Welcome back to Barnett Bible Church. Join us this week as Pastor Hopkins continues his sermon series through the book of Romans. Good afternoon again. Turn with me, if you would, in your Bibles once again to the book of Romans, reading verses 14, 15, and 16 of Romans chapter 9. Please stand with me for the reading of the word of the Lord. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For He saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. And I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. Let's pray. Father, high above the whole world, We praise your holy name, and we seek your face. And Lord, we ask once again that the Spirit might be given to open our understanding as we open your word. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's be seated. So a couple of weeks ago, We ended our session with a quote from Charles Spurgeon from the late 1800s. And I wanted to begin with that quote today. I'll be quoting Spurgeon a few times in this message. Spurgeon said, I believe in the doctrine of election because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me, I would never have chosen him. And I'm sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterward." No doctrine of Scripture causes more offense to the pride of man, but this doctrine, except for the doctrine of the cross itself, The doctrine of the cross strikes at the pride of man because in the unregenerate state in which we are born, we don't think we need a Savior to die for our sins, or atone or make satisfaction for our sins, if we even admit any sins. The doctrine of election strikes at the pride of man Because in the natural state in which we're born, we tend to see ourselves as the masters of our own fate, whose eternal destiny lies in our own hands, not God's, even if we admit of Him. The doctrine of the cross humbles us when we come to understand that the justice of God that was due us was meted out on God's Son in our place. And that it's only by God's grace that any of us have been saved. The doctrine of election humbles us. when we come to understand that this grace by which we have been saved, as the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Timothy 1.9, was, quote, given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began. So it's a humbling doctrine. We pick up this afternoon in our sermon series on the book of Romans with verse 14. where the apostle Paul anticipates an objection to the things that he's been teaching. And then he asks the readers a question, what shall we say then? That is, what shall we say in response to the truths that I've been laying down from Scripture and from the history of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? What shall we say then? What shall we say in response to these things? That they're not all Israel who are of Israel, as we read in verse 6. That the children of the flesh are not the children of God, as we read in verse 8. That the divine favor rested upon Jacob and divine disfavor upon Esau and that before the twins were even born or did any good or evil. As we read in verses 11 through 13, what shall we say in response to these things. It makes us uncomfortable. It makes us uneasy. The children being not yet born, verse 11, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him that calleth, of God who calls. It was said unto her, that is to their mother, Rebekah, the elder shall serve the younger, And as it is written, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What should we say in response to these things? Was God's favor of Jacob and divine disfavor of Esau not based on any consideration whatsoever of their future foreseen works, faith, or performance? We're neither custom, in this case, the expectation that the younger will serve the elder brother or any future actions of these twin brothers taken into consideration at all? The text tells us they were not. So what should we say in response to these things? How should we think about this? What should we say? What should we think about this? The assertion that God freely chooses whom He wills and passes over whom He wills seems arbitrary to some, maybe even unfair. And Paul anticipates the objection. What we found thus far in our study of Romans 9 is that just as God's covenant with the nation of Israel separated them from every other nation and people, so God's electing love distinguishes between individuals in that nation. And not only individuals in that nation, but also individuals among all the nations. As we read further on in verse 24. Look at verse 24. "...that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which he beforehand, or afore, prepared unto glory, even us, says Paul, of course, writing to the believers at Rome, even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. But the question remains. The objection anticipated by the apostle hasn't been fully answered. It hasn't been removed. Is there unrighteousness with God? That's the question. That's the objection that has been placed on the table. Is there injustice on the part of God because the divine favor rests on one person and not another before they're ever born or have done any good or evil to merit it? Of course the question is rhetorical. The answer is contained within and the answer is incontrovertible. God forbid. It's the strongest language the apostle could use. Is there injustice on God's part because He chooses one and passes over another? Absolutely not, certainly not. God forbid, Paul says, that any would come to such a conclusion, banish the thought. Such a response is unthinkable, even blasphemous. and justice on the part of God. The whole of Scripture exalts God's absolute righteousness and justice in every respect and in every regard and His right to do with