All right, Romans chapter eight,
the latter few verses, and then we're gonna get into chapter
nine and do an introduction there. I'm really excited about this.
You can always tell when I've taken time out of a letter because
it's almost like I'm getting a really big prize or a bonus
or a new car or something that I don't have to pay for when
I get back into a letter. I love teaching Romans. I love teaching all of it, but
there's just something amazing about how we've been going through
reading Romans together and going through it very rapidly. To be
honest, this makes one year of sermons. This is the 52nd week
of teaching in this rapid teaching. You might think, well, this isn't
too rapid. Oh yeah, this would take three to four years to do.
the way it should be done, but we can do this midweek and still
glean the theological principles, because that's what's most important,
that we can do that and we can, you know, our Sunday mornings
we slow, we're bogging down, we're really hitting it, and
John is not something you want to drive through anyway. And
then I've seen, I've got people that I've seen through history
that took two or three years just to teach Romans 1. I've
seen people teach, out of John chapter 1 and 2, 40 to 50 sermons. As a matter of fact, I can't
remember who it was, but it might have been Lloyd-Jones. He preached
a hundred and something sermons just out of the first few chapters
of John. And I'm thinking, what in the
world? If you listen to some of them, you're going, okay,
I see that. That's good stuff. And they're an hour long. They're
not 20-minute homilies. So tonight, I want us to read
verses 31 through the end of chapter 8, and then read through
verse 8 on chapter 9. That's all I'm going to be able
to do tonight, but I want to give us a feel for this text since
it's been a month since we've been in it. Romans 8, 31. What
shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who could be
against us? He who did not spare His own
Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him
graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against
God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who
is to condemn? Jesus Christ is the one who died.
More than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God,
who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress,
persecution, famine or nakedness, danger or sword? As it is written,
for your sake we are all being killed all the day long. We are
regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced,
persuaded, sure, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor
rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will
be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
Lord. I am speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience
bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow
and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself
were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers,
my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them
belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of
the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the
patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the
Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. 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 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 flesh who are the children of God, but the children
of the promise who are counted as offspring. This section of text, especially
chapter nine, when we chop it out, chapter nine is one of those
areas of Romans that a lot of our friends and family and loved
ones and enemies and everybody in between, Ronald McDonald,
whoever else it might be in our life, they love to cite this
as something that it's not. On the other side of that, a
lot of people would come and say, well, we know what it is
and we want to know what it's teaching. And they use it as
a proof text for the doctrine of election, which is not a bad
thing if you use it in context, the first eight chapters. And while there are many debates
concerning chapter nine, if you read up to it and you understand
what Paul is getting into here, What has he just done in the
last eight chapters, specifically the last two, for the sake of
the elect? He has opened up the floodgates
of God's sovereignty. He has opened up the purest picture
of God's sovereignty and salvation. He has established that the idea
of election is indeed the only article of salvation through
which God justifies His people. We are justified by the decree
of God and we are the elect. Paul has taught us already that
even though our lives will be at odds, even though our heart
and our flesh will always be at war, even though we may seemingly
feel and sometimes even be measured by others as those who are not
in the covenant, because Christ has saved us and because we hold
fast by a supernatural work of God Himself to the reality of
the gospel of grace, we cannot be lost. There is no possible
way for any of God's elect to be lost. Christ has secured them. Christ has died for them. Christ
has justified them. Christ will glorify them. And
that's why I spent the time I did on those things and what is properly
known as the Golden Chain. Paul closes out chapter 8 with
these rhetorical questions. What shall we say to these things? And this is the everlasting blessing
and promise and power that we have in the finished work of
Jesus. Whereby when he cried out, it is finished. The purchase
of the elect of God is complete. There is no condemnation now
for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is never a time when the
flesh will rule over us and present us to God under the law, but
we will be made one day completely spotless, as we are declared
spotless this very moment because of Jesus Christ, who is the spotless
Lamb of God. All of these questions. What
are we to say? If God is for us, then who can
be against us? Can the flesh be against us?
