15 God’s Sovereign Choice (Romans 9:14-33)

Krisan Marotta: Okay. Well, um my daughter uh plays on a travel soccer team, and you know I like to tell stories about her soccer adventures because she's really good anyway and uh it's fun. And around U13 uh her coach stopped playing all the players equally during the games. Up until that time you could pretty much count every player would play so many minutes of the game. Um and when they got to the U-13, which is the 12-year-olds, he stopped doing that and he had a little mini rebellion on his hands. Some of the uh players and some of the parents started voicing their accusations that he was being unfair because he didn't treat everyone exactly the same, he didn't pass out the same rewards to people, um, players that mixed practice didn't play as much as those who who had been at practice, and some people he worked on some skills a lot harder than others. And um so after one of the games, all the parents confronted him, and um he very calmly listened to all their complaints, and then he said, Well, everything you said is true, um, but this is soccer. He said, You're not describing injustice, you're describing soccer. This isn't you nine anymore, and um basically asserted he's the coach and he has the right to make his own judgments and that players under his uh command are are exactly that, they're under his authority and they're players, not equals. So um that's essentially what's going on today in our discussion of Romans 9. We, in a sense, Paul's debating with God. And the thing to remember is when you debate with God, it's not a discussion between equals. Um it's a similar theme. Like a coach and his players, a discussion with God is one where he's got authority and we don't. There's a difference, and it's gonna be a debate with God's gonna be different than a debate you and I might have because to up for us, we would appeal to the Bible, and that would be the authority with God. There is nothing to appeal to above God. God is the is the standard, and that so there's no standard of justice above God to which God should be held. So the other thing to remember as we go into this is that debate with God generally changes us, not God. So, you know, he doesn't need to have philosophical discussions with us. He does invite us to speak to him and to learn from him and to listen. And the questions that are raised in this chapter I think are important and inevitable, and we shouldn't be afraid to ask them. But in the end, in the long run, the the one that's gonna change in the debate is us. It's going to be about us. He doesn't need information from us, he doesn't need answers. So I think as we confront these, we have to be ready for the fact that we're gonna discover things about ourselves, we're gonna learn about God, and that's gonna affect us and to maybe revolutionize us or change us. So the the debate with God takes place for our sake, not for his sake. And the other um thing to keep in mind as we go into this is we can't fit God into our theological box. Um, I think part of the problems when you hit a chapter like Romans 9 is we've grown up thinking of God as this safe, pain, kind of easy to understand sugar daddy who, you know, answers all our prayers and gives us what we want, and he we kind of fit him into our comfortable little box that we've made for him. And then we hit a passage like Romans 9, which kind of forces us to break through all those walls in the box, and um yet you just have to realize that God's bigger than any theological box we design. So let me review where we are. We're in Romans 9, and uh well, let me review where we are in the book. The first eight chapters that we studied in the fall, Paul gives us his argument that we are justified by grace on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ, and that alone. And that raises the question at the end of that section of is the gospel too good to be true? Is it such good news that how could it possibly be that good? And that's really what he's answering now, and the way he's answering it is saying, okay, let's look at how God dealt with Israel. If God set the Israelites apart and made them his people and chose them and called them, and they've turned against him, they've rejected him in some in large numbers, then how do we know he's trustworthy? How do we know that he's called us and he's and we're not going to fall away too? So the underlying question is, is the gospel too good to be true? And the way he's answering that is saying, well, how did God deal with Israel? If he was trustworthy with Israel, then we know he will be trustworthy with us. So that's the whole set the 9 through 11, chapters 9 through 11 are are really discussing that theme, and they're all one unit. So last week we looked at the first 13 verses, and in that section, Paul argues that God does not base salvation on natural privileges like inheritance or ancestry or education or opportunity. Um all those things are blessings and they're great to have, but they don't guarantee you salvation. So just because you're born into a Christian family does not mean you necessarily will be a Christian in the same way, just as you were born Jewish in the line of Abraham doesn't mean you were necessarily um chosen. So the second principle he pulls out of that then is that salvation is always based on divine promise. So God Himself promises to act and he acts. He promises to save some and he does. And that was in the section with Abraham and Sarah, where the birth of Isaac was a a biological miracle to make partly to make the point that it is God who