So Romans chapter 9. Let's read from verse 15. Romans
chapter 9 and verse 15. For he saith to Moses, I will
have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth These
verses are speaking to us of God's sovereign grace, God's
prerogative, God's choice, God's elective purpose in gathering
to himself a people. The vast majority of religious
people in this world today have a basic assumption that it is
the individual who chooses God. And indeed we find that in churches
and in crusades and in big tent meetings, the call goes out,
decide for Jesus, choose God, follow after him. This church
doesn't pursue that course. This church doesn't hold that
doctrine. This church seeks to honour the
statements that we find in the Word of God about God's initiative
in the choice of individuals to salvation. So we find that
God says he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. and he will have compassion on
whom he will have compassion. It is not of him that willeth,
it is not of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. For the scripture saith, verse
17, Unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose have I raised thee
up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might
be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy
on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why
doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
Nay, but, O man, who art thou that replyest against God? Shall
the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made
me thus? Hath not the potter power over
the clay Of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour And
another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to show
his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that he might
make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy,
which he had aforeprepared unto glory? Even us, whom he hath
called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. He, as he saith also in Hosea,
I will call them my people, which were not my people, and her beloved,
which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass that
in the place where it was said unto them, ye are not my people,
there shall they be called the children of the living God. Isaiah
also crieth concerning Israel, though the number of the children
of Israel be as the sands of the sea, a remnant shall be saved. For he will finish the work and
cut it short in righteousness, because a short work will the
Lord make upon the earth. And as Isaiah said before, except
the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodom
and been made like unto Gomorrah. So here's the verse that we're
going to begin our thoughts on this evening. What shall we say
then? That the Gentiles, which followed
not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even
the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed
after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law
of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought
it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law, for
they stumbled at that stumbling stone. As it is written, Behold,
I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offence, and whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed. Brethren, my heart's
desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be
saved. For I bear them record that they
have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being
ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish
their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto
the righteousness of God. for Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Amen. May God
be pleased to bless to us this reading from his word. The names that are given to and
taken by the Lord Jesus Christ in scripture are many. There are scores, perhaps hundreds
of names, descriptive names that can be given to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Titles, descriptions of his nature,
his work, his accomplishments. And many of these names are familiar
to us. We know them readily. They easily
trip off the lips. We, for example, talk about the
Lord Jesus Christ as being the Lamb of God. That's not too unusual
for us. We've heard about the Lord Jesus
Christ as the Lamb of God many times before. John the Baptist
could say, when he saw Jesus coming, behold, the Lamb of God. that taketh away the sins of
the world. And so the Lamb of God was a
title that was given to the Lord Jesus Christ. He's called the
Good Shepherd. Again, a title which he takes
in scripture with which we all surely are familiar to some degree. He's called the Vine. Okay, we've
moved away from the Lamb to the Vine. But he's called the vine
because he is able to sustain his people, like the way in which
a vine takes nourishment and sends it out to the branches.
And the branches are fruitful, the branches are supported by
the body of the vine. And that again is a descriptive
picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's called the door. I am the
door. By me, if any man enter in, he
shall be saved. The Lord Jesus Christ is pictured
as a door. The way, again, these are familiar
terms to us of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am the way, the truth
and the life. And they're readily brought to
mind and they're easily applicable when we think about the Lord
Jesus Christ as that path, that way, that route into the presence
of Almighty God and into eternal rest. But there are other names that
are given to the Lord Jesus Christ that are less obvious, and perhaps
less applicable also, or less apparent as to their meaning. We find it a little bit more
difficult to understand what these names mean. And here, the
Apostle Paul calls the Lord Jesus Christ a stumbling block. A stumbling block. and he calls
him a rock of offence. a rock of a fence. A lot of people
have just finished celebrating Christmas and of course the picture
of gentle Jesus, meek and mild is brought to mind at the Christmas
season. And we have this picture of the
little baby, easily approachable, easily accessible, innocent and
vulnerable. And there, that's the picture
we often like to have of Jesus. something small and manageable. But have you ever thought of
the Lord Jesus Christ as a stumbling stone? Have you ever thought
of him as a rock of offence? You see, man-made religion, the
religion which we produce by our own wisdom, by our own construction,
It's like that religion that the Apostle Paul encountered
in Athens. Athens was a major city in Greece
and the Apostle Paul went there and he encountered a whole lot
of religious people and a whole lot of philosophical people and
a whole lot of theorists who were thinking about religion
and religious activity all day long. And out of that vain imagination,
They had built their own religions, in the plural, and they had altars
to all the gods that they could ever imagine, and all the gods
that they had ever heard of. Do you know that they even had
an altar there which they gave the name of as to the unknown
god, because they thought, well, we've got all these other gods,
we must have missed somebody. So just in case that God felt
left out and was angry with them, they had an altar to the unknown
God. And today we are not much better
as far as religion and as far as denominations are concerned.
