(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Alright, now in Joshua chapter 11, we just read the entire chapter. I'm going to do this one a little bit differently, one just for sake of time, because as I mentioned I need to be getting home a little bit earlier tonight than normal. But in addition, what's happening in this chapter, what we see here that's going on, this is a summary now of the rest of the battles that take place as they go into Possess the Promise Line. That it closes with, you know, and the land rested from war. So he goes, he fights these battles, these other kings, you know, they join up together and they bring themselves together to fight against Joshua and against the children of Israel and the Lord tells Joshua to say, hey, you know, don't worry about these people, I'm going to deliver them into your hand and God gives them the victory and everything just basically works out and it reiterates, I've brought this up in previous sermons, how that, you know, as the Lord commanded Moses and Moses commanded Joshua, so Joshua did. He didn't leave anything undone. That whatever the commandment was, when he had to destroy all the people, he destroyed all the people. When he had to burn the city, he burned the city. Whatever it was that he had to do, he did it all and the only exception to that was when they had made that league or that pact with the citizens of Gibeon, the high vites at Gibeon. That was the only time that they did something that was incorrect. They were deceived, they were fooled. It wasn't intentional that they were trying to do this, you know, to transgress against the Lord. They were deceived. They were a little bit foolish in that, in that dealing with that. But in every other instance, Joshua is doing what he was supposed to do, what he's commanded to do. So he's a very good testimony throughout this, this whole event, which is great. But there's one thing that we're going to focus in on tonight and I'm going to spend pretty much the entire time talking about this one subject and this one topic and it's found here near the end of Joshua 11 because there's not a whole lot, I'm not saying there's not anything to learn from these other verses, but some of this stuff we've already gone over and covered some of the similarities. But what I want to really hit today, because this is really, really important. Let's start reading, jump down to verse number 18 is where we'll pick up again. Verse number 18, Joshua made war a long time with those kings. So even though this is one chapter, you know, it's summarizing everything, but it's letting us know, hey, these wars were going on for a long time. This wasn't just done in one season or whatever. This was a long, there's a lot of battles going on that he was going and fighting, going to all these different nations and fighting these fights and killing the kings and doing all that. But then in verse number 19, it says there was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites, save the heavens of Gibeon, all other they took in battle. So think about this, as they continue to go on and they conquest and they're destroying, you know, city after city after city and they're just growing in their expanse over this land that they're going to inherit, there's still not one city that is surrendering and making peace with them. They all are fighting to the bitter end, every single one of them. No one is trying to make peace with them. The only people that tried to make peace was that one time the Hivites came and made peace with them, the land of Gibeon, every other time. And then it continues on to explain why that is, because you might say, well, why? I mean, we've already seen all these other chapters and these people are fearing the Lord because of all their victories and how they defeated these great, you know, established cities, Jericho and Ai, and they're getting, you know, they're winning these battles and fighting and winning against places that the people of the land never would have thought they'd be able to beat and they're just beating all these people. And you start to wonder, like, well, why wouldn't any of them just be like, okay, well surrender because we don't want to all die. The next verse explains, verse number 20, it says, for it was of the Lord to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly and that they might have no favor, but that he might destroy them as the Lord commanded Moses. This is actually a very important doctrine in the Bible and it's one that many people get very, very wrong and very confused about, to be quite honest with you. Even though this is only taking up a couple of verses in this chapter, this is actually a very important point that I want to make sure I hammer home tonight on what this actually means about God hardening their hearts, why does God do this, is this, and I'm going to be covering a lot about what's known as Calvinism. So if you're not familiar with that doctrine, I don't suggest you go and just read up all about it because there's no reason to just study all of the heresies of the world, but I'll give you a brief synopsis of what Calvinism is. Some people might call this hyper-Calvinism, it doesn't matter what label you're going to put on it, it's a false doctrine nonetheless. There's certain people out there that believe that God, one, will pick and choose who gets saved and who doesn't. So let's say, oh, these people are elect and they're predetermined to already be saved just because God shows that, hey, these people want to be saved and these people don't want to be saved