Romans 9:1–3Scripture
Romans. Today my assignment is Romans 9:1-3. I'm going to read that, and then I really just want to do some work. I'm going to talk about a few points out of 9:1-3. We've been in our small groups, we've been discussing this already up to this point, and it may seem as if I'm not really drilling down with these three verses like maybe you would want me to, and I understand that, but I would like for us to really set the landscape for the intent of Paul and the possible arguments that are circling that either he has already dealt with or he thinks he will deal with, that are common arguments that really lend themselves to understanding Romans 9, 10, and 11. And then I want to maybe mention a couple of things, draw a couple things out of these verses. So let's read that together, Romans 9:1-3. "I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow
Point 1Paul's great sorrow for the lost
And unceasing anguish in my heart." I was thinking, just hit pause there for a minute. I was thinking of things in our life that might cause great sorrow, for us to really truly understand that he is sorrowful, all right, for his people who are lost. What is great sorrow? A couple things I was thinking about: if you lost your kid to a tragic accident and your child died, that would cause great sorrow, amen. That would be tough. If you lost your husband or your wife, it should cause great sorrow. For some it may not, for others it would. If you became massively injured where it debilitated you and affected you for life, and the way of life that you used to live you no longer live that way anymore, it's changed everything, the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you live, it might cause great sorrow. To lose your parents, to lose anyone in this life, to lose your job, to lose your house, great loss, that would cause great sorrow. He begins to compare this to the feeling he has for those who are far from the Lord. Let me ask you this question: when comparing great sorrow to things like losing your child, what are your feelings regarding the lost?
Do you feel great sorrow? Well, the apostle Paul does, and
I truly believe that the greater that God captures your heart, the more he also captures your desire for those who are far from him, that they would come to know Christ.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 2:55
"I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart"
Means it's not just on Sunday morning when the pastor talks about having great sorrow for the lost, it's constant. He's constantly concerned for the lost.
Some of us have lost people in our house and we don't even know it, because we're so focused and busy with work and our life, and some of our children are lost and we've not even given it a second thought. For us, we're more concerned about them not embarrassing us. If you have young people, right, if you have young people at all, you know what I'm talking about your kids not embarrassing you. Let me tell you a story. So I was three years old, right, three, four, something like that, I don't remember. This is a terrible story already. I was young, my mom took me to Walmart. Now my grandfather managed Walmarts and he traveled all over the U.S. Opening up and then managing several Walmarts, so he was all over the place, so my mom actually worked at Walmart too, but off and on. But she took me to Walmart, we were shopping, and this lady comes up to me. Now this is in the South, you need to you need to get a reference here, where we're at, we're in the South, they do this in the South, right? Doesn't matter if you're their kid or not. And I was kind of running around the cart with my mom and this lady comes up and she goes, "Oh, you're a cute little stinker, you're such a cute little stinker, aren't you?" And she grabbed my cheeks and she squeezed them and said, "You're just such a cutie." And it made me really mad. I was like, how dare this woman call me a stinker! And so I got really mad. My mom said I turned red and I breathed real deep and I went, "I'm not a stinker!" And I ran around behind her and I grabbed her back end and put my nose in there and went, I ran back around and pulling in her face and said, "You stink too, lady!"
My mom said she just took the cart, walked off, and disowned me as her child while we were in Walmart. So we hope, if you have little ones in your house, we hope that our kids do not embarrass us like that, amen. We're concerned about that when we go out in public, when our kids begin to find themselves, but are you concerned about their eternal destination? We're concerned about their football games and their athletic prowess. We're concerned about making good grades. We are, many parents anxious about these things because we want our kids to get into a good college and possibly get scholarships, and we are throwing everything, time and energy and concern and money, at those things because they concern us. But what about their souls? I think there needs to be an adjustment in our life today, because many of us are so concerned about the temporal that we forget about the eternal. And let me tell you, those things you push your children to, although not necessarily bad, they are not eternal.