And we build our idol, Jesus. We build our own idea of what we think Jesus
should be like. And we take all of these names
that Jesus has, and we emphasize this one and that one, and we
kind of mix them up a little bit. And sooner or later, over
a period of time, out of that distills this picture of who
we think Jesus is. And we begin to worship him.
And we worship that Jesus. But the problem is, or the question
is, is that the true Jesus, or is that a Jesus that we have
manufactured in our own thinking and we have constructed in our
own imagination? Despite the Word of God clearly
declaring who the Lord Jesus Christ is, we discover that many
today worship an unknown God. They're still worshipping a God
that they don't know. The Lord Jesus Christ is revealed
as the one true God who loves and who hates, who saves and
who condemns. who brings mercy and who fetches
judgment. He is a rock that is a foundation
upon which the true church of the Lord Jesus Christ stands
and has its life. But he is also a rock of offense. And as such, he crushes his enemies. He causes his elect, his chosen
people, to stand when the evil day comes against them. But to many, he becomes a cause
of their stumbling and of their falling. This evening, I want
to take a few minutes to explain again the nature of the true
gospel. And if God will enable me, the
nature of the true Christ. In 1 John chapter five and verse
20, we read these words. And we know that the Son of God
is come. and hath given us an understanding,
that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that
is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God
and eternal life. We talk about believing in Jesus. But who is the Jesus in whom
we believe? Just think with me for a moment,
if you will. What is a stumbling stone? What is a stumbling stone? Well, I don't think you would
have to be very old to be able to tell me a good description
of a stumbling stone, because the answer is in the name. It's in the words. It's a stone upon and over which
men fall. And Jesus Christ is a stumbling
stone. It is both dangerous and it is shameful. If you trip
over a stumbling stone and break an arm or a leg or bash your
head, it can be a very dangerous thing. If you trip over a stumbling
stone, I wonder how many of us have ever fallen in the street. You kind of catch yourself coming
back up, don't you? And you look around to see if
anybody noticed that you had just fallen. And you sort of
pretend that it never happened, because it's embarrassing when
we fall. Do you know that in the fortified castles back in
Old England, they used to put stumbling stones in the stairways
and in the passageways of the castle. They physically put stumbling
stones on the ground, not because they were trying to trip up the
little maid that used to come to the master's room and make
up his bed or bring his meals or whatever it was happened in
those castles in those days. But so that if an enemy was coming
into the castle on a night when it was dark and creeping up the
stairs of the tower to the master's bedroom with his sword in his
hand or his spear ready to stab him, he would trip over the stumbling
stone in the darkness And in the noise that resulted, he would
reveal his presence there and the occupants of the tower could
protect themselves. A stumbling stone was physically
put into the ground so that an enemy would trip over it. And
we encounter these things in different places in these old
buildings. And that title of a stumbling
stone is given to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's applied here by
Paul to the saviour. Not only is it said that the
Lord Jesus Christ is the stumbling stone, the rock of offence, it
is said that it was put there by God himself. God has laid
in Zion a stumbling stone. God put the Lord Jesus Christ
into this world to be a stumbling stone. This picture that we have of
Christ as a stone is something that is repeated regularly in
scriptures. He is called a foundation stone
in another place. And it speaks to us of the eternal
purpose of God, the decree of God, the plan of God for humanity. You see, God isn't wondering
what is going to happen with the world. God doesn't wring
his hands with anxiety about whether everything is going to
turn out alright or not. God knows exactly what is going
to happen in the future because God has decreed that future. God has purposed that future. God has planned and set in place
every circumstance, every eventuality, and he knows exactly what is
going to happen. He is never taken by surprise. He is never outwitted. He is
the all-knowing, all-powerful God. It's in the very nature
of his being to be in control of all things. And these This
knowledge, this omniscience as we sometimes call it, it's the
eternal purpose and counsel of God to accomplish His will. We talk about prophecy, we talk
about promises and God has revealed what is going to happen in this
world and he has promised salvation to certain individuals that he
has chosen out in eternal decree, in eternal purpose to bring them
to salvation. It's not of the free will of
the individual, It's of the choice and purpose of God who will obtain
and receive salvation. That's what we read a little
bit earlier. It's not of him that willeth,
it's not of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. I will have mercy on whom I will
have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
So when we come to the scriptures, when we preach this gospel, we
are preaching about God's purpose of saving certain sinners. Not everyone, but certain individuals
that he knows that he has chosen and that he is going to bring
