https://youtu.be/GeOdBv762JQ
In our verse by verse study of Romans last time we completed our Expanded Translation Rom 9:14; "Therefore to what conclusion are we forced? There is no injustice with the God, is there? Emphatically no."
We noted that this verse explains that is blasphemous to impugn God's integrity and that God's perfect righteousness and justice supersede such an accusation.
Anthropopathisms such as hate express God's policy using a language of accommodation. Hate is a sin but perfect God cannot sin.
The anthropopathism does not imply that God is prejudiced; they merely express a situation with the language of accommodation using a human frame of reference, so that the issue can be properly understood.
The anthropopathism explains that God's omniscience knew that the free will of Esau would refuse God's justice by rejecting Jesus Christ and the free will of Jacob would accept God's justice by believing in Jesus Christ.
God has the right to bless or judge on the basis of His justice. God's righteousness demands equivalent righteousness and God's justice can only execute what God's righteousness demands so any judicial decision from God's justice cannot be unrighteous.
When the unbeliever rejects Jesus Christ as savior he also rejects God's righteousness and justice and the alternative to God's righteousness and justice is always judgment.
This also becomes a problem for the believer who actually possesses God's imputed judicial righteousness that was received at salvation. No believer is ever commanded to reinvent the wheel. The wheel is an analogy that represents God's plan from eternity past.
The wheel must turn on its axle and every believer must choose an axle to run on. He must choose God's axle that is based on God's perfect imputed judicial righteousness or his own axle is based on his own relative self-righteousness from being a good person.
That means that after salvation the believer must decide between the axle of God's righteousness or his own self-righteousness.
Choosing one's own self-righteousness is blasphemy because it impugns the character of God. God has given us His perfect imputed judicial righteousness that is exactly what we need for His plan but by using to our own self-righteousness we impugn and malign God's perfect character by rejecting God's provision.
The doctrine of God's essence resolves the apparent (but not real) contradiction between God's sovereignty and man's free will. It resolves it in the sphere of God's decree and the content of God's decree.
Man was given free will in order to resolve the angelic conflict. That means that man's free will must be tested as the means of resolving the angelic conflict. It was tested from the beginning in perfect environment.
In the Garden of Eden only one tree was forbidden and that one forbidden thing, became an instant test of free volition.
Innocent man in the garden could only sin by using his own free will to disobey God's one prohibition. God's prohibition came from His sovereignty, so the test was man's free will versus God's sovereignty.
When man's negative volition to God's command originated the first sin in the human race and the immediate result was spiritual death, first the woman, then the man. At that point God also provided another tree, the cross as another test of volition.
So with the original tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was a negative mandate; but the second tree, the cross, there was a positive mandate: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ."
God's omniscience knew in eternity past that Esau would reject Jesus Christ as savior and that Jacob would believe in Jesus Christ. In fact, in eternity past God's omniscience fed only the facts into the decree. Those facts included who would believe and who would reject Jesus Christ as savior.
Eternity plus God's omniscience means that there never was a time when God did not know everyone who would believe in Jesus Christ and everyone who would reject Jesus Christ as savior.
The unconditional promise to Abraham was given to a mature believer. These unconditional promises could only be fulfilled to a believer who was a descendant of Abraham because only believers have the imputed judicial righteousness of God and eternal life.
Abraham's unbelieving genetic biological descendants could never receive the promise, only his spiritual descendants could. That is why God only reiterated the promises regarding Israel to Isaac in the second generation, and Jacob in the third even though there were half brothers and full brothers in each generation.
God could only give Jacob the promise that he gave to Abraham and Isaac the chosen people promises, the land promises, the unconditional promises for the Millennium and the eternal state.
Even though all of Esau's sins were imputed to Jesus Christ on the cross and judged Esau rejected Jesus Christ as savior. From his own free will he said no. He had the same equal opportunity as his twin brother but he rejected it.
Esau's negative volition placed him outside of the Abrahamic covenant because of his unbelief God's promises to Abraham could never apply to Esau and they could only apply to Jacob.
God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Esau. Now we have Jews in every generation who have the biological genes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not their God because of their unbelief. John 8:44;
In their unbelief they really follow the pattern of Esau because if you do not believe in Jesus Christ you do not have God's imputed judicial righteousness, and if you do not have His judicial righteousness imputed these promises of being the elect people of God, and possessing and occupying a land forever, are impossible.
We see from this that God's promises can only apply to the spiritual descendants of Abraham never to the biological genetic descendants.
When salvation is rejected God has the sovereign right to judge and condemn, just as when salvation is accepted God has the sovereign right to impute His judicial righteousness and eternal life, and then at a future time to provide blessing to that imputed judicial righteousness of God.
God has rights that are compatible with His character. God did not save Jacob because he was moral and good and self-righteous and He did not condemn and judge Esau because he was bad, evil, or sinful.