Your child's soul should bring more anxiousness to your life than their football career.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 6:41
You're like, Shawn, that got personal, because now we're doing the fantasy football leagues. And listen,
I'm not against football, I'm against football being God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 6:53
I'm not against your kid playing football, and matter of fact, if they do it, they should hurt people, hit them hard, they should work until they bleed, they should give everything they got, but don't you dare give your kids to football. Don't give them to football, don't give them to their grades, don't give them to those things. We should have anguished, consistent anguish in our hearts towards our kids' eternal destiny. Let me just pause here for a second. I'm off topic, I'm just off topic. Maybe not, maybe this is the right thing. My mom sent a text message to the kids the other day, and "the other day" is six months ago, because when you get older a day is about half a year, all right, and I only think it gets quicker. But it was, "Do you know where you're going? The Lord is soon to return. Do you know that you're saved?" One of my children, we won't say which, responded and said, "Is Mom okay?" Or "Is Gigi okay?" My grandma, like my mom, their grandma is Gigi. "Is Gigi okay?" And I said, "What do you mean?" And they read the text and they're like, "This is just random, asking me about my eternal soul. What is this? Does she need to go to a home?" Like, it was confusing to them, it shocked them, this language of concern for their soul. And then once they realized that she, and so she sent them her testimony and said, "I know where I will be if the Lord returns tomorrow." It should not be shocking to our kids that we are concerned for their souls. Oh man, did that just poke me right between the eyes, because we live in a world where we are concerned about so many things, so many things, that being concerned about someone's soul sets us back on our heels. That it should not be so. It should not be so.
Paul then speaks here, speaks to the Jews that are in earshot, and he says, I'm concerned for my people. "For I could wish," listen, what was the word? "For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh." In other words, if I could lay my life down and save my brothers and sisters, I would do it, if I could even wish it.
But you know, you can't even wish it, because he's not holy enough. I mean, I think the apostle Paul said he's the chief of sinners, so what good is a life being laid down that is full of sin? What kind of atonement could his life ever make? And so he puts emphasis not on his willingness to do something for his brother but on his inability to do something for his brother. He speaks in such a fashion that he is in essence saying, I can't even save them if I wanted to, because I'm not righteous enough, I'm not good enough. There is only one who can save, and his name is Jesus Christ. Are you with me?
So don't get this convoluted, it isn't like, oh well, I need to be a person who, you know, who at least in my journal I'm saying, if I could lay down my life for my kid. No, the attitude of this statement is, you're not good enough and you can't, you couldn't, because you're inadequate. And although, and it's almost as if, it's almost as if, don't take this one to the bank, but it's almost as if he knows he couldn't even wish it because he knows himself immensely. Do you know yourself?
To know Christ is to know you, because we only turn to Christ once we truly know that we are broken, that we are sinners, and that we got all kinds of problems, can I get an amen?
And the more you know you, the more you know Christ, and so to be someone who is not self-aware is to be someone who is not christ-aware. I'm just
Pastor Shawn Gray · 11:56
on a rambling spree here, we'll just see where this goes, this is kind of fun, but I think it's very important to
Point 2Romans 9–11 is not a rabbit trail
Understand the heart of Paul. Now I want to do this, I want to lay some groundwork as to what Paul is trying to accomplish here. I mean, if you want to do this, and I think it's important here's my first point, right: Paul, as we move into Romans 9, is not going on a rabbit trail, just zigzagging around. And like, 9 through 11 could be pulled out, and all this is accurate, 9 through 11 could be pulled out and it'd still read seamlessly. 9 through 11 is building on the argument Paul is trying to build, specifically attached to justification by faith alone. It's building on that. He's not, right, these are not ramblings of a crazy man.
He is specifically trying to accomplish something here. Now, I've been excited to get to Romans 9, because Romans 9 is exciting, it's wonderful, it's beautiful actually. It speaks to God's sovereign work in the lives of men, and nothing comforts me more than to know that God is in control. I get a little nervous when I think that someone else is in control, especially me, because how many of you know you got problems? And I mean, come on, God knows what's going on. Now, this has been, I confess, a misunderstood part of the word of God, Romans 9. In fact, there are some commentators who in writing commentaries on Romans, and if you do any kind of research you'll notice this, stop at the end of chapter 8.