No. Can our neighbor be against us? No. Can our spouse and children
be against us? No. No one can be against us, for
God is for us. No one can stop the work of God
on our behalf. No one can establish a rejection
of the covenant of God. No one can undo the finished
and effectual work of Jesus who died on the cross. No one can
suck up the blood that was drained from the body of Christ by the
will of the Father and put it back into a certain place where
it does not have its reach upon God's elect. No one. Nothing can do it. Nothing can
do it. God, who did not spare His Son,
but gave His Son up for us all. Who is the context here? Who
is He talking to? The Christians of Rome. Both
Jew and Gentile alike. God gave His Son up for us. And
if God has crushed His Son, how will He not also in Christ Jesus
give us all things by His mercy and grace? Man, what is there
for us to fear? Nothing. Nothing. If your faith
is weak, don't fear. Is your faith gone? Don't fear.
Are you scared? Don't fear. You wonder if this
life will suck you down? It will not. Will the enemy come
against you? Possibly, by the will of God,
but he will not take you from Christ. Nothing. Nothing. There is, listen, there
is, and what's the context here? There is no sin. There is no
doubt. There is, get this, no unbelief
that can snatch you from the hand of God. People say, oh,
wait a minute, boy. You're talking trash now. If
we don't believe anymore, we're lost. No, you're not. In John's
Gospel, where we're in chapter 11 now, how many times do we
see the disciples and those around Jesus, whom Jesus declares to
be His children, who at one side of their mouth, one moment, they're
like, you are the Son of God, you are the Christ, you are Messiah,
you are the one come down from heaven, you are the one who revealed
us, you are the resurrection, you are the life. Oh no, now
what are we going to do? There's going to be a smell. Peter, we know. We know that
you are the Son of God. We know that you are the Christ
and you know all things. We don't have to ask you anything
else. We don't have to test you any more than was He due. I don't
know Jesus. I don't know who He is. I don't
have a clue. I've never been with Him. Get away from me! I don't
know Christ. I don't know the Christ. This man isn't the Christ.
This is what happens. This is the life of the believer,
beloved. It is up and it's down and it's
side to side and then sometimes we feel as though If it was left
up to us, we would perish, and quite honestly, that's a good
place to end. If it was left up to us, we would
perish in our sins. We would perish in our unbelief.
It is not the validity and the strength of our faith that establishes
God's covenant with us. It is the promises and the power
of God and His nature to not lie, who destroyed His own Son
to save His people from their sins. No one shall bring a charge against
any of God's elect. Now I don't want to bog down
into these interesting theories that we've heard and that I hear
continually and that I get into, not debates, but discussions
with people about how they take what is plain in front of them,
even in the English. No matter what version you use,
if you use a crazy paraphrase of disastrous proportions, it
still says the same thing. And everywhere you look in Scripture,
when God has predestined, He has always predestined individuals
in order that they might be His people who were not a people.
Election is always focused on the object of people, not nations,
not plans. It's always in the grammar four
billion percent of the time talking about individual elect people
who God has foreknown and we already know what the grammar
teaches about foreknowledge. He loves them with an everlasting
love. People want to argue that. Only
the Holy Spirit of God can make them alive where they can see
it. So let us not brag and boast in our understanding of the gospel.
Let us rejoice because of the grace of God. No one can bring
a charge against God's elect. No one can bring a charge against
any of you, beloved, because Christ has satisfied your debt
to justice, to righteousness, to the law. When someone does, When you do
in your own mind, when others do in front of us and around
us, we stand in the promises of God. And when we're unable
to stand, we've already seen the Holy Spirit of God will pray
for us and will secure us, who has sealed us. No one can condemn. Why? Because God is the one who
justifies and God is the one who says that the work of redemption
is finished. Jesus is the one who died, not
us. We are not going to die for our sins. We could not pay for
our sins in death and a billion, billion, billion eternities.
Which is an absurd thing to say, any of you quantum physicists
out there. More than that, Jesus did not
just die, He was raised, and where does He stand? At the right
hand of God the Father, with all authority, all dominion,
and He is the one interceding for us. So then who shall separate
us from the love of Christ? There's no tribulation, there's
no distress, there's no persecution, there's no famine, there's no
nakedness or danger or sword, no government, no. In all these
things, He says we are more than, this is review, all these things
we are more than conquerors. I mean, you think somebody's
victorious in war? We're better than that. You think somebody
has conquered and taken? We haven't even taken. We haven't
even conquered. Christ has conquered, and we're
more than conquerors, because Christ has established all the
conditions of the covenant of God, whereby He would save His
people from their sins, and there is no way that anything else
can defeat us, because Christ has defeated all death. Christ
has purchased His people and we are more than conquerors.
