Romans 11:33-35

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Romans chapter 11. Today we'll be going through verses 33 through 35.
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That's right. We're not finishing this week. We've got another one. We've got another one.
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As we normally do, let's start in verse 1. I'm gonna read through so we can keep the context of what he's talking about.
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In verse 1 he says, I asked then has God rejected his people? By no means, for I myself am an
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Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.
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God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the
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Scripture says of Elisha, how he appeals to God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.
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But what is God's reply to him?
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I have kept for myself 7 ,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.
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But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
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What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking.
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The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written. God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.
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And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.
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Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see and bend their backs forever.
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So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means.
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Rather, through their trespass salvation came to the Gentiles. So as to make
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Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the
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Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? Now I'm speaking to you
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Gentiles, and as much as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow
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Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?
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If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump. And if the root is holy, so are the branches.
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But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant towards the branches.
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If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you.
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Then you will say, branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in. That is true.
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They were broken off because their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith.
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So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.
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Note the kindness and severity of God, severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness.
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Otherwise, you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in.
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For God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree?
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Lest you be wise in your own sight. I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers.
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A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all
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Israel will be saved, as it is written. The Deliverer will come from Zion.
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He will banish ungodliness from Jacob. And this will be my covenant with them, when
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I take away their sins. As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake.
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But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
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For just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their disobedience.
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So they too have now been disobedient, in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy.
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For God has consigned all to disobedience, so that he may have mercy on all.
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Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom, sorry, oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.
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How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways.
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For who has known the mind of God? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him, that he might be repaid.
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For from him, and through him, and to him, are all things.
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To him be glory forever. Amen. So over the past several weeks, as we have been going through chapter 11,
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Paul has spoken about quite a few things, lots and lots of doctrine here in chapter 11.
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But he's coming to the conclusion of his...
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I'm at a loss for words here, even though I wrote them down. But yeah, he's at a loss.
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He's not at a loss. I'm at a loss. He has come to the end at chapter 11 here, which is really the end of everything he said from chapter 1 up to now, right?
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Concerning the doctrines of grace, and all that stuff, right?
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And what this, especially here in chapter 11, has brought him finally to is this wonderful doxology here in 33 through 35.
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Really through 36, but we're going to cover 36 next week, because there's so much in just that one verse.
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But he has shown us that as Gentiles, the attitude that we need to have towards the
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Jews is one of humility and one of grace, that we do not need to be conceited in the fact that they are as of yet still consigned to their disobedience.
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And he's saying this in the first century. He's saying this to Greeks who were quarreling with returning
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Jews from their banishment from Rome. They're quarreling about things in the church, and he addresses the
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Jews, and he addresses the Gentiles, and he is telling these Gentiles, look, don't be conceited toward the
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Jews because you think they're not being saved. No, there's a remnant. You know how I know there's a remnant? Me, right?
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That's how he starts off the chapter, right? But then he goes into the fact that they have not been forgotten.
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This is evident with the remnant, and he is proof of that. God does not break his promises, that the promises that he made to their forefathers, he keeps through the persistence of the remnant.
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If we're having an issue here of God made certain promises to certain people, we shouldn't have those problems anymore because there's certain people that he continues in that promise.
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Paul's explained to us as the remnant. He makes clear several times that both groups are supported by Christ, not the other way around, right?
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So the root supports the branches, not the branches supporting the roots, and that we need to have with that humility also have need to continue in our fear of the
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Lord that we shouldn't be even conceited in and of ourselves that we're saved, that we are the
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Gentile church because if God cut them off, he could most certainly cut us off, and at a certain time later as we're reading, we're talking about the end of the
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Gentiles. That's what he covers in the middle of this chapter is the end of the
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Gentile church, the end of the elect being called out of the Gentiles, but in all of this, as I said before, the contemplation and the writing of all of this brings him at the end to an attitude of awe and wonder toward God.
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In our daily lives, this is something that is difficult to maintain at the very least.
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We get consumed with the things of the day, and we very oftentimes do not read
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Scripture in our leisure time, and it's very easy to get wrapped up in the things of the world and lose sight of how wonderful God is and how wonderful it is that he has blessed us, but in 33 he says,
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Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. All the things that he has spoken about regarding his people and the future state has brought him to this, and as I said, this is an attitude that we should all endeavor to maintain.
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As created beings we must come to understand that there is no possible way that we can ever, ever fully comprehend or fathom
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God. There isn't. We are finite. He is infinite.
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We are created. He is uncreated. We all have however many years he has appointed for us to dive headfirst into what he has revealed to us in the
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Scriptures, and even that isn't long. You say you get the whole 120 years.
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That is not long enough to master just what he has revealed in Scripture.
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It's not. In eternity we will have eternity to comprehend and learn the things of God, and even that will not be long enough.
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For the rest of the eternity we will wonder at the mysteries of God.
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Now in this life and the next, obviously, a kindness has been shown to us in the fact that the
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Holy Spirit has caused us to realize a certain specific thing about ourselves, and that thing is that there are just some things about God that even he reveals in the
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Scriptures that we cannot comprehend. We can't, and if you think that, if you begin to get an attitude of I read it.
