01-03-2021

Park Meadows Church

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All right, so it's kind of a funny story behind this picture.

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It says Romans chapter 9, not in your Sunday school quarterly, and the reason

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I put that there, I grew up Southern Baptist, and we took Baptist off the sign here. We're kind of like Spurgeon was, you know, 150, 60, 70 years ago, but not so much like modern

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Baptist today, I don't think, so we didn't want to confuse anyone, so we took it off the sign, and it's just Park Meadows Church now.

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Brother Otis used to say we should call ourselves Biblinarians, and I could just picture that on the sign.

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We'd be even smaller than we are now if we put stuff like that on the sign, but that's kind of what we are,

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Biblinarians, but I can remember growing up, and I wasn't saved till I was 24, so all the time as my parents and my sweet grandmother tried to get me to go to church,

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I didn't want to be there because I wasn't saved, and a few times I went, it was an old building. I could go up in the third story and explore with my little friend

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Steve Schultz and skip church. We were running around, and there was a janitor that was there, and he would chase us because he heard either big rats or David and Steve are in the attic again, and he would chase us, and finally we ended up back down sitting by my grandmother, but I didn't like being in church, and I sure hated

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Sunday school. It was just like the teaching was just awful. They give you a quarterly.

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How many have ever had a quarterly system? You know what I'm talking about, where you got the little book. You're supposed to read it before you show up.

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No one ever reads it before they show up, unless they read it in the car on the way, including the teacher, by the way, and you walk in there, and it's just blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's just out of this book written in Memphis, Tennessee or somewhere,

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Nashville, wherever their Sunday school board used to be. It's in Dallas now, I think, and but one thing

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I remember is when you would get to Romans chapter nine, it would not be in the quarterly.

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They would skip that one every time. Now, I'm not saying they never did it.

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I'm saying I never saw it. The few times growing up that we got to chapter nine of Romans, it was not in the quarterly.

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It would just go somewhere else, and so that's why I put it up there kind of tongue -in -cheek, but a lot of Southern Baptist churches don't like to talk about election and predestination, all this, because they think it creates division.

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It doesn't, although these pews used to be totally full. Now you see where we are. No, I'm kidding.

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That has nothing to do with this church, but they do feel that way, and it could cause division if you came into a church that had never been taught these portions of Scripture before, and you started teaching them, and you lacked wisdom, and you didn't know the right way to say things, and yeah, it could create problems, but it doesn't have to.

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It should be the most loved topic in the whole Bible because it's about God being God.

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That's all it is. It's God being God instead of man being God, and that we should love this, but like you were talking about just a few minutes ago, man didn't always love

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God back, did he? Man still likes man better than God in most quarters, and if the

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Holy Spirit weren't working in our lives, we would too, but this is a magnificent chapter.

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I mean, it's not like Romans 8. Romans 8, you could spend another year in there easily, and Romans 8 is just so magnificent, but I tell you what's interesting about Romans chapter 9 is that it sort of cements in all the ideas in chapter 8 and says, yeah, that's really what

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I meant. What you thought I was saying, that's exactly what I'm saying. That's what it does, and it's a very hated chapter of scripture by all

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Arminians and all humanists who pretend to be Christians, all right? It's just hated because it puts

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God squarely in control and takes man totally out of control, and man hates that.

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The very people, the religious leaders who crucified Jesus Christ would have hated

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Romans chapter 9 if they'd had it. They hated the portions in Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and the

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Psalms where it teaches the sovereignty of God. They hated that, I'm sure, but God had a sense of humor though because I wanted to put a

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Renaissance picture up there. This is an oil painting from the Renaissance of Hagar and Ishmael being cast away by Abraham, and so the first one

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I put up there, I don't see that well without glasses, and I popped it up there, and it was beautiful, and it was by Van Dyck.

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Some of you've heard of that painter if you ever studied art, and well -known, and I popped it up there, and I looked once I got it on my screen where I could blow it up and see it, and I looked up and it said, not in your

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Sunday school quarterly, and I looked down at the picture, and there was a little bit of it was inappropriate. You know how sometimes the

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Renaissance painters would do what we would consider inappropriate to put up there, and I thought that I'm glad I noticed that because not in Sunday school quarterly would have been really funny with that picture up there.

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But anyway, this one is better, but it's a magnificent direction we're just about to go if I can get this part of the technology to work, which it doesn't want to for some reason.

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All right, so this is where we've been now. You can't really understand

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Romans chapter 9 and its purpose unless you have already been through Romans chapter 8, and that's one problem is people don't read the

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Bible verse by verse much anymore. They like topical, and topical never helps you grow.

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It never builds a strong church because you never get anything in the context that God wrote it in, but we've been through chapter 8 for a whole year, and basically just those two verses, and really if you started with verse 28, where it starts with foreknowledge, which really means for love, the word know in the

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Bible means to love with a relationship, of course you know that. So it starts with God loving us, knowing us by name, and our face, and everything about us before time began, before anything was created, and also

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He predetermined that we would be adopted into His family before time began, before anything was created.

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It starts there in what we would call eternity past, which is a kind of a funny word if you think about it.