The key to one's adjustment to God's justice is their attitude toward the Lord Jesus Christ, the only savior. John 3:16; John 3:36;
Rom 9:15; In this verse Paul makes a turn to sanctified sarcasm. He compares the best of self-righteous Jews, like the rich young ruler, to a Gentile who the Jews completely detested.
That Gentile is the Pharaoh of the Exodus generation. We will see here that Paul has used his final and last appeal to his countrymen. He realizes that the Jews are racially smart, that they are very quick to pick up on sarcasm.
In fact, they have used their sarcasm on others because of their great mentality.
Now the greatest genius of history other than Jesus Christ who is also, a Jew absolutely floors and shocks the entire Jewish nation by his comment that the unbelieving Jew is no better than the Pharaoh who hardened his heart and who in turn was the beneficiary of one of the most unusual experiments in history - God hardened his heart.
The verse begins with Moses who other than Jesus was is the greatest genius in history. Other than Jesus, in the Old Testament Moses is the greatest and in the New Testament Paul is the greatest. The Lord Jesus Christ who as the God-Man is absolutely unique is the absolute greatest of all mankind.
Verse 15 starts with a dissertation on the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. But we do not start with Pharaoh; we start with the greatest man of his own generation and one of the two greatest men of history.
"Gar" (For) is the explanatory use of a postpositive conjunctive particle that starts his explanation of the problem the Jews had at the time when the Jewish nation being formed in Egypt.
Next comes the present active indicative from the verb "lego" (to speak, to say, or to communicate) in the aoristic present tense that describes periodic action in present time.
The aorist tense usually presents periodic action in past time but sometimes it is necessary to demonstrate it in the present, therefore the aoristic present tense. The active voice: God produces the action of the verb in His dialogue with Moses in Exod 33:19.
The indicative mood is declarative describing the historical reality of this dialogue and its quotation here as introducing the principle and the problem that "All Israel is not Israel." There is also a dative singular indirect object from the proper noun "Moses" (Moses) transliterated from the Hebrew in to the Greek and then into the English.
Because of the golden calf incident God had threatened to destroy Israel. Exodus 33:19; All of my good (attributes revealed) I will cause to pass before your face, and I will proclaim the person of Jehovah before you."
How is He going to do it? By letting him see some form? No, finite man cannot visibly see infinite God and live. Next He adds how it is all going to be done - "and I will be gracious."
That is the way you see the glory of God. God's glory is revealed to man through grace. But this grace is not the grace that we have understood in the past, as God giving something we do not earn or deserve.
This is that same doctrine of grace but through the doctrine of the divine decree because the divine decree contains all the facts of history including every thought, every decision, and every action of every person.
That includes every category of every individual who has believed in the Lord. God's revelation is that grace is God's policy.
The part quoted begins with the word "I will be gracious." In the Hebrew of Exodus 33 this is in the qal perfect tense, that means, "I was always gracious."
He was gracious in the divine decree. He provided for Israel always knowing how Israel would become reversionistic and reject Him. Then He adds another verb: "and I will have mercy," the piel perfect tense of "racham" that describes the application of grace.
He is saying not only is He (the divine decree gracious but in addition He will have mercy. In the qual stem "racham" means to love but in the piel stem it means to have compassion or mercy. "On whom I will have mercy."
Again we have the piel stem of "racham" but this time it is in the imperfect tense that describes intensified love because compassion is an intensification of the application of love.
The first use of this word here is in the piel perfect; that is describing the divine decree. The second use it is the piel imperfect that is for the actual function of the print out of the print out of the decree as history. "I have been gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I have had mercy on whom I will have mercy."
In other words, in eternity past in the divine decree God demonstrated His grace. That is His glory. But that is only part of His glory. Perfect God provides a perfect plan for imperfect people and until we get to heaven that is the glory of God.
Translation of Exod 33:19: "And he (God) said, all of my good (tob) I will cause to pass in front of you (doctrine of divine decree related to history), therefore I will proclaim the name of Jehovah before you (you never learn the glory of God until you learn about the person of God); furthermore, I have been gracious (qal perfect of chanan; the divine decree) to whom I will be gracious (qal imperfect of chanan), and I have had mercy (piel perfect of racham) on whom I will have mercy (piel imperfect of racham)."
This tells us that in eternity past God fed this into the decree; He has been gracious. It is going to come out of the decree via the print out as the application of grace to life as grace in action or mercy.
Exod 33:20; "But he said, You cannot see my face; for man (lit. son of earth. This is finite man) cannot see me and live." In other words, 'You can see me but you can't see me and if you try to you will die.
You can't see my form while you are a son of earth, while you have a human body.' To see God with the eye is beyond the possibility of finite man, but believers see God with the soul every time they learn Bible doctrine. The soul contains thought; thought is life because a person is what they think.