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Yeah, it's up to God's mercy.

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I mean, no one can say, God,
I deserved it.

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I mean, everyone of us, God,
He, on Judgment Day,

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He could come down with a list
on every one of us and say, look,

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I've got all these reasons
to cross you off.

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But on the other hand, he's
not going to be arbitrary.

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But on the other hand, he's
not going to be arbitrary.

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He's going to have his reasons,

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but he doesn't have
to explain his reasons to us.

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David Bercot, welcome back to the podcast.

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It's good to have you on again.
Good being here Reagan.

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So we did a previous episode with you
about the book of Romans.

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And like you just finished, compiling
a commentary based on the early church

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writings about Romans.

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And today I want to tackle a topic
that I don't believe

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we've ever covered on this podcast,
and that is predestination, Calvinism,

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that whole package, essentially,
because a section of Scripture

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that's often used for
that framework would be Romans nine.

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And you address
that quite a bit in your book.

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And I would be really curious
to hear your thoughts on this.

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So we're going to plow into that and,
and we'll see where it takes us.

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But before we jump in to the text,

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can you first define
what is predestination, Calvanism, like

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what do we mean
when we're using terms like that?

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Okay.

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So predestination as it's used in
Calvinism and before that from Augustine,

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the doctrine says that

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before the creation

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either of the world or of or of mankind,

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that God arbitrarily chose

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who he was going to save
and who he was going to eternally.

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Damn.

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And that that arbitrarily is important
In other words,

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it was not based on his foreknowledge
that he looked in the future.

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And oh, Reagan.

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Yeah, this guy's living a godly life.

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This guy has faith in Christ.

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So yes, I'm going to, have him among
the elect.

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Is that
doesn't have anything to do with you.

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It just he just picked you.

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You live a godly life
because you are of the elect,

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not not the other way around.

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That he picked you
because you were living a godly life.

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So, the basis
and it all comes from Augustine

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was this thought that we play
no role in our own salvation.

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Everything is from God,

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our faith,

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our initial belief, the godly works
we do, the whole thing.

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God does every bit of that.

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And yeah, we're basically,
yeah, pieces of wood.

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You know, they wouldn't say that that
that he moves around, you know, but,

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they wouldn't say that that last part.

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But I think the rest would be all language
that they would be comfortable with,

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as in, like there
is there's nothing we can do to, to choose

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or to become a Christian, etc.,
because God has chosen

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all of that for essentially like he's

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that, he's the mover,
and that makes all this possible.

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It's nothing to do with us.

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okay, so let's let's get into Romans nine
then a little bit, because this is one

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that's going to come up
quite a bit in conversation.

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So I'm going to pull a couple examples,
just as kind of places to start.

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And we'll just kind of kind of use
those as launch points.

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So for example verses 12 and 13,

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it talks about how God loved Jacob
and hated Esau.

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It says in Romans nine verses 12 to 13,
and it says before they were ever

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born, before the idea that done
good or bad, you know, that's the claim.

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Are people misreading that
or they misconstruing that passage

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to use that to say therefore that's pre
you know, predestination.

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Yeah. People are misunderstanding it.

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I think to be fair,
it's not like people are twisting it.

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Like, where do you get that?

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I mean, I think somebody reading this, it
would be easy to come to that conclusion.

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But the problem is you
then have to ignore all the rest

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of the Bible, you know, because every
time God gives a commandment,

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the implication
is obvious that we can obey it.

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I mean,
why would he tell us to do something?

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Yeah, well, I can't
I can't do it, you know?

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I mean, you have to take the whole Bible

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and say, well, there's this God who’s
basically playing games.

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He tells the Israelites to do this
even though he knows they can't do it,

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or he tells them to do it,
and he knows they will do it

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because he's he's going to do it for them,
you know?

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And then Jesus complimenting like, just,

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yesterday in Sunday School,
we were talking about this centurion.

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And Jesus says,
I've never seen such remarkable faith.

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Well, if Calvinism is true,
God gave him the faith.

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So what's remarkable? Why? Why praise him?

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He didn't have anything to do with his,
with his faith. So.

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And like I say, this began
with Augustine in the fifth century.

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And, chapter nine was, you know,
one of the ones.

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And like I said, I think it's fair to say
just reading that apart

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from the rest of the scripture, you could
reasonably come to that conclusion.

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Now, the early Christians
didn't do that, though.

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You know, they read this and they said,
well, yeah, this sounds like this

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on the surface, but yeah,
what about all the rest of the Bible?

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And they were having to deal with it
because the Gnostics, many

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of the Gnostic groups who John identifies
as the Antichrist,

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they taught predestination that, you know,
there's nothing you can do about it.

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It's all been decided ahead of time.

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You're either part of the elect
or you're or you're not.

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So the early Christians
actually talk about this subject a lot

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because they're having
to counter the Gnostics.

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So and without the early Christians,

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I don't I mean, like I say,
this was always a mystery to me.

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I knew it couldn't

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mean what it says on the face just because
it contradicts other scriptures.

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But I never felt real comfortable.

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And the early Christians.

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Yeah.

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I mean, it's
just so amazing how they they could follow

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Paul's arguments even though they get,
you know, sometimes very,

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what rearranged.

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I mean, Paul doesn't
follow this logical order

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we were just talking about
in the previous podcast.

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So this one, you go back to verse

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six and I mentioned just yesterday

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I was listing the six, points
of Paul's great argument.

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And one of them is
that God has not been unfair to the Jews

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in extending grace to the Gentiles
and bringing them in.

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And so Paul spends a lot of time on that.

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Now, that aspect of those six things,

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most of those I would have seen in Romans,
I would not have seen that very much,

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that God has not been unfair
to the Gentiles.

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They they recognize.

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Okay, Paul, is is bringing this up a lot
because the Jews are making that argument.

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This if what you're saying
is true, then God isn't fair.

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Okay.

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So and
yeah, how can these Gentiles come in?

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They don't have the blood of Abraham.

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So Paul points out, look,

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there are a lot of people
who have Abraham's blood

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and they're not included
as part of Israel.

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So he begins, he says, verse six,
but it is not that

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the Word of God has taken no effect, for
they are not all Israel who are of Israel.

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I think of Israel means of Jacob.

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Okay, so just because you're
a descendant of Jacob, Paul is saying

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it doesn't mean you're part of the true
Israel, the the Israel of God.

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Okay. And and this is a shocking thing
to say to Jews.

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Now, it's it should have been no issue
to Christian Jews,

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but it apparently was the fact that he
he has to explain it so many times.

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But to the Jews in general,
that would have been,

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you know,
just almost impossible for them to accept.

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Okay.

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So it says, nor are they all children

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because they are the seed of Abraham,

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but in Isaac your seed shall be called.

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So his line of argument is okay.

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You're saying that,

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just because

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we are fleshly Jews

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doesn't
mean we're part of this Israel of God.

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And and they're saying,
all right, well, you know, you prove that.

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So his argument is okay,
think about it now,

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there are a lot of people on earth

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who are fleshly descendants of Abraham,

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but they are not part of Israel.

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And you Jews yourselves recognize that.

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Look at Ishmael. Okay.

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So he was part of the covenant
of circumcision.

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He's an heir of Abraham,
but he's not included in Israel.

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All right.

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So just because you have Abraham's blood,
it gets you nowhere.

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Look at the sons of Keturah. Was it 12?

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Well, yeah, it's a number of sons.

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And they started tribes and all that.

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They're not part of Israel yet
they all have Abraham's blood.

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So he says. So. Yeah.

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You have to agree with me

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that just because you have Abraham's
blood, that doesn't get you anywhere.

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All right.

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That is

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those who are the children of the flesh.

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Okay.

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So just because
you are a physical descendant,

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a genetic descendant of Abraham,
these are not the children of God.

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It doesn't make you a child of God,
which is what John the Baptist preached.

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You know,

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he said, God can raise up children
of Abraham from these from these stones.

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So this is all consistent
with what we see in the Gospels.

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But the children of the promise
are counted as the seed.

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Okay.

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And here's where it gets a little bit
more in the Greek reasoning.

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They're just a little bit harder to follow
his argument, but he's saying, okay,

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it has to be people who are part of,
the promise of

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of course, the Jews would have said,
well, well, we are, but okay.

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He develops this at this time I will come
and Sarah shall have a son.

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Okay.

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So so Abraham then had,

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I guess, 14 sons,
if I count correctly, but

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only one of the 14 was a child of promise,
and that was Isaac.

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Okay, so like I say, the vast majority,
all these people with Abraham's blood

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who are out there now,
you know, make up a lot of the Arab world,

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probably who knows

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what other people groups would have
some of Abraham's blood in them.

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They're not counted because they're not a
child with the promise. But,

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Isaac was and the promise was,
you know that.

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Sarah. She'll have a son.

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Okay. Now, here's
where it gets a little bit more confusing.

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And not only this,
but when Rebecca also conceived.

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Now, this says by one man
and their understanding it to say by one

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act of procreation, which is a lot

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more significant even by our father Isaac.

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Okay. So.

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Ishmael didn't have the same mother
as Isaac, nor did the sons of Keturah.

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But now when you get to Jacob and Esau,
you've got the same father,

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the same mother,

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the same act of procreation, you know,
from one conception or one whatever.

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That's how close it is.

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But he's saying,
even though it's that close, one

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is part of the seed
and the other one isn't.

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And it's like, so his point is,
it doesn't mean anything.

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You can be that close to Abraham.

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00:11:07,124 --> 00:11:10,336
You're his grandson.
You are a son of Isaac.

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You know, your own brother is part of it.

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But you aren't.

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Even though you're twins, you know, okay,

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for the children not yet being born,
nor having done any good or evil,

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that the purpose of God
according to election now

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a better rendition today

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because election people think
oh, that means predestination.

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Election just means to choose.

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Well,
I mean, we're going to have an election

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here in the United States in two months.

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Yeah, we just choose somebody. Elect means
who do you choose?

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You know, but because of Calvinism,
you have people today.

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Oh, election. That means predestination.

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No, it means it
just was an ordinary Greek word.

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It means to choose. Okay. So God

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has chosen before they did that

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according to his choice might stand
not of works, but of him who calls.

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Okay, now,
one of the things that Chrysostom says

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quite a few times
when he's discussing Romans is

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00:12:06,434 --> 00:12:10,020
we've got to keep in mind
what Paul's point is,

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because if you don't,
you're going to go off

235
00:12:11,897 --> 00:12:14,692
on a lot of strange tangents
and some wrong doctrines.

236
00:12:14,692 --> 00:12:17,111
Okay, so what is the point? He's
trying to get across.

237
00:12:17,111 --> 00:12:20,656
The point he's trying to get across
is that the Gentiles

238
00:12:21,115 --> 00:12:24,118
are part of
the promised seed through faith.