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I'm good. No problem. You know, somebody says, well I read it.
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Okay, explain to me the hypostatic union. Explain how truly man, truly
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God, and you can't say, well, human body and God took the spirit part and that's how that works.
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That's heresy. You can't say that. That's established a super long time ago. If we need to go through the creeds again, we can go through the creeds.
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You can't say that part. Humans were created body and soul, right?
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You can't say that part. Truly human, truly God. I don't know how it works, but I know in Scripture God says that it does, or the other one you can do is the
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Godhead. One God, three persons. Have you mastered that one yet?
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Good luck. There's no way in this life that we can master even what
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He has revealed to us. This small, small volume of the wisdom of God, and there is no way that we can fully comprehend it in this life.
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As we read through the Scriptures, we read through one, and 15 years later we read back through that section of Scripture, and a whole new thing is revealed to us.
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This should inspire a feeling of awe in us every time we come to the Word.
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Paul, when he says, oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, one thing that almost immediately came to mind for me was a picture, and you may have seen this picture floating around online, but it's a picture of an island, and it's an aerial view of the island, a drone or helicopter or whatever took it, doesn't matter, but you can see the island, and you can see all the trees and stuff on the island, and you can see the beach, and the water is clear enough that you can see the seabed underneath, and at a certain point it just disappears.
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It just drops right off, and I can imagine being in a boat going out to go fishing or something, and looking down over the water and seeing everything in the water, the fish and the seabed, the sand, all of that stuff, the things on the bottom, and then moving over top of the beginning of this chasm that you in no way, shape, or form could you ever get to the bottom of bottom of.
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Now, rationally, do we say, well, can't learn what's down there.
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Better stop. No, we don't do that. We, you know, we have means by which we can do that.
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And in the same way, God has given us means that we can learn more about Him, and that He reveals things to us, but notice also that we never say,
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I discovered this thing in the Bible about God. Is that a common terminology that we use?
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No, we say God has revealed this to us, so it's not even us that looks, that finds these things.
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God reveals them to us in a time in which He has prepared our minds to comprehend them.
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Consider for a moment the wonder of creation and how interwoven it is.
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The plants, the animals, vast complex ecosystems, how they operate, and how they operate intertwined with one another.
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The vast ecosystems that are just us as individual human beings.
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Our DNA, all the data of how you will look and how your body will function throughout your life, all encoded in a single molecule.
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All of it. In all of this,
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God did not leave, in all of the wonder of creation, God did not do this and leave either.
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We were not set to founder. Rather, He orchestrated history, time and events to bring about His Son and the work of His Son, Jesus Christ.
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The work that He would do in His life and in His ministry, and the work that He would do in His death,
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His passive obedience to the Father to save a people unto Himself. Our individual lives all orchestrated to bring us to that point at which we heard the gospel.
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Our lives after that fact orchestrated to sanctify us. All of the people that had to exist for us to exist, and everything else that comes to pass, has come to pass, will come to pass, for the good of God's people, and all of this is done by normal means.
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Surely there are miracles in Scripture, times when God has stepped in and intervened in the normal means and causes of things to make things happen for certain purposes.
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I daily point to Acts, point to the miracles of the Old Testament, but this is not the normal means by which
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God accomplishes things. It is a much, much greater thing that should give you all that everything that God has done, almost everything, will exclude the miracles
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He has done through normal means, both through righteous works of the elect and through the sin of sinners.
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It says how unsearchable are His judgments, and how inscrutable or impossible to understand are
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His ways. Not only is His wisdom and knowledge not only is
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His wisdom and knowledge unknowable in its entirety by us creatures, but it is also, in fact, impossible for us to search for them.
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As creatures, though being sanctified, we still carry around what is commonly referred to as our corpse, the dead thing that we haven't fully gotten rid of yet in this life that pulls us, wants to pull us back to sin, the temptation.
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Because of that, when it comes to the things of God, though we are being sanctified, we do not even know what to look for until the
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Holy Spirit shines a light on it. In 1st
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Corinthians 2, 6 to 11, he says, Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God which
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God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the
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Lord of glory. But as it is written, What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what
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God has prepared for those who love Him. These things
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God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the
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Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the
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Spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the
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Spirit of God. We creatures are only able to search for the things of God because the
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Holy Spirit causes us to, and even when we find them, as I said before, we don't say that we discovered this.
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We say that this was revealed to us, and in such a way we also understand it because of Him.
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We cannot even understand these things on our own. I'll ask again who lives your
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Christian life? And in 34 he says,
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For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?
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Paul here is quoting from Isaiah 40 verse 13, But there has never and never will be any created being that has counseled
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God or given him any sort of advice whatsoever. In our prayers when we beseech
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God for blessings or for works on our loved ones, we do not convince
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Him. We do not change His mind with our prayers. That's not how that works.
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Rather the prayer and our ability to read and understand Scripture is for our benefit, not
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His. Now through the events of things, in hindsight, it is much easier for us to recognize why
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God has done things that He's done. You can just look down through a history book and see that.
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How God has orchestrated events. You can see it most definitely in the pages of Scripture from Genesis all the way up to the end of the book.
