Who are you, O Man?

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The Bible clearly teaches the freedom of God in election and salvation. Paul makes this clear in Romans 9:14-24 by answering anticipated questions regarding these teachings. In this message, pastor Keith examines the doctrine of election and demonstrates that Paul's teaching is in direct conflict with many today who deny the doctrine of election or who take the arminian perspective.

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We'll begin with a word of prayer tonight, and then we will continue in our study of Romans, Chapter nine, our father and our God.
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We thank you for the opportunity to come into your house and to discuss and study your word, to have our questions answered and to focus on those things which we believe bring you praise and please you.
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And that is learning about you and praising you through our time of worship and Lord, we do believe that our times of study are genuine times of worship because in them we are drawing close to you and we are coming to know your person better and as such coming to know you better.
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We pray as we continue on in our research of Romans, Chapter nine, that you would open our hearts to the truth.
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I pray, Lord, as the as the pastor, that you would keep me from error as I teach.
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Lord God, that you would keep me from saying things that are out of line with the text of Scripture and that are out of line with the truth.
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And I pray, God, for, again, open hearts to hear the word, to understand it, and I pray as we look forward to the future of our church, that our commitment, that our church's focus would be the truth, that we would be known to not to be a church that is not afraid to proclaim that which is true, even if it is opposed to the culture, even if it is opposed to the normative way people do their lives in the century in which we live, but that we would proclaim truth because your word teaches us that the truth is what truly sets us free.
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And tonight, as we examine this text again, we pray that you would sanctify us in your truth.
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And remind us, oh, Lord, that your word is truth in Jesus name, amen.
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If you have your outline, the first bolded statement says the tragic unbelief of Israel, Romans nine, verses one through five, deal with the tragic unbelief of Israel.
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We said number one was Paul's personal connection with unbelieving Israel.
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Paul said that he loved his brethren so much that he wished himself could be accursed if it meant the salvation of his kinsmen according to the flesh.
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They are Israelites.
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And then, of course, verses four and five talk about God's personal connection with unbelieving Israel.
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Last week, we looked at verses six through 13, and we said that Israel's unbelief is consistent with God's plan.
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And number one, we said it is consistent with his promises.
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That was last week's the blank that we dealt with last week.
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Versus six, 13.
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Now, just to give a quick reminder of what we have learned so far, I wanted to read to you just sort of going over what we've learned.
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Paul's concern, beginning in the first part of Romans chapter nine, is providing an apologetic against an anticipated objection to his aforementioned position.
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He has said that God will not forsake his people.
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And then the question that would naturally arise from that is, well, has God forsaken those whom he promised not to forsake, namely Israel? And thus, if he has, has his word failed? This is why the first part of Romans nine, it says it's not as if the word of God has failed.
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Well, that's the question.
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If all these Israelites are not saved, then hasn't the word of God failed? And the answer is no, because God's promises have always been to the spiritual offspring of Abraham.
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Those who share the faith of Abraham, not just the genetic line of Abraham.
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Failure would imply that God's promises to salvation of salvation were given to every ethnic Jew.
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If God had failed, that would mean the promise was to every ethnic Jew.
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But God did not promise salvation to every ethnic Jew.
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Salvation is not a national thing, even in the Old Testament.
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I know what you're thinking.
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Salvation in the Old Testament.
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Well, God called Israel.
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So that sort of is a national thing.
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However, if you go into the Old Testament, what you see quickly and clearly are names like Rahab, Bathsheba.
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And you could even go back and say, Abraham, before he was a nation, was just an individual and he wasn't a Jew because he preceded the Jews.
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He was the forefather of the Jews.
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So salvation and election have always been individual in that sense.
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Romans 9 through 11 teaches two important lessons.
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One, salvation is not national, it's individual.
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It also teaches us that salvation is not ethnic.
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We do not inherit salvation.
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A person is not saved just because he is born a Jew.
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The only way God's promises would have failed would be if he had promised salvation to all Jews ethnically and he had not.
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So his promises have not failed.
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Salvation is the result of election and election is not national, it is individual.
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We see this in the choice of Abraham, the choice of Isaac and the choice of Jacob, which is what we've been studying the last few weeks.
