Session 38 – Romans; Romans 9, Has God’s Word Failed?: Mark Lanier, 08/23/26

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[00:00:00] Oh, I'm pretty stoked to be teaching this morning. We are in Romans 9. Now, Romans 9, 10, and 11, those three chapters are often cited as three of the most difficult chapters to understand in the Bible. And so it's a, an honor to get to teach them, but I also teach them with a measure of trepidation, and I also teach them with a measure of concern.

One of the concerns I've got is because of my personality when it comes to teaching. I am a Bible nerd I actually took a degree in biblical languages. That [00:01:00] really is my undergraduate degree. Because I wanted to be able to read Greek New Testament and Hebrew Aramaic Old Testament for myself, so people didn't stand up and tell me what it said.

I could figure it out. That was my heart when I started learning Greek at the age of 16. That was my heart and why I started learning Latin at the age of 15 so that I'd better be able to learn Greek. I cared deeply about I-- Now, that's part of my nature. Another part of my nature is I can argue with a fence post

When we moved from [00:02:00] middle school to high school The class in behind us and our class would develop the last will and testament of those leaving, and it would just be one little phrase, but it would be like, you know, "Becky Lanier leaves her friendly disposition to," and they'd typically name someone who was just cantankerous or something like that.

For me, for me leaving middle school, already at life, those people chose the following: "Mark Lanier leaves his natural argumentative ability to blank." I can argue. Now, you take a Bible nerd who has spent over f- [00:03:00] a- right at 50 years with the languages, and combine it with a lawyer who can argue with himself And you have a really deadly combination when it comes to these verses, which, uh, first unfolded to me from one of my Greek professors.

See, the classes I took to get a Bible degree, most of them were actually in Greek or Hebrew. They weren't in English. And so if you've got a Greek professor, you, you approach Romans reading it verse by verse, word by word, sentence by sentence, and translating it, and trying to understand what it says. Now, here's the problem and why I have such [00:04:00] concern.

It's very easy and natural for me to not only get lost in the joy of looking at these particular words and phrases and passages simply for the sake of understanding them. But that doesn't help people who aren't Bible nerds who are trying to figure out how to get by this week And I recognize that this is not a class of me.

I've already taught myself this stuff. This is a class for everyone. And so one of the hardest challenges for me in teaching Romans 9, 10, and 11 is not understanding Romans 9, 10, and 11. It's trying to make it not only comprehensible but useful to you. [00:05:00] And so that's my chore. And so what I decided to do, because that's my chore, is put some points for home at the start So you can see why any of this is gonna be relevant.

You don't have to hang on till the end Point for home one: God is a promise keeper You can rely on him. You can go to the bank on him. You can be confident that he keeps his promises. I'll fill that in later, but that's point number one. Number two, we should praise God from whom all blessings flow. And this lesson today should stir up in us not only confidence in God as a [00:06:00] promise keeper, but praise to God who is the promise keeper.

And then our third point for home is going to be the gospel goodness of what all of this is about. Amen. That God has redeemed his people. That God cares for you and has secured for you a life that could never be equaled So those are our points for home. How do we get there? Do you remember any of those movies where, uh, they have the reading of the will and you got everybody in there?

And I love those movies because there's always someone who's gonna be upset [00:07:00] They don't put that scene in there simply to show everyone happy. Someone, and they're usually either on the front row or immediately behind, is, "Well, what about me?"

And our courts are loaded. Sharon Hemphill down here handles cases like this. Our courts are loaded with people who fuss over a will. And when they fuss over a will, do you know the first question that the lawyer and the court really needs to address? It's: Well, what do the words of the will actually say?

That's the first thing that's gotta be determined. You gotta look at the will. You've gotta decide, what does the will say?[00:08:00]

That's metaphor number one we're gonna be using today. Got it? Metaphor number two, and for this, I've used AI to create a PowerPoint slide of my friend Tom NT, Nicholas Thomas Wright, Tom Wright. I emailed him this slide, and I said, "I want you to see the picture of you I'll be displaying in class tomorrow."

