Video Transcript: The Chosen and the Hardened

If I had to say what was one of the most unpopular passages in the Bible, I would say Romans  9. And if I had to say what is the most unpopular doctrine in the Bible, it might be the doctrine of election and reprobation doctrines that are contained in Romans 9. Now, just because they're unpopular doctrines doesn't mean they're not true. The Bible is God's revelation and Romans 9 is a revelation from God. And so I want to talk with you today about the chosen and the hardened. Romans nine begins with the Apostle Paul saying, I speak the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience confirms that in the Holy Spirit, I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ, for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel, Paul is agonizing, because he is feeling the burden of a missionary who is seeing people who don't respond to the gospel message, in this case, many many of his own people, the people of Israel, and I want you to notice two things here. One is Paul's conviction, that without faith in Christ, the people of Israel will be lost. How else could you possibly explain Paul's willingness to be himself cursed and cut off from Christ? Unless he thought that the people of Israel who rejected Christ, were not going to be saved? At the beginning of Romans 10, Paul actually says, Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer for Israel is that they may be saved. So he's clearly believing and convicted, that they aren't saved. If they aren't responding to Christ, the basis of his burden is impart his deep conviction that because they do not accept Christ by faith, they are not saved. 

The other aspect that brings him grief is His compassion, because he cares about these people. They're his people. They're his kingsmen, his relatives, and many of them are perishing. And he doesn't try to make himself feel better by saying, Oh, maybe they won't perish. If even if they don't accept Christ. No. He believes that if they don't accept Christ, they will perish, and he agonizes over them, and we to whatever we may think of certain doctrinal aspects, we need to understand that salvation comes only through Jesus Christ. And we should say that with a heavy heart, when we're saying it to people who are rejecting Christ, you are not ready to be an ambassador for Jesus, a missionary or a pastor, if you do not have a heart that grieves when people turn away and reject the gospel, and you're not ready to bring the gospel. If you think that there are lots of other ways to save people besides Jesus. 

People are writing books, even those claiming to be evangelicals, who say that everybody is going to make it in. In the end, I will guarantee you that somebody who thought that way would never have written these full, first few verses of Romans 9, Paul was in anguish, because he loves these people. And at the same time, he senses that unless they turn to Christ, they will be lost. That's his burden. And it's an even bigger burden. Because these are the people you would have expected to receive the gospel. They have so many advantages. Theirs is the adoption as sons is speaking of the nation as a whole of being the chosen nation. There's the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the 10 commandments, the temple worship, and the promises. There's the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the great leaders of Israel from them is traced the human ancestor of Christ, the Messiah, who is God overall, forever praised Amen. Paul says these people have had so many advantages. And God has lavished His blessings on the chosen nation of Israel. And yet many members of that chosen nation have turned away from Christ. 

I can feel just a little bit of what Paul feels and maybe you can too, when you look at your own people, even if you're not Jewish, some of us who come from Western European background or who are in North America, think of the great heritage some of the great Christians who came before us in, in Europe, Luther, Calvin Knox, or in America, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield, and others who were mighty preachers of God and This nation. And when you see many, many who are in these nations that had so many advantages, rejecting the gospel, it's heartbreaking. And when you see some of that going on, you may say, Well, yes, the gospel really true. Is God's word, really powerful to save. If people who you'd expect to accept it, don't accept it, that was a very pressing problem for Paul. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. It's a little awkward for the Jewish Messiah, to be rejected by most Jews. And so it's a problem for his heart because he loves them. And he wants them to come to Christ is a problem for the mind. 

Because many are saying, well, if the Jews don't accept Jesus as their Messiah, that's not very good evidence that he really is their Messiah. Or at least it's not very good evidence that God's word is powerful to say that in our own time, two people say, Oh, Europe and America are becoming so secularized and churches have fewer people in them and fewer people believe in Christ. This just goes to show you that Christianity doesn't have much in its favor. It may not be true. Now. How did Paul deal with that? That'll give us a hint of how we might deal with a similar questions we might have, has God's gospel failed? And Paul's answer is no. It is not as though God's Word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel, are Israel, nor because they are his descendants, are they all Abraham's children, on the contrary, it is through Isaac, that your offspring will be reckoned. So Paul is saying, God's word has not failed, because it has never been the case that all are saved. It has always been the case that God's word saves his chosen, and there is a chosen nation. But that does not mean all the individuals within that chosen nation, were chosen by God for salvation. And not only that, but now since the coming of the gospel. 