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He said, I chose Abraham.
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And after that, I chose Isaac.
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And then after that, I chose Jacob.
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And Jacob, of course, was the most profound choice.
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Why? Why was Jacob the most profound choice when he chose Jacob and not Esau? Yes, but what made the choice so profound? Wasn't the oldest, it was before he was born.
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They were twins.
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They were as close as any two genetic human beings have ever been in the sense that they had they came from the same womb at the same time.
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And God chose one and not the other.
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So in that sense, God is showing us that his election is individual.
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Now, could it be argued that Israel as a nation was elect? Well, we could say this Israel as a nation was chosen to be the vessel of God's word, God's will and God's Messiah.
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So in that sense, the nation itself was elect.
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However, the election to salvation is an individual election, both in the Old Testament and in the New.
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And if you want to just think of a cross-reference in your mind or if you want to write this down, first Kings chapter 19 and verse 18.
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What's that story? That's the story of a prophet named Elijah.
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And remember, Elijah said, I am the only one left.
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And what did God say to Elijah? No, I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
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The point God was making was, no, I have chosen seven thousand who have not.
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I kept for myself.
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And Paul repeats that in Romans chapter 11, verse four.
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I have kept for myself an elect remnant.
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Yes, the nation has squandered its blessings.
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Yes, the nation has gone its own way.
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And yes, many Israelites are worshiping Baal.
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But I have kept for myself an elect remnant.
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So even in the Old Testament, we see the individual election of God.
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All right, so that is where we are tonight, looking at verse 14.
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We say that not only is Israel's unbelief consistent with God's plan because it's consistent with his promises.
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But it is also consistent with his person, with his person, and we will begin tonight in verse 14.
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Paul anticipates questions.
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Paul was a missionary.
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Paul was a preacher.
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Paul was an evangelist.
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But Paul was also an apologist.
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Remember what an apologist is, an apologist is not a person who says, I'm sorry, what is an apologist? A defender, a person who makes a defense for what they have said and what they have believed.
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And we talk about Christian apologetics.
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We take a stand for what we believe.
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We take a stand for what we teach.
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We stand against error.
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And Paul, in his writings, you see his apologetic nature coming out because every time he says something that's hard to believe, he then follows it with the anticipation of a question.
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You will say to me this, but I will respond this way.
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That's Paul's very heart as a teacher.
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He knows what the objector is going to say, and he is there ready to offer up a biblical response.
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So he says, what shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? Now, before we go any further in looking at that question or going to his answer, rather, let's just look at the question.
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He says, what shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? Why did Paul ask that question? Because right before that, the Bible reads, Jacob, I loved Esau, I hated.
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That's what it said right before that verse.
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And you see, when you read the phrase, Jacob, I love Esau, I hated, immediately your mind begins to drift towards fairness.
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You begin to drift towards the concept of injustice.
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In fact, I don't know how many of you, I'm sure some of you know the name B.B.
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Warfield.
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B.B.
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Warfield said this.
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He said, the marvel of marvels is not that God in his infinite love has not elected all this guilty race to be saved, but that he is elected.
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But you see, we don't look at ourselves that way anymore.
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We don't look at salvation as something we don't deserve.
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We look at salvation as something everybody deserves.
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Everybody should have it.
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Everybody should get it.
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In fact, the only people that don't deserve it is Osama Bin Laden.
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That's how we talk.
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Yeah, we want him in hell.
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But the sweet old lady who never received Jesus, who lived her whole life in sin.
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No, she's sweet, so she's going to go to heaven or the sweet old man or the teenager who did whatever.
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You see, we only want hell for the most desperately wicked.
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But we don't understand that sin condemns us all to hell and the only salvation is Jesus Christ.
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That's the most difficult thing for people to understand.
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And if you preach that, you will be called a fanatic.
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You will be called a Bible thumper.
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You will be called narrow minded.
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And you know what? Jimmy crack corn.
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I don't care.
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I because you because the truth must be proclaimed.
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And when we talk about salvation, when we read the Bible, there are verses of the Bible that are very hard to understand.
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There are verses of the Bible that are very hard to take.
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And Jacob, I love, but Esau, I hated.