His creation whatever He wills. And to prove the point, Paul quotes God speaking to Moses in Exodus 33, 19. It's verse 15 in our text this afternoon. Paul says, listen to God's answer to man's objection. Is God unjust? Is there injustice on God's part? Is there unrighteousness with God? Verse 15, for he sayeth to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. This is Paul's answer to the critics, to all those who would respond, that's not fair. To those who would say, if God shows mercy to one person, he's obligated to show mercy to all people. Paul says, let God answer that objection. I will have mercy. on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." Paul says this is God's answer to those who would bring a charge of injustice upon Him. The passage that Paul quotes here in Romans 9-15 is from, as I said a moment ago, Exodus chapter 33 and verse 19. And here's how it's translated from the Hebrew into English in the passage in Exodus. God said to Moses, I will be gracious. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. And I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. Brothers and sisters, grace and mercy are God's to bestow. and none can charge God with injustice for bestowing them on one and not another." Do you believe that? Grace, you know, by definition is not owed to anyone. If it were, it wouldn't be grace. The definition of grace, this is from Webster's first dictionary back in 1828 when you were living in the 1800s, if you wanted to know what a word meant, you had to go to a Christian to find out. This is not the same definition that is in the modern Webster's Dictionary, but the definition of grace that Americans understood and all the English-speaking world understood in 1828 and for some time thereafter was the free, unmerited love and favor of God. The theological definition of grace is the free, unmerited love and favor of God. God's grace and mercy are unmerited. His favor is unmerited. If a person merits something, that means they deserve it. The Bible tells us what we deserve. The wages of sin is death. That's what every one of us deserves, Romans 6.23. We all deserve justice. None of us deserves mercy. Paul is saying, can any legitimate charge of injustice or unfairness be brought against God because He exercises mercy on some who don't deserve it and not on others who don't deserve it? If a king extends the royal scepter of clemency on one offender in his realm, is he obligated to extend the scepter to every offender in his realm? If the president grants executive pardon to someone, is he obligated to pardon all and empty the prison systems of the United States? Paul's point in bringing in the passage from Exodus is that God is not obligated to show mercy to everybody. And brothers and sisters, God is not obligated to show mercy to anyone. Here's Spurgeon's take on the passage. For those who aren't familiar with Spurgeon, he preached to a church of thousands, many thousands in London in the late 1800s. And he held firm to the doctrines of God's sovereignty and salvation and the doctrines of grace. The salvation is, you know, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the scriptures alone. And he preached the same doctrine that I'm preaching here today. By the way, the same doctrine that our pilgrim fathers brought over on the Mayflower, the same doctrine that was taught by the Reformers when the church separated from Rome, from the Roman Catholic Church, the same doctrine held by all of the martyrs in England that were slain and in Scotland and in Ireland in the 1500s and 1600s, the same doctrine held by Matthew Henry, a great commentary of his from the 1700s, same doctrine held by William Carey, same doctrine held by George Mueller, same doctrine that was preached to crowds of up to 80,000 people by George Whitefield during the time of the Great Awakening in the 1700s, when one in ten people Hearing that doctrine, by the way, came to salvation, to saving faith on this continent. It's also the doctrine that was preached and taught by the Southern Baptist Seminary when it was first founded in the late 1800s. Spurgeon wasn't preaching something new, that's my point. And I know our nation has fallen away from the understanding of this over the years since then. But the view that God would be unfair if His grace was given people in Christ Jesus before the world began has only become the dominant view in the last 120 years. It's been a decline. Along with the decline of the church in America and the decline of morals in the country has been this decline in the understanding of the doctrines of grace. Spurgeon writes, commenting on this passage, in these words, quote, in these words, the Lord in the plainest manner claims the right to give or to withhold His mercy according to His own sovereign will. As the prerogative of life and death is vested in the monarch, so the judge of all the earth has a right to spare or condemn the guilty. as may seem best in his sight. So you hear what Spurgeon is saying here. All mankind is guilty before God. That's what the Bible teaches. There's none righteous, no not one. And God has the right to condemn the guilty or to spare the guilty as seems best in his sight. That's his prerogative. He's God, we aren't. Spurgeon goes on, quote, men by their sins have forfeited all claim upon God. They deserve to perish for their sins, and if they all do so, they have no ground for complaint. If the Lord steps in to save any, he may do so, but if he judges it best to leave the condemned to suffer the righteous sentence that's due them, none may arraign him at their bar." That's Spurgeon in the 1800s. In other words, none of us has a claim on God's mercy. And if he leaves any who are justly condemned for