Our text this morning is from Romans chapter 9. If you'd like to turn there in your Bibles. Where we continue, or rather I could say Paul is continuing the discussion on how God's word has not failed. And even though the people of Israel rejected their Messiah and abandoned God and forfeited the covenant, God is still bringing about his promises and he's doing so through his own sovereign election. Paul is now going to anticipate his critics, his critics who would respond to this and say, well, this isn't fair. And here, Paul is going to emphatically reject that conclusion by demonstrating that this is how God has always worked in history. God has always brought about redemption through sovereign election and sovereign mercy. Romans 9, beginning in verse 14, picking up where we left off last week, the text says, what shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I raise you up to demonstrate my power in you. and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth. So then he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. Let's ask the Lord that he would bless the preaching of his word here this morning. Father, we rejoice in your way above all the riches the world has to offer. Teach us your ways. Teach us your testimonies that we may know you. That we may get a glimpse of your great glory and majesty. That it may move us, Father, to live lives of thankfulness. that we would worship you in all that we do, recognizing that our salvation, that our rescue from sin and from misery and from just punishment is a sovereign act that you have bestowed upon us, an act of love, an act of grace, and act that you have shown to us in adopting us as your own sons. We thank you for this. We pray that your spirit would open our hearts and minds to your word, that we would know and that we would understand it. Bless the preaching of your word for your glory in Jesus' name. Amen. As we all know, the doctrine of election that's described here in Romans chapter 9 is one of the most controversial doctrines in the Christian faith. In fact, it's one of the most controversial doctrines in all of scripture. And it needs to be handled with care. It needs to be handled even with caution, because a lot of the time, it'll raise questions to which we're not given an answer. But here in this text, we recognize it can't be ignored. It can't be swept aside. And some of the questions that we do ask are answered. And we're given answers we may not like, but they are answers that come from God to us in his word. The doctrine, though, teaches us about the glory, about the majesty of God, about the sovereignty of God, and it demonstrates His love, it demonstrates His mercy towards a fallen humanity in ways that perhaps we've never considered, ways that we've never thought of. And so as we go through the doctrine, there may be these struggles of our minds that say, well, how can this be? How does this allow God to be fair and loving and just, if he's just choosing some and not choosing others. But what Paul is doing is he's demonstrating this is a worthwhile struggle that we may know him, that we may know God as he is and how he has acted in history and in redeeming his people. And so Paul now anticipates these questions. He anticipates a struggle. And the struggle is this. As we look at verse 13, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I hated. Does this make God unfair? Does this make God somehow unjust? That he bestows love on one person and not another? C.S. Lewis did a short work called God in the Dock. Coming from that work, he writes this. The ancient man approached God, or even the gods, as the accused person approaches the judge. For the modern man, the roles are reversed. Man is the judge. God is in the dock. He says, man is quite a kindly judge if God should have a reasonable defense for being the God who permits war, poverty, disease, and is ready to listen to it. He says the trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock. And this is the very mindset that Paul is speaking against here in Romans 9. In fact, as we get to our text next week in verse 20, we're really going to discover how we're not sitting in judgment of anything that God does. rather god will do what he does and we are called to accept it and worship him as the perfect righteous and holy god so it's this role reversal and cs lewis says it's of the modern man but what we find here in the text of romans nine is that this isn't a modern thing at all mankind has always tried to sit in judgment of god rather than approaching god as the one who has been accused and so This argument, the role reversal of mankind that elicits Paul's argument all the way through verse 24, really, the reversal is rooted in man's forgetting who we are, but more importantly than that, we're forgetting who God is. We think that we can sit in judgment of God and say, wait a second, if this is the way that God functions and operates, this makes God unjust, as if we knew anything about justice, as if we knew anything about righteousness, as if we knew anything about holiness. In the realities, we know nothing of these things. Sin