God's Sovereign Saving Compassion (Romans 9:1-18)

Our gospel lesson comes from Matthew chapter 14, beginning at the thirteenth verse.

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

Now, when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.

But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, and healed their sick.

Now, when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, This is a desolate place, and the day is now over.

Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.

But Jesus said, They need not go away.

You give them something to eat.

They said to him, We have only five loaves here and two fish.

And he said, Bring them here to me.

Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing.

Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples.

And the disciples gave them to the crowds, and they all ate and were satisfied.

And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.

And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Saints, let's confess our faith in the words of the Apostles' Creed.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.

And let us pray.

Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your grace that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service.

Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

Amen.

So, friends, do you remember the first time, perhaps you were young, like a child like I was, when maybe it was a friend of yours, maybe it was someone older who knew better, came up to you and with a twinkle in their eye and a smirk on their face, offered a way of making a maybe it was that maybe there's a decision at hand.

It could go one way or the other, or maybe it was set up as a game, but this person had a coin in their hand and they said to you with a smirk this line Heads I win, tails you lose.

That's right.

So I remember the first time that happened to me.

Uh sheer optimism and determination was my first instinct.

I thought I got a 50-50 chance, and that sounds pretty good to me.

So we flipped, and you know what?

It goes to them.

That's fair.

There's one way to go or the other.

So then I took up a clause that children often do.

We say, best two out of three.

And so the next flip happens, and surely it goes to the other person.

So I encouraged, let's keep flipping.

We'll do best out of ten.

And of course, each and every flip goes to the other person.

And now my unbridled optimism is giving way to d to frustration.

It took me longer than it should have to catch on to what was really going on.

My frustration gave way further to a sort of disappointment until I finally realized that I'd been had, and now my disappointment gave way to a sort of betrayal of trust.

I trusted this person, I thought we were on even ground here, and now I realize they've had me since the get-go.

This has been an unwinnable setup since before I said yes.

Well, this feeling of a sort of childlike optimism, of a sort of uh of a can-do sort of uh spirit, giving way to a sort of disappointment, giving way to a sort of frustration, giving way to a sort of resentment.

Can this be how we feel when we read our passage in Romans 9?

Do we feel a little bit like this doctrine of election, this doctrine of predestination is a little bit like an unwinnable setup that has us, that has the reprobate those left outside salvation that has an unwinnable setup set up against them since the get-go?

Does our sort of optimism, our childlike yes to Jesus, give way to an excruciating, unceasable anguish?

Does it give away to a longing?

Does it give away to a sort of betrayal of trust because I thought God was compassionate, I thought he was just, and surely God wouldn't set up an unwinnable system like this?

How do we how we work through the doctrine of predestination and election says a lot, I think, about how we approach Paul, how we approach Scripture.

And I think we need to be so mindful to consider why it is that God, the Holy Spirit, has inspired this word, and what is it that God wants us to find today?

Is this an unwinnable setup?

I don't think so.

I think there's good news for us in this text, and I do think that there's good news for those we care about, those who are, those who don't know Jesus in this text as well.

Because when we talk about the lost, when we talk about the unsaved, we're not just talking about nameless, faceless people, are we?

We're talking about family members, we're talking about friends, we're talking about neighbors, coworkers, people we care very deeply about, people we long to see come to know Jesus in a saving way.

Is our God so callous and cruel as to set up an unwinnable system against those outside of salvation?

Or does this text show us something more about God's heart?

I think that this text witnesses to the fact that the doctrine of election, the doctrine of predestination, which is a thoroughly biblical doctrine, witnesses to God's sovereign saving compassion.

Election is God's sovereign saving compassion.

And that gives way to an assurance, an assurance of our own salvation.

This is a God we can trust, who really will deliver on what he's promised.

But it also gives way to a motivation for evangelism to share the good news that we ourselves have received.

And it shows us something about God's generous, gracious, compassionate heart towards the lost.

So on this very rainy Sunday here, let's dive into God's word in Romans chapter 9.

Romans 9 · chapter mention

Let's see something of our Heavenly Father's heart for those for his people.

So a couple of key words I wanted to find right off the bat before we dive into Romans 9, because there's a few important words here that are being used in very unfamiliar ways.