just for whatever it is that the will of God is, and they'll say, if you hear this term, the sovereignty of God, and you hear people just throwing that around a lot, watch out because 99% of the time you're going to be talking to a Calvinist. Now I don't have a problem with the word of God being sovereign, I don't have an issue with that word, but the reason why I'm even bringing that up is because that is a word that people will focus on, like the John MacArthur's of the world, and the people who are just these lordship salvationists and the Calvinist believers are going to focus on that word, the sovereignty of God, and what their point is, again in a nutshell, is that there is nothing that we can do to be saved because we are all just so vile and so reprobate, and we are just so far gone, it's called the total depravity, that humans are so far depraved that we don't even have the ability to put our faith in Christ and to call on the Lord without God giving us that as a gift to be able to do that, that it's like of God's will and power to even be able to call on the name of the Lord to be saved, and it's kind of bizarre because what it ends up doing, the repercussions of this is ultimately saying you don't really have a free will, at least when it comes to your salvation, because what they say is that God is sovereign and that He controls everything, and that God is in charge of the show, God runs the whole world, and everything that anyone does, well that's God's will, it's because God wanted it to be done, and it's a very disturbed understanding of who God is, because when you really start to think about it, and this is a concept that a lot of people will have just in your personal lives, how many times have you either heard someone say it or said it yourself, well that just must be what God wants to do then, just over anything that happens in your life. From losing a job, getting a job, doing it, well it just must be God's will, and just kind of ascribing that to everything that happens. That's not always the case. And especially, there's some instances, you know, I'm not saying that's never the case where God's opening a door for you, and God is leading you because we know that God will lead us. But at the end of the day, we all make choices that we're going to make, and sometimes we make the wrong choice. And sometimes the choice doesn't really matter. That's another thing too. So whereas God gives us a lot of liberty and a lot of freedom to make choices for ourselves in this lifetime, that the decision really makes no bearing one way or another. For example, what color shoes you decide to put on today, or what shirt you put on. Ultimately, you may have some implications depending on how extreme or crazy you get with the way you dress, just out in the world and what happens to you, but in general, I mean, what does it really matter if I put on a brown shirt today versus a black shirt versus a white shirt? Doesn't matter. It's not, oh this is God's will. I chose this one because God's leading me in my closet right to this shirt and I put it on because God made me do it. But when you really, and you know, I'm making a joke of it because when you get down into this doctrine that these people teach, it is like that. And what's really disturbing about this though is that not only can you, you know, we can make fun of the things that don't really matter, but what they'll say then is that people who do evil things, well it's God's will. So as opposed to what we believe, what the Bible teaches is that there are evil people out there. There are people that are just wicked that do bad things. They are the ones causing the harm and the strife and the problems like the predators, the child molesters, you know, people who do really bad things to other people. They are the ones responsible because they are doing that out of the wickedness of their heart. Because God is somehow willing them to do these things and to transgress against these children. But the God of Calvinism is the God that says that nope, God is suffering and he's in control of everything, like we're just these puppets on strings that's just doing, everyone just do it because who can withstand the will of God? And that's what they'll say. And we're going to get into Romans chapter 9 quite a bit because that's where they're going to turn to to try to prop up their doctrine when it comes to this type of thing. When it comes to predestination, you might have heard that term before, that you're already predetermined, God has appointed you, well you're going to be saved and they're going to be damned because God's already just decided that that's the way it's going to be. And what the reason why we're covering this is because in this chapter he's talking about God hardening the hearts of these people to make sure that they didn't surrender, that they didn't just roll over and say oh no, no, we give up, but that they did fight with them because God wanted them all to be destroyed. Obviously that really happened and that's true, so how does this factor in with our ability to still have free will? Because God's not the one that's just completely damning people to hell for no reason or without a cause, just on a whim, just deciding things. And we see this actual very same situation comes up with Pharaoh, where God hardens Pharaoh's heart. But when we look at that passage, and we're not going to look at that whole passage for sake of time because actually just turn if you were to Romans chapter 9, we're going to be spending more of our time in Romans 9 to cover this