Because of Him Who Calls

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Don Filcek; Romans 9:1-13 Because of Him Who Calls

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listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series in the
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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Good morning, everybody.
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I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to start off by saying I'm glad that you're here at Recast Church. We have been meeting in the
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Matawan area for 10 years as a church. This year marks our 10 -year birthday, and we started with the purpose of worshiping
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God and finding more worshipers for His name. That's our stated mission as a church, is that we would be a people who, throughout our daily lives and throughout the way that we work with our employers, the way that we interact with our families, the way that we interact with our neighbors, the way that we interact with one another, is ultimately with a focus on worship, and that in turn we would bring more in, that we would bring more into worshiping
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Him because He's great and He's awesome and He's worthy of that. Part of that is the way that we believe that everybody who is a part of this church ought to be growing.
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We believe that everybody ought to be growing in three primary areas. We should all be growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.
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We think that it's hard to demonstrate that in any kind of pictorial way because you'd have to have something that's got movement to it, because it's my conviction that what
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God desires is for us to be constantly taking on more faith, taking on more community, taking on more opportunities to serve and use our gifts and talents.
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Because of that, it's an ongoing expanding circles that overlap in our lives, and that's what we've been looking for in these past ten years, and I'm grateful that here we are ten years later at Recast still growing in faith, still growing in community, still growing in service.
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God has been faithful to keep us on that pathway, and I say God has been faithful because He is a big God. Our God is a sovereign
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God, and we're going to see in this introductory passage into the next big heading in the book of Romans that He is more sovereign than many of us would prefer.
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That's where we're going in the book of Romans, chapter 9 through 11 is about the sovereignty of God.
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It exists to highlight His sovereignty in the course of thinking about salvation and sanctification, the big subject heading, the big outline heading that we just wrapped up last week.
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Now we're moving on into that realm of sovereignty. And Romans 9 is one of the most controversial passages in all of the
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Bible. Churches have split over the things that are addressed in this text that we're reading this morning.
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I personally know one pastor who was run out of his church because he taught what this passage teaches.
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I know another that was attempted to be run out, he's still pastoring that church and some people have left, over the subject of the sovereignty of God.
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And so this is a pretty intense subject that we're looking at here. It's got some pretty direct things that it wants to communicate to us.
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And I believe that the reason this is a controversial passage is because it challenges our perception of our independence.
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It rubs up against our notion of being self -guided, self -directed, autonomous, the choice is up to us, we can make it happen.
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And that tends to be, how many of you recognize that that's an Americanism? That's a pretty big deal to us.
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We're self -directed, we're an independent people. And the fact of the matter is, there's other things that this text might appear at face value to address.
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And it is simply that it comes across a bit harsh if not read in context and not really studied and understood.
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And it is a very radical view of God. I think all of us have some fuzzy notion of who we would like God to be, and even to some degree the
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God that we have made in our minds and in our own image. He's really loving, he's really kind, he's got a big flowing white beard and you could just curl up on his lap, and wow, he just gives good things to us all the time.
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When bad things come, those come from Satan, but when the good things come, those are only ever from God, and you know, he only gives good things, that we could have that mindset.
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And so we bristle in our fallen desire, I think ultimately, to be sovereign ourselves.
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We kind of want to be in charge.
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So watch what Paul does at the start of this passage. I think it's very important that we understand his heart and his spirit, and I'm going to read this text here in just a moment, but I want you to zero in on Paul's emotional state at the start of this text.
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There's an emotional engagement in the material before he ever dives into a discussion of the sovereignty of God.
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He first feels very, very deep feels. And he feels deeply for those outside of him, outside of the call of God.
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You see, God forbid that we would ever peer into the deep matters of salvation, and peer behind the curtain to the things that are going on back there in God's choices,
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God's sovereign will, without compassion and a deep longing for those that are outside of Christ.
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And that's where Paul begins our text. So open your Bibles, if you're not there, to Romans chapter 9, verses 1 through 13.
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Romans 9, 1 through 13. And I believe that all of us are going to be challenged by the content this morning.
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All of us are going to be challenged in our thoughts about who our God is, the way that he rules, and how utterly and unreasonably sovereign he actually is.
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And so, yeah, if you're not already there, you can grab a Bible under the seat in front of you, so that we can all be following along.