We don't use these words along these lines in the 21st century.

So when we talk about election, we're not talking about any kind of democratic process here, right?

Where God and his angels didn't get together in parliament and, you know, vote on who's going to be in the kingdom and who's going to be out of the kingdom.

We're not talking about any kind of democratic process.

Instead, we we could just as easily use this word selection.

We're witnessing to the fact that our salvation didn't come at our initiative.

Instead, it came at God's initiative.

God from before time determined to uh to extend his grace, extend his salvation to his people who will be gathered together in Christ.

That's when we talk about predestination, a predetermination.

God, since before time, has set himself on this task of salvation in this way through Christ.

It is an unconditional election.

That is, it's not earned.

There's nothing we did or would do that God saw in the future and thought, okay, that's a good enough person.

I'm going to bring them into the kingdom.

No, this is God's will for us in Christ, those of us who are gathered together in Christ.

It's unmerited, it's unearned election, God's sovereign, saving compassion.

And now when we talk about Israel, Paul's using Israel in a very nuanced way.

We're not talking about the modern nation-state of Israel.

Instead, we're talking about God's covenant people, the descendants of Abraham.

And we're going to discover that Paul uses Israel in two nuanced ways.

In one way, there's ethnic Israel, there's the biological descendants of Abraham who became this great nation.

But Paul wants to zoom in on a particular spiritual true Israel.

Israel is the God's covenant people in the Old Testament.

Verses 4 and 5, they've received the privileges of God's favor, of his selection, of his election among the nations.

Privileges like adoption, glory, covenants, law, worship, promises, patriarchs, that is, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, which ultimately lead us to Christ, our Savior.

This promise that God gave to Abraham all the way back here is going to lead to the fulfillment of our salvation in Christ.

Here's what Paul raises.

Paul takes this argument away that I don't think we would in 21st century Canada, so it can kind of catch us off guard.

We've been talking about life in the Spirit and security in Christ.

Now Paul wants to talk about his brothers and sisters, Israel, and what salvation in Christ means for them.

We wouldn't necessarily think to go this way, but we should follow Paul's train of thought because I think we're going to learn something important about our salvation, about how God works for our salvation.

So Paul's concern is for Israel.

He has unceasing anguish and great sorrow on behalf of his brothers and sisters, his fellow ethnic Jews.

So we know from the story of the Bible that God chose Israel to be a promised nation for the sake of the nations.

God is going to make this nation, Israel, a kingdom of priests, that's going to convey God's blessing and convey God's salvation to all the nations.

And yet, this ethnic Israel, this national Israel, not everyone is saved.

So it seems to Paul.

So is there a contradiction here?

There's a question of God's sovereignty.

God's promise to use Israel for the sake of salvation, and yet not everyone in Israel is saved.

Can God fail to deliver on his promise?

Becomes Paul's first concern.

Has God's promise failed the lost in Israel?

So this is where Paul makes an important move.

He makes a nuanced distinction between ethnic Israel and spiritual Israel.

Let's look at verse 6.

It is not as though the word of God has failed, says Paul.

That's pretty conclusive.

God's word does not fail, does not return to him empty.

For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

That is, those who belong to ethnic Israel.

Continuing in verse 8, this means that it is not the children of the flesh, that is the biological descendants of Israel, who are children of God, but the children of the promise.

God's chosen are counted as offspring.

What's Paul talking about here?

Paul is talking about the assumed laws of inheritance that his audience would be thinking about.

I mean, we've talked a little bit about these inheritance laws because we talked about what it means to be adopted as sons in Christ.

It's understood that the first son in every family is going to receive the inheritance.

They're going to receive the goods and privileges of their father.

So it would make sense that if God made a tremendous promise to Abraham, that that promise will get transferred to Abraham's firstborn son, Ishmael.

And yet God works in such a providential way that it's not Ishmael who furthers the line of promise along to Christ.

It's in fact Isaac, Abraham's secondborn son.

And now Paul's audience might say, well, you know, uh Ishmael, his mother was Hagar, and Abraham should have known better.

Sarah was the promised mother.