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Then it comes into time in verse 30, for whom God foreknew,

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He also predestinated, and whoever He predestinated, the same group of people

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He called. Now we're in time. The calling is where the Holy Spirit wakes us up, and then those exact same people

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He justified. In other words, He made them right with God. He gave them the righteousness of Christ, and those same people are glorified, and that's in the present tense in English, which is interesting because we haven't been glorified yet until the rapture, but in the

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Father's mind, we already are, which is kind of a cool thing to talk about. So we talked about all that, and what's interesting in those two verses, the scope of this starts before anything was made, and before time existed, comes into time, and then goes out the other side into this glorified part.

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We've studied all of that, and it only took a year, so think about that. We're pretty fast, pretty fast.

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All right, so one of the last things we got into were out of the two things that happened in time, the calling and the justification, is we spent quite a bit of time on justification, because really when a

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Baptist says, I got saved, what he really means is, I got justified.

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I've been justified, because saved is a bigger word. It's not something you can't got saved.

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It's not something, because it's past, present, and future aspects to that big. It's a big word.

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Salvation is a big word. God has done many, many works to save us, and in the past, the present, in the future,

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He'll always be there for us, always saving us in a sense, but justification is something that happens at a point in time at the moment of your spiritual birthday, and so when we say we got saved, we mean we got justified, so we talked about this.

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We mentioned seven things you need to understand if you even understand what justification means, because human beings tend to want salvation to be something they accomplish.

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They want it to be something they can do for God, so that God will accept them, and every major religion in the world is built on that, and so -called

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Christian denominations are built on it, and yet the true gospel has nothing to do with such a thing as that, so we have to understand these seven things, and I made them brief for review.

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The depravity of fallen man, if we don't understand that, we'll never understand how salvation works, because we will think man can do things that man can't do.

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We'll think natural man would seek God, and the Bible says there's none that seek God, none, not one, so we need to understand the depravity of man.

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Number two, we need to understand what free, free grace means, and that's not a typo. It's redundant in the

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Bible, because grace itself by definition means undeserved favor, which means free favor, and God always puts the word free in front of the word grace, so it's free, free grace, and then we understand what propitiation means, that Jesus' work on the cross satisfied

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God as the payment of our sin debt. We need to fully understand that, and so far we haven't seen anything that man's done.

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So far, this is all what God's done. Number four, we need to understand imputation, that God took our sins and imputed them to Christ as if He had done them, and He was crucified with our sins in Him, and then when

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He rose again, He took His righteousness and perfection and imputed that to us as if we are righteous. That's not something we did.

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That's something God did for us and to us. Then we need to understand positional righteousness, that we have righteousness that God gave us, that what we do or don't do tomorrow won't change.

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If we don't understand that, we won't understand justification. Then we understand why it's just for Jesus to justify us, and then we need to understand that it's without the deeds of the law, separated from, apart from the deeds of the law, as the

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Greeks would put it. So we've studied all those things in detail, and then we ended up talking about that last part in that little series of things that happen, foreknown, predestinated, called, justified, and glorified.

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We spent some time on glorified, but I just want to read this. It's so beautiful. Romans 8 16. The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ.

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If so be that we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified together with Him.

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So this glorification is something that can't ever be done. Man cannot do this. This is totally done with Christ.

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Everything that was mentioned a moment ago on the seven points we just mentioned, all of that is with Christ.

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None of it is just us. None of it is just the human, natural human being doing something. It's the natural human being receiving something that's free.

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That's what it is, and including the glorification. I love it. I love to talk about verse 17 years ago when

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I would have coffee with brother Otis Fisher, and he asked me one time, you know, he was talking about this particular verse where it says we're joint heirs of Christ, and he says, brother

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David, do you know the difference between a co -heir and a joint heir? And I said, no,

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I'm not an attorney, brother Otis. I don't know the difference. And he said, well, a co -heir means like if you and I were brothers and our dad died and he gave you 50 % and gave me 50%, we would be co -heirs.

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And I said, well, I knew that. I said, so what's a joint heir? He said, brother David, that would be is if our father died and he gave both of us 100%.

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He said only God can do that. Isn't that great? Think about that.

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We're joint heirs with Christ. God's given us everything. Everything. There's nothing we don't possess.

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And then this, for I reckon that the sufferings of this present time in this life, and Jesus told us through the scriptures that we will inherit the kingdom of God only through tribulation.

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It's the only way. It's God's plan. It's how it works. It's God's plan. It's only one plan, but the sufferings and the tribulation of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

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So there is the glorification. We can't even comprehend what that's like. And in the father's eyes, we're already there.

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And then comes Romans chapter 9. After all that, we have this little chapter that's left out of the quarterly.

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Why? It's as if God inspired Paul to write chapter 9, number one, to illustrate the doctrines that are taught,

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I think, clearly in chapter 8, but to illustrate them with a human example, an example as the

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King James would call it, human life object lessons to teach and nail home this particular thing.

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And that's what the second point is. God inspires Paul to write chapter 9 to drive home those truths that are taught in chapter 8, and then to make them incapable of being disputed.

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Now, to the extent that that was the design, has it happened?

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Well, no, because it's disputed every day in many quarters and in every seminary in every church across the land, practically.