How? Through Him who loved us. Not
in ourselves, not in our lives. So that in this Paul is persuaded,
he is convinced beyond any doubt that nothing, death, life, look
at this list, angels, rulers, present, or to come, powers,
height, depth, anything that's in our creation will be able
to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Now this is one of those, I don't
even know what it's like anymore because it's probably been 1990-ish
since I've watched sports. One, 1992, three maybe, three,
when was the strike? 93? Baseball? 94? Anyway, ever since then,
I'm done. Not watching anything, not looking at anything, don't
care. don't care. But oh boy, I used to love the
home run kings. You know, these guys would come
up and they would walk them on purpose because they knew they
were going to hit a home run. If they throw the ball in the
air somewhere, they're going to hit it and they're going to
knock it way out of play. This is Paul's home run for the
church. And the bases could be loaded
with dragons and fire and pits and despair and everything else.
They could take the playing field away and the home run is already
hit. We are home. We don't even have
to run. It's just an automatic score.
Jesus Christ is our guarantee of the effectual love of God
for us from all eternity to all eternity. From one degree of
glory when Christ was glorified to another when we stand before
Him glorified in His power. This is the security of the believer
and our assurance is only found in the finished and complete
and effectual, powerful, majestic work of Jesus Christ by the mercy
of God for His people. And the lowest of wickedness,
whatever word I can come up with and make up these adverbs and
these verbs and these adjectives, I can make it all up to make
it sound ridiculous, but the most vile wicked person that
we can imagine who is the elect of God will come to faith in
Jesus Christ because Christ is atoned for their sins. And then
God will do some transforming. He will show them the truth.
He will bring them to the knowledge of His grace. And in His season,
He will work in them the understanding of what sin does. But oh my goodness,
when that temptation of the flesh taps them on the shoulder and
they seem to look like they used to, They haven't been lost. They are not forsaken. And that's
another sermon in itself. But God's love is eternal. And
it will never fail. Now, with this type of assurance,
this is why Paul says what he says in chapter 9, verse 1. Realize
the chapters don't mean anything to Paul. 4, or he doesn't say
4, he says, I am speaking the truth in Christ. He's about to
say something. That's extremely true. Why is
this necessary, what he's about to say? Because he just gave
a grand assurance to the people of Rome of God's eternal election
of them. That's the heartbeat of the end
of chapter eight. God has predestined them, he has foreknown them,
he and everything. Now people would say, okay, God's
election, God's foreknowledge, His love for His people will
not fail. What about all these Jews who
just rejected Jesus? Where's the separation of the
love of God in Christ Jesus for them? What in the world is happening
here? You see how that makes sense? It makes sense. Nothing
can separate us from the love of God, but what about all these
Israelites? What about all these Jews? They're hating Christ.
You're writing a letter. You know what these Jews have
done to you, Paul? They've arrested you, and beaten
you, and shipwrecked you, and all sorts of things that we see
what Paul endures for the sake of the elect, as he says to the
Philippian church, and to the church of Colossae. I mean, fill
up what is lacking in the sovereignty of Christ in my flesh. And see,
all of this makes good common logic sense to us, doesn't it?
Well, if nothing can separate God's people from His love, then
what, pray tell, is taking place with the ethnic Jews? You see,
the misunderstanding of the very essence of Israel to begin with
is what's wrong. And friends, I'm not here to
pick a fight on eschatology or a hermeneutic, but I'm here to
pick a fight on the gospel of grace. And everything before
Christ that was established to look like grace, to look like
righteousness, to point to God's forbearing and forgiveness was
a shadow. Everything and everyone. Jesus is called the second Adam
for a reason. Because Adam, in his existence,
existed for the sake of what? Being the federal head of a fallen
people who God would redeem through the true Adam. I'm speaking the truth in Christ.
I am not lying. My conscious bears me witness
in the Holy Spirit. We get it, Paul. You're telling
the truth. Okay? I mean, I swear on my mother's
grave type stuff here. but he swears by the Holy Spirit.
He swears by Christ. He swears by his own conscience
before God and before these people. To what? Because my kinsmen, great sorrow
and unceasing anguish in my heart. That's what he's swearing by.
