907. Election

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. We're continuing a study series entitled, Our Great Salvation. Today's speaker is seminary professor, Dr. Brian Hand.

If you would please join me in Romans Chapter 9. We all like the freedom to make choices. Sometimes our choices are really simple, whether you want coffee or coke. And they just reflect our personal preferences. Sometimes our choices are a whole lot more serious and actually stem from convictions or even the affections of our hearts. But I found it very interesting that when we come to the topic of God's making choices, we're a little bit inconsistent. We want to be able to make choices.

We want to be in control of our life circumstances and get whatever we want out of life. But we also have at least the temptation in each one of us at points in life to deny to God that same choice. As if somehow we had a right to choose Him, but He did not have a right to choose us. As we consider God's election in light of the actual words of scripture today, however, we see a powerful testimony to God's own sovereignty as well as His love. So let's begin reading together in verse 6 of Romans Chapter 9. We'll go through verse 16 on the theme, Jacob, Have I Loved? It is not as though the word of God had taken none effect, for they are not all Israel which are of Israel, neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children. But in Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, they which are children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of promise are counted for the seed. For this is the word of promise. At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. And not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one, even our father Isaac, for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?

God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. Last fall, as I read Ephesians to my children in our own devotional time, we came across the idea of election in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4.

According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. And I thought quickly, how do you express a concept like this of election to children? My oldest is 14. They range all the way down to 8 years old.

So how do you tell an 8 year old about election? Well this thought quickly came to me. Let's say that we had a box of donuts. Who bought the donuts?

Daddy did! They all chimed in. And let's say that I walk up to the box and opened it and I said, that one and that one and that one are mine. That's kind of like God's election. Elizabeth looked up at me innocently, my 8 year old, and said, Which donut did you choose?

That's not the point. I'm trying to get across to you that God has the right to choose because he created us. But which one did you choose? I don't know, the blueberry one.

My son chimed in. What other one did you choose? The sour cream one. What was your third one?

Does it really matter? She nodded sweetly, yes. Fine, the chocolate cake one. At first I was really exasperated that the grand theological point that I was trying to make just got wrecked by children's distractiveness. They were so easy to get off onto tangents. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, that's exactly what we do when we come to the doctrine of election. God gives us certain information and he lays out in front of us what he wants us to know and understand. Instead we start asking questions, such as, Why did you do it?

How did you do it? Exactly what are all the ins and outs of elections? How do I know if I am elect ahead of time? And we crowd him in a sense with questions that he does not choose to answer. It is better for us instead to take in hand what the scriptures actually teach us about this great doctrine and realize it is a doctrine of hope, a doctrine of blessing, a doctrine of strength and power in the exhibition of God's love. The fact that God chooses sinners at all to be saints reveals something important about his character. Election is inextricably linked in scripture with God's love. And if I had paid a little more close attention to the passage I was reading to my children, I would have noticed that.

Because the full text of Ephesians 1-4 is, According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. And that love is either connecting back with his choice in that verse or looking forward to his choice in the following verse. And as I looked elsewhere in scripture, I found that the context in which election occurs in scripture, over and over again, in some way or another, affirm for us God's love. In a sense then, the scripture texts begin answering a question that begins cropping up in our mind. That question that we see initially is this, isn't election arbitrary?

No, it's not arbitrary. God elects on the basis of his love. And our text today teaches this theme that is consistent throughout scripture. Election is the means by which God affects or brings his loving plan to an effective end.

So our response to that, instead of complaining against him, or instead of fearing that somehow we're in some kind of dangerous position, is instead to trust him. To respond to his love with joy and with hope. Now you might be thinking at this point, I don't see the emphasis on God's loving plan in Romans chapter 9. God's love in fact only occurred in verse 13, one time, and that was a quotation from the Old Testament.

So how can this be so integrally connected with the topic of election? Well if you would mentally at least go back with me to the end of Romans chapter 8, we saw some important verses beginning in verse 32. He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up freely, he gave him freely for us all. How will he not with him also freely give us all things? You see God has already exhibited this love. And God stands with a face or a disposition of love toward a sin-cursed world. And he looks out at all of us and says, God so loved the world, and I gave my son because I love the world. So his own heart's disposition is that of love.

