All right. Well, I hope everyone got a great night of rest. We've got a really, I think, an exciting session here. My main goal for today is to get everybody to understand Romans 9 to 11. So I want you to walk away after my morning sessions with a brand new perspective on this amazing passage. We're going to look in the first session just at Romans 9. And in the second session, we're going to look at Romans 9 combined with some of Romans 11. OK, so let's just do a little bit of review first.
So we looked yesterday at the history of Calvinism very, very briefly. We looked at Calvin, this very influential writer and thinker from France who went to Geneva. And we looked at the remonstrance of the Arminians. What does the word remonstrance mean again? Protest. Protest, yeah. And they had these five points of protest. And then we looked at the counterdevelopment of the five points of Calvinism at the Synod of Dort, which was in 1619.
And we summarized those points, or someone else summarized those five points with the acronym Tulip. So I'm hoping that you can all be able to rattle off the five points. If you can't do it today, certainly by the end, what is the t? Total depravity. What's the U? Unconditional election. Good. And then the L. Limited Atonement. I, Irresistible Grace, and P. Perseverance of the Saints. It's pretty easy to remember. So here they are. Here's the five. And I said before that the most important one is the U.
It kind of generates all of the other ones, the unconditional election. The vowels are the most egregious. The vowels should hit your vowels. And then the other ones here, limited atonement is one that not all Calvinists actually do hold. There are some four-point Calvinists. Perseverance of the Saints tends to flow out of the U and the I, and the T is also related to the U as well. So that's just by way of review.
We also touched on this big, big, big, big problem that Calvinism has had for centuries, which is the problem of love and goodness. Where is it to be found? And I told you about how in Calvin he doesn't develop from an exegetical perspective the first John passage that God is love.
And very interestingly, I've said this many times, and a lot of you who hear me talk about this will attest to this, that on the last day, people who are the damned will be able to say fairly accurately, the rock bottom, the most fundamental, the root cause reason why they are being condemned is that it was God's decision. If you are a Calvinist, that's what the U says. That's what the unconditional election says.
And that, to me, is a scary thought because it says in Romans chapter 1 that men should be without excuse. But this is the ultimate excuse. God, you never gave me this irresistible grace. I never could even have responded. And I didn't choose to be born. None of us chooses to be born. I was born, according to the Calvinist system, totally unable to respond, totally depraved. I never received this irresistible grace, and that's why I'm being sent away into eternal hell.
So, according to the doctrines of Calvinism, before the foundation of the world, God decided they would be reprobate. That's the U, unconditional election. And like all humans, they were born dead in their sins. The Calvinist professor that I learned from, he said that in Calvinism, the age of accountability is zero. So when you are born, you are born guilty and dead in your sins. And then they were never able to believe in God because God did not regenerate them.
And we talked about how regeneration precedes faith and repentance. So God condemns them to eternal damnation, and I put a question mark there. It doesn't seem certainly in our notion of what would be good and loving that does not square with that. And this is a quote from Austin Fisher. It's a little bit vulgar, maybe, but he says it, I think, very pointedly. He says, " In what sense was God good if he had done something like creating people so he could damn them?
" Pardon the pun, but if that is good, what the hell is bad? He's trying to get at this notion that the Bible consistently communicates God's goodness all throughout. And we should have some sort of resonance with that. But if this is the final picture of God, what is bad? All right, so anybody recognize this famous children's story? What is it? The emperor with no clothes. The emperor with no clothes. It's a famous story. Probably all of you know it. Hopefully all of you know it.
A story about a man who an emperor who thinks he's wearing all of these beautiful clothes. He's actually totally naked. He's been swindled. And everyone in the crowd is like, wow, these are amazing clothes. And they're convincing each other these are amazing clothes. And there's a small child in the audience who calls out the emperor and he says, he's naked. He's actually naked. And I actually feel like this is one of the best pictures for historic theology.
I don't care how many people say that that picture of God is reasonable or right. I don't care if everybody in the country says that I'm going to be I'm going to be the kid saying, he's naked. I don't care what you say. This is nakedness. OK, somebody came up to me yesterday and reminded me of something that I wanted to qualify here. So we should be very careful with my book recommendations.
And the reason is that nearly all of the books that I'm going to recommend, including the title from yesterday, not all of them, but are written by Protestant evangelicals. And that's because we talked yesterday about how they're just very prolific. We said that they're cranking out all these books and sermons and the seminaries are dominated by them.
Even though I really like how there is this rising tide of very capable scholars and pastors and writers who are countering Calvinism, they don't often hold to the full picture of kingdom teaching there. So let's just be careful with that. And especially if you're maybe shaking in your faith, be careful. This requires much discernment, as I said, because there's a lot of air in their books, as well as a lot of excellent statements.