to salvation. And we preach that gospel. We preach to men and women this
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if men will not have Christ,
if men will not have the Lord Jesus Christ, who is presented
in Scripture, but would rather make a Christ of their own devising,
a Christ of their own imagination, an idol Christ, if you like. Okay, so he's not chiseled and
formed out of stone or wood or metal, like some idols are, but
he's still manufactured by our own imagination. He's still brought
into being by the mistaken ignorance that we have of the true nature
of Christ. If men will not have the Lord
Jesus Christ as he is revealed in the Bible. If they are not
built upon that foundation stone that he is, but rather build
for themselves another foundation. maybe using the same language
of Scripture, maybe using a smattering of the same truths of Scripture,
but making a doctrine for themselves, making a denomination for themselves,
making a way of life for themselves. Is God to be answerable for that? If men do their own religion,
their own way, and God says, there is a way which seemeth
right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death,
Is God to be held accountable if men go their own way? He, the cornerstone of the church,
the foundation stone of the church, becomes a stumbling stone to
those who will not have him. Becomes a stumbling stone over
which they stumble and fall. He becomes a rock of offence
for while God has placed him at the corner of the building,
while God has said, this is the foundation upon which I will
build my church. They say, well, we're going to
build another church. We're going to build another foundation.
We're going to lay a foundation which suits our purposes and
accomplishes our ends. God has purposefully laid this
stone, which is Christ. And as men go away and as men
forsake and choose to follow another path, they discover that
that foundation stone becomes a crushing stone. a stone which
falls upon them, a stone that destroys them. The Lord Jesus
Christ is not only a Christ of love and grace and mercy. He
is a Christ of judgment and condemnation and destruction. And unless we
properly understand the Christ of the Bible, then we will discover
that that cornerstone becomes to us a stumbling stone and a
stone over which we fall. That same stone serves two purposes. It stabilizes one, and it trips
another. And the will of God is served
to both of these ends. The concluding verses that we
have here in chapter 9 contain a powerful statement of God's
sovereign purpose, sovereign grace as we call it. And I think
perhaps even in reflecting upon this passage for this evening's
service, that this is a stronger statement than even I had realised
before. Paul has stated in the most emphatic
terms, the doctrine of election. Again, let me just explain what
I mean by election. Every now and again, the country
goes to the polls in an election. What is it that we're doing in
an election? We are voting for who we want
to have in a particular position. It might be president, it might
be a senator, it might be a sheriff, who knows, whatever it is. We
are voting and when we live in a democracy, we have the right
to choose who we want to have ruling over us. That's what election
means. It's the choice. An election
is a choice. And we choose in a democracy,
we all have a vote and we choose who we want to be our leaders. Well, God speaks of election,
but he's not a Democrat. He doesn't say to all men, you
can choose. He says, I'm God, I'll choose. And God chooses and he has an
election. And the word of God tells us,
we didn't actually read the verse, but here in Romans chapter nine,
a little bit earlier, he speaks of Jacob and Esau. We did read verse 15 and 16.
And here we find that Paul is showing in this chapter, this
doctrine of election, this doctrine of God's choice. Not only that,
he's speaking about love. Now most people, certainly most
Christians will talk about God's love and they'll say that it's
universal, that God loves everyone. Well of course God loves everyone.
Don't we read that in the Bible? Well actually we don't read in
the Bible that God loves everyone. What we read in the Bible is
that God has discriminating love, that God has a love for one which
does not extend to another, that God has a special love for one
and even that he has an hatred for another. Jacob have I loved,
but Esau have I hated. You say, what? God hates people? That's what scripture tells us. Not only does it tell us that
God hated Esau, it tells us that these two boys, Jacob and Esau,
were twins. while they were still in their
mother's womb, when they hadn't done anything. So we're not saying
that God loves that one because he's good and he hates that one
because he's wicked. No. Before the twins, before
the children were born, listen, that the purpose of God according
to election, remember what we said election was, the choice
of God, that the purpose of God according to election might stand. God said, Jacob have I loved,
but Esau have I hated. Those who are going to be saved
will be saved because God chooses to save them. Those who are not
going to be saved will stumble over the Lord Jesus Christ. Stumble over that one who is
revealed in scripture as the only way, truth and life to sinners. Here is particular love. Here
is discriminating mercy. Here is the divine covenant promises
of God laid out to show men and women where the true source of
salvation is to be found. I will have mercy on whom I will
have mercy. I will have compassion on whom
I will have compassion. I'll love who I want to love.
