WWUTT 1292 God's Purpose of Election (Romans 9:9-12)

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Ishmael was not the promised son of Abraham, it was Isaac. And Esau was not the promised son of Isaac, it was

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Jacob. All according to God's will, when we understand the text. You're listening to When We Understand The Text, an online

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Bible ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty. Find videos and more at our website, www .tt

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.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in Romans, chapter nine.

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I'll pick up where we left off yesterday. Let's start by reading the paragraph that goes from verses six through 13.

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The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. But it is not as though the word of God has failed.

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For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. And not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring.

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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.

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For this is what the promise said, about this time next year I will return and Sarah shall have a son.

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And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather

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Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad.

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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.

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As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.

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So we come back here to verse six, where Paul says it is not as though the word of God has failed.

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Remember to our lesson yesterday, where Paul is anticipating somebody listening to what he had just laid out in Romans chapter eight, or what we have as Romans eight, would have been chapter eight in the letter that was sent to the church in Rome, it wouldn't have had chapter and verse markers.

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But as we have it sectioned out, it's what we know as Romans chapter eight, where Paul is laying out this robust doctrine of understanding that all who are in Christ Jesus will be saved and nothing will separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord. Even though the Christians there in the church in Rome were going through intense persecution and many others facing tribulations of any kind, none of these things are evidence that we've been separated from God.

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We share in the sufferings of Christ and these sufferings cannot even compare with the glory that awaits us if we endure to the end.

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So those who are in Christ Jesus will not be separated from the love of God.

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We are more than conquerors through him who loves us. And as a Christian is sitting there listening to this being laid out before the church there in Rome, they may have been thinking to themselves, well, what about the

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Israelites? Because they once were the people of God and they've fallen away from God.

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So have they not been snatched out of his hand? And then that's why Paul answers the question beginning with this saying, if it were possible for me,

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I would go to hell on their behalf if it meant their salvation.

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But the reason why they aren't saved is because God has not chosen them. And that is how this is being laid out here in Romans nine, verse six, he says, it is not as though the word of God has failed just because these who were known as the children of God, this ethnic nation who had been called out of slavery in Egypt, who had been given the promised land, who had received the covenant and and even from them came the

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Messiah. Even though all of these things were fulfilled through them, it does not mean that the word of God has failed for them just because they are not believers for Paul says not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

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Remember that John the Baptist said in the warning to the Pharisees, in the rebuke that he gave to the children of Israel, he said in Matthew three, nine, do not presume to say to yourselves, we have

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Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

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And John the Baptist wasn't necessarily being hyperbolic there. He was probably being typological because in the book of Ezekiel, it is mentioned that I will take out your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

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That's in Ezekiel, chapter thirty six. So you think of it in terms of those who are hard hearted.

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The Gentiles certainly were. They had stony hearts, not those hearts that were actually after the

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Lord. And so from these stones, those whose hearts had always been of stone,

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God was able to raise up for himself children for Abraham. And indeed, that has been the case from the

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Gentiles, from we who are not Jews. We are not descended from the Jews. We are not of the ethnic heritage of those who are descended from Abraham.

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We are of the rest of the world. We are descended from pagans. And yet God has raised up from these pagans children for himself, having given us the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And we have heard the gospel and turn from our sin and turn for a turn from our worldliness in which we walked and our hearts, which were hard as stone, have been made into hearts that seek after God, that love

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God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. All of this has been done by the choosing, by the providence, by the sovereign ordination of God.

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Going all the way back to Romans 1 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the

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Jew first, because it was to the Jews that the gospel was first spoken and then also to the

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Greek or to the Gentile, to the pagan. And that's the rest of us who have not been descended from Abraham.

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The Jews tried to defend themselves before Jesus by saying, Abraham is our father.

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This is in John 8 39, Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works

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Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

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This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.

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And they said to him, we were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God.

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And Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me for I came from God and I am here.

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I am not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what

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I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

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He was a murderer from the beginning. He does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

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When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

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So practical application here, you cannot say that you are a Christian because of who you are descended from.

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Every single one of us has a responsibility to hear the gospel and believe it.

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Now again, as far as you are concerned, you made a decision to turn from your sin and follow

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Jesus. When you get to the theology of it, according to the scripture, you were only able to make that decision because your heart was regenerated by the

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Holy Spirit within you that turned your heart from a heart of stone into a heart that sought after God.

