Romans 9 Objections Considered

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If you'll turn your Bibles once again with me to the 9th chapter of the
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Gospel according to Paul, the book of Romans, Romans chapter 9. This morning we looked at this section of the letter and attempted to provide a positive interpretation, a positive exegesis of this text as a whole, following the argument, placing it within its context, following from what had come before.
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This evening, in the time that we have, and in a shorter time than this morning, we will be looking at a number of the objections that people have raised to the understanding that we presented this morning.
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And so that will be our task this evening. But before we engage that, let us ask the
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Lord to bless our time together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we confess that without your
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Spirit we can do nothing. So we would ask that in these precious moments we have together around your
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Word that you would gather with us, that you would give expression of your truth, Lord, that you would help us to understand what you would have us to understand to be better servants of yours.
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We pray in Christ's name. Let us read together.
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We read this morning, starting in chapter 8, but let us read verses 6 through 24 of Romans chapter 9 to remind us of the material we're looking at.
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But it is not as though the Word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel, nor are they all children, because they are
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Abraham's descendants. But through Isaac your descendants will be named. That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.
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For this is the word of promise, that this time will come, and Sarah shall have a son. Not only this, but there was
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Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac. For though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to his choice would stand, not because of works, but because of him who calls, it was said to her, the older will serve the younger, just as it is written,
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Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there?
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May it never be. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom
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I have compassion. So then it does not depend on the man who wills, the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.
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For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.
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So then he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. You will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who resists his will?
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On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this, will it?
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Or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
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What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
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And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom he also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.
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Now, we had to rush a good bit this morning right toward the end. Unfortunately, I was not able to emphasize some of the things that needed to be emphasized there toward the end of chapter 9, but let me just take a moment or two to touch upon a couple of those things, sort of to wrap things up before we look at some of the objections.
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One thing that is very, very clear at the end of the section here is that what Paul is talking about has something to do with wrath and with grace.
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Notice it talks about he was willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known.
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He talks about these vessels. He put up with much, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.
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One of the things we emphasized this morning is that there is no reason to believe that the soteriological, the salvation -focused discussion of chapter 8 has been broken here, that the freedom that God has, that it was illustrated in the golden chain of redemption, continues all the way through and will continue all the way through chapters 10 and 11, in fact, here in this letter.
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But when you're talking about vessels of wrath, and then you have as the counterpoint to that vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, we think about Paul's theology.
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Well, what is this glory about? Is there not in the golden chain?
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What is the final step of the golden chain? Glorification. What does he say in Ephesians chapter 2?
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That we've already been seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We have this consistency in Paul's theology.
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And so once again, you might be saying, well, why do you emphasize that? It's so obvious, because in verse 24 it says, even us whom he also called, not for among Jews only, but also among Gentiles.
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You take that back to chapter 8. Those whom he called, justification, glorification.
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These are clearly the elect of God. Yes, there is a consistency here. Anyone can see this consistency.
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Well, I keep emphasizing this because when we look at the objections, we will see that at least for those who attempt to take the text seriously, the mechanism, the primary mechanism, is to cut this up into sections and to try to isolate these things, and hence change what's being referred to.
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And so the calling and the election becomes not something that is relevant to what we saw in chapter 8.
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It doesn't become something that is in regards to individual salvation and hence the salvation of all of the elect as a corporate body.
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But instead it becomes a calling to service, a fulfillment of ministerial duty or privilege, in being used in taking the message of Christ to the world, so on and so forth.
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Anything to try to avoid the clear implication of the text, the clear teaching of the text, that we are talking specifically about God's work of salvation as being foundational to everything else that he's doing here.
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But again, you can't get away from that because even though you have the calling, Jews and Gentiles, then as I did emphasize, we need to recognize that in those quotations, the quotations from the
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Old Testament at the end of the chapter, you have Paul wrapping all of this up, and we really, really need to see that what you have here is that reference of the remnant.
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Look at verse 27 again. Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved, for the
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Lord will execute his word on the earth thoroughly and quickly. That concept of the remnant, just keep your finger there and just look over at chapter 11, and you'll see in verse 5, in the same way then, there has also come to be at a present time a remnant according to God's gracious choice.
