Understanding Spiritual Israel and God's Promise

We're in operation now. Romans chapter 9, I want to begin reading at verse 6. Paul has talked a lot about the people of Israel, and a lot of it has been really negative. And I think that this chapter 9 is sort of a continuation of his discussion, but I think he's sort of trying to turn the picture a different direction, trying to talk about the value. The way he's talked about the law not being helpful, and the way he's talked about circumcision not being a benefit to give salvation, all these things he talks to the Jews about are almost negative for them. And now he turns in chapter 9 to sort of talk like, okay then, was it of no value that God has chosen you and called you to be his people? So in verse 6, I want to read verse 6 through 13. It is not as though God's word had failed, for not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. For this is how the promise was stated, at the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son. Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet before the twins were born, or had anything good or bad, or done anything good or bad, in order that God's purpose in election might stand, not by works, but by him who calls, she was told, the older will serve the younger, just as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. Now Paul is talking, beginning with his Jewish people, to address the Jews in the church at Rome, and he addresses them by going back to say the fact that God has called the Jews is not without value. It is not as though the word of God had failed. All the things that have happened in the Old Testament, through the Old Testament, up to the time of Christ, it's not as if God's plan from the very beginning, somehow or other, didn't work. He goes back to say, here is what you must, here is the way you must look at this. He's talked about the Jews, the Gentiles being ushered into the kingdom of God, and he's talked about the fact that keeping the law and being born a Jew did not necessarily mean that you were automatically in the kingdom of God, that you required faith or trust in God, so that not all the Jews were going to be among those who are the redeemed, but it simply points to Abraham as one of the examples of people who had faith, and then he brings the Gentiles in to say they also have faith, and so they have the same standing as any Jew would have. Now, the Jewish people thought of themselves as having a special privilege of being God's chosen people, and they saw the circumcision as being a mark that said this person now belongs to God and will find their place with God forever. Paul has sort of systematically said these things that you have counted on so much are really not benefits to you with regard to salvation, for it is the trust that you have in God rather than simply being a Jew or being circumcised or even keeping the works of the law. There's more to it than that. Now he comes back to say God's word really hasn't failed. It's not that God started out with the Jews and all that didn't work right, and he said, okay, forget that. There is some grand purpose in all that God is doing. It wasn't that God did something wrong. He's saying you misunderstood what God was trying to do. If you can see all of this in the proper perspective, then you will understand that there is a great stream of God's history that started with what God was doing with you and is now continuing and growing greater than it has ever been. So what he needs to do is to go back and look at this issue of who the people of Israel really are. What is their tradition and what does it mean that they've been chosen or called? So he starts with Abraham, the greatest of the patriarchs. For not all who descended from Israel are Israel. Now he uses the word Israel in two different ways. The first word he uses, the first reference is to the person Israel. That is the beginning stream with Abraham. And then he uses the second use of that word Israel is to refer to the spiritual dimension. So he's talking about the fleshly Israel and the spiritual Israel. Not all who are of the fleshly Israel are of the spiritual Israel. Now this shouldn't come as any surprise to them because all the way through the Old Testament, God has brought his prophets to bear to say the people of Israel have strayed from what I've asked of them and they're not doing what I've told them to do and my judgment's going to come on them and those who have been unfaithful to me will face this judgment. All the way through the Old Testament, he's drawn attention to the fact that just being a Jew is not everything that God expects of them. So here he points out to them something that all of them should have known to make what he's saying easier for them to understand. For not all who are the physical descendants of Israel are the spiritual Israelites who are followers of God, who are faithful in their obedience to God. You've always known that there's a remnant in Israel. That's what he's talking about. You've always known that of the physical Hebrews, there is a remnant who have remained faithful to God and there's the greater group who have been unfaithful to God. And all the way through the Old Testament, the prophet keeps talking about this, that God has a remnant of faithful people. Here he's saying it in just another way. All of the fleshly people who have been born of this fleshly line of the Jewish nation cannot call themselves the remnant, for the remnant were those who were faithful and obedient to what God asked for them. And so you knew that. Nor because they are all descendants are they all Abraham's children. Now he's talking about the spiritual Israel