Book of Romans - God's Governance of Man | The Law of Love, Pt. 5 (02/13/2022)

But we're in Romans chapter 13, and as you know, verse eight,

I'm just, I'll read it in case some of you guys haven't been with us in the last few Sundays. It says, oh, no man anything but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

So we've been talking about the law of love, which is the law sometimes called the law of Christ and how it's different from the law of Moses and why it's important to know the difference and why it's also important to know that the two don't mix.

You can't be saved by the law of Moses plus Jesus, or you can't be saved by Jesus plus the law of Moses, doesn't work that way, they don't mix.

And so that's what we've been talking about. Now, up until today, we have actually given 19 reasons why it is untrue when legalizers come into our churches, whether they be

Judaizers, in other words, Jewish people who claim to be Christians, but they want you to worship on Saturday instead of the

Lord's day, the resurrection Sunday day, and they wanna put you under law again, but it's all over the place, all over the world this happens.

And many, many churches are a bit legalistic and don't even know that they are. And so I've given 19 reasons why that won't work.

And actually, it's ammunition for you when you talk to family or friends or sometimes an old high school friend that comes up all of a sudden they're all zealous about getting you back under the law, the laws of Moses, the 10 commandments and all of the

Old Testament and mix that in with Jesus somehow. You have some ammunition. So think about that, 19 different points already, any one of which is all you need.

You share any one of those with them, that's enough to show that they're dead wrong. And Paul dealt with them too.

And he said, you know what? I won't give them even an hour. If they come into the church and we recognize that's what they are, we don't give them one hour in the church.

We ask them to leave. Now think about that. That doesn't seem politically correct nowadays, does it?

But that is what the scripture says you should do with a person that's trying to bring you under the law. So we've talked about 19 things.

Let's review them all. No, I'm kidding. I've already done that the last two Sundays. So let's start with number 20. Let's start with number 20.

So I would ask you to turn to the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, Hebrews 10, 19.

We'll start right there. And the overall topic is that when you have

Jesus Christ and you have love, which the Bible teaches God is love. So it's kind of the same thing when you say you have love and you have

Jesus. Because you cannot have agape love, which is God's type of love. You can't have that as a natural man or woman, boy or girl.

You just, you're not born with it. God gives you that as one of the 33 gifts and things that he does for you at the moment he saves you.

At the moment of regeneration, one of the things he does for us is he gives us that love where we can have that love for others.

We didn't have it until that moment. You didn't get that at your first birth. You got it at your second birth when you were born again.

And so this love, if you have it, then it is the fulfillment of the law. The scripture says, there's one reason.

That's all you need to know if you just tell a person that. So you know what, I've got Christ and Jesus said, I came to fulfill the law and I have his love.

And it says, if I have that love for one another, then I have fulfilled the entire law. So what are you talking about here?

You know, that's kind of how you deal with them. But, and then, you know, if you want to win an argument, ask questions when they answer you.

I mean, when they ask you a question, answer them with a question. Marion is an international attorney and I don't know how many times

I've watched him talk to people and observed how he does it and learn things from things he does when he talks to people, whether they're, you know, an adversary or a friend.

I've learned things from listening to him, but one thing I've seen him do again and again, they ask a question, he'll answer it with a question.

And he does that to me and I'm laughing when he does it because I'm thinking, man, you're trying to beat me at this argument.

You're answering my question with a question. You're not supposed to know that trick. So I bet a lot of attorneys know that trick, right?

But Christians need to learn it. So, all right, you've had time to find it. 10, 19, Hebrews chapter 10, verse 19.

Having therefore brethren boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.

Now you think about that. The Old Testament saint, since Jesus had not yet died and been buried and resurrected and literally gone into heaven and sprinkled his blood on the mercy, what is now the mercy seat in heaven.

He had not applied the blood yet. Then those people were not able to come in the direct presence of God the

Father, were they? So they had to have Moses or a priest and their priest could only go in the direct presence of God one day a year.

And he had to do it exactly the right way and he had to present the blood of the offering and sprinkle it everywhere.

And he had to be right with God before he went in there or he wouldn't come out alive, right? Well, now the

Bible says all that changed because Jesus died for us and presented his blood before the father and the father was satisfied with his blood as the payment in full for all of our sin debts.

