God’s Foreknowledge (Part B)

God wants those who want out of living without Him. God wants those who no longer want to go through this life without Him. God wants those who want to share His eternity under His authority as God. God is God, not applying for the job. Well, you know, maybe I can get it, maybe I can be your God.

No, God is every bit that omnipotent being, and He wants those who will trust Him for salvation, for life, for all eternity. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Romans.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick beginning in Genesis chapter 22, and then he'll continue into Romans chapter 9 on this edition of Cross Reference Radio. Take now your son, your only son whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. And we know the rest of the story, and if you don't, you're being ripped off, you're being cheated by Satan and yourself, and you need to get the story and find out what it means and how it applies not only to those around you, but to yourself.

It is one of the most fantastic stories, true stories, ever recorded in human history. One must be chosen by God, as will be pointed out in Romans 9, verse 33, as it is written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense, and whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. Now that's Paul quoting the prophet, the great prophet Isaiah. The one must be chosen by God, but they must also choose to believe God by faith.

He who chooses, chooses by that criterion. Verse 9, now we're going to take verses 9 through 11, for this is the word of promise, at this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son. And not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one man even by our father Isaac, verse 11 now, for the children not being born nor having done any good or evil that the purpose of God according to election might stand.

Not of works, but of him who calls. Well, you know, church doctrine can make all this go upside down for you, so I think it's better to just try to read it for what it means in the context and in the light of all the scripture that we have. In verse 10, where he mentions Sarah, which is the wife of Abraham who gave birth to Isaac, that's the bloodline from Abraham to Jacob. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, heirs of the offered promises that all the Jews were so self-satisfied with. What could they really boast coming from Jacob?

Jacob had a lot of problems. You know, what could they boast about King David? Well, there's a lot to boast about David, but there are also some heavy asterisks attached to his name, which takes out the boasting of being perfect amongst the peoples.

They are not. Now Paul's Galatian letter, already written, before he wrote this Roman letter, Galatians was out and circulated. Now he writes Romans. These two letters gave the Jews a lot to think about. Some of them just hated him more. That's what happens when he gets arrested in Jerusalem because at the temple. Those two letters were the catalyst behind their animosity towards him. But he hadn't published nor written Hebrews yet.

When he published Hebrews, metaphorically, he split the atom. He told them straight out, you can't keep being Jewish. You've got to be Christian. You can't do them both. They're irreconcilable. And if you continue going down to the temple with your sacrifices, you're going to go to hell.

So you've got to say, well, Paul must have knew his days were limited and he just didn't care anymore. You're going to let them have it. And that Hebrew letter lets them have it.

It is incredible. You know, it's a letter. Some call it a book, but it's a letter. And there's a little difference to that. Anyway, verse 11 here. Verse 10 is baked all into this also, so we can just comment on verse 11 and cover it all with it. In verse 11, the principle of choice is seen in Ishmael over Isaac, Jacob over Esau, differentiating for us between an Israel based on ethnicity and an Israel based on faith in God.

This is what is happening. This is what Paul is saying. If it were just about ethnicity, then Ishmael and Esau would be patriarchs too, but they're not.

Why not? They don't have faith. And if you have your Bibles, he's saying to the Jews, and you don't have the faith in what Christ or the Messiah has done in light of all the evidence, then you're outside also. Don't go blaming the Bible.

Blame yourselves for not heeding what the scripture taught. And so before these two knew themselves, God knew them. Before they were born, God knew Esau and Jacob in the womb. That's his foreknowledge. Before they had a chance to behave, God knew what they would do. He already knew how they would act among men and how they would treat him. He built their destiny off of his foreknowledge.

And they let that sit a little bit. God knew which way this was going, and he paved the road for it. Esau, you want to go away from me? There you go. Jacob, you want to find me? Here you go.

I'll help if you ask. I'm not forcing you, Esau, to go that way. And I'm not going to force you, Jacob. The farseeing eye of God knew who he would choose and why he would choose them, and he has revealed these things to us so we wouldn't have to guess. Imagine if you were giving the gospel and you weren't sure. Well, maybe. Maybe if you believe you can get saved.

No, we are supposed to with full authority. What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And if your family believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, they will be saved too. That's how much salvation there is to go around. So God's knowing is not the cause of their choices.

That's critical because if it is, otherwise it's not just. If someone caused you to do wrong and then blamed you for the wrong, you would say, cry injustice. God's foresight predestined Israel to be within his promises and excluded those who weren't interested. He saw those who would refuse and he predestined them to a different outcome.

You have to say so in that. Now God knows who's going to go which way. We don't, but he does. It does not mean for one moment that he's guilty. No one will stand before God and say, yeah, I didn't even have a chance.

Romans 11, verse 33. Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. There's that perfect knowledge. It is not an imperfect knowledge where he messed up something or didn't really have all the information. He's got it all. He continues, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out?

Now it's critical. The only ways of God that are past finding out are the ones unrevealed, not manifested. We'll get to another verse where he says, for he has revealed them. Deuteronomy 29, 29. There are things God has made clear and there are things he's withheld. So God is not the cause, but he controls.