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But the truth is, if a person uses the 10 rules of proper Bible interpretation and refuses to cheat on those rules and reads

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Romans 8, in fact all the book of Romans and the whole Bible, and you read

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Romans 8 and then you read Romans 9, then you can't lose the argument. Okay, I mean you can dispute it if you want to, but you can't win, because God made it where it's impossible to win that argument that chapter 8 does not teach predestination.

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It does not teach that God elected and chose who his bride would be. Romans 8 certainly doesn't mean that.

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It would be impossible to win that argument once we go through chapter 9, and I think that's part of the design of why we have chapter 9.

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So I'm going to give you today an introduction to Romans chapter 9. It'll probably only last a month, and then we'll get into chapter 9.

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How about that? All right, so let's start with verse 1. I say the truth in Christ, I lie not.

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Now, you got to think about this. When you're starting out the epistles of Paul all throughout the

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New Testament, don't usually skip the first three verses pretty much, because he's like it's a greeting. I, Paul, write to you, blah blah blah, and you skip it.

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You can't really afford to skip that in chapter 9, because it's really, really important, and a lot of what

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I'm going to talk about this morning is why is he saying exactly what he's saying? Every word is important here.

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Why is Paul saying exactly what he's saying? And I'm not talking about, I mean, I understand because the Holy Spirit inspired it, but why?

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Why? I say the truth in Christ. Why would an apostle need to say that? Is he apt to lie?

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I mean, he's not known as a liar, right? He says, now I'm going to tell you the truth in chapter 9. Of course, there weren't chapters, but you know what

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I'm saying. So I'm going to tell you the truth, and then he gets a little redundant. He said, not only am

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I going to tell you the truth, but while I'm doing that, I'm not going to lie. A little bit redundant, right?

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And then he goes deeper. He says, you can look in my eyes when

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I tell you this, and you can read my facial expressions in my body language, and you're going to be able to tell that my conscience is totally free, because the

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Holy Spirit is bearing witness to my spirit that I'm telling you the truth and not lying. Then he says,

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I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart, and that's how he started chapter 9 of Romans.

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You got to ask yourself, why? Why did he say I'm telling the truth, I'm not lying, my conscience is clear with the

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Holy Spirit, and he's telling my conscience that I'm telling the truth and not lying, and I'm sorry.

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I'm sorrowful. Those things are very important to set up this chapter, because the information that he's going to give us has made many, many human beings who are in the church sorrowful once they learned these bits of information, because it didn't fit with their view of who

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God was, and it put them out of control of their life and the lives of their loved ones, totally out of control.

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The very people that you wish you could save, you have no control over their salvation, and that makes you sorrowful sometimes, and I'm giving you a little, getting a little ahead of myself, but I think that's why he's sorrowful.

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The very people you want to see get saved, be justified, if we want to be more correct about that, we have no control over it whatsoever.

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What is our only job, and when I say only, I don't mean to minimize the importance of it, but it just means there isn't a very huge list of things that we have to do.

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What is our only job in this world among the ones we care about, and even strangers we meet that maybe the

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Holy Spirit gives us a little feeling for, for whatever reason? What is our job?

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Is it to save them? Because if it is, we are of all people on the earth the most unsuccessful, right?

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So what is our job? Share the love, share the truth, share the gospel, you're the winner man, but the gospel is the love and the truth, isn't it?

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From God's heart to mankind, all of mankind, and are we supposed to share the gospel only to the elect?

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Think about it. Are you sure, Ron? Where'd I learn that?

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Brother Otis, you'd answer, you think you know the answer, you'd give the answer, you'd say, are you sure? Just like that, and then you'd rethink it, you know, usually you had it right, or he wouldn't do that, but you're right.

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We're supposed to share it with the world of men, all kinds of men, but I will say this, we're only supposed to share it with who the

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Holy Spirit directs us to share it with at a given time, lest we cast our pearls before the swine, and they turn and rend us.

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So you don't just meet on Thursday night and go out for visitation like so many churches do, and just go witness to everybody door to door.

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God never said do that, you can in fact lose your life doing that. The Lord warned us about not doing it that way.

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He said, you witness to who I send you to, right? But that could be, could that be a non -elect person?

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Why? What's the purpose in that? Well, in other words, we were convicted to do it, but it also put, they're going to be held accountable for that truth, that love in that gospel, aren't they?

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I mean, I picture God at the great white throne judgment, and I'm sure this is not accurate, but I picture him asking only one question.

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What did you do with my son? You wouldn't need other questions. There may be other questions.

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Were you saying something, Paul? Okay, so I, you know, we witness, and the gospel goes out to the world, and that's called the universal calling in theology.

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So there is a calling taught in scripture where all of the world is called to come to Jesus Christ, the

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Messiah, for salvation, but then there is also the effectual calling that's taught, and the only way you can tell is from the context, which means you have to study to know the difference, but if you study, you can see the difference clearly, and you will see there are those two kinds of callings.

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So we play a huge role in the universal call. We, the church, and the church is us as individuals corporately together though, we, this church, all the churches that are on the earth today, our job is to send out the universal call.

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Let the bride say come, right? Book of Revelation, that's the universal call. We don't always know if someone's a goat or a lost sheep or a saved sheep, do we?

