Scripture reading this morning will be from Genesis 15. God in an unsolicited and undeserved act is declaring promises and making a covenant with Abraham. Moses writes, after these things, the word of Yahweh came to Abraham in a vision, saying, Do not fear, Abram. I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great. And Abram said, O Lord, Yahweh, what will you give me as I go on being childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, since you have given no seed to me, behold, one born in my house is my heir. Then behold, the word of Yahweh came to him saying, this one will not be your heir, but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Now look toward the heavens and number the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him, so shall your seed be. Then he believed in Yahweh and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, I am Yahweh who brought you out of the Ur of the Chaldees to give you this land to possess it. And he said, O Lord Yahweh, how may I know that I will possess it? So he said to him, bring me a three-year-old heifer, and a three-year-old female goat, and a three-year-old ram, and a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. Then he brought all these to him, and split them into parts down the middle, and laid each part opposite the other, But he did not split apart the birds. Then the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. Now it happened that when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. And behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. Then God said to Abram, know for certain that your seed will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation to whom they are enslaved, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation, they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete. Now it happened that the sun had set, and it was very dark. And behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch, which passed between these pieces. On that day, Yahweh cut a covenant with Abram, saying, to your seed I have given this land. From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenite, and the Kenizite, and the Kadmonite, and the Hittite, and the Perizite, and the Rephaim, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Gergeshite, and the Jebusite. Friends, when God speaks, he knows the end from the beginning because he is accomplishing his plan at all times. Father, thank you for the day that we have, this Lord's day to be here. Lord, a beautiful day. I thank you, Lord, for the opportunity and the ability that you have given us to be here, the desire to be here. I pray that you will take the time this Lord's Day and accomplish your work in the hearts of your people, that you will be honored by what is proclaimed here, that you will be honored by what is received. You will be honored by what the response is to the preaching of your word. We pray that our Lord Jesus Christ will be seen in the great majesty that is not awaiting Him, but the majesty that now is His possession for eternity, and that we will love Him all the more. It is in His name that we pray. Amen. Beloved, we are here for the singing of God's praise. We are here for the fellowship of the saints. We are here for growing together in the grace and knowledge of the Savior, as we have already done to a substantial degree in our Sunday school hour this morning. Tremendous Sunday school lesson today again. We are here primarily for the preaching of the Word. If you have your copy of God's book, open it with me to Genesis. Chapter 12. It was a June morning, 1988. A soon-to-be 12-year-old young man was in a nearly tragic accident with his stepbrother in a tractor, in a very mundane situation, in a mundane moment that was no different than maybe the day before had been. That young man now was faced with some unknown possibilities. And by his own testimony, the first thing that was on his mind, the first thing He said, the first thing I thought was what he had heard his dad say many times. What likely would have been his father's favorite Bible verse. In Romans chapter eight at verse 28, it says that we know that God is at work in all things for the good of those that love God who are the called according to his purpose. And that young man's mind immediately went to that verse and he asked himself a question. How is this going to be for my good? And you can imagine that. 11 year old kid probably thinks he's about to die. He has no idea. A tractor just ran over me. How is this going to be for my good? I doubt he's ever gotten a sufficient answer to that question. But the one thing that should have become clear and apparent to him and to any other Bible student is that although we do not understand the workings of God, he always does what is good. Because good is the only thing that he can do. And He is at work in all things for the good of His people, because His people will spend eternity with Him in heaven. He is moving in every area of life, the good, the bad, the indifferent, every issue in life, He is at work in. We wind up with questions as to why and to how. And if we're honest, we eventually end up like Job and have to become merely satisfied with knowing who. We are facing a subject like that in our current study here together. Looking at what has been a point of contention in the church now for Half of a millennium. And we begin to ask questions like, how could God do this? How could this be true of God? How can God do that and it still be okay if he's making unilateral decisions on his own and he doesn't take anyone else's opinion into account? It's very difficult for Americans because everyone in America has an opinion. Just open your Facebook. We began last week having returned to our study of the Tulip, the five points of doctrine that came out of the Canons of Dort We've come to the second one. We've laid the foundation of total radical depravity, radical corruption, the absolute inability of man, the moral inability that man is born with, insurmountable. Man who is born spiritually dead and is spiritually dead from his youth up. The thoughts and intentions of his heart are only evil continually. And following upon the heels of that is this idea of unconditional election, this unconditional choosing of God. To be sure, a hated and dishonored, denied, despised doctrine. Many take the teaching of this biblical, scriptural doctrine and consider it to be something that makes God into a monster. I'm here to tell you that if God is going to do any choosing based upon conditions that you and I must meet, the only thing that He will ever find is that you and I are natural-born monsters of iniquity. So we want to be careful how far we push the idea that this supposed doctrine attacks the free will of man. You hear that a lot. The free will of man. That God the Father has from eternity passed in the councils of the Trinity before anything was in the beginning that was before the beginning that he began by saying, let there be light. In the beginning that began, that beginning, in the council of heaven between the