239
00:12:24,702 --> 00:12:30,750
And the Jews were saying,
but how can a Gentile, a filthy Gentile,

240
00:12:30,750 --> 00:12:35,337
who worships stone idols,
who probably lives in immorality,

241
00:12:35,379 --> 00:12:38,382
you know, eats all these defiled foods
and everything,

242
00:12:38,382 --> 00:12:41,802
and they can just come in
and be saved like that.

243
00:12:42,470 --> 00:12:47,475
And his argument is, you know, we get
saved, we come in, not through works.

244
00:12:47,475 --> 00:12:49,685
Okay. It is, you know, God's choice.

245
00:12:49,685 --> 00:12:54,106
And he's saying, okay, look at these two
people groups, the Jews and the Gentiles.

246
00:12:54,106 --> 00:12:57,109
They're like Jacob and Esau.

247
00:12:57,109 --> 00:13:00,821
Now he's talking the promise to Rebecca.

248
00:13:01,864 --> 00:13:02,823
He said,

249
00:13:02,823 --> 00:13:06,660
in verse
12, the older shall serve the younger.

250
00:13:07,161 --> 00:13:09,997
And before that he doesn't quote it.

251
00:13:09,997 --> 00:13:12,750
He says, there's two nations
inside of you.

252
00:13:12,750 --> 00:13:17,505
So he's talking about two nations
that are inside of Rebecca.

253
00:13:17,505 --> 00:13:20,966
One would be the Israelites,
the descendants of Jacob,

254
00:13:21,133 --> 00:13:24,470
the other would be the Edomites,
the the descendants of Esau.

255
00:13:24,887 --> 00:13:26,555
Okay, so it's two nations.

256
00:13:26,555 --> 00:13:28,516
He's not talking about two people.

257
00:13:28,516 --> 00:13:32,394
And this is where people get messed up
that see, God decided to

258
00:13:32,812 --> 00:13:36,982
he hated Esau and he loved Jacob
before they were ever born and all that.

259
00:13:37,441 --> 00:13:40,277
But he said,
there's two nations inside of you,

260
00:13:40,277 --> 00:13:43,280
and the younger shall serve.

261
00:13:44,448 --> 00:13:46,659
The older shall serve the younger.

262
00:13:46,659 --> 00:13:49,537
Now that was never true
with regard to Jacob and Esau.

263
00:13:49,537 --> 00:13:53,332
Esau never served Jacob,
if anything, was the other way around.

264
00:13:53,332 --> 00:13:56,335
You remember when Jacob came back,
you know, boy, he bows down

265
00:13:56,335 --> 00:13:59,338
before Esau, you know, brings
all these presents and all that.

266
00:13:59,547 --> 00:14:03,300
Esau never bowed down to Jacob
or served him in any way.

267
00:14:03,801 --> 00:14:07,680
It was the Edomites and the Israelites,
okay, the two nations.

268
00:14:08,055 --> 00:14:10,724
And he's saying that, okay, before these

269
00:14:10,724 --> 00:14:13,894
either nation had done any works,
he had already prophesied

270
00:14:14,353 --> 00:14:17,147
that the younger,
which was the Israelites,

271
00:14:17,147 --> 00:14:20,609
would be served by the older
the who would be the Edomites.

272
00:14:20,609 --> 00:14:23,863
Even though we were talking
about a few minutes apart in birth.

273
00:14:23,863 --> 00:14:26,740
But, you know, you still had a younger
and a and an older.

274
00:14:26,740 --> 00:14:27,533
Okay.

275
00:14:27,533 --> 00:14:31,036
Now, what always tripped me up in that

276
00:14:31,245 --> 00:14:34,707
most people,
they don't go and look up these verses.

277
00:14:34,707 --> 00:14:36,292
And so they're thinking that

278
00:14:37,918 --> 00:14:40,004
the scriptures are saying that God says,

279
00:14:40,004 --> 00:14:43,924
I love Jacob before he was ever born,
just out of arbitrary.

280
00:14:43,924 --> 00:14:46,886
And I hated Esau before he was ever born.

281
00:14:46,927 --> 00:14:49,889
But Paul, they're the first one.

282
00:14:49,889 --> 00:14:51,724
The older shall serve the younger.

283
00:14:51,724 --> 00:14:55,019
That was the prophecy given to Rebecca.

284
00:14:56,061 --> 00:14:58,063
When he told her, there's two nations now,

285
00:14:58,063 --> 00:15:01,734
that last one is not a prophecy, it’s
from Malachi.

286
00:15:02,651 --> 00:15:07,781
It's a prophecy only in the sense of God
declaring his judgment on Edom.

287
00:15:08,115 --> 00:15:11,118
But this is long after Jacob
and Esau are dead.

288
00:15:11,243 --> 00:15:14,246
This is more than a thousand years later.

289
00:15:14,455 --> 00:15:14,872
And he's.

290
00:15:14,872 --> 00:15:18,125
When he says that when you read
the whole passage is from Malachi,

291
00:15:18,208 --> 00:15:21,253
I may have it here in the, the commentary.

292
00:15:22,296 --> 00:15:27,092
He is saying this was the prophecy
that the older would serve the younger.

293
00:15:27,301 --> 00:15:29,637
Now here is how it was fulfilled. It.

294
00:15:29,637 --> 00:15:30,638
And then he quotes.

295
00:15:30,638 --> 00:15:33,641
So he quotes Genesis
and he turns right around

296
00:15:33,766 --> 00:15:36,727
and he quotes from Malachi.

297
00:15:36,727 --> 00:15:38,062
So let me see.

298
00:15:39,897 --> 00:15:42,316
I think I have it here in there.

299
00:15:42,316 --> 00:15:45,110
So it's in Malachi chapter one, verses
two and three.

300
00:15:45,110 --> 00:15:49,073
Jacob, I have love, but Esau I have hated,
and I have made his mountains

301
00:15:49,114 --> 00:15:50,407
to desolation.

302
00:15:50,407 --> 00:15:53,953
And I've given his heritage
to the jackals of the wilderness.

303
00:15:54,370 --> 00:15:56,038
So when you read that.

304
00:15:56,038 --> 00:15:59,124
So this is Malachi right at the end,
towards the end of the Old Testament.

305
00:15:59,416 --> 00:16:03,337
So Genesis is the first book,
and this is in the Protestant Bibles.

306
00:16:03,337 --> 00:16:05,297
Malachi is the last book.
So he's saying, okay,

307
00:16:05,297 --> 00:16:08,425
this was the prophecy,
and you see how it was fulfilled.

308
00:16:09,176 --> 00:16:12,179
He says,
this is how these brothers will be.

309
00:16:12,554 --> 00:16:14,431
But he doesn't say I hated him

310
00:16:14,431 --> 00:16:18,060
one and love the other until the end,
until they prove themselves.

311
00:16:18,352 --> 00:16:21,814
And the Israelites,
at least at this time, are serving God.

312
00:16:21,855 --> 00:16:24,858
Not very well, but this is after the,

313
00:16:24,858 --> 00:16:27,027
after the Babylonian captivity.

314
00:16:27,027 --> 00:16:30,823
And the Israelites, God loves them
because they're serving him.

315
00:16:30,990 --> 00:16:34,535
The Edomites are persecuting the,
the Israelites.

316
00:16:34,702 --> 00:16:38,747
Well, and so really, you could say
Malachi is not even referring to

317
00:16:39,415 --> 00:16:41,792
Jacob as an individual, Esau
as individual,

318
00:16:41,792 --> 00:16:45,004
because he's writing hundreds
or a thousand years later.

319
00:16:45,045 --> 00:16:46,547
Exactly. it's the name.

320
00:16:46,547 --> 00:16:48,882
Okay.
I missed that too. It wasn't like I say,

321
00:16:50,134 --> 00:16:53,012
yeah, the early Christians, they got that
I mean immediately.

322
00:16:53,012 --> 00:16:58,517
And it's like, And their knowledge of
the Old Testament is just remarkable.

323
00:16:58,517 --> 00:16:59,226
I mean, they

324
00:16:59,226 --> 00:17:00,936
and they didn't have all the helps,
you know,

325
00:17:00,936 --> 00:17:03,856
you know, I've got to go to a commentary
to find it and.

326
00:17:03,856 --> 00:17:05,190
Yeah, and all that.

327
00:17:05,190 --> 00:17:08,193
So okay, so he's saying

328
00:17:08,235 --> 00:17:12,322
but his point was just because
you have the blood of Abraham proves

329
00:17:12,448 --> 00:17:17,536
nothing, you know, because with regard
to Abraham's very sons,

330
00:17:17,995 --> 00:17:22,291
13 out of 14 had his blood
and that got them nowhere.

331
00:17:22,291 --> 00:17:25,294
Only, you know, only one of the 14

332
00:17:25,335 --> 00:17:28,589
and then you get down to his grandchildren

333
00:17:29,965 --> 00:17:34,803
equally Abraham's blood the same, mother
the same, you know, conception,

334
00:17:35,262 --> 00:17:38,265
and one is chosen and the other one isn't.

335
00:17:38,557 --> 00:17:40,642
And he says this by choice.

336
00:17:40,642 --> 00:17:45,439
Now, this is where the early Christians
would differ from Augustine and Calvin,

337
00:17:46,065 --> 00:17:49,860
that he doesn't say
this choice was arbitrary,

338
00:17:50,277 --> 00:17:52,821
so they actually believed
in predestination.

339
00:17:52,821 --> 00:17:56,158
The early Christians,
that is, that God knows

340
00:17:56,575 --> 00:17:59,578
whether you're going to be among the

341
00:17:59,995 --> 00:18:03,624
eventual ones who will be in heaven,
and whether, you know,

342
00:18:03,624 --> 00:18:07,836
I will, whether anybody you know in
this room will be or won't be.

343
00:18:07,836 --> 00:18:09,546
God already knows that,

344
00:18:09,546 --> 00:18:13,550
but not because he arbitrarily chose it,
but because of his foreknowledge.

345
00:18:13,550 --> 00:18:15,677
He knows what the future holds.

346
00:18:15,677 --> 00:18:18,680
So he's already chosen us long ago.

347
00:18:18,680 --> 00:18:21,683
I mean, we are part of the chosen,
assuming we are.

348
00:18:21,850 --> 00:18:25,145
You know, before,
you know, Abel was was ever born or,

349
00:18:25,229 --> 00:18:28,398
you know, the world was created
through his foreknowledge.

350
00:18:28,732 --> 00:18:32,945
So, yeah, for the early Christians,
this was no big deal.

351
00:18:32,945 --> 00:18:33,529
Well, yeah,

352
00:18:33,529 --> 00:18:37,282
he knew what kind of person
Esau would turn out to be

353
00:18:37,282 --> 00:18:39,952
and what kind of person
Jacob would turn out to be.

354
00:18:39,952 --> 00:18:40,619
And then.

355
00:18:40,619 --> 00:18:43,997
And Paul shows will see
his prophecy was correct.

356
00:18:43,997 --> 00:18:46,250
Because when you get to Malachi.

357
00:18:46,250 --> 00:18:46,625
Yeah.

358
00:18:46,625 --> 00:18:47,876
Look how they turned out.

