there,
the shadow's gone. Israel, ethnically, was a shadow
of God's redemptive work of election. And through them comes the Christ,
who is the one who redeems the elect. So in this passage here,
along with what he's already talked about in the last eight
chapters, we see that there are two types of Jews. There are
ethnic Jews and there are spiritual Jews. There are outward Jews,
what does Paul say? Follow the precepts, the circumcised.
And there are inward Jews. The difference is, is that not
all Jews are Jews in that sense. Not all Jews are Israel, but
only the elect are true Israel. And only the ones who are spiritually
circumcised are true Israel. And he proves this through these
two examples of the birth of these four children, four children. See, Ishmael was born out of
the maid Hagar. Ishmael, his existence, of course
God is the giver of life, but his existence comes from the
will and the nature of the work of man. He was the firstborn
of Abraham. He is the seed of Abraham. He
is the one who comes from the loins of Abraham, to quote the
Old Testament. Yet he is not counted as offspring.
He is not counted in that sense as the spiritual seed. He is
rejected. He's rejected. Because He is
still born of the flesh. Born as what does Paul say in
Galatians 5? Ishmael is born after the flesh. What does Jesus
say in John 3? That which is flesh is flesh,
and it cannot understand the things of heaven, of Spirit,
because it is not born of the Spirit. But only that which is
born of the Spirit can understand spiritual things. How can you
understand spiritual things, Nicodemus, if you can't even
understand natural things, like birth and water and those silly
things, easy things? So Isaac then was born as a seed
of God's promise. Ishmael was born out of the practice
and the will of man. So it doesn't matter what man
does in the economy of grace to try to meet God where He is,
only that which God has chosen will be saved. Only that which
God has chosen is His elect. Isaac was born as a promise.
Thus he was born of the natural flesh. Of course, he wasn't divinely
conceived like Jesus Christ. But he was not to be counted
as the natural son, but rather the spiritual son, the son of
promise. And Isaac's birth was also part of God's divine work. Because if you know, the whole
idea of Hagar having to have a child to begin with is because
Sarah was too old. God had promised and they could
not wait. God had decreed, God had elected,
but they in their flesh, even though they were beloved of God,
they did what all people do, we try to take matters into our
own hands, and then try to give God credit for it. And God says, no, I reject Ishmael.
Only the son that comes from the promise I gave you, the one
that comes from that 100-year-old woman, will be the son of promise. He is my elect. So the divine
work of God to grant this old man and this old woman a son
was the only thing that would work. This is why it had to be
believed by faith. This is why that in the narrative
we see the timeline. This is why we see the two sons
so that God could reveal to us through the apostles the simplistic
picture of election. Spiritual birth is the only one
that matters, not physical birth. Not physical work, not physical
law body, not physical faith, but spiritual faith, spiritual
work. Only the Spirit gives life. And
see, the problem is that people continue to think that the shadow
has substance. The shadow are things gone by.
The true is Jesus Christ. The one who was to even come
is not Isaac. Isaac is not Messiah. Neither
was Jacob. Yet these men pointed to the
picture of the trueness of God's promise. Not only that He would
save His people and He would pull them out of the domain of
darkness, but He would also, through them, bring Messiah into
the world that He might take away their sins and satisfy His
justice. So there's no eternal promise
to a shadow. There's no eternal promise to
a picture. there's an eternal promise to
a people. And so God's election is not what He wanted to do,
God's election is who He wanted to do it for. There's a big difference. Romans 2.28 says, For no one
as a Jew is merely one outwardly, I've alluded to these a minute
ago, nor is circumcision outward and physical. The next verse,
But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the
heart by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from
man, but from God. Galatians 3.9, So then, those
who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of
faith. Galatians 3.29, And if you are
Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring. You are heirs according
to what? The promise of what? Election. You are heirs according to the
promise of election. Therefore, ethnic Israel has
always been a shadow. It has always been a type. Jesus
Christ is the anti-type. And the church is the product
of God's election. Abraham, as we always see him
touted in scripture as a man to be praised, he is praised
only for one thing. And what is it? That he believed
God. Not that he was a wonderful patriarch,
not that he was a man of obedience, not that he was a guy that was
solid and never doubted. As a matter of fact, it's the
opposite, isn't it? Abraham lied and ran and did everything he
could possibly do to screw up God's plan. As a matter of fact,
if I had sent Abraham, he'd have never made it. He would have
made it in a year. The minute he left Ur, he's lost his wife. But Abraham had unbelief. When God told him he was going
to have a son in Genesis 17, what does Abraham say? The Bible
says he fell on his face and laughed. and said to himself,
shall a child be born to a man who's 100 years old? Shall Sarah,
oh, Sarah was 90, I had their ages mixed up. Sarah was 90,
bear a child. He laughed at this idea that
they would have a son. Then in the very next chapter,
the Lord says to Sarah, I will surely return to you. This is
the quote, chapter 18 of Genesis, verses 10, 11, and 12, that Paul
quotes here in Romans 9. I will surely return to you about
this time next year, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.