Trinity, the Father chose a people that the Son elected to come to purchase that the Spirit goes out and pursues. Because man, man has fallen. And not just a little bit, man is absolutely as morally destitute as he can be. And when Paul sums it up in Ephesians 2, he can think of no better earthly description of the physical malady that affects every mother's child than to say that they are dead spiritually, dead before God, absolutely unable to respond to stimuli. And when we understand that that is the starting point, how in the mind of a man can we get from a morally corrupt, spiritually depraved, morally dead group of people. How can we go from there to a scene in heaven where there are representatives of every tribe and nation and tongue that have been fitted with the holiness of God sufficient to stand in his presence for eternity? How does one get from here to there? Well, you can't get there from here. Something else has to happen. Someone else must intervene. There are two other words that tend to be bandied about and stir up much confrontation. The idea of predestination, pro-orizzo in the original, the horizon has been set ahead of time. It's already been set. God has decreed the end from the beginning, and what is coming is going to happen because God has decreed it and has caused it to come to pass. Or, the other option is that God spun it out there to see what would happen. And so far, so good. The other is the idea of foreknowledge, that God looked down the tunnel of time and he knew ahead of time. We will eventually take some time to look at both of these words in their context, in the reality of how they are depicted in the mind of The Apostle, when they were written, the idea of foreknowledge is not that he knew ahead of time, the idea of foreknowledge is that he chose to love ahead of time. And Charles Haddon Spurgeon was right when he said that God had to choose to love me before I was born because he never would have chosen me after. And we look at the truths that if God does the choosing, then how does man, how does he condemn anybody if he has to choose those that come? Paul asks, who are you, old man? To answer back to God. That's the end of the discussion. Well, that attacks the free will of man. You're saying that man doesn't have a will, man is a robot. Okay, let's explore that for a moment. We got a few minutes. The free will of man. Man does have a free will. Man has a free will to do whatever he wants. Some of you are starting to scratch your head. He is free to do whatever he wants. What does man want to do? Natural born man, dead in transgression and sin, what does he want to do? Paul in dealing with the legalism blended with the church in the Galatian letter said this, that the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that you cannot do what you want. That is only true of a believer. An unbeliever has no impact of the Spirit on his or her life. The Spirit is not involved. The Spirit is not welcome there. That leaves one thing for the natural-born sinner to want. He has a lust, a blood lust for sin. And more sin, and more sin, and more is not enough. I want all that I can get. And when I can't get enough, I'll invent new ways to sin. So man's will is free to do what he wants, but man's will is bound under the shackles of sin, and he cannot choose good on his own. So I ask you, is the free will of man being assaulted by this doctrine? From that angle, absolutely being assaulted by this doctrine, and by necessity. Because until the Holy Spirit of God invades your life and brings the conviction of sin and righteousness and judgment, unsolicited, undesired, and undeserved, you should just be left to your sin to sin all that you want and go into eternity to experience what you've earned. That's what you deserve. People begin to look at this and say, well, that's not fair. You're right, it's not fair. There's not a person you've ever met that wants anything fair from God. What you want is God to grade on a curve. and say, as long as I'm better than that person or someone worse than me, judge them. Make that the low point and I'll be the high mark. That's what people want. No one wants fair from God. You know what's fair? Hell is fair. Hell is absolutely fair. Hell is absolutely just. It is what every person has earned. It is what you have earned. It's what you've earned this morning. Heaven is a reality that God, an opportunity that God has made a reality by grace through faith. And it must be by grace because you can't earn anything good from God and it must be by faith because you can't do anything that God will accept. When you begin to throw around ideas like this, people's ire begins to be raised. Well, wait a minute. I've told you in my ordination, ordination council started asking me questions about this. And most of the men on that council were not of any sort of Calvinistic persuasion. They were all, to a man, at least one-point Armenians. I like that term better than a four-point Calvinist, whatever that is. I'm a four-pointer. That means you're a one-pointer. And the questions that they began to ask me centered around this idea of what does it mean to be dead? What is this unconditional choosing and this definite atonement of Christ? I was thrilled. I was having a great time. It went on for 30, 45 minutes, and I don't even know how long. I had no idea. I said, this is great. One of the elders of our church that was there finally said, maybe we should move on to another topic, because we seem to be whipping a dead horse here. And I was the first to respond. I said, I would rather not, because this is great. Because typically, when this conversation is had, someone gets mad. Emotions get stirred up. I don't agree with this. This rubs me the wrong way. And this can't be right. And you know how you think. If this irritates me this much, then it can't be right. God is not leading me to believe that. Be careful what you blame God for in your heart. Emotions get inflamed over this, and we begin to look and say, you mean that there's no guarantee that I can save my children? That's exactly what I'm telling you. And I live with that same pressure. I mean, there's no guarantee that, there's no simple trick that someone has figured out how to get an unbelieving relative into the kingdom. That's exactly what I'm saying. We had a man come to our church once as, I don't know if he was there for a missions conference, I don't remember him being a missionary, but he told us that his, his ploy was to get people to say the words, Jesus is Lord. And tell them, now you're saved. Because if you confess with your mouth, Jesus as Lord, you will be saved. And I said, I understand the desire to do that, but that's foolish. That is silly. That is dumb. That is fleshly. Emotions get inflamed. You say, well, what you're telling me is that I can't handle this emotionally. You know why? Because your emotions are falling. Your emotions are broken. And the more sin has affected and infected your life, the more your emotions are broken. Sometimes you're never able to really get back to a state of discernment that can overcome your emotions. That's why God gave the Ten Commandments. You want to stay away from this stuff. You don't want this in your life. You can't handle this in your life. Or then people go from emotion to logic. Well, this doesn't make logical sense because the Bible does say whosoever will. It does say that. The Bible does say that. John 3, 16. I know some of you are thinking it. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. You know what I say to people when they throw that at me in this discussion? Read the whole chapter. Start from the beginning. Jesus said that in the context of a conversation with Nicodemus. The first thing that he said was, truly, truly, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of heaven unless he is born again from above. Do not marvel that I told you that you must be born again from above. The wind blows where it wishes. You don't know where it comes from or where it goes, but you know that it's been here, so it is with the spirit. He blows where he wishes. You don't know when he's coming and you don't know where he went, but you know he's been here because people have been born again, and he moves when he is ready. You're no one whatsoever until the Holy Spirit of God makes you a whosoever. We live in this tension that's not logical. It's not logical to say, well, If they're elect, if God's chosen them, they're going to be in the kingdom. We don't have to do anything about it. But the Bible says we do have to do something about it. The Bible says that we proclaim the gospel. Paul, in Titus chapter 1, said, I endure all of these things for the sake of the elect. It's actually in 2 Timothy 2. I endure. You ever read through 1st and 2nd Corinthians to read what agonies Paul's been through? You can read through Acts and you get some picture of it, but he goes down this list in 2nd Corinthians. I've been beaten, I've been hungry, I've been naked, I've been left in the sea three different times. Everywhere I go, I know that prison and chains afflict me and await me there. Well, Paul, why do you keep doing this? Isn't there something better you could do? Making tents is better than that. Maybe you need to fix your message. You know what? Give Joel Osteen a call. Let's call the man that refuses to talk about sin. He's got a packed house. He's not looking at 80 or 90 people on a Sunday every week, hoping that they all come back. He's packing the house, brother. You need to find out what he's doing. Ain't nobody whooping Joel Osteen when he shows up, is it? If he got whipped one time, he'd never come back. Paul, why do you do this? I do it for the sake so that God can draw his people into the kingdom. If ever there was a Calvinist, Paul was a Calvinist. Paul lived in this tension. How will they hear if no one preaches to them? How will they call upon the one that they have not heard of unless someone preaches to them? And no one comes until the Holy Spirit of God snatches them out of the kingdom of darkness and transfers them into the kingdom of light. So the idea of logic, we look at this logically and say, well, it doesn't fit. The reason it doesn't fit with your logic is the same reason your emotions can't handle it, because your logic is falling. Your logic is broken. And sometimes it's really broken. Sometimes there's just, there's stuff in life that have happened, we don't even know how to exercise logic. And what the cure for all of that is, is let the Bible speak and sit down and stand in awe of it. Let the Bible speak. Then we come back to this idea of freedom. Well, man has to be free, he can't be a robot. You understand that your idea of freedom is as fallen as any other aspect of your life? Friends, the last thing that I want is for God to turn me loose. He said, Preacher, I bet you were thinking something different this week, and then people cut you off on the highway. Yeah, for about a nanosecond, I said, Lord, if you just turn me loose for just a millisecond here, you know, we say that comically. Friends, if he turned me loose for a millisecond, I'd never come back. I couldn't get there, I could never make it back. I don't wanna be free, I wanna be a bondservant of Jesus Christ, shackled to him. But you know what, I'm not shackled to him, I'm in the palm of his hand. I'm in the bosom of the Father like a beloved child. Well, preacher, how are we ever gonna come to a conclusion about this? I'm glad you asked. I'll tell you what Johnny Mac said. Years ago, MacArthur said the only way we will ever get an uncorrupted view of God is to go to an uncorrupted source. What's the answer here, preacher? It's right here. Yeah, but I've read some things that are contradictory. No, you didn't. They're contradictory in your mind. That's what I tell you. There's some tensions there that we must live with, but the tensions are a result of our inability. They're not a result of God's lack of clarity. Your inability and God's supposed lack of clarity are one and the same. It's not that God's unclear. You can't handle it. You know, there's some stuff that goes on when, you all remember the scene from the movie. The lawyer asked the general a question, and the general says, what do you want from me? He said, I want the truth. You remember the next line? You can't handle the truth. Now, what he meant by that is you don't really wanna know. The reality in, come to the scripture is that you can't handle the truth because you can't handle it you're not you have no capacity to handle it we're going to eventually get to the responses to this doctrine and the first response is to stand in awe and praise god for being such a magnanimous and gracious god to invade the life of someone like me and bring me to himself for eternity with no explanation for why. We began last week looking at the reality of unconditional choice. The idea of election is choosing. God does some choosing. We see the choices of God throughout the scripture that are unsolicited. They are undeserved. We looked at it in the creation of the universe in the material universe and man and animals this mandated pattern of a weak God establishing and using his unilateral authority to make decisions that affect everyone and he doesn't have to take anyone's opinion into consideration then we moved into looking at the covenants there are five overt covenants I said there are only five, there's technically a reference to a covenant that God made with the Levites, with Levi and the Levitical priests. But the five covenants that are the overt, God-declared covenants that are His idea, they are His doing, they are a result of His choosing, begin with the Noahic covenant in Genesis chapter 8. Now I've asked you to turn to Genesis chapter, where are you? 12, there. When you look at the Abrahamic covenant, a little bit of context goes a long way in a situation like this. We have the God in heaven looking at the earth that he created. And in chapter 6 of Genesis, he says, the earth is so corrupt that there's nothing good left on it. I'm going to start over with that guy. And he invaded Noah's life, and he got Noah