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In your sin nature, being descended from Adam, you had a desire to rebel against God.

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That was your nature. Your nature was to do what was contrary to God. You were not seeking after God.

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You did not love God because your sin nature means you were in rebellion against God.

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That's all you wanted was to rebel against God. But now that the Spirit has changed your heart, when you heard the gospel, when you were convicted over your sin, hearing about it in the law, that you had transgressed the law of God, but you hear this good news that Jesus has died for your sin so that by believing in him, you will be saved.

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The Spirit has changed your heart to believe this and now you're a person who loves God instead of a person who hates

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God and is constantly rebelling against him. And so now you have been made into children of Abraham.

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You are no longer children of the devil who do as your father does, who is a liar and a murderer as he has been from the beginning.

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That's all of us caught in the devil's scheme. Ephesians 6 .11 says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

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But before we could do that, we were caught in the scheme of the devil. 1

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John 3 .8 says the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

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And we read in 2 Timothy 2, this is somewhere after verse 25, about how we are caught in a snare of Satan, but it's in hearing the gospel of Christ that we are freed from that snare when

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God grants repentance to us. And so we have this heart now that has been changed from stone into a spirit ritual heart that we might, in the

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Holy Spirit of God, love Christ and his word, desire the father, be adopted as his sons and daughters.

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All of this is the work of God in our hearts. God has raised up children for himself from stones by the gospel that was preached to us.

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And so now we have this promise given in Galatians 3 .7. As I read yesterday, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the

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Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying in you shall all the nations be blessed.

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And and that's us. We who were from the nations, not the Jews, but the rest of the world.

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We have heard the gospel. We have been blessed by the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ, who is the gospel.

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Verse nine. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

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And then Galatians 3 .29. And if you are Christ's, then you are

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Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. So that brings us back to our paragraph here in Romans chapter nine, verse seven.

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Not all our children of Abraham, because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

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And Christ is from Isaac. So it is by faith in Christ, who is the fulfillment of that promise, that we are named as children of Abraham, therefore children of God.

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Verse eight. 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.

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So understand the difference between the children of the flesh and the children of the promise.

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If it is by children of the flesh, then those who are descended of Ishmael can say that they are children of the promise.

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Remember that Abraham had two sons. He had Ishmael and he had Isaac. It's because God had promised

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Abraham a son, but Sarah knew that she couldn't have a son. So she gave her maidservant

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Hagar to Abraham and Abraham had a son through Hagar. That son was

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Ishmael. This was before Isaac. But this was Abraham and Sarah trying to take the promise of God into their own hands.

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And that resulted in something disastrous. It was something sinful. And then you had

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Ishmael and Isaac who were against one another and eventually Ishmael even had to be sent away.

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And there has been conflict ever since as a result of these two lines.

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One that went in the direction of Ishmael and one that went in the direction of Isaac. We've seen disruption in the

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Middle East ever since then. So Isaac is the child of promise. There was a child that was going to come from Sarah as it goes on here to say, this is what the promise said about this time next year,

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I will return and Sarah shall have a son. That's very specific.

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It's not that Hagar is going to have this child of promise. It is Sarah that is going to have a son as God had promised them from the beginning of his promise.

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And this is a citation, of course, that comes from Genesis 1810. It is Sarah who shall have the son.

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So we're seeing a distinction being made here between sons, not Ishmael, he's not the child of the promise.

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Isaac, those who come from Isaac is the child of the promise, the son that is born to Sarah. And then you have another mother that is mentioned here, verse 10.

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And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather

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Isaac. So we're just going down the lineage here. We're going from Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob.

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Isaac was the child of promise, not Ishmael. And then from Isaac would come two sons.

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And notice how God's plan is being worked through very specific women as well. We have

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Sarah mentioned, we have Rebecca mentioned, verse 10. Not only so, but also when

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Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad.

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We're talking about the twins here. We're talking about Jacob and Esau, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad in order that God's purpose of election might continue.

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Not because of works, but because of him who calls. Again, this is all to the praise of his glorious grace.

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It's not because of any work that we do, but it's because God has chosen, he has elected, he is the one who is working all things together for good for those who love

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God and are called according to his purpose. Back to Romans 8, 28, right? So that God's purpose of election might continue.