And Sarah was listening to the tent door behind him. Sarah and
Abraham were old, advancing years. The way of women had ceased to
be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed, and she says,
I am worn out, and my Lord, her head, my husband is old, shall
I have pleasure? And Ishmael's born out of the
flesh, not of the promise, so he was not a son. Just like those
who in this life are born out of the will of their flesh, they
are not a son of God. Then the next picture goes to
the two other boys in this narrative, Rebekah. In Genesis 25, Isaac
prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren. And the
Lord granted his prayer and Rebekah, his wife, conceived. Now see
the difference between the shadows of And the promise is, look at
the picture of Ishmael and Isaac. Same father, different mothers. So it's obvious to see this is
not the promise, it's not the miracle son that I was talking
about. Any man can have a child with a young woman. My promise comes here. The impossible,
that which man cannot do, God can do. What is impossible with
man is not possible. I mean, what is impossible with
man is possible with God, Jesus would say to the disciples after
the rich young rulers interchange. And so Rebecca then is given
two sons. She's given two sons inside of
her, why? Paul says, so that election could
be revealed. so that God's purposes of election
could continue, so that the picture of salvation and election would
be substantiated. Amazing to me that these people
never had a clue as to why their lives the way they were. But
God's divine purpose is a result of His divine election, and it
results in the execution of His divine work in determining who
is going to be saved by His divine power. verse 10 there, election
is about the promise of God's purpose and grace, not man's
actions and will. Esau and Jacob were both true
and simultaneous sons of Isaac. Esau was born first. Twins aren't
delivered at the same time. They have to come out one after
the other. So Esau was born first, yet it did not matter. It did
not matter about the law of the land or the essence of what is
proper and patriarchy. It didn't matter. God's eternal
purposes mattered in the history of man. That's why it's taught
this way. verse 11, neither son had any
disposition except the flesh. Just like Cain and Abel, they
were both born of the flesh, born of the same mother and the
same father at the same time. Yet God purposed to love one
and to hate the other. It was not due to God's knowledge
of Esau. He didn't look through the corridors
of time. And you think this is funny, but this is how people
think. Well, God is omniscient, so He looks into the corridors
of time, and He sees how Esau was gonna be. And He goes, no,
no, no, that guy ain't gonna work for me. See, Jacob will
work, we'll use him. It doesn't work that way. If
it did, Paul wouldn't have said what he's about to say. It is
not about what God saw them to do. It is about God's sovereign
choice and His eternal purposes that He chose Jacob to love and
He rejected Esau and hated him. God's election of Jacob and His
rejection of Esau is the only thing that mattered in this circumstance.
See, election is the purpose of God to save His people. and
the elect are the objects of His salvation and love. But rejection,
what we call reprobation, is where God says, I will not save
these people. It's not, they won't come, so
oh well. We see in Isaiah 6 and then John
12, where Jesus alludes to that very text, God sends Isaiah to
what? To a non-converting preaching
ministry. You go preach, I'm not going
to save any of them. I'm going to kill every one of
them. So there is an act of work with
God to fulfill His purposes. I will harden their hearts, I
will dull their ears, I will blind their eyes so they will
not be able to believe. 2 Corinthians 4, the God of this
world blinds the eyes of unbelievers. We can argue, and there's exegetical
evidence that the God of this world is God, but either way,
if he uses the enemy, just like he did with Job, God sends the
enemy to blind the eyes of unbelievers, however he does it. A crow, the
devil, a bag of socks, it doesn't matter. Whatever he wants to
use, God will use. That's next week's question,
or the next week's. So neither son at any disposition
except the flesh, they were just guilty before God because they
were born of man, just like Cain and Abel, but God rejected one
and elected the other. Jacob had all acceptance because
it was God's sovereign choice. I thought about this this afternoon
as I was going over this and I thought to myself, sometimes
the arguments, because I mean I've got, I could sit here for
another hour and give rebuttal after rebuttal after rebuttal
after rebuttal that I've heard on these things. And I've spent
a good portion of 12 years of my life arguing and debating
these things. And I don't do that anymore.
I exposit Scripture and let God do the work because it's no use
to try to win people over through debate, philosophy, or argument
because it's worthless. And I think it's sort of like
our cartographer. I don't even know if they exist
anymore because I can't imagine that with GPS and maps and all
that there's little unmapped areas, but our cartographer has
to be able to see what they're drawing. Imagine a blind cartographer. What would the map look like?