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But they're one of the three. They're one of those three things. We don't know. We do have times when we feel strongly we are not to witness to a person, and then we have times we feel strongly we must witness to a person, and even if it's frightening, right?

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We've had those times. So this is God's plan, but as far as you or me having a burden for a particular human being and wishing we could save that person, that's where this sorrow comes from.

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You don't have any control over it. Now, if you really think it through, it's not sorrowful, but we don't have time to do that yet.

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We're not there yet in this study. If you really think it through, it's glorious that that control is put in the hands of a perfectly righteous, all -knowing, loving

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God, rather than in the hands of men and women who make mistakes every day, maybe every moment of every day.

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It's so much better that it's not in our hands, but we don't look at it that way because we're humans, and we kind of like to be

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God. We like to think we're in control, and the older we get, the more we know we never were.

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I'm 66, and about when I turned 65, I figured out I wasn't in control, right?

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2020. No, that would have been a good year to figure it out though, wouldn't it? But, you know, we gradually begin to see, you know,

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I'm not in control of my spouse at all, and then we even come to see

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I am not in control of my children, and then we begin to see they weren't even my children.

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They were God's children, and I was their steward in God's hands to be a steward over that life for a short time period, but then there are grandbabies, and by that time we've grown up enough where our ability to love has expanded, and our great wisdom to nurture has grown, and our great ability to nurture with no spankings is remarkable.

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All right, so God's plan is wonderful. Don't you think it's interesting that in three different ways in verse one, he says,

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I'm not lying, three different ways, and then in verse four, he said, I've got great heaviness and sorrow in my heart, and now

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I'm going to tell you why. So, that's how we start this chapter. Four very interesting statements set the tone.

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Number one, I'm speaking truth in Christ, so I am spirit -filled while I'm telling you this truth he's saying.

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Now, think about that. The book of first John says when we're spirit -filled, we cannot lie, we cannot sin at all, nor will we sin.

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We won't want to, and we won't sin, so he's saying I'm filled with the spirit, and I'm telling you the truth. He's saying

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I'm not lying. My conscience bears witness as the Holy Spirit tells me that I'm telling the truth, and I'm sad.

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Great sorrow. That's how we start. Encouragement in the context immediately above this was important.

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I mean, if you can remember how, I know we studied the middle part of Romans 8 at the end.

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We'd already finished all the way to the end and went back and covered those last two verses, so maybe we forgot how the chapter ended, but right before he said,

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I have this great heaviness of heart, and I'm not lying to you, and what I'm about to say, you're going to think I'm lying, but I'm not lying, and it makes me sorry, so it might make you sorrowful.

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Right before that, we had seen this, because this is how Romans 8 ended. Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors.

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Now, what's a modern word for being a conqueror over something you're attempting to do? Being successful or winning.

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Yeah, being successful. If it's a sport, maybe winning. If it's business, successful. Rearing a family, successful.

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I'm more than successful. The world is not going to tell you that about yourself, is it?

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Nope, it's not, but God just did. I'm more than successful through him that loved me.

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If I'm connected to Christ, if I'm walking with Jesus, I am more than successful, for I'm persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor power.

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I want you to think while I'm reading this, is there anything in the universe that's left out? Principalities or powers, nor things present in the world today, or things that will come in the future, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation is the actual

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Greek word, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. Isn't it interesting that that had to be said before chapter 9, verse 1 and 2, and the rest of chapter 9 is given to us?

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We had to have that encouragement. So this chapter is not going to be a chapter that feels good to a human being of any kind, whether you're saved or lost, whether you're a goat or sheep.

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If you're a goat, you won't even read it. If you're a lost sheep, you'll hate it. If you're a saved sheep under bad preaching, you'll be confused by it.

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So it's not going to be an easy chapter, but we've been given encouragement before we got to it.

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And let's remind ourselves too, who is this whole book written to? Because many times people get confused when they say, oh

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God promised to save everybody, or they make some nonsensical statement that those of us who have studied the scripture know it doesn't teach that, but we know why they think that, because they read one little verse in the middle of a book or an epistle, and they didn't even read the first part about who was this written to.

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One of the first things we learn in proper Bible interpretation is we got to ask who is this statement made to?

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Who is it made to, and does it apply to me primarily, or only secondarily, or not at all?

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We have to ask those questions. So let's take a look at this one. Paul, can you tell me who this book, the entire book of Romans, is written to?

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Is it written to the world at large, or who is it written to? Jews? Gentiles? He says, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations.

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All right, so that tells us it's not just Jews, right? Jew and Gentile, for Christ's name's sake, among whom are you also the called.

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So there's a clue. Who is this book written to? Those who have been called. Now, I believe in the context and in the book of Romans, especially chapter 8, but in the entire book of Romans, you'll see the context that this is speaking of the effectual calling.

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So he's written to those who have been called, which means justified, saved, to save people.

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And if that weren't clear, he said to all that be in Rome, so that means not just people in this particular local church, but anyone in Rome who is called,

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I've written this to, and those who are beloved of God, called to be saints.

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Now, if you didn't think it was the effectual call, now you know it is. It's those who are called the beloved throughout the

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New Testament. That's a code word for the saved people. God's called children. So that's who this book is written to.

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And he says, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.