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Grab a device and navigate in there. But recast, we're going to take in God's word, what he wants us to know of himself, which might be a little different than what we think we already know about him.
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Romans 9, 1 through 13. I'm speaking the truth in Christ.
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I am not lying. My conscience bears witness, bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
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For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.
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They are Israelites and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.
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To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is
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God over all, blessed forever. Amen. But it is not as though the word of God has failed.
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For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham, because they are his offspring.
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But through Isaac shall your offspring be named. This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.
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For this is what the promise said, about this time next year I will return and Sarah shall have a son. And not only so, but also when
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Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls, she was told, the older will serve the younger, as it is written,
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Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you that you are faithful to challenge us in our notions. I think every one of us too, a person in this room, myself included, has had a paltry and small view of who you are.
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And I've had an elevated view, and I think many of us have had an elevated view of the value of humanity.
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An elevated view of our understanding of how much we're in control and how much we can orchestrate our own destinies.
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And so Father, I pray that you would correct that and reverse it in our hearts that we would see you as high and exalted.
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I don't believe for a second that we're going to walk out of here with a complete understanding of who you are and how sovereign you are and how in control, but Father, I pray that you would help us to take on what truth you have revealed in this text about yourself.
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And that it would move us to joy, that it would move us to gladness, it would move us to celebrate that you are indeed a redeeming
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God. You are a God who has selected and chosen out to show and demonstrate your mercy and we are recipients of that and I pray that that would settle on us in fresh ways this morning.
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Father, that we would sing praises to you because you are the Redeemer, you are the Savior, you are the one who is rescued.
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You are in your sovereignty, could have thrown it all away, you could have balled it up in the trash can and started over, but instead you have chosen to redeem through your
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Son. And so Father, I pray from that place of being redeemed where it didn't have to happen that way, but you chose to do it that way.
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I pray that we would rejoice all the more this morning, that we would lift up our voices in gladness as your chosen people this morning, in Jesus' name.
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Well, thanks again to Dave and the band for leading us, I appreciate that. I would just encourage you like I do every week to get comfortable.
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If at any time during the message you need to get up and stretch out or get more donuts, I think there's some more coffee back there as well, so take advantage of that.
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But the goal is going to be to keep our focus on Romans 9, 1 through 13. I encourage you to reopen your
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Bible or your device back up to that text so that you can have that in front of you, especially this morning.
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I think all of God's Word needs verification that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's Word, but even maybe more so today that you can see the flow of this text.
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And again, just as I emphasized in the introduction, that it is a pretty radical text, it's pretty stern and severe, and so just being able to identify that the things that we're talking about this morning flow from God and His desire to communicate with us.
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Those of you that have been a part of this series, our text shifts gears radically here at the start of chapter 9. There's not a scholar alive, there's nobody who studies the book of Romans that does not see a significant topic shift here at the start of Romans chapter 9.
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No matter how many various outlines there are, this is the start of a point in the outline, no matter who's doing the outlining.
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The sweeping scope of Romans chapter 8 concluded with a crescendo of confidence for the follower of Christ.
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Nothing, nothing, nothing can separate the follower of Jesus Christ, the one who's been redeemed by Him, saved by Him, by the work that He did on the cross, nothing can separate one like that from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
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Lord. We just went over the top to emphasize that there is solid, rock -solid confidence for the one who belongs to Christ that He will indeed finish the work that He started in us and that His love will never depart from those who belong to Him.
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But now after all of that confidence, Paul wants to wrap up some loose ends in his argumentation here.
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And so some might rightly ask, and probably more in that time and that era, but some might rightly ask if the promise of God to Israel in the
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Old Testament, if those promises to Israel have not resulted in the ultimate salvation of all of Israel, then is
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God really faithful? Is God really faithful? Can He really be trusted?
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Can He really keep us like chapter 8 just concluded? Are we really that solid and that confident of His love for us and that it'll never cease as we look back at the way that He worked with Israel?
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This is probably not a question that anybody in this room, I would guess that most of you have never asked the question that this text is answering.
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But I think that if we were more connected to the Old Testament and we all understood the old covenants better and we studied more and we read more in the
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Old Testament, then we would be asking these questions. But to bring it home to what does matter to you, just answer this question.
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You can raise your hand as you answer this question if it's true of you. How many of you would say that it matters whether or not God is faithful?