And we were having dinner and one of the young ladies that we're hosting said, I like the way she put it. She says to be careful about a steady diet of those kinds of materials. If that's all that you're taking in, if that's all that you're ingesting, be careful because you're probably going to get skewed and you're probably going to get one over after too long. So I think you should make your staple solid teaching from kingdom-minded Christians.
And certainly, all of us at Sattler, followers of the Way, I know many of you outside of those communities, we're trying to do that. We're trying to make lots of high-quality materials so that we don't have to always compromise so much there. OK, so one of the homework assignments I gave was Genesis 12:1 to 3. And I asked the question, what was this choice? What was this election of Abraham all about? And I'd love to hear some of you and feel free sisters as well as brothers can speak here.
What was the purpose that we saw in this passage of God's election of Abraham? Anybody? Yeah. Please, yes. He blessed Abraham to bless all the mathematical definition. Yeah, very good. Yeah. And I like how you put that there. Abraham was blessed to be an instrument of blessing to all of the nations. He was chosen with the vocation of being an agent to minister grace, to minister blessing to other nations. That's great. And I think that's kind of at the heart of it. So this is the whole passage.
Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. And then notice this, I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. We're going to come back to that as well. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. I love that line. In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
Does this sound like an election of, say, salvation for all of Abraham's descendants? Do you think from this that every descendant of Abraham is going to be going to be promised eternal life in the next it doesn't sound like that to me at all. I don't see how people read that there. This sounds much more like the term that we used yesterday, election to service. And we made a big deal about this point in the parable of the king and the wedding that God has different elections.
Some are unconditional, some are conditional, and we have to pay attention to the context. And people often swing to one pole or the other and they say it's all conditional. It's all unconditional. And we have to be more nuanced than that. I also asked you to read these chapters in Exodus, Exodus chapter 7 to 11. So I would love to hear, again, what patterns did you find in the hardening that we see described about Pharaoh? So it's a famous line that we've all heard many times that Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
So what patterns did we see in this? It's quite intriguing that in some of the plagues, it says that God hurt in his heart. In some of the other ones, he actually hurt him. Exactly. So it's very interesting that there is a and I'm going to show you on the screen how this all lays out, but Austin, you said it right there, that some of the times it says Pharaoh hardens his own heart. Some of the times it says that God hardens his heart.
And some of the times it doesn't actually say it just said his heart was hardened. So there's those three categories. So good. That's the first observation. What else do we notice about the hardening? Stan? There's at least three different Hebrew words that it comes from, and they mean all kinds of different. Yeah, there's a bunch of different things. In fact, one of the common Hebrew words that's used are " hazak " is the word for " strengthen.
" So it's almost like that person, whether they're strengthening their own heart, they're resolving, they're purposing. But yeah, diversity of words, it's used there good. What else? What else did we notice about pattern? There's one other key observation that I'm hoping someone noticed here. Yes? It was interesting how many times the people around him saw God's hand in what he did. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So there were multiple times that his court, so to speak, could see things that he couldn't.
All right, I'm going to show the pattern on the screen, and I think it's going to be obvious. I listed out every instance here. So the first section where Moses and Aaron were commissioned, God just generically says, " I will harden Pharaoh's heart. " So he's making a prophecy about what's going to happen. And then the very first instance where it's happening in chapter 7:13 of Exodus, it just says Pharaoh's heart was hardened. It doesn't say God was a Pharaoh, it just says it was hardened.
So because it doesn't say we're not going to say either, we're going to let the text be uncertain there. Then there's the first plague of the Nile turning into blood. And again, it says that Pharaoh's heart is hardened. It doesn't say who the agent is. And then in 7:22, it says that Pharaoh's heart remain hardened. So again, hardened, but it doesn't say exactly who. Then the second plague of frogs. Now, for the very first time, we see who's doing the hardening.
So in 8:15, it says, " He Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not listen to them. " So the first time where there's an agent mentioned, it's Pharaoh who's doing the hardening. Then the third plague of gnats. Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he would not listen, so it doesn't say there. Fourth plague of flies, 8:32. Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also and did not let the people go. So who's doing the hardening here? Pharaoh, obviously. The fifth plague of the livestock dying.
The heart of Pharaoh was hardened, so it doesn't say. We've seen a bunch of times now, that prophecy in the beginning, but a bunch of times where it's not quite described, and the times that it is first described, Pharaoh is the one doing it here. That's very interesting, I think. Then the sixth plague of boils is the very first time that it says, " The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh. " So all the way up to the first five plagues, it doesn't say that God's hardening Pharaoh's heart.
It only comes up here on number six. And then, the seventh plague of hail, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servant, so the heart of Pharaoh was hardened. And this is kind of interesting because here it says that Pharaoh hardened his heart, so the heart of Pharaoh was hardened. So it makes me wonder in those times when it doesn't describe who's doing the hardening, if it's like chapter nine, if it's Pharaoh actually doing the hardening. We don't know for sure, but it's an intriguing thought.