They'd rather not write another volume than try to tackle Romans 9, 10, and 11. Just let that one rest with you for a second. They just quit writing commentary. There are other commentators who will write all the way up to chapter 8, they will not write on 9, 10, and 11, and they will pick back up at chapter 12. Crazy, right? Crazy. We don't need to do that though, because we can't, because it will mess up our schedule, and I love Ebony enough to keep up with the schedule. She helps a brother not just run around like a squirrel, look at that, oh look at that pretty thing. So I'm very happy for her, and she keeps me on track and also ensures that I will not do what many commentators have done: we don't get to do the easy stuff and skip it on the hard stuff, amen. We got to do it all. That's the way it works. They'd rather not write another volume.
They are essentially, they are, in my opinion, these verses, these chapters are essential to Paul's argument. I don't believe that they can be removed. I believe they accomplish exactly what he's trying to say. Some have said in treating this section that it is a parenthesis, that for some reason Paul was diverted from his major theme of justification by faith and then he drops in this sort of closed package discussing Israel and then gets back to the main subject in chapter 12. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not what's happening here. Paul has learned, because he's taught these things before, no doubt he has learned what the objections are to his teaching. He knows what they are.
It's funny, when I share something on Sunday, I can get in the car afterwards and I can almost know what objections are out there. Why? Because we have conversations with people in small groups and around the table and at dinnertime, and we know where the pushbacks are. And you need to understand it is important for us to do some work to understand what he deals with, what objections are circling out there that he's dealing with in this letter, because if we don't know the objections, we don't know why he's saying what he's saying. So over these next several weeks we're going to begin to unpack the objections, the unsaid objections, and then that way we can properly understand his arguments. This is apologetics. That's what apologetics is. You can go to a little conference, you can have an apologetics conference, and people will be communicating and speaking, but what they're doing is they're speaking to objections without actually even sometimes saying the objection. That is apologetics. This is a very apologetic book, and these three chapters are very apologetic in nature.
All right, Paul has learned, because he taught these things before, that their objections, these things that he teaches and writes to the Romans, though inspired by the Holy Spirit, are not being taught by Paul for the first time. These are things he's been saying since chapter 1, and really there are some things that he feels he must discuss. There are some questions raised by objectors that have to be dealt with. Now, Paul is very logical in Romans. He's like a lawyer arguing his case and he wants to leave no stone unturned, no loopholes in his presentation. To get a groundwork, I'm going to give you a couple Scriptures here. I wanted to do way more, but I'm trying to keep it light and fancy-free today, light-footed and fancy-free today. To get the groundwork, let's go to Romans 1:1-5.
I just want to give you a few verses that are important to really understand why he's saying what he's saying in these first three verses. Romans 1: 1 through 5. I'll give you a few more moments because I don't have it on the screen. It says this: "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations." Everybody say it, all the nations. What nations?
Now, here at the very outset of the letter he affirms the fact that he is the apostle to the nations. You can translate the word nations gentiles. That's important. He is the apostle to the Gentiles, and the gospel here is said to be given to the nations, to the Gentiles. So this argument would have caused Paul's, for the Jews, they would have been like, wait a minute, wait a minute, brother, what about us? And so he begins then in chapter 9 to speak to this issue, and one of the questions that's going to come up in the mind of the Jews is, does that mean that God has set aside his people Israel? Here's another question: does this mean that there are no longer, that they are no longer worthy to participate in God's salvation and God's kingdom because they're Jew, they're not a Gentile? Are the Jews being written off? Now, is justification by grace through faith a Gentile gift alone? Is it not open to the Jews? Has the nation of people that for all these centuries has been God's chosen people now been permanently and totally set apart as an unworthy nation, and God has turned to the Gentiles and given up on the Jews? These are some things that might be circling in the minds of people from reading Romans 1 through 8. Paul needs to deal with that, actually, and he does in chapter 9, 10, 11. In that section he deals specifically with that. Look at chapter 11, verse 1, and I'm going to give you an overview of a few of these verses. I think this one's important though.