And it removed our sin. You see in the Old Testament, their sin was never removed, it was covered.

That's what the word atonement means. It was covered. So there was a covering over their sins and the sacrificial system.

It just rolled their sin forward every year until Jesus came and then it put their sins on him.

And when he died, their sins were in him. I'm talking about the saints, the Old Testament saints. And so they couldn't come into God's presence until Jesus died and presented his blood.

Well, that has happened now. And so therefore, look what it says, brethren, so we're talking only to Christian people, born again people, you have boldness to enter into the holiest, that means the

Holy of Holies where God's Shekinah glory is. How? By the blood of Jesus.

Not by stuff you've done, not by making sure you do everything you know to do right and you avoid everything you know to do wrong.

It doesn't say that's what gets you this ability. What it says is by the blood of Jesus. So it's the blood of Jesus plus nothing, right?

It's a gift. It's how it works. And the world doesn't receive it that way. We didn't grow up believing it that way.

Doesn't matter what denomination you were in. You grew up believing you had to do something. Everyone thinks they gotta do something.

But the problem with you add one thing to it, you just ruined it. In Romans chapter 14,

Paul made it really clear by inspiration of the Holy Spirit that if you're saved by works, then you cannot be saved by grace because otherwise you defy the definition of works.

And then in the same sentence, he says, now, if you're saved by grace, then works can have no part of it.

Otherwise you defied the definition of grace. You can't make it more clear than that. It's in one verse.

He says all that in one verse in Romans 14 and makes it so clear that we just don't get it.

We do not get it. It's because of a lack of faith. We don't believe, listen to me. You don't believe that one drop of Jesus' blood is enough to entirely remove every sin you've ever done, ever will do, and made it where God the

Father doesn't even know you're a sinner anymore. You just don't believe, you don't believe Jesus can do that. So that's a lack of faith.

And if you have a problem with it, go and read 1 John 1, 9 and believe it.

Now see, we have a problem believing that. The next time you sin, and you probably will, hopefully you'll get out of church before you do, but the next time you sin, go read 1

John 1, 9 and confess your sin, which means agree with God that what you just did was sinful.

That's all that means. It doesn't even say ask forgiveness. You don't need forgiveness, you already have it. See, that's what people don't get that.

It does not say ask forgiveness. It says confess your sins and he is faithful and just, which means he'll do it every time, and he's right to do it.

He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And then ask yourself this question, do

I believe this verse? Do I believe when God said that right there, do I believe he's telling me the truth?

Because if he is, you can just get up and go on and you're as right with God as if you have never sinned.

Isn't that amazing to think about? And you know what's interesting about it? Even if you didn't confess it, you're as right with God the

Father as if you have never sinned because he doesn't see your sins at all. Jesus removed them.

So 1 John 1, 9 is for your brain is what it's for. It's for your conscience is what it's for. And I believe it also helps with your relationship with Jesus and the

Holy Spirit because they're in space and time with us, whereas the Father is not. But we are walking with Jesus and with the

Holy Spirit and we do offend the Holy Spirit when we sin, do we not? So by confessing and agreeing, it's okay,

I know what I did was wrong and I hate it and I don't want to do it again. It restores the fellowship of the

Holy Spirit with Jesus. But God the Father didn't see the sin. Now that's too good to be true, isn't it?

But it's exactly what the Bible teaches through and through. So we can come boldly into the presence of the holiest place where the

Father is by the blood of Jesus. And that's the only thing that gets us there. Isn't that nice to know?

Well, we have to remind ourselves every day to believe it though, don't we? Verse 20, by a new and living way.

Now this is what relates to our topic today and the last few Sundays. Do you see there that the

Holy Spirit says that this is a new way?

It's not like the Old Testament. It's not like under the law of Moses.

It's not like prior to Moses, Abraham and everything that he did, it's the tithing and all the things that existed even before the law.

I don't know if you knew tithing existed before the law. Circumcision existed before he became a

Jew. Well, actually, he was a Gentile when that happened.

And then he becomes the father of all nations, the Jews and the Gentiles. All of that 400 years before the law happened.