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But if it is by grace, it's no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.
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And so you have this basic statement that is made there.
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It's made in chapter 10. You cannot obtain righteousness by works. You cannot obtain righteousness by trying to do something that is righteous before God as if he could owe you something.
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It is always by grace. It is always through faith. And who are those who by grace and faith are believing in Christ?
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Well, these are the ones that God calls to himself. So with that sort of wrapping things up, how can you get around this?
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How is there a way around this? Well, I'll never forget.
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When I first came to really start seeing the glory of these truths,
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I was not raised opposed to these things. I just wasn't raised with the language of reformed theology to express it in its fullness.
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And so I remember I was, as some of you know, at a rather larger church than ours is.
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And I was teaching a, if I recall, it was a Wednesday night class. It might have been a
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Sunday night class. I don't remember which one it was. But anyways, I read through this section.
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I read through chapter 9. And I'll never forget one lady who got up in anger and left the class because I read the text.
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I didn't comment on the text. She didn't give me a chance to comment on the text. She just knew, I don't believe that, and she was out of there.
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So obviously there are some people who just don't feel that we should even talk about these things. And that has always been one of the objections is that, you know, they're just some things.
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They cause too much division. You should just leave them alone. And many people,
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Calvin himself, have pointed out that what that argument really is is an argument against the wisdom of the
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Holy Spirit and having inscripturated these truths. We believe that if God has given it to us in the
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Word of God, he's preserved this for us, then there is a purpose for it. There is a need for us to understand what is given to us in Scripture.
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And so that kind of an attitude, while it is very prevalent, is not a kind of attitude that can be taken overly seriously by the person who believes that the
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Bible truly is the Word of God. Then there are others who just simply on the basis of tradition simply say, well, whatever else it means, it can't mean that.
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Now this is a very common thing. I mentioned very briefly this morning, but I was talking far too quickly, that if you've done some reading in church history, you know that the great division that developed between John Wesley and his brother
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Charles and the great Whitefield was over this very issue.
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And, of course, Charles eventually sort of modified his perspective and ended up being closer to Whitefield than he was to his brother on many issues, which is reflected in some of the hymns that we sing.
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But, be it as it may, Wesley was a strong opponent of the doctrine of election, the doctrine of predestination.
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And he very clearly said, whatever else this text could possibly mean, it can't mean what the
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Calvinists say it means. And there are a lot of people who take that perspective, and most of them do so based upon an absolute conviction that Reformed theology is destructive to a meaningful view of God.
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There's a modern writer by the name of Roger Olson who teaches down in Dallas.
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In fact, I sort of wonder if... Well, he teaches in Texas. I'm not necessarily sure he's in Dallas now that I think about it.
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Anyway, he's down in Texas, and he is sort of the modern representation of this.
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He was involved in writing that series of books that Michael Horton was involved with, Why I Am Not a
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Calvinist, Why I Am Not an Arminian, etc., etc. And he has repeatedly said that, just as Wesley, if God is like Calvinists believe him to be,
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I would not be able to tell the difference between God and Satan. That's what he says.
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Now, you might say, that's ridiculous. How can someone say something that absurd? Well, it's a very man -centered argument.
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It starts with man, and it starts with our, what he would call, our innate sense of what is good.
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And since God does things that we innately would not call good, given his presupposition starting with man, then there's no way to be able to tell the difference between Satan and God.
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And, of course, their big thing is he knows when he creates what's going to happen.
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And he decrees that it's going to happen. And, therefore, the means by which that takes place, the entire drama of salvation, which includes in the person of his son, his own incarnation into his own universe, in the person of Christ, and self -sacrificial giving, and the union of a people to Christ, and all these things, all of that becomes irrelevant.
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It's just nothing more than a puppet show. If from the beginning God decreed that a certain people were going to be saved, and a certain people were going to be lost, then it's all a sham.
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There is no freedom. There is no responsibility. And this
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God is horrible, because those people who, yes, they act upon their wills, they act upon their desires, but they never had a chance, and, therefore,
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God is evil. And so, no matter what else this text is saying, it can't mean that.