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This is one of the reasons why it is given to us so that we know that we can trust Him. That even though in certain situations that are beyond our ability to comprehend why it has happened, why
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God would do a thing, we can trust in Him that He knows what
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He is doing because He is who He is. He knows why.
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He knows the ultimate outcome. He even tells us that the ultimate outcome of everything is for the benefit of His people and for His own glory.
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The only counsel that God has ever taken was from Himself. Take Abraham's intercession for Sodom, for instance.
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Again and again Abraham says to God, if there are 40, if there are 30, if there are 20, if there are 10 righteous in the city,
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God says, if there are, I will not destroy it. Many take this passage to mean that, oh well, you know, this is
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Abraham and he's convincing God not to destroy the city, but there's no righteous there. No. God already knows that there's no righteous in the city.
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There is no possible way that anything Abraham says is going to change the outcome.
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God already knows the outcome. This has been orchestrated. God came there for Abraham to tell
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Abraham what He was doing. There was no changing his mind.
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The Godhead was present and had already agreed. There was not a single person in the valley found righteous.
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Now if you want to say, wait, but Lot, there was not a single person in the valley that was righteous.
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And we know this because we're given the reason why He saves Lot. We're given that reason in chapter 19 verse 29.
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He says, so it was that when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered
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Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which
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Lot had lived. The only reason Lot survived was because of Abraham.
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God loved Abraham and because of that, He spared Lot. 35 he says, or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?
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Friends, no one has ever, ever given anything to God. Come to terms early on in your
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Christian life with the fact that God doesn't need anything from you.
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He doesn't need you. He doesn't need your name. He doesn't need your fame.
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He doesn't need your gifts. He doesn't need your prayers. All of those things are for your benefit, not
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His. He gives you the gift of being
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His means for you. If you think that God needs something from anyone, please read
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Job again. This is the whole purpose of Job is to explain that God is sovereign.
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He is the uncaused cause, but if nothing has been given to Him that might be repaid, let's look at Ephesians 2 .9.
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It says, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.
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It is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no man may boast.
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Especially regarding your salvation, there is nothing you did to earn it.
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There is nothing you can do to keep it, and there is nothing you can do to lose it.
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It is not about you. Also understand that your salvation benefits you.
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It does. It is not about you, but it benefits you.
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Now I said that funny, so it might not sink in. The reason you're being saved is to glorify
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God, period. He could send us all to hell and be just as glorified.
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He's doing it for your benefit. James 1 verse 17, it says, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
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Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow new to change.
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Everything that we have comes from Him. We can go and we can do all the things we want to do to better ourselves.
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It does not matter. All of that comes ultimately from God. It comes through normal means, but it comes from God.
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If you want to experience that a little bit more heavily, start a business. Start a business and do all the marketing and everything you want to do, and see no income, and then have people who do none of that, and people come like there's no tomorrow.
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God provides for His people. He provides for everyone, but especially
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His people. To be grateful. I don't know how well this next statement is going to play out.
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It plays out very well in my head, but my head works a little bit different, so I'll give it a shot.
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I want you to consider for a moment that if everything we are given is done in mercy, and we all have received mercy, if we all have received mercy, then why should we ever have anger or envy when
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God gives to us, but may give more to another? If we have all received from the
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Father, from God, should we not have the attitude of having been shown mercy, rather than having strife or jealousy because God has given more to another if we deserve nothing?
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So in those moments where you see somebody with a better car, or a better house, or even somebody with a house at this point in this economic system that we're in, when you see that God has given more to someone, there is a reason
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God has given more to them. Your attitude toward that should not be jealousy.
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It should not be hatred. It should not be envy. It should be praise
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God that He has shown all of us mercy and provides for all of us.
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What God wants you to do isn't the same as everyone else. He has a specific purpose for you, and that purpose is not their purpose, and more especially, you should not look at pagans this way.
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There is a very specific... the reason that I say that is while God does show mercy and gives restraining grace to unbelievers, one thing
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He also does is give them exactly what they want. I know it is easy in your
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Christian life to wonder why evil people have it easy. It is.
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You're struggling to pay a bill to do this or to do that, put gas in your car, and you're looking over here at this person who is just an outright hater of God, and they have everything they want.
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Friend, they have everything they want because it is a judgment. One of the worst judgments that God can give you is to give you over to your sin, over to your idols, and to your passions, and again
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I go back to what Paul said earlier in what we covered earlier in that fear
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God. He did this with the Jews. He gave them over to their passions.
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A people who boasted in the fact that He was their God, and He gave them over to what they wanted multiple times.
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I might remind you in Scripture, He gives them over to their sin multiple times.
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He saves them. He brings them back, but one thing that you should have fear of most assuredly is that He will not do the same with you, but that doesn't mean you lose your salvation.
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That means you get to spend a lot of time and a lot of sin, and that is not something that I wish on anybody.
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Even for correction, we should have a general attitude of the fact that we have received mercy, others have received mercy, and be content with that.
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It doesn't mean not striving to do more, to work harder, but be content with the mercy you have been shown, and be grateful for it.
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We'll continue next week with verse 36 and the conclusion of chapter 11.