And so what we see is you take everything that has to do with the law, even the three different types of law in the

Old Testament, all of that, we now have a new and living way.

Now what's interesting, why do you think it says living? Why didn't it just say we have a new way? Well, you know the scripture that says that the law killeth, right?

And the spirit bringeth life, right? Is that what it says? The law kills. So the

Old Testament shows us how sinful we are and it does nothing but condemn us. But grace saves us.

Grace and the blood of Jesus brings us where we have eternal life. So I love the fact that it put a living way.

We have not just a new way, but we're alive. And you know, you never should stop and think, well, when

I die, I get to have eternal life. You started it the moment you got born again. And I told a story about Mary and how

I had this big plan to talk to him at breakfast, a plan of a particular perfect scripture to show him.

So maybe he would receive the Lord. And we would sit down and he's got his coffee drinks and puts it down and says, well,

I did it. And I went, man, I don't get to tell him the story. But so you were in your room, you were in your motel room most likely that night, wherever you were.

But at that particular moment, you received eternal life and you now have it, which means you don't have to die to get it, right?

So think about that, a new and living way, we're alive. Jesus looked at the Pharisees who were going about religion, which is always about works.

All religion is works. And he looked at them and he said, you are white as sepulchers and you're full of dead men's bones.

They were walking dead men who were religious. We're not, we're alive. So we have a new and living way.

And so by a new and living way, which he has consecrated for us.

So who made this clean? Who made this happen? Who made it work for us? He did, not us.

It's all about what he did for us. We call it the finished work of Christ.

Great phrase to use your whole life. The finished work of Christ.

It's done. Last thing he said before he died is it is finished, which in the Greek means your bill just got paid in full, right?

So by a new and living way, which he had consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh.

So by his blood and his body, which is pictured in the Lord's supper, the wine and the bread, his blood and his body, his life that he gave for us.

That's why we have this life. And it is new. It is not the way it worked in the

Old Testament. Yes, God provided a way for them, looking forward to faith in their

Messiah in the future. And every year he rolled their sins forward, every year by the sacrificial system.

And finally it rolled onto the body of Jesus Christ. And when he was on that cross, as he was dying, the

Old Testament people who belonged to the Lord, he knows them all by name. He hadn't forgotten any of them.

In fact, they were in Abraham's bosom in a safe place, alive. And they were never forgotten.

And all of their sins were rolled onto the body of Jesus. And he died for them too. And us, looking forward in time.

So the father is not bound by time, is he? Verse 21.

And having a high priest over the house of God, that's a reference to Jesus, our high priest, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.

Now think about that. We're not supposed to doubt our salvation. Why? Not because, you know, it's a fact that we sin sometimes, isn't it?

But that's not where our assurance comes from. It doesn't come from a lack of sin. Our assurance comes from the blood and the body of Jesus Christ that he gave for us.

And the fact that the Bible says, even in the Old Testament, Isaiah 53, that the father was satisfied with the death of his son in the place of us.

It paid for our sins in full. That's called the doctrine of propitiation. Best place to find that is in the

Old Testament, Isaiah chapter 53. God the father was satisfied with what Jesus did on our behalf.

He is our substitutionary. He died a substitutionary death for us. So he is our high priest.

He is both the priest and the sacrifice. Isn't that something? Over the household of God.

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of our faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.

That's what 1 John 1, 9 does for us, confess our sins. And our bodies washed with pure water.

Now who can tell me what the water picture's in the Bible? What is water picturing? You have the water and you have the spirit.

So there's two things, the water and the spirit. What is the water? The word of God. It's called the washing of the water of the word, the scripture calls it.

So as we read the Bible, it is cleansing our mind, which is a fantastic computer full of sinful stuff that's been stuffed in there from the time of our childhood.

Sinful stuff, sinful words, sinful habits, sinful ways of thinking, sinful ways of talking, sinful ways of treating people.

All of that is there and it has to be washed away. And it's the word of God that does that. The word of God.

So if you're not, you know, I would say this, a consecrated Christian, if it's someone you notice that's just different from the world, the more you notice that person, to me, it tells me it's directly proportional to the amount they've spent time in the

Bible. It's directly proportional. All right, so here it mentions it.