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That's a very difficult verse.
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And some people cannot even deal with that verse.
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But Paul gives us an apologetic.
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He asked the question.
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He said, what shall we say, then, does this make God unjust? You know what's so great about that is Paul is answering the objection that every Armenian raises when they read that verse.
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Every Armenian reads the verse Jacob, I love Esau, I hated.
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And they'll all say the same thing.
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Well, if that's true, God's unfair.
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Paul, if honestly, if your question is the same question that the apostle anticipates and answers, then you're on the opposite side of the apostle.
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And if the apostle is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you're on the opposite side of the Holy Spirit.
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And because the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity and the Trinity is what makes up God, you're on the opposite side of God.
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Huh? That's a bad place to be is on the opposite side of God on an issue.
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People say, well, that's just Paul's opinion.
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Well, then throw your Bible away.
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If that's what you think about the Bible, well, don't go away.
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Give it to me on your way out because I'll find somebody to use it.
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But you don't need it.
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If that's all it is to you, this Paul's opinion or Isaiah's opinion or Mark's opinion.
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That's not the word of God ready to go.
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OK, what shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? Meganoita, what is Meganoita? That is the Greek, the strongest statement of the negative in the Greek.
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May it never be or in the the ESV by no means in the King James Bible, it says God forbid.
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All right.
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This question, the question Paul anticipates, as I said, are in direct response to the reformed understanding.
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If God elects and he's unfair, Paul says, no, he is not.
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But why? He doesn't just in there.
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He doesn't just he doesn't just leave us hanging.
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He doesn't say is there injustice on God's part? Meganoita by no means.
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What does he say after that? He backs it up with the Bible.
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Don't you got to love that? Don't you love a man who does that? You got to love the apostle Paul because he goes to the Old Testament and he quotes from the Bible in the Bible because he's writing the Bible and he's quoting from the Bible.
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He's making this point from Scripture.
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He says, for he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
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Listen, this is forever the divine right of God to show compassion to whom he chooses.
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Jesus speaks of this ability within God and some of his parables, and I I shiver to see people miss this because Jesus talks about God's freedom in his parables and people read right over it.
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Think about the parable of the prodigal son.
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It's in if you want to write it down, it's in Luke 15, verses 11 through 32.
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Most of you know the story of the prodigal son and actually John MacArthur, I think, got it really good when he said it's actually the tale of two sons because everybody thinks about the son who goes away, gets into trouble and has to come back home and how the father shows love for him.
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But neither one of those people are the direct focus of the story.
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The focus of the story is the other person.
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The focus of the other of the story is the other brother, because when he looks and sees that his brother has been brought back into the family fold, when he looks and sees that his brother has not been made a slave, but instead has received the signet ring and the signet ring meant that he'd been redeemed back to his original position, that he'd been brought back into the family, that he had shoes on his feet and and slaves in horseshoes and he had the signet ring and he was back in that position, position of authority.
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And the brother said, look, I'm not going to his celebration.
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What did the father say to the brother? And now he's back.
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And what is the what is the key to that? That it is God's freedom to be merciful in how he chooses to be merciful and to have compassion on whom he chooses to have compassion.
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You know, if you read that story, we don't have time to go through it tonight.
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I talked to that story a few times because some of the things that we miss in that story is just how despicable the first brother was and asking for his inheritance early.
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He was basically telling his father, I wish you were dead.
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And by going away and squandering his father's inheritance that he had received, he was he was basically telling his father, I hate you.
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I don't want you around.
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I want to be my own man.
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I want to be my own person.
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And in doing that, the father still showed mercy and compassion because he shows mercy to whom he wills.
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And he willed to show mercy to the child, to the son.
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The other son didn't want to give him mercy.
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I'm sure his friend said, man, you're crazy for taking that kid back.
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You need to put him out in the slave house.
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But God shows mercy to whom he wills.
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Another story, my favorite parable in regard to this subject is in Matthew, chapter 20, verses 1 through 16.
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Matthew, chapter 20, verses 1 through 16, that is the story that Jesus told when he said that there was a man who had a field that needed tending and he went out and got laborers to work in his field and he went out and promised them a certain amount for the day.