doctrine. But what you'll find when you study the story of Pharaoh in Egypt, because you have a similar situation going on there where God is using Moses and Aaron to bring all of these plagues on the people of Egypt. And they start off being maybe not super bad, right? Like they're bad, but you can say well, okay, that was bad, but that's over now. But then they just keep piling up and getting worse and worse and worse, all the way up until finally when they lose their firstborn son, of every family, just their firstborn son has died, whoever doesn't have the blood of the lamb on their doorpost, their firstborn son dies. That's pretty severe. Right now it's the last plague that plagued them. But as the plagues are continuing, you start thinking like, why in the world is Pharaoh not letting them just go? I mean, your country's being destroyed, and even his own counselor was saying like, look, just let him go. But he wouldn't do it because God hardened his heart and basically made it so that he was just kind of making these really foolish decisions, even though it's like insane to fight against the Lord. But God just hardened his heart to just be like a stone and just be like, I don't care, I'm just going to basically just commit suicide if I have to, just resisting the Lord. And it's because God wanted to have all of these plagues happen to bring about the glory unto the Lord so that all the nations, all the people of the world would hear, man, did you hear what happened in Egypt for all these plagues and everything that happened to give God that glory of what's going on? It was God's will that those things would happen to bring that recognition unto the Lord and to just be a witness and a testimony unto the whole world. But what does that mean for that individual? Does that mean that God just had him, that he's just damned from birth because God wanted to stage this event? I don't believe that. I don't believe that. Same thing with Judas, right? Someone had to betray Jesus. Someone had to deliver him up according to scripture, it had to happen. So was Judas just, well, sorry, it's got to be you, it's got to be someone, it might as well just be you. No. And what we're going to see with this doctrine is the biggest problem, and we'll cover this again at the end, is that people have a hard time distinguishing between foreknowledge of events and therefore being able to prophesy and give us all this information and actually making somebody do something. People make their choices. And when it comes to God hardening people's hearts, I do think, we do see that he's influencing their choices here because he's hardened their heart. So he is actually having an impact on the decision that they're making, and if you want to say he's impacting their free will, that's fine with me to say that in these situations. But what we see when we study Pharaoh is that he's, Pharaoh is the one who started off hardening his own heart. And I believe everybody has the choice in this life, but then you get to a point in your life where you can hear the gospel, you can hear the good news, you can hear about the Lord, and you reject him. And this is the reprobate doctrine where God will give you over to a reprobate mind. And I think that these are the people that God will choose to harden their heart then, in order for his will to be done in these situations. Because they've already made their choice, so it's not like God is usurping somehow their free will to be able to get saved or something because, no, no, I'm just hardening your heart now. No, they had their opportunity. They had their chance, and God already rejected them, so now he's saying, you know what, I'm just going to harden your heart. Because why not? Their fate is already sealed. Why not? Now he's just going to use them, these vessels that are now fitted to destruction, to bring about his own glory, and actually make a good use out of them in the sense of warning for other people by hardening their heart. But these people, I don't believe that it was just foreordained that before they even had an opportunity to do anything, that God was just saying, nope, I'm going to harden you. Sarah and Abigail, come back in here and sit down right now. You're not allowed to get up out of your seats. Elizabeth is taking care of the boys. You'll be just fine. Sit down. Jonathan, sit down. Romans chapter 9, because this is a very important subject, and we're going to look to the New Testament to help shine a lot more light on this subject. So whereas we're looking in Joshua, we've only got one or two verses kind of bringing this up, this brings up a lot of other points, too, in Romans chapter 9, it brings up other events in the Old Testament and gives us a lot more explanation about what we should be believing about this. As we read through Romans 9, and this is key, please make use of the bulletins on the back, especially if you don't feel very confident in being able to answer someone who might have an objection and say that they're Calvinist. Because we're going straight to the passage that they will turn to to try to convince you that people don't have a choice or that Calvinism is true. Romans chapter 9 is their pet passage to turn to. And this is all the more timely, even just for me personally. We were just out sowing on Monday, and I ran into a lady who was turned around on this very issue. I was preaching the gospel, and one of the stumbling blocks to her receiving the gospel and getting saved that day was Calvinism. So I gave her a lot to think about, but she'd already been screwed up on this