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Does that matter to you? Go ahead and raise your hand. Of course it matters to us. Does it matter if God keeps
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His promises? Well, sure. Last week was a waste of time if He doesn't keep His promises.
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That I would stand up here with any sense that Paul would spend ink and parchment to tell you you have confidence in Christ and He's not faithful, you can't trust
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Him, and then that matters. Of course it does. And so the purpose of this text is going to fork into two main points looking at the
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Old Testament people of God, and we're going to get to some practicality, but the points come out this way.
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Verses 1 -5 is talking about a people group, a group of people that are blessed by God. It is that Old Testament nation of Israel.
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And then it's going to mine down deeper to a subset of that, and that is the chosen by God, and that's verses 6 -13, the chosen by God.
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Verses 1 -5 are the blessed by God. The blessed by God, and then a subset of those, the chosen, the chosen by God.
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So let's start off by looking at the blessings that God bestowed upon His Old Testament people, blessings that He gave to all of them together, not necessarily a subset, but to all of them.
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And Paul begins in verse 1 in a strange way. He goes over the top in this text to emphasize that what he is about to say in verses 2 -3 is the absolute truth.
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He states it in multiple ways to emphasize that you can trust what
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I'm about to say. And by the way, how many of you ever, like, when somebody starts saying, no, I'm being serious,
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I'm completely, you start to doubt them a little bit? Do you know what, that's the kind of human nature? But Paul is saying, you've got to believe me on this one.
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You've got to trust me on this. And he invokes Christ and the Holy Spirit in his claims that what he is saying is absolute truth.
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He says phrases like this, this is the truth in Christ. He outright says, I am not lying.
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And he says the Holy Spirit is witness to my conscience that these things that I'm about to say to you are absolutely true.
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So what is Paul, I mean, Paul's going over the top to say, I want to make sure you believe me when I say what I'm about to say.
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So what does he want to be sure that you understand? He says, I want you to believe. I want you to believe,
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I want you to believe, I want to make sure that you know I'm not lying when I say that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
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You see, what he's actually doing here in verse 1 is Paul is giving us an emoji in the text.
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Okay, he's literally showing us how he feels as he writes it. How many of you ever run amok before emojis and you were texting somebody and they took it the wrong way and they thought you were angry when you were actually joking?
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Anybody ever have that? It still happens with email all the time, doesn't it? You can't see the emotion with which something was written.
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Are they snarky? Are they sarcastic? Is it funny? Is it a joke? Are they crying when they write it?
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You don't know how they feel, so Paul has to say it because we're now 2 ,000 years removed from his writing and he wants to make sure you know that what is coming in this message moved him to tears.
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He's got the emoji at the start of this text with the tears streaming down, not the one with just a little bit of crying, but the tears streaming down emoji is what he's putting into this text.
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Without the statement, the remainder of this text would lead to a reasonable accusation of Paul having a cold and heartless attitude toward the lost, yes, even his own people, the
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Jews. By the end of this text, he's going to have divided the Jews into an in crowd and an out crowd and saying, some of you aren't even in.
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Matter of fact, the vast majority of you aren't even in. He will indirectly show them to be, a really strong phrase, accursed, damned by God.
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Strong terms. So the words Paul uses in verse two are words of extreme emotional turmoil that he's feeling for his people, those that he loved.
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And he goes to such an extent in verse one to say that these feelings are real because nobody could understand those emotions without him stating it, without him saying it, without him putting it down in writing.
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And if Paul didn't tell us about his anguish, we could easily think that he had a smirk on his face as he declares that God chooses whoever he wants to, and oh, by the way, he chose me.
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Some he chooses, others he doesn't. And we could imagine him, that he might even just add a get over it with a smug look, just the way it is.
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So he starts out in this section regarding the sovereignty of God with tears streaming down his face. He never looks at the lost with smugness.
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He loves the lost so very, very, very much. As a matter of fact, he loves them so very much that he makes an incredible, incredible, and when
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I say incredible, I mean almost unbelievable statement that stretches my ability to actually believe that it's true in verse three.
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I'm glad for verse one because without it, I'm not sure I could believe verse three. Paul says,
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I wish I myself were damned. I wish I myself were cut off from Christ if it meant that all of the
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Jews could be brought in in my place. You see, Paul was born a Jew and he loved his people.