will bring about salvation. And then the third point, which is probably the hardest one for us to to deal with, is that God's choice is not based on the behavior of individuals. That's the one we have a hard time with. He looks at Jacob and Esau and he says they were twins, they were of the same father, and before they were even born and had done anything, either good or bad, God had declared that he would say, Jacob, I have loved, and Esau I have hated. So salvation is based on God's promise. It's not based on human works, it's not something we've done to earn. Um and remember, part of the point he made was we're not born neutral. So it's not as if Jacob and Esau or any of us were born neutral and then we had a choice, oh, we're gonna go this way or that way, we're gonna be good or bad. Paul's point is we're all born lost, we are all born broken, and the fact is God will save some of us. So that raises the question, well, if it's not natural advantage, what what is it? How does God choose? And Paul's gonna answer that in the section we're gonna look at today, starting in verse 14. So that's the question we're gonna take up now. And actually, this is a hard section, but it's a wonderful section because we're gonna get answers to questions I've always wanted answers to. Is it fair? He's gonna deal with that directly. Well, is it fair for God to save Moses and not Pharaoh, or to save me and not my brother? Or how fair is that? He's gonna deal with that. And he's gonna answer the question well, if we're born sinful and we can't do anything about it, how can God blame us? Haven't you always wanted an answer to that? Paul's gonna give you four answers to that question. Um I was so happy to find this in one sense because I've read all these, you know, books and papers and people dealing with these questions and why is there sorrow in the world, and no one ever looked at Romans 9. It's like, we have an answer. We have four of them. So it's gonna be a great day. You're gonna love it. All right, well, let's start in um 9.14. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? So he's setting up, okay, Jacob, I have loved Esau hated, that's the verse right before. He chose one and passed over the other. Is that fair? That's the question he's raising. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. Okay, what's he saying here? The ul what he's the main point of this is the ultimate reason for God's choice is that God chose. Um it's pretty clear in verse 16 salvation's not based on human effort and not based on human works. That's what he means by human will or exertion. It's not our choice and it's not our effort, it's based on God who has mercy. Now, that's kind of hard to grasp, I think. We may not like that, but that's pretty clear what it says. Um, it makes us face the fact that God is sovereign and that he is not responsible to anyone or answering to anyone. I think part of the reason we have trouble with that is because we look at sovereignty and we connect it with tyranny, because to us, to give any person we know that kind of power it would destroy us. We have fought against that. We um, you know, we see that in our national life, in our family life, you know, teenagers don't want their parents to have that kind of authority over them. We in, you know, individual relationships, even in our government, we set up all these checks and balances in our in our government based on the idea that one person should not have that kind of absolute power because they'll abuse it. So we come to God and we think, how can he have that kind of absolute sovereignty or that kind of absolute power? And it troubles us, but God is not like us. God is not fallen, God is is not sinful. And what you have to come back to is if God had to answer to anyone, if there was some standard or being or person above God to which God must answer, then he's not really God, is he? I mean, the very nature of God is that he's sovereign. He does what he pleases and he does what he wants to do. What we have to get rid of is the idea that somehow his sovereignty is destructive to us or dangerous. As we've seen through Romans 1 through 8, it's not, it's a blessing to us. So God declares his sovereignty, but look at how Paul reasons here. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. The first thing to remember is we don't start out neutral, we start out condemned. And we saw that in the first four chapters of the book, um, that we all begin life with this spiritual disease, we all begin fallen, we're born in rebellion, we don't start out neutral and then we're rewarded for positive living or condemned for negative living. We all start out condemned, and God in his mercy rescues some. Now it's interesting to me that he picks Moses and Pharaoh as his examples. Um think about this for a minute. Moses is one of probably the exemplars of the faith. He is one of the best people who lived, and Pharaoh, by contrast, is among the worst. Moses was called the friend of God. He's said to have been the meekest man on the face of the earth. His humility, his gentleness, his godliness is commended in the scriptures. Um he's repeatedly talked about how much he loved God and followed him. And um yet God says, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and compassion on whom I have compassion. And this quote is taken from Exodus 33, which was one of the high points of Moses' life. In that section, Moses is entering into the tent where God meets him, you know, and the cloud comes down and settles on the tent, and all the people are kind of standing outside, you know, with