But we face a problem, because we don't respond in kind. So all of God's love in some senses is going to be wasted as he gives it, because we will not in our sinfulness and on our own strength respond well to that love. But we continue in Romans 8, who shall separate us from the love of Christ.

And then he lists a whole series of things and says finally, I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, height, depth, or any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And it's on the heels of this text, dealing with the love of God for his people, that Paul turns to Romans chapter 9, or begins to discuss with them some complaints that might naturally arise in our own minds. Because one of the things we do is go, wait a minute, you say God loved Israel, but look at Israel in the first century. It doesn't look like God's love has been effective. You say that God loves the world, but all this outpouring of love seems to be so ineffective, because we will not respond to him in faith. Well, Paul raises not only an objection, but our first point here, and that is that God brings his loving promises to an effective end through election. Verses 6-9, God's disposition again is so great that he wants to make, and does make, great and glorious promises to people. But his promises, in some senses, certain ones at least, of them, are contingent on our response to him. Even when God is making great promises, he has to bring those promises to pass, to completion, to fulfillment, by something that takes place in us, that transforms us, ourselves. But our disposition again is that we reject faith and obedience to God. It would seem that for all his desire, God has met an impasse in our stubbornness. Election is the means by which God overcomes that impasse. So Paul is asserting simply this, that election is an instrument that God uses to fulfill his promise. Without God's choosing people to be a special possession, no one would become a special possession. Look at these words that God spoke to Israel in Deuteronomy 7. The Lord did not set his affection on you, or his love on you, nor choose you, because you are more in number than any people.

For you are the fewest of all people. So we have God's love, and God's love is pouring out. Why did he do this?

What's going on here? Well, why did God choose them? Because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And so verse 6 shows us that election prevents God's promises from falling.

Look at this with me. Paul is boxing against an imaginary enemy, but it's an enemy that crops up in every generation. That is, it's a hypothetical, but so many of you have essentially asked the same question. Hasn't the word of God taken none effect? God made all these promises to Adam, and yet how do people respond in the interim?

They reject him. So God intervenes and chooses out from among humanity one man, Abraham, and calls Abraham into a relationship with himself. In order to bring his loving promise to mankind to an effective end, God elects Abraham. And then in the election of Abraham, God makes more promises.

What he's going to do with Israel or Abraham's descendants. And yet as time passes, we go, it's not happening. Abraham's descendants are rejecting God. They're turning away from him. They're not responding to God's loving promise in a way that is effective.

They're not laying hold of it and operating by faith. And so God reaches out again to draw people to himself. If God were not to move on our hearts, all of God's promises would be ineffective. And Paul says that's not going to happen. It is not as though the word of God has taken none effect. And he begins a process of reasoning with them that helps them to understand what election really looks like in practice. All of this is Israel body politic.

Yes, there's this huge group. But not all those who called themselves Israel were really God's Israel. There was always just a portion.

And somebody might then object right on the heels of that. But just a portion, how do you know that that's true? He's going to go further into a discussion of Abraham and demonstrate before us that this has been happening all along. Neither, verse 7, because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children. But in Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of promise are counted for seed. How do we know that within all this body of national Israel only some are God's people? Because within the direct descendants of Abraham, only Isaac was the chosen seed.

And you say, well, what other options were there? Well, there's Ishmael, of course. But do you know that Genesis 25 tells us that after Sarah died, Abraham remarried?

And he had additional six sons by this other wife. And yet only Isaac was the chosen. So God made promises to Abraham that themselves look like they will be ineffective, except that God chooses Isaac and accomplishes his promises through Isaac. Election then is preventing the promises from being supplanted by any other thing. Because as we continue on, those verses 7 through 9 are showing us that there is no alternative, there is no fleshly behavior or activity or any other thing that can replace the promises of God, that can come in on their heels and supplant them. The promises of God will never be uprooted or undone, and neither will his love.

So Paul's argument actually answers a second question that our hearts raise. What if I don't know if I'm elect? Do I have to figure that out on the front end? And some of you have lived in fear for many years, or you have gone back and forth. Maybe I'm not really God's child. How do I know? How can I tell?

How can I determine? Would you please look with me back at the promises of God? Election is bringing the promises of God to bear on your life. And one of those key promises of God is he loves. God loved the world. Moreover, the promises of God include, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

That's a promise. Election might be the vehicle or the means by which God brings that promises to pass, but if you wish to respond in faith to the word of God, you are elect. If your heart yearns toward God, he is drawing you.