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And then at midday, he realized he needed some more workers in the field.
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So he went out and got more workers and brought them in and he showed them the field and they worked and he promised them the same amount.
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And then later in the day, he went and got more workers and brought them into the field and he promised them the same amount.
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Then at the last hour, there was only one hour's work left to be done, but he needed more workers.
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So he went and got it, brought him in to do that work, and all of them made the same amount.
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They were all promised a day's wage and they all made a day's wage, even the person who only worked one hour.
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And what is the question? Fair.
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Either you should give the person who was there all day more or you should give the person who was only there one hour less, but you should not give them both the same because it's unfair.
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And what does the owner of the property say? Is it not mine to do with as I will? And thus God said, I'm sorry, and they agreed.
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But you see, that's the point.
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When you get to Romans chapter nine and you read those words, God says, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy and I will have compassion on whom I compassion.
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Why? Because it's my mercy to give.
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It's my compassion to give.
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It's mine and I am free in it.
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We talk and we tout the freedom of man, but we forget the freedom of God.
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And this passage tells us I will have mercy on whom I have mercy.
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Now, I did this the last time we went through this, but some of you weren't here.
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And I do want to show this because some of you might miss it.
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And if you weren't here before, I want you to miss this because it's kind of an interesting little linguistic thing is the word mercy in English is not a verb in English.
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It is a noun.
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But in the Greek language here, mercy is a verb.
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All right.
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In the Greek.
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So actually what it says is I will mercy whom I will mercy.
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We wouldn't say it that way because that's not the way English works.
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And we wouldn't use the word mercy as a verb.
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He said he had to say I will have mercy, but that's adding the word have it literally says I will mercy whom I will mercy.
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I will compassion whom I will compassion.
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And you you might want to think on that a while, just contemplate, because it really demonstrates the action being done on God's part.
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He is mercy in.
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Us, he is compassionate when he elects us, verse 16, so then it depends not on.
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Wait a minute, did I jump? I didn't jump.
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OK, so then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God.
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Who shows mercy or who has mercy again, it literally says so it does, it depends not on the human will or exertion, but on God who mercies.
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Now, this verse is somewhat debated by some folks because they ask the question, what does it refer to? What is the antecedent of it? Because he says it.
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Depends not on human will or exertion, the non-reformed position views it as many different things, some say it is national privilege, others say it is divine blessings.
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But if it refers to salvation, which is the extent, the extension of God's mercy and grace, which is what he was just talking about, the extension of his grace, I will mercy whom I mercy, I will compassion whom I have compassion.
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And it is not based on human will or exertion.
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It then refers back to the extension of the grace, the extension, the mercying.
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That's what the it is focused back upon.
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If that is the case, then this verse seals the fact that salvation is of God alone because he clearly says it is not of human will.
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How did you get saved? I got saved because I have my free will involved here.
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It says you didn't hear it says it wasn't based on your will.
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What is the will, the mind making a choice? Did you make a choice to come to Christ? Yes, you did.
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But what enabled the choice? God's mercy, it is not human will or exertion.
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It is the mercy of God.
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Our salvation did not originate in us or in our works, but in God.
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Psalm sixty five, verse four says, Blessed is the man whom you choose and cause to approach unto thee, the one that you choose and cause to approach.
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All right, verse 17, he's building his case on Scripture again.
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Paul teaches us how to preach.
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Those of you who are Bible teachers in here, Sunday school teachers, you guys who are who teach for me when I'm away and who preach in Sunday school classes and teach in technical class, he's telling you how to do it.
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How do you make the case for truth? You use the Scripture.
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That's how you make the case for truth.
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He says for the Scripture says to Pharaoh for this very purpose, I have raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
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So then.
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He has mercy on whom he wills.
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And he hardens whom he wills.
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The use of Pharaoh in this passage has caused no end of questions from the non reform position, because, again, if Paul is strictly speaking of the election and reprobation of nations, why would he now choose an individual as an example? Every time the subject of Pharaoh's hardening comes up, you will hear the same objection.
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Beloved, if you ever mentioned if you're talking to someone about election and you're talking to somebody about Roman Stein, I'm going to prepare you for the objection.