their jaws on the ground, amazed that Moses has just walked into this tent, and then the Shekinah glory of God has settled down on it, and uh God drops down in their midst, and it says that God spoke to Moses as a man would speak to his friend. That's a pretty amazing claim. And then, so this is one of these moments where Moses is in God's presence, he's it's rather remarkable, and then in the midst of that, God says, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. What's he saying? Don't conclude that there's something about Moses that made him so special that I would treat him this way. Even at our best, God's saying, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. So there's not something, you know, winsome or special about Moses. He's announcing, I'm going to do what I'm going to do. I'm going to choose who I'm going to choose, and I'm not responsible to you because of something I see in you. So he's looking at Moses at his best and announcing, it's still my choice. The best you have to offer is not enough to force me to choose you. It's not something that requires me to save. So none of us are worthy to approach God. We receive his mercy because he's merciful and because he's compassionate. So he's saying, Here's the best of man, it's still my choice. Now, in contrast, here's Pharaoh, who's was a one among the worst. He was vile, he was cruel, uh, human life meant nothing to him. He was perfectly willing to exploit the entire Israelite nation for his economic prosperity and his means and destroy those around him to kill his rivals. And yet, Paul doesn't say that God rejected Moses Pharaoh because he was evil. He says he rejected Pharaoh because he had a plan, he had a purpose, he had a reason, and there was something beyond which, um, beyond just Pharaoh and Moses. He did it that he might be glorified. So when the Exodus took place, it was such a miracle, it the word of this spread throughout throughout the ancient world. And while Israel was wandering around in the wilderness, the people in the land of Canaan were scared to death of them because they'd heard about this miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. Um, it went forth everywhere. In fact, hundreds of years later, the Philistines are still talking about the Exodus. If you look in 1 Samuel 4, they're afraid of the presence of the Israelites because they're going, they're those people who crossed over the Red Sea. They're the ones, their God did that. And Paul's saying, God hardened Pharaoh in order to do something glorious that his name might be proclaimed throughout the world. So neither the point is neither Moses nor Pharaoh deserved anything but hell. They they didn't neither Moses at his best was not required to be saved. He didn't deserve God's mercy, and we don't have the right to presume that. Um and Pharaoh at his worst was just an example of humanity being that hasn't been redeemed. So verse 16 sums it up. It does not therefore depend on man's desire or effort, but on God who has mercy. Now, Paul takes up the next question. You will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who resists his will? And that's our gut reaction, isn't it? Well, if it doesn't depend on us, and we're born this way, and we can't do anything about it, we can't change ourselves, why does he still find fault? Why does God say you're still to blame? I mean, I think that's um that accusation I think we'll hear day to day in in all forms. Um and it comes up, well, if God is sovereign, why is there still evil in the world? Um, if God is sovereign, why does he let good people suffer? I mean, it's just it's all the same question. And he's asking, okay, if Pharaoh couldn't resist his will, and God used him to, as part of this plan, to bring Moses and the Israelites out of the ed out of uh Egypt, and Pharaoh is merely an instrument in his hands, and so God uses people, at least some people let them do evil because he's got purposes. How can he turn around and blame them for them? Okay, that sounds really logical. Um, and it I will, as I said, it's a question I've always wanted to answer, and Paul's going to give us four answers to that. So let's look at the first one, verse 20. But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Well, what is molded? Say to the molder, why have you made me like this? All right, what Paul's saying is basically we'll answer the question, but first, let's examine your credentials. Let's look at it this way. Consider the difference between man and God. Here we have man, he's finite, that means his knowledge is limited, his understanding is limited, he's frail, his strength is limited, his vision is limited, he only lasts a little while. I mean, the Bible tells us our lives are like a breath or a puff of air, and then it's gone in comparison to eternity. So we're weak, we're unable to do much. You look through the course of human history, and even our best plans end in disaster sometimes, and we demonstrate over and over again that we're foolies. So with all our logic, with all our blessings, we make these atrocious blunders, you know, on the big scale and on the little scale. You've probably had instances where you're really trying to do the right thing and you end up hurting someone. You know, it's like I didn't mean to do it. You know, I had the best of intentions. I was trying so hard to do something good for my family or my neighbor, and I ended up stepping on their toes. You know, even in little situations we make those mistakes. So he's saying, here's man. Now we're standing up to God who is infinite in knowledge, infinite