Aug. 20, 2017 His Promises Are True by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Well, as we keep our eyes and, Lord willing, our spirits focused on the Word of the Living God, turn in your

Bibles again to Romans chapter 9, Romans chapter 9.

The text for this morning's message will be beginning at verse 6 through verse 13, but I would like to read it from the beginning of the chapter just so we keep in mind the context and,

Lord willing, some of what we said last week about those first few verses. Romans 9, beginning at verse 1.

Now, verse 6. But it is not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham, because there is offspring, but through Isaac shall your seed, your offspring be named.

This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.

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

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

Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of His call, she was told the older will serve the younger.

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

It was the word of the living God. You know, think about promises.

For a promise to be of any good, I mean, doesn't it require that two parties understand what has been promised, what is required, what is going to be provided, what is required on the other part?

We need to enter into a promise understanding what's being promised. I mean, in most of our experience, many of us have made loans or taken loans.

The bank promises to fund a certain amount of money for a certain purpose with terms, interest rates, and length of payments, and all these sorts of things, and the one who receives that money then promises in return to pay it back at a certain rate of money per month, that sort of thing.

Everybody knows what is being promised, what both sides of it are. In order for a promise to be of any meaning, the two parties, the promisee and the promisor, need to know what the terms are, what has been offered, what is required on the other side.

There are many promises in the Bible, of course, and there's all sorts of covenants that God makes, and some of them are two ways.

I will do this, and you will have to do this in return. Many are what we call one -sided. The unilateral, where God simply says,

I am going to, and in His grace and mercy reveals what He's going to do, but He requires or even wants or needs nothing on anyone else's side.

There are many promises in the Bible, different types of promises, and they need to be understood. And they're given so that they will be understood.

You might think, we have Abraham who was front and center in chapter 4 of this book.

And think back to Genesis 15, when God promises nationhood from His own body.

And Abraham is told, look up at the stars and see if you can count them, and so shall your offspring be.

And Abraham, his part is to believe, Genesis 15, 6, he believed

God, and that was counted to him as righteousness. There's a promise made that was understood, it was confirmed.

If you recall again in Genesis 15, and really, our text is Romans 9, and we will get there soon, when the two rows of carcasses were laid out, and God alone, showing that He alone would fulfill the promise, went between them.

It's an ancient suzerain vassal ceremony, where when a promise is made and accepted, a two -way promise, the two parties walk through, indicating, may

I become like these carcasses if I don't keep my side of the bargain. In the case of Genesis 15,

God alone goes through because God alone will be true to His word. Abraham's part,

Genesis 15, 6, is simply to believe that God would. Now in Romans 9, verses 6 -13, the

Apostle Paul is beginning his defense of something very important, which is

God's reliability. God's reliability, that God is true to the word that He gives, the promises that He makes.

Romans 1, 16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

I'm not ashamed. It is a reliable gospel. Your hope, your trust, your confidence is not improperly placed.

The gospel will accomplish what God has promised through it. And here in Romans 9, this is really what

Paul is beginning, is this extended defense, all the way through chapter 11, of God's reliability.

Why the gospel of what God has done for sinners in His Son, Jesus Christ, is a reliable gospel, is a word to be trusted.

There's an assumed question that leads him here. By now we should be familiar with the fact that Paul is arguing in what we call this diatribe style.

He has an interlocutor, an imagined, a theoretical dialogue partner.

And this one is asking him questions, and Paul is answering the questions as he goes. And there's an assumed question here that leads us into chapter 9 and this defense of God's reliability.

And it's sort of like this, okay Paul, I've been listening to you carefully,

I've read chapters 1 -8, as you go through and you talk about this gospel and the need for all men for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And God has done something that He promised, and it isn't by keeping the law, it's by faith in Jesus Christ who for us kept the law.

And you're telling me that God is reliable and that God will do it, and that God has justified sinners through Christ and His promises of good, and you want me to stake my eternal soul on this, right?