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He was trained and brought up in the Jewish faith. He was likely on track to be one of the most prominent
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Jews. He would have certainly been a rabbi. He studied under the most prominent of rabbis in that era and during that time.
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We have outside of the Bible accounts of the wisdom of Gamaliel, the guy that he studied under.
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Roman documents and things like that that mention Gamaliel. He was the who's who of trainers of rabbis and it's quite likely that Paul was on track to actually sit on the
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Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, the biggest council of the who's who of religious leaders for the
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Jews and he was probably quite likely on track. If he hadn't encountered the risen
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Christ on the road to Damascus, that's where Paul was heading. I hope you can see in these first three verses that without question
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Paul loved his kinsmen. He loved them in a way that we have a hard time imagining. I don't know that we have a love like that for anybody.
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I have to confess that if your salvation depends on me giving up mine, I'm not going to finish the sentence.
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But you can just guess. In verse three is an indirect statement about the position where he believes that the
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Jews of his day and age are in regard to relationship with God. What does he believe that he would have to do to take their place?
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He would have to be damned. He would have to be cut off from Christ, indicating that in a kind of backhanded way that he's identifying.
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You've rejected your Messiah. You've been cut off from the Christ. The one that all of your writings pointed to, you've missed him.
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And they stood in a position of being accursed by God and cut off from the Messiah. And Paul was torn up inside about it.
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And if he could trade himself for all of them, he says he would do it. Now this doesn't sound like blessing so far.
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The heading is the blessed up by God. And then now Paul's going to go on to that.
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He's going to explain that. After he sets it up with the emotion that he's feeling, it's still very right to categorize the
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Jews despite the fact that they're cursed and cut off from Christ, that they have indeed been a blessed by God people.
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Despite their current status, they have been deeply blessed in God's historic move among them.
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And Paul wants to emphasize that, and he wants to highlight that indeed they have been. They've received blessing upon blessing.
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In verses 4 -5 he explains the love and blessing in a list of things that he has worked in, that God has worked in and through his chosen people.
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The first thing that he highlights, the Israelites received adoption by God. They were called his son in various places throughout the
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Old Testament. The imagery, by the way, some of the prophets actually used the imagery of an adopted daughter as well.
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So son or daughter. And he found them wandering alone in the wilderness and there's imagery of God picking up his people, dusting them off, and bringing them into his household and adopting them and caring for them.
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Adopted by God. Sound familiar to some of the language he's used for us?
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Adopted. The Israelites had the glory of God. What is called in Hebrew the
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Shekinah glory of God. The actual visible glory of God that descended on the tabernacle and the temple.
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God's visible glory led them in the wilderness. A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
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They beheld the storm cloud of God descending on Mount Sinai at the giving of the law.
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They saw these things. They were a unique people who beheld the glory of God with their eyes.
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When Moses came down from the mountain he had to shield his face because the glory radiated from him having been in the presence of God.
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They saw these things. To them belonged the glory. To the Israelites belonged the covenants.
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The covenants were God initiated relationships forged by God with specific men. Relationships that God initiated with these guys.
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Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David. God saying, I'm going to do my work through you. His selection, his choice, his will to redeem.
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Where the default for the human race was condemnation. It was death and eternal separation from God and he entered in to break that cycle.
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To them belonged the giving of the law to Moses at Mount Sinai. The law that made them a distinct people and showed the world the inability to save ourselves.
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They were selected out as a nation to show all of us what law does for us and our inability to keep it.
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To them belonged the promises. These promises that came through those covenants that God made with specific individuals.
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Promises like he gave to Abraham. A promise of a good land. A promise of an abundant offspring. And one who would come from that line of offspring to bless all the nations.
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Those kinds of promises. Even a promise to David in his covenant to him that one would sit on David's throne that would have no end to his kingdom.
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We know who that is. All of these promises that we know now from hindsight's 20 -20 we can look back and see that these are fulfilled in Christ.
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These are all pointing towards the redeemer and the one who would save us. But to the
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Israelites also belonged the patriarchs. The men who spoke with God. Men who were chosen by God.
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Ancient men who wrestled with God. But the ultimate, most amazing thing that has come through God's chosen
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Old Testament people is found at the end of verse 5. In this thing, all those other things it said belonged to them, but this thing came from them.