Eighth plague of locusts. Now it says this, and there's going to be a run. Now the Lord said to Moses, go into Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants. Then in 10:20, the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, ninth plague, the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and then in the final one, 11 chapter 10, the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. So what's the pattern? It's pretty obvious when you see it all laid out. What's the pattern here that you see sequentially? Yeah.
In the first place, Pharaoh disheartened God. Basically, it was Pharaoh's will to be hardened and then God's strength in that. Yeah, exactly. It seems like Pharaoh is the one initiating this. And at the end, there's a whole run of times where God is the one who's being described there. Not at the beginning, but at the end. So I think that's very interesting. So patterns that we can draw from this. When it is specified, the first examples of hardening are pharaoh hardening his own heart.
And then later on, it's the Lord that hardens his heart. Now, interestingly, hardening is not necessarily final. We're going to look at this in our next session this morning. How do I know that it's not necessarily final? Who changed his mind? Yeah, Pharaoh kept changing his mind. He kept going back and forth. Good. And not only that, so that's the first observation. It's not a once-and-done event. It had to be done multiple times. Even the fact that this keeps going on again and again and again.
It's not like there's this divine decree, this pronouncement, and boom, Pharaoh's heart is stone, and that's the end of it. It seems like there's this continuum and this process that's unfolding here. And then we shouldn't forget that before this whole story even begins, Pharaoh has enslaved and is mistreating God's people. So way before the account even starts, we've got a pretty sinful, evil person. And what do you think? What promise that God made to Abraham do you think might be relevant here in Exodus?
You're smiling. What do you think? I forget how it was, but if somebody curses you. Exactly. If you mistreat the descendants of Abraham, then God is going to curse you. God is going to come against you. So there's something else going on here. So Pharaoh's on the wrong side of the Abrahamic promise here. I think we can safely say that. Based on this, what we're going to say is we're going to say there's two types of hardening. So there's a self-hardening.
There's a hardening where a person becomes just stubborn and they're callous in their sin. There's a great example of this. I thought about including it. I would recommend reading this on your own time, Zechariah chapter 7 verses 11 to 13, where there's a beautiful, very striking example of people hardening their own hearts. So that's self-hardening. But then there's another type of hardening, and this is a term that others have proposed, and I think it's a great term. It's called judicial hardening.
So judicial hardening is where God blinds the rebellious person in order to achieve a greater purpose. And we see this in the case of Pharaoh. So there's an external hardening. There's an external event or force that comes into play where a person is now hardened in their sins. Now, keep in mind that even that term hardening, you know I think of this, I picture like a clay pot or something, something that maybe a sculpture and it's kind of soft and maybe a little bit gooey.
And all that hardening does is it kind of locks it into position. That's all that hardening does. It doesn't actually change the pattern of that vessel or that pot. I think we'd all agree. And so even when we think of the term hardening, think about that, that it's just locking you in. It's fortifying you in to where you already are. OK, there's a great analogy that Leighton Flowers uses that I really like.
And the analogy, we've all seen this before, is you're driving along, and out of the corner of your eye, you kind of pass maybe a bridge or a hill or something like that. And you look in your rear view mirror, and wow, there's a policeman who's sitting there with his speed gun, and he's checking out who's speeding. And your heart beats fast for a second, and you look down at your speedometer, and you think, oh, am I speeding? I've actually gotten ticket once in my life. It's a terrible feeling.
So it's a great analogy because is this policeman, is this person sitting in the car with a speed gun, are they causing someone to speed? No, obviously not. But what they're doing is they're intentionally concealing the truth. They're intentionally concealing their position. They're hiding the truth in order to achieve a greater good. So what is the motive of hiding the truth? The motive is to stop speeders for the safety of all.
So it's actually a really nice example here of where someone who has a motive can actually allow speeding to go on for a greater purpose. Now, if a police person could come out and they could just be out openly and they could put in those speed bumps or something like that to make everyone, to force everyone to go slowly. But they don't do that. There's this other way that they operate in order to catch this. So this is a great analogy here.
Okay, this is hopefully a lot of you thought, oh, there's another example of this in the Bible, which is the case study of Joseph and the Brothers. How does this fit? How does the study of Joseph and the Brothers fit with this principle that we just read about? Well, they felt slight because he was the youngest son. And their father was basically he treasured him. Yep. So they treasured him. Yeah. So there's jealousy, clearly, in the beginning. And then when they saw that, it sort of made them angry.
And that's when they decided to throw them into Egypt. OK, good. And yes. Yeah, exactly. So they couldn't recognize his brothers. And then how does Joseph sum up the whole account when it's all said and done? And they're blown away. I'm sure they're scared because they think they're all going to be killed because they were just... Exactly. You did it for evil, but God did it for good. And he says, " Don't even be mad at yourself, " because God had this greater purpose that was in play.