And, um, I'd like to tell you he was pleased with it Anyway, uh, so Tom, uh, no, he was. He thought that was pretty funny. He, he said that he doesn't know how I made that. And, um, uh- And I made it because I was inspired by an analogy of his from a number of years ago. Tom said, "If you're out driving, and you're following a map to get where you're [00:09:00] going..."

Now, you young guys, that's what GPS used to look like. Okay? Just kinda bear with me here. Yeah, yeah. That's right. He's got two glasses, one on his fa- And that's because you use a different one for reading than you do for driving. This is pre-bifocal. Um, no. Uh, that's the AI, uh, residual. So anyway, you've got, um, you're driving somewhere, you've got a map, and you get lost What do you do?

You pull the map back out, you see if you had it turned upside down or something, and you try to figure out where you went wrong. Where did you zig when you should have zagged? Where did you turn when you should have gone straight? Where did you misread the road? You w- yeah, you, you, [00:10:00] you look at that map to try to figure out where you went wrong.

Where did you not understand the map right? Assuming that you've had a map that was made correctly Now, those two metaphors are gonna be very useful today, and I'll come back to them as we look at a new chunk within Romans. And I'm cur- y- yeah, that's a good chunk too. That's my kind of chunk. Yeah.

I, I say it's a chunk, but it's a chunk in Romans. That means it's not a chunk apart from Romans. It's not something that was just stuck in. It's, it's an integral, some would say one of the most key parts of the entire Book of Romans. To me, it's just a very natural flow in this book, but it is a chunk [00:11:00] that we take to itself.

It comes, however, on the heels of another chunk. And the chunk before it had ended with these verses: "Who will separate us from the love that Christ has for us?" Not only who, but what. Will tribulation separate you from Christ's love for you? No. Will distress? No. Will persecution? No. Will famine? No. Will nakedness?

No. Will danger? Will sword? Now, some of those seem, like, weird to us, like, well, when's nakedness gonna... Back then, those were real concerns. People could take everything you had, including your clothing, turn you out on the street [00:12:00] There were people who did not have food to eat. Everything he lists can't separate you.

And then Paul gives this quotation from scripture, "As it's written, 'For your sake we're being killed all day long. We're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.' But know this," he said. "In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us." And he says, "For I'm certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from God's love for us in Christ Jesus [00:13:00] our Lord."

Now, if this was unfolding in court, it's not hard for me as a lawyer to imagine someone standing up saying, "Objection, Your Honor." Because we know for a fact that there are promises that God has made before to Israel

And we know for a fact that most of Israel, most of the Jews are rejecting Jesus We know that the Jews have been wanting the Messiah. We live in an era, a time, an age where messianic desire and fervor is at a high, where messiahs are being proclaimed all the time within Judaism, yet none of them are authentic

And [00:14:00] so we have a lot of Jews that have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah, and they seem to be bereft of the blessings of Jesus. And so if God's word to Israel failed, why should we trust him now? Now please understand that I think what Paul's doing in Romans 9, 10, and 11 is more than simply answering that objection But I do believe that that objection is part o- o- of what stimulates his response.

And Paul's answer is very much like the two metaphors that I gave you Paul is saying, if you want to object and say, "But wait a minute, the people who are supposed to inherit the promise are not inheriting the promise," you need to read the [00:15:00] will. Go back and read the will and see what it actually says. Or to use the metaphor that Tom has used, if you don't think that you've arrived where you were supposed to arrive, go back and look at the map.

Either way, it's telling you something. It's saying, "Go look at Israel's story as it's set out in scripture, because the problem here is you're not understanding the scripture right." And what Paul commences to do is tell the story of Israel And if we just read Romans a little bit each Sunday, we may not get that full flow.