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I want to give you a little Bible lesson. It'll be real helpful in interpreting certain other passages. Do you see the word all in the first line of verse 8 at the end there?

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I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all. We have to understand the word all in Scripture doesn't always mean all in the sense of every man, woman, boy, and girl in the whole world.

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It doesn't always mean that. It doesn't always mean all human beings in the whole world.

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And you have to look at the context, especially with the Greek word pas, which is the word that all is translated from, because more often than not,

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I think I would say from my own personal study, so I'm not saying it authoritatively, but as far as I can tell from my own personal study, normally pas means some from all groups.

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In other words, some men and women and boys and girls will be saved from among the Gentiles, and some will be saved from among the

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Jews, and that includes all people groups, if you name those two groups, right? So some will be saved in Africa, some will be saved in India, some from among the

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Mohammedans will actually be saved, but it doesn't mean all individuals will be saved. So all doesn't always mean all.

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Sometimes it means many, or it can mean a few from all people groups. Normally that's what it means when

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Paul's speaking in his epistles, and certainly you can tell by the context, and certainly here's an example of that, because he says, first,

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I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all. So he doesn't mean all humans, he means the you that the people

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I'm talking to here, the beloved saints, the beloved called saints, all of you, you see?

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Great lesson, because all doesn't always mean all, and if you don't know that, you're going to miss some difficult passages, maybe four, five, six, seven, eight difficult passages in the whole

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Bible, really that are not plain enough for someone to get without really deep study, but understanding the use of the word pos, pos, or all will really be helpful.

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All right, so he says, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not,

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I'm heavy, I have great sorrow. What is the topic that Paul is about to discuss with only believers, because that's who he wrote this book to?

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Would you agree that that was clear who the book was written to? All right, so what's he going to discuss?

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Now what does this tell us, though, that we need to be a little careful about? Should we go into, you know, next

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Christmas when we're around family members that we're not normally around, and just walk up to them and say, do you believe in predestination, or do you believe

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God elected certain people to be saved and certain people go to hell? What do you think about that? You see, that's not using wisdom, because this wasn't written to them, maybe.

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I mean, you don't know who you're talking, even if it's family, you're really not sure, is this a goat, a lost sheep, or a saved sheep?

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If they're really saved, and you probably know that by now, but you don't know what they are, and it may not even be written to them directly, right, especially chapter 8, and certainly the chapter we're about to read.

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So you got to be careful to understand that lost people, whether they're a goat or a lost sheep, lost people will not get this.

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They won't agree with you on it, unless you're ready to spend two days taking them through many, many scriptures, they're not going to get it in five minutes.

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All right, so especially if you want to talk about Calvinism, which it's not, Calvinism is not

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Calvinism. The great Charles Burden said what is called Calvinism is not Calvinism.

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It existed thousands of years before Calvin, and he was correct about that, but anyway, if you want to talk about the five points, the fifth point is that Jesus only died for the elect, not for every human being.

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That one, you're going to have a problem in almost every church in America today discussing that one, and yet it's true.

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It's just they haven't walked it through yet in their mind. They haven't studied it because their pastor doesn't believe it. It's just they haven't looked at it.

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It's true on so many levels. I mean, it's biblically true, but it's also logically the only way it can work.

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If we truly believe we're only saved by the blood of Jesus and nothing else, then whoever that blood was shed for will be in heaven.

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If you think that through, I mean it's clear, but I lived into my 40s, I believe.

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I don't know, Charlotte, probably 30s before I believed that fifth point, so I was a four -point

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Calvinist in my 20s. I think probably by my 30s, I was five point, but Calvinism didn't make these points up.

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He was a great teacher. Maybe he made up the five points to help us remember these truths that have been in scripture for 2 ,000 years and even longer than that because many of these are in the

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Old Testament. You need to understand this information is intimate information from God to his children, not to the world, and if you start trying to teach this to the world, you can get punched in the nose pretty easily, at least verbally.

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If you're willing to go through a battle, fine, but you might want to pray about it and ask the

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Holy Spirit, number one, do you want me to discuss this with this group of people right here, and number two, what tone should

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I use and how can I do it meekly and open their minds, maybe the

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Holy Spirit open their minds so they could hear this, because this is not written to everyone, all right? So that we understand.

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Why it could be so intense that Paul starts out that way, so difficult, so hard to believe that he has to start a book like that.

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So you know, I think it's quite an interesting introduction.

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All right, now let's move on. Verse three, for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ.

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This is why I call Paul the best Christian who ever lived, because no other Christian I know would ever say this. I wish

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I could go to hell so that person right there could be saved. I would go to hell if that person could be saved.

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Now moms might say that. Dads might, but probably not.

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Moms might, but I don't know. But Paul said it. I wish that I could be sent to hell for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, and who might that group be, that people group?

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Who's he speaking of? The Jews. He said, I would allow

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God to curse me to hell for eternity if the Jews could all be saved. Wow.

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Now he spoke that being filled with the Spirit, which means he wasn't lying here either. I mean, look what he says.

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I'm telling you the truth in Christ. I'm not lying, and the Holy Spirit witnessed with my conscience that I'm telling you the truth.

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I wish I could go to hell so you guys could be saved. That's the audience he's speaking to, is the Jews right here, and a mix.