Chapter 11, verse 1 says this: "I ask, then," here's the question, I didn't, by the way, I didn't pull all those questions out of nowhere, I pulled them out of the Bible, but the problem is when we read, we don't see the problem, we don't see the concern, we don't see the questions that he's speaking to, we flow over them. But let's go to one, because this is what he's speaking to in these chapters. Verse 11:1, "I ask, then, has God rejected his people?"
There's the objection. There's the objection he places before them, and then he's going to talk about, may it never be, no way, Jose.
"For I also am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew." Look at verse, look at verse 26: "And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written, 'The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob; and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.' As regards the gospel, they are enemies," that's verse 26 by the way, "for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers." So before he can discuss the personal implications, listen to me, write this down, before he can discuss the personal implications of the gospel, he must first respond to the objections that are out there, where Jews are thinking they have been written off and forgotten as a nation, because if they've been forgotten as a nation, they've been forgotten as an individual, and if they've been forgotten as an individual, there is no hope for salvation. Are you with me today? So his goal is to work down to the personal. He starts with the nation because there's a question about them being forgotten as a nation, and he starts with that argument to say God has not forgotten you as a nation, that he can work himself down to the personal. That's the goal, that's what he's trying to accomplish.
So this is not a rabbit trail. This is Paul laying a foundation for an argument that continues to explain what justification by faith alone is.
Point 3Salvation rests on God's sovereign choice
Number two: God's sovereign choice. Chapter 9 is not about you trying to will yourself into eternity.
It's not about you choosing God.
The Bible says you don't choose God, he chose you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 24:57
This is not about your choice, this is about God's sovereign choice.
Nine goes through painstaking steps to help you understand that, and funny enough, we go through painstaking steps to try to ignore that.
Can I get an amen up in here? It's a very easy thing to refute. I read this and I just want to read this to you: "it is a very easy thing to refute another man's doctrine. It is quite another thing to make my own stand with firm footing."
Oh, just let that sit with you for a while, because anyone can argue any point with conjecture and opinions, but it is quite another thing to firmly stand on a doctrine that you have sought out completely, that you can stand on your own feet, not quoting the words of other men.
That's quite another thing. And the reality is none of us in here, all the other churches in Pleasant Hill, people are lazy and they don't want to do the hard work.
Just tell me what to believe and then I'm going to go argue for that belief. Can we have an honest moment in here for just a minute? It's all been honest moments, I'm just saying, but can we actually be, I want to be, I'm always transparent, okay, I want to share something with you.
I have seen people come from a place where they disagree with some of the things that we're learning and push back, to then totally adopting some of the things that we're learning and arguing with other people who are at the place they were a month ago. But then when you ask them, you're excited because you think they get it, you ask them, "Back that up with Scripture," they can't. Why?
Because they've just adopted a belief and fight for it, rather than going and doing the hard work of seeking it out that they may stand firmly on a doctrine of truth.
This is a problem. My goal on Sunday morning is not to indoctrinate a group of people that you might go out and argue a case that you haven't even sought out yourself. That's not the point of this, that's not the point.
It's good to wrestle with the Lord. It's good to wrestle with his truth.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 27:56
You won't win in the end, because eventually he'll just be like, you know, there are some who'll be like, you need to go from wrestling with God to clinging to God.
Listen, clinging onto God is not a choice.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 28:09
We wrestle against God until he touches us and then we are clinging, not because we do it in our will but because we do it through desperation and because of his touch. Are you with me today? Jacob didn't have a change of mind in the middle of arguing and wrestling with God. He didn't have a change of mind,
God touched him, and that's the way salvation is. It is a divine touch by God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 28:33
You don't will yourself there, you don't choose yourself there, God chooses you. Nine, he is laboring to get this across to people.
Point 4Hold to what the Lord says
It is pertinent that we hold simply to the letter of God's word rather than winding tales of conjecture that make people dizzy enough to not even have an opinion anymore. When did God's word not become enough?