It calls it the pure water that washes us. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering.

You never doubt your salvation if you know what brought it. If you know it wasn't you that caused it.

Anything you do is an effect, right? Not the cause. The cause is while we were yet in our sins, hath he quickened us?

Has he brought us to life? We were regenerated by God. There's the cause. Now, do you believe

God would regenerate you and give you God's genes and bring you into his family and now you're his baby, then all of a sudden you disobey one time and he just kicks you across the street and tells

Satan you can have him. Does that sound right? Not even a good human parent would do that. It's not how it works, but every religion teaches that it is how it works.

Every false religion in the world and every cult of Christianity, and even now, some of the mainline denominations of Christianity are mixing works in with grace.

And what they're saying at that point is you could lose it. Because if you don't do that little dab of humanism, if you're not very good at that little dab of stuff humans have to do, then you might lose it.

Well, yeah, if God included that as part of the plan of salvation, you would lose it. We all would.

We would lose it in a day, ladies and gentlemen. A day. And it's so prideful to be part of a group like that and think that you might be saved believing that stuff.

To think you might be saved because you're self -righteous if you think that. You're like a Pharisee. You're like the very people who killed

Christ because he loved people and he gave free salvation and they killed him for it.

They'll kill you too if the laws change, and they are gonna change, by the way. If you read your book of Revelation, you'll see that they are.

So one job that I've given Marion is to find where our cave is going to be. So he's working on that.

All right, so let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering for, look at how this ends.

For he is faithful who promised. So who is it that has to be faithful in order for you to stay saved?

Is it you that has to be faithful? Let's hope not because there's not a faithful soul in this room.

Some more nearly faithful than others, good grammar, but none faithful to Jesus all the time, right?

So it's not based on that. If you read it carefully, it says he is faithful that promised, and that's what we base this eternal security of the believer on.

All of that is found in just those few little verses, and it brings us to point number 20. We now enter in to the presence of God, is what that means, by a new and living way.

It's different than the Old Testament. It's different than the law. It's not the same, you can't mix it.

There is a, well, Paul put it in the Greek, like there's a great vast valley with grace on this hill, this mountain, and law on that mountain, and a huge valley in between, and they're separated and you can't mix them.

That's how Paul teaches it. And so we have a new way that we enter in, a new and living way through the offering of Jesus Christ's body and his blood for us.

So our eternal security is based upon his faithfulness and his promise plus nothing.

And it's the Abrahamic covenant, of course, that it talks about. All right, that's point number 20.

Turn with me to Romans chapter nine, verse 22, if you would. You got it?

Romans chapter nine, verse 22. What if God, okay, let me,

I gotta stop for a minute. I wish Ron was here today. He might be listening, and Pam, they might be listening in.

They might be too ill to even bother with it, but maybe they'll see the recording. Hey guys, if you do watch this, we're praying for you.

No, you don't feel well today, but Ron was listening, sitting at a big table at a tradeway meeting where someone did not like the biblical stuff

I threw in at the meeting, and they invited a young 30 -something to debate me and asked me, would it be okay if I invite my friend to lunch?

They didn't say it was for him to try to nail you and debate you and prove you wrong. And I said, well, sure, you bring your friends here, bring them to lunch.

So we had about 12 tradeway students and me, and then this guy sat right across the table, and here he goes, starts asking me questions.

And they were all designed to trick me and to get me caught up in my words about whether God is sovereign or not.

That was the issue. Election, predestination, that was the issue, right?

And so he asked me five questions so fast, I couldn't even take a breath to answer one.

He wouldn't take a breath to let me answer. I finally got a little upset with him. I said, look, young man, you've asked me five questions.

You haven't paused long enough for me to even answer the first one. I'd like you to answer the fifth one for me. What's your answer?

He could not answer his own question. It was the funniest thing. One of the funniest arguments I've ever had. It was like, wow, no answer?

And Ron and Pam were sitting two people down. I didn't know they were even listening because I wasn't talking to them. I'm just debating this dude, and they're just having lunch here with the other students, but they were listening to the whole thing.