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It doesn't belong to them, but it came from them. From their race. According to physical descendancy came the
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Messiah. The chosen one. The anointed one. Jesus Christ himself.
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Who it says in the text emphatically, probably the most clear Trinitarian formula of the divinity of Jesus Christ in scripture.
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I actually bounced this off of a couple of Greek scholars that I know and I actually emailed them this week and I said, am
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I reading this right? I just want to make sure because this is really an extreme statement in this text and they said no absolutely.
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The newest studies in Greek actually emphasize that this is actually right. Everything's pointing towards that this is calling
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Jesus Christ himself God. Very, very clear text here. Jesus Christ himself who is
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God over all and who is to be blessed forever and ever. God came in the flesh through the race of the
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Jews. I mean what a privilege. And Paul's amen at the end shows his enthusiasm and exaltation over this list of blessings that has culminated in the arrival of King Jesus for the world.
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See verses 4 -5 demonstrate how special, how unique, how blessed the Israelites truly are.
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So with all of his blessing and all of his promises and all of his covenants and all of his worship and all of his glory, how can they now be accursed?
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He's setting up the argument. How can they now be cut off? And here is how the following three chapters tie in with what has come before.
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First chapter 9, chapter 10, chapter 11 all about God's sovereignty. But Paul emphatically stated that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
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Lord. But I'm certainly no better than the Jews, am I? They had promises too.
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They were adopted too. They had covenants as well. They had glory. They had worship.
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And I don't know about you, but I haven't produced any messiahs. Have you? So if they could be cut off, then how can
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Paul be so confident that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus?
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Have God's promises failed? Has his word to his Old Testament people failed?
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I'm glad you asked. Because verse 6 has for us a simple answer.
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Right at the start of our next section, God's word has not failed.
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What we're going to get at here, and just to summarize his answer, we are looking too physically and too corporately for his blessings.
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What God was planning all along was not to bless his people through biological, physical connection with Abraham down through the generations.
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It was never enough to be born a Jew. But at the end of verse 6, Paul is saying there are physical
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Israelites born from the line of Abraham. And then there are spiritual Jews who belong to the true
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Israel. And earlier in the book of Romans, he actually identified that some of us in this room, those of you who belong to Christ, are actually from the spiritual line of faith like children of Abraham.
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So that we can be counted as descendants of Abraham as well. Not physically, we can't trace our line back through the tribes and all the way back to Abraham, but we can through faith.
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Our faith being like his faith. And now he launches into explaining that the difference between physical
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Israel and spiritual Israel comes down to one thing that makes us uncomfortable.
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The difference between being born to the line of Abraham and actually being in the promise, what makes the difference?
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The difference is the choice of God. The difference is the choice of God.
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And so the second movement of the text explains the chosen by God in verses 6 through 13. And he is not merely trying to explain past historical events in verses 6 through 13, but we've got to keep in mind who he's writing to.
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He's not just giving us a quick synopsis of the Old Testament, he's writing to the church in Rome, he's writing to the church here in Matawan.
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He's identifying the way that God works with us here and now to give us confidence that God is indeed faithful to his people.
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And he is talking to the church and he is using Israel as an illustration to us here where we live.
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And he does this by peeling back the curtains and let us see the operating system of salvation.
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Now I don't know about you, but I mean it was a long time ago that I liked working on computers and now it's just like I know how the computer works on the front end, but I don't know as much how it works on the back end anymore.
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Do you know what I mean? And for some of us to open up that cabinet or to open up your laptops back and look in there, it's like okay, there's stuff in there.
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I guess it does some stuff. But that's what I mean when I say he's pulling it back and he's opening it up and he's showing us the guts of salvation, the way that it really works.
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And the operating system is the choice and call of God. That's what's going on behind the scenes.
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There's all kinds of things on the interface, all kinds of things on the monitor that we can see and manipulate and work through, but at the end of the day what's running in the engine?
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The choice and call of God. And he starts here with Abraham in verse 7. And this statement would have been fighting words to any
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Jew during Paul's time. What he says in verse 7 would have been shocking to them. In verse 7 he says, and not all, not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named.
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They took great pride in being able to trace their family line back to Abraham, the father of their religion.
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But Paul dismisses centuries, Paul dismisses centuries of false trust by stating flatly and directly, not all who are descendants from Abraham are his true, are true offspring of the promise.