And God uses the sinful desires of the brothers to kill him to actually accomplish the salvation of all of Israel. It's pretty amazing, right? Now, just like the policeman here, did God cause the brothers to have this evil desire? Well, no, he doesn't. Does he use those evil desires to accomplish something amazing? Absolutely. I mean, I think it's just one of the most astonishing stories in the book of Genesis there.
So this is how Leighton Flowers summarizes that God's ultimate purpose, like that of the police officer, is only good. The brother's intention, like that of the Speeders, is not good. God's sovereign plan is to use their evil choices to accomplish His redemptive purpose, much like the officer's plan to accomplish His purpose through the free choice of Speeders. God's intention is only to redeem, save, and restore through this entire event. Yet to do so, He must permit evil men to fulfill their own evil desires.
There is no reason to suggest God determines the desires of the brothers any more so than there is to suggest the police officer determines the desires of the speeder. Clear, right? We're all tracking. This is going to be really important when we get to Romans 9 today. So we're laying the groundwork principle here. Okay, so let's get into Romans 9 now. Like I said, that's my main goal for our morning sessions here. So this is an incredibly important passage.
And it's hard to overstate how important Romans 9 is in the history of the development of Calvinism. I've read The Treatments of Romans 9 by Calvin, by John Piper, and Tom Schreiner. Tom Schreiner is another Calvinist theologian. I've read a lot of commentaries on Romans over the years. It was actually the very first sermon series that I preached when we started Followers the Way. Incredibly important. And John Piper gives a very vivid description of when he was a student in the 1970s.
He says, " By the end of James Morgan's theology class, I wrote in a blue book. " You probably don't even know what blue books are, but there are these exam books that those of us back in the day before a lot of electronic devices is how we took tests. And this is what he wrote. He said, " Romans 9 is like a tiger going around devouring free willers like me. " And it did. So Piper says that when he was reading Romans 9, it changed his whole perspective on God and ultimately took away his belief in free will.
Now you all read, I'm hoping you all read Romans 9-11. Can you see why that would happen? I can see why. I can see why someone reading that could get that. And we're going to show that, in fact, there's a much better way to read it that's much more biblically consistent. But I totally get that. And I'm not surprised that people say that. Tom Schreiner, who's another writer, he says it this way. Calvinists typically appeal to Romans 9 to support their theology of divine election.
In particular, they assert that Romans 9 teaches that God unconditionally elects individuals to be saved. So Romans 9 is the heart of the heart of Calvinism. So if you get Romans 9 and how to read it more biblically, Calvinism is undone. Romans is a terribly misunderstood book, terribly misunderstood book. One author says, " Never is bad evangelical Bible reading characterized most by our aversion to particularity chronological snobbery and egoism more on display than in Paul's letter to the Romans.
" Basically, what people tend to do about Romans is they tend to abstract it away from its context. And I encourage some of you who can to listen to, we're trying to get them all up, but I have this sermon series on Romans where I go through this. The real purpose of Romans is actually to heal Jew-Gentile relations. And I go through this in the sermon series there. The Jews and the Gentiles are fighting with each other. And they're at each other's throats.
Basically what happened is the Jews were exiled under someone named Claudius. They leave Rome. Claudius dies. Nero comes to power. The Jews move back to Rome. And now you have this situation where Gentiles and Jews who had some distance before are now suddenly back together, and they're not getting along very well. And so like many books of the New Testament, the Book of Galatians is about circumcision. It's about this Judaizing problem.
A lot of the books of the New Testament have to do with integrating Jew and Gentile. Now we read that, and we're like, yeah, whatever. That's like totally boring. I don't care about that. And so we tend to read it as chronological snobs, as he puts it. We want to say, how's this going to speak to me today? How's it going to make me feel good? That's how we tend to read Romans. But that's not right. You have to first start with what is the context of the book. And N. T. Wright puts it also very vividly.
He says, " It is common to list saints and Christians whose lives have been radically changed by reading this letter. The catalogue could be balanced by a similar number who have radically misunderstood it. Troublingly, the lists overlap. So Martin Luther is one example. This is his favorite book. There's people who are so changed by the book, and they just, ah, they're amazed and they're blown away by it. And yet, they understand it so differently from each other. Does anybody know what this is?
There's a certain type of test that this is. It starts with an R. It's a Rorschach test. Do you all know what this is? No? OK. So a Rorschach test, it's a famous test that is used in the field of psychology, where they take these random patterns. They basically take ink, they make a random pattern, they fold it, they fold the sheet, and then they open it up again. And what they do is they ask people, what does this look like to you? So to me, it looks like a moth or a butterfly.
But some people might say, " Oh, I see a face in there. There's like two eyes and a mouth there and oh, it looks like a cat. " Someone might say, " Here's a cat, " and there's the ears of the cat and all that, and here's the nose of the cat. And you can see lots of things. And what psychologists do when they do this is they use this as a way to figure out what frame of mind people are in. And as it turns out, if you use this with schizophrenics and people who are mentally disturbed, you get wild answers.
