Well this morning if you would turn over to Romans chapter 9 with me in your Bibles. Romans chapter 9 I want to read to you once again verses 6 to 15. We began looking at these verses last Sunday and we are in our 19th session on what it means to be reformed. Now most of you know that Romans chapter 9 is a very controversial passage among Christians. I would like to ask this question as we begin our time together. Why do you think that it is controversial, this passage Romans 9? Let me put it this way. When we become a Christian, the Lord expects us to receive all of his word, not just some of it. He expects us to receive it as it is, not as we wish it were. Why do you think that this is such a controversial passage? I think one reason is that we would like to think that God is only love. Yeah, Maria Elena says that many people would like to think that God is only love, that He's not a judge. The Word of God is the Lord's means of causing us to be strong as Christians. Every truth that he gives us, no matter how seemingly difficult to receive, is there for our benefit, and for our blessing, and for our encouragement, and for our strength And when we come to the doctrine of election, it ought not to be that we draw back and say, oh, no, no, I don't really want to think, oh, Lord, that you have chosen me, that I was so utterly sinful that I needed to be chosen unto eternal life, and that God would have to supply me with every blessing of grace. I long to do things for God." And that's how many Christians are, and that's how they believe, and they really neglect this doctrine of election. They toss it aside. They don't want to learn about it. They don't want to grow in it. They refuse it. Instead, they want to believe that they chose God. The beauty of the doctrine of election is that all of our salvation rests upon God, not upon us. If we were really so totally depraved as the Bible says that we are, we really had to have God choose us unto salvation or we would never come to Him on our own. Do you believe that? Because that's what the Bible so very plainly teaches, that our salvation is not of our own will, not of the will of man, John 1, 12, but of God. Let me read you these verses once again. I think I'll read from verse 10 to verse 13. And not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one man, even by her father Isaac, for the children not yet being born, nor having done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her, the older shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. We could read one more verse as well, for he says to Moses, I will have compassion on whomever I will have, or I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. My fifth point in regard to the doctrine of election is this, that God's choice in election is not based upon anything good or bad in those whom God has foreknown. God's choice was not made based upon anything good or bad in you, dear Christian. Again, I think it's something that the human mind does not really want to receive. We want to think that it's because there's something in us that God saw that He liked about us, and because of that, then that's why He chose us in Him. But that's not what the Bible teaches. And we don't particularly care for that truth because of it, do we? Now, the Bible teaches us that God saves his elect one at a time, and he doesn't necessarily choose to save all within a family. You notice what it says here, that you had two boys, and they're both in the womb. They haven't done anything good or bad yet, I mean, that could be seen by other men or understood by themselves. And yet there was something amazing going on in the womb, that God was making a choice. That God was making a choice. It says, for the children, conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac, The children not yet being born, not having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand not of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her, the older shall serve the younger." Now do you remember what they were doing in the womb? What was going on in the womb of Rebecca? Do you recall? They were wrestling with each other, Dave says. And that's exactly what was going on. How did Rebecca respond to that wrestling that was going on in her womb? By the way, that is a disturbing thing, when you have twins in your womb and they're carrying on. wrestling with each other. What did God say to her? Do you recall back there in Genesis? Yeah, there was two nations in her womb. She went and inquired of the Lord. And there were two nations there struggling against each other. And it was at that point in time that the Lord said and made this pronouncement that the older shall serve the younger." Who came out first in the birth? Esau came out first, all hairy and red. His name Esau means hairy, by the way. Esau was an hairy man, it says in the Old King James. And then came out Jacob, And what does Jacob's name mean, by the way? Oh, that's right. What does that mean? A supplanter. Jacob's name means supplanter. Or what else could we say? A synonym for supplanter would be? Deceiver or deceitful. Yeah, that's very good. You could call him a tricky man or a trickster. Now, was there anything in either Esau or Jacob that God saw there that caused him to say