Would we want to use it to go anywhere? No, but I think most
theologians today are blind cartographers. They're mapping out a way of
understanding God that God has simply just refused to admit
is His way. And God has simply expressed
things in such a clear and simple way. But even the simple stories
of Jesus in the New Testament. What did Jesus say about those
simple stories that children could listen to and go, yeah,
we get it. And the Pharisees would be like, like court jesters during the
time of monarchs, and they would come and supposedly entertain,
but they were sort of cunning with the way they did things,
and they would make fun of the king, but not too much, and sometimes
to the point where the king wouldn't notice it, but would be entertained. That's what unregenerate people
do with the Word of God. They'll use it and read it and
listen to it and try to teach it, but they could never see,
just like Jesus when He taught in parables, He said it was not
granted unto them to understand the simple things of the kingdom
of God, but to you it has been granted. A blind theologian can only produce
philosophy. They're really sophists, wise
fools, honestly. They think they know things,
don't know anything and yet we who have been born of God we
do know nothing yet but we know everything because Christ is
our wisdom. The Spirit of God has given us
just a great understanding of simple things that are hidden
from most people. And of course that argument in
itself from a logical sense from a Greek or Stoic point of view
is absolutely ridiculous. It makes us look like bumpkins
without a sense to our name. It makes us appear as though
we're not academic or that we could care less about maybe the
earth might be even flat. Or maybe there is no such thing
as gravity. See, when we hear people say those things, we sort
of laugh in a subtle way, mock and go, wow, where have these
people been? That's the way the world that's lost and the religious
of our day who refuse God's election look at the Christian who has
been born of God and understands it. They sort of look and think,
what an idiot. That's why it angers them. God's purposes will not fail.
Both of these things are true because God's purposes will not
fail. Esau was rejected and hated by
God. And what does it mean for God
to hate Esau? God hated Esau. Don't buy this Dallas Theological
Seminary stuff that it just means that God loved him a little bit
less. God loved everybody. God ascribes hate to himself. And God's hate is just. And God's
hate is righteous. Remember we learned some months
ago, foreknowledge always refers to an eternal love focused toward
individual people. So God's love and His foreknowledge
of His people is a knowing, a loving of His people eternally. He eternally
loved Jacob and He eternally hated Esau. And when we see that we didn't
see this before, like we go, wait a minute, I see it, I understand
it. It's not because we've come to a place where our mind has
been grown, it's that we've come to a place where we realize that
we were ignorant of the truth. And now we see God yields to
no man. He yields to the will of no man.
And God does not yield to the hearts of man or to the desires
of man. Sovereignty is the opposite of
that. And the flesh hates sovereignty. All things happen in sovereignty
because of God's will, because of Him who calls. The elder shall
serve the younger. Let's finish this up if I can.
Why? Because God caused it to be so. God willed it to be so. God called
it into being. Neither of the sons could change
it. None of them. The father couldn't change it. And God told their mother, I
choose the younger because I can. I chose without
any conditions of what these boys would do or become because
I wanted this one, not this one. God chose. Why? So that His purpose
of election would stand. So God rejected Esau. He refused
Him. He reprobated Him. Why? Because
He's just in all His ways. God is just in reprobation. God
is just in election. So to reveal His purpose of election,
and not only that, but also the picture of redemption would fit
into this picture of these two boys. He did these things. Before I was born, God loved
me. Before I was, God knew me. Before you were, God loved you.
Those who are not saved and die in that state, God does not love
them. Man hates this. Religious people
hate this. Atheists hate this. It is the
number one reason many people choose atheism because it's better
to ignore that which is obvious than to understand in a fleshly
way a supreme and sovereign, epic one. that isn't loving the way we
want him to be. Cain hated Abel, Esau hated Jacob,
God hated Cain and Esau, because we see that that which God hates,
when God loves someone else, those who God hates hate those
who God loves. Does Jesus not say that in John's
Gospel? They will hate you, the Master, His sons, they're going
to hate Him? They're going to hate everything
tied to Me? So they're going to hate you?
They persecuted Me? So they're going to persecute
you? And so forth. Paul tells Timothy, anyone who
wants to walk in a manner worthy of the calling of God is going
to be persecuted. And people hate those who have
divine love. People hated David. People hated Moses. People hated
Joshua. People hated the prophets. Look
at Jeremiah. And they're usually hated by
those who are religiously righteous in their own minds, doing what
is required and thinking themselves in God. Why? Why? Why? Because they're unconverted.
Why's that? Because they're unregenerate. But why does God have to hate?
Is it really just? We can accept the fact that God
in His sovereignty, He says it's just, so we can just accept it
as just. But the Scripture explains that very clearly. It is just. Reprobation is just. God, in His goodness, must hate
evil. And all men are guilty. So God
is just in putting wrath and condemning all men. The hearts and the minds of all
men are repugnant and vile to God. Self-righteous people are
hated by God. People who think good works.