doctrine. And I'll tell you what, when people get screwed, I've seen a lot of different false doctrines out there, I've talked to a lot of different people in my day, and some are a lot easier to overcome than others. But the doctrine of Calvinism is so entrenched and hits so many different areas, and the way of thinking is twisted just enough to where sometimes when you hear these doctrines, it's hard to look at it than any other way. They get you so focused in on a couple of different phrases and make it really difficult then to overcome and to think about this in any other way than just what they're trying to tell you that it means. An example of what I'm trying to explain here would be like in James chapter 2, people who teach works-based salvation will try to tell you, oh, faith without works is dead. And they'll repeat that so many times, you'll hear that so many times, that you read the Bible and you look at it and you're like, oh man, faith without works is dead, what does that mean? Is that works-based salvation? And people will have a tendency to doubt what that means. Now that's pretty easy to combat just because we have so many, a mountain of scripture just saying like, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, it's faith, it's not of works, and you have so many clear scriptures that it's easier to at least say, well, I must not be understanding this correctly because the Bible is crystal clear from every single other verse that is not of works at all. So if I don't quite understand this, I'm okay with that. And that was how I started understanding that passage, was not understanding it because people just throw this at you and it's hard to think about it any other way. But then the more you start looking at it and studying it and hearing sermons about it and just go, oh, okay, I mean, now I have no problem, I could explain James 2 up and down, it's not a big deal, it's no, I mean, I don't think, I definitely don't think it's teaching works-based salvation. Very simple what it teaches. But that's a sermon for another day. Romans 9 in Calvinism, though, people will get you turned around on some of these things and especially a few key verses in this passage will get you to start thinking like, oh man, I don't know, is God really just choosing who's gonna die and go to hell and who's gonna be saved just even for nothing that they've done? We're gonna cover this because this is a damnable heresy that people are teaching and it's screwing up a lot of people. And I want you to be prepared, one, to understand it for yourself, but two, to be able to have an answer for other people that might have this as a stumbling block for themselves. Look at verse number one, because the key to understanding this whole passage, there are a lot of references to the Old Testament here, we have to look them up. And we're gonna look them up, we're gonna see how they fit in for our understanding of this passage. Because when you don't look them up, you're gonna start, you might start to have more of a problem understanding what it's saying. Look at Romans 9, we're gonna start reading this in verse number one to get this whole thing in context. I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises, whose are the fathers and of whom as concerning the flesh, Christ came who is over all God blessed forever, amen. So the very beginning of this chapter, we see the Apostle Paul just writing how, hey, he's sad, he's sorrow, he's kind of depressed that his own kinsmen, other Jews, other people that have the same physical heritage as him are not saved. And he's saying, you know what, I wish that I could be accursed for them because he has this love and connection to his people, where I want my people to be saved, I want them to know the truth. But they don't, he's saying, especially because they're Israelites. To them, pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenants and that's even where Jesus Christ came through. They were the chosen people, God's people to bring forth God's word. Oh, how tragic is this that they're not being saved because they're not putting their trust in Jesus Christ and he has this heart for them. This is what this passage starts off with, just getting us into the mindset of what's being taught. Verse number six, not as though the word of God hath taken none effect, for they are not all Israel, which are of Israel. Go to the Margin of Zion conference where we'll probably hear a lot more on this passage because this is important too. He's basically saying that what God actually cares about is not the physical seed, it doesn't matter to him. But the Israel of God, God's chosen people, the elect, the people who are, would be called God's people, it's a spiritual people. It's not a physical seed. He says, not as though the word of God, for they are not all Israel, which are of Israel, which means from, like physically from Israel, neither because they are the seed of Abraham, physically. Just because they physically descended from Abraham, he says, are they all children? But in Isaac shall thy seed be called. Doesn't matter if you're physically born from Abraham, he's saying, but they need to be children of Isaac. And then he goes on to explain what he's talking about there. That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God. So the people who think because physically they are descended as a Jew or as a descendant of Abraham or descendant of Jacob, it doesn't matter. That doesn't make them a child of God. What makes them a child of God is if they're born again. It says, continuing on to verse