what he did, the older shall serve the younger? Anything good? Anything bad there? It was just simply God's choice, wasn't it? God just simply made a sovereign choice. Do you realize that if you are ever saved, that it is according to God's sovereign choice? It's a wonderful truth, really. I honestly believe that you may not, I may not, value it enough. That God would choose me, one who was fighting against Him continually. That God would choose you, which if you're honest, you were fighting against Him too. That you were at enmity with Him, which is what the Bible says. The carnal mind is enmity with God. Hostility to Him. Well, what can we say about Jacob? Jacob, if we were to look at his whole history, we don't have time to do that this morning. we would see that he stole his brother's birthright. Do you remember how he did that? When they grew up to be teenagers, and what was happening there? Esau was out hunting, and he was just famished. So he comes in, and Jacob has been making this stew. Do you remember that? What was that? He was deceiving his brother, wasn't he? He had this stew, this red stuff, and Esau comes in and says, hey, give me some of that red stuff. And what did he say to him? I will if you give me your birthright. Now, that is just not right, is it? But yet he thought, I can take advantage of him in this situation. He's so hungry. He'll give it up. And he did. Now, that was Esau's fault. Do you see that? just as much as it was Jacob's trickiness to trick him out of the birthright. It was Esau's fault, it says in Hebrews chapter 12, that for one morsel of food that he would sell his birthright. The birthright had all these blessings attendant upon it and spiritual blessings as well. So it was not a loving attitude that Jacob had before his conversion, was it? And then later on, Isaac was getting older. You recall that? Getting older, he was going to actually live for about 20 more years after that, I think, from what I recall in my studies. But he thought because his eyesight was getting so dim and everything that he was going to die shortly. And so he was going to give his blessing to his eldest son, which was the traditional thing for them to do in that day. He was going to give him his blessing. And so he was calling Esau to himself so that he could give him that blessing. And instead he met up with Jacob and also with his dear wife, who was trying to make the promise happen, to make spiritual things happen. She knew that the blessings should go to Jacob according to the prophecy that she had been given at the time of the birth of those twins. And she didn't want to see it given to Esau. And Isaac had favored Esau in this matter and hadn't really paid much attention to the prophecy that had been given to Rebekah. And so what happened? She says, my son, listen to me, you make this savory food and then you go in there, we'll clothe you with skins of animals, make you appear like Esau so that your father will be tricked and you'll receive the blessing. Wow, this is really bad. I don't even know if you can grasp how awful this was here and what resulted from it. When Esau realized that he had been tricked, he cried tears over it. And it even says in Hebrews 12 that they were tears of repentance, but it wasn't a grace of repentance. It wasn't a saving repentance. He just wanted to be blessed. That's all. So what I'm trying to say to you here is that God's choosing a person does not take place on the basis of their having done anything good or bad, but that God's not choosing that person unto eternal life means that they're left unto themselves, and really that what God is doing there is not in any sense positively hardening them, but leaving them to themselves to do what they would want to do in their own free will. which is not to serve him but to serve themselves. Now we need to understand that in terms of the doctrine of election so that we don't have gross misconceptions about it. You know it would take 20 years of God working with Jacob in order to teach him his way so that he wouldn't act that way, in that tricky way. He had to send him over to Laban so that he would work for him for twenty years, Laban would change his wages ten times and be a more tricky man even than Jacob. And God ordained it that way, dear Christian, in order that Jacob could learn God's holy way. But you know something? Esau never learned God's holy way. And why was that? Because God left him to himself. Well, these are the kind of things that we need to understand so that we'll understand God's working in the world, not just our own desire to see people come to know Christ, which we honestly do desire that, don't we? And so next time we'll see that election is based upon God's purpose, which is to show mercy on certain individuals and on certain nations. That's what we'll look at next time, but let's pray together. We thank You, Father, for our study in the Word. We long to understand it better, better and better, so that we will be thinking Your thoughts after You, and not just simply thinking our own thoughts and imposing them on the Scriptures. We don't want to do that, Lord. We pray that we would receive Your Word and grow by the truths that we learn. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You're dismissed.