in power, infinite in magnitude, wise, merciful, all-knowing, knows everything from beginning to end. Um, above all things, are we really qualified to ask this question? So he's saying, I think part of it are lot is it that our logic is wrong. There are mysteries that we do not understand. There are objectives that we do not know, and there are forces in the universe and in God that we just are not equipped to reckon with. So are we really equipped to challenge God this way? Now, that sounds like a cop-out, but think about it a little more. I think if you're struggling with that, uh one of the most helpful places to dig deeper into is the book of Job. Because Job was not a skeptic, he was not an atheist, uh, arguing against God, he was a devout man who loved God, and yet he was deeply bewildered by all the the uh things that were that happened to him. You probably know the story, he loses his family, he loses his wealth, he's afflicted with physical ailments, um, and there's these series of catastrophes, one right after the other, that basically ruin him. And then three of his friends come in the midst of all his pain and despair, and they say, Job, we know why you're suffering. It's because you're sinful, you just have to figure out what you've done that's caused God to treat you this way and confess it and repent of it, and then God will um, you know, fix it all. So in his despair, Jose cries out to God, but he doesn't blame God. He says, I don't understand. I come before you um to stand and plead my case because what you're doing seems so unfair to me. So this is chapters 38 through 41, is where all this is happening. If you want to, if this troubles you dig into that sometime. Because God comes to Job and He says, Okay, I'll answer your questions. You wanted a chance to talk to me, you wanted a chance to get some questions answered. Here I am, but before I answer your questions, let me ask you some. And God says things like, Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Where were you when the morning stars sang together and I flung the heavens into space? Were you there? Were you there when all the things began to be worked out? Did you enter into the secrets of the sea? Do you understand how the rain works? Do you understand how why lightning appears? Um, do you understand these things? And he says, These are simple to me. How how do they how do they work for you? And if that I mean it goes on and on. He says, Look at the stars. Can you order their courses? Can you make the Pleiades shine forth? Can you make Orion stride across the sky? Can you handle the workings of the universe? Can you handle Satan? Do you know how to deal with this? He calls it this fantastic dragon who can wreck a third of the universe with his tail, which I think is a reference to Satan. He says, Are you able to deal with all of that? And at the end of those chapters, Job falls on his face before God and says, basically, I didn't know what I was getting into. I just meant to ask you these questions, but you're not in my league at all. And he puts sackcloth and asses on and he repents. And he says, basically, I have nothing to say. Um, you are God and I'm not. And that's the force of Paul's argument here. Who are we to judge God and say, you're not being fair because we don't understand even a tiny fraction of the things that must be known to answer those questions? So, how do you argue with a God who is so far above us? So that's the first answer he gives. But he goes on, and it his second argument follows from that. Um, in verse 21, he basically says, even among men there is a form of sovereignty that we exercise, and we have a right to exercise it. So, why would we question God's sovereignty? Let's look at that. Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonored use? So he's saying, Okay, you've got a potter, he's working. At his wheel, he has one lump of clay, he divides it in half. With this half, he makes a beautiful vase to display in the living room. And with this half, he makes a slop jar. And that's okay, right? Do we question his ability to do that? He has that right. Men exercise that kind of sovereignty and authority. So why would we not expect that God has it? Well, at this point, you'd say, hold it, we're not clay. We have, you know, uh sensitivity and emotions and feelings, and we have wills, and we we are aware of our existence, so your analogy doesn't hold. But think about it, we have that kind of authority in our own lives. Um think about the way we treat plants and animals. Doesn't a gardener have the right to rip out whatever plants he wants and put new plants in? I mean, I threw away my Christmas pointsetta when all the red leaves dropped off. It was still I still have the cactus. I do, I still have the cactus. The leaves dropped off, but I didn't throw that one away. But the question is, don't I can't I make that choice? Do my neighbors have the right to come into my house and say, You killed a plant? I'm sorry, we're we have to w swear on a warrant for your arrest. Um it was living. It it could have survived if I'd taken care of it, but I didn't want to. Or think about a farmer. Why are you laughing at me? I did keep the cactus because I knew you guys would come to me and say, What about the cactus? Um the cactus was a gift from the group for those of you who knew that I got it at Christmas. So all right, back to being serious. Does a farmer have the right to go through his herd and say, we're going to pick these cattle for slaughter and we're going to keep these for the next for breeding or whatever? Doesn't