SPEAKER_01: Let me invite you to open your Bibles to the book of Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Malachi chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: You can find the book of Matthew, the first book in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Turn left a couple pages.
SPEAKER_01: Malachi in chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that encouraging to have our students lead us in worship this morning?
SPEAKER_01: I suspect there might be one or two of you who are tempted after this to come up to me and say, that was so great.
SPEAKER_01: Great job with those students and organizing them and that musical worship, it was amazing.
SPEAKER_01: And if that's you, let me just stop you right there.
SPEAKER_01: Because I had absolutely nothing to do with that.
SPEAKER_01: It's because of people like Kelly Nix, like Astros Blackwell, like Melissa Rowe, and of course JJ, who are doing such an excellent job pouring into our students, not just teaching them how to be excellent musically, but how to love the Lord that their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what our church is about.
SPEAKER_01: I hope that it was encouraging to you to have them lead us this morning.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to tell you that as a youth pastor here at Emanuel Bible Church, I have found it so encouraging to see that our church wants our students, wants our teens to be caught up in the whole corporate life of Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_01: We don't siphon our students off to in a dark room to entertain them with a smoke and mirror show to try to convince them that Christianity is cool.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's not what they need.
SPEAKER_01: Teens need the same thing that every single person needs: a real encounter with the living God through his word.
SPEAKER_01: That's what's at the heart of the life of Emmanuel Bible Church, and that has been a tremendous encouragement to me.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where we want to turn now.
SPEAKER_01: We want to turn to the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: We want the Word of the Word of God to be the means by which God Himself speaks to us this morning.
SPEAKER_01: So let's begin by reading from the book of Malachi.
SPEAKER_01: Over the next couple weeks, we're going to study Malachi chapter 1 as Jesse's away, and then we'll come back as we approach Easter, and we'll actually, as a church, we'll go through the rest of the book of Malachi in the course of the spring.
SPEAKER_01: But this morning we'll kind of an introduction to this prophet and the Lord's message through Malachi to us.
SPEAKER_01: This morning through the first five verses of the book.
SPEAKER_01: So let's read the text together.
SPEAKER_01: Look down at your Bibles and follow with me as I read from God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: Malachi chapter 1, beginning in verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: God's word says this The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.
SPEAKER_01: I have loved you, says the Lord, but you say, How have you loved us?
SPEAKER_01: Is not Esau Jacob's brother, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Yet I loved Esau, but Esau I have hated.
SPEAKER_01: I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to the jackals of the desert.
SPEAKER_01: If Edom says, We are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord of hosts says, They may rebuild, but I will tear down, and they will be called the wicked country, and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever.
SPEAKER_01: Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: There was a question hanging over Jerusalem in the time of Malachi.
SPEAKER_01: And it was the kind of question that I think every single one of us can relate to in one way or another.
SPEAKER_01: It's the kind of question that we ask when we encounter unmet expectations or hopes that have been shattered.
SPEAKER_01: It might be a child asking their parent, it might be a friend asking a friend, tragically, a spouse asking a spouse.
SPEAKER_01: In this case, it is the Israelites asking this question of God.
SPEAKER_01: And it is the question: do you really love me?
SPEAKER_01: Do you really love us?
SPEAKER_01: Malachi lived in the time in which the people of Israel had returned from their captivity in Babylon.
SPEAKER_01: They had rebuilt the temple under the prompting of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the two prophets that precede Malachi in our Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: They'd completed that temple, and they were expecting that all of God's promises to his people would now be fulfilled, that the glory of the Lord would fill the temple, that God would fulfill all his covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that he'd establish an everlasting kingdom where a son of David would sit on the throne and rule God's kingdom forever and ever, and the earth would sprout forth righteousness and salvation and justice would cover the earth as the seas, cover as water covers the seas.
SPEAKER_01: That was the expectation.
SPEAKER_01: And it hadn't happened.
SPEAKER_01: And by the time you get to Malachi's day, generations have passed.
