Israel and God's Own Choosing - Romans: Book of Revolution

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

So turn in your Bibles to Romans 9, and I'm not kidding that Romans 9 is one of the hardest chapters in the Bible, and I will do the best that I can with it.

But, you know, you that are guests with us, we are a chapter by chapter, verse by verse church.

You may not have been in a church like that, but we just go through the Bible and we're in Romans.

And Romans is the hardest theological book in Scripture.

So we've got the hardest book in Scripture and the hardest chapter in the hardest book of the 66 books of the Bible.

So, hey, we're really, everybody smile, we're gonna really have fun today.

Okay.

So we're taking it.

We've had a reprieve.

So Romans 1 through 7 is really tough part.

Then Romans 8 is like at the halftime show.

Okay, that's like the band came out, you know, and um not like the halftime shows you're used to seeing at the Super Bowl, but the ones you grew up with when you were a kid in high school that were kind of fun, and actually you could take, you, you, your kids could watch it with you.

Um, but Romans 8 is one of the most powerful, beautiful, positive chapters in all of the Bible, but then we hit Romans 9.

But before we do that, look at Romans 8, 28.

And we know that all things work together for good, to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose, for whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called, whom he called, these he also justified, and whom he justified, these he also glorified.

So we're gonna be talking about predestination a little bit.

A better word might be the sovereignty of God.

How many of you in this room would like to serve a God that doesn't know the future at all?

Okay, so that settles it.

It's right there.

You know, because we can we can talk to the cows come home about predestination, foreknowledge, and all the complexities of that.

Let me just say if you're to if you're a note taker, you should write this over the top of Israel and God's own choosing, write mystery.

It's a mystery.

If you think you can figure out God, then you can't walk by faith.

And so we walk by faith because we can't figure out God, and it's because you're not God and I'm not God, but he is.

And so it's hard.

Some things are hard.

This is one of those hard chapters like that.

So you're gonna see some stuff that you're gonna go, whoa, okay.

And so I'm gonna do the best that I can to explain it, but look at this.

What he just said, that all things, everything works together for good.

For those who, one, love God, and number two, those who are called according to his purposes.

So if you're not loving God, everything's not gonna work out good for you.

If you're not called according to his purposes, I'm not guaranteeing that everything's gonna work out good for you.

But if you are, it is still gonna be hard because as we talked about that last time I spoke, life is hard.

Okay, it's difficult.

So you can either do it with God on your own, see how it goes for you, or you can go through hard with God, with his power, with his presence, with his strength.

And that person, it's gonna work out.

It's actually gonna work out for something good.

So God, in his sovereignty, is accomplishing his will through the Durham Report, through what's happening with the FBI whistleblowers, all the stuff that's happening in the different aspects of stuff that we look at and go, whoa, and we talk about the deep state and things like that, and probably by the fact that I use that word, I'll probably get canceled again.

Um I don't care.

Okay?

Um, but let's look at let's look at chapter 9, verse 1.

I tell the truth in Christ, I'm not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and continued 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.

Listen to this, he gives us like seven, seven aspects or characteristics of Israel.

They gave us the adoption, they gave us the glory of God, they gave us the covenants of God, they gave us the giving of the law of God, the service of God, the promises of God, of whom are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came.

So Christ came as a Jew also, who is overall and eternally blessed by God.

Amen.

So what he's saying here is that he's got this deep burden in his heart for the Jews, because he's a Jew.

He called himself a Pharisee of Pharisees.

He said, According to the law, I was blameless.

Can you imagine that?

You, none of us in this room could say that.

You know, that if in all the Ten Commandments, all the Levitical law, all that, you grew up Jewish, and you could say, far as I know, I'm blameless.

Now, later, in another passage, Paul talks about the fact that there was this one thing, actually in Romans, we talked about it weeks ago, that there was this one command that he could not get his heart around, and that was, Thou shalt not covet.

That was the struggle for Paul.

He could not live fully, but he said of himself, I'm blameless, I'm a Pharisee of Pharisees.

And yet, we know the story, he he encounters Christ in a mighty way.

It's covered in Acts chapter 9.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

And in that, a light shines upon him, and he's knocked down, and he's blind for three days, and then this guy comes to him and lays hands on him, and like scales, these scales came off his eyes, and he could see again, and he becomes a believer, and he was a radical, saved individual.