And Paul would say, yes, that's right. Okay, given all that, Paul, what about Israel?

What about Israel? Are they not God's chosen people? Did God not draw them out of Egypt as His own peculiar treasure and make promises to them?

You're telling me that this gospel is reliable, that I'm to put my eternal fate on the basis of what you are preaching here in the first eight chapters of this book, this letter, this sermon that was read to Rome 2 ,000 years ago, and yet, this people to whom

He made promises, they largely do not believe. Paul, could

God not save them? Is God not true to His promises? What about them?

That's what's happening here. That's what Romans 9 through 11 is about. And I don't think we'll get it quite right if we think of it more in terms of Israel and the church, and what

God is doing, and what is the redemptive plan, and does Israel have a different track to God, and all these other sorts of questions, because it's not about that.

It's about God. It's about God's trueness and faithfulness to His Word, that the promise of the gospel is reliable.

It's as absolutely true as God Himself is true. And the flashpoint, the foil, if you will, is

Israel. And so Paul takes up the gauntlet. He's being asked, is

God reliable, and if this is so, if these people don't believe, if God has not kept His promise to them, why should

I believe this? That's what 9 through 11 is all about in Romans. And these questions are good questions.

They're good questions. They're worthy of the Bereans of Acts 17, who took to Scripture everything that they heard from the

Apostle Paul, and went to see if these things were true, and found them to be true, and were converted by the

Word of God and by His Spirit. But these are good questions, so we're going to take up this challenge, and we need to agree on something here before we delve into this, this first part of chapter 9.

1. If a single soul who

God, before the foundation of the world, predestined to be in His Son Jesus Christ, to be a beneficiary of His suffering on the cross, if a single soul who

God predestined to be converted by His Spirit, to repent of his sins, and to flee to Christ for forgiveness, because if one in all history, determined by God, promised by God for that, should fail to come to Christ, should end up in perdition eternally, one in all humankind, then

God's Word is untrue. If one person whom God has chose and predestined to be saved by the cross of Jesus Christ doesn't, then

Paul can't answer the diatribe partner's question. That's how important it is.

If any mere mortal is able to remove himself from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus as our Lord, after God has put him in Christ, and is able to un -put himself, then the whole thing evaporates like a mist.

It was a dream, it was a sweet fantasy, and we, like Dorothy, need to wake up and go back to our lives in Kansas.

That's how important this is. There's a lot at stake in John chapter 10, verses 27 to 30, this wonderful chapter in John's Gospel where Jesus declares

Himself to be the Good Shepherd. He says, My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the

Father's hand. I and the Father are one. Think of this in terms of Romans 9 through 11, and God's reliability, and what

Jesus Christ is saying about it, and what Paul's defending in Romans. Jesus goes on,

John chapter 17, in His high priestly prayer. He says, While I was with them, I kept them in Your name, which

You have given Me. I have guarded them, and not one was lost except the Son of Destruction, that the

Scripture might be fulfilled. One more, John chapter 6, verse 39, was read to you a moment ago by Jesus.

Jesus puts His Father, the efficacy of His atoning work at stake.

If even one soul is lost, even one, then the whole thing has failed.

And Paul in Romans 9 has no answer. Paul's first answer is what we covered last week.

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. He immediately follows with, For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham, because they are his offspring.

But through Isaac shall your offspring be named. All the way back to chapter 12 of Genesis.

In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. I don't have time to go into a lot of detail here.

This promise develops throughout Abraham's life. In Genesis 15 it is reiterated,

Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great. And knowing this to refer to nationhood and promised blessing,

He replies that he has no children. He even offers up Eleazar of Damascus, his house steward, as the promise bearer.

And that is when God bids him to count the stars if he is able. So shall your descendants be. Not your servants.

Not your house steward. Your descendants. And then there is

Genesis 16 with Hagar and her birth of Abraham's son Ishmael. And in the very next chapter, God comes again to Abraham and again restates the promise.

