God Is Sovereign Series

A. It has been said: “There are two sure things in life: 1. There is a God; 2. You are not Him!”

1. I would like to add a third sure thing: “And this God, whom you are not, is sovereign and can do whatever He decides to do.”

2. Steven Curtis Chapman wrote a song called “God is God” and the chorus goes like this:

“God is God and I am not, I can only see a part of the picture He’s painting, God is God and I am man, So I’ll never understand it all, For only God is God.”

B. In our last sermon in our Romans series, we started into Romans chapter 9, where Paul begins to address the deep and confusing subjects of God’s sovereignty, election and predestination.

1. In Chapters 9-11, Paul wrestles with the perplexing problem of the relationship of Jews and Gentiles to the gospel.

2. As we have seen in our series, the theme of the book of Romans is announced in 1:16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, and then for the Gentile.”

3. Notice the order in which the gospel was announced: it was given first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.

4. In that one fateful phrase are two titanic forces that collided with historic significance in the first century: the original election of the Jews and the later inclusion of the Gentiles.

5. The problem, of course, is that when the late-comers walked in the front door of the church, the “charter members” became offended and stormed out the back!

6. The great reversal of the first century raised such questions as: “Does God know what He is doing? Is He true to His promises? Has he rejected his own people?”

7. And I pointed out in our last sermon that this was a personally painful issue for Paul, because he was a Jew and he loved his fellow Jews.

C. In response, Paul seeks to reassure the Romans by referring to God’s foreknowledge, His election, and of predestination.

1. Unfortunately, the theological system of Calvinism, instead of bringing reassurance, causes people to doubt God’s goodness and His will for their life.

2. What Paul intended to be as a reassurance has instead become something quite unsettling: the mistaken idea that predestination means God arbitrarily appoints some individuals for salvation and other individuals for damnation.

a. A sort of cosmic “Eeny, meeny, Minnie, moe, you get heaven, to hell you go.”

3. Here is what we must keep in mind: The central point of this passage, the one thing I want you to know, is that God’s choice is for salvation!

4. In fact, the whole issue in this passage revolves around a widening of God’s salvation, not a narrowing of it!

5. The thesis of Romans is that now, through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God's Good News is for the whole world.

6. Paul is not saying that God chose the Gentiles instead of the Jews, but instead Paul is stressing that now through the gospel He chose to accept the Gentiles in addition the Jews.

7. But didn’t God foresee what would happen? Didn’t he know that if the door was opened wide for the Gentiles, His chosen people would become offended and reject the message?

D. Let’s see how Paul answers those questions by reading Romans 9:6-13: 6 Now it is not as though the word of God has failed, because not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Neither are all of Abraham’s children his descendants. On the contrary, your offspring will be traced through Isaac. 8 That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring. 9 For this is the statement of the promise: At this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son. 10 And not only that, but Rebekah conceived children through one man, our father Isaac. 11 For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand - 12 not from works but from the one who calls—she was told, The older will serve the younger. 13 As it is written: I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.

1. To explain this great reversal Paul refers in these verses to the doctrine of election.

2. To “elect” is to “choose,” and the story of salvation is a long history of forks in the road, a virtual catalog of divine choices, of selecting this one and not that one.

3. Don’t be thrown off by Paul’s use of the word “hate,” (Or God’s or Jesus’ use of the word) because it was a typical Hebrew idiom to express a preference, to like or love less.