ELECTION, in the PENTATEUCH
Genesis
From the beginning, God had a plan. His heart was not to have a people who would reject Him. But He willed to let them do that anyway. Then in His mercy He called out a people for Himself. A remnant. The elect. Otherwise, all would be lost. Why these and no others is the mystery. But as you will see later, their works is not the answer to that mystery, since God has created their works along with their faith.
There follows from my simple summary of this deep matter two streams of thought, seen in the rest of our searchings. You will see a God Who is not willing to lose anyone, yet hardening multitudes. A God who does not delight in the death of the wicked, who is angry with the sinner every day and will ultimately cast sinners into a lake of fire forever. A God who will be hailed forever as perfectly just and perfectly merciful.
The plan. But soon in Genesis we see counter-plans by Satan and humans. Is that plan separate from the holiness of God or has God placed it in their thinking? If it is separate, God has incorporated it into His own plan, so that ultimately His will will be done.
Let him that hath wisdom answer that one. Perhaps after we have examined the pertinent Scriptures, we will have that wisdom.
God knew the first humans would partake of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He knew of the untold suffering and eternal damnation of billions of earthlings. Something compelled Him to go ahead with His Plan anyway. That something is within Himself. His glory. His purposes.
So did God determine to allow them all to be condemned, or did He actually decree their condemnation in advance? A harsh question that seems to have a harsh answer. Paul seems to have responded to this enigma in his epistles.
Paul. There's a man who knew his Bible. But not like we have learned it. His insights remind us of Calvin. That is, Calvin reminds us of Paul.
Questions, questions, as we progress in Genesis. Why did God not stop Adam from sinning? Or anyone, for that matter? Hitler, Stalin, and all the rest.
We read of some interferences in Genesis, actually. Abimelech (Genesis 20) was kept from sin with Sarah's wife. Why him and not the others? God's purposes, dear reader, always God's purposes.
It seems easy for us to guess why God chose Noah. The text tells us he was a just and blameless man. A good man. So God chooses good men? Not so fast. That line of thinking will not work for long. Later we will read that there are no good men in the ultimate sense. Noah himself seems to slip a bit after the flood.
But, assuming that righteousness that God saw in Noah, that favor that Noah found in God, do we know for sure that it was not God that placed His goodness in Noah to begin with? Was not Paul an obnoxious sinner who likewise found favor with God, mercy for the chief of sinners (I Timothy 1:6)? Why do we assume Paul's righteousness was of God but Noah's was of himself?
Nevertheless, Job also is introduced to us as a good man. By the end of the book of Job we realize what Job realized. "I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:6)." The original goodness may have been from God, indeed, but the book of Job is a description of an ever greater grace upon a man who might have died trusting in his own right-ness, or thinking it was his own.
In Psalm 18, David is convinced God loves him because of his righteousness. God does love right living. But David had some lessons to learn. He has a fuller picture of himself after the Bathsheba debacle. Psalm 51:5, "I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me..."
Back to Noah. It is hard to ignore the fact that God totally decimated an entire world population, with the exception of a handful of believers who "found grace."
We don't get too much information about "Abram" before he becomes the leading character in the first portions of Genesis. Raised amidst pagan idols. How did he meet God? How did he know His voice? Why did God choose this one pagan man and call him His own?
But wait. Though he lived amongst pagans, his ancestry is traced back to the "good line" of Shem, son of Noah, namesake of the "Semitic" people. But were all those folks godly? Had they passed along the faith of the one true God, the God who sent the flood to judge earth's wickedness?
Was Abraham a good man or a bad man when God first dealt with him? We know he surely had a lot to learn, most of it very painful. But God chose this disciple first for His own purposes. And forget not that all the other millions of pagan Mesopotamia were left behind without a call.
And so it goes on in the narrative. Choosing some, letting others go. Until we come to the story of Jacob and Esau, a story that has caught the attention of a prophet and an apostle. And it grabs our attention too. It is a difficult concept, yet it will be repeated time and again in the Word God has given us. God does choose some people over others, and we just don't know why.
Isaac and Rebekkah (Genesis 24 and 25) are childless. Isaac prays, and two children come to Rebekkah at the same moment. God tells her that one child is to be stronger than the other. That one child will actually serve the other.