I am God Almighty, walk before me, be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly.

It's very personal. It's Abraham. And he's not hiring servants to keep the promise going.

God is saying it's through you. But this time, Abraham has a descendant to offer, doesn't he?

He has a descendant to offer, it's Ishmael, his real physical son, the fruit of his own loins.

He says, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. And God says in 1719 of Genesis, no, but Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son and you shall call his name

Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.

Then Genesis 18 .10, the Lord says, I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah, your wife, shall have a son.

We're talking about this development of God's promise. And Paul's defending

God as reliable. Do you understand what Paul's starting to say here? You see why

I'm going back to so much of Genesis? What is Paul saying? He says, you didn't understand the terms of the promise.

God is not unreliable. God didn't change what he said. God never wavered in accomplishing his purposes through Abraham.

Not for a moment. And for the interlocutor in Romans 9 to say, well, what about this,

Paul? What about these promises God has made to this people through Abraham? Paul's answer is essentially, you didn't understand the terms.

And they weren't hidden. It wasn't like one of those credit card applications. You ever see how small that print gets and how long it is?

I actually saw in a news segment one time a lady, I can't remember her name. She was a Harvard law professor who worked it out and tried to figure it out.

And she says, I'm a Harvard contract law professor, and I don't have any idea what this thing says.

This is not God's word, though. God speaks plainly. One of our brothers here is a lawyer.

And he makes the case, and it's a very good case, that God's word has this, I can't remember the term he uses now, but a contractual language.

It's meant to be understood. He gives it to us so we can know what he is saying.

It's not fine print. And this is Paul's answer. If you follow the promise given to Abraham, it was plain, large letters, easy to understand, what

God's going to do, what you must do. And here's the promise. And Paul's saying to this dialogue partner, no, you just didn't understand.

What was the difference between Ishmael and Isaac? They're both Abraham's sons, were they not?

Physical sons, born from his loins, is to use a biblical kind of language. What's the difference?

It's just this. One was the work of the flesh, the other the work of God's promise.

One from Abraham taking matters into his own hands with his wife, Sarah, and the servant girl,

Hagar. The other fully, purely, solely, only of the promise that God has so clearly stated.

We could go to Galatians 3. I'm afraid we'd get bogged down, so I won't go there very much today, but it has a lot to do with who are

Abraham's descendants. And in Galatians 3, we learn that the

Hagar -Ishmael cycle represents Sinai and works, while Sarah -Isaac represent the gospel and faith.

And who are the true descendants of Abraham? Those who are Abraham's children by what? By faith.

In Isaac, your seed shall be named. In Isaac is the offspring that is the result of the promise.

To make the point of verses 6 and 7 of Romans 9 requires nothing more than to read verse 8. 6 and 7.

In Nazareth, God's word is failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham, because there is offspring.

But through Isaac, your offspring shall be named. What does this mean? Paul tells us.

This means that it's not the children of the flesh. It's not those who follow after Ishmael.

It's not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise who are counted as offspring.

Who's the child of promise? Isaac. The proper direction of biblical interpretation is always from the

New Testament to the Old. For the apostles or for Jesus to tell us what the Old meant, and we have that in the

New Testament. And in this case, the meaning back in Genesis is pretty easy to pick up. Abraham shall become a nation through which all nations shall be blessed, that's

Genesis 12, and that nation, or better said, those nations will spring forth from his own loins.

That's Genesis 15. And the birth of that nation will be accomplished by God's faithfulness to his own freely given word.

That's Genesis 17. Isaac is the child of promise through whom the promise would continue.

So with that backdrop, you need to follow Paul's thought. Paul's thought, verse 6a, the first part of verse 6,

God's word has not failed. Now, you may not have understood it. You may have had a different expectation.

You didn't read the promise, and it wasn't fine print. It wasn't hard to pick out. And Paul's not saying you're in terrible sin because you didn't understand.