So I wanna broadcast [00:16:00] it since our focus today is on just a few verses. This is not an uncommon approach in Paul's day. If you went to a number of synagogues, if you went to a number of, of pla- you'd have Bible passages and other passages where that's what Israel and the rabbis and the writers have done.

They've said, "Let's tell Israel's story to make sense of what we're trying to understand today." If you look at some of the Psalms, like Psalm 78, it's a great example of this. Or you could Psalm 105 and 106. But look at what he did, the psalmist in Psalm 78. Okay, hold on. I gotta... I don't have that confidence monitor here, so I have to kind of figure this out.[00:17:00]

Can y'all read that? Is that big enough? Yeah. Okay, good. All right, Psalm 78 Give ear, O my peoples, to my teaching. Listen to what I'm saying. I'm gonna utter these deep, dark sayings from old. I'm not gonna hide them. I'm gonna talk about the glorious deeds of the Lord. And then look what he says, "He established a decree in Jacob."

By the way, Jacob, don't get lost. Jacob is often used as a label for the Israelites. He has established a decree in Jacob, a law in Israel, which he commanded to our ancestors. And then he starts walking through the whole story of what [00:18:00] God did. How, uh, the Eph- how he battled the Ephraimites. Um, how they failed to keep God's covenant.

What happened in the land of Egypt. How he divided the Red Sea. How he led them with a f- cloud, a fiery light. He split open the, uh, wilderness, the rocks, so that they'd have water that would come out. And it talks about their sin and what they did. And it just walks through the history of Israel to address things.

That's a very biblical approach. Nehemiah chapter nine does the same thing. Ezekiel chapter 20 does the same thing. Think back to the New Testament when Stephen is about to be stoned, and Paul is standing there on the wall holding the garment as the lookout of sorts to see if there's a last reprieve from the high priest.

What does Stephen [00:19:00] do? He tells the whole story. He tells the whole story of Israel. He goes back to the beginning and he recounts it for them to understand the Messiah This is a very standard approach. Josephus writes 20 volumes. He's a contemporary of Paul's. He writes 20 volumes on the antiquities of the Jews or the Jewish histories, trying to understand their world in light of the Jewish story.

There's a writing that comes out a little bit after Paul, a couple of decades later, but it shows the con- the, the, the, this approach that was prominent in Paul. We call it Fourth Ezra or Second Esdras. Um, 3:13 through 16 are the verses I pulled out. "Now when they lived so wickedly before you, God, you chose a man from among them.

His name was Abraham. You loved him, and to him only you showed your will, and you made an everlasting [00:20:00] covenant with him, promising him you'd never forsake his seed. And to him you gave Isaac, and to Isaac you gave Jacob and Esau. And as for Jacob, you chose him to yourself and set aside Esau. Jacob became a great multitude."

See, this is a very standard thing to do when you're trying to understand. You go back to the beginning, and you retell the story of Israel, and it's what Paul is doing in this section of Romans

So we'll talk today in three things we wanna cover. First, kind of to use my will metaphor, Paul talks about, in a sense, two Israels, and then he gives an exhibit A, Isaac, not Ishmael, and an exhibit B, Jacob, not Esau. So if we structure and think about it in those terms, it helps me at least as I teach it.

We start with verse [00:21:00] six. There are, in a sense, two Israels. Now, here's where Paul begins. Paul begins and he says this: "It's not as though the word of God has failed." Now he's got people who are listening to him talk here, or listening to, to his letter being read. That's more accurate. It's not as though. In the Greek, he's got kind of two Greek phrases blended together here, ou kai onde hoti.

This is doubly emphatic. It's translated, "But it's not as though." But it has-- it's written in a way where it's, it's not just underlined once, it's underlined twice. If I were translating this, no, when I [00:22:00] translate this, as I translated this, to get that double emphasis for you that you would be hearing if you were a Greek listener hearing this being read, you would have the same effect, I think, as if I said to you, "There is absolutely no way that the Word of God has failed."