Malachi puts it less delicately (Malachi 1:2-3). God tells Israel, in declaring His passion for them, that he loved Israel (Jacob) but hated Esau (Edom), and demonstrates that hatred by laying "waste his mountains and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness."
And Paul, in Romans 9, makes a point using this same pair of brothers. The children had not been born. God chose Jacob over Esau simply because God chose Jacob over Esau. We can speculate, Well, he chose Jacob because He knew what he would become. But it was God that made Jacob become what he became. God gave the prophecy to his mother. His mother protected him from the rage of his brother. Angels directed his way to a new life with his relatives. God led him to Rachel, and Leah, and the children that would make spiritual history. God literally fought with him until he - Jacob - lost, but won a blessing. A new name. A new people.
Was any of this attributable to Jacob? Could Jacob ever say, "Look what I did?" Towards the end of his life he humbly declared to great Pharaoh that his days had been few and evil. He hardly even knew what had happened in the heavenlies.
But he was chosen. Used for God's purposes. Could not Esau have done all those wonderful things? His father loved him. His father was Isaac, the very son of the friend of God himself. A great provider. A man's man.
But God did not elect the great man. As seems to be his norm, God chose the weak one. This pattern will repeat.
One of Jacob's boys was Joseph. Beloved, but a dreamer. Great dreams, but the young one. Not ready to be a leader yet. So much to learn.
But God chose the unlikely dreamer to save Egypt, and Israel from extinction. In his own words (Genesis 45:7) "God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance."
To God goes all the glory, in life after life, story after story. God chooses, God enables, God provides. He has a plan, He has the people to carry it out. Everything has been arranged.
Exodus
No clearer example of the Sovereign choices of Jehovah, His power, His ability to harden, His preoccupation - if you will - with carrying out His own plans and not yours or mine, no clearer example, I say, and I think I have Paul in my amen corner, is given in Scripture than that of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The attempts to explain all of this decision-making away and to somehow come up with Pharaoh in the driver's seat... well, it's pretty common. And looking back, it seems pretty awful. The text is clear.
But let us not rush to Pharaoh at the expense of a hard look at the man Moses.
Remember? Youngest in the family. Speech impediment. Convictable murderer. Reluctant excuse-maker. Comfortable shepherd of Midian serving under the priesthood of his Midianite father-in-law. That Moses.
I know, when we think Moses, we think Charlton Heston, MGM, romance, power, the miraculous. None of that Moses. The glory stuff is Hollywood. The miraculous is God. God promised to be with His mouth. God gave him signs and wonders he could use in Egypt. God spoke the law on tablets and in his own tongue. God gets all the glory and credit. What does Moses add to all of this?
Nothing.
We cannot add to the grace of God. Once we do, it is not the grace of God any longer.
So here is the pattern again. Unlikely man chosen by the God Who does what, and chooses whom, He will.
But I speak nothing radical so far. Most believers, on both sides, agree that God uses unlikely folks to be leaders of His people.
But should not another thought be creeping in by now? If God chooses leaders, does it not follow that he chooses their disciples, too? Did not Jesus say, "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you" (John 15:16)?
All leaders and all their followers, chosen. The chosen people. The elect. But, you say, that has nothing to do with salvation, and eternity, and the lost... No? Let's bring in Pharaoh and his interpreter, the Spirit-filled apostle Paul, who himself had a miraculous "choosing" , you will recall, one which we must discuss later.
Let's see Moses' account first. We'll start in 3:19. God knows that the King of Egypt is not going to let the people go, at least at first.
Foreknowledge. God knows what is coming. All agreed, I am sure. Question is this: Does his foreknowledge imply His own decree of that future, or is this a future totally concocted by evil, and some good, men, with God just looking on and adding drops of mercy here and there?
Let's go to 4:21. I am taking these verses in the order they appear in Exodus so you will see something you have perhaps not seen before: namely, God did all the hardening. The standard line here is that Pharaoh, as God foresaw, was a bad man, and hardened his heart against Moses. After this bad man had hardened his heart for so long, God just took over the hardening process himself. Paul has a word for you who believe that, later. For now, look at this verse.
"When you go back to Egypt [he hasn't confronted Pharaoh yet] , see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go."
Foreknowledge, coupled with a decree, is nothing less than predestination. Right? Clay in God's hand, yes?
Chapter 5: Sure enough, Pharaoh is hardened. From the beginning. As God said he would be. And God said why he would be: God hardened him.