Okay, this is why Paul goes to Jacob and Esau, who share the same mother and Rebekah, who are twins.

They were in the womb at the same time.

Esau was born first, and Jacob followed, closely followed him.

He was holding on to Esau's heel.

And Paul makes the point that God, in his sovereign choice, chose to work the promise through Jacob and not Esau.

Family history witnesses to the fact that God works against our expectations.

The family history of Israel and Abraham's family witnesses to the fact that God works against what we assume sometimes.

That the promised line is not necessarily the firstborn, but it's according with God's sovereign choice.

So there's a couple things we could say at this point.

Because when we trace this argument along, we end up in verse 13.

We end up with a very sticky verse.

Did you guys that that surely that stuck out like a sore thumb to you?

Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.

Now, we need to look at this verse very carefully because it's saying something important, but on a first reading, we might not catch the full nuance of what Paul's talking about here.

This word hated is not to say that God, hmm, that God absolutely despises and wants nothing to do with Esau.

And instead, Jacob, Jacob's the golden child, right?

As though God has no heart for those who are outside the kingdom and just zooms in on the privileged few who are within the kingdom or whoever number that is.

That's not what Paul is talking about here.

Paul is using an exaggerated word, hated, to convey priority or preference.

God is working his promise through Jacob.

In that sense, God favors Jacob over Esau, but God still very much has a plan for Esau.

And if we look at the book of Genesis, we see Esau reconciling with his brother Jacob at Genesis chapter 23, and we see a list of Esau's descendants in Genesis chapter 36.

Genesis 23 · chapter mention Genesis 36 · chapter mention

God is clearly still at work in Esau.

And we have no reason to conclude that Esau is necessarily unsaved and reprobate and left outside God's plan of salvation.

We simply know from Scripture that God chooses to work his plan of salvation through Jacob.

But God works his plan of salvation through Jacob for the sake of Esau and for the sake of Esau's descendants and for the sake of the whole world.

See, the promise that God gives to Jacob that leads us to Christ is a promise for the whole world.

Even those, even though God chooses Jacob over Esau in terms of conveying his promise, God still very much has a heart for Esau.

I think we can safely conclude that from Scripture.

So what Paul wants these Romans Christians, Roman Christians to see is that the pattern of God's sovereign compassion through history challenges our assumptions and our expectations.

I think that that's good news for us.

Because even we, 21st century Canadians, can make huge assumptions and have huge expectations about who is in the kingdom and who's outside of the kingdom.

We might assume and expect that anyone who goes to church every Sunday or is particularly philanthropic or particularly good natured, clearly they're saved.

But surely those people, and we all have those people in mind from time to time, don't we?

Yeah, those people are for sure out of the kingdom.

My goodness.

Well, this word, I think, to us challenges some of our assumptions and expectations.

Election, God's sovereign saving compassion, extends to everyone.

It defies expectation, it defies assumptions, our human assumptions.

There is no one beyond God's sovereign saving compassion.

God's heart is for everyone.

So what does that mean for us?

I think that means we can pray.

We can pray as those with confidence, those who are on our heart, family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers who might seem millions of miles away from the kingdom.

God can work a saving, sovereign act in their life such that they come to know Christ in a saving way.

That's hope for us.

That's hope for us who want to share our faith and see others come to put their trust in Jesus as their Savior.

The way God works can defy our expectations, and the family history of Abraham and Israel witnesses to the fact that God overturns our expectations to weave together a promised thread that results into this new covenant family, the church, which is a multi-ethnic family.

This goes beyond just natural Israel.

Now Gentiles, non-Jews are included in this plan of salvation too.

And that's what Paul talks about in Romans chapter 4.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

And that's why in Galatians chapter 6, Paul can refer to the church as the Israel of God.

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

Within ethnic Israel, there has been a chosen spiritual Israel called forth into salvation.

And that spiritual Israel finds receives their Messiah in Jesus.

So God's working, his sovereign, saving compassion defies our expectations.

But you might say to me, this, well, Creighton, God is still God, and it seems to me like you're either elect or you're not.

You're either in the kingdom or you're not.

And it seems to me that there's no amount of praying that can change that.

So it seems rather cruel and callous for God to set the system up.