He's just saying you didn't understand. You got the promises wrong. You had the wrong expectations.

God's word has not failed. We covered that last week. The second half of verse 6, because Jacob's physical descendants, the nation that sprang forth from his 12 sons, they are not all

Israel. Within that larger group that is called Israel, remember it's

Abraham, Isaac, the son of promise, from Isaac to Jacob, who was renamed

Israel, and from Jacob, the 12 sons who became the 12 tribes who became the nation of Israel, not all who came from Jacob -slash -Israel physically are

Israel -slash -of -the -promise. Within that larger group of this subset, one also called

Israel. I think it would have been easier for us if Paul had said, okay, there's Israel A, and there's Israel B.

There's Israel physical, there's Israel spiritual, if he just made it that much more explicit. But I think it's plain enough.

We're not reading into the text. There's an Israel that is the true descendant of Abraham by promise, that right there he calls the children of God.

There's an Israel within the larger group, physical Israel, the nation.

Verse 7a, the first part of verse 7. This is demonstrated by God's word to Abraham.

Just because you are one of his descendants doesn't mean you are one of his true children.

And he says very plainly that Ishmael was not. Jesus spoke of this in John 8, verses 39 and 40.

He said, if you were Abraham's children, now remember, he's speaking to his physical descendants.

He's speaking to Jews. I was born Jewish. I think

I've never done a DNA test, but I think you would find some evidence that I came from ultimately

Abraham, physically from Abraham. If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing what

Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, saying you're descended from him, but you're not his children. Is this double talk?

No, it's following the promises of God, plainly given in Genesis. If you were like Abraham, if you believed the way

Abraham did, you wouldn't be seeking to kill me. But you do seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

This is not what Abraham did. A few verses later, your father

Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So Romans chapter seven, or chapter nine, verse seven, the second half of it, the gap between Abraham and Jacob, between Abraham and his grandson

Jacob, the one who became the nation of Israel, that gap is bridged by the son of promise, by Isaac.

You see, except for God's promise, the hundred -year -old couple would have had only Ishmael.

Through Isaac, through the son of promise, shall your offspring be named, which is to say whoever comes from purely physical human means is not what

God means here by descendant. Just track the promise.

Just follow the one to whom God plainly said is the son, the child of promise, through whom the nationhood that God intended when he spoke to Abraham always intended.

Follow the promise. Now how does this answer the question of God's reliability?

This crucial question of the truth and reliability of the gospel itself, the efficacy of the cross of Jesus Christ, all this at stake here.

How does this answer all that? Paul is saying you're looking at it all wrong. God never promised salvation to every

Jew. He kept his word and granted birth to Abraham and Sarah. Abraham had two sons, only one of which was ordained by God.

The other was the work of the flesh. Now it's interesting to note that once she was pregnant,

Hagar, who was Abraham's concubine, started to persecute Sarah. Just as her son

Ishmael, the child, the product of the flesh, would do to the child of promise,

Isaac. You see, the seed of the serpent lives on, always seeking to discourage

God's people, always enticing them to exercise their own agenda in favor of God's.

And we can go way back with this. I mean, at the tree, that was exactly the case. For Abraham and Sarah, this is the case.

When they looked to Hagar to fulfill God's promise, always looking to use human fleshly means to accomplish what only

God will do by his spirit through his people because of his promises. Isaac was persecuted by Ishmael.

His mother was persecuted by Hagar. Esau later, Esau hated Jacob. We can go all the way back to Moses.

Think of Moses and the calf rabble, those who were worshiping the calf while he was up on the mountain getting God's word.

Think of Joshua and the Gibeonites who came and fooled them and gained from them a promise that got them their lives.

Think of David and Saul. Think of Jesus and the devil's temptations in the wilderness.

It's always the same plot. It's always the same way. This is what Abraham fell for back when he went to Hagar.

What is it? Here's a more sensible way to get there.