here. You know that the spiritual Israel is not comprised of all of the people who are physical descendants of Abraham. Now you know that because there was Ishmael who was a physical descendant of Abraham. Actually Ishmael was the first born. Sure he was of a concubine of Sarah's, but by all the rites should have had the right of the first born child. The Hebrew rules allowed for that. But because God had made a promise to Abraham that he was going to send him a son with Sarah, this son Ishmael was never ever counted by the Hebrew people as a part of the Jewish community. Even though he was every bit as much a son of Abraham as was Isaac. He had Isaac and Ishmael. And when the Jews began to trace their lineage, they never trace it back to Ishmael. He is the forefather of the Edomites. And the Edomites were never considered to be a part of the Israel community. The community of the followers of God. So he brings up this to say not only have you realized that there was out of the Jewish people a remnant that God saw that was faithful to him. You also know that Abraham had two sons. One of them was completely excluded from this spiritual tradition. And one of them was the source of the spiritual tradition that you count for yourselves. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. Now when he uses the word offspring here, he uses maybe a language that we don't consider proper things to talk about. It's our word for semen. He's talking about physically, sexually, by the genes of Abraham, this man is a descendant. Nor are we talking about the seed or the semen of this man Abraham. For both of his sons had his genes in them. The physical genes that were in Isaac were the same ones from Abraham that were in Ishmael. And yet you know that they're both not treated with the same kind of significance by you when you look back and discover who are the genuine descendants of Abraham. They're not descendants even though they could be called the children of Abraham. Ishmael could be called that. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring, and here he uses that same word that's translated descendants above, the physical DNA of Abraham is in Isaac. So it is not, it is through Isaac that your physical DNA will be reckoned. That is, you will be a child of God, you will be a child of Abraham, and you will only count this line as being a descendant of Abraham. So what he's saying is, you've counted on this physical connection to hang yourself the identity that you are a descendant of Abraham. But you know that that's not the whole story. Because you yourself will look at Ishmael and say he's not one of us. You'll, God looks at the people of Israel and says, these people, the remnant are my people, the rest of these descendants of Abraham are not. God all the way from the beginning, even in the Jewish community, and you recognize this, has differentiated between those who are really his and those who are not. And it never was based on simply the physical connection between Abraham and his descendants. Not even from the beginning. So don't be surprised when I talk to you about the fact that God has opened the doors to the kingdom of heaven to some people who are not physically connected to Abraham by Abraham's DNA, or what we would say is the physical or human stream. You shouldn't be offended by this, because all the way along you've recognized that that's not the foundation stone on which the nation has actually been built. In other words, it's not the natural children who are God's children. Now when he uses the phrase God's children, it's a common phrase in the Old Testament to identify who are the people that belong in the nation of Israel who belong to God. So he's using this to identify what we would call the remnant. He's using this to identify those who the prophets would say are faithful to God. Now he uses it to identify those who have the faith of Abraham, even though they might be Gentiles. These are God's children. And he identifies, this is an Old Testament phrase that's used throughout the Old Testament. They would have seen it and recognized it as a way of saying these people belong to God. It is not the natural children who are God's children. That is, it came simply by physical procreation. It is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offsprings. Now the difference between Ishmael and Isaac was simply in the fact that God said this is the person I've chosen. I've chosen this son that I've promised to you. He connects the promise with this fact of being chosen. Whenever I came to you, when God came to you, he said Sarah will bear a child. This was a promise. He didn't make the promise about Ishmael, but he made the promise about Isaac. And so whenever God made the promise about Isaac, he had already made a connection that this was the strain through which I will deliver the promise that I've come to bring to you. Now he's reminding this to the Jewish people. They knew this all along, but they had in their own mind sort of built this idea that everyone who was descendant from Abraham would be a part of the children of God. Now he's reminding them that they have thought this all along, but if they will stop and remember, they'll see that this really hasn't been a part of the thinking and theology and doctrine of the Jewish people from the very beginning. It is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. So Isaac became the offspring that God assigned to him. And it was because of God's choosing of Isaac over Ishmael that the strain of the Jewish nation begins. And this is the stream that they count on their own. But it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offsprings. For