he have a right to make that ch that say? We have that kind of authority. Now, granted, it's a delegated authority from God, and there are, you know, groups today who are trying to challenge that authority, but I think that's what he's getting at, that when God gave us dominion in chapter one of Genesis or repeated in chapter two, part of that dominion is we have that right to make those choices. You know, when a fly comes into your kitchen, do you swat it? You don't even think twice. You know, if you get crickets in your basement, you kill them. You know, if you had a turkey for Christmas dinner, did you do you blame the farmer because he raised that turkey just for that purpose of providing a Christmas meal? So we have, you know, should we go picket him because he made those choices? The answer, of course, is no, because we have sovereignty. We have that kind of delegated authority over plants and animals. And Paul's argument is God has that authority over us. There are parts of the Old Testament where God compares us to grasshoppers. You know, he's up here, and our lives are like little grasshoppers down here. And it the point in the in at least in Isaiah, when he brings that up, is and he cares for us. How amazing is that. So Paul says, um, what was the first argument? I'm lost. I've just drawn drawn a blank. Oh, who are we to answer back? And then doesn't God have the right to make sovereign choices as the potter does over the clay? Now, the next objection is, well, but that doesn't really solve the problem, does it? It still seems unfair for him to choose one and not the other. Um, and so Paul's going to answer that. This is his third answer, and starting in verse 22, and he's going to say, let's consider his motives. What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand Wait a minute. I think that's the NIV. Let me read the ESV, it's a little easier. What if God desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory, for the vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. And indeed he says in Hosea, Those who were not my people I will call my people, and her who was not beloved I will call beloved, and at every place where it is said to them, You are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God. And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the sons of Israel be as sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay. And as Isaiah predicted, if the Lord of hosts had not left us off left us offspring, we would have become like Sodom and become like Gomorrah. So Paul's saying, what if God has purposes and objectives that we don't see, that we don't understand? Doesn't he have the right to do that? And he's suggesting, what if one of those objectives was to display his power and his mercy by enduring basically blasphemous men? What if he's demonstrating this amazing patience and long suffering by letting uh centuries of foolish, ignorant men blaspheme him and talk against him and claim that he's dead, and he listens to that, and then he still saves some? What if he listens to all this, I don't know, what would you say, cheap and and blasphemous and foolish things that people do and say about him, and yet instead of responding in anger, he responds with patience and endurance and puts up with it. So he's saying one of his motives may be to teach us something about his character. And maybe what he's trying to teach us is patience and long-suffering and compassion and mercy. The other thing he implies in here, which I'm not sure, I and I will give you this as take it with a grain of salt, I'm not sure, but it sure seems to me like one of the things he's saying is, what if it some must be lost in order for some to be saved? What if it takes that kind of display of the wrath of God put alongside his patience in order to bring any of us to salvation? Um now I'm not sure, but it that sure seems implied to me, but I'd like to see if I can find that elsewhere in scripture to confirm that I that interpretation is right. But it so put that on on the limb of wild speculation. Um but it seems to me that he's saying it is necessary in order for some to come to glory for others to be lost. Now that's a hard truth. Um, and you have to put that along the sides of there are factors that we do not understand and things about God that he has not yet revealed, and that I think he will someday, but for now he doesn't, probably because we couldn't handle it, because we are not just equipped to um to get it. And I think what Paul's suggesting is he seems to suggest that no Gentiles would ever have been saved unless Israel had turned away and that only a remnant of Israel was saved. Um and as it is, I mean, for us, that's a wonderful blessing because most of us are probably not of of Jewish ancestry in this room. Um and he's saying, what if for those people to come, those people who never had the advantages, who never had the prophets and the and the um the privileges that Israel had, what they had to turn away for others to be drawn in, and they're now included. And he quotes both Isaiah and um Hosea as predicting that. He's gonna talk about this more in the next chapter, so we're gonna get into that a little bit more next next week. But let's go on to his last argument. Um, his final argument is in 29, and as Isaiah predicted, if the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have become like Sodom and become like Gomorrah. What he means by had not left us offspring and had not saved a remnant, if God had not chosen out a remnant for himself, every one of us would have gone the way of Sodom and