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You will hear this objection.
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Well, Pharaoh hardened himself.
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You'll hear that objection.
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And this is true.
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Pharaoh very much hardened his heart.
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The Bible says it.
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So it's true.
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However, the Bible also records for us.
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Long before Pharaoh hardened his heart.
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In Exodus, chapter four and verse twenty one, when the Lord is speaking to Moses from the burning bush.
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Exodus four and twenty one, and the Lord said unto Moses, when thou goest to return into Egypt and see that thou do.
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And I'm just going to tell you right now, for whatever reason, these notes of the King James Version.
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So if it's not exactly the ESV like you used to, it's OK.
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If you hear the V's and the vowels, it just just happens to be how I my my my notes when I was copying and pasting, I must have copied from the King James Version, which is fine.
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I love to preach from it because it sounds very regal.
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Some people, the only problem I have with King James, sometimes you have to translate English in English and find that somewhat redundant.
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But he says, Exodus four, twenty one, and the Lord said unto Moses, when thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thy hand, but I will harden his heart that he shall not let the people go.
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Can God be any more clear than that? When he says I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go now later in Exodus, chapter eight, verse 15, it says when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart and hearken not unto them as the Lord had said.
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It says it in the verse as the Lord had said, yes, he hardened his heart.
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But the Bible said God said this was going to happen.
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Why did God harden Pharaoh's heart? Because God in some way was trying to be mean to Pharaoh, because Pharaoh in some way was an innocent bystander who God decided to take out because.
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God is just a whimsical God who enjoys inflicting pain upon innocent people.
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Is that why God did it? Well, I want to reencourage you to look back at Romans nine because Romans nine tells us why he did it.
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Romans nine tells us, he says, for this very reason, I raised you up that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
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Why did God raise up Pharaoh and why did God harden Pharaoh's heart? Because through that action, God's name was proclaimed throughout all the earth.
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Well, that's not fair to Pharaoh.
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Here he is, that nice guy.
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Everybody loved him.
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He loved to have people over.
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He was very hospitable.
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And God just came along and crushed his spirit.
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Is that the position we're going to take on Pharaoh? Because honestly, when you talk to people about this, that's a position they seem to take.
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It's like, well, Pharaoh didn't deserve that.
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The love that we all deserve, Luke chapter 13, Jesus had people approach him and they said, Jesus, there's been this tragedy.
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And these people have been slaughtered in the synagogue.
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And Jesus looked at him and he says, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
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You see, that's what we need to remember.
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Jesus made the point.
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He said, look, you all have judgment coming unless you repent.
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Did Pharaoh receive anything that Pharaoh did not deserve? No.
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Did Pharaoh get anything that he himself did not want? I will I will push that point a little further, a little further along as we get there.
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But let me just say this about that.
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Some people make the case that Pharaoh, in some way, God made him worse than he already was by introducing sin.
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But see, that's the thing that we need to understand.
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What does it mean to harden someone? What does it mean to harden a heart? I will tell you this, I do not believe that the Bible ever teaches that God introduces sin into someone's heart.
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In fact, I would say that the opposite could be argued as true, that the Bible says that God tempts no one to sin and the word tempt, meaning that God does not encourage anyone to sin as the devil encouraged Eve in the garden to sin.
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He said to her, hey, God hasn't really said that.
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If you take that fruit, you will be as smart as God.
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You will know things like God knows and you will be like God.
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Remember, that's temptation to sin.
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And the Bible says God does not tend to sin.
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However, the Bible is very clear that God does harden the heart.
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You say, well, what's the difference? I have an illustration and I hope that I hope this hope this makes sense.
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Because really, there's a there's a there's a very important thing that we need to understand.
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And that is the doctrine of equal ultimacy.
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And I don't want to run away and use words like that to confuse you.
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Equal ultimacy says this God extends the same amount of energy.
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If you want to say God spends energy, God does the same amount of work in saving someone as he does in damning someone that God sends the same that God predestines to life and he extends to them goodness and he predestines to death and he extends to them badness and that we call equal ultimacy, that God is doing equal amount of work in both.
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Here's the problem with that.
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Number one, God doesn't have to do anything to condemn us.