A faltering Moses is told in 7:3 once more that God will harden Pharaoh. In 7:13, that heart grew hard "as the Lord had said." Remember, the Lord not only foretold the action of Pharaoh, but was the reason for it.
God makes the declaration in 7:14, "Pharaoh's heart is hard." Should be no surprise by now as to what is going on. So when in 8:15 we read that "Pharaoh hardened his heart," we must not revert back to the thinking that puts man in control. God has already done the work in his heart, and from here until the end of the episode it is clear that man is not working his own will, but the will of the Father. An empowered Moses confronts a hardened King. It's all God. He receives the credit, the glory.
You can read the following passages on your own, if you wish, but the Word is sufficiently clear: 8:15,19,32, 9:7,12, 35, 10: 20,27, 11:10, 14:5,8.
In 14:17, the entire Egyptian nation is said to be hardened.
Three more Exodus passages are dealt with or implied in Paul's writings. Let's go there.
We were in Romans 9 when dealing with Jacob and Esau. God favors Jacob. Someone says, "That's not fair!" (Earthlings' favorite three words.) God is not being righteous! Wrong. Correct your thinking, not His.
Example 2 Paul gives is the whole Moses-Pharaoh episode we just covered. He introduces it by quoting Exodus 33:19:
"...I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." Period. End of argument. I'll do what I want with whom I want. Stay out of this. I know what I'm doing.
Paul's own statement to follow has also become a classic: (Romans 9:16)
"So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy."
Suddenly Paul is not in the 15th century B.C., talking about a prophet and a Pharaoh. He's talking about here and now and you and me. And he's saying things we need to hear, if we have ears to hear.
You cannot will yourself into the heart of God. You can't work yourself into the plan of God. The plan is all His. The will is all His. His mercy will be shed on those whom He chooses. That's God speaking, via Moses and Paul. What more do we need to hear?
But Paul goes on. Another quote. Exodus 9:16.
"Even for this same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be declared in all the earth."
The plan of God is to glorify Himself. His Name. His power. Let every knee bow.
You're still complaining? Paul anticipated it, especially after he said this:
"Therefore, [Paul's conclusion of the whole Pharaoh affair] He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens."
Truly a hard saying. Surely this was what Peter was talking about when he mentions in his letter that brother Paul says some difficult things sometimes.
Difficult it is, and I shall not make it easy. Hard it is, but I will not make it soft. Let us read it as it is.
If God wants to save an elect out of the world, and make all the choices by Himself, He is God and will do it, whether I give Him theological permission or not.
If God wants to leave the rest of the world in the sin that it chose for itself, and assign them all to eternal damnation because of the hardness of their hearts, I step aside, I say, "God, do as you will. Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. There are no hardened sinners there, only those you have chosen. Lord have mercy on me!"
Objection! Humans have hard sayings too. Hard question for you, God: If it is Your sovereign will, and of course I cannot resist your sovereign will, how can you find fault with me if my heart is hard? Did you not harden it?
But here the discussion ends. Here we have attempted to go beyond the veil. Yes, there is still a veil of sorts. There are still things we cannot and will not understand until that day, and maybe not then, either.
Paul shuts the door to the mystery in our faces. Let it stay shut. "Who are YOU to reply against GOD. You're from the dirt. You are a created being. How dare you question your composition. Your very soul was created by God. Cannot God deal with His creation in any way He pleases? Stop these questions!
God is the potter (Romans 9, continuing in verse 21). You are the clay. Have you not sung it often, "Have Thine own way, Lord" ? Sing it now. Believe it. The Potter must have His way with the clay.
Some pieces of pottery are made to hold the garbage. Some to hold the Bread of Life. Some will be destroyed. Some will be put in places of honor in His House, for all to see. Some will be put in less visible places, but yet in the House. Some will be taken out back to the fires and burned.
That's God's business. Leave it with God.
Thankfully, Paul interjects the pronouns "we" and "us" as he winds up his message. We are the vessels of His mercy. He has seen us from the beginning and prepared us for glory. We are the called, the called from Jews and Gentiles...
Paul the Reformer, with a new message from Heaven. No wonder those other Reformers hung on his every word. If we are to reform the church of our own day, we must come back to the image of the Potter who does His own will.