has ruined us to the very core. It has touched us in every part of our being. And God is the only one who has the authority and the know-how to say what is right and what is wrong, what is just and what is unjust. Now, Paul speaking to his fellow Jews, they would hear this. and would respond to this notion of God choosing his people unconditionally and say, well, maybe that's not fair, but they can't get away from the reality, the reality that this is how Israel came into being. that God chose Jacob over Esau, and that through Jacob the descendants came forth, that of all the nations of the earth and all the peoples of the earth, God chose one man, Abraham, their father, from whom descended all of the nation of Israel. So they can't really get away from this idea. So there's a moment here where we're understanding Paul and writing this. The Jews would say, well, it's not fair that he's choosing Gentiles over Jewish people. But again, this is how God has always worked in history. And that's really what Paul's point is. He's going to demonstrate God's always done it this way. This is the testimony of both the Old and New Testaments. and he responds then to that role reversal next week. So as we look at the text, think about this. Because of God's past election of Israel, the Jew can never accuse God of injustice when God chooses sovereignly to save those into his church and remake the nation of Israel through this redeemed people that is the church. And they can't do this lest the whole history of Israel be subject to the sentence of God being unjust and unfair. So Paul makes his case. First of all, he emphatically negates the charge. May it never be. And then he gives two reasons, and each reason is followed by a conclusion. The first reason is that God's mercy is freely given, and this is demonstrated in how he shows his glory to Moses on the mountain and shows it to Moses and Moses alone. And then secondly, that God's purposes in granting mercy and hardening hearts are ultimately for his own glory. And this is demonstrated in the destruction of Pharaoh and Egypt and the rescue or the salvation and redemption of the nation of Israel out of slavery. But before we jump in, again, we're talking about the doctrine of sovereign election. I want you to listen to what John Calvin has to say about this doctrine. He says, since the Holy Spirit has taught us nothing but what is to our interest to know, this knowledge of election will undoubtedly be useful to us provided we shall confine it to the word of God. He says, let this therefore be our sacred rule, not to seek to know anything about it except what scripture teaches us. Where the Lord closes his holy mouth, let us stop our minds from going on further. Since, however, these foolish questions will come naturally to us, being what we are, let us hear from Paul how they are to be met. And so, as the questions bubble up in our minds about what this means, let Scripture answer those questions. And then, as Calvin tells us, we should stop our minds when those questions exceed the answers of Scripture. Because if we do that, we'll find ourselves in this position, really, where we turn into hyper-Calvinists, where we stop evangelizing people, we reject the free offer of the gospel that's given to all people. That's where the questions go beyond the answers. And we have to keep our mouths stopped, and our minds stopped, and just listen to what God has to say about this. So let's start with the first point here. Paul emphatically negating the charge. Look at verse 14. What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be. So what he's doing here, Paul as a master debater, he is anticipating the response of his fellow Jews. And Paul is answering those charges on his own terms. What shall we say then? How should we respond to the idea presented in God's holy word? Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. What do we do with such a statement? Now again, as Paul is anticipating the debates that are going to be coming at him, he decides that I'll just pose the question and then I'll begin to answer it myself. What do we do with this statement, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated? What does this tell us about God? And so, instead of ignoring this reaction, that everybody feels to some degree when we hear that. Paul deals with it in a straightforward manner. There is no injustice with God, is there? Is the question. The adikia is a Greek word here for injustice or unrighteousness. Is there an unrighteousness with God? Is there an activity that is unjust? An activity that does not conform to righteousness? In that statement, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. Is it unrighteous or unjust of God to choose one person over another to receive mercy and grace and salvation while the other person is left to suffer the consequences of divine wrath? Now, why does Paul raise this question? And why really is this question relevant to us today? And it's relevant to us and to Paul because when people hear this truth, Immediately, they say in their hearts or minds or even out loud, that's not fair. That's