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Now, obviously, it's difficult to deal on an exegetical basis with someone who comes to the text and says, well, look,
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I have certain presuppositions, I have certain assumptions, and I am simply bound by those, and, therefore, even though it may sound like the text is saying that, it can't be saying that.
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And so it must be saying something else. You will encounter a large number of people that come from this perspective, and if you're sitting there and you've gotten your pens out and you've gotten your paper out and you're sitting there going, all right, he's going to tell us exactly how to get somebody like that to see the light, you can put your pen away, because there is no way to get someone like that to see the light.
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Oh, you can speak to them, you can pray for them, you can answer their questions, but you and I both know that when it comes to that soul -shattering moment where you really come to understand that God is
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God. He's not the big grandpa in the sky. He truly is holy. And the root meaning of holy, yes, separate and all that, but it's other.
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Completely distinct. Completely other than we are that we cannot put God in the dock.
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We cannot try to judge God. We cannot try to restrict God by our types of categories and things like that.
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Once you've had that experience, which you see recorded in Scripture over and over again, once you have that Isaiah moment,
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I am undone, I have seen God as He truly is, you recognize that you cannot force that upon somebody else.
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You can proclaim the truth to them. You can patiently do so. You can try to get yourself out of the way. You can try to keep from being a cage -stage
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Calvinist. You can try to keep from being that kind of person who is just so obnoxious in your
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Reformed theology that you just chase people around and beat them over the head with copies of The Sovereignty of God by Arthur W.
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Pink and that kind of thing. But the reality is it takes the work of the
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Spirit of God to cause someone to realize that if they're really saying, well, if God's like that,
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I will never worship Him. That's a dangerous statement to make. That's a dangerous statement to make.
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And I can't look into people's hearts. But one thing that strikes me is if you're willing to actually state that if what the
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Bible is teaching is that God is like that, I will not worship Him. That strikes me as a statement of arrogance on the part of any individual.
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And yet that's what Roger Olson has said. That's in essence what John Wesley said as well. And there are many people who repeat that.
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Most, however, my friends, repeat that kind of a statement out of ignorance, not out of knowledge.
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It's one thing. Look, you'll encounter people and they were led to the
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Lord by Brother Bob. And Brother Bob is a wonderful preacher and he just thunders forth the
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Gospel and he says you have to be saved by grace through faith and all the rest of that stuff. But Brother Bob took me aside shortly after I got saved and he warned me about Calvinism.
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And he warned me people would come along and they'd try to trick me. And once you become a
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Calvinist, son, you'll never be a soul winner again. And because they trust
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Brother Bob and Brother Bob was the means by which they came to know the Lord, they have a real strong bias and they just really question you.
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And they may just keep you at arm's length and not really listen to what you have to say. And there's only so much you can do about that.
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There aren't any magic bullets. You have to leave that in the hand of the Lord. Now, what about those people who come to this text and they claim, they recognize, you have to believe all of the
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Scripture. You have to believe Scripture only. You have to believe all of Scripture. We need to accept what
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Scripture says and so they're not willing, at least openly, to repeat the words of John Wesley or Roger Olson or other people like that.
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What about them? How do they deal with it? Well, I mentioned this morning how Norman Geisler dealt with it in his book,
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Chosen but Free. He just chopped the text up into little pieces and would basically, this is how it would go.
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This is really the most common way that you're going to see this. What you're going to hear is that what you have in Romans chapter 9 is a discussion of nations and the privileges they have before God.
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Israel was greatly privileged by God. All those privileges are enumerated at the beginning of the chapter.
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And what's being explained is why that is changing. And then they'll very frequently go directly to chapter 11 where you have the discussion of Gentile believers as a group versus Jews as a group.
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And you have the warning against the group of Gentile believers. Don't boast against those who have been cut off since you might be grafted in.
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And they'll read that back into chapter 9 to try to avoid the conclusion that in any way there could be a personal application of the words of Romans chapter 9.
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Now, part of this misunderstanding is when we read
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Romans chapter 9, we're not saying that it's only about individuals and there's no view of the elect of God here.
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When we looked at Romans chapter 8, we started with who will bring a charge against God's elect?