And so I finally, I said, okay, if you can't answer it, would you allow me? Would you be quiet long enough? And I said that, but I said it nice.

I said, you know, would you be quiet long enough to let me answer all five of them? And then we can talk again.

Then you can ask questions. Yes, sir. So I did. All right, so the next morning, the second day of the

Tradeway event, Pam and Ron show up at the foyer and asked me to come over and they hugged me and they start crying.

And I said, why are you crying? They said, you changed our whole lives. I said, Glenn, it's stock market stuff. I'm happy that the trading's going well.

No, no, no, no. The stuff you said to that young man, we were at the table, two people down listening. He didn't hear a word you said.

You can imagine Ron saying this, right? He didn't hear a word you said, Brother David, but it changed our lives forever.

And then he says, we read Romans chapter nine and for the first, he grew up Pentecostal where they don't believe in eternal security.

Most of them don't and all that. And he said, we read, and they sure don't believe in election predestination and that God's in control, right?

He said, we read Romans chapter nine and for the first time in my life, and he said, and I grew up in church,

Brother David, it fit the whole rest of the Bible. You've heard his testimony, right? Well, here's where we are, so pay attention.

I mean, this is what Ron read that night. And look what it said, part of it anyway. Romans 9, 22, we'll just start there.

What if God willing to show his wrath and to make his power known endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath, which are fitted to destruction.

Now, wait a minute. Is that saying that God who, and the whole thing is talking about that God is the potter and we're the clay and he has a right to make us into anything he wants to.

Well, that doesn't fit real well with humanism, does it? Because what it's talking about here is he says, some of the clay, which he turns into human beings, were fitted from before the foundation of the world, they were fitted to destruction.

What does that mean? What does it say? Well, let's look at this word where it says they were aforeprepared.

Well, we hadn't got there yet, so let's get there. Let's just go to the next verse, 23. And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which were aforeprepared unto glory.

Now, okay, apparently we have two kinds of human beings that God creates here and God makes them for a purpose.

And that that purpose is predestined before the foundation of the world, before time and space began.

And one is called a vessel of wrath, which is fitted to destruction, which means they were created for the purpose of being destroyed like a paper plate.

Okay, let's just say a paper plate. They were gonna use at lunch today and they were built to be thrown away, weren't they?

That's what this word means. And then what if God did that so that on the other hand, it would make his glory show better and his grace show better on the vessels that he made, that were made from before the foundation of the world for mercy and which he had aforeprepared unto glory, which means to go to heaven as opposed to being destroyed.

Wow, now that doesn't fit your theology if you grew up in almost any church in the last 50 years anyway, 75 years, 100 actually.

You gotta go back 150 years to the time of Spurgeon and even further back, times of people like Whitefield to find anyone that understood this really among theologians.

They don't get this today. They will tell you they don't agree with this. I don't know what they do with this passage of scripture.

I guess you just have a Bible that just doesn't have it in there or you rip the page out, I don't know.

But the great Charles Spurgeon said, listen, you cannot deny that predestination is in the holy writ.

He said to do that, you would have to take a pen knife and slice it out every page of scripture. Wow, so there you have it.

Now, what does aforeprepare mean in the old English here? These vessels of mercy that are prepared to go to heaven, to have glory.

What does it mean they are aforeprepared? Well, in the Greek, it's a word that's as long as the front of this pulpit.

So I'm not gonna pronounce it. Because if I did, I would pronounce it in Texan anyway. But it means, the first part of the word means to make fit.

Actually, the second part of the word means to make fit. And the first part of the word is the little Greek prefix pro.

And it means in advance. To make fit in advance.

To make fit ahead of time. To make it fit before it's even here.

And that's what it means for those of us who are part of this family of God, where he has chosen to, by his grace and mercy, to let us be part of the vast creation of God that was created predestined to have his mercy and to end up in heaven.

But it also says in verse 22 very clearly that there are people who are fitted unto destruction as well, before time.

Now, that does not fit humanistic theology, humanistic religion, doesn't fit any cult group in the world, it doesn't fit any major religion in the world.

If you've ever taken a course on major religions, that'll wake you up about how they were founded, how they started out.

