The People Of God | Children Of The Promise

Welcome to the first Princess Sermon Podcast, where each week we dive into scripture, wrestle with truth, and discover how faith intersects our lives.

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Hey, let's dive into today's message together.

Well, good morning.

Good to be with you.

This is not the easiest passage to preach on.

If you were raised Presbyterian, though, the doctrines of predestination and election should be uh old hat to you.

So uh anybody raised Presbyterian here?

You want to come up and preach this passage?

All right.

Let's pray.

Lord, uh speak to us through this text by the power of your spirit.

Uh drive home into our hearts the truth of your sovereignty and your goodness and your love.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So two key doctrines that mark reformed theology are predestination and election.

They're shrouded in mystery, but they probe the deep thoughts of God as revealed in the scriptures, and they help Christians to ponder the ways of God that go beneath the surface of life.

Yet, not surprisingly, because their full meaning is often difficult to grasp and sometimes controversial, preachers often skip by them.

However, today as we continue our year-long study of Romans, we begin a new eight-week series entitled The People of God on Romans 9 through 11.

Romans 9 contains, without a doubt, uh the most concentrated scriptural teaching on the themes of election and predestination.

And as we open this morning with the first of the series, 9, 1 through 13, uh, we'll tackle these subjects by the Apostle Paul.

So who knew the Apostle Paul was a closet Presbyterian?

I've been looking forward to this time with you.

Having worked on this sermon now for some 35 years and nine months, ever since Cindy and I moved over to Durham, England in 1990 with our then three little kiddos to pursue a PhD in New Testament Studies.

My eventual thesis had the title Paul's Understanding and Use of the Concept of Election in Romans 9 through 11.

You can see a bound copy there.

And here's the abstract page.

Every thesis needs to have an abstract page.

Try to tell you what you're gonna be reading about.

Um, good news: a full copy of my thesis will be handed out to each of you upon exit this morning.

Just kidding.

The Apostle Paul was forced to deal with these mind-bending truths of election and predestination because of a quandary concerning Israel.

As we saw last week with the sermon on the end of Romans 8, Paul concludes his teaching there on the tenacious love of God toward his people who belong to Christ Jesus.

Remember those promises that Paul uh relates to us.

If God is for us, who can stand against us?

We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

And as he ends that last paragraph, I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So this soaring crescendo of love, joy, and hope.

And then we have this marked change when we start chapter 9.

Listen, Paul says, I speak the truth in Christ, I'm not lying.

My conscience confirms through 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 people, those of my own race, the people of Israel.

So Paul here says the crisis regarding Israel and its rejection of her Messiah is so serious, it's of salvation significance.

If I could bargain with God, if I could uh say to God, I'll forfeit my own salvation in Christ, if you will promise to save my people, Israel, I would do it, Paul says.

I would consider becoming anathema, uh cursed by God for the sake of my people.

But of course, that's not possible.

And this topic comes up because it's almost as if after all the applause and cheers die down at the end of Paul's rousing speech in Romans 8, a critic stands up and says, Okay, Paul, great words on God's faithful love to Christians.

But God made the same kinds of promises in the Old Testament to the Jews and even sent them the Messiah.

But look what's happened to them.

Most of them have turned their back on Jesus and God has hardened their hearts in judgment.

If God could do that to Israel, might he not do the same to Christians at some point in the future?

It's a great question.

Before I answer that, I want to share with you a recent, somewhat embarrassing story.

There's a point to it, no.

Uh two months ago, I headed out from home early in the morning to come down here to the uh to church a bit early.

Um I had my car key, fob, and attached keys in my hand as I got into the driver's seat, and I already buckled my seatbelt.

I was too lazy to try to force the keys back into my pocket, so I just threw the car fob and keys on uh the driver's seat between my legs, figuring that'll keep me from forgetting them in the car when I get out, because I'll brush against them.

Sure enough, by the time I got here to the parking garage, I'd forgotten about the keys.

But when I stopped the car and got out, I did brush against the keys.

I heard them jingle.

I thought, oh, yeah, there they are.

So that's the these are the keys and key ones.

It's a it's substantial.

It's right here.