Well, I'll tell you when it didn't become enough, when the internet hit. Truly, even in the church, God isn't enough. I didn't even know how, I didn't even know how I got a message, you gotta admit, I'm in a pastoral group and we're on this text feed, and check this out, there's a new website called Text With Jesus, right? The actual name of the website is textwith.me, okay, textwith.me, go look it up, go look it up. And so what happens in this thing is, it's an app, and it uses AI where you can text and communicate every day with people from the Bible, including Jesus.
All right, you go down here, it's a divine connection in your pocket. Discover a new interactive way to engage with your faith through Text With Jesus, a revolutionary AI-powered chatbot app for iPhone and iPad, designed for devoted Christians seeking a deeper connection with the Bible's most iconic figures. All right, this is what I love the most, go look at this in your own time, but this is what I love the most: "Finally!" Everybody say finally. "I'm getting the help I've needed on a lot of things that I've had questions about." Here's another one: "This gives me hope and strengthens my faith. This is such a blessing, such a beautiful blessing." Now listen, I'm all about technology and I'm all about advancement, but what I'm not all about is providing a solution that's an alternative to the Bible. You're not, well, what if these characters, the AI characters, what if it just quotes the Bible? Well, if it quotes the Bible like a lot of people when you crawl Google quote the Bible, we're gonna have some problems.
"Well, Jesus, I'm having a bad day." "Don't worry, my son, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you."
Come on. I wonder what John felt about this Scripture, "You are the head and not the tail." I wonder what John the Baptist felt about that. Did you get my joke? That's a funny joke. What did he say when they were lopping off his head? You think he was like, "I'm the head, not the tail, I'm above and not beneath"? Lop. Are you with me today? And the problem is we have opted, we're moving into football season, audible, we've opted for solutions that are not the Bible because we're not lovers of God, we're lovers of self. Okay, let me see, when you're in my response from this text because there was no groundwork, so I, and me, I don't really care, I don't know if they liked it or didn't like it when they posted it, but I just said, "AI chat about, huh, try opening your Bible a little bit," and then I did parentheses, "hand to forehead so hard I knock myself senseless almost to death."
That was my chat. They loved me on this chat feed, not really. It's a problem. I'm concerned because in a time that it is pertinent that we hold simply to the letter of God's word, we have substituted things for God's word. It's a problem. The simple truth is neither you nor I have any right to know anything more about predestination. News flash, that's what chapter 9 is about. He's continuing to talk about justification by faith and the fact that God foreknew you and the fact that he predestined you and the fact that he chose you sovereignly because he is God all by himself, and none of us really have a right to know every detail about all of that. We just simply can know what God tells us. If we were to know more, God would have revealed more.
So when you begin to wander off into opinions and conjecture, you're wandering away from the truth. The truth says what it says. It'd be better for our conversation to be, "thus says the Lord." Not, "Well, I think." And we need to have buzzers in our small groups, and whenever someone says, "Well, I think,"
And then we make them say, "Thus says the Lord, what does the Lord say?" And you're going to think this is rude, and I'm going to say this with the most, listen,
I'm going to say this as gently as I can: I don't care what you think, because this word, his word, gives life. Your word does not.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 34:47
And if this word gives life, what seed are you sowing in your conversation? You're sowing tares with your word. Are you sowing life with his? No, I don't care.
I don't care about what you have to say, I care about what you say the Bible says. This is important, we've got to move away from this whole "I have an opinion," so it would be better for our conversation to be "Thus says the Lord," rather than "Thus says the Lord, and I think."
I'm going to make the morning, I want to take this moment, just for a moment, we're closing around in the tractor, closing to shed some light on this portion of Scripture, on a portion of this Scripture, maybe to help us understand the groundwork as we go through it, where it discusses that some men are chosen and others are left.
The great fact is seen most clearly in verse 13. "Well, Shawn, that's not 1, 2, 3." No, but it'll help you understand 1, 2, 3. In verse 13, what does it say? "As it is written, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.'" News flash, it means hated.
And it is a terrible text, amen. It's troubling for me. One man I read said hate does not mean hate here, it means loved less.