How do we know that? Because you would not be drawn at all. You would not respond to him with anything other than coldness of heart, disinterest, careless indifference, if he weren't drawing you.

And so we can lay aside any fear preemptively. God doesn't say, figure out if you're elect, and then come to Christ. He says, my promise is that I love and I will accept anyone who comes to me.

And then he brings it to pass by calling us to himself. Well, the passage is going to continue, or other evidence continues in Scripture, not only with the Romans 10.13, which I already cited, but also 2 Corinthians 1.20, for all the promises of God in him that is in Christ are yes and in Christ, amen, to the glory of God by us. That is, ultimately speaking, and we can go into great depth in other places and other passages recognizing that ultimately Christ is the elect of God, and it is in him that we become elect as well. But in Christ, all the promises of God are an affirmation to us rather than a negation. All the promises of God have bearing on us, and God will not turn us away if we come to him by faith. Well, Paul continues his argument in verses 10 through 13 that God not only brings his loving promises to an effective end, but God also brings his loving sovereignty to an effective end through election. To begin with, election does not depend on forcing goodness.

In the attempt to justify both our own actions and self-worth, we're tempted to raise a new threat against the love of God, the threat of our own good works, as if somehow we earned favor with God. But Paul says that's not possible. Not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac, and we're dealing with twins here, because the Greek text is actually pointing out it's one act of conception. So it wasn't that she had a child over here, and then some years later she had one act of conception.

She conceived, and there were two. And yet in that two, the children not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. Election does not depend on our good works.

That's actually a joyful thought, or should be for us. Have you ever felt in peril of your salvation because of your wrongdoing? Even if you've trusted Christ, are there times at which you consider what you have just done? It's as it were, you hold up your sin in your hands, and you turn it around, and you look at it and study it again, and you say, I can't possibly know God and do this.

I can't possibly be one of his children and do this. If we had to be righteous in order to be elect, you would be correct. But God preemptively discards this kind of thinking and says, I chose ahead of time, and I told Rebecca before her children were ever born that the younger, Jacob, was the chosen one. And I did so specifically discounting any of their righteousnesses that would come later. That is, God brought his sovereign power to bear, his love to bear, and his authority to choose. And that is for our good. He also concludes that election does not depend on status.

Verses 12 and 13 added to the issue of works the fact that the younger would serve the elder. Has it ever concerned you that maybe you didn't come from the right family? You don't have the right background. You don't have the right heritage.

Oh, you can understand that guy over there who grew up and his grandfather was a missionary, his father was a pastor. He might be elect, but not me. I come from nothing.

A nondescript background, or worse. I was given up for adoption, my parents didn't know the Lord, didn't care about me, didn't care about God. I can't possibly be among God's chosen. Paul shows you right here, election is not based on status. God does not look out there and see, these are the lofty, these are the movers and shakers in the world. Oh, yes, in the ancient world, the elder was supposed to have the right of primogeniture. Fancy word, that means he was in control of the family.

He got a bigger inheritance. And God says, no, the younger will be superior because I have chosen. And so we have Malachi 1-2 reaffirming this in the choice. I have loved you, God says, to Israel. Yet the people of Malachi's own day were complaining to God, we don't see any evidence of your love. Wherein have you loved us?

I don't see proof of that, we've gone into captivity, we've returned from captivity, and even in our return from captivity we're no longer a glorious nation. Where's the evidence of your love? And God says, the proof of my love? Wasn't Esau Jacob's brother?

Same family, same opportunities? Yet I love Jacob, I chose him. There is evidence abounding all around us that God in his right to choose lovingly chooses and then sovereignly brings his choice to pass by calling people like us to be his children. So we might have raised another question concerning God's choice, and that is, what if God's election depends on my family and yet God has done away with that, bringing us to the conclusion that God brings his loving mercy to an effective end through election in verses 14 through 16.

Paul addresses the people and he is issuing forth another challenge or calling to mind something that they will challenge him with. What shall we say then, is there unrighteousness with God? If God really has this love, loving disposition, Christ died for the sins of the whole world, and yet because the whole world rebuffs him, he reaches out in order to make his promise effective. He calls people to be his own. Can we say that there is unrighteousness with God? Is his choice wrong?