Here's something that's gonna be a little bit easier, a little bit more efficient. Here's a kingdom that comes without a cross.

All you've got to do is ignore God's way, overcomplicate his promises or ignore the simplicity of them.

Take the easy road and here it is. Eat the fruit. Go to the

Egyptian maiden. Maiden? The temptation here is to ignore what

God has revealed in his decrees, to take them without thought or insight or discernment, to give no heed to how

God has intervened in history to make himself clear. Why isn't just being born physically a

Jew enough? Because that's never what God said or promised. He never said or promised that every

Jew, every Israelite would be saved. The charge that God didn't keep his word is proven completely false here.

And praise God for that. Not just because God spoke, he did speak, and every word that God speaks is true and forever cast in heaven, we know that.

But on top of that, as well as that, God spoke his word and then kept his word in history.

He kept his word with people whose record we have. And we can look at what he did with them.

Abraham and Sarah being the prime example here in this context, and say, yes,

God gave his word, God gave his promise, and God did it so we could actually see it played out in life.

Paul's interlocutor is right that God didn't save all of Israel. He just didn't understand that the promise spoke of an

Israel within Israel, of a people, a remnant that would be saved because they are the ones illustrated by history and illustrated by and given by God's word.

So that's about God's promise. That's what Paul's saying, you didn't understand what the promise was.

No, not as if God's word has failed, your understanding has failed. That's the promise, and then

Paul moves to election. God gives his promise and then it's election. This idea of predestination, this idea of God in his sovereign design before he created the world, determining who he would have to be his people, this

Israel that is true Israel, as we like to say, this Israel from Israel that is the children of promise, those who are

Abraham's descendants by faith, and thus truly his children, and therefore truly children of God.

You look at the end of verse seven there in Romans chapter nine, our ESV Bibles say, through Isaac your offspring shall be named.

And then in verse 11, it says, in order that God's purpose of election might continue. Those two words, named and election, those two words are related.

Named is from a word that means to call. And this is where we get the doctrine that we have that God's calling is effectual and powerful.

The effectual call that when God calls, he accomplishes. God just doesn't call the individual and say, hey,

I've got an idea for you. I have an offer, why don't you think it over and let me know if you like it.

No, no, no. Not with God whose word is powerful and reliable. God's call is effectual for each individual.

Election comes from the same root. To effectually, to powerfully, to effectively call someone from where they were to where God had predestined them to be.

And this all, Ephesians 1 .4

would tell us, before the foundation of the world, before you, like Esau and Jacob, were able to do good or bad.

Before you or parents even met and were able to even think about having you before you ever had existence,

God made his determination for you. So it's not by works.

It's not of him who wills or who runs, but from God who chooses, from God who chooses and effectually calls, from God who keeps his promise.

That this one who is calling Paul in Romans 9 to defend God through reliability just didn't understand. God chooses before the foundation of the world, that's

Ephesians 1 .4, and then God by his spirit remakes the spirit of the sinner so he has faith to believe and repent.

Jesus said in chapter 6 .39, this is the will, John 6 .39, excuse me, this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he had given me but raise it up on the last day.

It's what Paul wrote in Romans 8 .30, and those whom God predestined, elected, if you will, promised, those whom

God predestined, he also called. He made them aware, he made us aware, he made me aware that there was a calling, and then he enabled me, or you if you believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, enabled you to follow the calling. That's what election is all about.

Paul here stays with the patriarchs. He dealt with Abraham and Isaac. Next in line is

Jacob, the one who will be named Israel. He's the one meant in the second half of verse six, not all who are descended from Israel, physical descent from Jacob, the nation of Israel, the

Jews, not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Look again at verse 10 there in chapter nine.

And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of his call, he was told the older will serve the younger.

As it is written, Jacob I have loved, Esau I hated. If physical descent did

Ishmael no good, even less did it help Esau. The brothers Ishmael and Isaac had one father and two mothers, so they were half brothers.