"Jacob have I loved and Esau have I loved less." Well, I don't know, that may be so, but that's not what it says.
Are you with me today? That is not what it says here, not even in the Greek, and until you give me another version of the Bible, I'm going to believe what it says.
Why don't we have such difficulty taking the word of God and allowing it to stand just as it is?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 37:19
I'll tell you why, because many of us are trying to be God.
I think we have a better way, we think we have a better plan, we think we know better than he does. We have a hard time taking his word because we're so concerned about our word. The fact is that God loved Jacob, and I'm going to work this out when we get to verse 13, so don't leave our church before I do, and I prayed about this on a five-hour drive to Oklahoma and a five-hour drive back about whether I want to say this. The fact is God loved Jacob and he did not love Esau the same way.
That's what it says. It doesn't say I loved and hated them. He chose Jacob but he did not choose Esau.
He did not. He chose Jacob. "Well, that's not fair." He blessed Jacob but he never blessed Esau. "Well, that's not fair." His mercy followed Jacob all the days of his life but his mercy never followed Esau. "Shawn, that's not fair."
Well, was it because Jacob was better? No. Have you read about Jacob? No, a resounding no.
He permitted Esau to carry on in his sin to prove "Esau have I hated."
Some say the Scripture does not even mean Esau and Jacob but rather it describes the nation. I'm dropping bombs because I want to get us thinking about some stuff, and some of this stuff, don't get stuck on it because I'm going to go back and I'm going to explain this, but just write it down and it'll make more sense later. I'll have time to do it today. Some say the Scripture does not mean Esau and Jacob but rather it just describes the nation, Jacob's children and Esau's children, or the children of Israel and the children of Edom. I would like to know where the difficulty lies. Is the difficulty of God choosing removed by extending it to a nation, or is it still problematic? For you see, here's the thing: most of us want to get Scripture as far away from us as we can, and so we can adopt difficult doctrinal issues when we push it out to a people.
I don't think that's the goal. Paul here, although he's talking about the nation, I don't think that's his goal. He doesn't want to undermine the personal aspect of faith, of repentance, of us coming to Christ. I'm not saved because I'm an American. There's a thought out there that America is so blessed that it's replaced, it's called replacement theology, that America has replaced the Jews as a nation. Listen, I'm here to tell you something: we didn't replace anyone, no one. This is a pagan nation. We're not God-pleasers in any sense of the word. And by the way, do some research about what God calls a blessing in the Bible and know that it is not always attached to money. Sometimes it's blessed to die. It's simply blessed to be chosen by God.
Who cares what Lilac Lagoon you serve in? It does not matter. It simply matters you were chosen. "Well, if I'm gonna be chosen, I'm gonna be chosen and be in a mansion." No, you're going to be chosen and be where God wants you.
It's a blessing to be chosen, even if you're chosen to be homeless.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:57
God chooses you. Do not list off things that you must receive before coming to him. You can't even come to him till he first chooses you're his children. Some Arminians hold to the idea that there is a national election. I grew up arminian, I could speak very intelligently to this, at least to some degree, that there is a national election. They turn around and say that it is unjust to choose one man and not another, but isn't it just as unjust to choose one nation and not another? Are you with me today? Hear the argument. The argument is, this must be about the nation only because it's too personal for God to choose one man and not another, so this is not about Jacob and Esau, this is about the nations.
Yes and no. It didn't talk about the nations, it talks about an individual. It doesn't talk about the nation, the nations come from the individual, but it started with the individual. This is about, remember, he's starting with the nation to talk about the problem, have we been rejected as a nation? And he's saying, no, you haven't been rejected as a nation, so he can work down to the personal. That's his intention. That's his intention.
The argument Arminians hope overthrows others overthrows them in the process. The argument that they use, that this is about a nation and not about an individual, that argument in and of itself dismantles their position, because even in that, God chooses, and it's not fair.