this was how the promise was stated. At the appointed time, I will return and Sarah will bear a son. Now what Paul is talking about, he started off remembering saying, it's not as though God's word has failed. He's talking about now the fact that he said to them, the Gentiles, the gate has been opened to the Gentiles and now they become a follower of Yahweh God because of their faith. The faith was what opened the door for you and faith is what opens the door for the Gentiles. Your law did not make you a part of this. Your circumcision did not make you a part of this. Your works of the law did not make you a part of the community of faith. And just as the beginning, Abraham had faith, so any Gentile, anyone in the world who has faith enters into this special relationship with God. Now when I've said all these things, I want to remind you that all along you've known these. You may not have recognized them and you may be overlooking them, but I want you to remember God never said all of Abraham's children are my children. He said, there is one son that I've promised to you and this son of promise is the strain through which I will call my people. So if I've expanded this to include the Gentiles, it is because of this stream of faith that I said from the beginning. All of this stems from the faith of Abraham and the spiritual children of Abraham. And just as the physical descendants of Abraham were not all included, but all of the spiritual descendants of Abraham have been included. So I've broadened that more than just the remnant of Jewish people to those on the outside who have opened their lives to have the same kind of faith Abraham has. Now he's showing them that their own tradition supports what he's been saying about faith. That not every Jewish person, just because their children are descendants of Abraham, will be received in the kingdom as children of God. Now he moves this direction now from the first generation, Abraham and his descendants, to the second in verse 10. Now, not only that, he's talking about what he's just finished, not only in the first generation with Abraham do you see that God has selectively said not all the physical descendants of Abraham will be in this remnant, but the spiritual descendants will. But in the second generation, Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. So when you look at Isaac's situation, here Rebekah had twins. The language here, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father. And the way this is phrased, it means one sexual act produced both children. He's not talking about simply that you had one man who had two children, but in this situation, it was one single act that produced these twins. So there now is no differentiation. You can go back and say, for example, in Abraham's situation, it was his one child was by another woman, and the other child was by Sarah. But now he says, you look at Isaac, and that's not even a differentiation there. They're two children born of the same mother, the same father, by the same act. You couldn't get any more of the same than that. But even in this event, God said, I choose one over the other. And all of Israel accepts that. No one would have said that now Esau, the child also of Rebekah and Isaac, he was not the strand through which the tradition of Israel was to continue. They accepted the idea that God said, here are these people. One of them is the forefather of my people. I choose through this line to bring my people into the world, and through the other, I just move it aside. So if the physical genes of Abraham were the basis on which a Jew could claim this special relationship to God, it's suddenly, as you look at it, you'd realize that's not true. So the first generation, you might say there was a difference, but in the second, with Isaac and Rebekah, there is not any way in the world that the Jewish people could say that the descendants of Isaac should not both be included as streams of history for Abraham's descendants. But the people of Israel did not. They only counted one strand of that as their forefathers. They themselves have made that differentiation. Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad in order that God's purpose in election might stand, in other words, the choice was made before either of these children were born. You remember the story of what took place. God said to Rebekah that you have two children. The younger will rule and the older will serve the younger. They had not been born into the world. They hadn't done anything that would result in one of them being chosen over the other, but it was purely and simply God's choice. He said, this one do I choose and this one do I not choose. What Paul wants to point out to them was that it was not the result of the works of righteousness on the part of one or the other. It was God's choice. That God's election, what he calls them, just choosing, the word election means just to choose somebody. The one who is chosen was not chosen based on their merit or their behavior. Now some people look at this passage and say, since God knows everything that's going to take place, we can justify this by saying God looks into the future and he determines who is going to have faith in him and who is not going to have faith in them and then chooses them. They talk about predestination being based on one's behavior or choices, but here Paul is making it clear that the choice of these two guys was not based on anything that they had done. Now it could be that of course God might have had in his own mind some idea of what was going to take place, but Paul makes it clear in the way he's saying it that he didn't think that that's what took place. His