359
00:18:47,876 --> 00:18:50,420
The Edomites were worshiping idols.

360
00:18:50,420 --> 00:18:51,839
They attacked their brothers.

361
00:18:51,839 --> 00:18:54,842
You know, the Israelites,
the Israelites are serving God

362
00:18:55,008 --> 00:18:58,095
at that time, not worshiping idols
anymore and all of that.

363
00:18:59,054 --> 00:19:01,014
Okay, so

364
00:19:01,014 --> 00:19:04,017
the greater fulfillment, the point that

365
00:19:04,309 --> 00:19:08,647
and here's where
if you compare with Galatians, Paul uses

366
00:19:08,647 --> 00:19:13,485
a very similar example in Galatians
with regards to Sarah and Hagar,

367
00:19:13,861 --> 00:19:17,614
and he says that you think Sarah
would represent the Israelites.

368
00:19:18,699 --> 00:19:21,451
And Hagar, who was not, you know,

369
00:19:21,451 --> 00:19:24,454
his wife would represent the Gentiles
or something.

370
00:19:24,955 --> 00:19:28,625
But Paul reverses it
and he says, Hagar represents the Jews

371
00:19:28,834 --> 00:19:30,335
because they're in bondage.

372
00:19:30,335 --> 00:19:32,004
They're serving the law.

373
00:19:32,004 --> 00:19:33,839
They're in bondage to the law.

374
00:19:33,839 --> 00:19:37,259
And Sarah
would represent the Israel of God,

375
00:19:37,259 --> 00:19:40,888
which is made up of Gentiles
as well as as Jews.

376
00:19:41,305 --> 00:19:43,056
And he does the same thing here.

377
00:19:43,056 --> 00:19:46,435
So, Esau is the older brother.

378
00:19:46,602 --> 00:19:48,312
He's like fleshly Israel.

379
00:19:48,312 --> 00:19:52,024
They were here for 1500 years
before Christ came.

380
00:19:53,734 --> 00:19:56,403
Jacob would represent
the church, would represent

381
00:19:56,403 --> 00:19:59,948
Christians, the Israel of God,
who are the younger brother.

382
00:19:59,948 --> 00:20:01,867
They came along later.

383
00:20:01,867 --> 00:20:06,788
And so this is also a prophecy
about the church, about,

384
00:20:07,748 --> 00:20:08,916
the Jews,

385
00:20:08,916 --> 00:20:13,795
that in the end, the greater one would be
God would choose

386
00:20:13,795 --> 00:20:17,633
the Israel of God
made up of Gentiles and believing Jews.

387
00:20:17,633 --> 00:20:19,134
The younger brother, in other words,

388
00:20:19,134 --> 00:20:22,971
or is going to be the chosen one,
not the fleshly Jews.

389
00:20:23,597 --> 00:20:24,640
Now, you’re going to have to think on it.

390
00:20:24,640 --> 00:20:27,809
I mean, I yeah, I was on this for days.

391
00:20:27,809 --> 00:20:32,606
It's like, okay, you guys are seeing this
and let me go over this, okay.

392
00:20:32,606 --> 00:20:34,775
The so the older one.

393
00:20:34,775 --> 00:20:37,611
But then it all it kind of came together
just like he said.

394
00:20:37,611 --> 00:20:40,614
Just like Ishmael persecuted.

395
00:20:41,657 --> 00:20:42,532
Isaac.

396
00:20:42,532 --> 00:20:42,991
Yeah.

397
00:20:42,991 --> 00:20:47,204
And it's the same way
the Jews are persecuting the Christians

398
00:20:47,204 --> 00:20:48,538
in the same way here.

399
00:20:48,538 --> 00:20:51,083
You know that it's it's the Christians

400
00:20:51,083 --> 00:20:55,128
who are the faithful ones,
and the fleshly Jews are the ones who,

401
00:20:56,505 --> 00:20:59,883
God has hated in
the sense that they've rejected his son.

402
00:20:59,883 --> 00:21:01,843
I mean, the offer was still open to them.

403
00:21:01,843 --> 00:21:04,137
We're just talking about as a nation.

404
00:21:04,137 --> 00:21:05,222
Wow. That's. Yeah.

405
00:21:05,222 --> 00:21:06,515
That's pretty interesting though
because like

406
00:21:06,515 --> 00:21:09,518
if you're just taking a glancing
reading at that,

407
00:21:09,643 --> 00:21:12,104
I, I can see like
you said when we started out, you could,

408
00:21:12,104 --> 00:21:15,107
you could see someone using this to say,
oh yeah, predestination right there.

409
00:21:15,274 --> 00:21:16,441
But we're like, you're,

410
00:21:16,441 --> 00:21:19,486
you're trying to like look at the layers
that are here in the story.

411
00:21:19,486 --> 00:21:21,446
What it’s
referring to back in the Old Testament?

412
00:21:21,446 --> 00:21:21,655
You know,

413
00:21:21,655 --> 00:21:25,409
Genesis, Malachi, these are the places
there's a lot more going on here, right?

414
00:21:25,409 --> 00:21:27,160
I yeah. Wow.

415
00:21:27,160 --> 00:21:28,954
I think it's going to take me a minute
to untangle.

416
00:21:28,954 --> 00:21:30,956
I feel like I need to go dig into that
some more.

417
00:21:30,956 --> 00:21:33,917
That is really, really interesting. Yeah.

418
00:21:33,917 --> 00:21:36,503
as I mentioned in the,
the earlier session, the,

419
00:21:38,088 --> 00:21:38,630
it's one

420
00:21:38,630 --> 00:21:41,883
argument from the middle
of the first chapter after he gets past

421
00:21:41,883 --> 00:21:46,179
his, you know, greetings and all that,
all the way to the end of chapter 13.

422
00:21:46,179 --> 00:21:48,724
It is one long argument.

423
00:21:48,724 --> 00:21:51,935
It was not divided into chapters,
into verses and subheadings.

424
00:21:52,227 --> 00:21:54,646
It's one long thing.

425
00:21:54,646 --> 00:21:59,568
And a big part of that is God
has not been unfair to the Jews.

426
00:21:59,735 --> 00:22:04,448
He has every right
to pick the Gentiles to be his people.

427
00:22:04,448 --> 00:22:07,951
The Gentiles who believe,
because he picked

428
00:22:07,951 --> 00:22:10,954
Jacob before
Jacob had any works or anything,

429
00:22:11,246 --> 00:22:14,916
and before the Gentiles have any works,
he picked them.

430
00:22:14,916 --> 00:22:18,628
He prophesied in Hosea that, you know,
they would become his people.

431
00:22:18,962 --> 00:22:23,300
But in both cases,
Jacob did have godly works later on,

432
00:22:23,508 --> 00:22:26,762
and Christians have to have godly works
later on too.

433
00:22:27,054 --> 00:22:30,474
But as far as his choosing, yeah, he's
he did that,

434
00:22:30,807 --> 00:22:34,728
you know, from the outset before
there was any visible evidence.

435
00:22:34,728 --> 00:22:37,731
But he knew in his foreknowledge
how things were going to be.

436
00:22:38,148 --> 00:22:39,066
Wow. Okay.

437
00:22:39,066 --> 00:22:43,779
So, so let's, let's then
look at the verse immediately after.

438
00:22:43,820 --> 00:22:44,154
Right.

439
00:22:44,154 --> 00:22:47,532
So if you look at verse 14 back in Romans
nine here we see

440
00:22:47,532 --> 00:22:50,535
we're just looking
at the Esau Jacob situation.

441
00:22:50,869 --> 00:22:54,498
And then it says that God shows mercy on
whoever he wills.

442
00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:57,834
And then if you keep going to verse
16 says,

443
00:22:57,834 --> 00:23:01,129
it is not of him who runs,
but of God who shows mercy.

444
00:23:01,755 --> 00:23:06,259
Yes. So that again, seems like
we're pointing pretty strongly towards

445
00:23:06,259 --> 00:23:07,844
what Calvanism would say. See,
there you go.

446
00:23:07,844 --> 00:23:10,555
That's
that's what we're talking about. Yeah.

447
00:23:10,555 --> 00:23:13,558
And so what, the early Christians,
because they're having to respond to the

448
00:23:13,600 --> 00:23:15,268
not to Augustine, but to the,

449
00:23:16,311 --> 00:23:19,439
Gnostics who were
see, we don't have anything to do with it.

450
00:23:19,439 --> 00:23:22,150
It's all predestined for us.

451
00:23:22,150 --> 00:23:26,321
And they said, okay, go to that passage
where he says that to Moses.

452
00:23:26,780 --> 00:23:29,533
This was right
after they made the golden calf.

453
00:23:29,533 --> 00:23:32,202
And, you know, God tells Moses,

454
00:23:32,202 --> 00:23:35,330
you know, stand aside,
I'm going to destroy this people.

455
00:23:35,664 --> 00:23:38,500
And Moses said, you know, don't do that.

456
00:23:38,500 --> 00:23:41,211
If you're going to do that,
blot me out as well.

457
00:23:41,211 --> 00:23:43,547
And God
says, no, I'm not going to blot you out,

458
00:23:43,547 --> 00:23:46,842
but I'll have mercy on whom
I choose to have mercy. And,

459
00:23:47,968 --> 00:23:50,387
I will have compassion on whomever I have.

460
00:23:50,387 --> 00:23:50,971
Compassion.

461
00:23:50,971 --> 00:23:54,141
So all of the Israelites
deserved to be destroyed,

462
00:23:54,599 --> 00:23:56,226
but he didn't destroy all of them.

463
00:23:56,226 --> 00:24:01,815
He only destroyed, a minority of them,
who had worshiped the Golden Calf.

464
00:24:02,274 --> 00:24:06,319
And he doesn't have to explain to us
his reasons

465
00:24:06,319 --> 00:24:10,365
why he had mercy on those people
and why other ones got destroyed.

466
00:24:10,365 --> 00:24:12,200
I mean, we don't know.

467
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:14,244
But he doesn't
say it was arbitrary either.

468
00:24:15,412 --> 00:24:18,457
So he may have read the hearts
where he can read people's hearts.

469
00:24:18,457 --> 00:24:21,543
We know when Jesus was here, he knew what
people were thinking and all of that.

470
00:24:21,918 --> 00:24:25,255
So maybe the ones he had mercy on
or the ones that he knew

471
00:24:25,547 --> 00:24:29,384
would repent and and change their conduct,
at least for a time,

472
00:24:29,718 --> 00:24:31,094
and that the other ones were hopeless.

473
00:24:31,094 --> 00:24:33,597
I mean, you know, he says nothing here
about being arbitrary.

474
00:24:33,597 --> 00:24:37,350
I just that, hey,
I decide who I'm going to have mercy on

475
00:24:37,767 --> 00:24:43,064
and salvation, either as a people group
or as individuals.

476
00:24:43,273 --> 00:24:44,983
Yeah, it's up to God's mercy.