I'll have mercy on whomever I want to have mercy on. and no one
will tell me, because I am God, what I should be doing. So then
it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but
of God that showeth mercy, that the purpose of God, according
to election, might stand. When we read that little phrase
there, so then it is not of him that willeth, what is the it
that we're talking about there in that verse? Well, it's this. It's the calling of God. It's
the blessedness of the children of promise. It's the gift that
is given to certain individuals in this world because God has
chosen to make them His people, His children, and to bring them
into a relationship with Him. And that's what Paul is talking
about here. And in order to nail down the
significance of this doctrine, Paul tells us that righteousness,
or another word for righteousness is justification, being made
right with God, and peace to be reconciled to God, to have
our sins taken away, and for peace to be made between God,
who is offended at sin, and those of us who are the committers
and the perpetrators, the doers of sin, for these two to be brought
together in peace, to be brought together as friends, to be brought
together in union, requires justification, requires that a righteousness
which is acceptable to the Holy God is bestowed upon those who
have no righteousness of their own. Now how are we going to
get that righteousness? That's what the book of Romans
has been about. The apostle Paul established
that men are wicked in their nature and opposed to God. And
yet he has shown that there is a way that an acceptable righteousness
can be obtained by sinful creatures. How is it to be done? Well, that's
been the whole momentum of his argument. The Jews who had received
so much of God's revelation, they pursued a life of holiness. They worked their socks off.
to be as righteous as they possibly could be. They tried to do everything
that was going to be acceptable to God. They took the Old Testament
scriptures, they took the prophets, and they said, well, what is
it we need to do here? And you know what happened? The history of the Old Testament
is clear. They set out all the rules that
they needed to fulfill. And it's not just the Ten Commandments.
It's them and a whole load of other ones as well. And they
said, we'll obey these and God will find us righteous. And because
they were so sinful in their hearts, so hypocritical in their
nature, so devious in their minds, as we all are, we find that they
had an outward appearance of righteousness, but an inward
heart of wickedness. and they couldn't find a perfect
holiness that would satisfy a God of holiness or justify them before
him. And so Paul says, the Gentiles,
that is the non-Jews, which follow not after righteousness. They
didn't care about the Ten Commandments. They didn't care about trying
to please God. They just get on with their lives.
They just get on with, they found every opportunity to let the
wickedness of their hearts run amok. Go on, follow it, pursue
your lusts, pursue your ends. You do whatever you want. The
strong took whatever they wanted. And they left havoc in their
wake. And that was the way of the Gentiles. The armies of one nation assaulted
the armies of another. If they were strong enough to
take them, they killed their men, they took their women, they
put their children into servitude. And men made their fortunes or
lost their lives on the battlefield and in pursuing the ends of their
own desires. This was the Gentiles. They didn't
care about the laws of God. They didn't care about what it
was that the Jews were pursuing. So what does God say? He said,
the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, lo and
behold, they have attained to righteousness. They've got righteousness. That's what Paul says. Even the
righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, the Jews, which followed
after the law of righteousness, the Ten Commandments and everything
else that they could pile in there, hath not attained to the
law of righteousness. So the Gentiles, the non-Jews,
not every Gentile, but those that God chose, Not all those,
but those to whom faith was granted as a gift from God. They are
justified. The Gentiles are justified. They
didn't care about the Ten Commandments, but they've been justified. Why?
Because they've been obedient to the Ten Commandments? No,
because they have faith, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, faith
in God. They are made righteous in God's
estimation, in the estimation, in the sight of a holy God who
looks and sees all things. He says, I declare you to be
righteous. What, even though all my works
are as filthy rags? Absolutely. I declare you to
be righteous. I give you the gift of righteousness. And God has made them righteous
by his elective purpose. While all of those On the other
side, who placed their hope in obeying the law, in trying to
be as holy as they could be, to gain as much merit as they
could, to have peace with God, they have fallen short of the
holy standard of God's law and they therefore continue in their
sin. The point that the Apostle Paul
is making here is this, that it is grace and not works that
makes the difference. It's mercy and not law that makes
an individual right with God. It's a living spirit made alive
by God, the Holy Spirit, and not the corruption of this hypocritical,
self-righteous flesh. And that's the gospel and that's
the wonder of God's work. Making righteous a sinner, it
never was and it never could be. Not now, not until the Lord
Jesus Christ comes back. The work of a fallen man. A fallen
man cannot make himself right with God, no matter how hard
he tries. It is not of him that wills it. People talk about free will.
