Dennis Tuuri

Encourage each of you in your individual lives or in your families this week to go online. If you don’t have internet access, let me know to read St. Patrick’s Breastplate—so-called—the song we sang a paraphrase of at the beginning of the service. Clearly Patrick believed that every last atom of this creation is God’s creation, and God is moving everything—the lightning, the sea, the rocks, everything—to deliver his people, to magnify them, and to bring them closer to him.

So Patrick was a strong believer in the sovereign God, and on the basis of that, Patrick makes his prayers be made known to God in the midst of difficulties. It’s a wonderful chant of Patrick’s. We have three of his writings left to us over the course of history. He, of course, was the great missionary to the Irish who had imprisoned him. And so he doesn’t repay them in kind, but he pays them instead by the kindness of going and evangelizing Ireland upon his release.

He has a confession, which is his autobiography basically. This is the basis for what we sang today, and then a letter to the king of England who had killed Christians and urging his subjects not to follow him until he repented of his attacks—his anti-Christian attacks against the church. So, of course, Saturday is St. Patrick’s Day, and I would urge you each to do some reading, maybe your family devotional time, on him and particularly. Today we think of his belief in the sovereignty of God, and that, of course, is our topic again today as we consider a difficult topic: reprobation.

So please stand. I’m going to read all of Romans 9 and the first verse of chapter 10. I believe the first section and the end of this chapter 10:1 set the proper context for Paul’s instruction in Romans 9 of the sovereignty of God, even in terms of reprobation.

So I wanted to read those as bookends.

All right. Romans chapter 9:

“I tell the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, eternally blessed God. Amen.

But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham. But in Isaac your seed shall be called. That is, those who are the children of the flesh—these are not the children of God. But the children of the promise are counted as the seed. For this is the word of promise: ‘At this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son.’

And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even our father Isaac (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls), it was said to her, ‘The older shall serve the younger,’ as it is written, ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.’

What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not. For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.’ So that it is not of man who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show my power in you and that my name may be declared in all the earth.’ Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills and whom he wills he hardens.

You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will?’ But indeed, oh man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

As he says also in Hosea, ‘I will call them my people who were not my people, and her beloved who was not beloved. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” then there they shall be called sons of the living God.’ Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel: ‘Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. For he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.’ And as Isaiah said before, ‘Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah.’

What shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have obtained a righteousness, even the righteousness of faith. But Israel pursuing the law of righteousness has not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone, as it is written: ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense. And whoever believes on him will not be put to shame.’

Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.”

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your word. Bless us by your Holy Spirit. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ at your right hand interceding for us. We thank you that the Holy Spirit has been sent to us to bring us and teach us things of him, that we might rejoice in them, be comforted by them, be warned by them, and encouraged. Bless and help us, Lord God, now with this difficult topic we have to work our way through, and make us do it joyfully, submissively. Help us, Lord God, not to ask the foolish questions asked by the people addressed in the text, but help us to be your people—obediently, lovingly, and trusting you, our Father.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

We live in times of—as we said last week—everything that’s supposed to be up is down and everything that’s down is up. We live in a topsy-turvy world because the church of Jesus Christ hasn’t taken the gospel. And so, just as Jason and the men that made it met in Jason’s house in the book of Acts are accused of turning the world upside down—that’s our job.

We’ve been saved to the end that we might go in and conquer the land. When in Deuteronomy class today, chapters 6 through 11 in Deuteronomy—Moses’s sermon on the first commandment, which is loyalty to God—at the very part of that sermon is the transition from wrath to grace through the death of Aaron and the raising up of the high priest, Eleazar, moving the people of God. The place names are interesting—from a place of oppression to a place name that means pleasantness.

And that’s accomplished through the work and imagery of the Lord Jesus Christ as high priest. And immediately after that transition from wrath to grace is described in Deuteronomy, it then immediately says to Moses, “Arise, go in and lead these people into the promised land to conquer it.” That’s our job. Our job is to make the world right side up again in spite of it being turned upside down in our day and age.

I’ve got a couple of bill reference numbers here for you. What’s going on in Salem is astonishing. Friday, police were dispatched to a Beavers baseball game to compel Republican legislators to come and vote on a big tax increase—the removal of the corporate kicker. No matter where you stand on that particular bill, we are in a situation where coercion is kind of the mark of the day. A little symbol, not a big deal—it happens in other legislatures—but it’s kind of what’s going on.

And these bills I’ve got here are big deals. SB2 is the bill that would forbid discrimination against homosexuals, transsexuals, transgender people in hiring, housing, etc. Now, of course, the Bible—it says we’re supposed to discriminate, not on the basis of race, but we’re supposed to discriminate on the basis of sin. We’re not supposed to have people around us who are not in the grace of God—we pray they will be recovered—but at this point are in radical rebellion against God.

So that piece of legislation is a real danger to churches. It’s a particular danger to Christian schools and Christian businesses. Freedom is being impinged upon by that bill. Even more troubling to us is HB2996, introduced last week to make all private schools in the state of Oregon subject to the state in terms of licensure, registration, and certification of teachers. And it isn’t just private schools. If you teach a child anything for compensation, you’ll have to be licensed by the state if this bill passes. So it’s a direct attack on Christian private schools.