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The Bible says in John chapter three, we are condemned already.
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Right.
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So the work of having to condemn us.
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It didn't have to do anything extended to condemn that condemnation is already done through Adam, through our sin, too.
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And I look at I think of a I think of a set of pedals and please, this isn't going to go real well on the recording, but I want you to I want you to illustrate this.
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We don't want to help help.
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I'm solving the problem of equal ultimacy.
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It's not that many of you came with that problem tonight, but the problem of equal ultimacy is that God extends the same amount towards both.
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So he equally graced Moses and equally pardoned Pharaoh, and it's an equal emotion.
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Here's the thing.
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Grace is the extension of the goodness of God toward an individual.
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Hardening is the retracting of the goodness of God.
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To an individual, here that again, grace is the extension of the goodness of God towards an individual, and hardening is the retraction of the goodness of God from an individual, because we all have something that is called common grace.
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The Bible says that the rain falls on the just.
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And on the unjust, we all receive a measure of grace from God.
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If we didn't, our hearts would stop right now, your very heart beating in your chest is an extension of the grace of God.
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If God were to remove his grace from the world, we would all be out like a light never to be kindled again.
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But when God extends grace to someone, salvific grace, salvation, grace.
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That is an extension on God's part, but when God hardens someone, he pulls his grace back from them.
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And as such, that which is already depraved is allowed to have the full expression of it's that which is already fully sinful, is no longer restrained from its sin.
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Do you believe as bad as he was that Bin Laden could have been worse? You better believe it.
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Do you believe that Hitler could have been worse? Do you believe that more people could have died on 9-11? God's grace is always there.
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So when we talk about equal ultimacy, it's not as if God is making Pharaoh evil.
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He doesn't have to.
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He's already evil.
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But when he lifts the restraint of grace, Pharaoh is then having the full expression of his evil, and he as such displays to the world his hatred of God.
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Beloved, the world hates God.
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Oh, that sounds awful harsh, Pastor Foskey.
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You read Romans one.
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You spend a couple of days meditating on it and you come back to me and you tell me that you don't think that Romans one teaches that the world hates God.
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The Bible says we suppress the truth and unrighteousness in Romans chapter one, it says God gives us over to a debased mind.
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And what happens when God gives someone over to a debased mind, by the way, Romans one is the parallel passage here because Romans one, when it talks about God, gave them up to a debased mind.
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That's another way of saying God hardened their hearts.
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And when he gave them up to a debased mind to do what was unnatural within themselves, the women leaving their men and craving the lust of another woman and men leaving their wives and lusting after men, we see that happening and then you see that list of sins and what is contained in the list of sins at the bottom of Romans chapter one.
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Idolatry, fornication, hatred of God.
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And gossip, by the way, is right next to haters of God, just want to throw that out there because people often think gossip isn't that big a deal.
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But when it's right next to hatred of God in the list, you might want to remember that.
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So anyhow, the point of the matter is he says to Pharaoh or he says to Moses, rather, for this very purpose, I raised you up that my power, my might, that I might be shown my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
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So then he has mercy on whom he wills and he hardens whom he wills.
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Beloved, that is God's prerogative.
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He can harden whom he wills.
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It's hard to accept because in some ways that does rob us of what we have been promised.
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And that is some sort of autonomy in our will.
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But beloved, let me say this, God has never given any man anything in his heart that was evil, that wasn't already there.
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God has never introduced evil into the heart of man.
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Verse 19.
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This is the second question Paul asks.
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You will say to me, then, why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? Again, we have the anticipation of the question which flows naturally from a reformed interpretation.
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If, in fact, we were misreading Paul's words, that his use of Pharaoh was to show that he had hardened himself, as some people say, well, Pharaoh hardened himself, then this question would not be appropriate.
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If Pharaoh had simply hardened himself and God had nothing to do with the hardening, then the next question you will say to me, why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? That question does not lead from our many an understanding of Romans nine.
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That question does not lead from a free will perspective of Romans chapter nine.
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That question leads from a reformed perspective, which tells us we're on the right track.
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The question is this.
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If it is God who hardens by his own choice, why then does he still hold people responsible? And beloved, that is a hard question.