It's not of him that wills it, or of him that runneth. That
labours and exercises himself to the absolute best of his ability. but it is of God that showeth
mercy. Justification, the making righteous
of a sinful man, bypasses the law works and all of the fleshy
self-righteous effort and it settles upon those who by faith
are brought to peace by the grace and mercy of God's gift to them. Faith Trust in the Lord Jesus
Christ as our way of salvation, as our righteousness from God
is a gift from God. God gives the gift of faith to
individuals of his choosing, not to all men, but it is bestowed
freely upon certain individuals whom he chooses and he does it
without reference to their works or to their efforts or to their
law keeping. And what was true in Paul's day
is true still today. Righteousness comes by faith,
not by doing. Righteousness comes as a gift
from God, not by us trying to be better people, not by us trying
to make ourselves fit for God's presence. Only by faith, God's
gift to chosen individuals, And people have oh so much zeal for
religion. And they have zeal for God and
they have zeal for doctrine and they have zeal for the denominational
purity. And it never did and it never
will save a single soul. In chapter 10, verse three, we
read these words. Or we read that it was ignorance. It was ignorance of God's righteousness
and it was ignorance of the Lord Jesus Christ. that caused these
individuals to go about trying to establish their own righteousness. They being ignorant of God's
righteousness. What is God's righteousness?
It's Christ. They were ignorant of Christ.
That's the point we were making earlier. They had made their
own Christ. They had made an idol Christ.
They were ignorant of Christ. They didn't know who he was.
And because they didn't know him as the righteousness of God,
they went about establishing their own righteousness and they
did not submit themselves to the righteousness of God. They
never submitted themselves to Christ. They said, we will not
have this man to reign over us. Away with him. Away with him. In Proverbs 9, verse 10, we read,
the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge
of the holy is understanding. The knowledge of the holy. You'll
never find holiness by looking inside your own heart. You'll
never find holiness by searching your own mind. You'll never find
holiness by pursuing your own way. The only one who ever was,
who ever is holy is Christ himself. For you to have a knowledge of
the holy means a knowledge of Christ. It means trusting and
believing in the Christ of God, the Christ of Scripture. And
that's why we preach Christ. We preach Christ and Him crucified. That is why Christ alone will
profit your soul, will do you good. Not all the rules and regulations
and lifestyles and standards and morality of people who say
this is how you should live. You can live a thousand lives
trying every permutation and you'll never measure to God's
standard except you find Christ and have a knowledge of him,
God's holiness, God's purity. We preach Christ because no amount
of moral uprightness brings justification. No amount of good works brings
peace with God. We preach Christ because it's
Christ's work alone that exposes the weakness and the inadequacy
of the law and under faith brings all of the tempting attractions
of good works and self-righteousness. and man's own efforts to a grinding
conclusion and an end. There's no salvation under the
law, under man's works, under good works. And so Romans 10
verse four says, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believe in. Don't try to please God by living
a good life. You will fail. The only way to
please God is by trusting in that way of salvation that he
has established, by trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ alone.
True faith understands that our works never lead to peace with
God, never bring righteousness, never bring justification. But
faith, trusting Christ, it liberates us, it frees us, it informs us. of the sufficiency that is in
Christ, of the fullness that is in Christ, of the adequacy
of Christ and His righteousness imputed to us, granted to us,
gifted to us by God Himself that makes us fit for the presence
of God, not because of what we have done, but because of what
He has done, because of the sacrifice that He made, because of the
death that He endured, because of the salvation that He won.
on the cross on the behalf of the people of God's choice and
choosing. True faith comforts our hearts
in the midst of our failures. True faith strengthens our dependence
when we know we can't go on ourselves. True faith satisfies our every
need because it shows us the supplier of our every need, the
Lord Jesus Christ and all that he has done. If I have Christ, I have enough. If I have Christ, I have everything
that I need. I need no other argument. I need
no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died
and that he died for me. Amen.