to build a boat. And he put Noah and his sons on that boat and he closed the door. And he started over with Noah. Then he realized he needed to make a covenant with Noah because it was gonna continue to rain and Noah was gonna say, hey man, here's happening again. Get back on the boat. In chapter eight, Noah got off the boat. Yahweh smelled the soothing aroma and Yahweh said to himself, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done." 350 years later, come to chapter 12, a man named Abram. We'll get a little more context of Abraham's life as the scriptural record unfolds, as the revelation of God progresses. And Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldeans, as we see here. But his father was an idol maker. He was as pagan a man as a man could be. And God spoke to Abraham. Bible never tells us Abraham, I keep, his name's not Abraham yet at this point. He speaks to Abram in Ur of the Chaldeans. He is in a pagan place outside of what will become the land of promise. He is in a prosperous area. This is around the area where Nimrod would have begun to set up shop. Chapter 12, this son of an idol maker hears from God. You say, what did it sound like? I have no idea. But if you'll pay attention, you're going to hear from God right now, because I'm going to read this out loud. Genesis 12, 1, and Yahweh said to Abraham, does it say he answered? Abraham? Did Abraham have a question? Was this a response? Or was this an unsolicited invasion of Abram's life? We tend to say, well, we don't want God to just barge into our life. I want him to leave it up to me. If God were to leave the best things in your life up to you, you would never experience them. Nor were there ever been a covenant people of God nor would there ever have been a Messiah if God had not stepped into Abram's life unannounced unsolicited and undeserved Yahweh said to Abraham doesn't ask a question not responding to a question he says go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house to a land which I will show you doesn't give him a map and say leave here and go there he says you leave everything behind and follow me Then he begins the I wills. Not speaking of possibility, not speaking of likelihood, not speaking of potentiality. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you. And the one who curses you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. God just interrupts and invades Abram's life, living fat, dumb, and happy. Earl of Chaldea is just living life. Pretty good life. Wealthy guy, got a bunch of servants. He's got a beautiful wife, as we'll come to see. Haven't had any children. But Abram, by today's standards, kind of got it made. God comes to him and says, Leave where you are, leave your father's house, leave this land, and follow me to where I will show you. And this is what I'm going to do. Remarkably enough, Abram went forth as Yahweh had spoken to him, took a lot with him. God is making a declaration to Abraham, this is what I'm going to do. not been asked to come here it's not been requested no one would ever have thought of requesting this and if anyone would have thought of making this declaration to someone they would have picked someone other than Abraham because God chooses the foolish of the world to shame the wise and the weak and despised to shame the things that are so that the elective purpose of God will stand Move to verse 15, you have Abram and Lot have some issues. Lot gets taken in a raid after they separate. Abram brings him back. You have the interaction with Melchizedek. Chapter 15, verse 1, after these things, The word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not fear, Abram. I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great. He just steps in and starts talking to Abram again. God is leading Abram somewhere. God has the intention of cutting this covenant with him. And Abram, we read it this morning, Oh, Lord Yahweh, what will you give me? As I go on being childless, and the heir of my home is Eleazar of Damascus. Someone born in my home to someone else is going to be my heir because I have no seed of my own. He takes him outside and he describes what he means by seed. Number the stars if you are able to, so shall your seed be. then he, Abram, believed in Yahweh, and Yahweh counted it to him as righteousness. And he says, I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess it. I brought you out. Just what he's gonna tell the Israeli people in chapter 19 of Exodus. I took you out on eagle's wings. I did this, I brought you out. We didn't make an agreement, this is where I brought you. Scroll down to verse 12. He tells, Abram, we're going to make a covenant. Three-year-old heifer, three-year-old goat, three-year-old ram, split them all in half. If you split a bird in half, you get a mess, so he leaves the birds whole, puts them opposite of one another. It happened when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. And behold, a terror and great darkness fell upon him. Now people, commentators look at this and they have different ideas of what, well, what he's about to tell Abram about the slavery is this dark, foreboding reality. That's not why darkness and terror fell upon him. God showed up is why darkness and great terror fell upon Abram. And he comes down to Mount Sinai, the people run and hide, and he's hidden behind the thick darkness and the gloom on the mountain. They don't even see him, but they're terrified of him. Then God said to Abram, no for certain. What's Abram doing right here? What's Abram doing? Taking a nap. A divine coma that he's been placed in, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. God put him to sleep to save his life from the presence of God. No for certain. God knows that they're going to be sojourners in a land, not their own, that they will be enslaved and mistreated 400 years. And he knows that he's going to judge that nation to whom they are enslaved. And afterward, they will come out with many possessions. They're going to pillage Egypt. You're going to go in peace. And in the fourth generation, they'll come back here. Now it happened that the sun had set and it was very dark. just what Brother Chad referenced this morning, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between the pieces. Where's Abram? Sacked out over there somewhere, at a safe distance, and Yahweh passed through the pieces. Makes a unilateral, unsolicited, undeserved covenant with Abram. Then he begins to describe the covenant. To you and your seed I've given this land. From the Nile River to the Euphrates River. And he starts naming all the people. Kenizzite, Kadmonite, Hittite. It's the termites and the dynamites are on the other side of the river. some time passes he has a son 13 years or 15 years have passed come to chapter 17 in Genesis it happened when Abram was 99 years old Yahweh appeared to Abram again unsolicited unrequested unexpected he appears to Abram and said I am God Almighty Walk before me and be blameless, so that I may confirm my covenant between me and you, and that I may multiply you exceedingly. ' Then