Many who are not physical descendants of Abraham, are children of Abraham, nonetheless, by faith. And so it's the promise. That means people are reckoned as God's chosen. And so God, the Gospel hasn't failed, it's still saving all those whom God chose and to whom it is directed. In other words, it's not the natural children who are God's children. But it's the children of the promise, who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. For this was how the promise was stated, at the appointed time, I will return and Sara will have a son. Now if you know your Old Testament book of Genesis, you remember that Abraham had a number of children. He got to be kind of old and hadn't been able to have any yet. So his wife, Sarah's Maiden, Hagar, was given to him, he slept with her, and she became pregnant had a child named Ishmael. But that was not the child who had give birth to the rest of the chosen race. Later, after Sarah died. Abraham had a wife named Cateura, and several children by her, and they two were not the children of the promise, the child of the promise was Isaac, the Promised Son of Sarah, who had been infertile and unable to have a child. And it was through Isaac that Abraham's offspring would be named. And so Paul saying, it's always been the case that there has been one chosen, others not. And it's not just whether they were natural children, but based on the promise. And somebody might say, Well, yeah, but

God was choosing based on who the princess was, who the special wife was. And the choice of Isaac was based on Sarah being the woman who was his mother. And so Hagar and Cateura weren't the main wives. And so that was the basis of the choice. 

Well, Paul looks at another choice that was made. He says not only that, but Rebecca's children, Rebecca, the wife of Isaac, Rebecca's children had one and the same father, our father, Isaac, yet before the twins were born, or had done anything good or bad, in order that God's purpose any election might stand not by works, but by him who calls. She was told the older will serve the younger, just as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. Now, take a closer look at that. In the case of Abraham, and Sarah, you had a child chosen, who was the only child of the two and the other women who had been with Abraham, their children weren't chosen. But in this case, you have the same father Isaac, you have the same mother, Rebecca, you have the same pragnancy, they are twins. So you have all these things that are exactly the same. And if there's one little advantage that would tilt to one over the other, it is that Esau is the firstborn. So if there's any advantage at all between these two twins who are about to be born, the advantage goes to Esau. Who is the chosen, Jacob, have I loved, Esau have I hated, the older Esau will serve the younger and that was God's decision. Before they were born before either of them had done any good or bad, in order that God's purpose any election might stand. This is what Theologians call unconditional election. God does not base it on any qualification. And then it works its way out. Isaac has these two sons. And in some ways, Esau is almost the more likable one. Jacob is sneaky. He doesn't mind ripping others off. Sometimes he's kind of a chicken. Esau is kind of a man's man and kind of likable in some respects. But nonetheless, what happens, God has made that decision. And then as you read how their lives play out, God appears to Jacob in a dream, and he helps Jacob to come to know him. 

Later on, he comes to Jacob and wrestles with him and declares his name not to be Jacob, but Israel, the one who wrestles with God and man and winds. And God keeps working with Jacob, despite all of Jacob's problems and faults, and makes him a man of God. And Esau. Esau is a man who despises his own birthright and sells it for a pot of stew. He is a man who marries pagan wives, and just does what he feels like the New Testament says do not meet God bless, like Esau, that's how Esau was, life unfolded and his descendants the nation of Edom also lived far from God. And the fact is, that before Jacob and Esau were ever born, God had chosen Jacob, you don't have to like it. We may not want to accept the explanation. But there it is. It is God's purpose in election and not by the works of Jacob, or Esau, not by the qualification, because same father, same mother, same pregnancy, and Esau having a slight advantage. And God chooses the one who doesn't have even that slight advantage as the one who's going to be God's man, and through whom the promise is going to come. So Paul, is showing from this, that God has always based his decision to deal with people on his own electing love, and not simply on people's deserving. Now, that brings up the question, isn't God unfair? Paul says, What shall we say then? Is God unjust? Not at all. For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. And I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. It does not therefore depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. It's all about God's mercy, not our desire or effort. And if you want to say, well, that's not fair. You don't want to go there. 

If you want to start arguing with God on the basis of what's fair, and what's just then keep in mind these words from Shakespeare, though justice be thy play, consider this, that in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation. Do you want to go to God on the basis of justice? On the basis of justice, we can come only as people who are guilty sinners before the face of God, and it deserve only damnation. The only fair thing if fairness is what we demand is for all humans to be down. Nobody would be saved. If God simply gave each of us what we deserve. Now in is electing love. God has decided to get treat some of us in mercy, rather than in strict justice, he still just because he takes our sins and lays them on Jesus and pays for them. He pays for the sins of His elect, but not for all sins. He saves his elect and treats them with mercy. But he does not save all people. But we cannot say that God is unjust, for doing it that way. Because it is only His mercy and His free gift and his decision in Christ that saves anybody whatsoever.