SB776 is a direct attack on Christian benevolences. Many people at this church support it financially; people support it with their labors—the pregnancy resource centers. And this bill says that since these crisis pregnancy centers lie all the time—there’s a bunch of whereas clauses that say there’s a bunch of deceit going on—therefore the law says they’ll do an investigation of all pregnancy resource centers in the state. So it’s a direct attack on the benevolence ministries of the church.

You know, discrimination laws, taxation—taxation was the issue by which they sent the police out to the Beavers ball game on Friday because they want more of our money. They want to direct the education of our children, and they want to stop the demonstration of Christian benevolence to women who are being tempted by our culture to kill their unborn children.

Things are bad. I told you they’d be bad. I told you last year that eventualities were not good as we went into this legislative session, and they’re proving to be true. Now, whether all these—SB2 will certainly pass in some form. SB776, the attack on the pregnancy resource centers, has a number of co-sponsors and it appears to be a priority bill. So I do think that’s going to be a real problem for us. Probably we’ll be able to stop it, but it’s a problem.

I have no idea if 2996, the attack on Christian education—will it? It only has one sponsor. It was just introduced this week. I don’t know, but it’s an example of what’s going on.

God is not pleased with us. You know, he is bringing the whip against us. God has afflicted us. He is continuing to afflict us because we don’t properly honor him. And very specifically, we don’t honor him in understanding and bowing to his sovereignty and his divine choice.

And I want to talk today about God’s decisions in eternity in terms of those who are headed to hell—the doctrine of reprobation. But I’ve got at the top of your outline, you know, these doctrines are things that are important. There’s nothing more important to a culture than a determination of who’s in charge, who’s in control. The sovereignty of God is the base for everything else. The person of God—I should say, not just his sovereignty, but the person of God—is the base for every other work that’s built upon it.

On the opposite side, the pride of man becomes the base for the seven deadly sins—or is one of them—but it’s the root sin. And the pride of man is that he gets to choose instead of God choosing him. And so a theology that says that the ultimate determination of a person going to heaven or hell is that individual’s choice, as opposed to the election of God, not only is clearly contradictory to the scriptures—I mean it’s not even close in terms of what the scriptures teach. They obviously teach it’s God’s choice in election—but the big problem is that it produces a degree of pride in humanity.

And reprobation is a like doctrine. Denial of reprobation is essentially a casting of a vote for humanity as opposed to God. And so it represents pride of race. We’ll be talking about natural privilege—the idea that we have natural privileges, human rights. You see, from one perspective we can agree with that term, but from another perspective, that term is directly attacked by Paul in the text before us in Romans 9.

But it’s important that we be able to communicate these things. You know, we’re supposed to be able to convince people from the scriptures of who God is. And so this taking it to the living room is an attempt to do that.

We began this series by talking about the love of God in all eternity. His foreknowledge is not a foreseeing of certain events—we’ll address that shortly again from this text in Romans 9—but rather the whole doctrine of God’s sovereignty and predestination and election and reprobation begins with the love of God in eternity. And this is where conversations about God’s sovereignty should begin, with a consideration of his love. And that’s Romans 8. So if you teach your children and you remind yourself—Romans 8, Romans 8, Romans 8—it’s a central text to talk to people about this, the foreknowledge of God and being able to talk about that. Remember, it’s pretty easy—you know, the sentence doesn’t say he foreknew certain things. He’s knowing people. And the word “knowledge” means to love. Ephesians 1 we talked about last week.

God’s absolute sovereignty in all things and unconditional election both taught in Ephesians 1. So if you just, you know, have a friend over and start talking about the Bible—open it up to Ephesians 1—and there it is. All these great wonderful truths, a wonderful chapter of scripture, and certainly what it teaches is this: absolute sovereignty of God in all things and unconditional election. It also teaches, by the way, that Jesus came to restore all things, that all things are being restored. It’s the beginning place also, I suppose, of a consideration of an optimistic eschatology. Jesus is in the process of restoring all things.

So Ephesians 1. And today we want to talk about reprobation. What does it mean? Well, I’ve got a little text here. Romans 1:28 talks about a reprobate mind. And reprobate just means disqualified—tested and then found wanting. So evaluated and discarded. And that’s what it means in Romans 1:28. People that think they’re wiser than God, who worship the creature instead of the Creator—they think they’re wise, but they become fools. Their mind is reprobate. It’s disqualified.

2 Corinthians 13:5: “Examine yourselves. Test yourselves to see if you’re in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you are disqualified—unless you are reprobate,” some translations say. So this word reprobate is not very well known today, but it just means to be evaluated and discarded, found disqualified.

And then in Titus 1:16: “They profess to know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work—reprobate.” So that’s what reprobation means with a simple definition: it means disqualified, evaluated, disqualified, set aside.

And I want to talk a little bit. I’ve given you such long outlines because I wanted you to see these confessional statements of the church relative to reprobation. And so on page two, we’ll start to talk about that. We’ll read through some of that now.

So if you turn to the second page of the outline: Now, we’re a confessional church. It’s important that we understand this. You know, so often we think it’s just me and my Bible. Well, no. You’ve been brought to this place after 2,000 years of church history. The church has talked on all these issues for 2,000 years. It is the height of folly for us to just discard all of those things. We affirm certain confessions. And what we mean is unless we can find evidence from God’s word that they’re wrong, we’re standing by them. And it’s not wrong to cite confessions and creeds because that’s the traditions that God positively affirms in the New Testament.