Why would that matter? Because Paul was the most hated
ethnic Jew that ever walked the earth by his people. There's never been a man who's
been hated by his own nation as Paul has been hated by his
own nation. He was considered a traitor.
He was considered a blasphemer. He was considered a Roman pagan. He was considered someone who
was vile and the Jews of his day looked at him as someone
who hated them and thus everything that he did was a way of trying
to destroy the fabric of their own lives. But Paul says, I'm not identifying
anymore as a Jew like you think I would. But I love my kinsmen. Paul no longer identified as
ethnic Israel, but he identified as true Israel, and he did so
in this way. I am speaking the truth in Christ.
I speak the truth in Christ. See, he belonged to Christ, and
in him was the Spirit of God in Christ, and in him was the
truth of all that Israel was to be in Christ. So not only does Paul testify
and bear witness of his conscience, Paul says he testifies and bears
witness as Christ is truth, and he says in the spirit of God
in him also, he loves his people with great anguish, and he is
speaking in such a way with this construction as if God the Holy
Spirit is actually declaring he's telling the truth. Now that's
dangerous, isn't it? For me to say something like
that could suppose some crazy theological problem for me. If
I stand here and say, by the power and the witness of God,
the Spirit, so I speak, that would mean that God, the Spirit,
spoke in my heart to bear witness to that which my conscience also
says to approve and to affirm that which I feel, not as sinful
but as genuine, and then by the authority and in the name of
Christ I say it to you, is saying that God is saying this. God
is saying, Paul says, that He loves His kinsmen and that He's
grieved in a great way because of their rejection of Messiah.
That's what He's saying. Now why is this important? Because
I can see the Jewish people of this time who have been converted
whom God has birthed again and they have come to believe in
Christ. I can see this back in 2, the
whole occasion for this writing to begin with, to explain why
the Romans were just as much Israel as the Jews who were in
Christ. This statement would be mocked
by his Jewish brothers who were not in faith. Paul does not love
us. Because, I mean, what common
sense tells you that somebody that you just about destroyed
their lives, their livelihood, their reputation, and their bodies,
how is it that you would think they would love you at all? That's
why God the Holy Spirit had to speak this way through Paul. You might think it really crazy,
but friends, I hear it constantly. I hear it several times a year. Well, you know, Paul was a little...
harsh. He hated this group of people.
He hated this group of people. He hated this group. We can see
it in his writing. Well you can see it in his writing? Can you
really? That says he's not hating them. But that is something they do.
As a matter of fact, there are groups of individuals who have
given an upsurge to a resurgence of somewhat messianic Judaism
amongst the ranks of different ethnos, different people, different
cultures, whereby Paul is no longer considered an apostle
to them, that his scripture is not scripture, it's just apocrypha. So they move it away, and this
is becoming very popular. but he says that he loves his
fellow Jews in the flesh and they mocked him for it. While
they hate him as an enemy, Paul loves them. This is why he preached
to them, this is why he prayed for them, this is why he rebuked
them and pursued them. And this is not just a statement
of Paul's feelings, this is a statement As I've already said, a powerful
utterance of God the Holy Spirit through him who testifies to
this reality as true. Because if Paul were lying there,
or lying to his own conscience, he is actually causing the Holy
Spirit to lie. for the church, for us today,
and for the church of Rome especially, who was the recipient of this
letter, we need to grasp the depth of this love that Paul
had for his kinsmen. We already know that Paul had
great love for the church. He says to the church of Thessalonica
in his first epistle, with all the affection of Christ, He says
to the Ephesians in chapter 3 when he prays for them that they would
have an understanding with all the saints, the depth and the
height of the knowledge of Christ's love for them. And then he continues
to exhort and encourage the church to have that type of love that
can only come supernaturally and divinely through the Holy
Spirit. So in some sense, if Paul is lying here, his whole
ministry is moot. worthless. But Paul said the
truth here not only that he loves his kinsmen but I would say that
the love of Christ for his kinsmen also is very evident in the context
of even his anger and his grief that we see in the weeping of
Jesus in his humanity. No man can grasp the reality
of this in a spiritual way until he's been born of God supernaturally.
that which is flesh is flesh, that which is spirit is spirit,
and you cannot understand spiritual things until you've been born
of God the Spirit, and that includes the simple teaching of the gospel
from the Word. That includes the love of God
for His people, His elect, and that includes the reality that
God's people have a spontaneous affection for one another in
a supernatural and divine way that makes no sense, and I don't
know. the measuring line of our society.