choice was simply a matter of his own choice. Will and his own desire to make the decision. God's election is free from simply responding to what we have to say or do for him. So in this instance, the natural children who are born in this situation, one of them was chosen and the other one wasn't. Before the twins were born or before they had done anything good or bad in order that God's purpose in election might stand, not by works but by him who calls, she was told the older will serve the younger. Now this is a passage that is primary for John Calvin when he talks about his view of predestination. This view is a key passage that he uses and his interpretation of the passage is simply this. God chose one of these young men, elected to be his child and elected to heaven before they were born. Clearly he rejected the other and that other was doomed to hell before he was born. John Calvin's idea of election that God predestined these two guys before they were ever born, one to be a child of his and one not to be a child of his and this is the place that he gets it. Here God elected according to his purpose, not based on faith, not based on works, not based on anything they did, one of those and left the other one behind. Now he says, just as it is written, Jacob have I loved but Esau I hated. Now the passage he uses is a quote from Malachi chapter 1 verses 2 and 3. Malachi is talking about God's elective process. I'll read the passage to you from Malachi. Chapter 1. Here O people, all of you, listen O earth and all who are in it, that the sovereign Lord may witness against you the Lord from his holy temple. Look the Lord is coming from his dwelling place. He comes down and treads the high places of the earth. The mountains melt beneath him. The valleys split apart like wax before the fire, like water rushing down the slope. All this is because of Jacob's transgression, because the sin of the house of Israel. What is Jacob's transgression? Is it not Samaria? What is Judah's high place? Is it not Jerusalem? Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble, a place of planting vineyards. I will pour her stones into the valley and lay bare her foundations. All of her idols will be broken to pieces. All of her temple gifts will be burned with fire. I will destroy all of her images. She gathered her gifts from the wages of prostitutes, the wages of prostitutes, that they will be used again. That's not the passage I wanted to read. Malachi, excuse me, it's Micah. It sort of looked like Malachi. Micah, excuse me, I wasn't careful in reading the faith. An oracle from the Lord to Israel through Malachi. Jacob loved, Esau hated. I have loved you, said the Lord, but you ask, how have you loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother, the Lord says? Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau have I have hated. I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left Esau and left his inheritance to the desert jackals. Edom may say, though we have been crushed, we will reveal the ruins. But this is what the Lord Almighty says. They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the wicked land, a people always under the wrath of God. You will see it with your own eyes and say, great is the Lord, even beyond the borders of Israel. What Malachi is prophesying against, he's prophesying against the nation of Edom who had been perpetual enemies of Israel. Now, John Calvin's logic about this matter is very simple. That God is all, has all authority and power. And that God has the right to choose whatever he wants. Now see, none of this is in this passage. But these are the presuppositions that he has. God has all power and authority. And what he was fighting against in his time was the overwhelming power and authority placed in the Catholic Pope. So that the Pope saw himself and presented himself as the earthly vicar of God. And that the Pope had the right and the power to forgive sin. And if you paid him the kind of money he needed, this was in John Calvin's day, if you paid him the kind of money he desired, he could forgive you for your sins, of your sins. And the Pope thought he had the right to withhold heaven from you, to curse you to hell. And it was in this system that John Calvin saw the power of the Pope who put himself in a position to rule over human beings. In counteracting that, he began to assert the sovereignty of God. The idea that God alone is sovereign. There is no power on this earth but God's power. He has control over everything that there is. He alone has the authority to send people to heaven or to send people to hell. You can see how this teaching against the instructions of the Pope, against the teachings of the Pope that he had the authority to condemn people to hell or to save them. He was fighting against this system that had grown up in the 14th and 15th century. He was trying to reaffirm over the system that had been developed that was very corrupt. In the days preceding the Reformation, the Catholic Church was torn apart by fighting, by criminal behavior. I was listening to a tape that I've got about Martin Luther and it said in there that in the city of Rome there were 2,000 babies born every year, children of the celibate priests. The system was terribly immoral. Every priest in the land could, I mean people who were had positions of being bishops could purchase those with money. So they would purchase a bishop or head of a church and with it they would get the territory around it. Some of them had grown very wealthy because of the power that they had. Not only was there gross immorality on the side of all the, on the sides of many of the priests, the Popes even and