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Well, that's looking at the elect as a whole. But we recognize you can't talk about the term elect in vague, impersonal terms.
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That's one of the things that frightens me about so much of the preaching that is out there today is because they're so afraid of Reformed theology and they're afraid really of what the
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Bible's saying here, that they've pulled back the other direction and the result is an impersonal view of salvation.
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To where you have this, you have the elect, you have this class of the elect, but it's just a group.
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It's a nameless, faceless group that you get into by your faith and your repentance and they almost always have a very sub -biblical anthropology, a very sub -biblical view of the deadness of man and sin and they certainly really struggle with Romans chapter 8, the beginning where he talks about those who are according to the flesh cannot do what is pleasing to God.
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They want to tell you that, well, yeah, you may be dead in sin, but you can still humble yourself and you can do what's pleasing to God in the sense of humbling yourself and having faith and repenting.
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I thought those were all really pleasing things in God's sight. Well, yeah, you can do all that stuff. What's Paul talking about?
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They're unable to do what God's law demands. Doesn't God's law demand that? Well, anyways, they almost always have a very sub -biblical view of man, but what they'll say is that, yes,
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God has an elect people, but it's class election, you see. He's elected.
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All he's actually elected to do is to do this. Everyone who believes in Christ will receive these things.
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So the election becomes impersonal. It's not God choosing to save individuals, uniting them to Jesus Christ.
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It's God choosing to give certain blessings to those who will, in essence, unite themselves to Jesus Christ by their actions, by their faith, etc.,
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etc. So you have this class election idea, which is normally derived from Ephesians 1, which
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I can't even understand how you can do that because the direct objects are all personal there, but anyway, that's where it comes from.
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And so when you come here to chapter 9, what you do is you try to say, well, this isn't about soteriology.
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It's about national blessing, and how do you prove that? Well, you prove it by verse 13. You prove it by verse 13, and you read it and go, what?
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How does that prove national privilege?
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Well, it's simple. Just as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated, and you have a reference there,
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I'm sure, in your Bibles, and that takes us back to the book of Malachi. Now, Malachi is written long, long, long after Jacob and Esau have left the scene.
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And in Malachi, Jacob is referring to God's people
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Israel, and Esau is referring to his descendants, the Edomites, who have fought and warred against God's people.
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And so you'll find all sorts of oracles, prophetic oracles in the
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Old Testament against the Edomites, and about judgments of God upon the
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Edomites. And so they'll say, see, right there, if you look back at what
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Paul's quoting from, you will see he's not talking about Jacob as an individual, and he's not talking about Esau as an individual.
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In fact, how hateful would it be for God, before these little babies, and I was just listening to my future debate opponent a week from tomorrow, speaking on this subject, and this was exactly his language.
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He said how absurd it would be to think that God would speak about hating little babies.
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And he presents Esau and Jacob as these innocent little babies, and God's saying,
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I'm going to love this little baby, but I'm going to hate this little baby and send it to hell. And so you do sort of get that kind of, let's use the most emotional terminology we can, rather than dealing with the actual text itself.
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But that's the argument, is that, see, this is about nations. This was written so many hundreds of years later that you can't possibly think that it's talking about God's choice of Jacob and Esau.
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Now, did Paul know when he quoted Malachi, when Malachi was written?
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Well, of course he did. Of course he did. And so the question is, how is the apostle using this text?
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And how does the apostle interpret his own use of the text? Well, when we look at it, you have a quotation, and it was interesting.
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It was pointed out that verse 12 is from Genesis and verse 13 is from Malachi, and that's the first and last books of the
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Old Testament. Well, sort of. I mean, that's the way it looks to us, too.
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Malachi, Genesis. But remember, if you pick up a Jewish Bible, that's not the way it is. The last book in the
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Jewish canon is 2 Chronicles. Now, Malachi is in there. It's just before that. So their order of canon is different from ours.
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So chronologically, yeah, that would be first and last, but it wouldn't be canonically.
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Remember, Jesus actually sort of used the canonical argument we talked about for the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Barakiah.