It seems it it nevertheless seems unwinnable, and it seems rather callous.

Well, I think Paul wants to answer this objection here.

I mean, we can acknowledge, yes, that God is God, that ultimately salvation belongs to the Lord, and it's his saving action, not our own willful exertion that saves us.

That's true.

But election is God's sovereign, saving compassion.

God is capable of saving, even beyond our expectations.

But election reveals God's compassion for the lost.

Election represents God's compassion towards those who are lost in sin.

It's true, not everyone is saved, but is God unjust?

Paul concludes, no, there is no injustice on God's part.

Let's back up Paul's argument and recognize, let's get our bearings.

Let's step back and let's look at the big map of the shopping mall.

Do you ever get lost in a shopping mall and you desperately need that directory and you need to see that little red dot that's telling you which footlocker you're next to?

Okay, let's step back and let's get a sense of where we're at in Paul's big argument in Romans.

Remember that Paul began in Romans chapter one by concluding that we are all of us lost in sin.

We are all of us in need of salvation.

We have all of us, Jew and Gentile alike, traded the worship of the Creator, who's blessed forever, for the worship of the creature.

We've chosen to idolize that which is not God.

We've chosen to set our lives for that which cannot provide life or salvation for us.

And whether that's money, sex, career, fill in the blank.

Whatever that looks like, we've chosen to worship that which is not God and trust in that which cannot supply.

So we all of us are recipients, righteous or rightly recipients of God's wrath, except that God has worked his salvation in Christ to call us into salvation.

This is why Paul writes about God's compassion and mercy.

It is undeserved.

It is not something we've earned.

It is not something God owes us.

But instead, election is God's sovereign saving compassion for those rebellious, sinful creatures that stuck their nose up at God, that rebelled against him, that are now being called back into the family.

It is the heart of a father who longs to receive the prodigal child back home and calls us to salvation.

Romans chapter 1 written witnesses the fact that we've been given over to this sinful hardness of heart.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

And that's the negative example, by the way, that Paul uses.

Paul uses a negative example of Pharaoh in verse 17.

Pharaoh's hardened heart consigns him to God's wrath.

And yet when we back that up and we look at Exodus, we see about 40 references to Pharaoh's hard heart.

And in those references, it seems to oscillate back and forth between God hardened Pharaoh's heart and Pharaoh hardened his heart.

So who hardened whose heart?

Did Pharaoh harden his heart, or did God harden his heart?

And the answer, I simply think, the biblical answer is yes.

Yes.

Pharaoh's heart was hardened.

Pharaoh was set against God's will, and he was set against God's purposes.

And in his stubborn, unrelenting rebellion against God, God handed him over to the desire of his heart.

Pharaoh's desire of his heart was to set himself against God.

God handed him over to that which he truly desired.

And friends, that's the witness of Scripture against us.

That God who has has has, in our sin, we've been given over to the desires of our hearts, the sinful desires of our hearts, such that we are, we will chase after the desires of our hearts in an infinite trajectory.

Away from God.

And friends, I just don't think there's any better way to describe the reality of hell.

It is being given over to the infinite trajectory of being, of pursuing one's desires that take us further and further and further and further away from God who is our life.

That's spiritual death.

And I think that parables like Lazarus and the rich man and Luke 16 witness to this reality.

So we can agree with biblical scholar Leon Morris when he writes that neither here nor anywhere is God said to harden anyone who has not first hardened himself.

God's heart, the hardening of heart that keeps us from salvation is God handing us over to our willful, stubborn refusal to yield ourselves to the saving grace of God in Christ.

And here's, I think another key point we can make here is just a couple verses after our reading concludes.

Paul uses the word prepared, and this is a very important word.

In verse 22 and 23, you can take a look at that on your own.

Paul uses this word two ways.

God has prepared salvation, and God is prepared, has endured with much patience, pardon me, vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction.

And even though in English that's the same word prepared, it's being used in two different senses.

See, in the Greek, preparing salvation for those who are within the kingdom, that's an active, that's that's an active verb.

God is actively preparing salvation.

And yet for those whose hearts are hardened, those who God has endured with patience, that is a passive prepared.