Leviticus
Quickly, but with significance, we look at the entire priestly system of sacrifice, and realize that it was all for Israel only. Sins could be pushed ahead, forgiven after a manner, in Israel alone. The chosen people. Why not offer forgiveness and sacrifice for all nations in 1400 B.C.? It is a question we must deal with honestly and fairly. We want John 3:16 to avail for us today. But how does John 3:16 deal with 4,000 years of human history where redemption was not possible?
Remember we are talking about a God Who makes sovereign choices. Who loves and hates. Who does what pleases Him. In Leviticus 20:23 we see Him saying to His chosen people Israel:
"And you shall not walk in the statutes of the nation which I am casting out before you [the Canaanites]; for they commit all of these things [the evils mentioned in the preceding verses] and therefore I abhor them..."
That's plain enough. No interpretation needed. Not talking about sin, but sinners. There can be no sin without a sinner to commit it. The two are inseparable, and God hates it all.
But there is a people God loves, the ones He foreknew (v. 24):
"But I have said to you, 'You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.' I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples."
Hates sinners. Loves his people. Separates them. Makes a plan for them. This is Sovereignty.
Numbers.
In Numbers we confront the man Balaam. God had many true prophets. The difference between the true ones and the false Balaam is the attitude of the heart. Balaam wanted to make some money on his ministry to the King. He would have cursed Israel in a minute, left to his own devices. But God over-ruled his will. In his own words:
"The word that God puts in my mouth, that I must speak (Numbers 22:38)."
"But God would never come against a man's will. God is a gentleman. He gives us perfect liberty to...."
And so on goes the argument. But this way of thinking simply does not match with the actual facts of Scripture. When all is said and done, God will say and do all.
Numbers 17 tells us of the sovereign choice by God of Aaron. Why Aaron? Didn't he allow the people to make a golden calf? Didn't he criticize his brother's choice of a marriage partner? Didn't two of his sons exhibit profane choices in their worship? This man will lead all of Israel in the worship of the one true God?
If you are asking this question and making the list I just made, you are doing exactly what Israel did, a sin which drove the Lord to demonstrate publicly this miracle of chapter 17, the budding rod. Aaron is God's choice. God doesn't say why. He does not have to.
And why you? And why me? What wondrous grace is this!
Deuteronomy
As Moses recounts the travels of the past 40 years, he tells them of one Sihon, the king of Heshbon. Sihon refused to let the people of Israel pass through his land. Humanly speaking we can understand why he would not want 3,000,000 people of an alien nation, about whom he had been hearing some pretty strange things, traipsing through his territories.
But the human reason is not the one accounted by Moses. Moses tells his people that it was the Lord their God who "hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that He might deliver him into your hand... (Deuteronomy 2:30)"
Another "Pharaoh." Another opportunity for God to show Himself strong on behalf of His people Whom He called. His will be done.
Chapter seven is even more to the point. Look at verses 7 and 8. Moses here describes a God who simply sets His love on people because He loves them, and once love is set, it is set! All He wants is for that love to be returned. He did not choose Israel "because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all people."
Definitely the least. Seventy souls entered Egypt by invitation of Pharaoh's assistant, Joseph. Seventy. Not a lot to work with. And as we have seen, a hard-hearted bunch in the face of constant miracles. But God's love was set... We will see later how even to this day God has not forgotten His promises to Israel.
Why does He set His love on certain ones? Moses says, "...because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers..."
So the "God of the Old Testament" is a God of love! Why did we think otherwise? He changes not. Love from start to finish. And also Holy and Just from start to finish. Hater of sin and those who commit it from start to finish.
The question begs to be asked, "If God sets His love on me, simply because He loves me, then why that love and why me?"
That question is not to be answered. Not in this life. I do not wish to indicate that there is no answer. God has reasons for everything. All we know for sure is that the answer to that question is in the deep and abiding purposes and counsel of God, and is not about how wonderful you are or think you are. Just ask any sinner who has been saved by this grace.
In chapter nine, one more non-reason for God's choice of Israel: their righteousness. Three times in as many verses the Lord through Moses devastates their pride, letting them know that the only reason they get to come into the promised possession is that their manner of life is a notch above the Canaanites they are replacing! He calls them stiff-necked, rebellious God-provokers.
Two chapters before, love talk. Now, the rest of the story. This love is pure mercy.
Again, we can relate.