number eight, but the children of the promise are counted for the seed, the promise. Like in Titus, as the Bible says, in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began. We are children of promise because we're believing in the promise of eternal life. We believe in that promise. So we are children of promise, just as Isaac was a child of promise, that God promised Abraham he would have a son. He was a promise that needed faith for Abraham and Sarah to believe that he would actually have a son in their old age. He was the child of promise. And it was through that faith that they had that strength to even, that Sarah had the strength to conceive seed, read Hebrews 11. But anyways, I don't want to get too far off on that either because it's going to distract from what the main point of this is. Let's keep reading. We're trying to get this whole thing in context. Verse number eight, or verse number nine, excuse me. For this is the word of promise, at this time will I come and Sarah shall have a son. I just explained that. And not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one, even by 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. Girls, pay attention, Jonathan, sit down, Jonathan, sit down. And this is the phrase, these are the verses that the people who believe in Calvin will want to turn to. We'll reread them again. Verse number 11 is the key one that they'll say, it says, for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil. So what's this talking about? It says, Isaac had Jacob and Esau were his children, right? They're twins. They were still in the womb. And what this is saying is that, well, the children weren't even born yet. They haven't done anything right or wrong. It says that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. It said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger. So this is teaching us that right from the beginning, it was already told unto Rebekah that, well, the elder is going to serve the younger even before any events had happened. And what they'll say, what the Calvinist will say is that, see, it doesn't matter what choices they made, God just determined, I'm going to love Jacob, I'm going to hate Esau, and you don't even need to know why. It's just the way it is. Love him, hate him, you're going to heaven, you're going to hell before they're even born. That's what they think this verse is talking about. It's not talking about that at all. And we're going to turn back to these passages. First one, keep your place in Romans 9, we're going to flip back to Genesis 25 because you'll notice it said, it was said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger. So we're going to look and see what is this talking about. What actually happened in that story when it was said unto Rebekah, the elder shall serve the younger. Now I'm just going to submit to you right now that the purpose of God according to election or according to what God has chosen might stand. Yeah, God has chosen that the seed was going to come through Jacob and not of Esau. And we also know that God knows the beginning from the end and we can't forget this because this is key. I'm going to bring this up a couple more times. God exists outside of time. We live bound by time. We don't understand existence without time. It's foreign to us. We could try to think about it, but honestly it will probably make our heads hurt. I know it makes my head hurt when you really, really start to think about what it's like to not have time. All we ever know is a beginning and an end. We have a birth and a death. We understand that concept. We're in this construct, but God created this construct. God created space and time and matter and everything that exists and every rule that exists. God created those things so He is outside of that box. He made that box for us to be in. So to God, from His perspective, all of existence and all of eternity as far as on a timeline goes, it's already happened and it's already going to happen. It's already done. He could just, if you do any video editing or something, you put up a video, He could go to the timeline anywhere. In a sense, it's already played out. The choices that you don't know you're going to make tomorrow, God knows what you're going to make tomorrow. It doesn't mean, though, that God caused you to make those choices. The whole thing plays out. Our lives, the will that He's given unto us to choose still exists. And we live and we act knowing that there's consequences for our actions. I mean, think about how just would that be for God to force you to sin, you don't have any will of your own, and then to punish you for that. That doesn't make any sense. The whole doctrine is wicked. It's actually very wicked as hell. And it turns God into some kind of a monster of just an evil, evil God. Why would He even give us any reasonable person with the ability to reason and understand justice and morality and right from wrong and giving us consciences, why would it be contrary to who God is? That doesn't make any sense either. I mean, again, that's just from more of a philosophical standpoint, that wouldn't even make any sense. The Bible says He's made us in His image, but what everyone's going to deem to be just as far as, hey, if you commit this crime, you deserve to do this, as opposed to someone forcing you, I mean, if someone's just, you know, were to take, you know, I mean, think about it, if someone were to literally seize control over someone else and bring them into a store and make them grab something and walk out of the store without paying for