It doesn't make sense whatsoever where people can hurt us and
we love them and we pray for them and it doesn't mean that
our flesh doesn't beat the chest of vengeance for a moment or
even hatred or frustration. Holy cow, every marriage has
or will and will continue to have that type of thing until
we're so old together we can't even argue anymore. But this love that Paul has has
great implication. has great implication theologically
and has great implication for the gospel because it is going
to set the tone for what he's about to say as he expounds on
the history of Judaism, on the calling of the covenant of God,
the covenant of grace, which is the only covenant that God
has ever truly made in a spiritual sense. All the other covenants
God made were temporal covenants. They were earthly covenants.
It's clear. It's easy. I mean, the polemic
against Judaism that we see in the New Testament, which I say
Paul wrote, Hebrews, And we can argue about that, but it's just
fun. It's Paul's language. I'm going to say it's Paul. And
Peter said that Paul wrote Hebrews. You know, that letter that Paul
wrote to you guys. Read it. But the implication is that what Paul experienced
under the hands of the Jews really had no consequence to his ministry
at all. But He was caused to love them more and more and more.
He, by the Lord's Spirit, was given more and more and more
affection for those very people who rejected not just Him, but
also the Messiah. As Jesus will say in the latter
part of John's Gospel and other places in the Synoptics, that
those who hate the Master will also hate the servants. Those
who hate the Father will also hate the sons. It's like I've
been taught many years, you know, growing up with great-grandparents,
as I was a child, your daddy's a rogue, you're a rogue, your
sons will be a rogue, and the only rogue he is, a rogue's a
thief. And that was always sort of true, you know, you had a
line of thieves and a line of liars, and it was always something. Of course, that's not really
true. But that's the way we look at
it. And here, this situation that Paul experienced was of
no consequence. He loved them anyway. And it was such a contrast
to the love that he had for them to begin with, which his love
was zeal and passion. Without knowledge, without rebirth,
he was still in the flesh, he was dead in his sins, and according
to his own understanding of the law, he said he was blameless
without sin. He would consider himself a warrior
for God to come against the way of Christ. the way of Jesus and
come against the people of Christ. And Jesus says to him on the
road to Damascus, why do you persecute me when Paul had never
persecuted Christ? But in persecuting my foot, you
persecute me. You persecute my body in any
way. You are bothering me. The same is true for Christ.
When someone comes against Christ's people, the irony behind that,
not necessarily the irony, but the beauty behind that, it is
an ironic beauty, is that Paul, in his passion to be the guy
who would start a war against Christianity as part of the Sanhedrin,
would be the one then who would be hated the most by them. But it had no consequence. He
loved them even more. What He expressed in His love for them
really was of no consequence. It didn't change their heart.
It didn't change the heart of His readers. It didn't change
anyone except those who have been born of God. I mean, we always hear that. If
people just know how much we love them, we've got to love
them into Jesus. Listen, if we love them in Christ and they
hate Christ, Christ hates them. Those words are harsh. But his expressed love, as we'll
see in a minute, it really had no consequence also because it
was an impossible desire. What was his expression? Out
of great anguish, 4 verse 3, and there's a lot of debate with
this, by the way. There's a lot of criticism on this particular
context, especially in the grammar, and I don't really want to go
through all of it, but I'll touch a few because we're running out
of time. For I could wish that I myself
were accursed, and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers.