Paul's not leaving any doubt Paul's clearly going to explain how the Word of God has not failed. That's where he's going. That's what matters to him. This is not the case of someone... Look, we, we've got, we've got grandkids. We have 12 of them. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's right. We rent them out[00:23:00]

Um, Becky told me the other day, she said, "Have you realized that January 1, we will have a grandchild age one, two, three, four, five, twins at five, six, seven, nine or 10, nine, 10, four- 13." We got 12 grandkids. And they'll all be at some age in January

A couple of them are at the age right now where they just want to keep asking why Remember that age?

They call me Mark Mark. Mark Mark, can I have some more candy? You'd need to ask [00:24:00] your mom. Why? She's in charge of such things. Why? Because she's your mother. Why? Because she gave birth to you. Why? Nobody really knows at this point

Because God blessed her. Why? Because that's the kind of God he is. Why? And at some point you just say, "Because." Why? Because. Why? Because. And you just try to outlast them on that one. Paul doesn't just say because. He says there's absolutely no way that God's word has failed. Just study the map. Go back and look.

Because there's absolutely no way it's failed. Now, this word failed, ekpipo, ekpipo, [00:25:00] failed It's a great Greek word. Been around when Paul was using it for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's used when... It, it, it's got a, a, a meaning behind it of falling down, falling down to the ground. And so it's used, for example, of a ship that runs aground on the rocks.

So ekpipto

It ran onto the rocks. We see that word used by Luke in Acts when Paul gets shipwrecked in Acts 27, and it's actually used, like, three times, I think, in that narrative. Fearing that we might run on the rocks, ekpipto. They let down four anchors from the stern, and they prayed for the day ahead. But they wound up [00:26:00] running aground.

They, they feared that they might ekpipto. They might not succeed. They might fail. They might run to the ground. If you went to a Greek drama, you went to a Greek play, and it turned out to be really bad, do you know what you could do? You could boo, and you could hiss, and you could ridicule and mock the actors until they left the stage And do you know what happened when they left the stage?

They would use the word ekpipto. They failed as actors. They fell in their trade You could have a beautiful vase of flowers, and they might look springy and perky and beautiful, but over time, the flowers will wilt, the petals [00:27:00] will ep- epto James uses the verb ekpipto in this way in James chapter 1. So does Peter, by the way.

"For the sun rises with its scorching heat, withers the grass, its flowers," ekpipto, "and its beauty perishes." Paul uses ekpipto in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the chapter on love. "Love never fails. It doesn't wilt, fade, fall to the ground, hit the rocks. Love never ends. It never fails." You say, "Well, I don't know about this and then that."

Well, that wasn't the love that failed. It was the lack of love that brought the failure. So ekpipto is this concept that his [00:28:00] listeners would hear, and they would hear it, and they would also take it even another step beyond knowing the Greek because some of them used the Greek Old Testament as their Bible And in the Greek Old Testament ekpiptō is used for something that goes unfulfilled Look at this passage in Joshua 21.

Not one word of the good promises has ekpipto, has fallen to the ground. But ekpipto there is meaning it's been unfulfilled. Same thing in 1 Samuel 3:19. "The word," or, "The Lord let none," I left off the E, "of Samuel's words ekpipto, fall to the ground." And then a really important passage that I think's in Paul's mind as he's writing this.

Ekpipto is also found in [00:29:00] Isaiah chapter 40. In verse eight it says, "The grass withers, the flower ekpiptos, but the word of our God will stand forever." The grass withers, the flower... Now, ekpipto is actually one form of a very irregular Greek verb. So you're looking at it and saying, "That doesn't look like ekpipto to me."

It's a Greek irregular verb. You just had to memorize the forms. Trust me, it's still the same idea. But the word of our God will stand, which is mone in the Greek, uh, uh, meno-o. Uh, it will stand, mene, forever. I underscore that, stick a pin in it, because Paul's gonna use that word again later. But he's got this idea, the grass withers, the flowers fade.