477
00:24:44,983 --> 00:24:47,194
I mean, no one can say, God,
I deserved it.

478
00:24:47,194 --> 00:24:50,238
I mean, everyone of us, God,
he and Judgment Day,

479
00:24:50,238 --> 00:24:53,325
he could come down with a list
on every one of us and say, look,

480
00:24:53,533 --> 00:24:55,994
I've got all these reasons
to cross you off.

481
00:24:55,994 --> 00:24:59,414
But on the other hand, he's
not going to be arbitrary.

482
00:24:59,414 --> 00:25:01,208
He's going to have his reasons,

483
00:25:01,208 --> 00:25:04,211
but he doesn't have
to explain his reasons to us.

484
00:25:04,711 --> 00:25:07,631
So then, is it
not of him who wills, nor of him who runs,

485
00:25:08,006 --> 00:25:09,966
but of God who shows mercy?

486
00:25:11,218 --> 00:25:11,927
And again, this

487
00:25:11,927 --> 00:25:15,222
was one the Gnostics really, really used.

488
00:25:15,764 --> 00:25:18,725
And again,
he's talking about the people group.

489
00:25:18,725 --> 00:25:20,602
So he picked Israel.

490
00:25:20,602 --> 00:25:23,563
It had nothing to do
with their righteousness.

491
00:25:23,563 --> 00:25:26,566
They were slaves in Israel
when he picked them.

492
00:25:26,775 --> 00:25:28,026
They didn't like Moses.

493
00:25:28,026 --> 00:25:31,696
I mean, they started disobeying lost faith
before they ever crossed the Red sea.

494
00:25:31,738 --> 00:25:35,575
Complained the whole time they weren't
chosen because they were so great.

495
00:25:35,575 --> 00:25:39,496
I mean, God, God was the one
who decided to choose them.

496
00:25:39,663 --> 00:25:41,540
And it's the same with the Gentiles.

497
00:25:41,540 --> 00:25:44,626
When he decided, I'm
going to include the Gentiles in this,

498
00:25:45,752 --> 00:25:48,463
the Jews can't say, well, that's not fair,
because we're godly.

499
00:25:48,463 --> 00:25:48,797
And they weren’t.

500
00:25:48,797 --> 00:25:50,549
It's like, hey, when I chose you,

501
00:25:50,549 --> 00:25:53,635
you know, you were miserable slaves
worshiping idols in Egypt.

502
00:25:54,052 --> 00:25:56,805
And you know, I had mercy on you.

503
00:25:56,805 --> 00:26:00,767
And if I want to have compassion on the
Gentiles, I have every right to do that.

504
00:26:01,059 --> 00:26:04,104
And in the end, it's
what I decide that's going to

505
00:26:05,105 --> 00:26:07,357
be the deciding factor, not

506
00:26:07,357 --> 00:26:11,403
what you know, those people groups
do now as an individual.

507
00:26:11,403 --> 00:26:14,948
So he's talking about people groups
and that's how they understood it.

508
00:26:14,948 --> 00:26:18,702
But if we apply it as individuals,
it's still true

509
00:26:18,952 --> 00:26:23,373
that again,
there's never a thing of arbitrary.

510
00:26:23,373 --> 00:26:27,002
And I choose people without any reason,
which is what Augustine is saying.

511
00:26:27,210 --> 00:26:31,881
If there is a reason, then then, then that
means we do have a role in our salvation

512
00:26:32,132 --> 00:26:32,757
and all that.

513
00:26:32,757 --> 00:26:33,592
So is real important

514
00:26:33,592 --> 00:26:37,345
to Augustine that nothing to do with God's
foreknowledge is just boom, boom.

515
00:26:37,345 --> 00:26:40,599
I picked this one
and I know he's he's not saying that,

516
00:26:40,890 --> 00:26:43,893
but he is saying that in the end.

517
00:26:44,603 --> 00:26:46,730
it's going to be up to God to show mercy.

518
00:26:46,730 --> 00:26:49,899
And that's going to mean
more than anything we do.

519
00:26:49,899 --> 00:26:56,448
It doesn't mean that how we live
and our faith won't be a deciding factor.

520
00:26:56,990 --> 00:27:00,910
But even with them, as I just mentioned,
none of us on Judgment

521
00:27:00,910 --> 00:27:04,456
Day will be able to say, look,
I had I lived such a godly life.

522
00:27:04,456 --> 00:27:07,459
My faith was so strong. You owe me heaven.

523
00:27:07,792 --> 00:27:11,421
No, it's
going to be up to God's mercy in the end.

524
00:27:11,421 --> 00:27:14,424
But that doesn't mean
because there's so many other verses

525
00:27:14,549 --> 00:27:17,719
say he is going to look at the fruit
we produce.

526
00:27:17,719 --> 00:27:22,515
He is going to look at how we we run,
how we obey him, what our faith is.

527
00:27:22,515 --> 00:27:25,518
So you don't take one verse in the Bible

528
00:27:25,644 --> 00:27:28,438
and then cross off all these other verses.

529
00:27:28,438 --> 00:27:31,358
This is one thing I notice
when I read the early Christians

530
00:27:31,358 --> 00:27:35,028
for the first time,
which is now been nearly 40 years ago.

531
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:37,822
It's like, oh, they take everything.

532
00:27:37,822 --> 00:27:40,450
I was used to church groups
that would have these proof text.

533
00:27:40,450 --> 00:27:42,827
They pick here,
they pick there, they ignore this.

534
00:27:42,827 --> 00:27:45,288
The early Christians take the totality.

535
00:27:45,288 --> 00:27:48,291
You look at the whole Bible
and particularly the whole New Testament.

536
00:27:49,125 --> 00:27:50,794
And what does the whole thing say?

537
00:27:50,794 --> 00:27:55,215
And then you read every verse
in the context of the whole message

538
00:27:55,507 --> 00:27:59,469
and the whole message of the New Testament
is, yes, how we live

539
00:27:59,928 --> 00:28:02,681
does play a role in our final salvation.

540
00:28:02,681 --> 00:28:05,558
Our faith does play a role,

541
00:28:05,558 --> 00:28:09,938
but ultimately God's
mercy is a bigger factor than either

542
00:28:09,938 --> 00:28:14,067
our faith or our obedience is
what Paul is saying.

543
00:28:14,067 --> 00:28:14,943
Okay?

544
00:28:14,943 --> 00:28:17,362
And then he continues, for the Scripture
says to the Pharaoh,

545
00:28:17,362 --> 00:28:22,242
for this very purpose, I have raised
you up, that I may show my power in you,

546
00:28:22,242 --> 00:28:25,245
and that my name may be declared
in all the earth.

547
00:28:25,662 --> 00:28:27,997
Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills,

548
00:28:27,997 --> 00:28:31,334
and whom he wills, he hardens. Okay.

549
00:28:31,334 --> 00:28:32,961
So again, oh, well he hardened Pharaoh.

550
00:28:32,961 --> 00:28:35,839
So he made Pharaoh do all this bad stuff.

551
00:28:35,839 --> 00:28:40,385
And yet the other scriptures say there is
no unrighteousness with with God.

552
00:28:40,385 --> 00:28:44,889
And I think that'd be pretty unrighteous
to make you do something evil

553
00:28:44,889 --> 00:28:47,767
and then punish you. You know something,
Reagan? Why did you do that?

554
00:28:48,977 --> 00:28:49,811
I had no say in it.

555
00:28:49,811 --> 00:28:50,979
You made me do it.

556
00:28:50,979 --> 00:28:51,312
That's it.

557
00:28:51,312 --> 00:28:52,689
Doesn't matter. Boom.

558
00:28:52,689 --> 00:28:54,441
I'm going to punish you anyway.

559
00:28:54,441 --> 00:28:57,193
It's like, well, that's not again.

560
00:28:57,193 --> 00:28:59,446
You're going to take the whole Bible.
Look at the character of God.

561
00:28:59,446 --> 00:29:02,115
Is that the character of God
that he would do that

562
00:29:02,115 --> 00:29:04,033
makes someone do something bad

563
00:29:04,033 --> 00:29:07,787
and then turn around and punish them
when they had no choice in the matter.

564
00:29:08,204 --> 00:29:10,790
So he doesn't say again

565
00:29:10,790 --> 00:29:13,960
that, this was all arbitrary.

566
00:29:14,252 --> 00:29:19,048
So in his foreknowledge, he could see
what kind of person Pharaoh was.

567
00:29:19,466 --> 00:29:21,885
Now, there were other kings.

568
00:29:21,885 --> 00:29:26,055
If they had been given the signs Pharaoh
was given, they would have repented.

569
00:29:26,306 --> 00:29:29,225
We know that for sure,
because think of Nineveh.

570
00:29:29,225 --> 00:29:30,977
He didn't get given any signs.

571
00:29:30,977 --> 00:29:33,980
It just had Jonah preach
that God is going to destroy,

572
00:29:34,063 --> 00:29:38,735
you know, Nineveh and how many days
it was no miracles at all, no nothing.

573
00:29:38,902 --> 00:29:40,695
And yet that king man, he repented.

574
00:29:40,695 --> 00:29:42,155
He told the whole nation, you know,

575
00:29:42,155 --> 00:29:45,408
we're all going to put on sackcloth,
even the animals and all of that.

576
00:29:45,784 --> 00:29:49,329
So, yeah,
some people respond, Pharaoh should have.

577
00:29:49,329 --> 00:29:53,708
I mean, he got shown all these miracles
that would have convinced almost anyone.

578
00:29:54,125 --> 00:29:56,503
But God knew ahead of time.

579
00:29:56,503 --> 00:29:58,838
No, he's that hard hearted.

580
00:29:58,838 --> 00:30:00,673
And in some of the
when you go back to Genesis

581
00:30:00,673 --> 00:30:04,427
and read the account, it
sometimes says Pharaoh hardened his heart.

582
00:30:04,469 --> 00:30:06,554
Sometimes it says God hardened his heart.

583
00:30:06,554 --> 00:30:11,768
So God already knew the response
all of this would have.

584
00:30:11,768 --> 00:30:15,021
So if you recall the account in Genesis,
you know

585
00:30:15,230 --> 00:30:18,191
God would do one of these miracles
and Pharaoh would say, oh, please,

586
00:30:18,191 --> 00:30:20,819
you know, take away the frogs or whatever
it was.

587
00:30:20,819 --> 00:30:23,446
You know, I'm sorry I’ll
let the Israelites go.

588
00:30:23,446 --> 00:30:26,241
And so God would remove the plague.

589
00:30:26,241 --> 00:30:29,244
Now he was hardening
Pharaoh's heart by doing that,

590
00:30:29,661 --> 00:30:33,706
which sounds counterintuitive,
but he knew what kind of person

591
00:30:33,706 --> 00:30:37,794
Pharaoh was that Pharaoh looked at that
as weakness on God's part.

592
00:30:39,045 --> 00:30:39,963
Yeah.

593
00:30:39,963 --> 00:30:42,966
This guy gives in really easy. And so.