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If God is the one who has the prerogative to harden whom he wills, why then does he still find man responsible? Men, gay and on the contrary, oh, who are you? That's Paul's answer.
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Literally, it begins with the phrase, oh, man, the phrase, the first word is men and gay, and that is the word for on the contrary.
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Now, in your Bible, it's going to it's going to say it's going to say, but who are you, old man? That actually the word there is on the contrary, oh, man, it's oh, anthropo.
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And then he says, who are you, old man, to answer back to God? Who are you? You might say, well, I'm I'm Keith Foskey.
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I got every right to ask God questions.
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I got every right to go to the throne of God and say, God, why did you do that? I want to remind you of a little guy named Isaiah.
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I don't know if he's little or not, but he was a man in Isaiah chapter six.
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He had an opportunity to stand before God and you know what he did? He said to God, God, you really haven't done this right.
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God, you haven't really you haven't really convinced me that you exist.
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You haven't really convinced me of this whole righteousness thing.
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I'm not really convinced that you're the one who gets to decide on who marries whom and what kind of things happen and whether men and women should do what they should do and whether there's a place for womanhood and a place for manhood and whether or not we should be able to allow to do abortions.
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And God, you really haven't convinced me that we should have a church that has rules and church discipline.
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And you haven't really convinced me that we're supposed to have a male eldership.
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And God, you haven't convinced me that the deacons are supposed to behave a certain way and that pastors are supposed to behave in a certain way.
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God, you really haven't done that.
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No, what Isaiah did was he put his hand over his mouth and he said, woe is me, for I am a man of unclean and I live in the midst of a people.
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Woe in the vernacular is a statement of judgment.
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Woe is me is the statement of personal deserving of judgment.
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Woe.
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Let me tell you something.
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When Richard Dawkins says he's going to stand before God, he's going to tell God that God didn't present himself to him strong enough.
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And that's why he was an atheist all his life.
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And when Dan Barker stands before God and he tells he says, I'm going to tell God that God didn't present himself to me in such a way that I can know that he exists.
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And when all these other fools out there, because the Bible says it is a fool who says in his heart there is no God, when they stand before God, they will not say to God, you did not exist and you didn't show me that you existed enough and you didn't write it in skywriting.
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And what they're going to say is, woe is me and such.
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When we read this phrase.
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Who are you, old man? Paul is reminding us who we are.
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He is reminding us of our condition.
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How will the thing molded say to him who molded it? Why do you make me like this? Is that what you're going to say to God when you get to heaven? No, you're going to fall down in the midst of what you're going to do.
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And if he has extended you grace, what you will do is you will praise him for eternity, for that grace.
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And the people who go to hell, I believe, will continue to curse God forever in separation from him because they can curse him now.
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And they will still be apart from his grace and they will still hate God.
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But his condemnation will be just.
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If you think that Pharaoh was bad when God removed his grace from him, imagine the people's hearts who are in hell.
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Somebody asked me one time, how can hell be an eternal punishment for a temporal sin? I said, what makes you think that hell is a place where there's no sin? What makes you think that hell is a place where people do not continue to hate God for eternity? They hate God now and God's given them grace.
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It's not easy stuff.
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It's difficult, but when we deal with it and we learn it, it gives us a different picture of the world and we begin to see the world as it truly is and God as he truly is.
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So many people close their eyes to what is going on in the world and they don't even see it happening until it's right up on them.
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That is why we're dealing with the things we are in our nation is because we have so closed our eyes.
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Oh, well, it's never going to come here.
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Let me tell you something.
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It starts in Europe.
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It goes to Canada.
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It gets us by way of California.
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That's the process of how it gets here and it's here.
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Verses 21 to 24, Paul gives the illustration of the potter and the clay.
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And I want to make a recommendation to you.
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If you're an avid reader or not, you need to read one book.
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You need to read The Potter's Freedom by Dr.
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James White.
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The Potter's Freedom is an exposition of this passage, has the potter have no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and make his power known, has endured with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles.
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By the way, that destroys the argument of the national group, the group that says this is all about national election, because he just said he called us from the Jews and from the Gentiles.
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It would make no sense if he was talking about national election.