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There are Gentiles also. There's a whole mix of people that are listening to this.

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You've got goats, you've got lost sheep, you've got saved sheep, and Jews and Gentiles mixed into all three of those groups, and that's who he's speaking to.

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And that's why he has to start out with verse one and two, because of what he says here in verse three, because no one would believe that he really meant it.

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So what is he implying? He's implying I have no control over it, and that's why

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I'm sorrowful, isn't he? If I had control over it, Paul said,

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I would just look to God with a sincere heart and say, send me to hell and save all of the Jews.

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But he has no control over it, because God's not going to say yes to that, is he? Because Jesus said, no man comes to me unless the

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Father draws him, and did that happen on the Damascus Road for Paul already by this time he wrote this?

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Yes, it did. And Jesus said, of them I will lose how many? Nothing, but will raise it up at the end.

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So God, if Paul prayed that prayer, God would have to say no. Paul knows that.

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He knows that, and that's why he's sorrowful, because he has no control over if any

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Jews would get saved in this dispensation other than himself. Now he's seen a few saved, so he probably has some hope, but he knows they're not all going to be saved.

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In fact, he knows most of them will be lost, because they won't receive Jesus as their personal

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Lord and Savior. Wow. These kinsmen who are

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Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption? Now think about this.

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Did you think the adoption pertained to the Jews, or did you think that was for us, the

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Gentiles, who were adopted into God's family? Tell me the truth. What do you think? That's what we all were taught in church growing up, is that we're adopted, and the

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Jews are the kids, and we're the adopted kids. My Bible says the Jews are adopted too. Isn't that something?

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Why did they need to be adopted? Because they came from the same fallen race as we do.

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In fact, when Abraham was brought out of the land, he was not a Jew. He was a Gentile.

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The father of the Jewish nation was Gentile, and there are many Gentiles in through the lineage of Christ, as we know.

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So that is a matter of human race, not Jew or Gentile, and the only way

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God saved the human race, and if you want to ever say Jesus died for all men, women, or if you want to say died for the whole human race, you can say it as long as what you mean by that is to save humans, so that there would be some humans.

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Do you understand what I'm saying? The flood almost eliminated humans, except Noah found grace in the eyes of God, which means

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Noah was a wicked sinner who didn't deserve it. That's what grace means, by the way. He received undeserved favor from God.

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It doesn't mean God looked down and found one good man and saved the human race. He didn't find any good men or women, and he showed his grace upon Noah and that family and put them on the ark, and, you know, that saved the human race, did it not?

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Would there be any humans? Would there be, what, eight billion people today if he hadn't saved eight people?

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So in that sense, God saved everybody, saved the human race, didn't he? So when

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Jesus died, the same thing is true. He saved the fallen human race, which would have totally been gone and annihilated, and all of it 100 % in hell, if God had not had a plan where he was going to elect or choose certain from that fallen race and show his mercy and grace to those, and to save them by the blood of Jesus Christ, to pay their sin debt with his blood rather than theirs.

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The substitutionary death of Christ comes into play there, and yet the Jewish people,

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Paul said the whole concept of adoption pertains to the Jews, and yet he's saying

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I'm sorrowful because most of them in my generation are going to go to hell because they're not receiving Jesus.

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Isn't that what he's saying? And yet the adoption pertains to them. We wouldn't know anything about it without the

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Jewish race because that's who God gave these concepts to, and the glory and the covenants, the

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Abrahamic covenant belong to the Jewish race. I know Abraham was a

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Gentile, but by the time the covenant was made, he wasn't. He was a

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Jew, the father of all nations, many nations, but also the father of the

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Jews, and so the very covenant that we're saved through according to the book of Galatians in the New Testament is the

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Abrahamic covenant. That belonged to these people, and the giving of the law certainly belonged to these people, and the service of God and the promises of God all belong to these people, and the huge majority of them are going to go to hell because they're rejecting the

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Messiah, and that makes Paul sad, and he said in fact if I could go to hell so that all these people could be saved,

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I would do it. I have no control over it, he says, and for that reason

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I'm sorrowful. You have to understand when you're talking to a person for the first time about these depths of truths that they've never heard in any church anywhere, that it's going to make them sorrowful to even think you might be right, and it might help to use the concept we use a lot of times with people where we say, well,

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I used to believe the way you do, but then I saw this, and now I believe this. That's a great little formula, so they at least know you can identify with how they're feeling because you went through that too.

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Let them understand it made you sorrowful because when you figured out you didn't have any control, it didn't feel good, and it didn't feel good for Paul when he found this out, but it's a fact, and he's not lying to us, and he's telling us the truth, and his conscience witnesses with the

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Holy Spirit that he's telling us the truth. So these people whose are the fathers, the promises belong to their fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh,

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Christ came through their lineage. Christ is over all, and God is blessed forever.

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Amen. That group of people, most of them are not going to be saved in this dispensation of time.

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Isn't that something? Now that's just a hint of why

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Paul was sorrowful, and why he said, I'm not lying, because the group he's talking to today when he wrote that, they were going to not believe that could possibly be true, right?

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So that's how we start out. He's concerned about some of his kinsmen, the Jews. He's concerned about their souls.