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The word offspring is a loaded word that harkens back to the covenant between God and Abraham where God told him, I will give you a multitude of offspring.
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But Abraham was told directly that the line of the promise blessing would come through one specific son.
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It would come through Isaac. It would be a son born to Sarah. God refined the people of the blessing by his own will and choice is the main point that Paul wants to get at here.
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God in his sovereign choice saying, no it's not going to come through every one of your children, it's going to come through one specific one and I'm going to choose who it's going to be.
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He didn't choose Ishmael. He didn't choose any of Abraham's later sons. He chose Isaac to be the pathway of the blessing.
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God's desire being accomplished in the lineage of Abraham. And so in verse eight,
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Paul seeks to dispel any notion that God's plan comes through natural means. It's not natural birth that brings a person into the people of God.
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It never has been. It's not who your parents are. It's not where your parents go to church. It's not their faith. It's not being born to the right people group or anything like that.
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But it's always only ever been being born according to the promise. This is a way of saying those who are chosen by God receive the promise of God and will believe the promise of God.
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And the specific promise to Abraham given that he believed is found in verse nine. Paul is quoting
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Genesis 18 .10 and he says, and he quotes declaring that Sarah in her very old age would bear a son to her husband.
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And of course we know that that son would be Isaac, the one named laughter. And in case that isn't enough to convince us that God is in charge and has the right to decide who he will and will not draw in as his people, he gives us a more pointed and clear example in the next generation of the
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Old Testament patriarchs. He goes down a level and Isaac married this, this wonderful young lady named
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Rebecca, who also struggled with barrenness like her mother -in -law. But over the course of time and by God's design, she conceived twins with Isaac.
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And before they were born, God told her that the younger would serve the older. Again, God refining this.
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God selected Jacob before they were born, before they had a chance to prove themselves, before they could do either good or bad, before they had done right or wrong.
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And against the societal customs of blessing the firstborn son, God chose the one he desired for his own purposes.
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And there are four observations about verse 11 that are very important that we understand. These are fundamental to understanding that as God is bringing this from the corporate huge Israel down to the individual of the church and identifying for us the operating way that he saves, there are these four observations about verse 11.
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The first, he chose them before they were even born. His sovereign will and purpose does not take into account the quality of the individual he chooses.
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Did you guys hear that? His sovereign will and purpose does not take into account the quality of the individual he chooses.
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Before Jacob or Esau could do either good or bad, the text says, God chose
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Jacob. Jacob hadn't proved himself, but God chose Jacob. This serves two purposes in the text.
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It serves as the answer to the question, how can God be faithful while most of his people reject their Messiah?
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The answer comes down to his faithful choosing of a spiritual lineage, his choice. But it also answers a secondary question, how can
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I be sure he will keep me? Because he chose you apart from your ability to please him.
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How many of you are glad for that? That he chose you apart from your ability to please him. How many of you know you can't please him?
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You already know that. And so praise God that he would choose us. He chooses some according to his good pleasure, his prerogative, and his desire.
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He chose them before they were even born. The second observation from verse 11 is he chose Jacob over Esau before they were born to further his purposes of election.
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That's the reason. He says it was so that my purpose of election would be continued on, that I would be shown to have the freedom to choose.
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He chose so that we would know that he has the freedom to choose. The reason was so that we would know fully that God is sovereign over his blessings.
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And he is completely free to choose. The word in the text is elect, in the ESV, means to choose or election.
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But God is free to choose whoever he wants to bless. His purposes of election would continue.
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The third thing he chooses not because of works, not based on good works that we have done.
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Paul doubles this up as a purpose in God's divine election. He already stated that God chose before they had done either good or bad.
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He chose before they had even accomplished anything. They were in the womb. And he chose the younger over the older.
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But he explicitly states that his purpose of election is not on the basis of any deeds done ever.
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He never looks out over mankind and finds one that he deems worthy of salvation based on good deeds and law keeping.
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He'd have to overlook all of us. If that was a prereq, none of us could be saved. So he does not choose because of works.
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And fourth, the fundamental line between those who are blessed to be included in his covenant people, both
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Old Testament and New Testament, comes down to the phrase at the very end of verse 11. I got the title of this message from this.
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It is because of him who calls. He is the one who chooses.