not fair that God would choose Jacob over Esau, that God would pick one over the other. That's not fair that God would choose one person to be saved and not the other person. Why doesn't God fair in doing these things? Unconditional election that doctrine grinds at us because it destroys two of our principal Idols that we all carry about in our hearts and really these are the two primary doctrines of humanism Humanism being being a philosophical religious worldview that all the answers are found inside the man himself It's the notion first of all The notion that we have a free will that is capable of choosing God. That we in and of ourselves can do something to act on our behalves in order to bring us into right standing with God. And then secondly, the notion that fairness should govern all of God's actions according to how we define fairness. And we'll define fairness in all kinds of ways that have nothing to do with fairness at all. I want to start with the first one because I think it's the most prevalent. The notion that we have a free will that is capable of choosing God. Now that sounds very good and I will grant you now there is a sense in which we all have a free will. I don't reject the idea that we have a free will. You do have one. You can choose whatever is in your capacity to choose. What that means is that you make free choices every day. You chose what you were going to eat for breakfast this morning. Nobody dictated that to you. You chose the clothes that you put on this morning, what you're going to wear. You chose whether to read the newspaper or look at your social media on your phone, or even you made the decision to get in your vehicle and drive to church. No one forced you to do any of those things. But your will is not free to choose other certain things. You don't get to choose your age, do you? Time marches, whether you will it to or not. You don't get to choose your height. You're just given what you've got. You can't make one of your hairs gray or black. I mean, you can dye them, but it's still a gray hair. It's just covered up in dye. There are certain things that our will just cannot do because they're outside of the capacity of our will. Whether you can survive without breathing is not a decision of your will. Whether you can walk out on the porch, start flapping your arms and flying into the sky is not a decision of your will. It is beyond the capacity of your will to choose to do or not do that thing. And this is important to understand because when we get to this idea of choosing God, what we find is that scripture teaches us very clearly it is outside of the capacity of your fallen will to choose God. You have no capacity to make that decision. The fallen sinner's will is not free to make a decision to choose God. The will, your will, is bound by sin. It's not capable of such an act. And you can't do it because you will not do it, and you will not do it because you don't desire to do it. And that really gets at the heart of the issue. The desire to choose is not there. The will, as Jonathan Edwards put it, the will is what the mind chooses. The sinner has a mind that is corrupted by sin. That means that our desires are tainted by sin. Our mind and our will and our desire can only choose that which it has of its capacity to choose. And as sinners, we can only ever choose to sin. We can only ever choose evil. We can only ever choose corruption. And this is why the passage that we always quote so much from John 3 is so important. You must be born again. Something must happen to change that fallen inward will, that mind, that heart that is set and bent upon evil and sin and corruption that will never choose God because you never want to choose God. You won't ever desire God. God must choose you. God must come and he must actually violate in every way your free will that would only ever choose sin and force himself upon you in such a way so as to change you completely so that you desire different things. You desire God instead of sin. You desire righteousness instead of sin. I want you to notice this in Romans 3. Paul's already made this very clear to us. In verse 11 he says, there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God. No person has the capacity to seek for God. No one will ever make the decision to go look for God. It's always God who comes and seeks after others. And this is the great glory and majesty of the doctrine of election. It's that God seeks out those who never desired Him. It's that God goes and finds those who are rebelling against Him and pushing away from Him, and He draws them to Himself by changing them and giving them a new heart and giving them new desires. So the notion of a free will that's able to choose God is a notion that we don't really have the liberty of holding on to if we believe the Bible. Now, that's the first reason people reject the doctrine of unconditional election. It grinds at the very heart of humanism, the belief that the answer is within ourselves, and Christianity is a religion that says the answer is not in yourself, it is outside of yourself. The answer is found in God through