Abram fell on his face, and God spoke with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with you. My covenant is with you. And you will be the father of a multitude of nations, and no longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. He still does not have Isaac. I will make you exceedingly fruitful. I will make nations of you and kings will go forth from you and I will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your seed after you. And I will give to you and to your seed after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. unsolicited, undeserved, unexpected, unrequested, and no one looks at this and says, how dare he come and tell Abraham what he's just gonna do and not even ask his opinion? Have you ever thought that? You've read this a lot of times, brother. You ever thought that when you read that? Why didn't he give Abraham an option? Does Abraham have no say in this? You know how you wives are. Do I have a say in this? I just have to do what you say? Sometimes. I've never heard anyone ask that question here. Look at the grace showered on Abram. God just invades his life and makes these promises and gives him this stuff. That's the pattern that God has always followed. Turn forward a few pages to Exodus. That's the Abrahamic Covenant. Actually, actually hold on, I forgot to write this in my notes. God doubles down on this with Isaac. in chapter 26. So you have Abraham, this helps you when you get to Galatians and he's talking about everybody being related to Abraham because all of the promises and the covenant, all of it was for Abraham. This helps you with that. Abraham's off the scene. Isaac and his cousin are married. That was kind of the norm in that day. There was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine which had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerard to Abimelech, king of the Philistines, and Yahweh appeared to him. What was Isaac doing? Isaac just doing the best he knows how. Hey, there's a famine. I remember last time pops went to Abimelech. We'll try the same. Didn't work real great for him when he went to Abimelech the first time. It's been one of the times that Abraham lied about his wife being his sister, half lied. Isaac took a step up. He married his cousin, not his sister. Yahweh appeared to him and said, do not go down to Egypt dwell in the land which I shall tell you sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you for to you and to your seed I will give all these lands and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham and I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and I will give your seed all these lands and by your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because Abraham listened to my voice and kept my charge my commandments my statutes and my laws What did Isaac do to incur this blessing from God? What did he do? Happened to be Abraham's promised son. Doesn't end there. Get this cat Jacob. The lowest point of Jacob's life. He's running for his life from his brother. He just lied to his dad with the help of his mom. He just created the greatest separation in his home that he possibly can. Unfaithful, self-centered Jacob. He's running for his life. Chapter 28 in verse 10, departed Beersheba, went toward Haran, reached a certain place, spent the night there because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of the place, put it under his head and lay on that place. I've never been so exhausted. And I thought, you know what? That rock looks comfy. Let me get some of that. This is how worn out he is. Then he had a dream, and behold, a ladder stood on the earth and its top touching heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, Yahweh stood above it and said, I am Yahweh, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie I will give to you and your seed. And your seed will also be like the dust of the earth. you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed behold I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land for I will not forsake you until I have done what I have promised you Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said surely Yahweh was in this place, and I did not know it And he was afraid you better believe he was afraid and he said how fearsome is this place? This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate to heaven Now I ask you Where was Jacob's choice in any of this There was none And if Jacob would have had a choice in this, he would have turned it for himself. That's what he did. I'll tell you, hold on, man. Let me get some of these almond trees. I'm gonna peel the bark in a spiral, and then we can talk about it. If you know anything about Jacob, that's one of the things he did. Jacob is at the lowest point of his life. He's dealing with sin, compounded by sin, compounded by more sin. He has dishonored his father and his mother. He has destroyed the relationship with his brother. The last thing he heard his twin brother say to him was, when dad dies, we're having two funerals, one for him and one for you. Mark it on your calendar, boy. For his sake, I'll leave you alone. But when he's gone, so are you. And he leaves. He's a man without a home, without a country, without a family. And God takes this guy and puts him to sleep and says, these are the promises that I've made to Abraham, to Isaac, and now to you, Jacob. And later, Paul, to make the point in Romans 9, he's going to quote Malachi chapter 1, and Paul says, God said, Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated. And we look back at the birth of these twin boys and we reach a conundrum. The conundrum is not this. The conundrum is not, well, why didn't he love Esau? You know exactly why he didn't love Esau. Nobody loved Esau. Esau was a wretch. His descendants are wretched. By the time you get to Matthew's gospel, the Roman king over Judea was Herod the Great. He was a descendant of Esau. Things didn't get better. The question is not, why did God hate Esau? The question is, why did God love Jacob? The question is not, well, why doesn't God just choose to treat everybody equal? Why doesn't God just choose to save everybody if we're all equal to start with? Just choose to save everybody. That's not the question you need to ask. The question you need to ask is why does he save anybody? Why does he save anybody? Why did he invade Noah's life? We have no idea. It was by grace. Noah found charis. He found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Abram. Abram. What was special about Abram? Nothing. What was special about Isaac? He was Abram's promised son. What was special about Jacob? He's the one that God chose to continue his purposes of election in Romans 9. He chose Jacob over Esau. Fast forward to Exodus chapter 2. Noahic covenant. Abrahamic covenant. Attached to that Abrahamic covenant is what we call the Mosaic or Sinaitic covenant. Depends on, I guess, if you're in a Baptist or Presbyterian setting. Same thing. Both mean the same thing. You're familiar with what goes on in Exodus? That 400 years of slavery that he told