Some people think, " Oh, it's my dad, I see my dad there. " So what's interesting about a Rorschach test is that it tells a lot about the person. It tells more about the person than it does about the random collection of ink on the paper. And in fact, Romans is a lot like that too. Romans is this book that in a lot of ways is a Rorschach test, that you can read it and read into it all kinds of things.
So Luther approached it in one way where he had a particular set of questions that were vexing him and he got one set of answers there. We need to do it much more faithfully and there's a whole set of strategies we can do to read it properly. So what we're going to do is we're going to jump in to Romans 9-11 with first kind of some high-level principles here. So I'm just going to make a few, if you have time to go back and listen to some of my sermons on this, you can get more information about this.
But the driving question of this section of Romans, Romans 9-11, is what about all of God's promises to Israel in the Old Testament? So Paul's writing here in the first century, and we know this from the New Testament, that most of the Jews did not accept Jesus. They were, in fact, persecutors of the Christians. And there's an obvious question, which is, wait a minute, God made all these promises to Abraham and God made all these amazing promises about how the people of Israel were going to be this blessing.
And now the very people that are the descendants of Abraham are now the enemies of the gospel. That's the driving question that Paul is getting at here in this section. So the question then is, does the unfaithfulness of most of Israel nullify the Word of God? Do you see this? Can you feel this question? I mean, it's an obvious question, right?
If you're in the first century and you're in this nascent movement of Christianity and it's a small fledgling movement here, and you're coming out of Judaism, and Paul would often go and preach in synagogues when he goes to different cities in Acts. And time and time again, the very people that were the people of Abraham that were supposed to be these agents of blessing, they're turning around and throwing stones at them and persecuting them. And it's like, what happened here? What happened?
What happened to the promises of God that were made in the Old Testament? Is God just a wimp? Did His promises fail? So this is the big question that is driving the section. Really, really important. And this honors the context of Romans far, far better than any other set of questions. So what happens is we're not bothered by that question. So I'm guessing that few of you woke up in the morning and were vexed by this question. You were like, " Oh, what's going on with the promises of God to Abraham?
Are they left unfulfilled? " But if you were in the first century, that would have been a question that you were consumed with. Because here you are persecuted by the very people of God that were supposed to be your allies. And we have to not make the mistake of saying, " Because we're not bothered by it, that's not what Paul is writing about. " That's the Rorschach test. That's like, " Oh, I don't see that in Romans. It doesn't bother me. " So that can't be what he's talking about. That's terrible hermeneutics.
That's terrible exegesis. And the number one thing you can do to understand it correctly is to look up the passages referred to in the Old Testament. Paul makes a number of quotes from the Old Testament. And what bothers me the most about the Calvinist exegesis is they do very, very little of that. And in fact, the times that they do, they try to dismiss it and to put that context almost away and sweep it under the rug. But we're not going to fall into that mistake.
I'm also going to say that there's a couple of different approaches that are non-Calvinist interpretation of Romans. They get into the same place, but they take somewhat different approaches. I'm only going to highlight one today, but there's a couple of other ones that, like I said, basically get to the same point. Last night, my wife and I stayed up till midnight, and I've got a great wife. She was doing her PhD in medieval English literature, and I always like to enroll her help when I'm reading old texts.
And we were reading from this commentary, it's hard to read, but it's by Origen. Origen wrote a commentary on Romans, which this is going to be the second book I'm going to recommend only for those who are willing to slog through difficult reading. But if you are willing to slog through it, it is amazing. It is just absolutely amazing.
And my wife, as she was going to bed, after reading the section, she said, wow, what Origen really does in Romans is he brings together and weaves in the whole New Testament into Romans 9-11. And she said the Calvinist people, they tend to take different verses in isolation and not integrate it properly. So for those who are serious and willing to, like I said, slog through a hard reading, I love this book. It's been, for me, very helpful in my own understanding.
OK, now let's pay attention to the beginning and the ending. So I think we all get why people who are Calvinists read it like they do. There's this thing about the pot and the potter, like you can't talk back to the master, and they read that as who you are. And this does sound like maybe we're just these passive vessels. And I can see why people get unconditional election from that as well. But pay attention to the beginning and the ending.
So what Paul opens up is with an intense statement of his desire to see Israel saved. Do you remember this? He opens up and he says, " For I could wish that I were, " what? What does he say? Accursed. And he says more, not just accursed and what else? Accursed from Christ, cut off from Christ. He says, " I would be cut off from Christ if I could save Israel. " And he does that actually in the beginning of Romans 10 as well.