SPEAKER_01: The book of Malachi is probably composed in about 450 before the time of our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That means that multiple generations had been born and lived their life and died in Jerusalem, waiting for God's covenants to be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: And it seemed that they had gone empty.
SPEAKER_01: Generations dying without the promises fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: Naturally, they were asking the question, does God really love us?
SPEAKER_01: And the book of Malachi comes as an answer from the Lord to that question.
SPEAKER_01: It's a word from the Lord to his people to affirm that his promises still stand, his words will never fall, and he will fulfill all his covenants and purposes with his people.
SPEAKER_01: In a word, the book of Malachi is a book to affirm that God still loves his people.
SPEAKER_01: And the way that the book of Malachi is structured, it's composed of six disputations where God has a dialogue with his people, where he affirms something is true, and he allows them to question him and to ask him, Are you sure that's true?
SPEAKER_01: And then he gives a reasoned response to prove that it is true, and then he shows the implication of the way that they should respond to him.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that I bother telling you that structure is because I think it invites us to understand something about the nature of God.
SPEAKER_01: He understands our questions, and he understands our complaints, our worries, our anxieties, our doubts, and when we experience doubts, he invites us to come to him with them.
SPEAKER_01: And what we find in the book of Malachi is a people wearied by unfulfilled promises and unmet expectations, coming to their God and having an encounter with their God through the word of the prophet to reaffirm that God really does love his people.
SPEAKER_01: And what we're going to see this morning is the first proof that God really loves his people in Malachi 1.1 through 5.
SPEAKER_01: The first thing that God tells his people to remind them that he loves them is remember, I chose you.
SPEAKER_01: So what this little text, as we're going to study it this morning, does for us is Malachi 1.1 to 5 calls us to rekindle our affections, rekindle our love for the Lord by remembering that he elected us for salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Now let me just pause for a second before we dive in.
SPEAKER_01: This is Youth Serve Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: It's Youth Ministry Sunday, it's Teen Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I think this is just indicative of the nature of Emmanuel Bible church.
SPEAKER_01: Is on Teen Sunday, we're not jumping into the kiddie pool, we're jumping straight into the Word of God, and we're doing a predestination sermon on Youth Ministry Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: This is a great church, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: This is a predestination passage, and I just want us to see before we jump in, this is where God goes.
SPEAKER_01: When we have a doubt, does God really love me?
SPEAKER_01: He says, Remember, I chose you.
SPEAKER_01: That's supposed to affirm his love for us and cause us to gaze at the wonder of his love.
SPEAKER_01: That's where God wants us to go this morning.
SPEAKER_01: So let's just walk through the text this morning.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to just take Malachi 1, 1 through 5, according to the structure that it presents itself in the passage.
SPEAKER_01: First thing that we see is that God gives us an assertion.
SPEAKER_01: God says, verse 2, I have loved you.
SPEAKER_01: That's great news.
SPEAKER_01: But the people of Israel living in Jerusalem at this period of time really aren't in a mindset to be able to receive that news.
SPEAKER_01: Their mind is stuck on their poor circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: And at this point in time, Judah was not the center of God's global kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, it was a tiny little province under the thumb of Persian oppression.
SPEAKER_01: Poverty was rampant, social injustice was pervasive, the walls of the city were physically torn down, moral laxity was pervasive.
SPEAKER_01: There were problems.
SPEAKER_01: And people had their eyes on their problems, and they're thinking, we don't I thought God loved us.
SPEAKER_01: We don't deserve this.
SPEAKER_01: We deserve something so much better.
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible to really be amazed at the love of God as long as you have your eyes on your circumstances and not on God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not just an issue of what happens when things are going wrong around you.
SPEAKER_01: It's also an issue of what happens if you have your eyes on things that are going well around you.
SPEAKER_01: You remember the word of the Lord to Israel before they even came into the promised land.
SPEAKER_01: In the book of Deuteronomy, God warned them, Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_01: Whether things are going well in your life, or things are going tremendously poorly, as long as your eyes are on your circumstances and you're thinking things are going well, this is what I deserve, or things are going terribly, this is not what I deserve, your heart will not be in a position to recognize the reality of God's love.