I liked the story of a wealthy woman who wanted her portrait painted by a great painter, and she was quite vain and quite proud of her her own beauty. And so she posed and sat for the portrait and the painter worked on it for many days. And finally he was finished and she was eager to see it. And when she looked at it for the first time her face fell. Sir, she said, that painting does not do me justice. The painter responded, madam, you do not need justice, you need mercy. That's what God says to us. You don't need justice, you need mercy. And so you can't even start talking about whether God is just or fair because he is just and fair. And justice means damnation, for all. Mercy means salvation for some, and God gives it through Jesus Christ. And that is Paul's explanation. He says, It doesn't depend on how hard we try, or how much we want it. It doesn't depend on man's desire or effort. It depends on God's mercy. And that's what he told Moses long ago, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. And that was part of the revelation of God's own name, Jehovah. 

Now, the Scripture says to Pharaoh, I raised you up for this very purpose that I might display my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Therefore, God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy. And he hardens, whom he wants to harden those words, He has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens when he wants to harden, are very, very hard to swallow. And Michael Horton, now a theologian says that when he was a young man, he was reading the Bible. And he came to that verse. He has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens who he wants to harden. And he slammed his Bible shot, and he threw it against the wall. And then he said, as he thought about it, and pondered, he thought he began to get God's message. And the message was this. I'm God. You're not deal with it. God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy. He hardens who he wants to harden. He's God. You're not. You better just learn to live with that. In the case of Pharaoh, God told Moses before Moses ever went to Egypt, that he was going to raise up Pharaoh and display his power. And again, and again, we read that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, we read also that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and he was fully responsible for that. But God hardened his heart too. And he made Pharaoh stern and strong beyond all human endurance as those planes came upon him because God had his own purpose in doing that, and God had the right to use Pharaoh and to harden him in that manner. Now, God could use pharaoh that way.

Think of Judas. Judas was a man whom God used, God allowed Satan to enter into the heart of Judas, and to betray Jesus Christ, and to offer Jesus Christ up as the sacrifice for the sins of the world. But Judas himself was possessed by Satan, committed suicide and what to hell. Judas was a man, who was bypassed, Jesus chose many to be as disciples, he chose Judas to be among their number, but for a different purpose. And Judas had started out as a thief, as a crook, as a critic of somebody who did something kind for Jesus. And it got worse and worse. And finally, he was right for Satan to come in. And God could still use it. 

Now, think of it this way. If you had, if you were a police chief, and you found out that one of your officers was crooked, you could just let him go on. And you might choose to do that. And that would not mean you were bad, necessarily. You might think, well, if I let him keep on going and getting even worse, I'm going to find out who some of the other bad guys are. I'll find out what crime bosses this crooked cop is dealing with. I'll find out what other crooked cops he's associating with. And after I've used him for my own purposes, then I'll bring him in and punish him. 

Bible says God can use Pharaoh, or Judas or anybody else, for his own purposes. He can have mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, but he can also harden who he wants to harden and glorify himself, even through their judgment. And in the case of Israel, at the time of Jesus, he could harden some of them, and he could use that for the purpose of bringing the salvation in Jesus to more and more Gentiles. God has his own purposes, whether they are the purposes of mercy or the purposes of hardening. Well, then one of you will say to me, Why then does God's still blame us? For who resists his will? If God decides something who can do anything different than what God has decided? But who are you, oh, man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it? Why did you make me like this? Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same ones with clay, some pottery for noble purposes, and some for common use? I want you to notice something. I want you to notice the question that's being asked, Why Does God still blame us? If he is so sovereign in all of this? Let me just ask you, does the gospel you believe and teach, ever make anybody asked this question? If it doesn't, you probably aren't preaching the gospel the way Paul preached it. Okay. Hear what I'm saying? When Paul preached, for example, the gospel that were saved by faith in God's grace, and not by our own works, some people would object, well, shouldn't we go on sinning so that grace may abound? Paul had to deal with questions like that in his epistles? Because that was the kind of question that people would ask, when they heard him preach salvation by faith in Christ alone, and not by their own works. And so they'd hear that message. And they'd say, Well, shall we go on sending the grace way around? Now, if nobody ever asks you the question, Well, does that mean we can just get away with sin, then you probably haven't preached grace and faith in Christ as freely as it should? Now, once the questions asked, you still have to deal with it. 