Is it reasonable that Paul opens up with this intense desire for the salvation of Israel that then he's going to launch into how God is unconditionally damning Israel? It doesn't quite fit. It almost seems a little bit odd that in that construct that Paul seems to love Israel more than God loves Israel. On the one hand, Paul's pleading there, but then there's this passage that's justifying how God is totally fine to just damn all of these Israelites there. So keep that in mind.
It's not a proof, but I think it's at least illustrative. And then the final picture, Paul ends with a picture at the very end. What is the picture that he gives? It's from the world of vegetation. Yeah In Romans 9? Well, it's written in Romans 11 at the very end. So Romans 9-11 is one big block. The olive tree. So he gives us a picture of the olive tree. And this is, I think, really interesting. Hopefully you read it.
But what he says about the olive tree is he says the Jews that were the natural branches were cut off and you Gentiles who were wild were grafted in. And he ends by saying to the Gentiles, he says, " You Gentiles, if you're proud, if you're arrogant, God's going to cut you off too. " Because if He didn't spare the natural branches, He's not going to spare you either. Does that sound to you like unconditional election? Not at all. That sounds like the very opposite of unconditional election.
So his climactic application at the end of Romans 9-11 is a statement about how they are conditionally on the olive tree and how he says that if they dare to be proud, to be arrogant, to boast about their status, God's going to cut them off too. So whatever Paul is doing in the first sections of Romans 9-11, the climactic application is clearly conditional and it's the exact opposite of unconditional election.
So the beginning and the ending right off the bat tell us the Calvinist interpretation should seem a little suspect. It's even more clear with Paul's summary. This is the last verse that he gives before the doxology there where he says, " For God has shut up all in disobedience that he may show mercy to all. " We're going to spend more time in this in the second session. I love this verse. So there's a driving purpose why God is operating like he is. So he's shutting up people in disobedience. Why?
That he may show mercy to all. So it sounds to me like this, and I think it's the only way to read this in fairness, that this is a temporary strategy, so to speak, that God will ultimately be able to show mercy to all. So he's using disobedience and start to think about this. He's using disobedience and think about the story of Joseph, the story of Pharaoh, in order to accomplish a greater good. What Romans 9-11 is ultimately about is in miniature.
It is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful story about how God is going to use different hardenings and things like that of Israel in order to show mercy to all. Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to jump right into the text, and we're going to go through parts of it verse by verse, and we're going to hit, I think, some of the most difficult verses in here.
So he opens up by saying, " I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart.
For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises, of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came who is over all the eternally blessed God. Amen. Okay, so this is easy, right? Paul is saying, he says it a bunch of different ways to be emphatic. I'm not lying.
My conscience is bearing me witness about what? Oh, I tell the truth in Christ. So he says it three different ways. I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. He is broken over the Israelites. He's broken over this falling away that he has seen among his people. And he says, like we just talked about, that he could wish that he were accursed from Christ, accursed from Christ. Strong language if he could save his countrymen according to the flesh. And these are the blessings.
This is the things that Israel carried, the adoption, the glory. Remember the Shekinah glory fell down on the temple. We all know those scenes hopefully. The covenants, the law, the promises, and of course ultimately from whom Christ came. So they had this incredible ministry, this incredible mission to be the people through whom Jesus would be born. He uses that language again at the beginning of the end of Romans 10. So Romans 10: " My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.
" Do you see that? Right at the beginning of Romans chapter 10, he's saying the same thing again. Again, this is really important. This whole section is framed by these statements where Paul is desiring the salvation of Israel. He's not coming up with some strategy to justify their damnation. And then this is really powerful. Romans 10:21. This is God speaking. But to Israel he says, just let this really sink into you. All day long, I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.
So this is God's plea. Now, does this sound to you, if unconditional election were true, does this sound like a statement that God could make with any measure of honesty? Picture God, just pleading. I love this. I've stretched out my hands all day long. I just picture someone pleading and weeping and you know that picture of Jesus over Jerusalem, how I longed to gather you like a hen gathered her chicks, but you would not. So in this picture, does this sound like unconditional election to you? Not at all.
I mean, if unconditional election is true, God is speaking very dishonestly here because it seems here like God has extended His grace. He's calling. The block is not on Him. The problem is not that He didn't give people irresistible grace. The problem is that people didn't respond to God. So this is a very, very important statement here where we see God's heart here, that He's trying to call all of Israel in. Okay, so let's read on. But it is not the word that has taken no effect.
For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham. But in Isaac, your seed shall be called. That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. " For this is the word of promise, at this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son.
" And not only this, but when Rebecca had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac, for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand. Not of works, but of him who called, it was said to her, " The older shall serve the younger. As it is written, " Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. " Okay, so most Calvinists, they take this statement here to be about the eternal salvation or damnation of Jacob and Esau.