SPEAKER_01: That's where Israel was, and thus they ask this question in verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: God, you say you've loved us, but really?
SPEAKER_01: How have you loved us?
SPEAKER_01: And that's the pattern that we find through the book of Malachi.
SPEAKER_01: It's in chapter 1, verse 6, verse 7, chapter 2, verse 17, chapter 3, verse 7, verse 8, verse 13, again and again and again, seven times, God affirms a truth to his people and he allows them to respond with but, but, but, really?
SPEAKER_01: They're challenging God.
SPEAKER_01: But at least they're going to God with their doubts.
SPEAKER_01: At least they are going to God with their questions.
SPEAKER_01: That's the pattern that's revealed to us in the nature of this dispute.
SPEAKER_01: God, when he delivers the word of the Lord through Malachi, could have had Malachi just say, Here are God's requirements, mic drop, and walk out of the city.
SPEAKER_01: But instead, he reveals his word through Malachi in this form in order to invite us, when we have doubts and when we have questions, to come to God with our doubts and our questions.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the way that the Lord responds.
SPEAKER_01: He responds by affirming this truth.
SPEAKER_01: I chose you, not Esau.
SPEAKER_01: There's the proof of my love.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: I've loved you.
SPEAKER_01: The people respond, How have you loved us?
SPEAKER_01: And here's how God responds.
SPEAKER_01: Is not Esau Jacob's brother, declares the Lord, yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.
SPEAKER_01: I've laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.
SPEAKER_01: If Edom says, We're shattered, but we'll rebuild the ruins, the Lord of hosts says, They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called the wicked country, and the people with whom the Lord is indignant forever.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, I chose you and not your brother Esau, and I've been faithful, and I have spared you, and I've brought you back to the land, and I've rebuilt the temple, and I have not proven unfaithful to my word.
SPEAKER_01: Now I just, before we move any further, the I we're going to discuss this just a little bit more, this whole language of love and hate, but I think it's helpful just to at least begin to broach it now.
SPEAKER_01: God says, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.
SPEAKER_01: That's pretty startling language.
SPEAKER_01: And I would guess that most of us, if we find this affirmation startling, it's not the love part we find startling, it's the hate part.
SPEAKER_01: Jacob, I have loved, but Esau I have hated.
SPEAKER_01: Really, God?
SPEAKER_01: But it's helpful to remember something in the nature of love.
SPEAKER_01: The nature of love is to make a choice, and love, by its definition, by its nature, is exclusionary.
SPEAKER_01: To love one is not to love another.
SPEAKER_01: We could give an example of this many ways, but I think a very helpful example is the example of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Marriage is, after all, the relationship that God looks at and says, that's what the relationship between Christ and his bride, the church, is like.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the nature of marriage is that one man, one woman pledge loyal love to one another for life, and they pledge that love to no one else.
SPEAKER_01: When a man and a woman say I do to one another, they're saying yes to you and no to everyone else.
SPEAKER_01: I'm choosing you and I'm choosing to exclude everyone else from this covenant, loyal, intimate, one-flesh love.
SPEAKER_01: It's the nature of love, is it has to exclude others.
SPEAKER_01: And so it becomes a Hebrew idiom in the Hebrew language that if you love one person, you're hating the other.
SPEAKER_01: If you love one thing, you're hating the other.
SPEAKER_01: Because when you choose this, you're not choosing the other, and there's a dichotomy between my love that is going here and not there.
SPEAKER_01: You see this all over Scripture, but I think one helpful place to go is the words of our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says in Matthew chapter 6, verse 24, No one can serve two masters, for either you will hate the one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot serve God in money.
SPEAKER_01: Now think about that for a second.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you have two jobs.
SPEAKER_01: Does this ring true that while you're working for one, you're hating the other?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe you just hate both of them.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what Jesus is saying.
SPEAKER_01: What Jesus is saying, if you are working for one, you are not working for the other.