But has the word of God ever failed? Has it ever ekpiptoed? [00:30:00] There is absolutely no way that the word of God has failed

M- for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. I don't like that translation. Sorry, I messed up my slide here. Um This is not even working. Boom. That's all right. Here's the key. I don't like the English Standard Version here. I like the NIV on this passage better because this, "Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel," belong is not in the Greek, and belong can mean something.

It's kind of a little theological loading that's putting, being put in there without you having the choice. Greek, you often don't have a verb that says to be, is, or whatever. You just write the sentence and it... You put it in in [00:31:00] English 'cause we need it. They didn't, and that's what you have here. You don't...

It doesn't say belong to. It just says, uh, the ones out of Israel are not Israel Not all of the ones out of Israel, Ugar, for not Pontes, all of the ones coming out of Israel are Israel, are actual Israel

This is a weird thing. Paul says, "Don't think the word of God is wrong. Go back and read the map because the map will tell you everyone who has come out of Israel is not Israel." Now let's understand what Paul's not saying. Paul is not saying the church has replaced Israel in those promises. [00:32:00] We should never read that.

That's a no, no, no, no, no We're not replacement theologists if we're following Paul. We don't take the promises to Israel and say, "Well, now those, we know tho- those really belong to the church."

The, the promises that God made though, Paul says, were never made to all of Israel. Don't think that the word of God has ekpiptō. It hasn't

Now, at this day, this would not have struck Paul's audience as weird because Paul lived in an era where many people were asking, "Who is the true Israel?" Even within Israel, some felt that perhaps something had gone wrong because Israel was still under [00:33:00] the domination of Rome And they thought they should be their own kingdom And no one should stand against them.

And so they're trying to figure out what's wrong, and some of them just go off by themselves and decide, "We're the true Israel." There's a whole community set up outside the Dead Sea, a community of Qumran, and you can go back and look at their covenantal documents, and they'll talk about the fact that, that, "Look, we've all separated out.

We're the true Israel, and we're following the teacher of righteousness, and, and, and we're the ones that inherit all of the promises, not those Roman wannabes that are running the Jerusalem temple." And so Paul lives in a culture and a time where people are trying to define who is the true Israel. And it's interesting, for the Qumran adherents that we can read about, it was based [00:34:00] on their rigor, how good they were.

It was based on stricter Torah observance, stricter calendar observance, withdrawing from everyone else. And that's what made them the true Israel. But Paul will be talking about the true Israel, and that's not what he says. He says the true Israel is the promise and call that landed on the Messiah So there are two Israels in a sense that we're talking about here.

Who inherited the promise? Who's in the will? We can't answer all this this week, by the way. We're, we're, like, 20 minutes from being done, and I got two more points. So let's get to the second one. Exhibit A, Isaac, not Ishmael. Paul says, "Look, not [00:35:00] everyone who's descendant of Israel or Abraham is Israel. Not all children of Abraham m- not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring."

And he quotes Genesis, "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." Now, he's got a little wordplay going on here, and, and we'd hear it if we were listening to this in the Greek. It's a little bit harder to hear in the English, but I wanna underscore it. Paul says, "Not all are his children," tekna, and that's actually the second classification in the way Paul writes it.

Not all are his children because they're his offspring, his sperma, his seed. We get the word sperm from it. Not all, but the way Paul says it is, "Not all who are his, the seed of [00:36:00] Abraham" are all children Just because they're the seed doesn't make them the children

Just because they're DNA'd doesn't make them what Paul is calling and what scripture calls a true Israelite. Paul says, m- and he quotes again, "Through Isaac," and it's a strong but in the Greek. Alla is a strong but. "But through Isaac shall your offspring be named." Now, if you're a Jew and you're in Rome and you're hearing this, this is what you got so far.