Uh but uh so I remembered that the keys were on the seat, so I turned after I got out of the car and looked down on the seat, but there were no keys there.

I thought, oh great, maybe I just brushed them off the the seat onto the uh floor between the seat and the door of the car.

So I looked down there, nope.

I thought maybe they fell forward uh and maybe beneath this the seat.

So I crouched down and looked in the front little well there and in this under the seat, front seat, no keys.

Thought maybe I brushed them off uh outside the car and they dropped down onto the pavement.

So I crouched down and looked under the car, no keys.

This is strange.

So I looked under the car parked next to me, thinking somehow maybe I really brushed them off and they drifted under the car uh next to me.

Nope, no keys there.

Um so I was starting to get a little worried now.

I looked in the front console and between the console and the driver's seat, no keys there.

Uh I opened the back door of the driver's side.

I looked under the front seat in the back, thinking maybe somehow they'd fallen back there.

Nope, no luck.

Uh I was getting really worried now, so I opened the other doors, passenger side doors, and I looked everywhere that was visible in the car.

No keys.

Uh I figured maybe somehow I'd forgotten and I'd picked up the keys and put them in my jacket pocket or my pants pockets.

So I patted down the pockets, no keys.

Now I was really worried.

And so I did a full pat down: shoulders, arms, chest, torso, back, rear pockets, down my legs, no keys.

And finally, in desperation, I patted between my legs.

Lo and behold, there were my car keys.

Somehow, as I brushed across them, the key ring had embedded itself in the upper inseam of my pants.

And there they were hanging.

Talk about embarrassing.

I was I'm so glad it was early in the morning.

Nobody else was in the uh walking by in the garage as I bent over and twisted that key ring until finally it came loose from the inseam.

I didn't take a picture of that.

You'll have to imagine that on your own.

Well, why do I tell you this story?

Uh, for two reasons.

The first is I hope that by association now, whenever you hear of the doctrine of election in the future, it'll bring a smile to your face.

But the second reason is more important, and that is sometimes the key you're looking for is the last place you'd imagine.

For Paul, the key to solving uh the conundrum regarding Israel's rejection of the gospel lies in God's purpose of election.

The last place most Jews would look.

After all, they were God's chosen people, the offspring of Abraham.

They had the right pedigree, they had the right bloodline, they knew the law and the traditions.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were their patriarchs.

God must love them, they thought, for he had favored them over the Gentiles.

But Paul argues in verses 6 through 13 of our passage, that God never promised that he would save all ethnic Israel, all the descendants of Abraham.

Through his sovereign design, God chose to save a subset of his descendants, of Abraham's descendants, those who would be called children of promise.

And these constitute the true Israel of God, those who demonstrate true faith in the God of their fathers, because God himself has turned their hearts to him.

Not all Israel is true Israel, but only the children of promise.

And Paul demonstrates this by reviewing the history of the patriarchs.

In Genesis 12, God chooses a pagan man in Mesopotamia out of hundreds of thousands, and he calls this man to move to a land that God will show him, and he promises to make of this man Abram a great nation, through whose descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

Abraham obeys.

In Genesis 15, we discover that Abram's wife, Sarai, is barren, and Abram assumes that he's going to have to make his slave Eliezer his legal heir so that the promise of God can come true.

But God says to him, No, your own son will be your heir.

In Genesis 16, Abram remains childless through Sarai's barrenness, and the two decide in a not unusual arrangement of the day that Sarai would offer to Abram her slave girl, an Egyptian maid named Hagar, so that Hagar might offer Abram, bear him a son on Sarai's behalf.

Indeed, Sarai conceives and bears a son who will be named Ishmael.

But because Abram was trying on his own to make God's promise come true, the Apostle Paul, when he looks back on that story, thinks of Ishmael as a quote, child of the flesh, that is one whose life symbolizes human striving to produce naturally what only God can produce supernaturally.

So in Genesis 17, it's now thirteen years later, uh Ishmael is uh celebrating his bar mitzvah.

God reappears to Abraham and reaffirms to him his covenant promise.

I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

And God renames Sarai Sarah, and he declares, I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her.

I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations, kings of people shall come from her.