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And then he said who been nationally elected nationally out of the nation of the Jews.
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It doesn't make sense.
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He calls individuals out of the nation of the Jews and individuals out of the nation of the Gentiles.
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And he says that whom he has called not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles.
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Beloved, Roman chapter nine is difficult.
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Only if we are unwilling.
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To say.
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God is God.
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And I'm not that's that's when it becomes very difficult.
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Well, I can't believe that about God, because that hurts God's character.
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I've got to protect God's loving nature.
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Beloved, if you had a lion in your yard, would you feel the necessity to protect it? No, that would be foolish, right? You don't have to protect the nature of God and the character of God.
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You proclaim it.
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God.
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Is God.
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It need us protecting him from the truth, if it's the truth, it's the truth.
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Now, had a guy.
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I have recently become the recipient of a onslaught of very nasty emails.
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I don't think it has anything to do with my sermon Sunday, but it's OK.
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I happened all the time.
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Every every every every once in a while it'll happen.
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But I wanted to end with this illustration.
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In the Old Testament, there are some passages that are quite difficult to interpret.
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If you do not understand that the Old Testament economy was a theocracy and everything in the Old Testament that regarded the ceremonial and governmental law, the Israelite people was for God's specific management of a theocracy, something we don't understand.
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We understand democracy.
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We understand monarchy, but we don't understand theocracy.
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And when you don't understand it, it's very difficult to understand how God managed his people in the Old Testament.
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And there are some laws in the Old Testament that when we read them, we say, boy, that sure doesn't fit into a democracy.
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Well, guess what? It weren't a democracy.
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And this guy sent me something today.
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And he said, God in the Old Testament allowed for the selling of daughters into slavery, which means he was a horrible guy.
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And he quoted a verse, I forget, I think it was Leviticus.
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I have to go back and look.
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This guy is not interested in dialogue.
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He's just interested in throwing out verses.
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And I'm not really interested in dialoguing with him unless he responds with more than just a Bible verse with no commentary.
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But anyhow, my point is this.
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So what if God commanded what he wills and he is God, so what? Well, I don't like it.
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I'll say it again and I'll say it real slow so you can hear it.
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So what? God is not trying to win a popularity contest.
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He is God and I am not.
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And when I can accept that, I can read any verse in the Bible and understand it.
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There's a verse in the Psalms that says, Blessed is he who takes your little ones and dashes their head against the stone.
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What? It's called an imprecatory song.
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If you don't understand that God is God, you will never understand an imprecatory song.
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There's the Bible.
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There's a verse in the Bible that says God hates those who do wicked.
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But wait a minute, I was told that God hates sin, but loves the sinner.
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Mahatma Gandhi said that.
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And guess what? He's a Hindu.
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We don't know that because we've been convinced that that's in Hezekiah four or somewhere.
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And I'm preaching, I better stop.
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I'm over time.
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The point is this, when we can accept that God is God, nobody's going to be able to knock us out of the water with one of these Bible verses that they pull out of thin air and say, well, what are you going to say about this? So what if God is God and I am not, I accept his every command.
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And if God had that command for the people of Israel under a theocracy because he established in his theocracy the way that his people ought to behave and it's not in line with America's democracy that's done so well the last few years.
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Who are you? Oh, man, that's Paul's whole admonition to us.
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And if you can come to that place, the Bible, well, it will open.
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There's so much that will open up in the Bible for you when you can finally get to that place where you tried it, where you get away from trying to dictate who God is and simply say, who am I as a creature to say to the creator, why did you do it like that? Our father and our God, such an important text of scripture that we have been able to look at tonight.
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And I pray that the words that have been spoken have been spoken in such a way that hearts, Lord God, has have have seen the truth and Lord God, that you've opened hearts to the truth and Lord God, may it never be that we seek to be arrogant.
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With truth, but also, Lord, may it never be that we be afraid and Lord God, as we go to our individual homes and we go to our individual lives, I pray that we would carry the gospel with us.
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And let us never forget that the gospel is not simply a message for how someone can get saved.
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But the gospel is the proclamation of what you have done to save.
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We pray that in Jesus name.
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Yes, ma'am.