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So why is he concerned about their soul? I mean, if Paul uses good salesmanship skills, which he was a tent maker, he had to know how to sell the tents.

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Couldn't he use his technique to cause people to pray a little prayer? Dear Jesus, come in my heart and save me.

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Amen. Now take my hand. You're a brother. Couldn't he do that? He knew he couldn't, and that's why he's sorrowful, because he knew if it would work that way, he could actually be pretty good at that, wouldn't he?

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All right, look at verse 6. Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect, for they are not all

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Israel which are Israel. Oh boy, now we're going to get into some things starting right about now, and we're going to start to see why

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Paul had to say, I'm not lying to you. You're going to think I am when you hear these truths, because they're hard.

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They're deep. They're not fuzzy little truths that humans love to hear, and you know how he starts out, which

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I think is pretty beautiful. He says, you're not going to be able to blame God's word for this.

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Do you see that? Read it. Look at it. See, you're not going to be able to blame

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God for this. Not as if God's word has taken no effect in the world, and people haven't heard it.

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Here's the fact. Not everyone who says they're Israel is

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Israel. Now, that's going to be a principle that can be applied to the modern church very easily.

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Not everyone who sits in church today is a Christian, born -again style Christian, who's been actually called by the

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Holy Spirit and regenerated. Not everyone who claims to be a Christian is a

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Christian. So, that's a similar model. Not everyone who was...

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Now, Paul's actually taking this into the physical, like they're born a Jew physically. Not even all of them are

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Jews. Now, that's an interesting concept, isn't it? Now, the very first thing that's happening here is

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Paul is removing the concept that genetics has anything to do with who gets saved.

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Oh, this starts to get very uncomfortable, because just because you have a Christian family, and you both spouses are born again, and grandpa used to be a preacher, and we got a great lineage of Christians in our family, does not mean that all of your children will be

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Christians. Is that hard? How about it, moms?

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Especially for moms. I've had... The reason I pick on the moms, because I've had moms tell me this at meetings. You know, during the break, they come ask me questions, and they'll say, you know,

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I got three kids. What you just taught made me very uncomfortable, Brother David. I'm not disagreeing with you, but it just confused me and made me very uncomfortable.

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And I'm sensing what it is, is they're losing control over whether all their children will be saved or not.

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So, I always say the same thing. I say, look, I think I know what you're getting at.

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Would I be right? And I'll tell them what I think it is, and I say, yeah. I said, well, listen, let me ask you this. Would you rather the salvation of that child's soul for eternity depend on you living such a perfect life in front of them, such a stellar witness, and a clean, righteous life, that that saves them?

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Or would you rather a loving, all -knowing God be in control of whether they get saved or not?

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And they always say, okay, I see what you're saying. But then they'll say, but I still got to get used to it.

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And I'll say, I know you do, because this is not easy. But it's not the word of God's fault that not everyone gets saved, is it?

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Because the universal call goes to every man, woman, boy, and girl in the world. Jesus died on the cross, he was buried, and he rose again to save God's people.

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What will you do with that information? It's not God's word's fault, and it's not that the word of God doesn't take an effect, because it always has an effect on every human.

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It either draws them or pushes them away, or in my case, it pushed me away a lot of times, and then it finally drew me.

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I was never attracted to it until I was 24 years old, and only after being regenerated was

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I attracted to the word of God at all. But it always had an effect on me. Every time

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I ever sinned as a lost person, from little child all the way up, I was felt guilty about it.

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Now, I don't know if goats feel that way when they're growing up in life or not. Maybe they never feel that way,

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I don't know, but they do have a conscience, so they probably do. But God's word has an effect on every human.

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But Paul says, here's the truth, not everyone is going to be part of Israel.

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Then you have to figure out what's he talking about now, right? And we're just about out of time. Whatever this is that he's talking about, he is not willing to blame it on the lack of God's word, or the lack of God's part with regard to sending out the word of God to all men, especially the

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Jews. Paul's not going to put the blame on God's word going out. You can tell I wrote that late at night, that verse.

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I need to redo that sentence, but you see my point. He's not going to allow the blame to go on to God or God's word that all humans are not saved.

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That blame is not going to be on God. It's the great white throne judgment when God looks at people and says whatever he says, and asks them however he wants to say, what did you do with my son?

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None of them are going to say, well, you didn't let me get saved. You made it where I couldn't get saved because I wasn't elected.

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Not one person will say that, because number one, they're all Armenians and they don't believe in that anyway.

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They're not going to say that. They're going to say, I was in control and I didn't choose him, and then they're still hoping for mercy, but they won't get any, right?

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I mean, that's pretty much how that's going to play out. It won't be God's fault at the great white throne because the word of God was sent out to all people of the world, and Jesus died on the cross for every man, woman, boy, and girl in that sense.

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He died that everyone will be judged by that death. Think about that.

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So if you find it too cumbersome to debate people on the fifth point of Calvinism, just agree with them.

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Say, yeah, he died for everybody. He died to curse the ones that reject him and save the ones that don't.

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You can agree if you do it that way, right? Neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children.

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Now look at that. It gets even harder. You're talking to a group of Jews and Gentiles, a lot of Jews in the room, and some of them claiming to be

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Christians already, and he says, you know, just because you're a child of Abraham does not mean God is going to take you to heaven.