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That's in 2 Chronicles, so that was beginning and the end of the Jewish canon. But anyway, you have the two put together, and he quotes from the actual narrative of the story.
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The older will serve the younger. Just as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. What shall we say then?
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There is no injustice with God, is there? So Paul recognizes that if you're tracking with him, if you're listening to him, you're going to hear what his argument is, and the argument's going to result in an opponent saying, you're saying there's injustice with God.
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Now, the problem is what our non -reformed friends will do with this particular text is they will say, well, you see, the
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Edomites deserved God's judgment upon them. They had persecuted the
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Israelites. They had aided in military work against the
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Israelites. They had engaged in idolatry, etc., etc. And so, yes,
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God's judgment now justly comes upon them because of what they've done.
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Now, notice what the desire is. You want God's judgment to come upon the
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Edomites because of what the Edomites have done themselves. What you're trying to avoid is actually what
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Paul's talking about because what was Paul's whole emphasis? Before the twins, before the boys had done anything good or bad, before they had done any evil, before they had done any good so that God's purpose in election might stand not by works but by him who calls, this was said.
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So, functionally, they end up turning the entire thing upside down and saying that what
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God is doing with Edom long afterwards is because the Edomites have been bad people and therefore
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God's judgment is being brought against them. What is Paul's point? Well, it's the same thing all the way through.
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God has always had the freedom to choose, to guide the path of the promise according to his purpose.
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He is not having to react to us and go, oh, okay, I wanted to bless that guy, but, oh, okay, he's,
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I didn't see that coming and so now I'm going to have to go over here, let's try getting this guy and let's try going over here and getting this guy.
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In fact, I even asked my upcoming opponent, I said, do you think that Paul could have resisted,
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Paul could have rejected Christ's call upon his life on the road to Damascus?
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And he said, yes. So, I guess, you know, even though it says that God set
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Paul apart from his mother's womb, that God may have done that, but Paul may have messed it all up and so God's got to find somebody else, he's got a plan
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B and a plan C and a plan D, I guess, and maybe Paul was plan C already, maybe he'd already tried this with other people, it's just not written down for us in Scripture, and Paul's the first one that said yes.
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I don't know, I can't figure some of these things out because this perspective doesn't start with a theology of God where he is not only omniscient, but he is the creator of all things, he is with the first and the last, he has a decree that he is working out in time.
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It doesn't start there. In fact, it doesn't really have a decree at all. Since it starts with man and tries to understand
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God through man's experience with God, it ends up very, very difficult to figure out exactly how it answers a lot of these particular questions.
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But that's the primary approach that is taken, is, well, this is about nations, even
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Pharaoh, even Pharaoh in verse 17 is the representative of Egypt.
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And so you have God sovereignly despoiling a nation, and it doesn't have anything to do with Pharaoh as an individual.
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And here again is where we go, well, it's actually both. It is addressed to Pharaoh, it says,
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I raised you up, but certainly none of us would deny that there was a judgment upon an idolatrous nation in the judgment of the leader of that nation.
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And that God placed that particular man in that particular situation specifically to bring about...
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I mean, think about how often in the text of Scripture the whole story of the exodus, the
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Passover, the destruction of these gods, how often this comes up.
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And are we really to believe that that's what God wanted, but he wasn't sure whether he'd be able to get it or not?
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Because, you know, Pharaoh might have, you know, Pharaoh might have... I mean, after like the first or second plague, don't you think even a mildly smart guy would go, okay, you guys are gone?
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You know, I mean, Pharaoh doesn't strike me as an idiot. You don't get to that position and have that kind of power and authority without having a few gray cells working in the brain.
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So, you know, they basically try to say, well, you know, all that hardening stuff, yeah,
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I know, God said he was going to harden Pharaoh's heart even before Moses ever talked to Pharaoh.
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But you see, that's because Pharaoh was already hardened, you see. He was already hardened.
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Well, if what you mean by that is he was an idolater, a sinful idolater, yes, but sinful idolaters will do what they need to do to try to get out from underneath the unpleasantness of the wrath of God.
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That's why we read in the book of Revelation men calling upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them to hide them from the wrath of God.