SPEAKER_01: You're loving the one in that you are choosing to be devoted to this one master and work for him, and that means you are not devoted to and not working for and not serving this other.
SPEAKER_01: Loving one, hating the other.
SPEAKER_01: It's just an idiom for choosing one which necessitates you exclude another.
SPEAKER_01: That's what God is saying to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And this goes all the way back to the nature of God's covenant promises through Abraham and then through Isaac and then through Jacob.
SPEAKER_01: Isaac's wife Rebecca has two children.
SPEAKER_01: She's having twins.
SPEAKER_01: And before she's even gives birth, she goes to the Lord and asks, What is going on?
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord says this.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord says to her, Two nations are in your womb, and two people from within you shall be divided, for one shall be stronger than the other.
SPEAKER_01: The older shall serve the younger.
SPEAKER_01: God already chose, when Jacob and Esau were yet still in the womb of their mother, that he was going to send his promise of salvation through one, not the other.
SPEAKER_01: That is what happened with the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Jacob's seed becomes Israel, the covenant people, whom God has given a promise to, that through them a blessing will go to all the peoples of the earth, and God is reminding the people of Israel, I've been faithful to that promise, haven't I?
SPEAKER_01: Here you are.
SPEAKER_01: Look at your brother Esau, whose line became the people Edom.
SPEAKER_01: They became your enemies.
SPEAKER_01: And they participated in the Babylonian destruction and spoil of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: They mocked you and laughed at you when you were carried off into captivity.
SPEAKER_01: But now where are they?
SPEAKER_01: There's an entire book of the Bible, the book of Obadiah, which is dedicated to a prophecy where the word where the Lord promises that there will be judgment on Edom for their participation in the destruction of Israel, but God will continue his promises to Jacob, even though it seems impossible in that moment in history.
SPEAKER_01: And now, a few generations later, the word of the Lord comes through Malachi to the people of Israel and says, See, haven't I been faithful to that promise?
SPEAKER_01: Here you are, there's a temple, no one says this was possible, and now look around, where is Edom?
SPEAKER_01: Because by the time of the fifth century, the Nabataeans and Arabian people had come up and had captured the Edomite cities, had driven them out of their land, and here we are in the 21st century, and there ain't no Edomites, but there's a lot of Israelites.
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Lord is calling the people to put their mind on.
SPEAKER_01: Not your circumstances, but the reality that a God who stands outside of time and is above the temporal workings of the nations has put his electing love on you and will fulfill his promises to you, and it's not based on anything that you do.
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Lord says through Moses to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: It's not because you are more in number than any other people.
SPEAKER_01: But it's because the Lord loves you.
SPEAKER_01: That's where God wants his people to put their mind.
SPEAKER_01: Not on their circumstances, but on the love of God, and to recognize that God's love for you is not based on who you are, what you do, it's based on his sovereign choice.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what the text says.
SPEAKER_01: It's not because of who you are that the Lord set his love on you, it's because he loves you.
SPEAKER_01: Why does God love you?
SPEAKER_01: Because he loves you.
SPEAKER_01: And he loves you because he loves the ultimate cause of God's love for his people, his choice of his people, his keeping his promises to his people resides in God, not in you.
SPEAKER_01: And so your circumstances might look good or they might look bad, but God hasn't changed, and God's sovereign purposes to love you and fulfill his promises to you, remain.
SPEAKER_01: That's where God calls his people to put their mind.
SPEAKER_01: And that leads to this implication of this prophetic word to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: I've loved you, I've chosen you, I've proved it through history and being faithful to my people, and the way that you should respond is in verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: You should glory in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 5 in your Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Your eyes shall see this, that is God's fulfilling in history, his promises to his people, and you will say, Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: That'll be the response of the people of God as they see God keeping his covenants, ultimately through Israel, bringing the Messiah who sends a blessing to all the Gentile peoples, tongues, and nations all over the world, and we will say, Great is the Lord who by his own power and grace saves his people.
SPEAKER_01: That's Malachi chapter 1, verses 1 through 5.