And for the next 14 to 17 years, we're not sure exactly, he goes up into the northern parts there of the uh Asia Minor, and we don't know what he did.

In Galatians, he talks about this, but he's alone with the Lord, he's grappling with his faith.

Then he comes back to preach, and as he preaches the gospel, the people, his people, who loved him the most before.

Remember, he had papers to go to Tarsus to go after, I mean to Damascus, he's from Tarsus, to go to Damascus to kill the Christians there, and in the process of that, he encounters Christ.

He is a rising star in Judaism.

He studied under Gamalael, he studied at the Harvard of the Hebrews at that time, there in Jerusalem, and now he is a hunted man.

He is gone from hero to zero, and over these 14 to 17 years, he is hounded.

Just hounded by the Jews.

I mean, actually, the Roman, under the Roman Pax Romona, the piece of Rome called the Pax Romana in Latin, there was a lot of freedom of religion, but among the Jews, no freedom of religion, let me tell you that.

And so he was persecuted everywhere, every town he went into.

And yet, look what he says.

I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were a curse for Christ, for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh.

I mean, that's amazing, right?

Isn't that amazing the kind of heart that Paul has for the people that are stoning him, the people that are torturing him, the people that are persecuting him?

I mean, that's a good lesson for us.

When we see what's happening in our culture, we see the different situations that are happening across our culture.

If Paul were here, he would say, Do you, are you compassionate enough for America that you would be willing to give up your salvation that America might be saved?

And that, I mean, that's a that's a heart level.

I don't get it.

I don't understand it, but that's what God has always done with his leaders.

Moses, talk about the worst job ever.

You go and you set everybody free, you take on all, you have plagues, signs and wonders, everything you could do with Pharaoh.

He deals with Pharaoh, right?

He sets them free, they get in the desert, everybody complains from that point on for 40 years.

And he and it's like it's ah, and yeah, and then God says, I'm gonna just take them all out.

I've just decided we're gonna take them out.

If I was Moses, I'd go, come on, man, let's do it.

I'll just step back, man, burn them up.

Let's set fire from heaven.

But what does Moses do?

He says, No, Lord, what would the nations think if after they were set free you then curse them?

No, give them another chance.

And he cries out to God, help our them.

Jesus weeps over Jerusalem.

A church.

May we be a church that weeps over Colorado Springs, that weeps over El Paso County, that weeps over Colorado, that weeps over America, and turn those things that frustrate us into intercession and prayer for our nation.

Paul's doing that.

And he's weeping for his people in such a beautiful way.

But it is not that the word of God is taking no effect, for they're not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children, because they're of 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.

So Abraham's descendants, or Israel, the nation's seed of Abraham.

Write this down.

This is really important.

This is the distinction I would make.

There's a difference between the descendants of Abraham and the seeds of Abraham.

There's a difference between the descendants of Abraham and the seed of Abraham.

So he's saying, look, I am Abrahamic, I come from the Abrahamic line called the Jews.

I'm a part of that, but there's a different kind of Jew as it relates to being children of God.

And those that are children, just because you're of the seed of Abraham doesn't mean you're a child of God.

I've heard this with Christians who love Israel, which is great.

But they've talked about that almost like the ethnic Jews are children of God.

They're not.

Okay, ethnic Jews are ethnic Jews.

Ethnic Ukrainians are ethnic Ukrainians.

You have to get saved.

You have to put your faith in Christ to become a child of God.

Now there's a, I guess there's a generic sense in which we talk about children of God, meaning that God created them.

Okay, so I understand that.

But let us not get confused in somehow giving salvation to someone just because their mother or their father was from a particular ethnic background.

Okay?

And so what he's saying is, look, he makes it very clear, those are not the children of God.

The children of God are those who are of the seed of Abraham.

And what he means that is he's speaking of Isaac.

Because remember the story.

Amazing.

Okay, somebody else want to teach you right.

But no, the reality is that we've all been confused, we've all struggled at times in our life because here's the deal: sometimes what God does is very confusing compared to what he tells us to do.

So he says to Abraham, look, look up at the sky, Genesis 12.

He's he's childless.

He goes, Look, I'm gonna give you a child through Sarah, of which from that progeny will become the descendants that will be like the stars of the heaven.