That is my kinsman according to the flesh." Now there are
some people who would say that is an impossible thing for Paul
to say because it is an impossibility. It is an impossibility. That's
what makes it so absurd. And then some people like to
put commas where commas are not, and there's a lot, and I mean,
we're respected men, some men that I know who would argue with
me that this is not what the Scripture teaches here, but I
think this is what the Scripture teaches here, that Paul is expressing
a hyperbole, but that is a genuine desire if it was possible, not
that it's possible. That he would be willing in his
love for them. Understand this. Because Haldane
even says, he says it would be a violation of the law, and I
don't want to go there right now. And his love for them, it
would be, if it were possible, the love that he had for his
kinsmen and the grief that he had over their rejection of their
own Messiah, he's willing, he would be willing to what? Give it up. Makes sense in the context. Now
I'll have an email inbox full of heresy titles here in a minute,
but we'll just add it to the Chronicles. What he expected from and by
and through the sovereignty of God was the only thing that really
had consequence, and it would come to pass. And that's what
he's going to explain here about God's sovereignty and His love
for His people that had nothing to do with ethnicity. verse 4. Noam will finish all
this. They are Israelites and to them
belong the adoption, glory, covenants, law, worship, promises, patriarchs,
and Christ. You see these things? Paul describes
the nature of the Jews according to history. The word Israelite
means he who struggles with God, Jacob, wrestling with God and
lost. So he says he won. changed his name to Israel, which
means he struggles, wrestles with God. To be an Israelite
throughout all of the Bible, first and second halves, was
a title of honor. It was a noble thing to be an
Israelite. Even if you weren't the elite
of the elite by the time the first century rolls around, it
didn't matter to be an Israelite. It was so far greater in the
eyes of most people rather than anything else. I think that's
one of the reasons why, just as what? As Cain hated Abel because
Abel was approved by God and loved by God and all that he
was was accepted by God because he was in God's favor. Cain hated his brother, thus
he murdered him. And we see the illusion of the
blood of Abel crying out from the grave for justice. And then
we see Paul writing in that polemic that I mentioned earlier in the
book of Hebrews that the blood of Abel cries out for a better,
I mean cries out but that the blood of Christ and the blood
of the new covenant, the true covenant cries out louder. Israelites, honorable people,
the distinction that no other people on earth could ever have,
but those who God had elected out of these pagan nations. Israel
was not a people when God made them a people. He took a Chaldean,
not all Chaldeans, just one, from Ur, worshiping the reflection
of the sun on the rock that we call the moon, and He called
him His own, and He promised him to be the father of many
nations. And I could literally preach.
You see, this is where, if we were going through this on a
Sunday morning, I would take 15, 16, 17 weeks just to preach
through the covenants, just to preach through all the things.
And it was just a beautiful picture, but that's not the way we need
to do it right now. But these Israelites, these were
the descendants of Jacob, and they were noble people. And to
them was what? The adoption. The adoption, this
picture of creating a people for himself is a type of the
gospel, and it's a Christ-fulfilled shadow of the body of Christ.
You've been adopted by me to be my people. Hey, Abraham, Abraham. And he believed God and he went,
and he lied, and he sinned, and he deceived, and he did all sorts
of things, and he never, and it was 13 years after that promise
when Ishmael was born, when they decided to take matters into
their own hands. So Ishmael is a son, is the offspring of Abraham.
Doesn't matter, Ishmael could be the offspring of Abraham and
Abraham could have 40 billion more children, but only the one
who God has adopted will be the true Israel. He made them out of nothing to
be something. To them belonged the glory. I
mean, you think about that for a second. Think about Sinai for
a minute. This is later. much later. Think about Sinai,
the glory of God descending in the presence of these people
after God put them in captivity in Egypt by His miraculous, glorious
revelation of power. He brings them out and they fuss
and moan and whine. So God in His permanent, effectual, eternal
covenant, said this is what I have purposed, that though you are
my ethnic people, you are not all my people, and I'm going
to show you, I'm going to kill almost all of you, and this generation
of Joshua I will take, and they will be my leg. The glory, the presence of God,
the Word of God, the glory of God revealed through Jesus as
Jesus Christ. All these things were given to
the Israelites. They were the stewards of the
oracles of God. They were the stewards of the
covenants. They were the stewards of the very presence of God.
Intimacy with the glory of God in Christ Jesus, all these types
and shadows, the power, the majesty, the pointing to the reality of
true intimacy with God, the mercy seat, all these pictures, all
the stuff in the tabernacle, all the stuff in the temple,
all the stuff at Sinai, every bit of it, it was all given to
those people. And even in the face of it, what
did they say? Don't talk to us about this glory.