He doesn't give that up. Isaac and Jacob were both elected. Ishmael and Esau were left out and there's a reason and it's not magic. John's Gospel, chapter six. Jesus answered and said, did I not choose you and the twelve? One of you is a devil. I chose you.

That is inescapable. I chose twelve of you. Eleven were elected.

Because one of the chosen opted out of being selected. He lost his election. Jesus knew it. Jesus allowed it and Jesus used it. He did in his own lifetime. He used Judas.

Not in the sense of exploiting him, but he did not allow control to be taken from him. One, just quick in passing, the Pharisees said in plotting the death of Christ, let's get him killed, but not during the Passover. When did he die? During the Passover.

Because they were never in control. He was always in control. And the same with Judas. He gives Judas an opportunity right up to the last moment. When Judas comes to give him that treacherous kiss, Jesus called him friend. You would think, you would think after all Judas saw, he would say, oh man, I can't do this.

How could you call me friend and I'm betraying him? And Judas, his pride couldn't handle it. He killed himself in contrast to Peter.

Peter went and wept bitterly. God never indiscriminately picks and chooses who gets to hell and who gets to heaven. I believe that when Christ picked Judas, because we see this, we see this in history, we see this in life. I believe when he picked him, Judas was a relatively an earnest person like the rest of them. I don't believe he put on his staff intentionally a devil at the moment.

I believe Judas evolved into what he became by his own choices. And if you give me any other scenario, then we are just puppets. We have no chance. We have no say so. Our fate is sealed.

Our fate is not sealed. We have a say so. And this is one of the things that Paul is trying to tell the Jews. Don't blame your Bible. You have a say so. Don't act like because you're the Jewish people that you're somehow going to be good with God automatically.

No, that's not true. What are you going to do with the truth? What are you going to do with faith? These things the Lord has put in your reach. God has no need to damn souls for hidden reasons.

We know the reasons he has told us. 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 9 and 10. But as it is written, eye has not seen nor ear heard nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him, but has revealed them to us through his spirit.

It's not saying there's a lot of Christians misunderstand that verse, I think, and they think that, you know, that gives them license to act like out of control, you know. Well, you know, the Spirit just called to me and I lost control. No, that's not the Holy Spirit. That's another Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives self-control, not takes it away. What are the fruits of the Spirit?

Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, self-control. Well, judgment is the direct outcome of a deliberate action. Romans 2 verse 5, but in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart, you are treasuring up for yourselves wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. God is blameless and the devil will lie to you because that's all he can do. He can't do anything but lie. He is the father of lies. He's a liar from the beginning, quintessential pathological liar, Satan. And he will lie to you about every single thing, but especially the important ones. He will tell you things about you. He is the accuser of the brethren who tempted the brethren to be tripped up in the first place.

How does that work? Lord, do you see what your servant did when I tempted him? Well, that's the story of Job.

Not only the story of Job, but Job's story brings it out in detail. We're here in verse 11. According to election might stand not of works, but of him who calls. So avail yourself of the calling of God. Salvation's not rigged.

Choose faith. Again, go back to John 7 and see that he chose 12 of them. That one chose not to come back.

And we have a different illustration of this. Jesus healed 10 lepers. Only one of them chose to come back and say thank you. And Jesus noticed it. Weren't there 10 of you?

What happened to the other nine? So accepting God's invitation is not something earned. It is something celebrated.

It's unfortunate to some teacher. You can't do that. You can't accept God because that would be works and then you'd get credit. I don't see that at all. Believers do not boast in our salvation. We rejoice in that salvation.

For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. God set the whole thing up.

God elects those who accept the invitation, but he does not elect who is to accept the invitation. God knew Isaac and Jacob would respond to him as I've covered. So he called Isaac and Jacob to greater things.

Knowing, knowing that they would be pliable in his hands. Hebrews 11 6. He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Now who, who says they believe in that and then go out and act as though they don't believe in that?

Well we're all probably guilty at some point. He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Well the trouble is that I don't want to wait for those rewards.

I would like to start getting them now. And some of them we do get now. But the greater ones are in reserved. Verse 12, it was said to her, to Rebekah, the older shall serve the younger. Now this, he's talking about Esau the older of the twins and Jacob the younger of the twins. And he is saying the older shall serve the younger. The individuals are not in mind. He's getting this mainly from Malachi chapter 1 and 2 which he'll quote and we'll read it. The individuals are not in mind here.

Who then? It is the attitudes of the nations that descended from these individuals. Ishmael and Esau are an illustration, a template for those who have information about God and do nothing with it. And their descendants just built upon that and the outcome is that they were like Ishmael. If the individuals were in view, there would have been a false prophecy because Esau never served his brother Jacob. Nor could it be said that Jacob was stronger than Esau during their lifetimes.

In fact, Jacob was worried when Esau was coming with 400 men he was going to wipe everybody out. Verse 13, still going to come back to this and sum it all up in this verse here. Verse 13, as it is written, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. The gasp. You mean God hates you?

You bet. Dude, to get your concordance and look up the times the Bible says God hates. An abomination to God. Which is just a variation of saying God hates. There are things that God hates.

