In the sermons on Romans 9-11 that begin today, I may at times fail to satisfy your reason, and as a result you may find these seermons a disappointment. I don't like to diappoint any congregation, especially one that listens as well as you do. But I had rather disappoint you by saying what you don't expect and doing it well, than by saying what you do expect, and doing it poorly.

So, let me proceed to say what you don't expect on a matter that often generates far more heat than light, and which occupies Romans nine: the doctrine of election. Verses 1-3 begin where we don't expect the apostle to begin, with intense personal sorrow. We can appreciate the sorrow, if we remember how chapter eight comes to an end.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:38-39).

Amd someone was sure to ask the apostle, "Oh, is that so? What about Israel? Aren't they the Chosen People of God? It looks like they got separated from His love. They rejected Jesus as Messiah."

Paul must have felt that question more keenly than the many other questions he tried to answer in Romans. It hit him where it hurt, and all the more because he was a Jew himself. Listen to his sorrow in verse 1-3.

I speak the truth in Christ - I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit - I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.

It is fitting that such feeling should stand at the entrance to Romans nine. The apostle's sorrow is the attitude that will prevent intellectual arrogance from dominating our interaction with the theme of the chapter.

Among his flesh and blood kin, the Jews, rejection of Jesus had gathered momentum all across the Roman Empire. Their rejection was so enormous and so unexpected that it required an explanation from someone.

But first, it roused the pathos of a broken heart. The pathos opens chapter nine and welcomes us a sign, even as a kind of prophecy. For right here you can see zee the sunny good sense of the New Testament, namely, that knowledge is subordinate to love.

Here on the threshold into the chambers of the Trinity, the apostle was moved, not by the passion to know, but by the passion to love. His heart was in the right place, and so he was able to keep his head amid the dark doctrines where so many have lost their heads and turned their hearts to stone.

It is sub-Christian to become incensed about the doctrine of election, when we have no tears for those who may be affected by the doctrine of election. Let's keep our priorities clear, and we will make our way tolerably well through the mysteries of Romans nine. A broken heart for people whom we do know will prevent a hard heart over mysteries we can never know.

What broke the apostle's heart was the sprreading rejection of Christ among Jews in the face of their unparalleled privileges. Verses 4-5 sum up those privileges.

Theirs is the adoption as sons. Isn't that interesting? Israel itself was not always God's chosen. Out of all the nations on earth God adopted them. It's a hint of things to come. Theirs (is) the divine glory, the glory of God as manifested to Israel throughouttheir long journey as a nation. Theirs are the covenants, those acts by which God bound Himself irrevocably to Israel's present and future. Theirs is the receiving of the law. The law, the Torah, laid in the soul of Israel their understanding of who God is and what He required of them as His people. Theirs is the temple worship in all its splendor. And theirs is the promises, such as the promise to bless all the nations of the earth through Israel. Theirs are the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Finally, from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen. Sometimes, I think Jesus is disrespected all around. Jews don't care for Him, because He is too much of a Gentile, and Gentiles don't care for Him, because He is entirely too Jewish. It is another example of the sting of particularity that characterizes God's ways with mankind.

The apostle listed this catalogue of incomparable privilege and wondered how so many who had received such privilege had missed the point so badly. It was a mystery.

The Path Less Traveled
Chapters 9-11 offer the apostle's answer to this mystery. His answer has provided language for the doctrine of election and predestination that most people have in their minds. I think I would be accurate to state that doctrine in the following words.

Election and predestination mean that God made a decision before the universe began to divide all human beings who would ever live on earth into two groups: the saved and the damned. He did this without respect of persons and without regard to anyone's moral achievements. (See Lorraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, 83).

You need to know that I do not believe that, and I do not teach that. I respect you, if you do believe it. Honorable and capable Christians have believed it. If you disagree with me, I hope you will respect me as well. If you are uneasy with the doctrine as I have just tated it, or if you dismiss that doctrine as good for nothing but starting an argument, I hope you will give what I say about this doctrine careful hearing. I share your uneasiness, and I have an alternative. I am not interested in arguments that go nowhere, and I have an alternative.

I did not invent this alternative. Honorable and capable Christians before me have articulated it, and they have given the Church a fresh way to understand the biblical language that sheds light on contemporary life. I commend it warmly to your consciences. Let me introduce this alternative to you by stating two of its governing principles.

First, we will never understand election and predestination, if we do not understand God's purpose in election. The apostle states this purpose near the end of these three chapters in Romans 11:32. For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. God means His every act of election to expand the circle of mercy among the human family. Angus Dei, qui tollit peccata muni, miserere nos. Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. In so praying, we appeal to the center of the Father's electing purpose.