Now, the first citation I have here is from the Westminster Confession of Faith, “Of God and the Holy Trinity.” Now this has nothing to do with reprobation really. But again, there’s a context for this discussion in Romans 9. The context is not Paul’s you-know, fleshly hatred of the Jews who want to kill him and keep getting him arrested. The context is Paul’s love for those Jews, his great desire that they would come to salvation, to the point of saying, “I’d just as soon be accursed if they could be grafted in.” Very important.

We don’t, you know—reprobation is not some kind of logical statement that leads to logical things that aren’t related from incarnational truth. And the incarnational truth is Jesus wept over Jerusalem, apostate, reprobate Jerusalem. Jesus wept. And here the idea is to put it in the broader context of who God is. We’re going to talk about a specific aspect of what God does in terms of the reprobate and the doctrine of reprobation, but understand the large context.

I think it’d be a great thing in family worship and devotionals on a regular basis to return to the Westminster Confession of Faith, Statement One, “Who is God?” There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will. Why? For his own glory. Most loving, gracious, merciful, longsuffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and withal most just and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness in and of himself, and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things, and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleaseth. In his sight all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain. He is most holy in all his counsels and all his works and in all his commands.

To him is due from angels and men and every other creature whatsoever worship, service, or obedience he is pleased to require of them.

Wonderful statements. In the early days of this church, we sat around my living room going through the Westminster standards, and Judge Beers, as I recall, read these tremendous, beautiful, grand statements of the person of God and wept with a consideration of the God who it is who has called us, revealed himself to us, calls us to worship him. This is the God of the scriptures distilled down into the confessions of the church, which confessions we believe in.

Now those confessions also talk about the doctrine of reprobation. Here’s from—these are not confessions, but these are statements—first of all, of John Owen: “Reprobation is the eternal purpose of God to suffer many to sin, leave them in their sin, and not giving them to Christ, to punish them for their sin.”

And then in the PRC Protestant Reformed Church Catechism: “What is the decree of election? The eternal, sovereign, and gracious good pleasure of God to save to eternal glory some men through the means of faith in Christ. What is the decree of reprobation? The eternal, sovereign, and righteous good pleasure of God to condemn others to eternal damnation on account of their sin.”

So this is what reprobation is. And then I have this quote from a PRC pastor that I came across: “Reprobation is that eternal will, good pleasure, or purpose of God according to which he determined that some of his moral, rational creatures would be cast into hell forever on account of their sins, and that this fact would serve the cause of Christ and redound to God’s glory alone.” That’s the doctrine. That’s what we’ll be talking about in Romans 9 in just a couple of minutes.

God, as part of his decree, has decreed that the reprobate will end up eternally in hell.

Now, we have the Canons of Dort, first main point of doctrine. This is, you know, what we’re going to use as our springboard for this entire sermon. The Canons is the five points, so-called, of Calvinism, which go back to this ecumenical church council of Reformed churches in the city known as Dort. The findings of the church—well, article 15—on the first, they had five heads of doctrine. The first was unconditional election. These are their words, what you have here on your outline: “Divine election and reprobation is what they called it. The judgment concerning divine predestination which the Synod declares to be in agreement with the word of God and accepted till now in the Reformed churches everywhere.”

Well, here’s article 15 dealing with reprobation:

“Moreover, holy scripture most especially highlights this eternal and undeserved grace of our election and brings it out more clearly for us.”

Now, just pause there. They’re setting reprobation in the context of a discussion of God’s election. And we’ll see how Paul does the same thing in Romans 9 in just a minute.

“In that it further bears witness that not all people have been chosen, but that some have not been chosen or have been passed by in God’s eternal election. Those, that is, concerning whom God, on the basis of his entirely free, most just, irreproachable, and unchangeable good pleasure, made the following decision: to leave them in the common misery into which by their own fault they have plunged themselves, not to grant them saving faith and the grace of conversion, but finally to condemn and eternally punish them, having been left in their own ways and under his just judgment, not only for their unbelief, but also for all their other sins, in order to display his justice.”

And this is the decision of reprobation, which does not at all make God the author of sin. The Bible’s quite clear that sin entered the world through men—a blasphemous thought. But rather it’s fearful, irreproachable, just judgment, and avenger.

We won’t read the responses to reprobation. I’ll refer to them at the end of the sermon. But that’s the doctrine of reprobation.

Now, you’ll notice that the Canons of Dort talk about reprobation from the position of man already fallen in sin. Did you notice that? So the idea is that we have everybody after the fall, and then God’s decree of reprobation is what they talk about in relationship to what happens after the fall. Now, God’s decree is not subject to time. So they’re not saying that, but they’re putting the logical order of God’s decree of reprobation. I know this is kind of heavy theology stuff, but that thing after God’s decree of election.

So, and they’re doing it after the fall. God’s decree of the fall. And this is called an infralapsarian position. Big term—”lapse” means the fall and “infra” means under or after the fall. And so that position that the Canons of Dort talk about is that God’s decree logically comes after him decreeing the fall.

Not a big deal, but you might hear these terms: supralapsarianism. “Supra” just means over, right, or before the fall. And so if in that position, God decrees the reprobation before the fall, at the same time as—not logically following the fall—it’s not a big point, but I wanted you to understand that the Canons of Dort are a softer version of reprobation. And I think one of the reasons for that is because the scriptures discuss it that way.