Well, she's been barren her whole adult life.

Abram falls on his face and he laughs to himself.

Right, he thinks, I'm almost a hundred, Sarah is almost ninety.

How could this be?

It will happen, God says, and you will call the boy Isaac, which means he laughs.

A short while later, in Genesis 18, God appears again to Abraham at his tent, where where God once again makes this promise of a miraculous pregnancy and birth.

And this time Sarah is inside the tent near the tent flap and she overhears God's promise.

She too laughs in unbelief.

Who can blame her?

But God counters, is anything too hard for the Lord?

By next spring I will return to you, and Sarah will be holding a son.

Genesis 21 records the Lord's return and the promised birth of Isaac.

Though Abraham himself is understandably attached to his 13-year-old son Ishmael, God tells him to turn his attention to his wife Sarah and his newborn son, because by God's election, through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

Now, Paul uses these Genesis accounts to emphasize God's sovereignty in shaping who will be part of his chosen people.

But a Jewish opponent listening to Paul might uh might respond Of course God chose Isaac over Ishmael.

Ishmael was a half-breed, after all, born of an Egyptian slave girl and not born of Sarah, Abraham's rightful wife.

So Paul says, okay, let's go to the next generation of the patriarchs and see God's continuing work of election.

Isaac now is fully grown, he's married Rebekah, she becomes pregnant with twins.

Jacob and Esau are both offspring of the same parents, both of the same bloodline, both in the same womb.

But even before they are born, God chooses one for his electing purpose and not the other.

Paul writes in verse 11, yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, in order that God's purpose in election might stand.

Esau's firstborn, and so according to Jewish law and tradition, he should receive a double portion of it, both the inheritance and the favor of the family.

But in God's sovereign plan, God reverses this by declaring, the elder will serve the younger, and Jacob have I loved, Esau I have hated.

On top of that, Paul notes that God's election of Jacob over Esau occurs before birth, that is, before they had done anything, good or evil.

In other words, God's choice of Jacob over Esau had nothing to do with anything inherent in either boy, but rather rests simply in the mystery of God's sovereign plans.

Verse 12 underlines that God is not making his choice on the basis of reward for good works, but rather that God, in extending his call upon one life, but not upon the other, was determining the destiny of Jacob as the one through whom God's saving purposes would continue.

That's kind of mind-bending.

Perhaps you're thinking at this point, well, if salvation is all God's decision, and if all human beings are completely in God's hands as to whether they're chosen or rejected, if he could therefore save all human beings if he wanted, why doesn't he?

Why are some chosen and others rejected?

Why doesn't he choose all for heaven?

It's a great question.

I'd love to answer it.

But Paul saves his answer for the second half of Romans 9.

So you have to come back next week.

And Pastor Tim will make everything clear.

I believe the doctrine of sovereign election because of passages like this one today, and because of other texts teaching, for instance, uh by Paul in Ephesians 2, 1 through 5, that by nature none of us is fit for the kingdom of God.

That is, we are all, as Paul says, spiritually dead in our sins and trespasses.

And by nature, we start out life as children of wrath, with no capacity to kick start our own way into the new life that only God can pour into us through his Holy Spirit.

On our own steam, by our own decisions, we would never choose to surrender our lives to Jesus or to love God rather than the world.

But I believe these doctrines also, beyond the scriptural witness, because personally speaking, I have no other way to explain how I became a Christian.

Perhaps you can relate in your own life, but for me, I think what are the odds that a little boy born to a Syrian Muslim father, raised in the heart of fundamentalist Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia, molded by Sharia law, then mesmerized around age 14 by the world of Eastern mysticism, and trafficking in that to the point at age 19 of traveling to India to study classical yoga under an aged Brahmin caste guru, all the while being schooled at Stanford University in analytical Western philosophy.

What are the odds that suddenly at age 20 I would do a complete reversal and become a resolute follower of Jesus Christ?

If God operated on the basis of odds, my goose would have been cooked long ago.

But I've discovered in the scriptures proclaim that God seems to delight in taking basket cases and turning them into gift baskets.

He demonstrates his glorious mercy by reversing lost causes, by taking what is dead and bringing it to new life, by rebuilding lives that have imploded.