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Not by who your parents were, not by birth order, not by how good or bad you are or will be, but for the purpose of his election that it would be all of grace and not at all by works.
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The blessings of salvation come because of him who calls.
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Salvation is his work. And the text concludes with a really hard quote from the book of Malachi.
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As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
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I have a feeling one of those words stands out to you a little bit. We'll talk about that here in a minute. But before we move to discuss what is one of the hardest truths in the
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Bible, let's remind ourselves where the text started. Let's not lose sight of the heart with which Paul wrote these things.
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It started with the deep compassion and anguish of Paul. He would love to save all of his people, even if it meant great loss for himself,
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Paul says. If he could do anything to save them he would. But there is no question that Paul here in this text is acknowledging that salvation is not his prerogative, but God's.
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Paul faithfully preached. He faithfully traveled. Paul faithfully suffered to bring the gospel to anyone who would hear.
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He was eager to bring the gospel. And all the while being firmly convinced that salvation is ultimately a work of God by his sovereign choice.
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I want to admit to all of you, and I think many of us can relate to this, but I just want to just tell you honestly,
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I think I would have chosen Esau. I read the story. I mean as many of you know the story. I think many of us would have.
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If I was captain of the football, captain of the kickball team on the playground, I would have wanted
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Esau on my team. If I was putting a war party together to raid some
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Ites, Canaanites, Samurites, whatever, Ites, I would have selected
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Esau over Jacob any day. The text is abundantly clear. Jacob was a mama's boy.
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Esau was a man's man. Hunter, fisherman, out in the wilderness. Jacob, it says, kind of clung to his mom's skirt in the kitchen.
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Jacob was chosen by God because of his good purposes and his good plan.
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Because he is free to choose. And by the way,
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I want to just clarify something that I've seen happen in the church. I've been guilty of it and of going into this thought pattern in my mind.
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I want to paint Esau as bad as possible and Jacob as good as possible to defend
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God's choice. To make it seem reasonable. So Esau must have been this terrible oaf and Jacob must have been this really stellar guy because God chose
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Jacob. And that's not at all what the text says. Not at all. God doesn't seem to show any interest in defending his own choice.
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In elevating Jacob and going, look at my Jacob. Do you know what the name Jacob means?
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Swindler, scoundrel. That's the guy that God chose in the womb before he was even named, before he was even born.
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God said, I'm gonna choose this one. He didn't live a particularly stellar life with that whole two wife battle thing that he had going on and all of that.
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And I think in reality, when we look at, go ahead and look at verse 13. Read it one more time in your head. Read it just for a second. I'm gonna give you a second.
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Read it. Man, is there a word you don't like in there? What's the word you don't like in there?
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Go ahead and say it if you hear it. Hate. You don't like that word, do you? And I think that most of us are scandalized by the wrong word.
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The word that ought to shock us is the word love. That God would love any rebel against him.
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But we're like, oh no, we're so lovable. No, we're not. I am
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Esau. All of us. Jacob was Esau in the same camp and God by his choice said,
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I will love you. That's where all of us were. The scandal is in the word love.
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Jacob, I have loved. Are you serious, God? Really? You're gonna let him walk all over you like that?
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You're gonna let your people who have rebelled against you and sinned against you and would put your son to death given the choice.
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We would be there spitting in his face. He's loved us.
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He has loved us. That God would love a sinful rebel like you.
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That God would love a sinful rebel like me. That God would love a sinful rebel like Jacob.
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That is where the surprise and the shock in this text should rest. We need to clarify these words though because they're so emotional to us.
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The word love, I'm not convinced we fully understand that word. The word hate,
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I'm not sure we fully understand that word and particularly how they relate to the Almighty God.
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Love and hate in verse 13 are not technically emotions that God feels. I believe that.
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It's not that he feels some kind of animosity and anger towards one of these two preborn babies.
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Love and hate are actions taken in choosing to bless the one and leaving the other to his own destructive choices.
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I know I run the risk of softening the word hate. You could accuse me of saying, well Don, are you just saying that to make it more palatable?
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But God didn't hate Esau in the way that I might hate someone who harmed one of my children. Hatred is a metaphor in this text and in Hebrew, it's kind of a
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Hebrew idiom for not chosen, not selected. So what are we to do with this pretty severe and strong text here?