As we’ll see in Romans 9 in just a minute, election is the big deal in God’s word. And the doctrine of reprobation is secondary to that and serves it. And so they sort of leave it in that way, and that’s I think pastorally the right way to do it. Now I think that logically we could say that he decreed men to go to hell at the same time as he decreed the fall and all this stuff, and that there’s no logical order to the decree, but they pick it up there, and that’s very easy to demonstrate from scripture as we’ll see from Romans 9. And that’s what they do here.

And so in terms of the confessions, this is what they say.

Okay. And we will now find my notes: double predestination. Just a word there too. God predestinates men to heaven from one perspective. He predestinates men to hell as well. And this can be called predestination, right? But the problem with that is when we equate the two. Obviously “predestined” means set the eternal destiny of the one before all time is created. And God does that.

But what we have to make sure we don’t fall into here is thinking that somehow God treats the reprobate the same way as he treats the elect. In other words, with the elect, God is sovereignly working to bring them to salvation and call them. And with the reprobate, God is not sovereignly working to take somebody good and make them wicked. He is moving on somebody who is wicked to make them good with election. He’s not moving on somebody good or neutral and making them evil. That’s not what the scriptures teach. The scriptures teach the full responsibility of men for his sin.

So it’s very important that we don’t fall into some of these logical deductions, but rather go by the text of scripture to say what reprobation really is all about.

And now we’ll look at a few scriptures very briefly.

1 Peter 2:8: He says that Jesus is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. “Now listen: They stumble being disobedient to the word, full moral culpability, to which they also were appointed. So God appointed him to that end, but it’s the very thing they would do. Okay? But God has appointed him to that end. He has made the reprobate. He has a decree of reprobation at which he has appointed these people to disobedience. Now, he doesn’t force them to. It’s what they want to do.”

Jude chapter 4: “For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord and God, our Lord Jesus Christ.” So they were long ago marked out for this. God singled them out for this life of reprobation.

Romans 11:7: “What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks, but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded.” So the elect are sovereignly saved by God. Their eyes are open. But it says he positively blinded the rest—who are about the elect specifically of Israel, those of Israel who weren’t coming, weren’t part of the elect.

Romans 11:8 says: “Just as it is written, God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, ears that they should not hear to this very day.” Now, he’s talking about Israel. You know, when we read Romans, we often think of it in terms of our world and just humanity in general, but that’s not what he’s talking about. He’s talking very specifically in the context of the removal of the bipolarity of the old covenant world.

In the old covenant, there were Jew and Gentile. The Jews were the priestly nation to minister to the Gentile, but they were separate. And when Jesus comes, they’re now stitched together into one. And the book of Romans is about stitching that together. And while we can look at Romans 9 and draw out truths of election and reprobation from it, the big point of what he’s talking about is why most of Israel is not coming to salvation. And he’s saying it’s the decision of God. God has intentionally blinded them—blinded the elements of Judaism who wouldn’t come to Jesus Christ.

Matthew 25:41 says this: “Then he will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels or messengers.’ He’s saying, You’re part of the devil’s army, and I have from all eternity prepared this eternal punishment for you.”

Proverbs 16:4. I know these are hard truths for us, but this is what the scriptures teach. Proverbs 16:4: “The Lord has made all for himself. Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom.” He’s made the wicked for the day of doom.

Matthew 13:11: “He answered and said to them, ‘Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.’ God withholds it.” This is the language of Dort. He withholds that grace, that mercy, the opening of the eyes to them—withholds it.

Matthew 11:25: “At that time Jesus answered and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the eyes of the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.’ You hid them from people. You declared them to be on the way to hell. You left them in their sin and misery. You wouldn’t open their eyes. Can it be clearer to us?

‘Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight.’ Now, do you see what Jesus does with the decree of reprobation here? Not only does he assert it—you’ve blinded some, you would not given grace to some—but he says, first of all, he locates its purpose in what seemed good in the sight of God. That’s as far as we can go. We don’t know why it. Well, there’s a little bit more we can say about that in a couple of minutes. But the cause of this is because it seemed good to God the Father. That’s enough for Jesus. It should be enough for us.

And it’s enough to not just put up with the doctrine because Jesus says, ‘I thank you, Father, for this truth.’ We are to be thankful to God for his decree of reprobation. That’s what Jesus does. He’s the model, right? What would Jesus do? He’d give God thanks when he hears about the doctrine of reprobation and seeing it played out in his own life.

Revelation 4:11: “You are worthy, oh Lord, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things and for your pleasure they are and were created. All things were created for the pleasure of God, including the eternal lake of torment of fire.”

All right. Now, let’s turn to the text, Romans 9, and we’ll move through these elements. And I’ve already talked about verses 1 to 5, but it’s so very important. Remember, again, he’s the discussion of this is about God setting aside most of the Jews and grafting in the Gentiles, right? So he’s talking about the removal of the bipolarity of the Old Testament. Very important for understanding of how we’re to treat so-called Judaism today. It’s got no connection to the New Testament, really. It doesn’t. That special place of Judaism, which was special during the Old Covenant—bipolarity, two poles, two centers, Jew and Gentile—now it’s done away with.

Acts is all about the movement away from that. And in AD 70, that’s finally done away with. And that’s what Paul’s addressing here. And what he’ll do is he’s going to say the Jews have been set aside because they thought they were special to God. They believed in their natural privilege. But before he gets to that, he wants us to understand that this teaching of reprobation relative to the Jews is set in the context, as I said before, not of, you know, “Yeah, yeah, give it to him, you know.” No.