Go, okay, I'm good.

I believe.

Believe God for that, by faith, okay?

And then she gets older and older and older.

So then one day, Sarah goes, Look, it's not working out real good with what God said.

So I've got this, I've got this young uh servant girl named Hagar.

Why don't you go into her?

So he did.

Not many guys would pass up on that opportunity, right?

Coming from your wife.

So he goes into her in a fleshly moment, and she's born of the flesh.

It was a fleshly moment.

It was a weakness on Sarah, but it was a weakness in Abraham, and they have Ishmael.

Now, years pass, we're talking about 14, 15, 16 years, according to how you count it.

Still no son.

Then Sarah has Isaac, the promised seed, right?

Well, how do you like this?

You get the promised seed of which the stars of the heavens are going to come from, and then God says, kill him.

Take him up on this mountain, and I want you to sacrifice him to me.

Now, does that sound anything like that makes any sense?

My point is, is everything in the Christian life, everything is a mystery.

There's all kinds of turns and curves in the road that we don't understand.

And listen, write this down, write this down, don't miss this.

You gotta walk by faith.

You gotta walk by faith.

You can't walk by feelings, you can't walk by sight.

God's ways are not our ways.

And he's saying here that there's a promise that came through Isaac, and it's through that promise that the Messiah was gonna come.

It's through that promise by faith.

Abraham believed God.

Remember, that's the theme of Romans.

You guys that have been with me all through Romans, the theme of Romans is believing God and it being counted as righteousness.

That comes directly from Abraham, Genesis 12, looking up into the sky.

So that's what he's talking about here.

So the so the cryptic message of these verses is we believe God.

When you believe God and you walk by faith, it's counted upon you as righteousness.

So Genesis 22, write this down, it's really important.

Genesis 22 is where Abraham takes his son, his only son Isaac, to the mountain, Mount Moriah.

And now write this down, it's really important.

Three words are used for the first time in scripture.

Love is used, worship is used, and lamb is used.

So this is the prophetic word of the Messiah, because it is believed that is on Mount Moriah, that's the Temple Mount.

That's the Temple Mount.

Where the temple is when Christ came in, that mountain, the mountain of Jerusalem, is the Mount Moriah that Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed, prophetically, prophesying that a thousand years later, Jesus would be crucified on a cross right there.

That's the seed.

And that's what the Jews are missing.

That's what he's saying.

You're missing it.

That's the point.

Now he continues, and not only this, so not just that, but not only this, but when Rebecca, now Rebecca becomes Isaac's wife, 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 calls.

It was said to her, the older shall serve the younger, and it is written, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.

Now I want you to look at that verse, that last verse, which is verse 13, and I want you to write on the side, chosen.

Instead of loved and hated, I want you to put in the word chosen.

In other words, we could reread it.

Jacob I have chosen, but Esau I have not.

You say, well, that doesn't seem very fair.

Well, look at yourself.

It doesn't seem very fair either, does it?

You got chosen.

We don't mind being the chosen one, it's the people who weren't chosen.

Well, he's gonna tell you about why that's important, but the point here is that Isaac's the seed, and then Rebekah has twins.

Okay?

So she has Jacob and Esau.

And here this is another thing, it's a big mystery.

So the the firstborn gets the birthright.

That's according to the covenant promises in the Old Testament, and yet Esau is born before Jacob, right?

But Esau hates, I mean, literally despises his birthright, and Jacob wants it.

You could write over the top of that, fear of God.

So Jacob, whose name means supplanter, he's a rascal.

Jacob's a rascal, and so is Esau, but but Jacob's the secondborn, and yet that's where the seed, that's where the promise is gonna come from.

It's gonna come through Jacob, the supplanter, and he has to go into the wilderness, and he has this ladder come down from heaven, all the angels come and bam, you know, all this stuff happens, and then he wrestles with an angel and he dislocates his hip, and we could go, it's it's fascinating.

So read Genesis.

Okay, I don't have time to go into it.

The point is that's where the seed's gonna come from.

Here's what he's here's where he's driving, here's where he's driving this thing.

He's saying, look, I'm not God.

I love my people.

These promises, these, these, uh, the covenants that all came from the Jews.

They came from my people.

I love them.

But they've rejected the Lord.

They haven't chosen the seed, they've chosen descendants.