Abram about when he cut the covenant with Abram has come to fruition. It's coming to the end of that. The Pharaoh at the time, I think it was one of the Thutmoses, there were several of them, I hope I said that right, makes a decree, these Israelis are overpopulating, they're outpacing the population of our people, we need to slow it down or they're going to rise up and demand their freedom, so we'll kill all the males. So he's killing all the boy babies and letting all the girl babies live. The two Egyptian midwives lied to him and trick him to preserve the Israeli children. This one couple has a baby that they can tell is beautiful and I know that every mother in this room has read that and said, there was nothing special about this mother and father because I think my baby is special too. My baby's beautiful beyond description. So whatever that meant about Moses was something special. She made a little ark out of bulrushes, coated it with pitch, floated him down the river. You know the story. Providence of God, he was brought into Pharaoh's house. And he gets in trouble. He finds out when he gets grown that he's an Israeli. He wants to suffer with the Israeli people. He kills an Egyptian because He was beating an Israeli, buries him in the sand, the next day everybody knows about it and he says, my goose is cooked because when Pharaoh finds out he's gonna kill me and he hit the ground running and left. And he winds up tending another man's sheep in Midian somewhere in the middle of nowhere. While he's in Midian, chapter two of Exodus and verse 23. Now it happened in the course of those many days. Those many days is 40 years. From the time Moses left to the time God calls Moses out of Midian to go back. He spends 40 years in the Midian wilderness tending Jethro's sheep. It happened in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died and the sons of Israel sighed because of the slavery and they cried out and their cry for help because of their slavery rose up to God. Some people that stop reading right here and say that God rescued them because he hates slavery. Half of that's true. I don't think God has a real soft spot for slavery, but that's not why he comes to rescue these people. Verse 24, so God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God saw the sons of Israel and God knew them. He cast his love on these people because of a covenant that he made with Abraham. And he sends Moses back and he goes in and he, He really has to argue with Moses on the side of that. Moses was a stubborn cat. And I said, boy, take your shoes off. You ain't supposed to be here. This is holy ground. He starts telling him what he's going to do and he said oh well you know I really you know I got Jethro Sheaf and all and I don't know if I can go it's not really a good time for me and he said no you're going to go well you know I don't talk the language really anymore I've been here in Midian I just I kind of lost my my accent and all that I had and I don't know if I can go OK I'll send Aaron and Moses finally says look would you just send somebody else I don't want to do it and God said boy you're going and you know what he did he went And he said, when you get there, you're going to tell Pharaoh, let my people go that they may serve me. And he goes in to rescue these people for himself, not merely to rescue them out of slavery. Multitude of people groups that were enslaved in in Egypt because during Jake Joseph's time there people were selling themselves They ran out of money. They ran out of assets. They ran out of land We'll sell ourselves to you for food and they they indentured themselves and their posterity There were multiple people groups of slaves in Egypt. God rescues this people group why because he had made a covenant with Abraham Isaac and Jacob so you go through the The 10 judgments, crossing of the Red Sea, you find yourself come to chapter 19, three months after they crossed the Red Sea. They've already complained, they're griping, they don't have anything to eat. He gives them manna in the morning, quail at night. They're griping about the water. Moses has to strike, one time he has to strike the rock and water comes out of the side of a mountain in a desert. Another time he cuts down some tree and throws it in the pool. I remember I told, we went through this on Sunday night. I told our Sunday night crowd that as a kid, I always understood that was a sweet gum tree they threw in the water to make the water sweet. Would that help? Probably not. Whatever the tree was that God told him to throw in, they could drink the water. So they've already had ins and outs. They've grumbled against Moses and they come to Mount Sinai. Now, if you had all of the capacity, in the universe if you were omnipotent and you could start over anything you want to at any time you wanted and you could do whatever you felt like doing and this people group has griped again and again and again you know what you just did for them they know what you just did for them they know what you're doing for them right now you know what you're doing for them right now and they continue to gripe they continue to fuss they continue to turn their back on you if god were like you and i exodus chapter nineteen wouldn't be here Because he would have done away with these people long before and said, you know what? I got all the time I want. I'm starting over with you, Moses. Me and you, Mo, we're going to start over. We're going to have a whole new group of people. At one point, he does tell Moses that, and Moses intercedes for the people. But it wouldn't have taken until chapter 30 of Exodus for you and I to reach that point. Exodus chapter 19, Moses has gone back. He's brought them out. They've come back to this place. He tells Moses, I'm going to give you a sign. that it's me that's talking to you. And the sign is that you're gonna come back here with all of those people and worship at this mountain. So Moses is receiving the sign that God promised him probably a year, year and a half prior to this. And they're back in chapter 19 at Mount Sinai, verse three. Moses went up to God, and Yahweh called to him from the mountains, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the sons of Israel, You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I lifted you up on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Who's the actor in that? Who? Who's helping him? I brought you on eagle's wings. When they left, he tells Abram that they're gonna leave with great possessions. It tells us when they left, they went and asked their taskmasters and their owners, would you give us your gold and all of your fine linens? And they said, sure, have it all. They plundered Egypt when they left. And they just walked out. In fact, Pharaoh tells Moses, get them out of here. Pharaoh pushes them out. They go three days journey. They find themselves hemmed in by the mountains, the desert, Pharaoh, and the Red Sea. God comes and stands between them overnight and tells Moses hold that stick over that water and the waters parted and in the morning they