SPEAKER_01: Now I could just wrap it up right here, and the parking attendants would be really happy with me.
SPEAKER_01: But it's youth serve Sunday, and I'm the youth pastor, so I'm gonna do what I want.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to preach another sermon.
SPEAKER_01: That was Malachi chapter 1, verses 1 through 5.
SPEAKER_01: But we have a New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: That's a lection in the Old Testament, but it doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_01: We have a New Testament, so I think we should close by looking at what Paul says about this in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you turn in your Bibles with me to Romans chapter 9?
SPEAKER_01: Flip over to Romans chapter 9 because this word from God through Malachi that I've loved Jacob but hated Esau, it shows up again in our Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: It shows up in Romans and chapter 9 as Paul is contemplating God's plans and salvation, how he saved some but not all.
SPEAKER_01: And that verse from Malachi chapter 1, verse 2 appears again in Paul's argument.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to look at a few verses in Romans chapter 9 and begin to try to apply them to our situation as new covenant believers and the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean that God elects people for salvation?
SPEAKER_01: Look at chapter 9, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is dealing with the question: why is it that God saves some Israelites, but not all, some Jews, but not all?
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 9, verse 1, Paul says, I'm speaking the truth in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not lying.
SPEAKER_01: My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Paul's wrestling with the issue of he wants all Jews to be saved, but not all Jews are being saved.
SPEAKER_01: Not all Jews are believing in the Jewish Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: And he has the question, what's going on?
SPEAKER_01: Is God's promise through Abraham failed?
SPEAKER_01: And then he says, no, it hasn't failed, because God's promise was always for individuals.
SPEAKER_01: And the elect that God has chosen are being saved.
SPEAKER_01: They are responding to the word.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: It's not as though the word of the Lord has failed.
SPEAKER_01: For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but through Isaac, your offspring shall be named.
SPEAKER_01: Paul affirms that the re that God elects those whom he has chosen, and he hasn't elected all.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the first point that Paul makes for us God chose us for salvation.
SPEAKER_01: If anyone is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is only because God sovereignly before the foundation of the world chose you, elected you by name for salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Now, some a common view when looking at Romans 9 has at times in various phases of the church's history been to look at Romans 9 and say, this is about nations.
SPEAKER_01: It's not about individuals.
SPEAKER_01: That just seems a little bit too in your kitchen, that God would choose some for salvation, but not all.
SPEAKER_01: This is about God choosing Israel and not other nations.
SPEAKER_01: Big old books have been written about that.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't fit the text.
SPEAKER_01: One of the reasons is that nations are made of individuals.
SPEAKER_01: But another reason is that you already believe an election.
SPEAKER_01: If you are a Christian and you believe the word of God, you already believe an election of individuals.
SPEAKER_01: The first example that Paul gives is Abraham.
SPEAKER_01: Why did God reveal himself to Abraham, who was a pagan living in ancient Mesopotamia, an idol follower, and God reveals himself, calls him out, and makes a covenant with him and no one else.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because God chose him.
SPEAKER_01: Abraham had two sons.
SPEAKER_01: Isaac and Ishmael, and God chose that the promise would go through Isaac and not Ishmael.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because God chose Isaac, not Ishmael.
SPEAKER_01: Why is Paul, the apostle, the one who's writing these letters, able to write these letters?
SPEAKER_01: Because Paul was a persecuting, blaspheming, Christian, killing, antichrist warrior, and in the midst of his rebelling against God, Christ revealed himself to Paul on the road to Damascus and changed him.
SPEAKER_01: Why did God do that to Paul and not Pilate?
SPEAKER_01: Because God chose Paul.
SPEAKER_01: That's where Paul goes.
SPEAKER_01: Paul goes to God's electing of individuals for salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: Not only so, this is where he begins the Jacob and Esau saga.
SPEAKER_01: When Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing, either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls, she was told the older will serve the younger.
SPEAKER_01: As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I have hated.
SPEAKER_01: What's the basis of salvation of any individual?