the bishops had children. Some of them had prostitutes living in their houses as well as wives and children they were never married to. It was into this system that the Pope exercised political power and authority. And what John Calvin was forced with was trying to argue against this in this culture. And his way of doing it was pointing to the supreme sovereignty of God. There is no one in this world who controls anything but God. Now when he comes to this passage he sees this as an affirmation of this absolute authority of God where God acts without regard to what anybody does. Some people see this as a sign of Calvin emphasizing God in a way that makes him wicked. He chooses one person over another. But what Calvin says about this passage and his own ideas about what it means is that every man born in the world all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Paul says that in his earlier part of Romans. So if all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God then all deserve to die and all deserve to go to hell. So if you have a bunch of criminals who are all murderers and you decide that you are going to try to help one of them to learn a different kind of life and a lifestyle and the others then are sentenced to death they have all earned exactly what they are getting. That is his idea. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God so if God chooses to save one or two people out of this whole group everyone else who gets to go to hell really gets what they deserve anyway. So you can't say that God is not just. Here he says God exercises his election not based on anything that a person does good or bad even implying that he bases it not on faith even because everyone has sinned and everyone deserves to die. And if you should object he says when he comments on this passage if you should object that God has done something wrong then what you are saying is that your idea of justice is far better than God's. Who do you think you are to question God's righteousness and justice? Can you say looking at this passage he should have chosen both of these boys? They were both twins born to the same woman and the same father. Why does he have to choose one over the other? It is God's pure choice that determines the ultimate destiny of one over the other. And if you should doubt that God is just you know the Bible teaches that he is just. And who are you to question whether or not God is just? It is like a small child who doesn't understand anything about the world that begins to ask for ice cream or candy and you give one child ice cream or candy because of your own choice and the other you don't. What does a child have to say about whether or not adults are acting correctly? So God has the perfect right to be able to make a choice that this person will be chosen for heaven and this person will be chosen for hell. Now in the passage Paul does not say that one is chosen for heaven or the other one is chosen for hell. That is sort of an interpretation that is placed on the event. What I understand Paul to be saying is not a matter at this point of salvation. For what he is really talking about is the strand of people through who God is going to work to finally bring to fruit this great act of bringing his own son into the world. And what God is talking about here, what Paul is talking about here is how God in his freedom has used the Jewish nation to begin to bring about what he is trying to accomplish. Which this great purpose to bring Christ into the world. Remember he went back and was talking about how Adam had sinned and it messed up all the physical earth and it messed up all the human race. And God's great purpose is to restore this world that he was trying to restore. He chose Abraham as a person through which he would do this work to bring about his Messiah into the world. He chose Abraham because Abraham was the line through which he wanted to do it. Abraham exercised great faith and God used him and his faith to be able to be an example for us about trusting God. From each step in this passage God chose someone through which he was going to work. You will find it difficult in the Old Testament to find any place where it talks about people going to heaven or hell. It is just not a part of the language that God uses in the Old Testament to describe what is taking place. He does talk about them being children of God. Now here he talks about this choice of Isaac being a child of God and in Rebekah's sons one of them being chosen, Jacob, and the other Esau not chosen. But in each of these instances he is talking about this line through which God is going to work. He is not talking about salvation so far as I am concerned. When you get over to the book of Deuteronomy and you are talking about when the Exodus is taking place, when they come to the territory of Edom, God tells the people of Israel not to go into the territory because this is a place that I have given to Esau. In that simple phrase Moses learns from God that God has in some way his own covenant with Esau. I don't know that the idea here in the Bible where it says Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated is necessarily to be taken to mean one he gives them away to heaven and the other one he doesn't. The phrase is used in the New Testament in the same way to talk about money. It is used to talk about your parents. If you love God then you hate money. If you love money then you hate God. If you love money then you hate God. That sort of extreme is a way that the Hebrews seem to be able to express preferences. Choosing one over the other in terms of preference. Not in terms of its destiny but in terms of its preference. What I