Please God, He hates these good works. So reprobation is good
because men are evil. And that which is good and sovereign
must destroy and crush evil. But now the question, back to
the beginning, trying to wrap this up with a little bit of
sense. Why would God elect a people
to save? because Jesus Christ died for
the elect. So God's hatred of sin has not
been forgotten. Romans 3 is clear on that. His
righteousness is displayed in the crushing of Christ because
He applies Christ's righteousness to His elect and Jesus substituted
Himself for us. So that God hates and has crushed
and will crush in all wrath all sin. For the elect, He has sent
His judgment on Jesus. For the reprobate, He will put
His judgment on them. So He's just. In all these ways
He is just. So Jesus was crushed in place
of true Israel, the elect. God has always loved the elect
because Christ was always the one in whom they would be justified.
Even though we see the scripture talk about objects of wrath,
we see Paul say we were by nature but we were not objects because
Christ would satisfy our wrath. And we'll talk about that next
week a little bit more in depth. While the elect share that nature,
they are made alive by the Spirit and given faith. Thus, they believe
in the finished work of Jesus Christ on their behalf. Faith,
then, is not the agent of life. Faith doesn't save you. Faith
is the result of Christ saving you. God's mercy and election
is what saves you. Grace. By grace you have been
saved through faith. And faith is not of your own
doing. It is the gift of God so that no one could boast Those
who are not chosen unto life are rejected unto judgment and
death. Both of these are just and judicial
truths that are holy in their completeness. So, in our last
few minutes, ask the question in your own mind, what are we
going to do with this teaching? In the last 40 minutes or so,
I can promise you that things that come out of my mouth that
some people will hear when the end of next week is over and
people have found this teaching and they'll decide very clearly
that I am a heretic and I'm just wrong that I am just some weird
guy who loves John Calvin I was preaching this message in 2004 I was preaching this message
in 2001 I didn't even know who John Calvin
was until 2010. Paul is what we need to look
at, not Calvin. The spiritual states before God
is the segregation of mankind, the elect and the reprobate. But the world's gospel wants
us to say this, You've got to choose Jesus or you're choosing
hell. The Gospel is, God is sovereign
and just. And He crushed Jesus Christ for
His elect and will bring them to life. And He will crush the
reprobate justly for all of eternity. There you go. What are we going
to do with that? We're going to trust in it. The
Bible tells us in Adam, all die. And in Christ, people would argue,
all are made alive! But are all made alive? Or all
that are made alive are made alive in Christ? See, we've got
to learn grammar. All that are made alive, that
are alive, are alive in Christ. Because they've all died in Adam.
We've got to understand the context. All men are dead in Adam. And
those that are not made alive in Christ remain there. Condemnation
is theirs. The believing ones will not perish
but do have eternal life. But those who are not the believing
ones are condemned already because they are not believing in the
only Son of God. I'd love to take time and share
with you some historical creeds. As a matter of fact, I think
I might just read one little passage from Dort, Article 7. Election is the unchangeable
purpose of God. whereby before the foundation
of this world he has out of mere grace, according to the sovereign
good pleasure of his own will, chosen from the whole human race,
which had fallen through their own fault from their primitive
state of restitute into sin and destruction, a certain number
of people to redeem in Christ, whom he from eternity appointed
the mediator and the head of the elect and the foundation
of salvation. The elect number, though by nature neither better
nor more deserving than others, but with Him involved in one
common misery, God has decreed to give to Christ, to be saved
by Him, and effectually to call and to draw them to His communion
by His Word and Spirit, to bestow upon them true faith, justification,
sanctification, and having powerfully preserved them in the fellowship
of His Son, finally to glorify them for the demonstration of
His mercy, and for the praise of the riches of His glorious
grace, as it is written, even as He chose us in Him before
the foundations of the world, that we should become holy and
without blemish before Him in love, having ordained us to adopt
us as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, freely bestowed
on us in the Beloved. And elsewhere, and that's Ephesians
1, 4, 5, and 6, as we've already done in Romans 30, those who
He foreknew, He also called. And those who He called, He also
justified. And those who He justified, He
also glorified. That's why we've taken that time
before we move into the latter part of 8 and 9 to deal with
that little chain of events at the latter part of Romans 8,
verse 30. And this is not new. This is
the gospel of free and sovereign grace. Anything else is no gospel
at all. Let's pray. We love You, Father,
because You first loved us. You've chosen us. You've elected
us. And so in You alone do we worship
and praise and exult. And we thank You, God, for the
beauty of Your work in Jesus Christ. And we pray these things
in His name. Amen.