Hide your face, don't give us this." But there were a people
there who had been made right with good hearts by God's adoption
and they saw it and they're like, what's wrong with you idiots? God prepares His people for splendor
and He separates even out of them spatially those who are
not chosen and rejected in the type that we see in the glory.
the covenants, the law, the worship. Imagine what it was like to worship
at the Feast of Booths, at the Passover. I mean, I get chills
to think about that. And I've seen it, I've witnessed
it, I've been in a Seder before, I've seen some of the little
pictures and glimpses, and it has no... It's just like, this
is silly. As a child, I remember thinking
about these things and wondering what it must have been like to
be at Sinai, wondering what it must have been like to be in
the temple, where the priests would go in and we'd pour the
blood for the sake of my family, where I would be reminded of
the covenant of mercy that God had promised me. that through
His Lamb He would sacrifice His Son, the coming of Emmanuel,
God with us, the God who comes down from heaven and tabernacles
with men, the fullness of the glory of God, to be crucified
and crushed for my iniquities, that I might be justified in
His sight, and that nothing I do in this world, no matter how
much I bring to the table of this worship, ever makes a difference
and has no consequence. It's all to remind me of the
fullness of what is to come for my own. soul. And I just get
overwhelmed with that and I think, wow, and now we get to see it
face to face. We don't have to hide in the
types and shadows. We don't have to hide in the regalia. We don't
have to borrow and burrow ourselves. We don't have to borrow from
Judaism and burrow ourselves in this weird, thick, religious
experience. We just see and we behold. the worship, the promises, the
patriarchs, the fathers of the nation, those whom God adopted
along and along and along and along, and it seemed like there
was never enough time for Israel to get back on track, because
it was never intended for them nationally to ever be on track.
It was a shadow of even those who are gathered in the name
of God, only the elect out of that group will be saved by Him. It is not for your sake that
I'm about to act, God says through Ezekiel, but for the sake of
my great name, which you have defamed among the nations. I am about to do this for me.
I'm about to create a people for me. I'm about to save a people
for me. And what does it all point to?
And this is, we have to quit here, but it is the Christ. To them belong the patriarchs. the sons and fathers of Israel,
and from their race according to the flesh is the Christ, the
Messiah. John 4 arguing the precepts of
Israel, the precepts of Judaism. The affection, the adoption of
Jacob. Jacob who became Israel, who
wrestled with God. Now we are also in Jacob. See, she says, are you greater
than our father Jacob? You better believe he is. Jacob was just an adopted sinner. And then in the midst of all
that arguing, she even does what he says here, what I just said.
She even sort of escapes into this thing, oh, it's all about
the worship. I know we're experiencing the presence of God and our worship.
They were not. Jesus says the time is coming and is now here
where no one will worship the Father in that way, but all who
are true worshipers. will worship in spirit and in
truth. And she's dumbfounded. She can't see it. Why? Because
she's not born of the Spirit. She is born of the flesh. In
her entire life, she's trying to feel the thirst of her soul
to come into the presence of God, to be adopted by Him for
whatever means she thinks is necessary for Him to notice her.
But in that emptiness then, there is still a void that she tries
to fill with other men. and then her own people who were
hated by Jews are now, she's hated by them. And then out of
nowhere, in the middle of it all, she says these words, I
guess it is only Messiah who will teach us all things. Where'd
that come from? It came from God the Holy Spirit
who regenerated her, and in the depths of her mind, the only
thing she could see that would resolve her conundrum was the
promised Lamb of God. She was born again. And then
Jesus gave her the gospel. The one of whom you speak, I
am. And she worshipped Him and she
exercised faith. God granted faith. That's conversion. And she goes and says, behold,
I saw a man, I've met a man who's told me everything I've ever
done. Could he be the Christ? the Christ. And then people say,
well, well, well, the Word of God must have failed. Verse 6,
look, we've got to get through verse 8. It is not as though
the Word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from
Israel belong to Israel, and not all who are children of Abraham
and not all 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 it is the children of the promise who are accounted
as offspring. It doesn't matter who your daddy
is. It doesn't matter where you come
from, it doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't matter what you choose, it doesn't matter
what you believe, it doesn't matter how serious you are, how
convicted you are, how sincere you are, it doesn't matter. What
matters is that God counts you as a child. And it's not capricious
anymanymanymo. Oops, sorry, here you go. No. Before the foundations of the
world. Those descended from Jacob do
not constitute true spiritual Israel. National Israel was never
a chosen people. That's what Paul just said. Those who are the offspring of
the flesh are not the children of God. Those who are counted
as offspring are the children of God. Though God used this
new created nation to bring forth the Christ, the nation in itself has no bearing
on that. on who is and who is not the children of God. Israelites
of the flesh were never meant to be the elect. They were never meant to be the
elect, but the elect were meant to be seen in the choosing of
Israel. It is a shadow. See, the whole of Scripture reveals
that salvation is only, only, only God's election of His people. And it has nothing to do with
the Tulip. It has nothing to do with Calvinism. It has nothing
to do with the historical theology of any of those iterations. It
has nothing to do with being Baptist. It has nothing to do
with any of those. It has everything to do with what God has revealed
through His Word. And we can all get together and
agree on it and come up with our own name and then become
a denomination. We can become, I don't know,
the heretics are us. I don't care I want to see other
people see the glory of Christ in salvation, which means God
must show them the glory of salvation in election. God is faithful. Haven't we already
learned that? Isn't that why He's asking these questions?