I want to find out what those things are and avoid them. Still, the nations are in mind in this statement which he is quoting from Malachi 2 and 3. History offers no record of Ishmael or Esau worshiping Yahweh. You don't read of the God of Esau. We do not read and Ishmael built an altar to the, they're not there.

Both were circumcised, both had godly parents, both lived outside the covenant, and both were comfortable doing it that way. In time, both Ishmael and Esau personally manifested their hostility to the things of God. In time, we see Ishmael taunting the newborn Isaac. In time, we see Esau pledging to kill his brother Jacob. Whereas Isaac and Jacob personally manifested care for the things of God.

They got to that place, they got to the, both of them got to the place of calling on the Lord in spite of their shortcomings. From Ishmael have come the Arab nations, bitter foes of Israel to this day, and for many centuries, passionate adherence to Islam. These are the descendants of those two boys. From Esau came the Edomites, the bitterest and most vengeful of all of Israel's ancient enemies. So intense was their animosity and their hatred to the Jews that Obadiah's prophecy is devoted only to them. They're doomed, and that's why you won't meet an Edomite.

They're gone. That was a sentence against them, but they certainly influenced their surroundings. As it is written, again, Malachi chapter 1, it gets right to what Malachi does with Esau, I have hated Jacob, I have loved, where the subject and the distinction of their lifestyles are finalized by the prophet. The descendants of Esau were repulsed, they repulsed God, they pushed him away to the point of irretrievability. Again, this is what Paul is trying to say. If you're going to push away Christ and understand what you're doing, understand your own history, understand we've been through this before, understand there was an Ishmael and there was an Isaac, one went to heaven, the other one, big question mark.

The same thing with Esau and Jacob. And so yeah, everything he's saying, if they're getting it, this is their culture, they understand what he's saying, what are they going to do with it? We know that there were a lot of Jewish converts by Paul, and how do we know that? Because when he gets to the end of these letters and he says, tell this one I said hi, and tell that one, and give my greetings to how many Jewish names and Gentile names are in those numbers.

And how many did he leave out? The descendants of Jacob, they allowed God to throw an investment into their lives, into the lives of their descendants, and into the lives of their spiritual descendants. Those who would be in agreement, and these are the ones that carry the race forward, and they carry the church forward. We're in this line, and that's why Paul was saying earlier that they're not all Israel, who are Israel. And that's why we can say with equal authority, they're not all Christians who say they're Christians. What do they say about Christ? What do they say about his scripture? Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.

You can't miss that. You read it once, you got it forever. Now God never said this until Jacob and Esau became two great nations. So understand, he's not talking about the two people, Jacob and Esau, he's talking about their descendants. Malachi comes over a thousand years after these events. Not the New Testament, he's about 400 years before the New Testament.

But he's over, or he's probably almost 2,000 years after the days of Esau and Jacob. This is not an emotional hatred as we would associate with hatred. It is a loathing for wickedness, a classification. It gives us an idea of God's disdain for that which pushes him away. Their choices are held in sharp contrast and it's evidenced in their people, vindicating God's election. So you say, yeah, I see why God chose Isaac over Ishmael. I see why God chose Jacob over Esau. Look at their descendants, they're not interested in him still, at least within the Jews.

The Jewish people, there are those that are still interested. And spiritually, the church, the true church, our descendants, come along those same lines of faith. One in his offspring sought God, the other did not. The other was indifferent, stubborn, hostile towards God's will, and the Old Testament has documented it.

It's right there for you to read. When you go into the Scripture and you read about those historical events in the book of Kings and Judges and Genesis, you're just getting the evidence of everything that's to come in the New Testament. In fact, if you were to take a map, you could see how much of the book of Genesis and Judges and Joshua happened in Jordan, the modern kingdom of Jordan. These are the peoples that belong to, in contrast, Jacob and Esau, Ishmael and Isaac. Esau bypassed God's blessings, not being interested, and taunting the one who God had put his favor upon, being Isaac. Esau, the name in Scripture, has come to mean the world against God. Isaiah 63, verse 1, and we covered that just recently in our study.

We're almost done. If the Jews of Paul's day were content with warring against Messiah, then those individual Jews would not enter into the promises of their own Scripture. That's this point. You treat the Bible as, or you treat God's word as Esau and Ishmael did, then expect their fate. The ball is in your court. The foreknowledge of God allows him to run his creation, to make his invitations, to assist, and to bring him to eternity. So I'm going to close with this. Maybe there's someone listening and you've not trusted Jesus with your salvation. Your life and your soul and all of your eternity, you're not trusting him. There's no other way. He is the only way.

This is the good news. Trust calls for reason to think it through, to make a deliberate response to, or a deliberate rejection. This is the criteria.

This is the standard. These are the circumstances. And you either select Christ or not. You may say, well, what about those people in other lands?

You see, there it is. What about those Jews who rejected the Bible? What about those other people? Well, we have to first start here.

What about you? What do you care about everybody else when God is talking to you, to your face? 1 Timothy 2, verse 4, I'm going to close with this.

Speaking of God, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.