Gomorrah. So I think that's he that's his final argument. God has not chosen, um, if if God had not chosen to draw us to himself, none of us would have been saved. So we start from the wrong premise. We start thinking, well, everybody ought to be saved. So why are you condemning a few? But the the real answer is everybody ought to be condemned, and God is saving a few. We're all born lost. Remember chapter three, when he says there's none that hasn't uh no one has done good, no one, not even one, none seeks after God. So Paul's point in this is God in his grace reaches out to us, and without it we would all be like Sodom and Gomorrah. The whole race would be lost. Okay, then he closes with this really remarkable paragraph. Um and I think part of it is he's saying, he says, What shall we say then? And I think people are saying, well, how do you know if anyone's saved then? If you can't tell by the fact that they're Jewish or that they have this inheritance or these advantages, if you can't tell by the choices they've made, how do you know? How can you look at someone and know or look at our how do we look at ourselves and know whether or not we were saved? And that's what he's answering in 30 to the end. What shall we say then? The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness attained it, that is a righteousness that is by faith. But Israel, who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, Behold, I am laying in Zion, a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. I think the force of that little paragraph is saying you know whether someone is saved or not by how they react to Jesus. That's the stumbling stone that's in Zion. So if you look at your life and you're wondering, is God drawn me to him? Am I saved? Am I a believer? You're looking at someone else's life, how do you know whether you've been saved or not? And Paul says, the way you can tell is by how you'd answer the question, who is Jesus and what did he do for you? It's like, and the analogy is you're walking down a path and there's a big flat rock in the middle, and you can either fall over it or you can stand on it. And he's saying, people trip over it when they reject Jesus, or they stand on it and they gain life, and they will never be disappointed. So the Jews who were determined to work out their salvation on the basis of their own behavior and their own good works and the law stumbled over that stone. They rejected him and because they wouldn't admit they needed a savior. But for those who saw that and said, I can't reach that standard, I need a savior, he says, that's evidence that you've already been drawn by the Spirit of God. The fact that you're even asking the question, Do I am I saved? is a good sign because it means you want to be saved. And God must have put that desire in your heart. If you weren't asking the question, or if you're answering the asking the question, it's because God is at work in you. Without it, Paul's saying we would be like Sodom and Gomorrah. We wouldn't care. We wouldn't want to be saved. We wouldn't even ask the question, does God love me or has God saved me? Because we wouldn't care. We wouldn't want to be saved. So the testing point, the crisis, if you will, for humanity is who is Jesus Christ and what did he do for you. You can be very religious, you can spend hours and hours or even a lifetime pursuing religious pursuits, but if you haven't answered that question, who is Jesus? you've missed the point of faith. God put him down in the midst of society to reveal those whom he called and those who he didn't. And you can see Jesus taught that plainly. He says, No one can come to the Father, no one can come to me except my Father draw him, in John 6. And also in that section, he says, All that my Father has given me shall come to me. Him that comes to me I will never, never cast out. So, what's left for us? I mean, how do you respond to a passage like this? Paul's told us God is not a tame lion, essentially. He's bigger than we even think, he's sovereign in ways we can't even imagine. We are not qualified to answer the questions that he that we want because we don't have the understanding he has. Um and but the thing that we do need is to know who Jesus was, and that's we can handle. That we can figure out, and that we can come to. So I think the response is to say thank you that you that you brought us, that you called me. Let me stop there because I know you probably have questions. So let me just pray to close this and then I'll give you a some a chance to respond. Father, how this passage puts us in our place. It's hard to come to it without realizing afresh how desperately dependent we are on your saving grace. And we pray that you would be continually reminding us of that, that we did not save ourselves, we could not, that we didn't even initiate the desire to be saved, that all comes from you. But we thank you and praise you that you didn't leave us as you could have in our lostness and and in our in our sinfulness, you could have in your justice destroyed us. Um but you did not. And we pray that we would be ever grateful and reminded of that, that you have called us and redeemed us and brought us to yourself at great cost to yourself. We pray that you would be working these truths into our lives, giving us the patience and the to continue asking and seeking where we're confused, to continue to come to the scriptures for the things that we don't understand, and to continue to trust that even though the answers may be hard, that the truth is ultimately what will set us free. In Jesus' name. Amen.