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There clearly had to be a hardening of Pharaoh's heart so as to cause him to persevere so that the full destruction of the entire range of the
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Egyptian gods would be able to be manifested. And God didn't have any problem doing that.
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And if you want to try to say, well, yeah, Pharaoh is just representing Egypt, yeah, but what ended up happening to Pharaoh?
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Did it turn out real well for him? Because I've actually heard someone saying, yeah, he was just representing Egypt, but he could have repented and been saved individually.
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Did that happen? What happened to Pharaoh? Something about Red Sea, drowning, dead, that type of thing.
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For this reason, for this very purpose, I raised you up to demonstrate my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.
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Sounds very personal. Do we deny that he represents Egypt? No, that's just a continuation.
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But it becomes meaningless if the individual is taken out and that's what they're afraid of. That's what they're afraid of is that individual accountability, that individual application of what is going on here.
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Obviously, it all ends up coming apart once you really listen to the objection in verse 19.
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Because you will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who resists his will?
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He's not talking about nations here. He's not talking about nations. This very clearly is an objection grounded in the idea that if God is so sovereign and so free in how
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He guides the promises and the fulfillment of the promises and He, well, verse 18, so then
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He has mercy on whom He desires and He hardens whom He desires. If that's true, then the objection really is against the kingship of God.
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It is against the idea that we are all sinners, that God could deal with us as He sees fit.
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And that fundamentally is the objection that mankind has at this point.
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That fundamentally is the objection. They may say on one level, oh yes, yes, yes, God could justly bring
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His judgment to bear against us all. But they don't really believe that.
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They don't really believe that. You press that far enough and you'll discover that most who try to find a way around this also are going to have a real hard time with Romans 5 and Adam's federal headship.
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And if you drag them back to the story of Achan, and remember the story of Achan and he takes that booty and eventually is found out and who dies?
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Well, Achan does. Was Achan alone? No, Achan wasn't alone. His wife and kids and doggies and kitties end up under the rocks too.
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And if you really want to find out if someone is listening to what the
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Word says, not that they don't go, oh, I'm going to have to think about that. Oh, that's troubling.
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But if you want to find out if someone's actually under the authority of the Word of God, take them to a place like that.
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Take them to Uzzah. If you really want to find out if someone's more impacted by post -modern
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American sentimentality as if it's theology, take them to something like Aaron's sons or to Uzzah.
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Because there's no instrumentality of man in these situations. There aren't too many places.
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I mean, okay, yeah, boulders from heaven type thing, but there aren't too many places where God directly just, you know, the lightning bolt from heaven type thing taking place.
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But when Uzzah reaches out to study the ark and God strikes him dead, you really find out if you push somebody whether they really believe that this is the
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Word of God or whether they're standing in judgment over it. And it's scary how many people go, I don't think
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God would ever do that. I don't think God would ever do that. If you think God would ever do that, then there is a huge crack in the foundation that you have in understanding why
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God did the cross. If you can't see what the connection between those two are, you've missed it.
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You've missed it. And there's a lot of things like that in Scripture that unsettle us, but the question is, do you have
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Jesus' view of Scripture or do you have modern man's view of Scripture? That's really the question.
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And so when we look at this text, when we talk with our friends, please, I did not intend today to be arming the caged stage
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Calvinist with a bigger bat than he had before day. Okay? I don't want any of you guys or gals to be going, oh man,
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I've got a 30 -round mag for my reformed AK now. Oh, this is great. I'm heading for Facebook now.
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It's not the intention. That's not the purpose. God has used this text as a bat for many a person.
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I have a feeling there's probably a few people in here, if I ask for hands, whether God used this text to just slap you upside the head and make you go, hey,
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I'm not just the grandpa in the sky guy. That there'd be a number of you going, yeah, still got the bruise from that one.
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Yeah, that's right. That's not what today is about. My hope is that with this morning, well, first of all, what
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I learned this morning is that I ain't getting all that into 20 minutes. That ain't going to happen.
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So you all can pray for me. I've got to get this morning's sermon into 20 minutes. That's going to be, it's always, always a challenge.