He is heartbroken over the matter. He is so sorrowful over it that he’s willing to give up his own salvation and be accursed. That’s what the text says. Now, let us remember that when we talk about reprobation, when we think about it, when we see the opponents of the church doing their deal in Salem, as they did last Wednesday with their great rally, we see a people like that, you know—do we want to go punch them? No. We weep tears that they’re rebelling against Jesus Christ. We have great sorrow for them. We want them to come to salvation. And you know, many of them will, because we’re just like them. That’s the whole point of election—we’re no better. We’re all the same, fallen in sin and depravity. Okay.

So Paul wants to make sure they believe this. Talking about, he brings the Holy Spirit in as his witness. “Can I get a witness?” He said, “Yeah, the Holy Spirit is my witness in this, that I have great sorrow for these people.” That’s the context. That’s the setting.

But then he goes on to talk about reprobation and natural privilege.

He speaks in verses 6 to 9: “It is not that the word of God has taken no effect, for they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham. But in Isaac your seed shall be called. That is, those who are the children of the flesh—these are not the children of God. But the children of the promise are counted as the seed. For this is the word of promise: ‘At this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son.’”

The problem Paul said with the Jews is they think because they were descended from Abraham, God has to bless them. They thought they had privilege with God because they’d been, you know, baptized, circumcised, they were taken, you know, the peace offering meal, all that stuff. They thought they were something in the eyes of God apart from the Gentiles, who were nothing. They believed in natural privilege—a privilege that was given to them because they’re included in this group that was God’s special people. And they were, for a period of time. They didn’t. But Paul says, “You’ve got it all wrong. It wasn’t because you were owed anything. It’s the free grace of God. And if you think that the promise comes because of your natural privilege, your own goodness, you got it all wrong. It’s of grace. It’s of faith. It’s the children of the promise that are the true Jews of his time.”

Now, I’ve got on the outline here, I think it’s on your page, that the grievous error of dispensationalism has caused many to stumble because, you know, dispensationalism—and I say this with tears as well, with sorrow in my heart. I don’t say this to condemn people, but I say that the view of dispensationalism, that the Jews are still a special people to God, and as I said two weeks ago at the Restore America conference—to have a man affirmed in his Judaism and his rejection of Jesus Christ, to be affirmed that way by pastors and congregants giving this man a standing ovation as a Christian leader, supposed, even though he’s not a Christian—this is not helpful for this man. This feeds the very thing that Paul says is his big problem in life: his belief that as a Jew he’s got natural privilege.

Yeah, the dispensationalist say, “Amen. Yeah, you’re right. You guys got natural privilege. You got a right to the promised land. Sure you do. You got a right to salvation with God apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. You bet.” We are creating this problem in evangelicalism. We created the problem with the imposition of Israel at the end of the first World War through dispensational theology, restoring back to them.

Woodrow Wilson, I said that the Son of Man—the preacher’s son—would be able to give Israel back her land. What? That’s her land? What is that? No. In AD 70, that was all done away with in the New Testament. You read the epistles—that’s what they’re all about. No, that’s all gone. Now the land is the world, and the church fills it.

So we have provided a stumbling block to the Jew. We’re doing him no good by encouraging what Paul says here is his basic problem—his belief that he’s owed something by God. He’s owed nothing by God. You see, nobody’s owed anything by God. None of us get what we deserve. Praise God. And they don’t get what they deserve. They get the patience and longsuffering of God.

The point is Paul attacks this idea of natural privilege. Now, when evangelicalism, when the church today, of which I’m a member in this country, engages in this kind of sin of saying that Israel has natural privilege, we set up in our minds a whole set of other natural privileges. All of a sudden, we’re privileged because we pounded the stake in the backyard with the date that we prayed the prayer. And now God has to do what we want him to do. You see, we have natural privilege with him—not because we’re walking in faith, but because we did something in the past. So it opens up a whole set of problems.

The idea of natural privilege, and Paul attacks this doctrine in very strong terms, and he tells them, “No, that’s just not right.” And then he goes on in verses 10 to 13 to talk about election. And this is where it’s important to understand that reprobation serves the doctrine of election. Okay?

What does he say here, verses 10 to 13? “Not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even our father Isaac (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls), it was said to her, ‘The older shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated.’”

And you know, we want to soften the verse. “Jacob I loved. Esau I didn’t love as much. Jacob I loved. Esau wasn’t that big a deal to me. I just didn’t like him all that much.” No. The word used here is a word used repeatedly throughout the New Testament—the Greek word for hatred. God hates the wicked. And Esau, at least as this is being described, is described as a reprobate man, a reprobate mind rather.

And this tells us that this decree of God to love one and hate the other didn’t happen because of anything in them. Now, was Jacob a good guy? You bet he was. And that’s another problem we’ve got in the modern church today—is putting Jacob down. Bible says Jacob was a perfect man, as perfect as men can be. That was Jacob. Okay, that’s who he was. He was a great man. He loved God. He knew that he was supposed to get the inheritance, and so did his mother. That’s what that story is all about. We don’t want to put Jacob down.

But you see, it’s the other way around is the way we think of it. Evangelicalism teaches that Jacob was good and therefore God loved him. But this says before they did anything good or evil, before they were born, God decided to place his love on one and not the other. And the lives you see reflected then—the goodness of Jacob, his perfectness, his wonderfulness, eventually even bringing Esau into blessing as he comes back to the promised land—that goodness of Jacob is a result of God’s sovereign election. It doesn’t create it. It’s the result of it.