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She was told, Rebecca was told, the older will serve the younger.

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As it is written, Jacob, I loved, but Esau, I hated. Now they were twins, of course, but there's still one who was born before the other.

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And that was Esau. When Esau was born, Jacob came out holding his heel. And so he gets named

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Jacob, which means heel grabber. It also means cheater. And Jacob certainly was that.

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See, he was he was not a good man. When you go through the story of Jacob, he he was deceived and he was also a deceiver.

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So he would go back and forth with his father in law, Laban, and they would kind of do things to manipulate one another.

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Laban even tricked Jacob into marrying his oldest daughter, Leah, who was not as easy on the eyes.

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But Jacob loved Rachel. And so he worked even seven more years so that he would get

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Rachel. Remember that that Jacob worked seven years to get Leah, thought he was getting Rachel, but it was Leah that he ended up marrying.

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And then he worked seven more years that he might have Rachel because that was the wife that he truly loved.

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But God blessed Leah's womb and she had more children. Rachel did not have as many children.

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And it's from Leah even that the that the child of the promise would come,

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Judah, who was born of Leah, not born of Rachel. Rachel had Joseph and Benjamin.

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Those were her sons. But but Leah had the other tribes of Israel. Anyway, I'm kind of off on a rabbit trail here.

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The point that I was making was that Jacob was not an honest man. He was not a good man.

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You don't see goodness in the life of Jacob. You see a guy who was kind of a trickster.

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He did whatever he needed to do to advantage himself. He loved one wife more than he loved another wife.

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He even had favorite sons that he had over other sons. Jacob would not have been an easy guy to get along with.

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It wasn't much to admire in this man. So, again, as it's stated here, though, they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, even after they were born.

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There wasn't anything about Jacob that was more redeeming than about Esau. So this is in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, not because we do anything good, but because of him who calls.

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Rebecca was told the older will serve the younger Esau who was born first, though he's the one who's supposed to receive all the promises.

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He's supposed to be the inheritor of everything from his father. He's the one that's supposed to receive all the blessings.

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Now, Jacob fools Isaac into giving him the blessing instead of Esau. It's like just because Jacob did that.

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I mean, really, what would be the big deal? Why doesn't Isaac just say, oh, well, he's the second born anyway. So that didn't count.

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So I'm going to give the blessing to you. Well, again, it's it's so God's purpose of election might continue, not because of our works, not because we look at two people and we say, well, the older son deserves everything because he's the oldest.

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That was the the tradition that that was the heritage in.

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Well, I want to say in Israel at that time, Jacob was Israel. So that was that was the way things were in the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

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The one who was oldest was the one who would receive everything from the father. This, by the way, is why we have in Colossians chapter one.

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It being said that Jesus is the first born of all creation. It doesn't mean that God created

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Jesus first. It means that God has given everything that is that belongs to the first born to Christ.

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The first born gets everything from the father. He is the heir. And so just as that's the tradition among men.

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So, God, the father has done. This is an analogy that Paul is using here.

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So the father has given all things to the son. And Jesus even says in Matthew chapter twenty eight, verse 18, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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And previously, when Jesus called his first disciples, he even said to them there that everything has been given to him by the father.

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So that's that's the reference to first born. The first born is the heir. He's the one that gets all the stuff from the father.

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And so we would think here that between Jacob and Esau, Esau would be getting all the stuff that belonged to Isaac.

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But it's Jacob who receives not only the blessing from Isaac, not only the blessing from Isaac, but even the promise that God would continue through Jacob to Christ.

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We're going to talk more about this tomorrow. I'm going to come back to this statement in verse 13, as it is written,

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Jacob, I loved, but Esau, I hated. We'll talk about this once more in our lesson tomorrow.

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Let's conclude with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness, for your calling, for your grace in the gospel of Christ that has been proclaimed to us, that we would turn from sin, that we would believe in Jesus, that we would be called your children.

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And it is all by your work, not ours, to the praise of your glorious grace.

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So may we lift up the praise that is due you and we live our lives today as a reflection of the goodness that God has shown to us.

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May we walk as Jesus has walked with the same love and kindness that we have received in him.

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It's in his name that we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to when we understand the text with pastor

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Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt

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.com and click on the gift tab in the top right corner of the page. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our