their sins in their sins to suffer the penalty that they deserve for their sins, there's no injustice on God's part. Martin Lloyd-Jones put it this way back in the 1960s. God has the right to show mercy to whom he will show mercy. And God has the right to have compassion upon whom he will have compassion. There is no ground, that is legal ground, for complaint whatsoever. There is no legal opposition that we can erect. There is no charge that we can bring against God if he did nothing but allow the whole of mankind to go to everlasting perdition. No one would have the slightest ground that is rightful ground of complaint. No one would. No one could put their fist before God and say, you're unfair to me, you've been unfair. No one. The mystery, he goes on to say, isn't that everybody isn't saved, but that anybody is saved. Close quote. Brothers and sisters, it is of God's mercy that any of us are saved from our sins, and we need to give God the glory that is due His name. Dr. Sproul agrees with Spurgeon and Dr. Lloyd-Jones. God reserves to Himself the sovereign, absolute right to give grace to some and withhold that grace from others. What Jacob got was grace, what Esau got was not injustice. God withheld his mercy from Esau, mercy to which Esau had no claim. But the withholding was not an act of injustice on God's part. Jacob got mercy, Esau got justice. The elect get grace, the non-elect get justice. Nobody gets injustice. Nobody gets injustice." Close quote. Praise God because of his infinite goodness and mercy, he's not left all of sinning humanity to the justice to us. If you're a believer here today, this afternoon, it's not because you were wiser or smarter than your unbelieving neighbor. Smart people die and go to hell every day. If you have emerged from unbelief, it is through the mercies of God alone. The humble Christian, when he gives his testimony, he doesn't say, well, I did this, and I did that, and I did this other thing. The humble Christian says, God did it all. God changed my heart. God opened my eyes. God gave me life, God saved my soul. It's all of him and none of me. Verse 16 of our text this afternoon goes on, so then it is not of him that willeth, here's the conclusion, says the Apostle Paul, it's not of him that wills, nor is it of him that runneth, but of God who shows mercy. But of God that showeth mercy. Paul is saying, it is not of him that wills or runs, but of God who shows mercy to men whose will is bent against Him and whose feet are running in the opposite direction from Him. If salvation were of the will of man, as I said in our last session, no one would come to Christ. Every one of us Remember I said I was born with a holy corrupt. That's what the Scripture teaches, a completely corrupted nature that we inherited from our first parents. And the human will did not escape that corruption. The human will is in bondage to sin. Is man free to choose whatever he wills? Absolutely. The problem is that in the corrupted state of our nature in which every one of us are born, we only choose according to our nature. a corrupted nature. And a corrupted nature with a will bent against God never chooses God. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter 2 that in the state of the flesh we all walked according to the flesh, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. We were all fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and we were by nature children of wrath. In that state no one wills to choose God. Unless God changes our nature, unless God makes men willing to come, none would come to Him. Unless God changes our will, we will never embrace Him. You know, the whole of the teaching of the doctrine of election comes down to this. Give God the glory due His name. It's pretty simple. Just give Him the glory due His name. You know, unless God changes our will, we will never come to Him, we will never embrace Him. Genesis chapter 3 and verse 8 says, when Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God. Why? It was right after they sinned. The nature is now corrupted, it's utterly corrupted. They don't want God. have anything to do with God. They're running in the opposite direction from God. They're trying to sow fig leaves to cover up their sin, their shame with human works. They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God, and that's what their posterity, all their posterity has been doing ever since. Running in the opposite direction from God, our nature is the same as their nature. We act the same way that Adam and Eve acted. You know, many look at the doctrine of divine election and think it's unjust because they imagine men and women running towards God with their arms wide open, wanting to embrace Christ and the gospel, and God turning some away because they're not elect. The reality, however, is this, that all mankind is running in a stampede in the opposite direction from God, galloping headlong into eternal destruction, and God mercifully pulls some out of the herd. That's the reality of it. That's the reality. It is not of Him that wills, nor of Him that runs, but of God who shows mercy. Before time began, God mercifully chose to save some from the state of corruption and nature in which they were born and set his affection upon them and give them new hearts in time with new wills and new desires and conviction for sin, hearts to repent, faith to embrace his son whom he sent into the world to save them and deliver them from their dreadful state. Ezekiel the prophet said in Ezekiel 36, 26, quoting God, a new heart will I give you. A new spirit will I put within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh. I will give you a heart of flesh that is a heart that's beating and alive toward God. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments and do them." If you're a believer here this afternoon, it isn't because you used your free will to accept Christ in a better way than your neighbor, that you use your free will to accept Christ while your neighbor used his free will to reject Him. It's that God graciously and sovereignly changed your will in regeneration. Again, I don't have the quote right here in front of me, but from memory Noah Webster in his 1828 dictionary defined regeneration in theological terms as that change that God makes within us. You can look it up later. The change by which God subdues our natural rebellion in opposition to Him and His law and replaces it with affection, with a principle of affection and love for Him. So regeneration, everyone understood, you know, in that century and going back, you know, to the Reformation, they understood that God had to work first in our lives. that there had to be a change made in us by God, that He had to change our will before we'd be willing to come to Him. So that the first act in our salvation and all the way through to the last is all of God from beginning to end. It is a monergistic work of God. It's one energy, one work that takes place because God in His mercy, graciously, takes some who are hardened against Him, we all are, and He graciously and mercifully changes their heart and gives them a new heart, as we read in Ezekiel. If you've come to Christ today, it's because God graciously and sovereignly changed your will and gave you a new heart, took away the stony heart and gave you a heart of flesh that is alive to Him. Remember this, I stray for just a second. So, back to the garden because every Christian doctrine that there is, is laid out in some form in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Okay, so we're back in the garden and it was said of God to Adam, don't eat the fruit of this tree in the center of the garden, right? Because on the day that you eat thereof, what will happen? You shall surely die. You shall surely die. Well, Adam and Eve eat of the fruit, and then Adam lives to be 930 years old. And all these atheists down through the ages, they say, oh, see, the Bible's incorrect. The Bible's wrong. See, Adam didn't die the day that he ate thereof. They didn't die. See, the Bible's incorrect. No, they did die. That's why they took off running and hiding. They died a spiritual death and their bodies would later die a physical death. There is no other explanation for that passage. Either God's Word is not true or they died on that day and it was a spiritual death. They had no interest in God at that point and that's the way we all come into the world having been born after their posterity. The question is this, have we been raised from that death? You see, there's the thinking that, well, man comes into the world, he's a little sick, and he just needs some medicine, and he can pull himself up by his own spiritual bootstraps. And then there's the teaching that was preached on this continent by all the people I mentioned, and all the Puritans, and all the, you know, martyrs, going back, that no, we're dead in trespasses and sins. Then when the Apostle Paul said we are dead in trespasses and sins, he meant we're dead, we're spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. So they died spiritually. There was a spiritual death in that they no longer had an interest in the things of God. In fact, they were averse to God and they didn't even want to be in His presence and they ran in the opposite direction from Him. But what happens? God comes to them. God hunts them down. They were lost and God found them, hiding, running, going in the opposite direction, like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus in an instant, intervening, interrupting their lives. If a tree falls to the north or to the south, the place where it falls, there it will lie. Ecclesiastes tells us, but not so with those dead in trespasses and sins to whom the grace of God is made known. They are raised from spiritual death to spiritual life. and they will be raised on the last day. If you have come to see yourself as a sinner in need of the Savior and looked to Jesus who never sinned, trusting in Him who died for your sins, it's on account of the mercy of God. Give Him the glory due, His name. What happened was the grace of God interrupted your life, and the truth of Christ's love and mercy flooded your soul. And God drew you by cords of irresistible love to embrace His Son by faith and trust Jesus and what He did on the cross to reconcile you to God now and forever. Remember Jesus said, no man comes to the Father but through the Son. And then what did He say after that? And no man comes to the Son except the Father who has sent Him, draw him. That word draw used there. Same word Jesus used when he said, throw the net on the other side of the boat and draw in the fish. No one comes to the son except the father who sent the son, draw him. No one does. If you have emerged from unbelief, it is through God's mercy alone. People hear the gospel every day and reject the mercies offered in it. The only difference between unbelievers and believers is the grace of God at work in their life. If you love Christ today, it is because He first loved you. Salvation is of the Lord from beginning to end. If you chose Christ today, it's because He first chose you. Give Him the glory due His name. Give Him the glory due His name. If you're a believer here today, I'll end with this. Praying for maybe a family member or a friend that is lost, don't despair. Keep praying. Pray without fainting as Jesus said. You know. that no one is beyond the reach of God's grace because His mercies reach to you. Keep praying. Keep praying.