And when we think that it’s his goodness that somehow caused God to choose him, you see, it just builds up a sense of our own pridefulness again. So Paul preaches the doctrine of God’s sovereignty.

But but look what he says. He says this whole story, the reprobation of Esau—that’s his discussion here. He’s talking about the reprobation of Israel. Now he’s talking about the reprobation of Esau. And he says the very purpose of it, the purpose of God—this was to fit the purpose of God according to election. The purpose of this doctrine of reprobation of Esau is to the end that we might see what God has done with the elect.

The doctrine of reprobation is subservient in terms of emphasis and priority to the doctrine of election, of God’s people, the ones that he would save and bring to eternal salvation through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the next section, we’re going to see the same thing. He works with Pharaoh. He tells Pharaoh that he hardened him. He’s reprobate. He was in the subject of the decree of reprobation. He destroys Pharaoh in the Red Sea. And he says, “He does this to Pharaoh, saying that I might show my power in him.” His power how? His power to deliver Israel out of the hands of a powerful world leader who is reprobate.

The whole purpose of the story is not to show how bad Pharaoh was, but rather it’s ultimately to show the power of God to redeem his people. It’s election. It’s salvation. It’s God’s love and mercy to those he chooses to set it upon. That’s the purpose of reprobation—to focus the world’s view upon those whom he is saved. It’s to the purpose that election might stand.

He softens hearts. The softening of hearts is what’s talked about. We’ll talk about that later in this series—how God draws us to himself. And then he’s going to talk about pots. And he says that in terms of the pots being made for honor or dishonor, says that the reason for this was that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy. So the purpose of reprobation is God’s setting of his love on those that aren’t reprobate. And that’s what’s emphasized.

Judas—”I chose you,” he said. “Didn’t I choose you? And yet one of you is a traitor.” Judas was chosen. What was Judas chosen to do? He was chosen to bring to pass the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. What was the purpose of that death? It was election. It was the salvation of the people that God loves. The doctrine of reprobate—the one man being decreed to be reprobate, Judas—was for the purpose of the salvation of humanity through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Election.

So reprobation is set in the context, first of all, of our sorrow—well, first in the overall arching picture of who God is. Secondly, it’s set in the picture of Paul, like the Savior, weeping over those that go to destruction. Third, it’s set in the context of natural privilege, claiming that we have rights somehow. And then fourth, it’s set in the context of God’s election of certain people. It’s subservient to his grace and his mercy shown in election.

This is so important because Reformed people tend to talk about reprobation as if it’s equal to predestination or election. It’s not. I am fully convinced that the great majority of humankind over the stretch of human history—however long it goes on, I don’t know—that the great majority of people will be saved. God loves more people than he hates. The only reason he hates some is for the purpose of showing his love on the many. You got one disciple—11 disciples. You see, that’s kind of the idea here.

So reprobation has to be put in its place. It has to be taught, but it has to be put into its place.

Paul was sad about the Jews, right? He was very sad about the Jews. The Jews thought that they had a right to blessings from God. God hates—even the sin of man, or uses rather, even the sin of man, Judas—for his purposes. God said he loved Jacob but hated Esau. And this was not because Jacob was better. Jacob was better because God chose beforehand to love him and to save him.

All right. At the fourth point of the outline is reprobation and justice.

So Paul now deals with several objections. He says, “Well, what shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not. He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.’ So it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the scriptures say to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose,’ which we just talked about that verse.

Now, here the next two sections, Paul is answering typical objections from people. “Well, it must be unjust.” Then, let me read Calvin’s quote on this. John Calvin said this: “The predestination of God is indeed in reality a labyrinth from which the mind of man can by no means extricate himself. You can’t understand it all. He’s saying because you’re not God. This is godly knowledge, and we can’t understand it all. God does not tell us to understand all of these things. He simply says it is what is real. This is what I have done. I have chosen some and I have not chosen others. Believe it.”

We’re called to believe it and then to make use of it in our preaching and in what we do in our lives. It’s the same thing like most things in our lives. Do you understand the process of digestion? Do you wait to eat the food until you can figure out what’s going on inside you? No. The process of digestion is a mystery to us—not to doctors, but we don’t know. We eat the food. We trust God. We believe him.

When I come in this morning, we turn on these light switches. I don’t know how electricity works. I can’t figure it out. There are guys who probably can—some abstract philosophies of it and whatnot. We don’t even know what light is exactly, or the mechanism, but when it comes to this matter, you see, we want to know everything explained to us and all the objections answered. Instead, God just tells us here to submit to it, to believe it.

So Calvin says, “So unreasonable is the curiosity of man that the more perilous the examination of a subject is, the more boldly he proceeds. So that when predestination is discussed, as he cannot restrain himself within due limits, he immediately, through his rashness, plunges himself, as it were, into the depth of the sea. What remedy then is there? Therefore, thee godly—must they avoid every thought of predestination? By no means. For as the Holy Spirit has taught us nothing but what it behooves us to know, the knowledge of this would no doubt be useful, provided it be confined to the word of God.

Let this then be our sacred rule: to seek to know nothing concerning it except what scripture teaches us. That seems simple enough, doesn’t it? When the Lord closes his holy mouth, let us also stop the way that we may not go farther. But as we are men to whom foolish questions naturally occur, let us hear from Paul how they are to be met.”