walked through and Then God pulled the cloud out of the way and the Egyptians Went in after him and God drowned the entire Egyptian army and two things happened that day for the Israeli people one Their greatest enemy on the face of the planet was annihilated right before their eyes. They all saw it I still think Moses had a bit of apprehension when God told him to hold that staff over the water to let the waters collapse. Moses knew some of those people. That's what God told him to do, and God destroyed their enemy. They no longer had to worry about Pharaoh chasing them down in the Sinaitic Desert. They were annihilated, but also the trip back was closed. They could not go back. And what God's plan was going to be was that within 15 months they would come to the Jordan River and at that point they could exercise their faith and cross the river. And when it came time to exercise their faith, they didn't. And God killed off the entire generation in the next 40 years in the wilderness wandering. And when their children and their children's children came back 38 years later, they crossed the Jordan River. They had learned enough. But at this point, the only one that has been acting is God. They have no idea where to go. They know the one thing they can't do is go back to Egypt. They talk about it, oh, if we could just go back to Egypt. They can't go back to Egypt. God's closed that door. And he says, I brought you here. None of them asked for it. None of them earned it. None of them really even wanted it. But this, for God's plan, is what is happening. I've never heard someone say, well, you know, those Israelis really didn't ask God for all of that. He's kind of just stepping out of his lane and doing some of this stuff for these people. Nobody's ever said that. You know why? Because if he hadn't done this, there wouldn't be salvation for you and I. His purposes of salvation would have been thwarted there if he would have been like you and I. But he's not. Verse five, still in chapter 19. So now then, if you will indeed listen to my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples of the earth. For all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words, Moses, that you will speak to the sons of Israel. I'm going to make you all of these things. You've been a group of slaves. All you've ever known is chattel slavery for generations. But now, I have brought you out on eagle's wings and I will make you my people if you will listen to my voice and keep my covenant. And in this covenant, God sets what is the standard that is demanded in order to meet his requirements. He gives them the ceremonial law, how they are to respond to him in religious worship. He gives them the civil law, how they are to live together with one another. And he gives them what I've called the communicable law. have heard it referred to as the moral law he's telling him this is what I am like this is the law that you are to keep if you are to be acceptable to me because this is what is required by me because of who I am they didn't ask for any of that they didn't deserve any of that they didn't request it but because he had made a covenant with Abraham and because he was coming to to set this covenant before them that this is the first bilateral covenant. He made a covenant with Noah, made a covenant with Abraham, he didn't ask them anything. And this, ultimately, in chapter 24, he's gonna bring to them the book of the covenant, chapters 21, 22, and 23, he spells out kind of what, how the Ten Commandments are gonna flesh out in the civil law. And then Moses comes out and he tells them what God says, he writes it down and he reads to them the book of the covenant. And then he took the bulls and the peace offerings and he took half the blood and put it on the altar, half the blood he put in bowls. And then he comes to the people and he's read and they're hearing the book of the covenant and the people said, all that Yahweh has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient. And Moses splattered them with the blood and said, now the covenant has been sealed. It was a covenant they did not request. It was a covenant that they tried to respond to properly. It turned out to be, for multiple reasons, less than they anticipated and, at the same time, more than they could have anticipated at that point. But God brings this to them. He interrupts it. He just does what he wants to do. The fourth covenant is the Davidic covenant. I'm going to have to do something about that clock. Either that or you're gonna have to listen faster. Let's try that. First Samuel 13. Really, really quickly, if that's possible for me. First Samuel 13, 14. Saul has been nothing but a disaster for the people. One of the kings, so God gave him a king. They said, we want a king like everybody else. God said, okay, Samuel, we're going to give him a king like everybody else. And he did, it was King Saul. Then he gave him a king like nobody else had, would be King David. But as he is, he's rejecting Saul. He says, now your kingdom shall not endure. Yahweh has sought out for himself a man after his own heart. And Yahweh has appointed him as ruler over his people because you have not kept what Yahweh commanded you. He's talking about David. He has sought out a man after his own heart. He's gone and found one for himself. He is the one. And we look at it and say, oh, well, David earned something. Do I need to remind you of Bathsheba? How about Uriah? How about Absalom? David was not perfect in any way. He was not a man that had earned anything. He's a man that God chose to bestow his love upon, and he was a man after God's own heart. He would become that as God would move in his life. This is God's, the one that he chose. So he sends Samuel to Jesse's house in 1 Samuel 16. Comes in, I love this. Verse six. Now it happened when they entered, this is Jesse and his sons, that Samuel looked at Eliab and thought, surely the anointed of Yahweh is before him. Eliab walks in and Samuel says, behold the man, this is oldest brother. God said, hey man, don't look at his appearance, don't look at his stature, because I've rejected him. For God sees not as man sees, for he looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. And they go down the list, is there anybody else? Yeah, we've got stinky little brothers out tending the sheep, little harp boy, out there singing them sheep with his harp and fighting bears and lions and honing his slingshot skills, but playing his harp. We got tired of hearing the harp, so we sent him to be with the sheep. Verse 11. Samuel said to Jesse, are these all of them now the youngest with the sheep? Then he said, send and bring him here. But we will not turn around until he comes here. So now they got to go find him. He's gone through all the other brothers. Now they have to go find David in the field, brought him in, says he was ruddy with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance. And Yahweh said, arise, anoint him, for this is he. Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the spirit of Yahweh came mightily upon David from that day forward. And Samuel arose and went to Ramah. That was it. Samuel comes in, anoints him with oil and leaves. Why did he anoint David? Because God chose him. You're going to say, well, David must have been some spectacular something or other. No. He was ruddy. He wasn't even You remember why Jacob got upset when he woke up the next morning after his first wedding and he had the wrong wife? He married Rachel, he woke up with Leah. No, it's not a Willie Nelson song. He didn't like her because she had weak eyes. She had light colored eyes. Here, speaking of David's appearance, he was probably kind of reddish brown hair and dark hair was the expectation. There was nothing about David that anyone looked at. This is little heart boy, the tender of the sheep, the baby of the family, the runt, the baby. But this is the one that God chose. He didn't ask David about it. He didn't consult David. He didn't even ask Jesse. All he asked Jesse was, is there anybody else here? I got this little one. You want a little one? Go get him. Okay. And it doesn't tell us what the reaction of the brothers were. It really doesn't until David becomes Saul's armor bearer later when he comes into the battle and they start picking on him. God chose David. Unsolicited. Undeserved. Unrequested. Unexpected. You're familiar with the story. He becomes king. He rules so well that he becomes the standard by which all other kings that come after him in Israel's line of kings are compared to him. Then you come to 2 Samuel chapter 7. This is where we see the Davidic covenant spelled out or established. David has requested to build a house of cedar for the Ark. The Ark of the Covenant is still being housed in a tent. David says, I wanna build a house for it. Prophet Nathan said, yeah, sounds great, do what you want. Neither of them consulted God about it, and God tells Nathan, I didn't ask you to build this. You think I've kept it in a tent because I couldn't help myself? No, I've had it in a tent because it's where I want it. I'll build it when I'm ready. You go back and tell David this. Thus you shall say to my servant David, 2 Samuel 7 verse 8, thus says Yahweh of hosts, I myself took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people Israel. I've been with you wherever you have gone, and I've cut off all of your enemies from before you, and I will make you a great name like the name of the great men who are on the earth. Verse 12, when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up one of your seed after you who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build me a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me. You say, you know, we've been reading this covenant word a bunch in these first three. We don't read the word covenant here. Psalm 89, we're going to end here. David understands that he is undeserving of any of this. He's trying to do something on his own to honor the Lord and it really sounds great on the outside. It sounds logical to anybody who would read it for the first time. But God had different plans. Because God has got a plan that is set and he's not looking for additions to it and he's not looking for corrections to it. I will sing of the loving kindness of Yahweh forever from generation to generation. I will make known your faithfulness with my mouth. For I have said loving kindness will be built up forever. In the heavens you will establish your faithfulness. This is God speaking. I have cut a covenant with my chosen. I have sworn to David my servant. I will establish your seed forever and build up your throne from generation to generation. This is speaking of 2 Samuel chapter 7. I have cut a covenant with David. I have sworn to David, my servant. Verse 27, I will also make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. My lovingkindness I will keep for him forever, and my covenant shall be confirmed to him. So I will set up his seed to endure forever in his throne as the days of heaven. No discussion, no sharing of ideas, a unilateral sovereign choice of God. Now friends, I'm gonna ask you, has God made a bad choice yet in anything that you've read with me this morning? Has God violated anybody's will or violated anything that he needs to go back and apologize for? Do we think that something has changed since then? I told you last week I was going to challenge some of the sensibilities in the areas where we're comfortable as we look at choices that God has made just of himself, by himself, and for himself. And we rejoice over them. But that's in somebody else's life. And we're not done. Nobody asked for the new covenant. We're going to look at that a little bit next week. Then we're going to look at the callings. He called the prophets. He called the apostles and friends. He has called the church. Collectively and individually. He's not asked permission. He's not made a request. He's not open forum asking for some kind of debate. He is at work in all things for good. by his definition for those that love him who are called according to his purposes. The question you really need to ask is do you trust him? Do you trust him? I ask my kids that all the time, do you trust me? Because I have to tell them things that they don't like. I have to tell them things that they don't understand. I make rules and I draw hard lines and no, I'm not gonna do this, I'm not gonna allow you to do that, I don't want you to do this. Do you trust me? Sometimes it's through gritted teeth. Yeah, daddy, I trust you. But friends, as much as my kids trust me, you can trust God infinitely more than that. And when you don't understand what he is trying to do or what he is doing or what he has described, you can know this, that he understands it with great clarity and he is at work in all things for good because that's all he can do is good. He has eyes that are too pure to even look upon evil. He is in the heavens and he does as he pleases and men stand in awe of a God like that. We serve a great God, my friends. You stand, we're gonna pray. Father, I pray that something of Honor to you and benefit to your people has escaped this pulpit today. Lord, I become so enamored with the reality that you are accomplishing more than anyone ever at any time in a given moment could possibly understand. As believers we stand here as trophies of your grace, we stand here as validation that you are still in the heavens doing as you please, that you would save the likes of us as beyond our capacity to understand. I pray that as we see this pattern throughout history of the scripture, that we will see you in a greater and more adored light, that we will love you for who you are, knowing who you are by what you have done, that you are the God who makes salvation a reality for the undeserving. And that when you have saved, you hold us fast for eternity. Our hope has never been in us. It never can be in us. Our hope is in you. I pray that that will become more and more apparent as we study these truths together. Bless your people for being here. Carry them safely home. Pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.