594
00:30:43,049 --> 00:30:44,175
Yeah. Then the next one.

595
00:30:44,175 --> 00:30:45,468
Okay, I'll let him go.

596
00:30:45,468 --> 00:30:47,762
Even knowing
he wasn't going to let him go,

597
00:30:47,762 --> 00:30:50,390
because he saw this week
God, Jehovah, who?

598
00:30:50,390 --> 00:30:53,393
You know, I can just,
you know, monkey around with him.

599
00:30:54,435 --> 00:30:55,603
And God played. Yeah.

600
00:30:55,603 --> 00:30:59,732
He he hard every time he did a miracle,
it hardened Pharaoh's heart.

601
00:30:59,732 --> 00:31:01,109
He just got more sure that.

602
00:31:01,109 --> 00:31:03,611
Yeah, I'm the guy running the show here.

603
00:31:03,611 --> 00:31:06,447
And I'll make God
take the the plague away.

604
00:31:06,447 --> 00:31:09,450
And each time
God took it away until the very end.

605
00:31:09,617 --> 00:31:11,327
But God was doing this for a reason.

606
00:31:11,327 --> 00:31:14,330
He wasn't just playing around
with Pharaoh.

607
00:31:14,581 --> 00:31:19,627
A great multitude of Egyptians left
with the Israelites when they left.

608
00:31:19,878 --> 00:31:23,548
So Pharaoh's heart was being hardened
by these these, plagues.

609
00:31:23,923 --> 00:31:27,760
But there was a great company of Egyptians
whose hearts were softened

610
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:29,429
by the exact same miracles.

611
00:31:29,429 --> 00:31:30,054
It's like,

612
00:31:30,054 --> 00:31:33,766
wow, there is a genuine God out there
who's more powerful than our God. So?

613
00:31:34,309 --> 00:31:39,564
yeah, the same act can harden one person's
heart and soften someone else's.

614
00:31:39,981 --> 00:31:41,691
Origin’s famous example

615
00:31:42,650 --> 00:31:45,653
that I love is he said, take a piece of,

616
00:31:46,529 --> 00:31:48,239
wet clay

617
00:31:48,239 --> 00:31:51,618
and a piece of wax
and put them out in the sun.

618
00:31:51,868 --> 00:31:53,328
Okay?

619
00:31:53,328 --> 00:31:55,830
The very same sun, the very same hour,
you know,

620
00:31:55,830 --> 00:31:58,791
put them there together
on a hot afternoon.

621
00:31:58,875 --> 00:32:03,588
Now that wet clay is going to harden up
from the heat of the sun,

622
00:32:04,172 --> 00:32:08,009
that very same heat
is going to make that wax get very soft.

623
00:32:08,509 --> 00:32:12,931
It's the same action but two different
results depending on the substance.

624
00:32:13,348 --> 00:32:14,807
And so it's the same way with God.

625
00:32:14,807 --> 00:32:19,437
When he did these plagues, it softened
the hearts of many, most of the Egyptians.

626
00:32:19,437 --> 00:32:21,439
I mean more Egyptians than it hardened.

627
00:32:21,439 --> 00:32:25,860
And yet Pharaoh, it hardened his heart
because of what he was inside,

628
00:32:25,860 --> 00:32:29,364
not because God made him that way,
but because of his own evil heart.

629
00:32:30,323 --> 00:32:31,616
So we have to keep

630
00:32:31,616 --> 00:32:34,285
you're basically saying
you have to keep in mind the again,

631
00:32:34,285 --> 00:32:38,039
the broader context of that story and say,
well, who was Pharaoh,

632
00:32:38,206 --> 00:32:42,085
what was he, how was he responding
or choosing to respond to these things.

633
00:32:42,627 --> 00:32:44,462
Yeah. That makes yeah, that makes sense.

634
00:32:44,462 --> 00:32:50,218
Now, this is where Paul like we're
we were saying earlier how he is hard.

635
00:32:50,218 --> 00:32:55,098
Now, another writer might have made
these points a little bit more clear.

636
00:32:55,098 --> 00:32:57,308
You know, he throws it in there together.

637
00:32:57,308 --> 00:33:01,229
And the early Christians I was trying to
find this passage and I couldn't find it,

638
00:33:01,980 --> 00:33:03,147
before this interview.

639
00:33:03,147 --> 00:33:05,149
I think it's in Second Corinthians.

640
00:33:05,149 --> 00:33:08,903
But Paul, when he was writing,
you know, said, I'm

641
00:33:08,903 --> 00:33:12,365
not I'm not very skilled at writing. And

642
00:33:13,408 --> 00:33:14,659
and none of us ever notice that.

643
00:33:14,659 --> 00:33:16,119
It's not quoted very much.

644
00:33:16,119 --> 00:33:19,580
But, the early Christians, almost
every one of them quoted that is this is.

645
00:33:19,956 --> 00:33:21,874
Yeah. Paul.

646
00:33:21,874 --> 00:33:23,543
Yeah. He's,

647
00:33:23,543 --> 00:33:27,839
you know, a tremendous apostle, tremendous
evangelist, tremendous church planner.

648
00:33:28,339 --> 00:33:31,009
But yeah, when it comes to writing,
he doesn't

649
00:33:31,009 --> 00:33:34,178
lay things out
quite as clear as, say, James does.

650
00:33:34,178 --> 00:33:35,388
Or I was going to say.

651
00:33:35,388 --> 00:33:38,558
Yeah, you look at someone like like James,
it's kind of it feels like,

652
00:33:41,310 --> 00:33:43,896
like you can kind of
just read it and like, oh, okay, got it.

653
00:33:43,896 --> 00:33:46,941
Whereas the passages we're looking at
are like, okay, we're going to have to

654
00:33:47,650 --> 00:33:48,818
there's layers.

655
00:33:48,818 --> 00:33:52,071
There's yeah,
there's a lot of pointing back to things,

656
00:33:52,071 --> 00:33:52,947
you know, even the stuff

657
00:33:52,947 --> 00:33:56,117
you're pointing back to
in Genesis, in Malachi with the Esau

658
00:33:56,159 --> 00:33:58,703
Jacob thing was just
I hadn't thought of that before,

659
00:33:58,703 --> 00:34:01,164
you know, it's like, oh, yeah,
you would have to know those passages

660
00:34:01,164 --> 00:34:03,041
for that to make more sense.

661
00:34:03,041 --> 00:34:04,751
Like, what is Paul quoting here?

662
00:34:04,751 --> 00:34:05,209
Yeah.

663
00:34:05,209 --> 00:34:08,880
And think the way an ancient Greek
Easterner

664
00:34:09,338 --> 00:34:11,924
thinks, which is different
than than the way we think.

665
00:34:13,843 --> 00:34:17,055
And it's interesting that
doesn't get quoted as much as it should,

666
00:34:17,055 --> 00:34:20,475
but, Peter, he says,

667
00:34:20,475 --> 00:34:23,478
and I can't quote him verbatim, but,

668
00:34:23,728 --> 00:34:27,231
there's many things in Paul
that are hard to understand

669
00:34:27,231 --> 00:34:30,234
and that, you know,
the wicked and perverse twist.

670
00:34:30,568 --> 00:34:32,987
So that is the Holy Spirit

671
00:34:32,987 --> 00:34:37,450
telling us that in Paul
there are things hard to understand.

672
00:34:37,658 --> 00:34:40,912
So when we jump in
and think we can just take proof texts,

673
00:34:41,704 --> 00:34:43,206
we're ignoring the warning.

674
00:34:43,206 --> 00:34:45,458
The Holy Spirit has warned us, be careful.

675
00:34:45,458 --> 00:34:47,960
He didn't say that about James.
And when you read James, hey, be careful.

676
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:49,045
There's things in order to understand.

677
00:34:49,045 --> 00:34:50,880
Or he didn't say that about Peter,

678
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,717
but Paul, he says, yeah, in his letters
there are things hard to understand.

679
00:34:55,343 --> 00:34:59,013
So the Holy Spirit is telling
us, okay, he's my chosen vessel.

680
00:34:59,305 --> 00:35:01,557
He he writes like a prophet.

681
00:35:01,557 --> 00:35:04,644
He doesn't write like a lawyer
who lays things out, you know, really,

682
00:35:04,644 --> 00:35:07,647
really clear. And so be careful

683
00:35:07,897 --> 00:35:11,234
when you're reading because there are
things hard to understand.

684
00:35:11,484 --> 00:35:13,945
But if you compare them
with the rest of Scripture,

685
00:35:13,945 --> 00:35:17,365
they become clear
or it helps to make them clear.

686
00:35:17,365 --> 00:35:21,619
But if you just grab, like Romans nine
and you ignore all the rest of Scripture,

687
00:35:21,619 --> 00:35:25,039
yeah, you're going to come to some
really, wrong conclusions.

688
00:35:26,207 --> 00:35:29,627
And would that have been
maybe this is getting a little off topic,

689
00:35:29,627 --> 00:35:34,674
but back to the context of how we got here
with the predestination Calvinism thing.

690
00:35:35,258 --> 00:35:39,387
Do you feel that is what Augustine
would have been doing?

691
00:35:39,387 --> 00:35:43,516
Like was he taking Romans nine
just this chunk and extrapolating

692
00:35:43,516 --> 00:35:45,393
that into something,
or was it part of something else

693
00:35:45,393 --> 00:35:49,063
that caused him to come up
with some of these ideas, and so forth?

694
00:35:49,397 --> 00:35:52,150
Or maybe, maybe that's a bit off topic,
but it'd be kind of interesting,

695
00:35:52,150 --> 00:35:54,485
know, like, where's this stuff come from?

696
00:35:54,485 --> 00:35:57,488
yeah, I know a lot of people.

697
00:35:57,530 --> 00:36:00,116
And there's good, cause behind it.

698
00:36:00,116 --> 00:36:01,617
But again, I can't read his heart.

699
00:36:01,617 --> 00:36:05,329
Now, I mentioned, you know, the Gnostics,
they were using all of this.

700
00:36:05,329 --> 00:36:08,332
And the early Christians discuss this
because,

701
00:36:08,749 --> 00:36:12,712
of how having to counter the Gnostics
now, I, I did not mention

702
00:36:12,712 --> 00:36:17,300
in the other session that origin
had been a Gnostic, not origin.

703
00:36:17,592 --> 00:36:19,969
Augustine, and had been a Gnostic.

704
00:36:19,969 --> 00:36:21,596
Oh, interesting.

705
00:36:21,596 --> 00:36:21,929
Yeah.

706
00:36:21,929 --> 00:36:25,683
So he had a Christian mother,
but he rejected Christianity.

707
00:36:26,142 --> 00:36:28,978
And then he joined a sect called
the Manichean.

708
00:36:28,978 --> 00:36:30,521
They were a Gnostic sect,

709
00:36:30,521 --> 00:36:34,150
but he was mixed with a bunch of eastern
religion from Persia.