Islam is very interesting to study, the history of Islam. It basically was about war. Killing people.

But none of those great world religions could understand this at all, because in all of the false religions and false cults of Christianity, it's all about what man does to deserve to get to heaven, in one way or another.

I mean, oh, I believe in Jesus, but you gotta. And when they add that, they just fell right in with all the religions of the world.

And they will never be able to understand Romans chapter nine, verse 20 and 23. You've heard me joke a thousand times that you ain't gonna find that in your

Sunday school quarterly, among the Southern Baptists. They don't teach it because it's controversial.

Well, why is it controversial? Because they don't want to believe the plain English or the plain Greek, if you want to go there.

And so there you have it. So there, it's very clear. It goes on in verse 24.

Even us whom he has called. Now think about that a minute.

These vessels of mercy, apparently, as they're living their life on their beautiful timeline, there has to be a moment when

God says, well, wake up from the dead. He calls you.

And that's what the effectual calling means when you study the Bible. Ears be open where you can hear

God's word. Eyes open so you can see God. Now, I'll add this. I don't think it's in the scripture, but I think he also takes your chin and goes like this and says, look, there is your shepherd and your sheep and you're hungry and he's got the food.

Now he gives you a choice. Will you receive him? Well, duh, you're already a sheep.

There's your shepherd and you recognize him and you're hungry and he has the food. What choice are you going to make? Yeah, it's a free choice, but you make the choice.

He's irresistible. Calvin said he has irresistible grace and people misconstrue that to think that he meant that he just makes

Jesus completely magnetic to human beings, especially those who are going to be saved.

He doesn't mean that because I'll promise you for 24 years of my life, there was no magnetism between me and Jesus.

I did not want to hang out with him. I did not want to go to church. This was the most boring book I ever saw in my life. I tried to read it at least five different times from junior high through college.

I never got past that this person begat that person begat that person and I was done.

Boring. And when God saved me, I never have put this down since.

Literally, Charlotte can tell you that. I mean, I don't say I studied every day, but if I don't, I may study all day

Saturday. So I'm going to get a week's worth of study in this book. Why? Because the Holy Spirit put love in my heart for this book and for you and for him.

And it's all his work on David Mitchell's Charlotte Knew Me Before and After. She would tell you the difference.

And bless her heart, she married me even before. I don't know how that happened, but because of God's foreknowledge, that's it.

That's the answer. So look at this.

These vessels of mercy have to be called. When was the last time you heard that, priests and church?

Okay, I'm going to invite all of you. Here's how we would do it, okay?

Everyone close your eyes. Close your eyes by your head. We'll practice. Okay, if you know that you're saved, raise your hand.

Don't really do this. Don't really do it. We're just showing you how it feels, okay? Now, so pretend your hand's not up.

Okay, now, nobody looking. And we have some, Glenda playing some nice quiet music over there.

All right, now, if your hand is not up, I want you to get up now, come out of your place and come down to this altar, and I, David Mitchell, am going to save you.

You may now look up. That's how it's done. Now, you don't really say,

I, David Mitchell, am going to save you, but what you do is you say, I got the formula, just listen.

Now, if you just pray this little prayer, dear Jesus, come to my heart and save me, amen, you will be saved. And what, let me ask you, what if the

Holy Spirit hasn't called that person yet? Then what happens? You just gave them false belief that they're saved when they're still lost as a goose, and now they're saved, because I said they're saved, so they ain't worried about it now, right?

Now, fortunately, fortunately, we, including preachers, too, cannot mess up God's salvation, or his plan, or his predestination, or his election.

And if that person that I just messed up really is supposed to get saved someday, guess what? God will call them in their motel room when

I'm not there, right? And all of a sudden, they will find a desire, whosoever desires to call upon the name of the

Lord shall be saved. It's in there, they don't know how it got there, they know they didn't have it two seconds ago, two days ago, their whole life, but they do now, and they're saved.

Now, they may go tell some preacher, you know, I've got this thing going on, what should I do? Oh, well, you need to pray this prayer, dear

Jesus, come to my heart and save me, amen, and you do that, well, that doesn't mess it up at that point. But you were saved before you did any of the religious stuff, right?