You got... Oh, my Apple Watch thinks I just fell. I'm okay. I did, I did not fall. [00:37:00] If I did not do that, Becky would be getting a phone call in a minute saying, "We think your husband has taken a fall." Here's what the Jew would be hear- or the, the, the church would be hearing when they hear this. There's absolutely no way that the word of God have failed.

Not all descended from Israel are Israel. Not all of Abraham's offspring are his children

And there's this great word that's used here, Kaleo. Isaac, but in Isaac shall your offspring be named. Kaleo is translated be named, and that's fair, but it's, it's technically at its root the idea of called. Might mean called by name. But it's important because Paul uses the word called here. God calls. And we're gonna see that word used again and again.

[00:38:00] God calls. Through Isaac shall your offspring be called

And that's just there, and you gotta get that to, to hang onto it. All right, so where are we now? Um, we wanna stick a flag in that called, uh, we did that. Think about it this way. God said through Isaac... Now Abraham has two sons, Ishmael through Hagar, and Isaac through Sarah. And God says it's gonna be through Isaac, both of them seed of Abraham

And technically, Ishmael has a better claim. I mean, look at Ishmael and compare him to Isaac. Who's firstborn? Ishmael [00:39:00] That's progenitor. That's all the rights of the firstborn How about the covenant? God's covenant to Abraham was expressed through circumcision. Ishmael circumcised on the same day as his father, as Abraham.

That's covenant. We've got progenitor, we've got covenant, and we've got paternal love because Abraham's comment to God is, "O that Ishmael might live before you."

Abraham's o- offspring includes the one who's first born, who's got the covenant of circumcision, and is loved by the father. But God's reply is, "Nope. It's going through Isaac."

And so Paul says this means that it's not the children of the [00:40:00] flesh who are the children of God, it's the children of the promise that are counted as offspring Now I don't agree with everything the Puritans wrote. I don't agree with everything John Flavel wrote, and in fact, I'm not sure John Flavel even wrote this.

I can't find that he did, but it's often attributed to him, so some Puritan probably said it, and bless his heart, he's been dead for 350 years. Let's give the guy the credit and benefit of the doubt. I like the statement, "If Abraham's faith be not in your hearts, it will be no advantage that Abraham's blood runs in your veins."

Now Paul says this means it's not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. These are the descendants of Abraham. These are those [00:41:00] Jews that are following the Messiah that he's talking about here. But when he says that they're counted, logizomai is the verb.

We've seen that before used repeatedly by Paul in Romans chapter 4. Now, you gotta go back many, many, many, many, many months ago to remember that class, but it's an accounting word. It's like entering it into your bank book, and it's the word that was used for Abraham. Abraham's faith was r- uh, counted, counted to him, logizomai to him, as righteousness.

And in Romans chapter 4, we have Paul using this word repeatedly. And so this is... You know, while it was months ago for you, it was just about 15 minutes ago for the people who were hearing this read. But you go back to Romans chapter 4, "What are we to say was [00:42:00] gained by Abraham, our ancestor, according to the flesh?

If he was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. What does Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned,'" logizomai, "To him as righteousness." Now to one who works, wages aren't put into the bank account. They're not credited to you as a gift. It's just your pay. But someone without works- trust him who unjustifies the ungodly, then their faith is entered in and counted as righteousness.

And it just keeps going on and on through there. So when Paul is here in Romans chapter 9, Romans chapter 9, uh, I, I'll quote Tom on this later. I don't know that Tom said this, but it's ... he'd probably agree with it, I'll bet. Um, and he isn't in here, so we'll never know. So I might as well just say it. Eh, Tom's a big fan of this.

No, I would [00:43:00] never do that. Um

But what Paul is doing in Romans 9 is not divorced from what he's been doing this whole letter. Paul didn't in Romans 9, 10, and 11 say, "Now I'd like to take a break from the theme of Romans and what I've been talking about in Romans to address some medieval questions that, uh, the, the Calvinists and the Arminians are going to have in about 1400, 15, 1600 years.