Second, election and predestination are not decisions about who is saved and who is damned. They are decisions about who will carry forward God's purpose in the world and make it possible for Him to expand the circle of mercy among them all. The language of Romans nine is not about eternal destiny; it is about a mission in this present world. I will come back more than once to these governing principles. So, now, let's listen to the apostle's language with them as our guides. The apostle begins with an assertion and proceeds to an explanation.

Election Is Not a Matter of Nature or Virtue
Verse six makes the assertion. It is not as though God's word had failed. God's word is what Paul in verse eleven calls God's purpose. He is saying that the large-scale failure of his Jewish kinsmen to accept Jesus as the Messiah does not mean that God's purpose for mankind has failed.

"My heart is breaking," he says, "over my Jewish brothers who have rejected Jesus. If that meant God's purpose for mankind had failed, my heart would break a second time, even more disastrously. But God's purpose hasn't failed, and I can show you why. In fact, I can show you why from the experience of Israel."

His explanation begins in the rest of verse six and the first half of verse seven with a play on words. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendents are they all Abraham's children. It seems like an inappropriate time to make a play on words, but Paul's aim here is most erious.

What he was driving at begins to come a bit clearer in the rest of verse seven. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words Abraham had many children, but they were not all equal. Isaac seems to have help a unique place among Abraham's offspring. So, what made him unique?

The first half of verse eight explains. In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children. Of all Abraham's children only Isaac was considered to be God's child. So, what made him God's child and different from all of Abraham's other children?

Look at the rest of verse eight and verse nine. But it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son." So Isaac differed from all of Abraham's other children, because his birth was the result of God's promise to Abraham and Sarah.

Paul summarized the circumstances of Isaac's birth in Romans 4:19-21. Without weakening in his faith, he (Abraham) faced the fact that his body was as good as dead - since he was about a hundred years old - and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, beign fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

God chose Isaac to carry forward His purpose of expanding the circle of mercy among the human family. Paul's point is that the chosen descendants of Abraham are the ones who carry forward that purpose. Verses 10-13 tell another story from the family lore of Israel that make the same point but take it one step further.

Verse ten says, Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. When Isaac grew up, he married Rebekah, and she announced one day she was going to have a baby; only it wasn't one baby. She was expecting twins. That brings us to the twist in the story.

Verses 11-12: Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad ... she was told (by God), "The older will serve the younger." It was highly unusual in their culture under any circumstances for a younger son to be given preference over the firstborn son. It was absolutely unprecedented for that decision to be made before any child was born. So, what is Paul driving at?

First, he is making the same point he did with the story about Isaac. God chose Isaac to carry forward His purpose of expanding the circle of mercy among the human family. The chosen descendants of Abraham are the ones who carry forward that purpose.

But in the part of those two verses that I left out Paul takes that point an important step further. He says that the choice of Jacob over Esau took place before either was born in order that God's purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls. The apostle is making it clear that God's purpose for mankind did not depend on human goodness or human evil, but on God Himself.

Widespread Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Messiah may have broken Paul's heart, but it did not mean that God'spurpose of expanding the circle of mercy among the human family had failed. As Paul's ministry demonstrated, God had elected Gentiles along with Jews who believed in Jesus, as surely as He had chosen isaac and Jacob to carry forward His merciful purpose.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Now, let me ask you a couple of questions. Does the apostle say anything here about being saved or being damned? He does not. From what you know about the story of Isaac and his brother, Ishmael, and about the story of Jacob and Esau, do we have any reason to think that Ishmael and Esau were damned? I have read the stories about these men in Genesis many times, and God blesses them richly.

Verse 13 of course makes it sound like Esau had a bad end. Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." But in Luke 14:26 jesus says, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple."

In the parallel passage in Matthew 10:37 Jesus says, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Love and hate in the Bible are often terms of choosing or not choosing, not terms of emotional intensity. It would be appropriate to understand verse 13 as saying, "Jacob have I chosen to carry forward my merciful purpose, but Esau I have not chosen for that."

These opening statements about election in Romans 9:7-13 do not focus on the eternal destiny of the men mentioned. They have everything to do with who will carry forward God's purpose of expanding the circule of mercy among the human family. And God's act of electing lets us know that His commitment to that purpose will never go away.

In Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan wrote, "Then I saw in my Dream that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a place where was a Fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it always casting much Water upon it to quench it; yet did the Fire burn higher and hotter. Then said Christian, What means this? ... So he had him about the backside of the wall, where he saw a man witha Vessel of Oil in his hand, of the which he did also continually cast (but secretly) into the Fire."

The "man with the Vessel of Oil in his hand" is our electing God. The "Fire burning against a wall" that unquenchably burns "higher and hotter" is the Church. We are part of that elect company. Here heaven and earth intersect on the journey to salvation and the New Jerusalem. Rejoice and stay put. Don't distance yourself from this fire.