710
00:36:34,901 --> 00:36:37,486
The same time, I think he was 11 years

711
00:36:37,486 --> 00:36:40,489
in there as one of their disciples,

712
00:36:40,573 --> 00:36:43,534
and they would have taught predestination.

713
00:36:43,826 --> 00:36:46,829
So that has been one of the questions

714
00:36:46,829 --> 00:36:49,832
that all we can do is ponder,
because I can't read his heart

715
00:36:50,082 --> 00:36:53,711
if they left that thinking in him,

716
00:36:53,711 --> 00:36:57,965
you know why he was so comfortable
with grabbing predestination?

717
00:36:57,965 --> 00:37:01,385
Because that's how he had been thinking
all of those years.

718
00:37:01,761 --> 00:37:02,720
It may not have been.

719
00:37:02,720 --> 00:37:04,597
You know, I can't I can't prove that.

720
00:37:04,597 --> 00:37:09,560
But it certainly raises a question now,
how did something that was part of

721
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:14,774
Gnosticism that the church finally, you
know, shut the Gnostics up, defeated them,,

722
00:37:14,774 --> 00:37:18,319
and then it suddenly comes in the church
from someone who used to be a Gnostic.

723
00:37:18,819 --> 00:37:24,492
It's yeah, it definitely raises
some strong suspicions, but I don't know.

724
00:37:24,492 --> 00:37:28,246
But like I say, on the other hand, yeah,
he went into this crazy thing.

725
00:37:28,246 --> 00:37:30,373
I've got to counter Pelagius.

726
00:37:30,373 --> 00:37:34,085
And even if I go against
everyone who lived before me, you know,

727
00:37:34,502 --> 00:37:36,212
in fact, somebody pointed that out to him.

728
00:37:36,212 --> 00:37:37,922
Well, no one has ever taught this before.

729
00:37:37,922 --> 00:37:41,509
And Augustine's response was, well,
they weren't having to deal with Pelagius.

730
00:37:42,009 --> 00:37:45,012
It's like, well, no, that's a dumb
way to come up with doctrine,

731
00:37:45,012 --> 00:37:46,847
you know, that you come up with something.

732
00:37:46,847 --> 00:37:49,267
It's like, well, no one has taught that.

733
00:37:49,267 --> 00:37:53,229
Well, yeah, but they weren't dealing with,
you know, one of these megachurch

734
00:37:53,229 --> 00:37:57,775
pastors who's I mean, come
on, Christian faith is a Christian faith.

735
00:37:57,775 --> 00:38:01,779
If a heretic comes along, we don't
change it in order to shut the heretic up.

736
00:38:01,779 --> 00:38:04,490
I mean, that's
that's a really dumb approach to

737
00:38:04,490 --> 00:38:06,784
to scripture, but,
yeah, he gave himself away.

738
00:38:06,784 --> 00:38:09,245
This is yeah, I'm trying to counter him.

739
00:38:09,245 --> 00:38:12,248
And so, yeah, I'm having to go, you know,

740
00:38:12,498 --> 00:38:15,501
and it's like, well,
you've just basically condemned yourself

741
00:38:15,501 --> 00:38:19,422
with your own words and yeah, you,
you have ended up corrupting Christianity

742
00:38:19,839 --> 00:38:23,217
because you want to get the better
of the argument against Pelagius.

743
00:38:23,676 --> 00:38:28,472
And then ultimately these ideas continue
on through these writings.

744
00:38:28,472 --> 00:38:31,183
And eventually,
of course, Calvin comes along

745
00:38:32,184 --> 00:38:33,227
from what I understand

746
00:38:33,227 --> 00:38:36,856
refines, hones these things
and really builds them well, something

747
00:38:37,023 --> 00:38:40,693
that's obviously
still talk and used quite a bit today.

748
00:38:41,944 --> 00:38:43,654
But really
they're just building on each other.

749
00:38:43,654 --> 00:38:46,615
Is that a way of saying it like,

750
00:38:46,615 --> 00:38:46,824
Yeah.

751
00:38:46,824 --> 00:38:48,200
So Augustine like saying

752
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:51,287
it became the official doctrine
of the Roman Catholic Church.

753
00:38:52,413 --> 00:38:54,373
But then during the Middle

754
00:38:54,373 --> 00:38:57,376
Ages, a Catholic church
kind of pulled back because this is like,

755
00:38:57,668 --> 00:39:01,172
yeah, this is a little extreme to say,
God predestined everyone

756
00:39:01,172 --> 00:39:02,965
and they haven't even done anything wrong.

757
00:39:02,965 --> 00:39:04,383
And so you're doomed to hell.

758
00:39:04,383 --> 00:39:08,262
And even what gives it away is Augustine
says, now we got to be careful

759
00:39:08,262 --> 00:39:13,684
when we preach this, because, you know,
it's going to, discourage people.

760
00:39:13,684 --> 00:39:16,395
Or maybe they'll quit living a godly life.

761
00:39:16,395 --> 00:39:18,147
And it's like, now wait a minute.

762
00:39:18,147 --> 00:39:20,107
If we don't have any say or

763
00:39:20,107 --> 00:39:24,111
if we don't have any part in what we do,
then you can preach whatever you want.

764
00:39:24,111 --> 00:39:26,155
Because if they've been

765
00:39:26,155 --> 00:39:29,283
chosen to be the elect,
then they're going to do the right thing.

766
00:39:29,909 --> 00:39:32,620
If they're not of the elect,
it doesn't matter what you preach.

767
00:39:32,620 --> 00:39:34,205
I mean, you can tell people to go out
and do wicked.

768
00:39:34,205 --> 00:39:36,665
They're going to do
what God has chosen for them to do.

769
00:39:36,665 --> 00:39:38,959
So why are you afraid to preach this?

770
00:39:38,959 --> 00:39:42,129
You know,
so yeah, it's funny how Augustine kind of

771
00:39:43,381 --> 00:39:45,132
and this was the other thing people said.

772
00:39:45,132 --> 00:39:50,679
So, you know, so why why do you preach
than the need to live a godly life?

773
00:39:50,679 --> 00:39:53,682
And why do you preach against sin
if it's all predestined?

774
00:39:54,308 --> 00:39:56,977
And his answer was, well, Paul did it
well.

775
00:39:56,977 --> 00:39:59,980
Yeah, but you haven't proven
that Paul taught predestination.

776
00:39:59,980 --> 00:40:01,399
Oh, Paul preached against sin.

777
00:40:01,399 --> 00:40:03,317
So I'm just doing what Paul did.

778
00:40:03,317 --> 00:40:08,197
Yeah, but you haven't proven yet
that Paul taught arbitrary predestination.

779
00:40:08,406 --> 00:40:11,409
Again,
the early Christians would have said, yes,

780
00:40:11,409 --> 00:40:14,912
the Bible teaches predestination
based on God's foreknowledge,

781
00:40:15,329 --> 00:40:18,833
but not arbitrary predestination,
where God we do something

782
00:40:18,833 --> 00:40:22,420
because God made us do it,
but rather God chose us

783
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:25,923
before we were created
because he saw in the future

784
00:40:26,090 --> 00:40:28,509
how we were going to respond
to the gospel message.

785
00:40:30,344 --> 00:40:31,262
And that's, that's

786
00:40:31,262 --> 00:40:34,265
something I mean there's a lot

787
00:40:34,473 --> 00:40:36,267
wow. There's a, there's a lot here

788
00:40:36,267 --> 00:40:39,270
because this, this is such a big

789
00:40:39,603 --> 00:40:41,063
theological framework that's used, but,

790
00:40:41,063 --> 00:40:44,066
and there's so many different angles
and so many different opinions on this.

791
00:40:44,442 --> 00:40:47,820
But Romans nine tends to be like that
would be one of the main passages, right.

792
00:40:47,820 --> 00:40:48,696
That that's used.

793
00:40:48,696 --> 00:40:51,699
It's not the only one, but I would say
it's probably the key chapter.

794
00:40:51,699 --> 00:40:53,534
There's also I think it's the first

795
00:40:53,534 --> 00:40:56,954
chapter of Ephesians
is, is is quoted as, as well.

796
00:40:57,371 --> 00:40:59,081
And yeah, you're asking about Calvin.

797
00:40:59,081 --> 00:41:02,084
So his genius was he took

798
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:07,089
Augustine what Augustine taught him
and built a very nice system.

799
00:41:07,089 --> 00:41:10,092
I mean, his,
the Institutes of Christian Religion.

800
00:41:10,092 --> 00:41:13,929
I, you know,
I read those years ago and really, that's.

801
00:41:13,929 --> 00:41:15,931
I mean, that's a chunk.
That's a lot of work.

802
00:41:15,931 --> 00:41:19,685
Yeah, it's a lot of a lot of words It was
when I was on a search for what was true,

803
00:41:19,685 --> 00:41:23,355
and I was reading Luther and Calvin
and the Anabaptists.

804
00:41:24,064 --> 00:41:27,735
And so when I read the three
and it's like, oh, the Anabaptists fit

805
00:41:27,735 --> 00:41:28,402
what I'm reading.

806
00:41:28,402 --> 00:41:31,363
And the I had read the early Christians
before I got that far.

807
00:41:31,363 --> 00:41:32,948
And it's like, this is fitting.

808
00:41:32,948 --> 00:41:34,450
The early Christians, you know,

809
00:41:34,450 --> 00:41:36,994
where Luther and Calvin were both teaching
predestination.

810
00:41:36,994 --> 00:41:40,331
We usually think of Calvin,
but actually Luther taught it as well.

811
00:41:41,540 --> 00:41:43,584
Because
they both were following Augustine.

812
00:41:43,584 --> 00:41:47,254
But what Calvin's genius
was to take Augustine and build

813
00:41:47,254 --> 00:41:53,052
this system
that is fairly logical, easy to to follow.

814
00:41:53,469 --> 00:41:55,471
And it's always obviously been successful.

815
00:41:55,471 --> 00:41:59,975
I mean, it's still being taught,
you know, today by by a lot of people.

816
00:42:00,935 --> 00:42:04,522
So, you know, I have to give credit
to Calvin as a gifted teacher.

817
00:42:04,522 --> 00:42:06,482
I just think he's,
you know, he's mistaken.

818
00:42:06,482 --> 00:42:09,485
It's not what he taught
was not the historic faith.

819
00:42:09,860 --> 00:42:12,446
But, yeah, he was gifted nevertheless.

820
00:42:12,446 --> 00:42:15,282
And putting it together.

821
00:42:15,282 --> 00:42:18,285
So one other question here,

822
00:42:18,661 --> 00:42:20,704
what about the illustration
of the potter in the clay.

823
00:42:20,704 --> 00:42:25,668
So it seems like that's saying
God molds us however he chooses.

824
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:29,296
And we really don't have any grounds
and we don't have any say in it.

825
00:42:29,755 --> 00:42:30,089
Like,

826
00:42:31,173 --> 00:42:31,507
yeah.

827
00:42:31,507 --> 00:42:34,218
Like what do we do
with what do we do with imagery like that?