And that's why Jesus was always saying, you guys to the Pharisees, you say, Oh, we're of the bloodline of Israel.

He says, Well, look, the Lord can raise up rocks that are of the bloodline of Israel.

You have to walk by faith.

You got to put your faith in me and your trusted man.

What shall we say then?

Is there unrighteousness with God?

Because that would be your natural way of thinking here.

What, he he chose, he didn't choose, that seems unrighteous.

Certainly not.

For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.

So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.

For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I've raised you up that I may show my power in you, that my power may be declared in all the earth.

Therefore, he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens.

So ten times in Exodus it says that Pharaoh hardened his heart.

And ten times in Exodus, it says, God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

So you don't have a Moses unless you have a Pharaoh.

You don't see a Moses raised up unless God allows a Pharaoh to be raised up.

Now that gives me a whole lot of hope in our country.

Because God is at work with some of the weirdest stuff going on that I've ever seen to do a new work that we would not be shaken out of our slumber without us experiencing that work.

I've always said this.

But it's probably been years since I've said it, but I'm going to say it now.

So this is a good word.

Take notes on me.

Okay, this is a good word, really.

Satan is God's stooge.

Satan is God's stooge.

Satan, who thinks he's pretty cool, and he's kind of moving around right now across our country and across the world, is being actually used by God to set up circumstances to do a mighty work, a mighty revival, a mighty revolution of the Spirit of God across this globe.

So let me give you an example.

So when we look at the early missionaries coming out of Europe down into what they call the dark continent, which would be the Congo and the center part, the heart, kind of the heart, the dark heart, the dark-heartedness of Africa.

Many of them were martyred.

Many of them, the first group were Moravians, and then others came after that.

And yet look at Africa today.

I mean, there are whole nations right now that call themselves Christian.

I mean, it's not perfect, but nothing on this earth is gonna be perfect.

It's the already, but the not yet, of the kingdom.

But to look at Africa 200 years ago, where they're just where white colonists are coming in and just raping the land, uh making slaves in Europe and then in America and stuff, and then look at it today, is amazing that the kingdom does take over.

It takes over.

And so the kingdom is moving, and he's saying here, I'll have mercy on him.

Ever I want to have mercy on.

Don't tell me, but I've got mercy, and he's always had mercy on our country.

He's gonna work it out.

There is a work.

Don't get too caught up in the darkness.

Flip on the light.

So these so Liz and I were praying together today in the room, and we were in there where the fireplace is, and we were talking, and the lights were kind of low, and you just had the fireplace, and we were both saying, you know, you can sit here, we can sit here and study the darkness.

Oh, that corner's really dark.

That place over there, oh, that's really, really dark.

You know, or you can sometimes just flip on the light.

Flip on the light.

No more darkness.

So I believe God calls us to be more light flippers than dark studiers.

So the reason I say that is because we we're we're full of bad news.

That's how that's why you go to those podcasts, right?

I do it too, right?

And um and I'm just learning that I've got to renew my mind.

You've got to renew your mind.

And so the Lord is saying here that he raised up Pharaoh in order to raise up Moses.

Remember COVID?

See, a lot of you guys don't remember what we went through here because you're here because of what we decided to do.

We were just this, I don't know, three or four hundred-member church, something like that, and we, and Paulus told us to shut down everything, and we just did the research, and we said, that dog doesn't hunt.

And we opened up.

And we got all we got the early immune system, man.

And the antibodies.

And we were healthy, man.

Healthy.

Then we even did a worship conference during the day.

Crazy.

I mean, everybody got sick.

You gotta get sick to get the antibodies.

We're the healthiest congregation in this city.

I'll guarantee you that.

We are a healthy church.

What did we started studying stuff, we started becoming truth seekers, stuff we had never thought of before.

We started looking into it.

We started looking into a guy whose um name rhymes with Alchie.

And and and we and we studied him, you know.

And uh I didn't know anything about Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

at that time, and then I started studying him, and I could go on about Dr.

Malone and Dr.

McCullough.

You see what I'm saying?

What man means for harm, God uses for good.

All things work together for good.

And so if we'll stay in his purposes, if we'll stay in his love, the worst situation is gonna turn out to be the greatest miracles of God.

You can't get healed of cancer until you get cancer.