He rejects or opposes the self-sufficient and gives grace to the humble.

As Paul reminded the Corinthians, consider your call, brothers.

Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many of you were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts boast of the Lord.

Here perhaps is the key to understanding the electing purpose of God.

In his sovereignty he tends to choose those individuals through whose lives he can most clearly demonstrate his glory, whether it's through his power, his mercy, his wisdom, or his love.

And God's electing choice always results in certain effects in the lives of the elect.

You may be wondering during this message about yourself, has God chosen me?

It's a common question.

How would I know?

Well, here are five quick signs of God's work in the lives of the elect.

First, humility and wonder.

The recognition that nothing in me warrants God's mercy, that I'm as prone to sin and darkness as any other person, and that given the appropriate circumstances, I could have turned out to be a Charles Manson or my nasty.

Neighbor down the street.

If I cannot say of another misguided human being, there but for the grace of God go I, then I haven't yet understood the depth of my own depravity, nor the wonder of God's grace offered to make me his son or daughter.

But when I grasp the truth of God's electing purposes, uh that that uh births within me a newfound humility and wonder.

Secondly, gratitude.

Knowing that we don't deserve any gifts from God, we receive with gratitude his manifold kindnesses.

God's call upon our lives fills us with thanksgiving that he has claimed us as his own and leads us to praise him more deeply.

St.

Augustine once said, A Christian should be an allelujah from head to toe.

And one of our great hymns of the faith declares, Ye chosen seed of Israel's race, ye ransomed from the fall, hail him who saves you by his grace and crown him Lord of all.

The life of God's elect people should be a life of gratitude.

Third, we embrace the family of God.

To be chosen as God's child is to belong to his whole family, not just to God.

The Christian life is not a solitary journey.

By God's grace, we develop a growing love for the church, recognizing that we are meant to walk together in life.

Another great hymn puts it, elect from every nation, yet one or all the earth.

We belong together in the unity of God's family.

Or, in the words of the British hymn writer Brian Jeffrey Leach, we are God's people, the chosen of the Lord.

I always smile whenever I sing a hymn of Leach's, because my wife Cindy, before we met, had briefly dated Brian Jeffrey Leach.

I have no doubt that Brian was chosen by the Lord, but he was not chosen by Cindy, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Fourth, a newfound purpose.

To experience God's election in your life is to discover your why, to live for the glory of God.

According to Paul's writings in Ephesians 2 10, as one of God's chosen, you are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand, that you should walk in them.

As Christians, we are called to shine with the light of Jesus in a world cloaked in darkness, pointing people to his offer of love.

We have a newfound purpose.

And then lastly, a secured destiny.

To be chosen by God is to gain assurance of your eternal destiny with God.

You are bound for glory.

As we saw in Romans 8, 29 and 30, paraphrased a minor minor amount, Paul wrote, You whom God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be firstborn among many brothers and sisters, and you whom he predestined, he also called.

And you whom he called, he also justified, and you whom he justified, he also glorified.

God's chain of salvation is unbroken.

He who began a good work in you will bring it to fulfillment at the day of Jesus Christ.

Brothers and sisters, if you have faith in Jesus, love for God in your heart, and the desire to live for his glory, then you may rest assured that you are one of God's elect, because these things cannot be generated by the fallen human heart, but are supernatural gifts to those who are the promised children of God, which he gives to draw us to himself.

But if you don't yet find these qualities within you, please don't despair.

If you desire these things to be in your heart, if you want these gifts from God, that in itself is a sign that God is at work within you.

And so I encourage you, I urge you, open, throw open the doors of your heart to Jesus Christ as much as you know of him, and watch him go to work, drawing you as a child of promise into the chosen people of God.

Let's pray together.

Lord, your ways are beyond our ways.

We marvel at.

We rejoice at.

We thank you with all humility and uh with deep gratitude that we belong to you and that your hand of salvation upon us will never let us go.

May we always sing your praises.

We pray, Father, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Hearing God's word is just the beginning.

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What challenged you today?

Maybe it's surrendering something, stepping into community, or simply trusting Him more deeply.

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Act on it today.

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