That's a passive verb.

God has given them over to the desires of their heart.

God is not delighted to consign us or consign anyone to judgment, to wrath.

And yet God, in his sovereignty, will hand us over to that which our hard hearts desire most.

We are all in the same boat, saints.

Apart from Christ, we all of us have desires of our heart that will lead us infinitely further away from God.

It's God's election, it's his sovereign saving compassion that calls those of us who are called in Christ to the kingdom, to salvation.

And that is a powerful act of God's fatherly compassion, his overwhelming grace and mercy, his sovereign justice that takes those who are sinfully inclined, such as us, and brings us into his family, brings us into the family of faith and into salvation.

God's sovereign saving compassion reveals not God's injustice, it reveals God's overwhelming mercy and compassion.

Because, friends, if we really want God's justice, we have only to read Romans chapter 1 to know where that will lead us.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

It will lead us to God's wrath, and yet God's mercy and compassion is for us.

He calls us to salvation.

This witnesses to the very heart of the problem in Romans.

We are powerless saints to save ourselves.

There is no striving, there is no exertion, there is no earning it that can grant our salvation before Christ.

We need God to dive into the pit after us, to rescue us, as it were, to pull us out of it.

Apart from God's sovereign, saving compassion and mercy, we are without hope.

That's why Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 2 that you and me, we, were at one time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Remember, the promise-bearers, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope without God in the world.

Friends, we see Paul's great sorrow for Israel here, don't we?

In verses 1 and 2, that great sorrow and unceasing anguish he has for his fellow Israelites.

He would rather be accursed and condemned on their behalf so that they could know salvation.

That's his desire.

And friends, Scripture witnesses to the fact that this was accomplished, not by Paul, not by Paul on our behalf or on the behalf of his fellow Israelites, but this was accomplished by Christ on our behalf.

Christ became a curse for our sake.

He took on our curse.

He took on the wrath and condemnation that we rightly deserved, so that he could suffer the death that we ought to die on our behalf.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, so writes Paul in Galatians 3.

And through him to reconcile all things, whether in heaven and earth, by making peace by the blood of his cross.

That's the hope of salvation.

Christ has become a curse on our behalf, so that by his compassion and mercy we can have a share in his resurrection.

We are saved and secured by his grace.

Paul writes again in Ephesians chapter 2 that by grace you have been saved through faith.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

It is not your doing, so that no one can boast, but it is a gift of God, not the results of work.

It's unconditional.

It is a free gift.

We have only to cry out for the mercy of God and yield our otherwise hardened hearts to receive this saving compassion of our sovereign God.

And so, friends, we can rest.

We can rest with assurance knowing that we're saved.

We can rest with assurance looking at our new life in Christ, looking at our baptism, looking at our union with Him who is the source of our life, and recognizing that, yes, God in Christ really, truly, fully, has completely saved me from my sin and his wrath.

And if we're unsure, we have only to look to Jesus to find that assurance.

This means election is not an unwinnable setup against us.

It is God's sovereign compassion to save us.

It is Jesus saying to us in John chapter 13, I chose you.

John 13 · chapter mention

That's what Christ would say to us today.

And this means not that we should slack on our evangelism because, hey, the elect are the elect, and those who aren't elect aren't elect.

No, this is assurance that God works against our expectations and beyond our wildest imaginations.

We can pray with great burden, with unceasing anguish, like Paul talks about in verses 1 and 2, for those we love and care about, that they would come to receive Christ and know him in a saving way.

Because God works his sovereign saving compassion, he can work beyond our wildest dreams, beyond our expectations.

Friends, we who are in Christ are recipients of God's sovereign saving compassion.

We know his fatherly love, we've been brought back into the kingdom.

Let's share that good news.

Let's not keep that buried away or under a basket or under a lampshade.

Let's let that hope shine for a world that desperately needs Jesus.

So, Father, we pray that you would inspire our evangelism, inspire conversations, give us opportunity to open our mouths and talk about Jesus, talk about the hope of our salvation.

Thank you, Lord, for the assurance of our salvation in Christ.

And Father, send us as those who have been called and claimed by you.

All of this we pray in Jesus' precious name.

Amen.