think happens here in this story is that Paul is describing for us what God did. He chose to work through the younger person who should have been subject to the older because it was his choice or preference as to how he was going to work his purpose out in the world. I don't think he was saying I have destined Esau to hell without any chance for him to do what he should do. If you read the story of Jacob and Esau in each time Esau makes the wrong decision like he sells his birthright, when you read that story you get the idea that that mistake was all his. That it wasn't that God said you don't have a choice about whether or not you sell your birthright. The story reads in a way that lets us know that here's a foolish young man that's made choices and decisions that are wrong. And when you hear any preacher preach on those passages apart from this one, that's what they'll tell you. Here is a young man who had no value to the idea that he had the birthright and it was his. And he simply threw it away by his own failure to value what he really had. Now if in this story as Calvin interprets it, if he went back to be able to preach on this passage and he would have to say that God had made it impossible for Esau to do the right thing and he was damned from his birth, then in each of these instances the story should read a little differently. Of course Esau can't make a good choice if he's damned from the beginning. Of course his making a choice to give away or to sell his birthright was not anything wrong with that. He was destined to do it from the beginning. But the story in the scripture does not read that way. Whatever this passage means, I don't think that God has intended to say to us that I have determined that some people will never follow me and some will. Everywhere you find in the Bible God condemning people for their failure to follow him. He places the responsibility firmly and completely in the hands of the person that's making the choice. The prophets never come to say to Israel, you have sinned and you just can't help it. That's just the way you are. I'm sorry about it but you're going to be damned to go to hell because you just can't help it. Every time the prophets come they say to the people of Israel, you have sinned and God wants you to repent. God doesn't want you to do this anymore. The whole passage of the scriptures all the way through is God's constant battle with the people of Israel saying you can and should have done better. The choices that you've made were wrong. You should have made the other choices. If it's true that God has condemned one of these men to hell before he started and the other to heaven before he started, then all of this prophecies in the Old Testament and all the things that went on there are simply a charade. For if there was nothing that they could have done, God didn't seem to know that and his prophets didn't seem to know it. And the prophets wept over the evil choices of the people of Israel. They were genuinely convicted that the people of Israel could have and should have done differently. If Calvin is right about this passage and it's done and finished before people are born, then the idea of choices is really completely outside of the system. What I think is done here is Paul is trying to say to the people of Israel, God has chosen you for a specific purpose. The purpose is that this is the line through which he's going to work to bring his Messiah. And he made that choice before you did anything. It wasn't based on your merit. This opportunity that you have to have the Messiah be a descendant of your nation is my choice and mine alone. So here's what we have. God makes his choices among people. How do you know he's given you a choice? The Holy Spirit comes inside of your life and tells you that you should choose good. That you should choose Christ. And if you know that that's true, then the opportunity for election is yours. Now what Paul has talked about consistently through this section up to now is that it was the faith of Abraham that allowed him to become a follower of God. He doesn't say about Abraham that Abraham didn't have to have faith. He makes it clear that it was the faith of Abraham that brought him into this relationship with God. So whatever Paul means in this passage, everything that he's said up to here is very pointed toward the fact that it is faith in God that is the key ingredient that allows you to become a child of God. Now when he talks about this preferential treatment of one over the other, we all understand something about that. You look around you. Every single person here has gifts. I'm not talking just about talents. But each one of us have our own unique calling from God. This life that he wants us to live. It's not a part of what we earn. We don't have really any control over it. You're brought into this world and suddenly you find Christ. And you discover that there are some things you can do for him and some things that other people can do for him that you can't do. Every one of us has gifts and callings that are unique to us. They are completely and entirely in the hands of God. What Paul is telling us is that there are some things that happen in our life that God makes his own choice about. And what Paul is finishing earlier is there are some things in our life that we have choices about. Did that surprise you? There are some things in our lives we just don't seem to have choices about. And there are some things that we seem to have choices about. Both of those seem to be at work in this great world and in the history of God's dealing with people. I think in this passage what John Calvin is focused on is one small dimension to deal