In fact, virtually all Calvinists take this. This is a statement where God is saying, " I'm saving Jacob, but I'm damning Esau. " And he's doing that before they were even born, before they've done anything good or evil. And so they take this as can you see how, if you read it in that way, this is a pretty good proof text in favor of unconditional election. God doesn't see anything good, anything evil in them, but he says, " I'm going to pick you, Jacob, and I'm not going to pick you, Esau.
" And in fact, I'm going to hate you, Esau. This is the heart of you can see why Calvinists get their theology. OK, but it's totally wrong. And in fact, as we're going to see, it's easy to see why it's wrong momentarily. So let's go back to Genesis. So there's this citation here that's mentioned where it says that the older shall serve the younger. I wish we had time to do the first few verses. Unfortunately, we don't have time to do that, so I'm going to go a little bit quickly here.
But in Genesis, if we look up the citation, it's Genesis chapter 25:23, it says, " The Lord said to her, " Who's the her? Two nations are in your womb, two people shall be separated from your body, one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger. " Who's the her? Rebecca. It's Rebecca, right? So Rebecca's pregnant and she's got twins in her womb. And God says to her, " Two nations are in your womb.
" So right off the bat, even way back in Genesis, it's very clear that the promise that is given to Rebecca is about two nations inside of her. This is less about individual people here. I mean, obviously, they're descendants of those individual people. But notice that. Two nations are in your womb. One, the older shall serve the younger. Did the older, did Esau serve Jacob? So think about the story of Genesis. Is it the case that Esau ever served Jacob?
Well, if you read the story in Genesis to go back and look, it's never described that Esau ever serves Jacob. In fact, if anything, after Jacob comes back, after he's married and has all his children, he comes back and he's bowing down to Esau, he's bringing the presence, and he's worried that Esau is going to come after him, and then they separate in part ways. As far as we know from the book of Genesis, Jacob never served Esau. Sorry, Esau never served Jacob.
So this is a promise about, in fact, as we'll see, nations. Okay, let's look at another reference that Paul makes in that same passage in Romans 9. " The burden of the Word of the Lord said to Israel by Malachi, ' I have loved you, says the Lord. Yet you say, ' In what way have you loved us? ' Was not Esau Jacob's brother, says the Lord. Yet Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated and laid waste his mountains and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness.
Even though Esau has said, " We have been impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places. " Okay, so I looked up the reference, and if you have a study Bible, it'll say, Paul is quoting from the book of Malachi here. There it is, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. When was the book of Malachi written? Ballpark. You know I'm not looking for exact dates here. Yeah, so roughly 400 to 500 years before Jesus was born, when did Jacob and Esau live? Ballpark. It's about 2000 BC.
So this is roughly 1,500 years after the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob I have loved Esau hated is here. What is the context of it? You can kind of tell here. Who are the Edomites? They're the descendants of Esau. Jacob, I've loved Esau I've hated is about, it says right here, I laid waste his mountains and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness. This is about God's dealing with the Edomites.
It's not that this passage if you quote it as about anything about individual Jacob and individual Esau, that's just wrong. Contextually in Malachi, he's talking about the nation of Edom and the Nation of Israel and how they're interacting. And in fact, this is represented as well in Obadiah, which is another one of the minor prophets. I'm going to go through this quickly.
The Lord says to Edom, " We've heard a report from the Lord, and a messenger has been sent among the nations, saying, ' Arise and let us rise up against her for battle. ' ' Behold, I will make you small among the nations. You shall be greatly despised. The pride of your heart has deceived you. You who dwell in the clefts of the rock, the Edomites lived in a rocky place, whose habitation is high. You who say in your heart, who will bring me down to the ground.
And notice this, for violence against your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you and you shall be cut off forever. In the day you stood on the other side, and the day the strangers carried captive his forces when foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, even you were as one of them. What is this saying? Put this in normal English. This is a powerful, powerful passage. Through Obadiah, God is speaking to the Edomites. What did the Edomites do wrong?
It says right here in verse 10, and what's the context of this? Does anybody know? Yes, Dan? They took sides with Israel's enemies instead of Exactly. They took sides with Israel's enemies, and Babylon, remember, ransacked Jerusalem, took them captive, and Edom was on the other side. They were like helping the Babylonians and all the enemies of God. And so what God says to the Edomites here is, because of how you treated Israel, you're going to be cut off.
Does that harken back to another, something else we said before, that people who mistreat Israel? Where does that go back to? Abraham's promise again, you don't want to be on the wrong side of the people of God because you're going to be cursed. And that's where Edom is found again. And notice how it says violence against your brother Jacob. Is Jacob alive here when this passage is being talked about? No, it's not. So in the Bible, it's common to say Jacob or to say Esau.
It can mean the descendants of Jacob, the descendants of Esau. It's not talking about Jacob and Esau as individual human beings. It's talking about their descendants. It's very, very common all throughout the Bible. OK, so there's something else going on here, which is that this is the passage we just read here. The Calvinist interpretation is oh, what else is going on here? So what's going on here is if you think about it, Paul is writing to Jews, right? So try to hang with me. I know I'm stretching a little bit.