You can't go through a culture that's pressing in to bring freedom without feeling the pressure of being pressing in.

So don't give up.

Stay strong.

Verse 19, you will say to me then, Well, why does he still find fault?

For who has resisted his will?

Lots of people.

But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God?

Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, why have you made me like this?

Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

So he's saying here that God's sovereign, he's forming each one of you out of clay.

What lump of clay is going to tell the potter what to do?

And God, who's Lord over all, has formed you, he's forming you for a purpose.

And every one of you in this room have lumps in your clay.

I know some of you, and you're lumpy.

And you know me as your pastor, he's lumpy.

Lumpy people make the best people if they'll let the potter smooth them out.

And you can't get it.

I mean, can you imagine if you're like a chunk of clay, say, ah, ah.

I like that lump.

That lump's been with me for many, many years.

And the potter goes, that's right, and it's gone now.

Because I'm gonna need the clay.

I'm gonna need you because I'm forming in you this beautiful, this beautiful vessel for my glory.

That's what he does through Jesus Christ.

What if God wanted to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering, the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory of the vessels of mercy which he had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called, not of the Jews only, but also the Gentiles, as he also says in Hosea, I will call them my people who were not my people, and her beloved who was not beloved.

And it came to pass in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they may be called sons of the living God.

In other words, God was raising up actually the Jews.

So the Jews wrote these scriptures.

The scribes, I mean, when we found the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948 and 1949 in the Qumran caves, they found the greatest archaeological find in all of history because of the detail that Jewish scribes in honoring the scriptures gave to the writing of the scriptures.

We have that now, and we're just a bunch of idolaters and Gentiles who didn't have that.

But because the Jews, we now have that.

We didn't seek God, but God chose us.

He actually used the Jews to bring the rest of the world to Christ.

That's the descendants of Abraham.

You understand what I'm saying?

So when so, in other words, when Abraham looked up in the sky and he said, All these stars are like the descendants of Abraham, Abraham saw it as meaning the Jews, the Hebrews.

They weren't called Jews yet, but the Hebrews.

He's seeing it that.

But what he what he didn't know yet, because he he's on the other side of the prophecy, was that it was the seed of Abraham, the seed of Isaac, the seed of Jacob that would bring forth Jesus, our Messiah, that would take the gospel to the world, and men and women.

There's like two billion people in the world today that believe.

Some of them worship some different ways than we do.

They wear different dresses, they they have candles and bells and smells and all kinds of stuff, but they really believe in Jesus.

And remember now, in the first century, when this is being written, we're talking about a few thousand across Asia Minor.

We're talking about two billion today.

Do you think when when when 11 of the 12 disciples are being martyred for their faith, they could believe or conceive that 2,000 years later?

I mean, India is just, they're planting a thousand churches a day in India right now.

They're planting 500 churches a day in parts of Africa.

God's on the move.

It's pretty cool.

And he is accomplishing his will.

You're on the winning team.

I like being on a winning team.

Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel.

Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved.

And he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.

I think this is prophetic, but what we're gonna get to in the next couple weeks about a revival that's coming to the Jews.

And as Isaiah said before, unless the Lord of Sabiah had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom and we would have been made like Gomorrah.

So what shall we say then?

That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have obtained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith, but Israel pursuing the law of righteousness, but not attained to the law of righteousness.

Why?

Because they did not seek it by faith.

But as it were by the works of the law.

Jesus is either a stumbling stone or a cornerstone in your life.

Jesus is either a stumbling stone or the cornerstone in your life.

You can't have it both ways.

You follow him, he's the cornerstone.

Build your life on his word.

Righteousness, peace, and joy.

Stumbling stone, if you're gonna do it your way, you're gonna keep running from God, and it's gonna be dismal.

Because you can't do it.

And if you could, there was no need for a Messiah.

And because there's a Messiah, and we walk by faith, we put our trust in Him.

There's power.

There's power in your life, there's anointing in your life.

And you begin to discover the piece of clay that's being formed by the potter, where all things work together for good.

To those who love God and are called according to his purposes, whom he also predestined that they might be conformed to the image of his will.

Guess what?

Being conformed is always through hard things, not easy things.

So rejoice if it's hard.

Look past hard to the good things that God's doing in your life.

Thank you for listening to the Foreign for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.