But now my point here is, if you have preached about election in a manner that says, Well, God just kind of looks ahead in time and sees what we're going to do. And then he responds to us accordingly. Nobody would have raised this objection, would they? They would raise it only if they are told He has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy and He hardens whom He wants to harden, and he is the complete authority on all this. That's only then the ask the question, well, then how can God still blame us for who resists His will? At that point, the Apostle, he's willing to take various questions and address them. It's not always wrong to ask tough questions. But there does come a point when the questions have to end, especially when you're starting to judge God. And so Paul says, Who are you Oh, man, to talk back to God, he is, the one who is in charge, God is the Creator. And the first word belongs to God, the creator, before the foundations of the world. God made his decisions. And he had the first word, God is the judge. And at the end of the world, God gets the final word, we need to get used to that God is God. I'm not. He's the creator, I'm the clay. He is the judge of me and of you, I'm not his judge. And so we need to understand that whatever is hard for us to understand, and whatever is even harder for us to accept or like, the fact remains that God is supreme, and he cannot be blamed for the things that he does. He is perfectly good. And we are responsible, when we resist His Will we may not understand why or how that works. 

But the Bible teaches the absolute sovereignty of God and the total responsibility of humans when we resist His will. What if, what if God chooses to show His wrath and make His power known boar with great patience, the objects of His wrath, prepared for destruction? What if he did this, to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of His mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory? Even us, whom He also called not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles? So Paul isn't saying, I know the explanation for sure. And this is it. He just saying, Hey, here's one possible thing to consider what if? What if God wanted to make his wrath known? Now, again, some Theologians want to be too nice, and they want to say God doesn't have any wrath against sin. What if God wants to make his wrath and power known? Maybe he has some sinners that he chooses not to save simply in order to display His power and His wrath against sin, and he puts up with them, he has his own purposes for them. But the reason why they were brought into existence in the first place is to display something about God. And what if he wanted to make the rich of His glory known to the objects of His mercy, and not just Jews, but Gentiles too. So God displays His wrath and His mercy. And he does that out of his electing love, and also out of his hardening wrath in dealing with the objects of His wrath. Now, this is a difficult passage, we have to be careful not to draw the wrong conclusions from it, but we also need Need to accept God's revelation as it is? Not as we'd like to make it up? It gives us straight answers to some hard questions. Does the unbelief of some in Israel or in the modern case, does the unbelief of people also in many parts of Western Europe or America mean that God's gospel failed? No. 

The gospel saves those whom God has chosen. It's that simple. This the chosen the elect are being saved. They are responding to the gospel. Is God unfair? No. under God's law as sinners, we're all doomed. And God freely chose, chooses to show either wrath or mercy but either choice, whether he chooses to show a sinner wrath, or chooses to show mercy in Christ crucified, either choice is fair, it's just God is not violating justice by giving sinners punishment. And he's not violating justice, by giving sinners salvation if the punishment has been laid on Jesus Christ. So God is not unfair. Can God blame the hardened? Yes, he can. He is the Creator, He is supreme. We're not. He's the judge. He judges as for our choices, we can't judge him for his choices. 

One characteristic modern approach to God, as CS Lewis explained a few decades ago is that men put themselves as the judges and put God in the dark and make God the defendant. And so we think we're going to judge God, what a disastrous mistake. God is the judge, we're not. And we need to learn to deal with that. Now, having said all that, from Romans 9, I don't want to quite leave it just there. Let's look at a little fuller picture very quickly from Romans 10, and 11. In Romans 10, and 11, we learn some other things that God reveals. One is that we are responsible to accept the gospel. If you understand what the Bible says about God's election, and his hardening, you might say, well, then just whatever happens, happens, but that's not how the Bible deals with it. In the course of explaining all of this, God makes it very clear that the Gospel comes nearer to us, and we're responsible to respond in faith. And in Romans 10, it says, The word is near you. It's in your heart, it's in your mouth. And if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. 

So we have this responsibility to respond to the word with our heart, and with our mouth, and don't let any understanding of the doctrine of election or predestination or hardening take away that responsibility. Another thing, we are responsible as Christians to spread the gospel again, in Romans 10. Paul says, Now, how are they going to call on somebody they haven't believed in? And how are they going to believe in somebody they've never heard of? And how are they going to hear unless somebody preaches to them? And how are they going to preach unless somebody sends them? So Paul very clearly shows the responsibility to spread the gospel. Paul, himself believed powerfully in the doctrines of election and of hardening. And Paul preached the gospel more vigorously to more places than any missionary who ever lived. And since then, there have been people who understood these doctrines of God's sovereignty, and nonetheless, were mighty missionaries. And I shouldn't have even said, nonetheless, because of belief, in God's sovereignty, they were mighty missionaries. 