it, would you really hold that person responsible for that type of crime or action? Of course not. The one doing it would be the one ultimately responsible for that. Now, we understand that God's given us consciences, it's actually not that hard to figure out. So why would we think God would have that type of an attribute of just controlling every wicked thing that everybody does, and then all of a sudden still holding them responsible for it? That doesn't make any sense. But let's look at Genesis 25, because in Romans 9, it's saying that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. So before they were born, they were still in the womb, it said to Rebekah, hey, the elder's going to serve the younger. Now keep in mind, the way that Calvinist is going to apply this verse in Romans 9, they're going to talk about individual souls going to heaven and hell. But what is this passage really talking about, and what was it said to Rebekah in Genesis 25? Look at verse number 21. The Bible says, And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren, and the Lord wasn't treated of him, and Rebekah's wife conceived. And the children struggled within her. And she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord. So they're not having children, Isaac's praying to the Lord, God gives them children, and then as she's pregnant, she can feel like the baby's fighting inside of her. And she's just like, what is going on? This is crazy. We've been praying to God, he's blessed with children, and now there's just like this war going on in my womb. So she goes to inquire of the Lord, she's like, what's the deal here, to go ask God about what's going on? And then it says in verse 23, And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger. Now in the context of what is said to Rebekah here, is this just talking about, well Esau is going to serve Jacob, because the elder is going to serve the younger. Is that just with those two individuals, is that what this is talking about? Of course not. Because that's why it says, Two nations are in thy womb, two people, it's talking about a whole group, it's talking about all of their descendants, it's talking about generations that come from those two patriarchs, not from those two individuals personally. And when you actually look and study the Bible, and you look at the lives of Jacob and Esau, you never see Esau serving Jacob anywhere in recorded scripture. In fact, when Jacob's coming back from taking his wives and spending all that time with Laban and coming back into the land, Esau's confronting him, and he's got his own army, he's got his own forces, and Jacob's worried about Esau. And Jacob's giving Esau all these gifts, and he's sending these droves and his cattle and everything just to try to satisfy him in case he's angry and wants to kill him. If anything, when you look at these stories, Jacob in a way is being the servant of Esau. From everything we see in scripture. There is not one thing that shows us, nope, Esau literally, the man, became the servant to Jacob. No. Because that's not what this is talking about. So when we keep that in mind, especially when we're looking in Romans 9, which is referring to this story, it's referring to what happened here, it already assumes that you know what happened there. Because it's quoting the Old Testament that you understand what the Old Testament, what happened in that story, that he's talking about two nations of people. Not the individuals. But see, the Calvinists will take that verse and say, nope, God is just damning one person and saving another person. When that's not it at all, it's actually talking about and it's prophesying the future. It's giving information saying, you know what, the elders are going to serve the younger. The Edomites, the descendants of Esau will end up serving Israel. And there's so many applications to make just in general with this symbolism of what's going on here. So continuing in Romans 9, verse number 13, we're done in Genesis 25. The next verse says, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. And see, this is why we're stopping at each place, because now we say, oh, as it is written. Well, where does it say that? Well, it says that in Malachi chapter 1. We're going to turn to Malachi chapter 1, it's the last book of the Old Testament. We'll see where this is quoted from. If you just read Romans 9 without the understanding of everything it's already referencing and assuming that you already know, it's easier to be distorted on what it's actually saying. Because you just see Jacob and Esau, hey, the kids weren't born yet, but the elders are going to serve the younger. Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. And they just see, it's talking about the individual, it's talking about that that's it. And they'll point to these sections without actually going back and see what it's talking about. When we look at Malachi chapter 1, it's going to become very evident again that Malachi chapter 1 is also talking about nations and not the individuals. It's not just talking about Jacob and Esau individually, it's talking about the nations, about the group of people. Look at verse number 2 in Malachi chapter 1. I have loved you, saith the Lord, yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother, saith the Lord? Yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau. So there's the quote that we saw in Romans chapter 9, that's the quote. But let's keep reading from that quote to get the whole thing in context. And I hated Esau and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, now