SPEAKER_01: It is not in that person, it's in God who chose them, God who elected, it's in God's purpose.
SPEAKER_01: That's the cause of salvation because God chooses some for salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Now let's ask this question.
SPEAKER_01: Here's, I think, a logical question that would come to mind for many of you as you're wrestling with this.
SPEAKER_01: What about the hate part?
SPEAKER_01: We kind of talked about that a second ago, but it kind of seems like God is double predestinating.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, Some I'm gonna make for salvation, others I'm gonna make them for damnation.
SPEAKER_01: What about that?
SPEAKER_01: If God chooses some for salvation, and in choosing them, he then enters into their life, intervenes, and creates faith, grants spiritual life and brings them to salvation, does he in the same way intervene in the life of others to create unbelief?
SPEAKER_01: Does he intervene in the life of others to create fresh sin and evil and rebellion against God?
SPEAKER_01: Is that what the text says?
SPEAKER_01: That's not what the text says.
SPEAKER_01: The way that God treats individuals is asymmetrical.
SPEAKER_01: He treats those he elects by intervening in their life and saving them, and he treats the non-elect by passing over them and allowing them to go their own way.
SPEAKER_01: He chooses one, which means he doesn't choose the other.
SPEAKER_01: Another way to think about this is that the nature of election for salvation is that it presupposes the need for salvation, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: There's no business, God doesn't have any business electing from some for salvation if we don't have the need for it.
SPEAKER_01: That is, God looks at human nature and sees that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: He sees that there are none who seek God, no, not one.
SPEAKER_01: He sees that the nature of human life is that the wickedness of man is great, and that every intention and the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually.
SPEAKER_01: As Paul says, the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot.
SPEAKER_01: Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
SPEAKER_01: We are both unwilling and unable to come to God on our own volition.
SPEAKER_01: Naturally, we all have the freedom to choose, and we all choose sin.
SPEAKER_01: We all choose to worship the creation rather than the creator.
SPEAKER_01: That's our default.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we want to do.
SPEAKER_01: This is why Paul sums up our human condition in Ephesians chapter 2 by saying we are dead in trespasses and sins.
SPEAKER_01: No more ability to choose God than a dead man has to get up out of his casket at his own funeral.
SPEAKER_01: Thus, Jesus himself says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
SPEAKER_01: This is our condition.
SPEAKER_01: God does not need to intervene in the life of a sinner to create unbelief.
SPEAKER_01: We already don't believe in him.
SPEAKER_01: In order for God to harden someone, all he has to do is let go and stop restraining them.
SPEAKER_01: As Paul says in Romans chapter 1, verse 24, he just has to give us up to our own desires.
SPEAKER_01: And those desires will be to worship the creature rather than the creator.
SPEAKER_01: What God has to do for anyone to be saved is he has to intervene in grace.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what he has done for us.
SPEAKER_01: He chose us, and he burst into our life when we were straying from him.
SPEAKER_01: Dead in trespasses, but God, but God, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, caused us, caused us, he gave us life, he brought us back to life, united us with Christ so that by grace we have been saved.
SPEAKER_01: What that does is what Paul says in verse 11, it shows that God's purpose of election will continue not because of works, but because of him who calls.
SPEAKER_01: The basis of our salvation is that God chose us for salvation, and he chose us on the basis of his own will.
SPEAKER_01: He chose us on the basis of his own will.
SPEAKER_01: Now, another question that we will ask naturally about the nature of this election that is taught to us in the scriptures is okay, sure, the word election, predestination are in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: If I'm a Christian, if I want to believe in Jesus, then I have to deal with that.
SPEAKER_01: The word election, predestination, they're there in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: But what's the nature of that election?
SPEAKER_01: And some would say that the reason that God elects people is because he can see that in time, when the gospel is offered to them, they will believe it.