Now, see, American religion hates what I just preached. It just absolutely hates it, but the point is, the

Bible says, even us, those of us who are the clay that's molded unto mercy, not the paper plates that are gonna be thrown away, the ones that are created to last forever, even us, when he has called us, not of the

Jews only, but also of the Gentiles, now, that's something Paul had to convince the Jews of, because they thought

God wouldn't save a Gentile, as he also in Isaiah said,

I will call them my people, let's talk about the Gentiles, I'll call them my people too, which were not my people, they weren't

Jews, this is amazing, and I will call her beloved, which was not beloved, that's us, the bride of Christ, predominantly

Gentile, bride of Christ, we were hated by the Jews, but Jesus loves us, we're his bride, and it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, you are not my people, there shall they be called the children of the living

God, and I find so many theologians out there that say, well, the tribulation period is just for the

Jews, you know, all of that is just Jewish, and that couldn't be further from the truth, it's for Jew and Gentile, there's a work to be done on the

Jews, yes, but there's a huge work to be done on the predominantly Gentile American church, more than any, and all the other churches, because the

Bible says that the bride has to make herself white when Jesus comes for us, and we're not doing that yet, you know what it takes for us to do that?

God has to take all our toys away, and when we get in that cave, we'll be consecrated, we'll be praying, singing hymns, we'll be thinking about the

Lord, we'll be thinking about his beautiful creation, and we'll be thinking about the hell that's going on in the world among the people that didn't know him and didn't know what to do, and they're being slaughtered and all that stuff going on, and we'll be at peace, we'll be in complete peace, and when he comes, the

Bible says, we will be drawn to him without any part of us, we will just be like magnets and just be drawn to him when he comes in the heavens, and that's called the rapture, and then after that, you'll see

Armageddon, we will fight together with him, but we'll be in immortal bodies, we'll be changed in the air, this body will be eternal at that point, can never die, never be ill, never have to cry, never have pain, and yet we will fight with him in that battle against the enemies of God, that is an amazing future that we have.

So there we see Isaiah talking about all that, a thousand, well, this is

Paul, he's quoting Isaiah, who was talking about it a thousand, 2 ,600 years ago, a six or seven, 800 years before Jesus Christ was ever born, all right?

So this little passage shows very clearly that we are the vessels of mercy by his grace only, it's nothing to do that we are better than the next person, we're just like Noah, we were part of a fallen race that's about to be destroyed, we were saved purely by grace, which means undeserved,

God just turned on our eyes and our ears and our spirits and he quickened our spirit, and we were drawn to God at that moment, and it was all because of what he did for us, and then we were really happy to have that gift to be given to us, and we've been walking with him ever since, and that's how that works, so we are the vessels of mercy by his grace only, we were aforeprepared unto glory, that is predestination, both

Jew and Gentile. Now, look at verse 27, Isaiah also cried concerning Israel, though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant shall be saved, so he talked about the

Gentiles already in this little passage, now he talks about Israel, and even though Abraham was promised that he'd be the father of many nations and the

Jews would be like the sand of the sea, so many of them, this is very clear that they're not all going to heaven, only a remnant, that's a small portion of all the

Jews will be in heaven, now what's beautiful about it though, by the time we get to the end of the age, and when

Jesus Christ comes in the air, every Jew that has survived the tribulation is still alive, still living, when they see him, they will fall on their knees and receive him as their

Messiah, so all of Israel will be saved at that moment, everyone that's alive, all the

Jews alive in the world will be saved, and they will be ushered into the thousand -year millennial kingdom along with the

Gentiles that are saved, and then we'll be there, but we're in our immortal bodies, we've already been changed, they are mortal people that go into the millennial kingdom, the interesting thing is, they live to be 900 or 1 ,000 years old like they did before the flood at this point, so some of them that go in will be alive when that era is over, so it's a fascinating bit of the future that the

Lord tells us about, so this remnant shall be saved, for he will finish the work, now listen to this, and cut it short in righteousness, because a short work will the