On one occasion, Paul was in a city, and he wasn't getting any results. And the Lord came to him one night and said, Paul, don't give up, keep on going. I have many people in this city, get that? They aren't responding yet. But God has them there. They're chosen, and God is going to be moving them to respond to Paul's message. So Paul stays there. And it keeps on going. William Carey, who is often called the father of modern missions, was having a discussion with some ministers when Carrie was only a young man, and they were wondering, what should we talk about today? And Carrie said, Well, let's talk about the duty to bring the gospel to the heathen. And one of the old ministers who was in a person who really believed in the doctrine of God's sovereignty, but didn't listen to the responsibility to accept or spread the gospel. He said, If God wants to save the heathen, then God will do it. And he took that to mean that we didn't even have to talk about missions or sending people to other nations to tell them about Jesus.

Well, William Carey was not a hyper Calvinist in that sense. He believed in God's election. He was what they call the particular Baptists so carry believed the doctrine of election as I've just been talking about it, but he believed that God Calling him to bring the gospel because how are they going to believe in the one they've never heard of. And so he served in India for years without anybody responding positively to the gospel in the conviction, that eventually some would. And they did. And this belief in God's sovereignty is what keeps us going, when our human efforts haven't won anybody over. Because when all our efforts are exhausted, and we've preached the gospel, we've witnessed to somebody, when we're done doing our best, God may just be getting started to use what we've been bringing. So we have this responsibility, first to accept the gospel, and then to spread the Gospel. Another thing keep in mind, this was about the problem of is Israel and its widespread unbelief. But Paul says! Now keep in mind, I'm talking about this problem where a lot of Israelites don't believe, but I want you to keep a few things in mind first, not everybody has rejected the Gospel, there is a Jewish remnant chosen by Grace, I'm one of them, says, Paul. And there are others too, who are Jewish, who are walking with Jesus, who accept Him as Messiah. And in every age, there have been people from the Jewish nation who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. So there's never been a total casting off of Israel. Also, there's something else going on, says, Paul, during this time when most of Israel is hardened. 

There's a great expansion of the gospel to the Gentiles. And if I could draw an analogy, though, not putting it at the same level of Scripture. In our own time, as many in Europe and America have been more secularized, we nonetheless find that while some are being hardened, God is having mercy in areas that previously weren't as reached by the gospel with millions upon millions in Africa, and various parts of Asia, coming to faith in Jesus Christ in areas where previously, Christianity was hardly known at all. And so God can use this partial rejection and hardening of one people to bring many, many from another people in. And so Paul says, This is what God was doing in in that era, and that through later centuries, as well, where many Jewish people were not accepting Christ, nonetheless, many of the Gentile nations had had a lot of converts to Christ. And a final thing Paul points out in Romans 11, inspired and revealed by God is that there's going to be a vast future conversion of Jewish people. And so all Israel will be saved. He says, and so we can put what Paul said in its wider context that Israel is not totally rejected. There's a partial remnant that's chosen, that even the hardening of Israel is being used for great purposes and saving many Gentiles, and that there is going to be a great end pouring of Jewish people still into the kingdom of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul also says in all of this, that no group can claim superiority to another group. It's only through humble faith that we are saved. He knew some Gentiles were gonna say, well, Jewish people were broken off of the vine, and we were so that we can be grafted it, aren't we great? And Paul said, You better consider the kindness and sternness of God. 

God is kind to you, but he can also be stern, if you get boastful, or if you think it's because of you and not because of His mercy. And then, finally, we must in all of this when we tried to understand as much as we can be willing to live with some loosens things that we can't explain. There is a great mystery. In Deuteronomy 29:29, the Bible says, The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and our children forever. There are certain things that are revealed and we must be careful in this whole area of the chosen and the hardened not to draw too many conclusions beyond exactly what the Bible itself says, We must leave a good many things, a mystery and be able to live with loose ends, until God reveals more when it comes again. And in all of that, as we honor God's mystery and our own limited knowledge, we must also adore the majesty of God. Here's how Paul ends that whole section in dealing with it in Romans 9-11. At the end of Romans 11. The Apostle says, Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, How unsearchable is judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor who has ever given to God, that God should repay him, For from him and through him. And to him are all things to Him be the glory forever? Amen!