SPEAKER_01: And so the nature of God's election is that because God is outside of time, he can see who are the people who will respond in faith, and so he then retrojects back into eternity past, and he elects those individuals who will respond positively to the offer of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like if you've got a sporting event that you want to watch, and you've recorded it on whatever your streaming service is, and you somehow have stumbled upon the score of that game.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's the worst, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: So you know that whoever is gonna win.
SPEAKER_01: And so at the beginning, as you're beginning to stream that game, you choose whoever.
SPEAKER_01: The Chiefs.
SPEAKER_01: I just spoiled it for some of you, sorry.
SPEAKER_01: Is that the nature of God's election of us?
SPEAKER_01: He knows the score, and so he then you know places his wagers appropriately?
SPEAKER_01: He's out outside of time, he can do that, right?
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: Paul responds to an objection now, and he says, What shall we say then?
SPEAKER_01: Is there injustice on God's part?
SPEAKER_01: By no means.
SPEAKER_01: You see the question that Paul's answering?
SPEAKER_01: It's a rhetorical question.
SPEAKER_01: He's teaching that salvation is based on God's choice on the basis of his will, not based on anything in you.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing in you that would stir God or make him want to choose you.
SPEAKER_01: It's based solely on his own sovereign electing love.
SPEAKER_01: He then intervenes and creates spiritual life in you and draws him to his son.
SPEAKER_01: Naturally, the response to that would be that doesn't seem fair.
SPEAKER_01: That God would choose some, but not all.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't seem fair.
SPEAKER_01: And do you see that the nature of Paul having to address that rhetorical question just serves to confirm that what Paul is teaching is this teaching of election that's based on God's will and not your faith.
SPEAKER_01: If Paul were teaching that God looks into time and he sees who will respond to him positively, and then he elects those, he gives everybody equal opportunity.
SPEAKER_01: Some people choose him, some people don't.
SPEAKER_01: He elects the ones that choose him.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody's gonna respond.
SPEAKER_01: That's not fair.
SPEAKER_01: And that accords with just everything that we naturally believe about fairness as human beings.
SPEAKER_01: If that's what Paul was teaching, this objection wouldn't be in the Bible, but it's there because what Paul is saying is that election's based on God, not you.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he says in the next verse.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
SPEAKER_01: So it depends not on human will, not on human faith, but on God who has mercy.
SPEAKER_01: The basis of salvation is God's election based on his own will.
SPEAKER_01: You could say it this way: election is not the cause of faith.
SPEAKER_01: Election, excuse me, election is the cause of faith, and not faith the cause of election.
SPEAKER_01: We're not chosen because we believe, we believe because we're chosen.
SPEAKER_01: If election were based on the our choice of God, then it wouldn't be God's election.
SPEAKER_01: It would be our election, and God's just, he wins.
SPEAKER_01: But election is based not on our choice, it's based on God's choice, God's sovereign purpose to choose us individually for salvation on the basis of his own will.
SPEAKER_01: And what's the point of it?
SPEAKER_01: Well, here's what Paul says it's for his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: Not your glory.
SPEAKER_01: Because you didn't contribute anything to it.
SPEAKER_01: From beginning to end, the nature of salvation is from God, through God, by God, and for God, not based on you.
SPEAKER_01: And if you are reading that, I intentionally tried to craft this sentence because all I did was just rephrase a passage of scripture.
SPEAKER_01: This is what Paul says about election.
SPEAKER_01: God predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.
SPEAKER_01: God chooses us for salvation on the basis of his will, and it's for his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: The effect of the teaching of election in the Bible should cause our hearts to say, how incredible that God would elect me.
SPEAKER_01: That I think you will you may ask as you contemplate this is if that's true, that God elects for salvation, and there's no salvation unless God chooses to intervene in your life and bring you to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: How can you know that he's elected you?
SPEAKER_01: You know because you believe him and you love him.
SPEAKER_01: You know that you've been elected because you believe the gospel and you love the God that saved you.
SPEAKER_01: Because you couldn't do that on your own.