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Well, they didn't know that. It'd be like telling someone in a mega church today, just because you're sitting here doesn't mean you're saved.

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Just because you're sitting here enjoying the music does not mean you'll be in heaven. Just because you prayed some prayer formula doesn't mean you'll be in heaven.

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Doesn't mean you won't be, but doesn't mean you will be. Well, they wouldn't like it any better than this group liked it when he said, just because you're from Abraham, don't think that means you'll be in heaven.

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Because look what he says, but it doesn't work that way.

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Just because you're a Jew, you go to heaven, doesn't work that way. He says, but in Isaac shall thy seed be called,

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God said. So God's seed, now you have to go to the parable of the sower, where Jesus taught, they asked him, did you sow bad seeds?

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And he said, why, I never sow bad seeds. Why are you asking? I'm paraphrasing a little bit here. He said, because there's tares coming up with your wheat.

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And he said, oh, I didn't, I didn't, I only sow good seed. The enemy came in by night and sowed the tares.

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Well, later they come to him and said, would you explain that? And he said, yeah, that's the devil. The devil put the tares in the world.

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I put the sheep in the world or the wheat in the world. And the wheat or the sheep, and he said, that's

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God's seed. That's Jesus's seed. And the tares were Satan's seed. So here we're talking about God's seed, the called, those who the

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Holy Spirit wake up and quickened and regenerate, the called, that seed will come through the seed of promise, through the line of promise, which is

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Isaac, not just because they're from Abraham. Oh, man, he is discussing something that man has no control over, and it's the calling of the

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Holy Spirit, and rather he adopts you into that seed, the called line lineage of Isaac.

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And he's discussing a hated doctrine, salvation by promise rather than by works.

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All right, so we pretty well set up chapter nine. That's as far as I want to go today, I think, but you can see why he said,

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I'm not lying three different times in the first verse, and then he said, I'm really sorrowful, because as a human being,

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I wish I had control over who gets saved. And I've told crowds of people around the country many times, you know, there's basically two groups, two kinds of people in this room, and a lot of times there'd be a lot of people in the room, and I say there are those of you who if you could, if you were

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God, you would just save everybody. You would create a way, you'd make a way, even though man's a sinner and fallen, you would just save everybody.

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And then there's a second group of people who would kill everybody and start over fresh. All right, but none of you like the way

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God chose to do it, because he didn't do it your way or your way, he did it his way, which is to save a remnant, an elect chosen few from the whole race, and save them only.

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But save the entire race by saving them, and you don't like that he did it that way. You don't like the fact that Jesus got to pick his own bride instead of other people picking it.

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You don't like the fact that God knows who his children are before he makes anything. You don't like God, because you've invented a

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God who didn't do it that way. I've told people that straight to their face, it breaks all over this country, and had them look down at the ground and look back up at me and say, that's giving me a lot to think about.

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Because I'll ask them, I'll say this, I'll say, look, I know you don't agree with me, but what if you studied the scriptures for a year, and you found out that I was telling you the exactly the truth, and that that is how

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God is, would you still love him? Because he's nothing like what you think he's like.

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You've invented a different Jesus, would you love the Jesus of the Bible or not? And I've had them just look away and say,

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I don't know, and walk away. That's pretty scary, isn't it? But that's the state of America today, and the state of the church.

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And 150 years ago, I would guess 90 % of all

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Baptists were particular Baptists. They knew that Jesus died for the church, not for everybody, but that's flip -flop.

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Now only 5 % maybe even understand it. So you know, how do we deal with our family, especially at times like just happened, where you were with people you're not with a lot.

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You got to deal with it very carefully, because number one, this deep information was written to God's people, not to the world.

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Number two, they're going to be sorrowful when they first hear it and think you're lying.

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Number three, you just got to find out a way to be patient and meek and understand that unless the

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Holy Spirit opens their eyes, they will never agree with you, never see it. And number four, it's not important that they agree with you, and that's the hard part, because all of us want everyone to be not only a

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Christian, but exactly my kind of Christian, right? Like me. Well, Paul was a little bit that way, wasn't he?

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He said, I want you, you know, don't listen to those other teachers. I'm your father, and we all feel a little bit like that.

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That's okay, I guess, but we have to be really careful. So we got a good start on chapter 9, and we will pick it up there next time, the

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Lord willing. Let's stand in that prayer together. Father, we thank you so much for your word, and we thank you for your spirit, the water and the spirit you've given us, and thank you for preserving this

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Bible to us in this generation. And Lord, that in itself is a beautiful, marvelous miracle.

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And thank you, Lord, that every jot and every tittle, every cross of the T and dot of the

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I is important in this book you've given us. Every little word is important. Thank you that you gave us all these beautiful truths in the book of Romans, especially chapter 8, and now you're going to nail them home in chapter 9, and help us to understand that there is no argument here in reality.

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There is no debate on what the truth is with regard to your sovereignty, and yet the world chooses to debate.

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So equip us, Lord. Use these passages to equip us, and may your spirit give us the meekness and the wisdom that we need to share the light of the gospel, the truth, and be the salt of the earth.

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We ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship now. Bless the meal we're about to have, and we ask it in Jesus' name.