Christ. Secondly, it's our notion of fairness. Now, if the first one didn't get you, you can say, well, fine, but how's this fair? And this one's really simple. We don't want what's fair. We don't want fairness from God because if God were fair, he would send us all to hell. There would be no one who escapes from his just and righteous judgment against sin. We don't want fair. What we want is mercy. We want mercy. There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. This mercy comes to us from God and is freely given to us in a sovereign act of love. This is the difference between man and God. There was a trial decades ago with the Rosenbergs, and I believe the judge's name was Kaufman, and the Rosenbergs were Russian spies, and they were charged with and convicted of treason against the United States, and they were sentenced to death. And as they get to the end of the trial and the lawyer's trying to appeal to the sentencing, the lawyer stands up and says, your honor, all my clients want is justice. And the judge turns to the man very softly and calmly and says, this court has given you exactly what your clients asked for, justice. What you really wanted was mercy. But that's something this court has no right to give. And the case was closed. As R.C. Sproul used to say, don't ever ask God for justice. He may give it to you. The notion of fairness is the notion we really need to think about in light of our fallen, condemned condition. God's not unjust because He chose to save one person and not another. No, that means God is merciful. That means that God can act in His court in a way that human courts aren't allowed to act. And in mercy, he provided a sacrifice in our place. In mercy, he chose a people from before the foundation of the world to be the recipients of mercy and to benefit from justice satisfied in his only son, Jesus. George Swinek, the Puritan, said, have you ever beheld a condemned prisoner dissolved into tears upon the unexpected and unmerited receipt of a pardon, who all the time before was as hard as flint? He says, the hammer of the law may break the icy heart of a man with terrors and horror, and yet it may remain ice still, unchanged. But when the fire of love kindly thaws its ice. It is changed and dissolved into water. It is no longer ice, but of another nature. And he says, therefore, meditate much on the love of God and Christ to your unworthy soul. This is who we are. We are the criminal, the hardened, ice-hearted criminal who suddenly is given a receipt of pardon, a receipt of mercy, and we see that the love of God doesn't break our hearts, it melts our hearts and changes them into something different. Notice the first reason Paul gives in demonstrating God's freely given mercy to whomever he chooses. Verse 15, he says, for he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. Now, the text here is from Exodus 33, and it may take you a moment to understand what's actually happening here, because the reference would be very familiar to the Jewish people, perhaps not so familiar to us. Remember in Exodus 33, Moses is up on the mountain, and I'll just read verses 18 and 19. Remember, Moses says, I pray you, show me your glory. Moses wants to see the glory of God. He wants to visually lay eyes on God in all of his splendor. And God says to him, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. Now what's the point there? Well, the point, again, is pretty simple. How many of you would like a chance to see God in all of his glory like Moses did? If you're not raising your hand, go home. There's no point in being here. Everybody wants to see God in his glory. Now, I mean, if you haven't prayed this, I would be surprised. We've all prayed, let me hear your voice, let me see your glory. We want to see this manifestation of God. We long to see Jesus' face when he comes. We long to see him come in all of his glory. We want to behold God. And that's not a bad thing. You should not desire that. We shouldn't even try to stifle that desire. The point is, we'd all like to see this. How many of us have seen it? Nobody. None of us have seen this. And we haven't even got a glimpse of this in any kind of a physical manifestation. How many of the Israelites saw what Moses saw on the mountain when the goodness of God passed before him? None of them. It was just Moses. Moses was the only one who got to see this. And as I read this text, I want to say, that's not fair. I want to see God like this. I want my face to glow like Moses and everybody to run away because they're scared and I have to wear a veil. I mean, these are wonderful things, and yet, just Moses. God picks one guy, one guy. I mean, really, out of the history of redemption, he's the one guy to get to see this. Maybe the apostles, as they got to see Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, saw something similar to this. But Moses sees something that makes his face glow. a portion of his glory, enough of God's, the backside of God's glory, that Moses was changed in his very physical features from it. And then God says to Moses, I'll have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I'll