828
00:42:34,218 --> 00:42:36,470
Is that extrapolating
too much into that imagery?

829
00:42:36,470 --> 00:42:39,640
Is that putting our perspective
on something else?

830
00:42:40,099 --> 00:42:41,141
Yeah, explain that.

831
00:42:41,141 --> 00:42:45,437
I think reading that again,
I think it's reasonable, you know,

832
00:42:45,437 --> 00:42:49,900
if someone reads what Paul says there
and, and, that.

833
00:42:50,401 --> 00:42:54,446
Oh, he's just saying that we're nothing
but clay and God does with with us.

834
00:42:54,446 --> 00:42:55,531
What he wants.

835
00:42:55,531 --> 00:42:57,783
But I'm saying you could conclude that.

836
00:42:57,783 --> 00:43:00,619
But, Paul, it's not what Paul says.
You will say then to me.

837
00:43:00,619 --> 00:43:03,789
Why does he still find fault
for who has resisted his will?

838
00:43:04,123 --> 00:43:07,209
No man
but who are you to answer back to God?

839
00:43:07,626 --> 00:43:11,338
So this isn't an Armenian
that, you know, Paul

840
00:43:11,338 --> 00:43:15,217
is talking about and and God is saying,
who are you to answer back to me?

841
00:43:15,342 --> 00:43:16,385
These are the Jews.

842
00:43:16,385 --> 00:43:21,181
Okay, so a lot of Romans,
one reason it's a hard book to follow.

843
00:43:22,099 --> 00:43:22,766
And part of it,

844
00:43:23,726 --> 00:43:24,643
Paul takes on the

845
00:43:24,643 --> 00:43:27,646
persona of, unbelieving Jew.

846
00:43:28,022 --> 00:43:32,443
Other parts he carries on a dialog
with an unbelieving Jew and,

847
00:43:34,445 --> 00:43:35,988
but he doesn't lay all this out.

848
00:43:35,988 --> 00:43:37,114
It's crystal clear.

849
00:43:37,114 --> 00:43:40,659
I think most people reading it
realizes, you know, in part of it

850
00:43:40,659 --> 00:43:45,289
he's dialoging with a fictional person,
you know, but he just he'll be doing that.

851
00:43:45,289 --> 00:43:46,498
And then the next verse,

852
00:43:46,498 --> 00:43:49,752
of course, there weren't verses, but
the next sentence, he's suddenly somewhere else.

853
00:43:50,461 --> 00:43:54,840
Again, origins, illustration of he's
he's taking you on this tour of this.

854
00:43:54,882 --> 00:43:58,927
You know, palace and
and yeah, he just goes from room to room

855
00:43:58,927 --> 00:44:00,095
and you only see a little bit of it,

856
00:44:00,095 --> 00:44:03,265
and then you're in another room
before you know it. So.

857
00:44:04,058 --> 00:44:05,351
No. Oh, man.

858
00:44:05,351 --> 00:44:06,977
But who are you to answer back to God?

859
00:44:06,977 --> 00:44:11,774
So the Calvinist would read the
oh man that Paul is talking to

860
00:44:11,815 --> 00:44:14,943
is being, well, like, say, an Armenian,
someone who believes in free will.

861
00:44:15,277 --> 00:44:19,406
Now he's talking to this unbelieving Jew
who's saying God has been unfair,

862
00:44:19,406 --> 00:44:24,995
you know, and Paul is saying, you know,
who are you to answer back to God?

863
00:44:25,954 --> 00:44:26,497
We as

864
00:44:26,497 --> 00:44:29,792
humans
can pry, can ask questions about God.

865
00:44:29,792 --> 00:44:33,462
But there's a limit to
how far any of us are entitled to

866
00:44:33,879 --> 00:44:36,965
to pry into why God does this or that.

867
00:44:36,965 --> 00:44:40,010
I mean, there's a lot of things
that as a fallen human,

868
00:44:40,010 --> 00:44:42,930
I would think, well, if I were God,
this is what I would do.

869
00:44:42,930 --> 00:44:43,389
And, you know,

870
00:44:43,389 --> 00:44:46,266
we wouldn't have evil on the earth
and we wouldn't have this or that.

871
00:44:46,266 --> 00:44:48,686
Yeah, but God's ways are different.

872
00:44:48,686 --> 00:44:51,897
They're higher than ours, so much higher
that we're not going to comprehend

873
00:44:51,897 --> 00:44:52,981
everything he does.

874
00:44:52,981 --> 00:44:55,109
Now, it doesn't mean that we can put

875
00:44:55,109 --> 00:44:58,112
wicked things on God and just say, well,
you don't understand,

876
00:44:58,445 --> 00:45:01,907
but we're not going to fully understand
all of his ways.

877
00:45:01,907 --> 00:45:03,367
And he's just saying, you know,

878
00:45:04,368 --> 00:45:07,204
who are you to,

879
00:45:07,204 --> 00:45:08,622
you know, form this or that?

880
00:45:08,622 --> 00:45:13,210
So you're complaining as a Jew,
that God is

881
00:45:13,252 --> 00:45:16,338
being gracious to the Gentiles,
but who are you to complain?

882
00:45:16,338 --> 00:45:18,674
God can be gracious whoever he wants.

883
00:45:18,674 --> 00:45:20,718
He can take these Gentiles.

884
00:45:20,718 --> 00:45:26,265
You know, John's words was he can raise
children to Abraham from these stones.

885
00:45:26,265 --> 00:45:29,226
You know, in the same way here
he can take these Gentiles

886
00:45:29,226 --> 00:45:33,105
and make them into a vessel
that is worthy.

887
00:45:33,522 --> 00:45:35,941
Now, the key,

888
00:45:35,941 --> 00:45:39,069
thing on this one
that the early Christians point to

889
00:45:39,486 --> 00:45:42,489
is second Timothy two 2321

890
00:45:42,906 --> 00:45:46,285
and this is such an illustration of why
you never just take one

891
00:45:46,285 --> 00:45:49,455
passage of Scripture
without looking at the whole picture,

892
00:45:49,455 --> 00:45:52,499
because Paul says something very similar
there.

893
00:45:54,042 --> 00:45:54,543
We're here.

894
00:45:54,543 --> 00:45:58,714
He says, why did you make me like this
out of this same lump of clay?

895
00:45:59,173 --> 00:46:01,884
Makes one vessel for honor
and another for dishonor.

896
00:46:01,884 --> 00:46:02,968
And it sounds like, oh, okay.

897
00:46:02,968 --> 00:46:04,887
He just arbitrarily does this.

898
00:46:04,887 --> 00:46:07,806
But then in second Timothy,
this is still Paul.

899
00:46:07,806 --> 00:46:11,101
He says now in a large house,
they are not only vessels of gold

900
00:46:11,226 --> 00:46:14,229
and of silver, but also of wood and clay.

901
00:46:14,438 --> 00:46:17,065
Some are for honor and some for dishonor.

902
00:46:17,065 --> 00:46:19,109
Almost the same things he’s saying in Romans.

903
00:46:19,109 --> 00:46:20,110
But now listen.

904
00:46:20,110 --> 00:46:24,823
Therefore,
if anyone cleanses, cleanses himself

905
00:46:24,948 --> 00:46:28,911
from these,
he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified

906
00:46:28,911 --> 00:46:32,331
and suitable for the master's use,
prepared for every good work.

907
00:46:32,998 --> 00:46:35,918
So there, he says, if we cleanse ourselves

908
00:46:35,918 --> 00:46:39,838
of the wickedness,
then we can be a vessel of honor.

909
00:46:41,423 --> 00:46:42,341
So yeah, the

910
00:46:42,341 --> 00:46:46,094
early church, when they read Romans nine,
they also read Second Timothy.

911
00:46:46,094 --> 00:46:49,014
They say, look at the other part
that Paul says

912
00:46:49,014 --> 00:46:51,558
he uses the same illustration
and he's showing.

913
00:46:51,558 --> 00:46:54,937
No, we do play a role in this,
that if we cleansed ourselves

914
00:46:55,395 --> 00:46:57,981
from wickedness,
we leave those things behind.

915
00:46:57,981 --> 00:46:59,608
God can use us.

916
00:46:59,608 --> 00:47:01,568
Now, the other aspect of that is

917
00:47:01,568 --> 00:47:04,196
we're not going to do all of that
on our own power.

918
00:47:04,196 --> 00:47:09,993
God, you know, plays a key role
in, bringing us to faith.

919
00:47:09,993 --> 00:47:12,746
Jesus said, no one can come to the father
unless I.

920
00:47:12,746 --> 00:47:15,290
No one can come to me
unless the father draws him.

921
00:47:15,290 --> 00:47:18,252
And he said, without me
you can do nothing.

922
00:47:18,335 --> 00:47:21,839
So there's the early Christians
would have seen,

923
00:47:22,089 --> 00:47:26,260
not Monergism, which is what Calvin
to say, that there's only one force mono

924
00:47:26,718 --> 00:47:29,471
the the all of the force
energy comes from God.

925
00:47:29,471 --> 00:47:30,681
We do nothing.

926
00:47:30,681 --> 00:47:33,058
And the early Christian was said,
no, it's synergism.

927
00:47:33,058 --> 00:47:36,687
It's God's power,
and it's us responding to God's power,

928
00:47:36,812 --> 00:47:38,021
not because it has to be that way.

929
00:47:38,021 --> 00:47:40,232
God could God could do the other.

930
00:47:40,232 --> 00:47:41,567
But it's not God's nature.

931
00:47:41,567 --> 00:47:45,821
He wants people who love him,
so he gives us the opportunity.

932
00:47:45,821 --> 00:47:49,783
But he knows in our fallen nature,
without his help,

933
00:47:49,783 --> 00:47:54,955
we would never make it without him
drawing us, him giving us power.

934
00:47:55,163 --> 00:47:57,875
On the other hand,
he doesn't do it all for us.

935
00:47:57,875 --> 00:48:00,794
We we still have to believe he's
not going to do our believing for us.

936
00:48:00,794 --> 00:48:02,421
He's going to do our obeying for us.

937
00:48:02,421 --> 00:48:03,672
But he will give us the power

938
00:48:03,672 --> 00:48:07,551
to make it possible
to do both the believing and the obeying.

939
00:48:07,551 --> 00:48:12,764
So it's the two things working together
that we see when we take the whole Bible

940
00:48:12,764 --> 00:48:15,767
and not just,
you know, select verses that it's it's

941
00:48:15,767 --> 00:48:19,813
man has a role and God
plays a role, you know, in our salvation.

942
00:48:22,190 --> 00:48:25,569
wow. So this this is a lot to to untangle
could

943
00:48:25,611 --> 00:48:29,448
because there is so much wrapped up
in these frameworks, you know,

944
00:48:29,448 --> 00:48:31,992
with, with Augustine, Luther, Calvin,
those are the big names.

945
00:48:31,992 --> 00:48:33,493
But there's others as well.