Esau and Jacob are twins. They shared both mother, Rebekah, and father, which was

Isaac. Abraham had pleaded with God, first for Eliezer to be his heir, then for Ishmael, and God says no, but through Isaac.

Isaac preferred Esau over Jacob, sort of following the way his father Abraham did Eliezer and Ishmael.

Was God saying no, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.

You know, the word hated causes no end of controversy. If we take it at its plainest meaning that God simply hated this unborn child before the child was born, while he's in the womb, it makes

God sound unfair as though he offered the sin that would eventually prove Esau to be unworthy of maintaining the promise.

Some people take hated as meaning less preferred, but I'm afraid if we do that, it weakens

Paul's argument and softens God to say, well, God just didn't like him as much, which is not what hated means, does it?

Remember in C .S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles, Mr. Beaver asks

Susan if Aslan, Aslan, who is the allegory for God, for Christ in that story, he asks if he's safe.

And Mr. Beaver says, who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he is good.

God's not necessarily safe, but he is good. His election is his secret will in accordance with Deuteronomy 29, 29, but the fact of his elective freedom is not mysterious at all.

In his promises, he makes known his will, and by his election, he effectuates it. He gives his promises plainly, he tells what he's going to do, and then he effectually calls, he elects, or he calls those who he elected.

What's being taught here is of very high importance. Before they were born, before they'd done anything at all, that's when

God made known his decree concerning them. Speaking of Esau and Jacob, not by works, not by deserving, not by physical descent, nothing avails for salvation but God's good pleasure to save whom he chose to benefit from the sacrifice of his son

Jesus and his cross. You know, Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 is the classic text for this.

Keeping in mind Ephesians 1, 4, which says this is before the world was created, by grace you've been saved through faith, and this not of your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works that no one may boast.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It's never changed. It's always been by grace.

It's always been by promise. It's always been by God calling out and effectually changing and calling the one he would have.

That last quote in Romans that I read, Jacob I have loved but Esau I have hated, that of course is from the opening chapter of the prophet

Malachi, who's the last prophet that you have in your New Testament before you turn over to the

Gospel of Matthew. But if you wanna turn there for a moment,

I think it would help us to spend just a short amount of time in Malachi. Malachi chapter one and verses two through five.

It says this, I have loved you, says the Lord, but you say, how have you loved us?

You see, the Jews at that time were in terrible distress. They had returned from Exodus and Babylon. The second temple wasn't yet complete.

The economy was a mess. Enemies surrounded them. Their princes were abusing them, and they're saying something to God like this.

Do you call this love? And here's the answer. Is not Esau Jacob's brother, declares the

Lord, yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated. You see, this is more than just words.

God speaks and he acts. What he has decreed within himself, he manifests in history.

And what comes next in Malachi is sort of just look around. I destroyed you and I sent you into exile.

I destroyed Edom, who is Esau's descendants, and I left them destroyed. There's a way how he says it though.

I have laid waste his, that's Edom, Esau, I've laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.

If Edom says we are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins, the Lord of Hosts says they may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called the wicked country and the people with whom the

Lord is angry forever. But you, he speaks to Israel through Malachi, but you whom

I love, you are back in your own land, you are about to finish the temple, but Edom will never be destroyed and they never, will never be restored, excuse me.

And they never were. He finishes with this. Your own eyes shall see this and you shall say great is the

Lord beyond the border of Israel. They shall one day worship in the new temple.

While Edom is inhabited by jackals and weeds. Jacob, you,

Jacob I have loved, but Esau I've hated was meant to open their eyes. Esau was

Isaac and Rebekah's son just as much as was Jacob. God in his freedom chose to cast his love on the one rather than the other.

So God never said that every descendant of Abraham or Isaac or Jacob would be saved. Nor was he tricky or subtle about it.

He put it plainly through Isaac, the son of promise, not Ishmael who came by your own effort, but through Isaac is the one through whom your seed, the promised seed, the one that will bring the blessings promised in Abraham's first call, that shall come through Isaac.