have compassion on whom I have compassion. And the whole event, the whole thing he's saying is serving to demonstrate that God's mercy is given solely on the basis of his sovereign choice. I'll show you my glory just to you. And it's my decision. And guess what? I'm not gonna show it to anybody else. Just Moses. Does that make God unfair? Does that make him unjust? Now the Israelite would have to read that and go, well no, because this is what made Moses Moses. And if that was robbed from Moses, the particular part of Moses being this prophetic leader for the nation of Israel would be taken away from him. What we know is that God doesn't have mercy on everyone. And we see this. He doesn't have the same kind of mercy on everyone. We even think about spiritual giftedness in the church. We don't all have the same spiritual gift. Some are given a greater measure of faith than others. Is that unfair of God? We think about it this way as well. There are people in hell right now who are just as bad of sinners as we are. And there are people in heaven right now who are worse sinners than the ones that were in hell. What's the difference? Well, the difference is we should all be in hell because of sin. And so how do we get to paradise? There's only one way to get there. God must have mercy on us. And the degree of his mercy varies in some situations. But he gets us all there. And he gives his mercy to whom he'll give it. And he has compassion to whom he'll have compassion. If you consider this text in Exodus 33, God's glory is manifested to Moses that day on the mountain. He shows him his glory, but God also reveals his glory to his people through his redemptive acts. His work in creation, his judgment against sin and unrighteousness, his salvation, all of these things are demonstrating and showing us the glory of God. And we are to worship God for all that he has done. And if we decide, you know what? I like God's attributes in this side, but not so much the other side. In other words, if we pick things about God that we like, and we begin to dismiss the other things, we take away from God what we don't like, all we do is fashion an idol. And we begin to worship that which is not God. If we say, I don't like this election thing. I don't like this whole idea of God sovereignly choosing. What you're doing is creating a God according to your own image. One that you like. One that you can worship. I've heard people say this, if God really chooses people based on his own sovereign will, then that's not my God. And you're right, that's not your God. Your God's an idol. We are bound to view God and understand God according to the revelation that he has given to us. We're to worship him for all of these things. And here's the great part. God is here showing us his glory in revealing himself and revealing his acts. The objects of his mercy and love are these people that he has chosen. He's revealing this to us as well as the objects of his justice. His wrath, and He gives the chosen, the elect, mercy, and He gives us grace, and He gives us unconditional love based upon Christ, and He gives justice and wrath to those who are not chosen. What we have here is a revelation of God, and that should cause us to worship Him, not to, as C.S. Lewis puts it, sit in the dock, or put God in the dock while we sit in the judgment seat. Notice the conclusion there in verse 16. So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. That whole idea of the will of man, Paul directly comes against it here. That theleutos in the Greek, the will, the decision in man to purpose based on a desire is what the Word is speaking of. And we ask the question, well, why can't it depend on the will of man as we saw in Romans 3.11? Because no one will ever seek for God. And really think about this for a moment. This is how you get over the hurdle of the unfairness. This is Paul's point. No one would ever seek for God. And therefore, if it depended upon the will of man, everyone would be damned. No one would be saved. No one has the capacity to choose to seek God. In fact, all have turned aside and become worthless. What about the man who runs, the man who tre kutas? Simply meaning to attempt to do something. Based on that desire, he moves forward to do something. Why doesn't the application of God's mercy depend on us doing something? Why can't it depend on us doing something righteous? It's because in verse 12 of chapter three, there is none who does good. No, he says, not even one. No one does good. in verse 19 of chapter 3, for we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. Because, Paul says in verse 20, because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. As we read the law and we respond to it every Sunday morning, I hope you're recognizing that. What the law's primary purpose is to do is to come and show you and to show me I am a condemned sinner. that I can do no good in the sight of God. And that drives me away from that humanism that would look to my will or to my actions to do something to gain merit or favor with God that would get me into paradise. And it drives me away from that