There was never such a silly argument as that of trying to bring out national election. What is the election of a nation but the election of so many units of a people, and it is tantamount to the same thing as the particular election of individuals. How much more injustice rests in God choosing one nation over another than God choosing one person over another? No, this reason cannot magically reason the difficulty of election away. It is a fact. Furthermore, here is why it's not correct. Let's read the preceding verse of verse 13. The next verse refers to the children, not the nation. All right, let's do that. "What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.' So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy." Number three, and final thing, and I have
Point 5Where do your loyalties lie?
No notes but just the title, because I want to chat with you for a second.
Where do your loyalties lie? Some of you would say, "Well, Shawn, a good answer would be my loyalties lie with God." And although I don't think that's the wrong answer, I think it's problematic by nature, because ultimately your loyalty should lie with his purposes. You're like, same thing, it's semantics. No, not really, because when people profess God with their mouth, I'm afraid many people in the church today aren't professing the same God. I think we have fashioned idols to our own liking and we worship around them, and it is hard today to discern what profession is true and what is not because we do not do life with people close enough to see their fruit. This is good stuff. Listen to me, there are many of you here today that are more loyal to your purposes and your plan than you are to God's. That's why the number one seller for years was The Purpose Driven Life, and people weren't concerned about God's purpose, they were concerned about their own.
That's why it sold like gangbusters. Are you with me today? Don't lose me yet. Why do we do small groups?
So you get to know one another. You don't get to come in here for an hour on Sunday, never do life with anybody, be a part of this fellowship, and then actually declare you're a part of the fellowship. You're like, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, you're asking me for more commitment? I'm not talking about time, i'm talking about relationship. I'm talking about, do you love the church like Christ loved the church?
Because he died for the church, he didn't just attend church for it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 47:49
Are you with me today? Some of you will profess that your loyalties lie with God, but I don't know what God you worship, what God you've built, I don't know what God you believe in, but I worship the one true God, and the only way I can know which God you worship is by your fruit, and the only way I can know your fruit is by doing life with you, and the only way that I can do life with you is by sacrificing time, energy, money to do so. Some of us have made the thing Jesus died for, that thing has become an inconvenience for us. Oh, today is not the problem, it's not a problem today that you be faithful with your firstfruits, that's not a problem.
People would much rather cut a check than get to know someone.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 48:46
I'd rather you keep your money and get to know your brother across the aisle. It's a problem.
And we spend a lot of our time in conjecture arguing against God's purpose because we're not loyal to his purpose. God's loyal to his purpose regardless of what you think. And by the way, by the way, I'm going to go ahead and throw this out there, you can't be loyal to your purposes and to his. There's no such, I know we live in a world where critical thought is dead, so then dumb things are said online like, "I give a hundred percent to my work, and I give a hundred percent to my church, and I give a hundred percent to my kids, and I give a hundred percent to my boyfriend, girlfriend, I give a hundred percent to my husband or wife." No, you don't. That's like 700 percent. Now you just let me know you're really dumb and you should not talk.
But we live in a world that believes they can give 100 to everything. Loyalty requires 100.
You cannot compartmentalize your relationship with God, give him five percent, and say it's a hundred.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 50:17
Are you with me today?
That's not loyalty. And let me tell you, if you're not a believer, you'll never be loyal to God's purposes, ever, because it's not possible without his strength, without the Spirit to help you do that. If you're his, guess what, whenever you tiptoe away and you're disloyal, he doesn't allow you to stay there long, he snatches you up. Why? Because he loves you and he chose you, and you can't. How many of you are believers and you know that other people can go do some other crazy stuff, but you just can't, he won't let you. He won't let you. Why? Because you're his. You know why?
Because when he chooses you, he's loyal to keep you 100 percent.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 51:16
So this is not an act of the will or contrition or any of those things. This is a divine act of God. Loyalty is not a work that any man can boast. It is a touch that makes you go from wrestling the things of God to clinging on to him with all your might. It is not a choice you make, it is not a decision you make, it is not an act of the will, it is not a work you do, it is a divine touch of God, because he chose you, because he loves you and didn't hate you. That's the good news of the gospel. It is a gift that no man can boast.
It's a gift.
He chooses whom he pleases because he's God all by himself.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 52:15
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