Lord make upon the earth, does that make you think where things gonna be going like they are now, a thousand years from now, it says he makes a short work on the earth, the earth is roughly 8 ,000 years old now, and God is not going to give this a lot of time because he's gonna deal with sin, he's gonna deal with the sin of Adam and Eve and all the human beings that have been born into this world and the fallen angels are already dealt with, but he's gonna deal with all of that, so he'll make a short work on the earth, so that means we need to be ready right now for this stuff to come to pass, don't we, and as Isaiah said before, except the

Lord of Sabbath had left us a seed, now look at this, he's talking about Israel, he said if he hadn't left a seed in Israel, now do you remember how last week we talked about the wheat seeds and the tare seeds that Jesus talked about, the farmer planting the seeds and he planted some weeds in, the enemy came by night and planted weed seeds in there with a good seed and Jesus said

I don't plant any of that, I only plant good seed, so the wheat is

Jesus's, the tares, the weeds belong to the one Jesus named when they asked him who you're talking about, he said

I'm talking about the devil, he planted them here on the earth, and there you have these two seeds, well this seed is referenced here in Romans chapter nine verse 28 and 29 where it says except the

Lord of Sabbath, now this is with reference to the Jews, if he hadn't left Israel a seed, that means wheat seed, we had been as Sodom and been made like unto

Gomorrah, so all Israel would have been destroyed because of their stiff neck, if God hadn't left a seed, elect people among the

Jews, a few that would be saved, Paul was one of them, wasn't he? Dr. Rocky Freeman was one of them, but there you have it, so they have to be called and they have to be of the seed of Jesus rather than the seed of Satan and all of that is taught here in this chapter.

Verse 30, what shall we say then that the Gentiles which followed not after righteousness have attained unto righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith,

I'm gonna read the next one and we'll talk about that a minute, but Israel which did follow after the law of righteousness has not attained it, they have not attained unto the law of righteousness, now you think about that what that's saying, it's saying look the

Gentiles didn't know anything about the law of Moses, did they? They didn't even try to attain it or keep the law and yet now we find them saved,

Paul says, we have Gentiles being saved everywhere we go and they're not doing it by works is his point, they don't know the law, they are not being saved by the works of the law and then he says, and then we have you

Jews out there that are seeking to be saved by the works of the law and you're not attaining it, wow, here again we see this great divide between grace and law and Paul says there's no admixture of the two, you cannot mix them and he says it again and again and again, it says the reason that these

Jews sought it not by faith, you see, it says they have not attained it in verse 12 tells the reason why, why didn't they attain it?

Well, look what he says, because they sought it not by faith, they didn't seek it by faith in the

Messiah, they sought it by faith in their own self works, their own good works, but as it were, they sought it by the works of the law for they stumbled at the stumbling stone and who is that?

Stumbling stone is Jesus and they stumbled at him because they thought he was just gonna kill Caesar and set up kingdom and he didn't, he loved people and he died for people and they did not like it, they would rather be saved by their own works than by this type of savior, so they stumbled in verse 33, as it is written, behold,

I lay in Zion and he's quoting the old Testament where the prophets testified that the

Jews would miss their Messiah and he's telling this to the Jews, Paul is always talking to the

Jews and telling them, hey, you don't have it right, okay, don't try to influence the Gentiles because you're gonna teach them wrong things, you don't have it right, as it is written, behold,

I lay in Zion, a stumbling stone, a rock of offense and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed, so if you do believe in him, you will be saved, you won't be ashamed in the end, so that brings us to point number 21 and that is that even

Israel did not obtain salvation by the law of righteousness or by the works of the law but only by faith, all right, so let us stand, that's about all we have endurance for today so now you have 21 things you can tell your friends when they try to make you live by the law or be bound by law of any kind, you can also tell your mind and the devil when he tries to tell you, well, you just sinned, you're probably not really saved, you can remind him of any one of these 21 things, if you can remember just one or two out of the 21, you can say

Satan, you know, it doesn't work like that, we have a new and living way, we can come boldly into the presence of God by the blood and body of Jesus and you know what he'll do right when you say that, he will flee from you, that's how you deal with it, let's pray,

Father, thank you so much for your word, we ask you to bless it in our hearts and lives, help us to use it to help others and we ask you to bless the meal and the fellowship we're gonna have in a few minutes, we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.