Edom, is that the man Esau? No. If you're familiar with the Bible, Edom is the Edomites, like the people that are descended from Esau. Edom isn't the name of Esau, it's the name of his people, of his nation. Whereas Edom saith, we are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, they shall build, but I will throw down, and they shall call them the border of wickedness, and this is what they're known as, the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever. The Edomites were wicked people. They made that choice. God didn't make them wicked. God didn't say that they had to be, put that down right now. Put that away. But again, we have the reference talking about the nation, the people, right? Not the individual, because at the end of the day, the way that God treats an individual, especially when it comes to like salvation, is different than the way he treats an entire group of people. So individually, our salvation, our eternal salvation, our soul salvation is based on one thing, our faith. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or not, that's it. And the choice is yours. And you're gonna be saved by your faith, but when it comes to a nation or a collective group of people, well, a group of people doesn't have its own soul. Everyone has their own soul, so the way that a soul is saved is by putting their faith in Christ. So the salvation that a group of people can have is only gonna be talking about a physical salvation. A nation, a city, collectively, the way that they are saved is by their works, which is what we see in Jonah, the book of Jonah, the people of Nineveh. It's an entire city was being preached against about the city being destroyed. Not every single soul in that city going to hell and that they all have to do a bunch of good works in order to be saved and go to heaven, but the city. In order to save the city from God's wrath being poured off, from God's destruction coming upon that city, they had to get right with God. They had to do good works and they did. They repented at the preaching of Jonah and they started doing good things and they stopped doing some of the bad things and God said, great, you're doing good works, now I'll spare you. I'll have mercy on you now. So Nineveh was saved by their works as a city, but no individual was saved and went to heaven based on their works. Do you see the difference there? It's pretty simple, it's pretty straightforward. So when we're talking in Romans chapter nine about this purpose and the election and everything else and over and over again we're talking about groups of people, how can this be talking about God damming a soul to hell or saving a soul just because He wills it, especially when the rest of the Bible has no such concept taught at all anywhere, but that the choice is given unto us and I just want to throw this in this sermon right now because I've heard people say, well the Bible doesn't say freewill anywhere, the Bible doesn't say freewill. I've had people on soul loading try to tell me, I said, you haven't read your Bible at all have you? Where did the Bible say freewill? About a hundred times in the Old Testament, you ever heard of a freewill offering? Yeah, yeah, freewill is in the Bible. It definitely is. How could you, I mean think about that, because they're trying to say that even the concept of having a freewill, it's not in the Bible, because God's sovereign and He's in charge of everything. How could you call something a freewill offering, meaning, because you think about all these other offerings in the Old Testament, sin offering, trespass offering, if you do this, you have to do this, that's God's law. But then there was another sacrifice and He says, you know what? If you just want to, out of your heart, you want to purpose something and just give, just have a sacrifice, give an offering unto the Lord, you're free to do that. Now He gave them ways to do that, well this is the way that you're going to do it, but it was not obligatory at all, it's not something that they had to do, it's up to them. I think that's called freewill, they're giving you the choice. It would be ridiculous to think that God's saying, well it's totally up to you whether or not you want to give this sacrifice, and then He's just like making them, like well this person's going to give this sacrifice, and this person isn't, that's not freewill. But anyways, let's keep going here, Romans chapter 9, because I just had to throw that in there because that's another point that a Calvinist will like to try to make, oh it doesn't say freewill in the Bible, actually it does, in the concepts all throughout the scripture. Or like, how about this, choose you this day whom you will serve, well I didn't think the choice was mine, I mean isn't God making me make the choice? No, you choose, as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord, all throughout scripture. That's an entire sermon on its own as well. So let's look back at Romans chapter 9 now, verse number 14, what shall we say then, is there unrighteousness with God, God forbid, for He saith to Moses, so now again we're quoting more Old Testament, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. Now I have this down in my notes, I'm actually going to skip this for sake of time, it's in Exodus 33, if you want to see where that quote is coming from. This one isn't going into any depth or detail about being a nation or anything like that, this actually comes into play when Moses asks to see God's glory, you remember he puts him in a cliff of a rock and he passes before him