with a big issue that was important to him in his day. I don't say that it's not true that God chooses people in certain ways and it's purely in his hand. I think that's true. I'm not sure that it's meant to say that that choice is for our eternal destination. I'm not sure that it means that our relationship with God can only be based on God's choice before we're born. If that were true there are a lot of times in the Bible when people genuinely believe that they've made a decision to have faith and trust in Christ and they made that decision of their own choice and their own will. And there's many times in the Bible when God is really angry. You take the time that Moses went up on the mountain to get the Ten Commandments and the scripture says that God was very angry because the people of Israel were down in the valley making an idol out of gold. And he said to Moses, you get down there and straighten this out with those people. And he was very angry. If they were predetermined to do this why would God be angry about it? And you look through the whole Bible and you find this same story. Why would God ever be angry with people because of what they've done if their life is predetermined? If you built a railroad and you had the railroad go up to a hill and around the hill and go on the other side and you put the train on the tracks and it went would you be angry if it followed the train track? Well you'd be a little silly if you were because you built the track. If this destination of ours is all in the hands of God predetermined before we came, the Bible just doesn't make very much sense to me. Why is God ever angry with anyone when they're doing exactly what he predetermined before they were born? It makes no sense. God seems genuinely surprised that the people of Israel were building an idol down there. He seems shocked about it. Over and over in the scriptures you see God responding to people being angry at what they do and what they say. I don't know that I remember any place in the Bible where God was saying, well it's what I knew was going to happen anyway. And just blowing it aside. He does say that the people are of Israel are evil and wicked and that they're going to be doing wickedness but he tells them not to do it. Like they could change that. I think that what the Bible describes is that God is sovereign in his power and authority. And like in this story, he makes choices as to how he's going to use us. And some of those choices seem to be made before people are even born. But in the life of the person when those choices are made, they always seem to be conscious in every instance that they are making their own decisions about how to make those choices. It's a mystery that there is no explanation for that I know about. That God is sovereign in his power and authority and that we have been given responsibility to both respond to God in faith or in unbelief. And yet God is the ruler of all that there is. What Paul wants to do in this passage is to say to the people of Israel, if you have counted on the fact that you kept the law to make you righteous and holy and to make you a child of God, I want to point out something to you. When these two boys were born, they never did any works of the law and God chose one and not the other. Don't think that you by your good works and deeds of the law can enter heaven on your own. There is a choice here that God makes. Now how do we deal with this? Here you can sit down with people and talk to them about their salvation experience and you can explain the gospel to them and you can explain who Christ is and sometimes when you explain that to them, it has absolutely no impact on them. And then you will sit down and talk to the next person and tell them the same thing and their hearts are open and broken and they are ready. There is in the work of salvation something that God alone does. Yet in every act of salvation there is something that human beings have to do too. God has morphed together in this great process of what he is doing, his sovereign choices and will and the freedom on our part to participate in what he is doing. Here I think he wants to say to the Israelites, do not think that you can of your own will and your own wishes make yourself righteous enough to enter the kingdom of heaven. He has already told them it takes faith and trust in God, not your good deeds, faith and trust in God. And that is what makes you a child of God. I think that is what Paul is trying to get to. He wants to make sure that the Jewish people understand that God has given them great opportunities, placed them in a great place. He has actually called them to be a part in the kingdom, but it wasn't because of their good deeds. It was because of his grace that they have been chosen to this great position of being the people who belong to God. Let's pray. And so, Father, the great mystery of your nature is beyond our capacities to understand. It is mine, of course. I speak for myself. But we know that you are the Lord, ruler of heaven and earth. You know that there are choices you make that are above and beyond anything that we can do. And yet we everyone know, day by day, that we make choices and decisions, sometimes in which you affirm us, and sometimes in which you say you shouldn't have done it. And we know by our own conviction spirit that we could have done differently. We are not in a world where we are hopelessly on one track, unable to change or to be different. For you made it possible for each of us, by faith and trust in you, to find life in all of its fullness. And we give thanks that you have opened the kingdom of heaven to such as we. In Jesus' name we give thanks for that. Amen.