false hope that I would look to Christ, who is the end of the law for all those who believe upon him. So the man who runs can't get anywhere. The man who wills can't will himself anywhere but into deeper sin. Calvin said this, that the mind of man is so completely alienated from the righteousness of God that it conceives, desires, and undertakes everything that is impious, perverse, base, impure, and atrocious, that his heart is so thoroughly infected by the poison of sin that it cannot produce anything but that which is corrupt. That's a summary of us. And so if it depended on your will, if it depended on your actions, we're all doomed. Because we can't make an action of the will, we can't do an action of forming from the will to ever earn merit with God, and every person would go to hell if God did not intervene. Praise God. that his mercy is not dependent upon us. Praise God that our will and our actions have nothing to do with our salvation. It's always on God who has mercy. Understand mercy, the very meaning of the word itself. Mercy is to show kindness or concern for the person in need. What it is, mercy, as a definition, is an act on behalf of one whose condition has rendered them unable to help themselves. God shows mercy to those who cannot help themselves, not that will not help themselves, not that they would if they had enough information. They can't help themselves, and God moves upon them in an act of mercy. Charles Simeon wrote this, we cannot have one spark of real humanity In other words, you know nothing about your humanity at all until we are abased before God as guilty, helpless, and undone creatures who have no hope but the tender mercy of God in Christ Jesus. As long as you're clinging to this hope in yourself and you're thinking that salvation has something to do with your will, something to do with your actions, you have no idea who you are as a human being. You've built yourself up as a God, in fact. God helps those who cannot help themselves. That's the nature of mercy. And so we praise God for His mercy. But you know what we do in the midst of this? We see a person who is filled with all iniquity. We see a person who is hard-hearted. We see a person who is totally unresponsive to the gospel, living in the fulfillment of all their sins and their desires. And even as Christians, what do we say? There's a lost cause. Forgetting. that we're all a lost cause. There's no hope in ourselves. There's nothing that we could have done. Spurgeon said that he or she who is a son or daughter of Adam has a corrupt origin. As we all came from that source, we are all corrupt. And then he goes on and says, do not ever say of anybody, that person is too bad for me to do anything with him. It is the genius of Christianity to select the worst first. And we should never regard any man as utterly hopeless until he is dead. He says, as long as the breath is in the body, even if all the devils from hell were also in him, there is enough power in the Lord Jesus Christ to make the whole troop of them fly. And it is for us. to attack those devils in his name. Jesus Christ having saved us means that the salvation of other sinners must be possible. You see, the doctrine of election isn't just something that we say, yeah, God chooses and that's the end of the story. The doctrine of election is the very basis for all of our hope in evangelism and missions. It's that God, through the preaching of the gospel, can save sinners. Reason number two why there's no injustice in God's election. Verse 17. For the scripture says the Pharaoh, for this very purpose, I raised you up. to demonstrate my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth." Notice first that God makes an example of Pharaoh in order to demonstrate his power and his glory. This is kind of the other side of the coin. Because all men are sinners, because all men are totally depraved, God acts in what we call as theologians common grace towards the world. It just simply means this grace that is common to everyone whether you're a believer or an unbeliever and that common grace is there to restrain the sinful tendencies of mankind so that the world can continue to function and If God was not restraining sin and humanity, we would all go about murdering, killing, raping, pillaging, just living to the full extent our sinful and corrupt depravity that is in our hearts. It is by the grace and mercy of God that he restrains the sin of mankind so that the world can actually function and that the gospel can be spread throughout the nations. Man, if you think about it this way, and the analogy has flaws, so don't take it too far. Mankind is like a vicious dog held on a chain by a strong owner. The dog, if not restrained, would go out and fulfill his desire to attack. He would launch into whoever got near to him. The owner uses that vicious dog for his own purposes to guard his property or to protect himself, whatever it is. The amount of restraint is dictated by the grace of the owner toward the person that the dog would like to attack. As long as that Owner is restraining that dog. It can't do what it desires now When God