So Calvin says, in summary, that when God closes his mouth, we shouldn’t open ours. We stay right to what the word of God has revealed to us in the scriptures. And that’s what he says here. He says, “Well, you’re saying God is unjust. What are you talking about? Justice is God. God is the standard by which justice comes to us. Justice is not some abstract concept that we can put above God and judge him according to that standard. No. God is supreme. Not abstract Platonic ideas or truths. No. We have a personal God at the head, and he is the one who is the standard of justice.”

So, of course, it’s a ridiculous thing to say it’s unjust.

Now, I mentioned that we’re going to talk a little bit about foreknowledge again. And let me read you another quote. This is by Charles Hodge. And so they’re saying, “Well, isn’t this unjust, Paul?” And Hodge says this: “If the fact that one believes and is saved and another remains impenitent and is lost depends on God, how can we be blamed? Can we resist his will? It will at once be perceived that his plausible and formidable objection to the apostle’s doctrine is precisely the one which is commonly and confidently urged against the doctrine of election. There would be no room either for this objection or for that contained in the 14th verse, the one we just read, if Paul had merely said that God chooses those whom he foresees would repent and questions and oops and believe, or that the ground of distinction was in the different conduct of men.

It is very evident, therefore, that he taught no such doctrine.” So Hodge is saying, “Look, if any place Paul is going to tell us that it was because God saw something ahead in time about particular people they would choose and others wouldn’t, he’d answer this objection that way. Oh, no. No, you don’t. He says God isn’t unjust because, after all, we’re just talking about God looking through time and seeing who would respond and who wouldn’t.”

Paul doesn’t do that. What he says is that God is justice. There’s no unrighteousness with God. It is of his very nature to be just. And so Paul answers the objection by saying this is a bad objection. There’s no abstract justice above God. What God does is the standard of justice. And he doesn’t try to explain it. He simply says this is what we are to believe about God’s eternal decree, his election, predestination, and reprobation.

There is no justice. God is described here as the full and final cause of all things. Nothing is outside of the determined foreknowledge and will of God. And he simply doesn’t entertain the objection in here. In the plain words of scripture, where we are required then to believe both in human responsibility and God’s predestination—and we would say also that includes the doctrine of reprobation.

Well, there’s a second objection raised up—it’s that of coercion—in chapter verses 19 to 24: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will?’ But indeed, oh man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?’”

Paul is clearly here teaching us that God has the right over his clay to do whatever it is he wants to do. In so, God is just in his doings. And I forgot to mention in the last section that Jesus says the same thing in a parable about salvation. Right? You got workers in the field. The guy owns the field. He sends some people out at the start of the day. “I’ll give you 20 bucks.” He sends a guy at the middle of the day. Sends them just an hour before closing time. They all come back. He gives them all 20 bucks. And people say, “Well, that’s not fair.” He says, “Well, no, wait a minute. Fairness is defined by the fact that I can give my money to whoever I want to give it to. I own the field.”

And it’s the same thing here with the doctrines of predestination and reprobation. God owns the whole thing. He created it. It’s his. He is the standard of justice.

And here is an idea made that God coerces men, but they are not being coerced. God is certainly sovereign, but the idea of coercion here ignores the fact that it’s God’s eternal decree that actually establishes free will from men. We are not against free will. The Bible teaches that people make decisions. What are those decisions a result of? Well, in part, they’re a result of a whole multiplicity of causes: what their parents taught them, what the world around them is like, how their digestion is working that day. There’s all kinds of factors—an innumerable number, almost an infinite number—of factors that go into our decision process, right?

We’re not totally unrelated to the whole thing. We’re not walking around as little completely autonomous robots, controlled by him with a radar signal from above to do a particular thing. God actually establishes the freedom of man’s will through his creative order. If he didn’t, it would have been impossible. Birds don’t have free will in the same sense. They’re subject to their environment. They’re environmentally determined. Not so man.

God sovereignly gives man the ability to make choices. The problem is that after Adam’s fall, we will always and forever choose the path of disobedience to God. The problem isn’t that we’re automatons or that God is coercing us. He has to coerce us away from that. That’s where he’s got to get involved and drag us into the kingdom, as it were.

But he certainly doesn’t have to coerce the reprobate. The reprobate wants to do those very things. So there is no coercion here in the context of how we think of coercion.

Paul says no. That objection is not going to work. God doesn’t coerce people. People are not robots. He gives them will. And then sixth, he talks about reprobation again and natural privilege. He returns to a discussion of Israel in verses 25 through 33.

And you know, basically he’s saying the same thing as he did earlier: You think you have a natural privilege to do these particular things, that God has to bless you, and there is no natural privilege with God. God gives to whom he wants to give salvation.

So they have a supposed natural privilege, and we have the same thing today in rejecting natural privilege. You know, Paul hates this idea that men are privileged to something because of who they are. He hates it because it’s the very thing that is destroying the people that he most loves. I mean, he has great sorrow for his brethren, the Jews. He loves them. And what is killing him? It’s the idea that they have blessing with God apart from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, that’s the same thing that’s killing our country. We believe in human rights. And if we understand that in terms of a relationship to other men, that’s one thing. But we think that people have ultimately a right to life, for instance. We don’t. The only thing that fallen man has is a right to death. We don’t have a right to life. Life is given graciously by God. And in the case of the reprobate, his long-suffering and gracious toward him in terms of that.