Absolutely not. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. It is not of him that willeth or runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. God is not unfair or unjust.

Let's put it better in those terms. Because fairness is a rather human concept and a fairly base or low virtue. Justice is a high virtue. Love is a high virtue. Mercy and compassion that the Lord speaks of here is a high virtue. And the scriptures tell us that there is a justice that demands sinners be punished. There is a mercy that provides a means that we might not be punished.

And that punishment might fall on a substitute. Love offers that substitute to the entire world freely for anyone who believes. And fairness never even enters into the equation. It lacks strength and merit and it attacks the theological virtue of love.

Think of it this way. If God has to exhibit a completely indifferent attitude toward everyone, where is love? Indifference is not love. It's one of the frustrating things that we experience in our current society when a virtue like tolerance is exalted because tolerance is not love. Tolerance means I don't care about you and I don't care what you do.

I'll let you do whatever you want to do. I don't care enough to rebuke you if you're wrong. If you're driving off the cliff, as it were, of life, doesn't matter to me. And God instead is calling our attention to the fact that he is absolutely just and yet he, as it were, interdicts his own justice with mercy through the means of election. In Christ, God has provided a means by which justice is satisfied and love extended simultaneously.

So God loves the world and opens the way of salvation, but the world uniformly rebuffs God. If we were to use just a couple of illustrations to bring this to bear on you, but imagine that a couple, Sarah and Robert, went. They had the resources to adopt people and they had worked with church youth groups for so long they wanted their own children but could not have their own. And so they went to an orphanage to adopt children. They had the money to adopt many and they actually went into a room and looked around at this entire room full of people and themselves said, we'll let anyone, and even spoke to the children, we'll take you all. Anyone who wants to be my child, come. Well, the children are used to the orphanage in which they live and they certainly don't know these people any more than we in our sinful condition knew God.

We didn't know anything about him, we didn't know what his character was, we didn't know what his disposition was, we didn't care anything about him and we were quite comfortable in our sin. And so none of the children raised their hand to go with these who would be their loving parents. Robert and Sarah were on their way out and they got in the car and they were just about to drive away and Sarah turned to her husband and says, we've got to go back.

We love them, we have to take some. So they turned around and went back in and with the authority of choice and the resources at their disposal they said, we'll take that one, that little girl, and that little boy. Little ones who would not choose them at that moment. And yet because they chose the little ones, those little ones were brought into the family. That is God's election. He's inviting you to come to faith because he loves you.

But he's bringing to pass his perfect promise, his perfect sovereignty, and his perfect justice through the means of election. In 1997, I met a young lady at church and shortly after we started dating I grew to love her. The following summer after we had met, she was a counselor at a camp in Wisconsin and I was stuck here in humid, stuffy Greenville. So I started writing to her regularly, faithfully.

In fact, I had kind of a devious plan. I got this big, huge puzzle and I broke it up into chunks of 25 pieces each and sent them in the mail, 25 pieces at a time with messages written on the back. So when she got it, she had to put the puzzle portion together and then flip it over to see what the message was. Poems, trite little thoughts, you know what all that stuff is, right? Nine months later, I met her as she was returning to school and I gave her the last section of 25 pieces of that puzzle.

Oh, actually 24. And while she was putting it together and then fumbling around looking for the last piece going, I lost it! I lost it! I said, well just read it anyway. And she read through a little statement that I write and the last piece said, Will you marry me?

It's okay. How many of you are upset that I chose her? How many of you don't think I had a right to choose? You see, having a loving disposition as a person does not mean that that love will not be localized and brought to an effective end in choosing one. You see, we actually have an illustration of election all around us and you young ladies who have rings on your finger are very glad for the concept of election. And I don't mean just theological.

We love it when love comes to an effective end and draws us out as special into a unique relationship. And instead of being frustrated and angry and bitter or hostile toward, fearful about the election of God, we realize that election is the vehicle by which He is inviting every one of us by faith to be His children. And it is the vehicle by which He's affecting that in our lives. You've been listening to a sermon preached by seminary professor Dr. Brian Hand. Join us again tomorrow as we continue the doctrinal study series called Our Great Salvation here on The Daily Platform.