SPEAKER_01: The only way you can do that is if God has intervened and has brought you to life and has united you to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And now that you see Christ, and now that you love Christ, your heart should swell in awe that the reason you are here enjoying the love of God is because God chose you before the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_01: You see how this ought to drive us down in humility and up in praise?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we really need to ask ourselves: if I am a Christian, why am I a Christian?
SPEAKER_01: And the answer can be because I believe the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're a Christian because you believe the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Why do you believe the gospel?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I was convicted of my sin.
SPEAKER_01: Why were you convicted of your sin?
SPEAKER_01: I recognized it was wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Why did you recognize it was wrong?
SPEAKER_01: I realized I needed a new life.
SPEAKER_01: Why did you realize a new life?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I didn't really have much purpose and I knew I needed a purpose.
SPEAKER_01: Why did you say you didn't have purpose and you needed a purpose?
SPEAKER_01: Do you see how you can just keep going layer after layer after layer after layer after layer after layer?
SPEAKER_01: And what matters, what really matters in your life is what is at the bottom.
SPEAKER_01: Because if what is at the bottom is something in you, then fundamentally you are walking around God's earth believing you're a little bit better than the people around you.
SPEAKER_01: Fundamentally, what's at the heart of your worldview, your view of God and your view of self, is that I'm a little bit smarter, a little bit wiser, a little bit more spiritually sensitive than the people who don't believe.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what God says.
SPEAKER_01: God says if you are a Christian, it's not anything that was in you, it was entirely a gift from God.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that you have, you've received with empty hands.
SPEAKER_01: You are a Christian because God chose you before the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_01: He set his affection upon you.
SPEAKER_01: And God made a covenant that he would redeem you at the infinite cost of God the Son departing the comforts of heaven to come into this world, to stand in your place, to bear the wrath you deserve.
SPEAKER_01: And then he sent his spirit into the world to awaken your heart, to bring you to life and draw you to the Son.
SPEAKER_01: And now you've been caught up in the divine nature, sharing in the love of Father, Son, and Spirit, and promised an inheritance, imperishable, undefiled, kept for you in heaven, where you will hear your father say, Well done, good and faithful servant, enter the joy of your master.
SPEAKER_01: All of this, all of this is from God.
SPEAKER_01: Because God chose you on the basis of his own will for his own glory.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the Apostle Paul writes at the end of Romans chapter 11, when he gets to the end of his discussion of election salvation, this incredible doxology.
SPEAKER_01: I think it's appropriate for us to end there.
SPEAKER_01: To let the Apostle Paul's response to the teaching of election shape our response to God's teaching of election.
SPEAKER_01: And one of our missionaries, Davis Prickett, who's a Bible translator in Africa, has prepared what he calls a literary paraphrase of the book of Romans, kind of an expansive literary translation of Romans to capture some of the emotion of the Apostle and his writing.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to read from Davis' translation of Romans chapter 11.
SPEAKER_01: Just listen to the Word of God, how Paul responds to the reality God chose us.
SPEAKER_01: In light of this powerful and perplexing outworking of his providence, I cannot help but pour out praise.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, how incomprehensibly deep, how immeasurably abundant God's infinite wisdom and knowledge employed in all he ordains and performs?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, how unfathomably profound his decisions and decrees! Oh, how infinitely fathomless his judgments and dealings with mankind! How could anyone ever know the thoughts and intentions of the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: How could anyone ever offer him counsel and insight?
SPEAKER_01: How could anyone ever give God something he must pay back?
SPEAKER_01: God owes absolutely nothing to no one.
SPEAKER_01: For everything is created from God, everything is caused by God, and everything goes back to God.
SPEAKER_01: So everything must give God all glory and honor in every moment for all eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: God, that's the prayer of our heart.
SPEAKER_01: We want to say with the Apostle Paul that all glory, all honor, all praise would resound to you because of who you are and what you have done.
SPEAKER_01: It is a miracle that we share in divine life because you, by your own power, by your own gracious act, have made us alive together with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: By grace we have been saved.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, make us a people who marvel at this and who want to walk in a manner worthy of the calling you have given us.
SPEAKER_01: We pray this in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, DC area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with folks.