The Jews are now on the wrong side of history as well. They're on the wrong side of the Abrahamic promise now because they are now persecuting the people of God. They're persecuting the people who are the descendants of the followers of Jesus. So, when Paul is making these quotes here, he's not just pulling these at random, right? He's pulling these because of their context. And there's a bit of a double-edged sword that is being communicated here. So there's two solutions to what God is saying here.
The Word of God is not of no effect. There's two reasons why. Number one, first reason why is this concept of remnant. So all throughout the Old Testament, there's this kind of whittling down. It's not like all of Abraham's children were the ones who carried forward the promise. It was just through Isaac. And then similarly through the descendants of Isaac. It wasn't both of the sons. It was Jacob and not Esau. So that's the first thing, the concept of remnant.
And then the second concept that's here is that if you are on the wrong side, if you are persecuting the people of God, as Edom did here, and this passage in Malachi references, be careful. Be very, very careful because God is going to come against you. So the Calvinist interpretation is very strange indeed. Because what they say is that this passage, Jacob I have loved, Esau have hated, they say this is about, oh, this is about individual Esau. And God is saying, I hate Esau.
I'm damning him to hell before he was born. But I love Jacob and I'm giving him eternal life before he was born. So that's the standard Calvinist interpretation. But in Deuteronomy 23:7, God commands the Israelites, " You shall not abhor an Edomite, for He is your brother. " So I think this is kind of interesting because this means in the Calvinist world, God is telling people, " Don't hate the Edomites, they are your brother. " But what is God doing? He's hating Esau and the Edomites before they were born.
It makes God somewhat hypocritical here, doesn't it? That he's telling the Israelites to honor them and not abhor them. And what I will ask you, and we'll take a break in just a moment here, is thus far, based on the quotations that we've read, and like I said, you've got to read the context. You've got to go back and read the Old Testament references.
Does it seem like what Paul has talked about so far is about the eternal salvation or damnation of individuals, or is it about God's unconditional choice for Israel, which we mentioned before, and God's conditional opposition to those who attack God's people. Okay, so I think it's way more historically grounded here. He's not talking about, again, just two random people, Jacob and Esau, and he's using those as illustrations of unconditional election. He's giving the story of Israel here.
In addition, we have to be careful with love, hate, language. So, it says in Genesis 29:31, " When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. " That's the new King James translation. If you look in the King James, a couple of other translations will say, " When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, " okay? So, that's actually the literal translation. It's the exact same word there.
Now, Jesus uses the love/hate language in a similar way where sometimes to hate someone isn't necessarily to go out and beat them up or attack them or something like that, or to despise them. Where does Jesus use that kind of love-hate language in a way that's more about selection? Yeah. Exactly. Luke 14:26, " If anyone comes after me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
" Now, nobody of any stripe, no Calvinist, no Arminian, nobody that I know of will say that Jesus is actually teaching that we should go out and literally hate our parents, that we're supposed to despise them and mistreat them. That's crazy. What hate there means is that we choose, that whole passage means that we're choosing Jesus above our families, right? That's what that passage is about. The problems go on and on.
If you assume, if you assume that what this is about, this is about unconditional election, this is what God told Ishmael, " As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget 12 princes and will make him a great nation. " Abraham had six other sons besides Isaac and Ishmael. He had another wife, Keturah. Under the typical Calvinist interpretation, because only Jacob is elected, seven of his other sons are eternally damned.
Now think about that for a moment. Think about just how crazy this interpretation is. So when God goes to Abraham and it says, " Abraham, you're going to be a blessing to the whole world and you're going to be this light. " And what this really means is that one of your sons is going to be eternally elected to salvation. But seven of your other boys, Ishmael and your six other boys, they're going to be eternally damned to hell. Congratulations, Abraham. Man, if I were Abraham, I'd be saying, please don't.
This is like terrible. I don't want this. Please, God, this is not the blessing I want. Do you see how important it is to keep distinct in your mind this election to service versus election to salvation? So I think this is my last slide for the session here. So a strong distinction was made between those blessed to bring the Word and those who may or may not choose to believe in that Word. These are different.
It is not consistent to interpret these passages as God's choice to effectually save one brother to the damning neglect of the others. Do you get this point? This is why we did this yesterday about this. It's so important. God can make a choice. It can be unconditional to pick Jacob. I have no problem with that. He can pick Jonah, he can pick whoever he wants for the ministry of this word. But that is a different notion as choosing who's going to believe in that word or not. So that's the end here.
So I went about five minutes longer. Let's take a seven minute break and let's try to regather here at about 9:32. I want to make sure we get to the rest of Romans 9 because we are going to put it all together and you're going to see how this all works.