hardens a heart as we say he never goes and puts evil into somebody's heart God doesn't create evil in the heart of man rather God simply loosens the chain. He lets the person have less restraint upon that sinful nature to go out and do what they already determined to do, what they already desired to do. He's just loosening up on them a little bit. We saw this, in fact, in Romans 1 very clearly. Verse 24, therefore God gave them over in the lust of their hearts. He didn't put lust in their hearts. He just gives them over to the lusts that they already have, to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. He just let slack in the chain, so that they would go and do what they already desired to do. God allows this. to demonstrate his power and glory in judgment. This is what happened with Pharaoh in Egypt. You all know the story. God sends the plagues amongst Egypt. He tells Pharaoh constantly through his messengers Moses and Aaron, let my people go. Each time Pharaoh's heart is hardened. And we read that and we go, this is incredible that Pharaoh would ever do this, but it is unto the praise of God's glory in his deliverance of the nation of Israel with a strong arm that he shatters the mightiest nation in the world through the hardness of Pharaoh's heart. And God brings Israel out of that rescue. Now, in doing that, never forget all of God's actions. Everything that God does, you could say God exists, and he acts, and he moves in creation. He made creation, he created in order to demonstrate his own glory. And so he raises Pharaoh up in order to crush him, in order that the whole earth would fear him. in order that everyone would give God glory. But just as Egypt became the object of God's wrath and his destruction and his justice was demonstrated in that destruction, Israel became the object of his love and his mercy. And the people of the earth saw, look at how God loves his people. Look at how he has mercy upon those whom he has chosen. And so what's the conclusion here? Look at verse 18. So he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires. When we get down to it, in the end, God came and he interrupted your love affair with sin. He stopped you from doing the things that you desired to do. This is why I love the free will argument because scripturally God comes in and in every way violates what we might call free will. I only desired sin, corruption, and evil until God came and gave me new desires. I didn't want anything else. God gives us a new heart and a new mind and he changes us. and he has mercy on whom he desires. And he also hardens whom he desires. In fact, well before the events take place in the Exodus, well before the plagues come through Moses, God says to Moses in chapter four, verse 21, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Why? so that he could demonstrate his power and his glory in destroying that nation. Predestination, divine, sovereign, unconditional election, is a manifestation of God's glory because it shows all of his attributes. It shows his power. It shows his sovereignty. It shows his love. It shows his mercy. But it also shows his justice. And so what does this teach us? Calvin says, the only haven of safety is the mercy of God as manifested in Christ, in whom every part of our salvation is complete. He says, as all mankind are in the sight of God, lost sinners, we hold that Christ is their only righteousness, since by his obedience he has wiped off our transgressions, by his sacrifice appeased the divine anger, by his blood washed away our stains, by his cross borne our curse, and by his death made satisfaction for us, we maintain that in this way man is reconciled in God or in Christ to God the Father by no merit of his own, by no value of works, but by gratuitous mercy. So the big question that we all ask, how do I know I'm elect? How do I know that I'm one of the chosen? How do I know that I'm Jacob and not Esau? And the answer is very simple. And this is where we close our mouths when the questions start to rise in our hearts. I said it to you once, I'll say it again today. If Jesus Christ is the sole object of your faith, know that all of your sins are forgiven. That's how you know if you're elect. That's it. Are you resting upon Jesus Christ? There's no other diagram that you've got to figure out here. Just do you believe in Jesus? Is God unjust? May it never be. Rather, what we find instead, when we look at it from the right perspective, God is merciful. God is merciful in that he shouldn't have saved anyone. God acted in such a way as to distribute mercy to those whom he has chosen, and those whom he has chosen were undeserving of that mercy. And apart from that mercy to those chosen, no one would be saved. And that gives us a great cause to worship. That's what drives the worship of God's people. He has given you mercy. He has forgiven you your sins. He has given you grace. He has chosen you to be his very own. And so as you really consider this, it's not a question of is God unfair? Is God unjust? It's what would it be like if God wasn't merciful? May that motivate our worship today. Let's pray together.