Learn from this that it is all of promise, of election, all from God's freedom to enact his will as he so chooses.

And all graciously revealed to us so that we can understand it. You know, salvation isn't by promise.

That would mean that no salvation was possible except by physical descent from Jacob.

I mean, if that were the case, then only Jews could be saved and if that were the case, then the pluralism of our day, all roads lead to the same place, you've just got to find the one that works for you, that would be as good as anything else.

The question raised in Romans nine is whether the salvation Paul has been writing about in eight chapters of Romans is reliable.

If you look at the children of Jacob, the Jewish nation through the ages, God's reliability far from being impugned is actually confirmed.

He did save the Israel within Israel. He is saving them now. He will continue until each one who was elected and will be called has come.

Who is this today? It's everyone who believes in Christ Jesus our

Lord. It is those who are the children of God and Abraham's true descendants by faith in the

Jesus he rejoiced to see. God said this plainly. He gave his word.

He put the promise in plain, easy to understand print and proved it in history through Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob, through you.

If you, by faith, have turned to Jesus Christ and repented of your sins and sought forgiveness for your sins in him and relying on his work at the cross alone where God poured his fury for your sin on him and you know that your sins were answered by him and that his obedience to the law is yours and therefore

God has imputed to you Christ's righteousness, you're a child of the promise.

You're a descendant of Abraham in the way that Jesus meant in John chapter eight. Truly Abraham's child and therefore a child of God in the sense that God had always promised and always meant and plainly stated and then proved in history.

This gospel is reliable. As clear as was the word to Abraham, so also is the word to you.

Repent and believe the gospel. Repent of your sin, of your sinful nature and believe this gospel that God sent his son to accomplish.

You know, my analogy of a bank loan is really only of limited value because we're speaking of God here, so any metaphor, anything you put together to compare it is all gonna fall apart if you take it too far and it should because we're trying to compare, we're trying to make illustrations of the great and living

God. Before we enter into that transaction with the bank,

I mean, there's some mutual investigation, isn't there? I wanna make sure the bank has the money to loan me. I wanna make sure that it goes into escrow and it pays off the people it needs to pay off so I can have the house.

They need to make sure I have a credit history and enough funds to pay it back. With God, it is a bit different.

It's barely an illustration when we compare it to God. You see, it's impossible for God to lie. It's impossible for God to lie.

It's impossible for God not to be fully reliable. Of his own free will, he has proven in history that his word is true and that all his promises in Christ Jesus are yes and amen.

We don't get to do a Dun and Bradstreet on God to see if he's proven himself reliable and he doesn't run a

FICO score on us to see if our credit history's good enough for him to bring into the kingdom. It doesn't work like that. And I only brought up the idea of the promises and these loans and things that we do in our lives to show that we need to understand the promise.

We need to understand what's been promised and what is required of us. God has spoken clearly in his word.

His promises are understandable. God has chosen a people that he, by promise, will save in his son

Jesus Christ. What is your part? What is my part? Repent and believe that gospel.

Repent of your sin and trust this God whose word has never failed. Jesus Christ is the one in whom

God's children, Abraham's true descendants are named. He is the Israel you must descend from.

By faith in him, in Jesus Christ, by repentance for your sin, by fleeing to his cross where his suffering accounted for your sins.

Pray to God, believing that he hears and plead for the new birth that makes you a child of God and a citizen of his

Israel. In Jesus' name, amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word.

We thank you, Father, that you have proven to us in history to be a reliable God, a true

God, a word from you that never fails. And so, Lord, we put all our hope and our trust and our faith in this gospel you have given us in your son,

Jesus Christ. We pray for all here this day, Lord, that they would hear the word of promise that you have given in him, in Jesus.

And Lord, that everyone here who knows not Jesus Christ would follow this promise and repent of their sins.

And you, Father, in your mercy, by your grace, and according to your word, would save. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.