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Believe me, it always is. That's just the nature of debates. But when we present these truths, when we have an opportunity, even if it's a limited amount of time,
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I have found that the most effective way to communicate, not to someone who wants to disbelieve,
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I can't change that heart. I know that a week from Monday there are going to be people sitting that far away from me, and I might as well be speaking
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Swahili to them because they're not going to hear a word that I have to say. And you might say, how do you put up with that?
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I've just always recognized that's the way it is. I think the apostles recognized that when they proclaimed, what did
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Jesus say? You spread the seed and some of it falls on stony ground and some of it falls on shallow soil and the byways and the birds come along and does that mean you stop sowing the seed?
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No. You leave the rest of it in God's hands. And so it's for the person who has ears to hear.
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It's for the person who really believes the Word of God. And I can tell you story after story after story of people that over the years
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I've encountered and when I've had this opportunity, oh, they struggled and sometimes they fought, but they were always under the authority of the
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Bible as the Word of God. And it's that person that when you walk them through it, when you allow it to speak, not when you jump around and go, oh, let's go over here and look at this.
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When you just walk through the text and allow the argument to develop and it just gets stronger and stronger and it reaches a crescendo.
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I've seen that used by God over and over again, but it requires you to know the text and to be able to be that guide to bring them along.
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And if you know what the objections are going to be, then you can express yourself with extra clarity when you get to those texts where you know there's going to be an objection.
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For example, if I were you and I got to verses 12 through 13,
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I would immediately say, now, isn't it interesting? Paul quotes from Genesis and he quotes from Malachi.
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And he quotes from Malachi long after Jacob and Esau are gone. And he puts them together.
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Why does he do that? Because his point is that God has always had freedom to act amongst men.
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And he takes that statement from Malachi, which then becomes foundational to how God treats the
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Israelites and the Edomites. He takes that and he puts it together to point out to us
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God has always had this freedom. And that's why he goes on to say in verse 14, what shall we say then?
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There is no injustice to God in it. So what you do is if you know where the objections are, you in essence incorporate the objections and answer them.
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That's what Paul's doing. That's exactly what Paul's doing. Every time he makes a point, he knows what the objection is going to be and he responds to it.
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And that's why the argument is so powerful. And so that would be my suggestion to you as well.
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When you have the opportunity to open up texts like this and to spend some time with someone and you can sense that willingness to be submissive to the
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Word of God, this text, John chapter 6, Ephesians chapter 1, can be used to truly challenge a person to start thinking seriously about what the
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Scripture is teaching on these subjects. We want to be used of God. Again, we don't want to abuse these texts.
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We do not want to just go out and win battles and things like that. But what we do want to do is see more and more of our brothers and sisters firmly grounded in the truth because I'm going to tell you something.
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We are going to be more and more put under tremendous pressure about what we believe as Christians.
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And it's going to cost us more and more every day in our jobs and our positions in this land if God does not stop the evil men and women who are seeking to bring this kind of pressure to bear upon us in this society.
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And an inconsistent, refutable view of theology will not stand when persecution comes.
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I'm not saying that people... Don't get me wrong. Don't misinterpret what I just said. When I say it will not stand, it will not be able to defend itself in the public square.
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I think there will be many a person who is inconsistent, who are true believers, and God's going to preserve them.
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Don't get me wrong. I'm not dismissing everybody from the kingdom of God that doesn't agree with me on every single point.
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What I am saying is if we want to be able to be consistent, if we want to be able to be salt and light, to have an answer to those who would demand a reason with the hope that's within us, then we better be consistent in our theology.
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And that means we have to start with God and we have to allow God's Word to say what it says, even when people find that to be offensive and troubling.
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Amen. Let's close our time with a word of prayer. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we indeed bow before Your sovereign kingship.
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We recognize that these words are words that carry tremendous weight and they remind us of who we are, that we are vessels of Your hand and that You're the potter.
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And Lord, we live in a world that every single day tries to convince us that there is no potter and we are not made of clay.
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And so, Lord, we thank You that Your Word reminds us, teaches us the truth. Your Spirit testifies with our spirit that these words are true.
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Help us to live in light of them. Help us to be used of You to promote
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Your truth, to help others to understand Your truth. And Lord, that in all things,