God's faithful, why the Israelites? Because that's the point. God's
faithful to save His children. not nationalistic ideals, not
a specific people group. His promises stand, and they
stand today. They don't stand in the future.
Well, they do, but they're not standing for us to see them later.
We see them now. The promises of God to His people,
to His chosen people, are now. We have all spiritual blessings.
How? in Christ. The fulfillment of everything
that God in His faithfulness has awarded His people is now,
right here, in Christ, this day, it is done, the work is finished,
and God is faithful. And this was finished, or this
was declared, long before there ever was an Israel. long before
there ever was an Israel. God chooses who He desires and
He does so after the secret counsel of His own will. That's the point. Those He has loved eternally those He has chosen eternally
is not conditioned on man's lineage. It's not conditioned on race.
It's not conditioned on blood, or man's choices, or man's work,
or man's obedience. Someone told me just two weeks
ago that election is conditioned on the obedience of the person. And I could not respond to that
letter, because the only thing I could say is, God have mercy
on your everlasting souls. That is heretical and damnable
in every iteration of Christendom known to man. Yet it is this person's sole
belief that she and her husband are born again by their obedience
to believe. Election is clearly God's eternal
point in salvation. Abraham's offspring are not his
children spiritually. Ishmael was not chosen. Why do you think God purposed
Ishmael? To show us that it's not, it
doesn't matter. Ishmael, was he a child of Abraham?
Yes. Was he offspring? Yes. Was he elect? No. But through
Isaac shall your offspring be named. Wait a minute, wait a
minute, wait a minute. What's this guy doing here? The older
shall serve the younger. That's where we're going to be
next week. It was not Esau that the covenant would be fulfilled.
It was through Jacob. Why? Let me give you a sneak peek. For this is what the promise
said, verse 9, about this time next year I will return and Sarah
shall have a son. And not only so, but also when
Rebecca had conceived children by one man, see, her forefather
Isaac Though they were not yet born, and had made no choices,
and had done nothing, good or bad, had committed no act of
will, in order that God's purpose of election might continue. Not because of the work of man,
but because of Him who calls, she was told, the older shall
serve the younger. Friends, it is a rough day in
Christendom. And I'm beginning to see, and
I know this is a terrible thing to say, and I've been saying
it for a while, but I'm beginning to see that there is a very small, small
bowl in which we can call Christendom. And I've been doing this a long
time to me, but it's not really been a long time. But in 21 years
of ministry, it's like I see so many people called to do things. And I remember my early days
of ministry, even before those 21 years. And I'm thinking, this
is what I'm supposed to do because I was doing what other people
told me I should do. And I see day, after day, after
day, after day, and year, after year, after year, many people
just coming into the fold of the church, coming into the fold
of Christianity, coming into the fold of what they're calling
the gospel, yet so few can grasp the truth of God's eternal grace. So few, even when you explain
it to them, can say, oh, I see Christ is my righteousness. They cannot trust in that which
they have not been shown by God. And I'm learning more and more
that faithful teaching to Scripture is the only thing we're really
called to do. Teach it to your children. Teach
it to your grandchildren. Teach it to yourself, to each
other. Because without the truth of Christ and His Word, we will
create all sorts of ways in which God has worked to save a people
and then we will apply a label on those people as we see fit.
God has His people and He will save them because Christ atoned
for their sins. Let's pray.