The idea that we have human rights in our day and age is an assertion of natural privilege against a sovereign God. And so the doctrine of reprobation is despised today because it strikes right at the heart of the kind of man who thinks that because he’s a man—just because he’s a man—he has certain privileges and not responsibility. Certain privileges and blessings due to him from the Creator.

God said to Job, “Well, are you right to be angry that you know the plant died?” And Job says, “I’m right to the point of anger.” Job, in his rebellion against God, says, “I can get angry at you.” And that’s what people do today. Human rights is espoused. The doctrine of reprobation is denied. And as a result, we move more and more in the context—not of human rights—we move more and more in the context of a removal of rights, a removal of true liberty.

As God’s right to do what he wants to do with his creation, as described in Romans 9, has declined, we have not had an increase in freedom. We have an increase in coercion. Gary North had an article called “From Cosmic Purposelessness Evolution to Human Sovereignty.” Well, you know, it’s just survival of the fittest. All this came about, you know, cosmic purposelessness. But now man has arrived on the scene. We are God. We are the people. Wisdom resides with us. And we will now determine the flow of history. We will determine what’s best for the environment. We will make people in South America not be able to afford tortillas because we want ethanol because maybe it’s got some relationship to how the climate changes.

And there is increasingly coercion being applied against us. We’re going to coerce you to send your kids to our government schools because, after all, the state is the voice of reason. The state is the one who’s going to protect human rights. But the protection of human rights means we can’t have your kids being educated without us knowing what’s going on and without us approving who—what they’re going to be taught.

What we have of the denial of the reprobation of God and his total sovereignty is an increasing that of coercion on the part of modern man. It is a loss of liberty, not an increase of liberty.

There’s an attack on our children in this legislative session. There’s an attack on our money. Now, do you realize that it is becoming very difficult for the Christian family, as defined in the scriptures, where mom is the primary caregiver of the children when they’re young, stays home from work when they’re young, maybe works later, works before that, but has this caregiving, nurturing aspect in the family—that is almost, you know, it’s not impossible, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to do right?

Two-wage-earner households are becoming not just a matter of choice but a matter of necessity. That is an attack on the Christian family, an economic attack. Okay? And why does it happen? Well, the fact that 45% of what they earn is going to pay taxes at one level or another—state, local, or federal—that might have something to do with the fact of why you need two incomes now to support one family.

If half the income is being given to taxes, to fund a bureaucracy that will come tell you how you should educate your children, or not, and tell you whether you can think in your heart and preach from your pulpit that homosexuality is a sin—a sin that we grieve over and are sorrowful for these people (and I am, when I go to some of these hearings in Salem and see folks, they’re not happy; the government is giving them a false assurance that what they’re doing is correct; it’s not; they’re not happy; helping them—they’re in the same position to homosexuals as the evangelical church is to Judaism; we’re not helping anybody with this stuff), and increasingly the state becomes coercive against our children, against our money, and against our property, right?

Measure 37 going to be overturned, perhaps in this legislative session. The point is that this is not some abstract doctrine. The doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty and reprobation is a doctrine that strikes right at the heart. Its purpose, pastorally, for Paul is to strike at the heart of human pride—that somehow any of us have a natural privilege before God to do what only he, by his grace, has said he will do in the context of our lives.

Reprobation strikes a death blow to humanism. It strikes a death blow to the idea that humanity is more important to us than God. God says some small portion of humanity will be sent to eternal destruction so that you might rejoice the further in the grace and mercy he’s shown you. Because there’s no difference between you and them except his eternal choice of you, him setting his love on you from all eternity.

Now, that’s the destruction of pride, and pride is what causes us to hate people really, in the ultimate sense of the term. And the destruction of our pride—the knowledge that it is pure grace—means that it can just as well reach to this person or that, who are our enemies, as not. And so it increases evangelism. It shouldn’t decrease it. It should cause our hearts to overflow in love for God because of his grace. And it should tell us that when we see people that seem absolutely reprobate to us, that the arm of God is not shortened. He brings those sort of people—such were some of you, Paul says—into the kingdom.

So the doctrine of reprobation is of great practical importance in our assurance that God loves us, in the death of pride, in the death of humanism, and eventually, once more, in the context of human liberty, as this doctrine is preached once more from the pulpit.

May God grant us grace. May he give us grace that the chastening rod he brings upon our back through Salem this year is not so hard as to make us completely break. May he give us grace with the legislature. May he keep us from some of these terrible judgments that seem to be coming upon us. And may he give us grace to the end that we might honor him.

God isn’t happy with us. We haven’t honored him as the sovereign God that he’s declared himself to be. We’ve asked those same stupid questions that Paul addresses in Romans 9: “God isn’t fair. God made us robots.” And we know that both of them are ridiculous questions. And we only ask it to avoid the plain truth that the Lord God is sovereign, and he will do with his creatures whatever he will, for his good pleasure.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your love for us. We thank you for your grace. We thank you that love and grace extends to all humanity, and we know, Father, from the goodness of your character and from the record of scripture, that many people—far more people that are lost—will be brought to salvation. Help us, Lord God, not to put a stumbling block in front of that through an assertion of natural privilege of any kind or stripe. Help us, Lord God, to bow the knee to you, to honor and glorify you, and be empowered by you to take the message of grace to those that we talk to.

In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.