So let's, um, shift to, uh, some Renaissance and, uh, Enlightenment, uh, arguments over predestination." He's not doing that at all. He's just still walking through Israel's story, and he's saying that the children of the flesh, it's not children of the flesh who are children of God. It's the children of the promise that are accounted.

Membership in the promised family of God has always been by God's [00:44:00] crediting. It's the act of God. It's always been by God's crediting. It's never been biological arithmetic or, as in Romans 4, earned

Romans 9 isn't a new doctrine, it's Romans 4 applied to Israel's story And I do know Tom said, "What counts is grace, not race."

So we've got this Romans 4 being triggered. This means it's not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, it's the children of the promise that are reckoned, that are counted, that are credited as offspring. And that's a huge thing. And, and it's straight out of Deuteronom- or Genesis. The Lord said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son."

That's the promise of God. Don't think the Word of [00:45:00] God has failed. You look at the Word of God, go back and read the map, and you'll see it's fulfilled

The very thing that, that, that you think might be a failure is actually nothing more than a fulfillment. Yes. It was God who said it's coming through him. I- God made that promise. He's the child of the promise. And this is not a God who promises and forgets. It's not a God who promises and fails to deliver.

The word, the promise of God does not get shipwrecked. It doesn't fade like a flower. It's not thrown off stage like a bad actor. And if someone wants to stand up and say, "Objection, your Honor, you're using an example which has Sarah, his real wife, and Hagar, who was like a summer fling."

then move from [00:46:00] Exhibit A to Exhibit B. It was Jacob, not Esau. So Paul says in the next verse, "Not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac." Now, I just misspoke. I just said it says in the next verse, and it does in English, but it really doesn't in the Greek.

This Greek is like the Sunday edition of The New York Times crossword puzzle. Now, could I parse this in Greek for you? Yes. Would all of you leave before I was done? Yes, except for Larry Burgess. Everyone else would be gone because it's that difficult. So what the translators do is they try to kind of put into two verses what it kind of all mashes up to be in the end.

So, "Not [00:47:00] only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac," in other words, Paul's dealing with, "Objection, different mothers," and Paul's saying, "Overruled," 'cause we got one mother here Twins coming out of one mother. One mother, one father, and they're twins. And they were twins who were not yet born before either of them had done anything.

This election, this choice, this God picking his children had nothing to do with them and everything to do with God In order that God's purpose of election might continue, and here's our word mene here, which is again from Isaiah 40, "The gla- grass withers, the flower," ekpeptos, "but the word of the God," menos, "continues, [00:48:00] stays forever" God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls.

So that Isaiah passage, I'll put it back up here, ekpepto is where we had it. Grass withers, flower fades, the word of our God stands forever. That's the mene, same word

And it's not because of works, but it's because of him who calls. Oh, I put it back up here so you could see, mine, mine. That's just a long E with a little I under it instead of the short E with the I after it. But it's the same word. Now, who's he talking about here? Jacob and Esau. One elect, chosen, n- over the other

There's one question to be asked here [00:49:00] with two possible answers. The question, God elected Jacob over Esau for what?

for that historical role in producing the Messiah

Or is he talking about for salvation?

I can't wait to talk about that next week. So Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls. And, and that, by the way, this not because of works, but because of him who calls, is verse 12 in the Greek text.

So the, the-- even the text blends a little bit there, so I have to put it, "Not because of works, but because of him who calls she was [00:50:00] told, 'The older will serve the younger.' As it's written: Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated." As it's written. So what's he talking about? They were elected? Is that historical role?

Is that salvation? Well, what complicates this, give you a little teaser for next week, is just as we saw in Psalm 78, Jacob and Esau are names used for the nation of Israel and later Judah, and the nation of Edom, who are the descendants of Esau. And so th- on the historical role, even in Genesis 25 itself, where the promise is made, look at the way God worded the promise.