and he's like, well I'm going to cover you up, you're not going to see my face, but I'll let you see my hindr parts. So in that story, I'll just read that one verse for you, it says, in verse number 19 of Exodus 33, it says, and he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. So we have that concept being shown there, now I think this has more to do with God being compassionate or merciful to people, that is up to God on how much mercy he's going to extend to someone. And he doesn't have to have some hard fast rule on that, that he wants to extend extra mercy to someone. My children break my commandments, I have a law and I have discipline that I give them, but you know what, sometimes I'll extend mercy unto them. And it's not a hard fast rule of exactly, they have to follow this to a T and then they get my mercy, it has to do with what I'm feeling at the time if I want to be merciful unto them or not. And I think, again, we're made in the image of God and I think that God can be very similar to that, just saying, hey, if I'm going to extend mercy on someone, for one, that's not a bad thing, and that's up to God's discretion on if he wants to just choose to show mercy on someone, then he's going to show mercy on them. If he's going to show compassion, then he's going to show compassion on that person. Not everybody got to see the glory of the Lord, but Moses did. Moses got to see that. Moses was a good servant. And you think about, God probably will show more mercy on people who are actually following him a lot more closely when you make a mistake or you're someone that's just sold out in your heart and you're trying to serve the Lord and you slip and you fall and you stumble and you sin. I think God's going to be a lot more merciful to that person than he is to the person who's just willfully going out and just doing whatever they want to do. Call me crazy, but that's probably what we see in God's character, actually that is what we see in God's character. So again, this phrase and this verse in Romans isn't some hard thing to understand or deal with, but once the Calvinist gets you so twisted on how sovereign God is in picking and choosing people to be saved or not, then it gets even more out of control the further you read down this passage. See, they start you off on the wrong direction and then continue down that path and you end up way far off than what this passage is actually teaching. So let's look at verse number 16 there in Romans chapter 9. Romans chapter 9 verse 16 says, so then it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth but of God that showeth mercy. So again, they always want to apply these verses to salvation. This is what they'll say for this verse, they'll say, see, it's not of him that willeth, meaning it's not what you want. So what they'll say is that, well, if you're the one choosing to get saved, it's what you want, that would be your will when you call on the Lord, you want to be saved. And they'll say, see, it's not of him that willeth that God's going to show mercy to. But this isn't talking about your soul being saved, nowhere in the passages is it talking about this is how God saves souls. But they want to pull out these verses and claim that that's what it's talking about. So when it's describing God's graciousness and God's mercy, and say, you know what, you're not going to determine God's grace and God's mercy, it's not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. Of course, it's God that's going to show the mercy, but this isn't talking about that soul being saved and going to heaven. It's not the same mercy. There's lots of ways that we could receive mercy. One of them would be eternal salvation, right? Having mercy on our souls, not going to hell. But there's plenty of other areas that God can extend mercy upon us, not just eternal salvation. So verse number 17, for the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. And I mentioned Pharaoh earlier, but now we're getting to that in Romans chapter nine, because he's another example of someone whose heart was hardened by the Lord. Therefore, hath he mercy on whom ye have mercy, and on whom he will he hardeneth. Now when you have someone who has already become a reprobate, they've already become rejected by God because they've rejected God themselves, the way that God doesn't owe them anything. So the way that he deals with them is totally up to God and how he's going to do that. He didn't remove, like, you know, once they've made their choice, yeah, then they're no longer capable of getting saved. But what this is saying is that now God just does whatever he wants with them to make his will known. So if you have one person that's a reprobate and God chooses just not, just to let them do whatever, okay, that's up to God to do that. But then if he chooses someone else and allows them to get into these positions of power and great might, you know, and to climb the ladder to be a leader, and then decides to use that person and say, you know what, now I'm going to harden this guy's heart. Again that's the will of the Lord also, and that's up to him. God has that power, but God's not going to take that, you know, this doesn't apply to our will of being saved eternally, our soul. These people have already gone that route, they've already become reprobate. Exodus chapter 9 focuses in on this, but turn if you would to Matthew chapter 20. Yeah, I'm not going to, if you want to know more about the Pharaoh and Moses, you could read Exodus chapter 9 for yourself, I'm not going to get into explaining all that tonight.