946
00:48:33,493 --> 00:48:37,247
And obviously what we're seeing in Romans
and all throughout Scripture.

947
00:48:37,831 --> 00:48:41,627
So first, as you're bringing this up,
so do close someone listening to this.

948
00:48:41,877 --> 00:48:43,670
You know, they're like, wow,
this is a lot of material.

949
00:48:43,670 --> 00:48:45,213
I want to look into this more.

950
00:48:45,213 --> 00:48:46,965
What are where some places they can go.

951
00:48:46,965 --> 00:48:49,343
If they want to learn more,
they want to study into this more.

952
00:48:49,343 --> 00:48:51,595
Where's a good place they can start.

953
00:48:51,595 --> 00:48:51,887
Okay.

954
00:48:51,887 --> 00:48:54,890
So I mean, without, you know,

955
00:48:55,098 --> 00:48:58,060
you know, I'm going to recommend the
commentary that I've just worked on now,

956
00:48:58,185 --> 00:48:59,770
just none of my brilliance in there.

957
00:48:59,770 --> 00:49:01,188
I mean, I was just

958
00:49:01,188 --> 00:49:05,359
the same boat as everyone else was like,
wow, this is a complicated book.

959
00:49:07,152 --> 00:49:07,444
Yeah.

960
00:49:07,444 --> 00:49:10,781
They taking the whole early church,
all these different people

961
00:49:10,781 --> 00:49:14,284
who had the apostolic faith
handed down to them by the apostles.

962
00:49:14,534 --> 00:49:16,620
How did they all understand this?

963
00:49:16,620 --> 00:49:21,667
You know, people who spoke the same Koine
Greek as Paul,

964
00:49:21,667 --> 00:49:25,462
who lived in his culture, who thought
like an Easterner, like like Paul does?

965
00:49:25,963 --> 00:49:26,254
Yeah.

966
00:49:26,254 --> 00:49:28,757
How were they understanding
all of these things?

967
00:49:28,757 --> 00:49:30,842
And what other verses did they see?

968
00:49:30,842 --> 00:49:34,137
So, but I wish I could say, yeah,
there's another commentary I can recommend

969
00:49:34,137 --> 00:49:37,432
and all that because, yeah, I'm not
I mean, I just don't know.

970
00:49:38,308 --> 00:49:40,852
I only did this because there wasn't one
already available.

971
00:49:40,852 --> 00:49:43,397
I don't understand,
I mean, to me it's it's crazy.

972
00:49:43,397 --> 00:49:46,358
Why are there's hundreds
of commentaries on Romans

973
00:49:46,483 --> 00:49:50,112
and not one that okay,
this is the early Christians.

974
00:49:50,112 --> 00:49:53,115
I mean, there is one series,
the ancient Christian series,

975
00:49:53,573 --> 00:49:57,619
but they they mix Augustine
in with the other early Christians.

976
00:49:57,619 --> 00:49:59,955
It's like, well, it's one or the other.

977
00:49:59,955 --> 00:50:02,958
I mean, you can't just mix them together,
you know?

978
00:50:03,083 --> 00:50:04,459
Otherwise it's a good series.

979
00:50:04,459 --> 00:50:07,671
I mean, I use them a lot,
but it's always puzzled me

980
00:50:07,671 --> 00:50:11,425
that they don't seem to see that
there's like a delineation point there.

981
00:50:11,425 --> 00:50:15,387
You're saying, yeah, in particularly
in Romans, you can't mix Augustine

982
00:50:15,387 --> 00:50:19,516
with say, origin or Chrysostom
or Clement of Alexander.

983
00:50:19,516 --> 00:50:20,183
Justin Martyr.

984
00:50:20,183 --> 00:50:21,309
I mean, it's like,

985
00:50:21,309 --> 00:50:26,106
hey, they're on two different sides
of the fence and one was before the other.

986
00:50:26,106 --> 00:50:28,066
You know,
Augustine came after these people.

987
00:50:28,066 --> 00:50:31,069
And so you got to look at
what was before Augustine.

988
00:50:31,278 --> 00:50:32,988
So that's what I've tried to do.

989
00:50:32,988 --> 00:50:34,614
I've tried to make it, like I say, user

990
00:50:34,614 --> 00:50:38,577
friendly, but again, it is nothing
I can take credit for.

991
00:50:38,577 --> 00:50:40,162
I was as mixed up as anyone else.

992
00:50:40,162 --> 00:50:42,164
What do I do with Romans here?

993
00:50:42,164 --> 00:50:47,044
And I had to like, say, a good year
and a half of work in this, another,

994
00:50:47,878 --> 00:50:50,964
six months to a year of
just the research of, you know, reading it

995
00:50:50,964 --> 00:50:54,342
for all of it to make sense, to get in
my brain finally, you know,

996
00:50:55,510 --> 00:50:57,262
but, yeah, we can learn so much from

997
00:50:57,262 --> 00:51:00,640
the people who taught and learned it
from the apostles, you know?

998
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:00,891
I mean,

999
00:51:00,891 --> 00:51:05,062
it's like we have it it you know,
God made sure those writings weren't lost.

1000
00:51:05,395 --> 00:51:08,607
It's like, to me, it's just absurd
that Christians don't go there.

1001
00:51:08,607 --> 00:51:12,360
I mean, that was my first thought
was, well, how did the people who lived

1002
00:51:12,360 --> 00:51:14,362
after the apostles,
how did they understand it?

1003
00:51:14,362 --> 00:51:17,908
You know, and it's really odd to me
that people don't go there, you know,

1004
00:51:17,991 --> 00:51:21,161
but anyway,
so that that might be an option

1005
00:51:21,161 --> 00:51:22,788
then for some to start
digging into some of that,

1006
00:51:22,788 --> 00:51:25,624
that source material,
you know, those early church writings,

1007
00:51:25,624 --> 00:51:29,211
you know, and, and even some of the stuff
you were pulling out here in Romans nine,

1008
00:51:29,211 --> 00:51:32,297
like the different layers
that you were saying, okay, here's here's

1009
00:51:32,297 --> 00:51:35,342
what Paul saying, but
it's referring back to this and, oh, yeah,

1010
00:51:35,342 --> 00:51:39,638
this Old Testament past like that stuff
that's that's pretty easy to miss.

1011
00:51:39,638 --> 00:51:41,807
You know, there's other layers in there
and dig through that.

1012
00:51:41,807 --> 00:51:45,268
So mean if you were going
to pick just one person and

1013
00:51:46,228 --> 00:51:47,813
you know, I took

1014
00:51:47,813 --> 00:51:50,774
a pretty, you know, good sampling.

1015
00:51:51,525 --> 00:51:54,277
John Chrysostom, who,

1016
00:51:54,277 --> 00:51:57,405
was the well, he was actually an elder

1017
00:51:57,405 --> 00:52:00,700
in the Church of Antioch
when he preached through Romans.

1018
00:52:00,992 --> 00:52:02,119
We have his sermons.

1019
00:52:02,119 --> 00:52:05,372
He just went through verse
by verse there online.

1020
00:52:05,372 --> 00:52:08,375
I mean, you know,
a person can download those for free.

1021
00:52:09,126 --> 00:52:11,336
His sermons on Romans, I was going to say.

1022
00:52:11,336 --> 00:52:14,005
Yeah, if you want. Oh,
I don't want David Bercot. Okay, fine.

1023
00:52:14,005 --> 00:52:15,674
If you're going to just take one source

1024
00:52:15,674 --> 00:52:18,176
now, like I say,
I wanted to get a broad perspective.

1025
00:52:18,176 --> 00:52:21,179
I mean, Chrysostom is a fallen human
like everyone else.

1026
00:52:21,763 --> 00:52:23,849
But, yeah, he's pretty good.

1027
00:52:23,849 --> 00:52:26,852
He he sees these things.

1028
00:52:27,102 --> 00:52:30,856
There are a few times that it seemed
like most of the other early

1029
00:52:30,856 --> 00:52:33,567
Christians
were taking a little different position,

1030
00:52:33,567 --> 00:52:36,319
but in general,
what he says is what they were saying.

1031
00:52:36,319 --> 00:52:39,406
So yeah, that would be a a source
that's available for free.

1032
00:52:39,406 --> 00:52:42,617
And, and somebody who,
like I say, would, would like to leave me

1033
00:52:42,617 --> 00:52:43,952
out of the picture. That's that's fine.

1034
00:52:43,952 --> 00:52:45,996
Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's up there.

1035
00:52:45,996 --> 00:52:47,747
And so that would be another source. Yeah.

1036
00:52:48,707 --> 00:52:48,999
Yeah.

1037
00:52:48,999 --> 00:52:53,211
Well thanks for thanks
for being willing to tackle this one

1038
00:52:53,211 --> 00:52:56,631
because this is a, this is a big topic
and I know it gets really controversial

1039
00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:58,300
sometimes with people.

1040
00:52:58,300 --> 00:53:00,677
And I'm really curious
what the comments are going to be like.

1041
00:53:00,677 --> 00:53:03,555
On this one. Yeah.

1042
00:53:03,555 --> 00:53:07,267
But but it's really important to engage
with this stuff, you know, this this is,

1043
00:53:07,559 --> 00:53:10,353
I know like, know,
you know, especially as a teen, you know,

1044
00:53:10,353 --> 00:53:12,522
I had a lot of questions about that
because you read Scripture

1045
00:53:12,522 --> 00:53:14,983
and some of it sounds very much like,
oh, you were chosen by God.

1046
00:53:14,983 --> 00:53:16,985
And then the next part is like,
oh, no, free will.

1047
00:53:16,985 --> 00:53:19,571
And like,
you're trying to put the pieces together

1048
00:53:19,571 --> 00:53:23,700
and having people like yourself willing to
to dig into it and share what you find,

1049
00:53:23,783 --> 00:53:26,161
I think that's really valuable
and I appreciate that.

1050
00:53:26,161 --> 00:53:27,412
Yeah.

1051
00:53:27,412 --> 00:53:28,038
Okay.

1052
00:53:28,038 --> 00:53:28,955
Wow. Well, thanks.

1053
00:53:28,955 --> 00:53:31,666
Thanks for coming on the podcast,
David. You're very welcome.

1054
00:53:31,666 --> 00:53:32,125
All right.

1055
00:53:33,585 --> 00:53:36,421
Thanks for listening to this episode
with David Bercot.

1056
00:53:36,421 --> 00:53:37,547
If you found this interesting,

1057
00:53:37,547 --> 00:53:41,885
you should check out the other episode
we did with him on the book of Romans.

1058
00:53:41,885 --> 00:53:44,679
You can find that
linked in the description below.

1059
00:53:44,679 --> 00:53:47,557
If you enjoy Anabaptist perspectives,
leave a rating and a review

1060
00:53:47,557 --> 00:53:49,059
on your favorite podcast app.

1061
00:53:49,059 --> 00:53:51,686
It helps more people find this podcast.

1062
00:53:51,686 --> 00:53:54,856
Thanks so much for listening
and we'll see you in the next episode.