Two nations are in your womb Two peoples within you shall be divided. We're talking about [00:51:00] two nations here. We're talking about the nation of Jacob, we're talking about the nation of Esau. Or how about this passage out of Obadiah? Obadiah is just complete. Obadiah, the entire minor prophet book of Obadiah, granted one chapter, but the entire book of Obadiah calls the Edomites Esau and calls Judah Jacob.

Just that, that's the label for him. Verse six, "How Esau has been pillaged." Well, Esau's been dead for 1,500 years. It's the nation of Edom. "Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob." Well, Jacob's been dead. He's announcing the, the judgment that's happened to the Edomites because of the way they had treated the Judahites.

But that's just the language that they used. So when Paul is writing about Jacob and Esau and he's quoting from the [00:52:00] prophets, those are common ways that the prophets had labeled them, and not just the prophets, the psalmists and even the, the authors behind the Ten-- the, the Torah. So it's not because of work, but it's because of him who calls.

Again, kaleo

She was told, "The older will serve the younger." Okay, now wait a minute. You go back to the story of Jacob and Esau. Read it. Do you know what happens? Jacob served Esau. That's right. Jacob bowed down seven times to Esau. Jacob was scared for his life. Yaakov, as his name would be in Hebrew, was not a fan of his big brother, and he was petrified.

This whole idea, the older will serve the younger, just happened within the nations in [00:53:00] history there

And then Paul quotes Malachi 1, "I have loved you," says the Lord. "But you say, 'How have you loved us?' Is not Esau Jacob's brother?" declares the Lord. "Yet I've loved Jacob, and Esau I hated. I've laid waste his hill country, left his heritage to jackals of the desert." That alone is a reference to the nation of Edom, which was nestled right up next to Judah.

That's Judah. That's Edom Now we can talk and we'll talk next week about what does it mean, uh, loved and hated. Is hated rejected? Loved less? We'll discuss all of that next week as well. Um, now some of you as I close this today might be saying, "Is that fair?"

And on that objection, the judge's reply is, "Come back next week and I'll rule on [00:54:00] that." But let's get to your points for home. Have no doubt, I don't know what promises you're clinging to, but there is absolutely no way that the Word of God has failed, has withered, has run aground, or gone away unfulfilled, period.

No way. Absolutely, no way. When I was young, we sang in church this song, Standing on the Promises. Standing on the promises that cannot fail. When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail. By the living Word of God, I shall prevail. Standing on the promises of God. That's real. That's true. You can do it.

Point for home two: praise God from whom all blessings flow. He credits, he reckons, he calls, he elects, he makes, he saves. Standing on the promises that cannot fail. [00:55:00] Let eternal ages-- through eternal ages, let his praises ring. Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing. Standing on the promises of God. Point for home three: this is gospel goodness, because all of this fits under the rubric of that great beginning, that the gospel, the death, burial, resurrection of ri- of Christ, the redemption that is found in his sacrifice on our behalf, that has the power of God to save everyone who believes.

Everyone who believes. Because we can stand on the promises of Christ our Lord, bound to him eternally by love's strong cord. Overcoming daily by the Spirit's sword, standing on the promises of God. Amen? Amen. Here's your lunch topic. Jacob and Esau, elected to their historical roles as [00:56:00] nations, to salvation, or both?

Talk amongst yourselves. Let me bless you in the name of Jesus, and we'll be done. Lord, in the name of Jesus, we bow before you, and we stand on your promises. Your promises, Lord, right now, I speak over everyone hearing, that by the power of, of Jesus and his blood and his resurrection, by the indwelling Spirit, by your omniscient, omnipotent, divine hand, would you meet the needs of people who are standing on their promise, their promises?

Would you give peace to those who struggle for peace? Would you give joy to those bereft of joy? Would you give guidance to those bereft of direction? Would you give inspiration to those feeling worthless? [00:57:00] Shower your love

It is our prayer in Jesus. Amen. Amen.