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I'm going to conclude with some contrasting options for you. We're nearing the end here but I want you to think through.
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I'm going to give you some options. You can apply it either direction. The choice is between you and God and the way that you work forward.
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I'm going to give you three sets of options. The first option that I believe is set before us today is we could get angry and deny that God is sovereign or that he has the freedom to choose to bless whoever he wants or we could be grateful that he has for some reason chosen us.
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I set those choices before you today. Get really angry and deny that God is sovereign and disagree with the text or be grateful that he has for some unknown reason chosen you.
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I think we can all agree that the text paints a pretty solid picture of the sovereignty of God and even more so in the text to come.
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He who calls, God himself is the one who chooses who to bless with his covenant promises.
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It seems to me that we have a choice. Either shake our fist at a perceived unfairness or we can fall on our knees in gratitude that he chose us.
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Two other sets of options. Quit all evangelistic efforts and find a quiet place to sip mojitos because God is sovereign and he will save who he wants to save.
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So we can just chill, maybe relax and watch some Netflix or learn from the burning ache of Paul's heart for the lost and get out there and seek to find the elect.
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God wants to use us in this work of his salvation. It is a privilege.
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It is an honor and even more beautifully a guarantee that there are some who will respond to the gospel because salvation is in the hands of him who calls.
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And so I take comfort in the opportunities that I have to share the gospel with others knowing that there are some who will respond to his divine call.
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The third set of options in front of us. Accuse God of being cruel and unfair. It's a real option.
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Or acknowledge that in our rebellion he need not save a single one of us.
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He didn't have to save any of us. This text is a setup for one of the toughest texts of scripture that's coming up.
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This is not the difficult one. I get to leave for a few weeks, allow you to sit on the thought that the harder text is coming.
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Some of you know that I'm actually going to be out for a few weeks here. I'm going to be taking a sabbatical over the month of August. I would encourage you please, oh please, oh please, be at church while I'm gone.
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That means that you take in the word and you want to gather together with one another and that you're not so caught up or hung up on me as a preacher that you're not willing to come while others are preaching.
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I've got a great lineup of guys who are going to preach in my absence. Please come and participate in body life and be together and connect with one another.
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Encourage one another. Listen to what God has to say through his word to each and every one of us in my absence.
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I don't know, I got off on that. That wasn't in my notes. Coming back around. This is a tough text but the tougher one is saving for when
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I get back. But to steal a little bit of what's coming in Romans chapter 9, it's going to state emphatically and directly the application of this text, the final kind of note to where this is all going and that is simply this, that God will have mercy upon whomever he wishes to express mercy.
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That's God's design, his prerogative. It's kind of the very nature of him being
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God. He didn't need to show mercy to anyone. He has shown mercy to me.
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And can you rejoice today that he has shown mercy to you? Let's come to communion this morning with thankful hearts, with gratitude.
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Let's come with the burden for those who do not know the salvation of Jesus Christ and let's come with trust in the plans of the
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Sovereign Almighty God. His ways are really hard to understand and so what I do personally when
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I don't understand, when I come to the end of my ability to wrap my mind around God, what
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I love to do is I come back to the cross to remember his love for me. So if you're all in with Jesus and I encourage you to come into the tables contemplating, consider the cross this morning.
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If you're all in with him then you can come to one of the tables in the back and take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us. And I encourage you to take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.
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And if you lose sight of his love for his people then come back to the cross. And that is exactly why we take communion together every week, because we can so easily forget his love and mercy that was poured out for us.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the hope that we have based on your call and your choice.
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That Paul's argumentation results in deeper confidence for those who belong to you.
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It's not because we sustain ourselves, it's not because we cling to you, because we've got a great grip on you, but you have a great grip on us.
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And it's for that reason that nothing can separate us from your love. We are saved by your choice.
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We are held by your choice. And even our behavior, good or bad, cannot dissuade you from loving those who belong to you.
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So Father, I pray that that reality would settle on each one of our hearts and that you would give us an evangelistic zeal like Paul, a passion and a desire for those that are currently outside of your covenant, that are currently outside of your call and your love.
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Father, that you might use some of us to issue that divine call, that some would come to faith in you through the voices of those that are gathered here.
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And Father, that you would protect us from wrong thoughts about you. You would increase our love for you each day.