Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries |
The golden calf incident reveals the mercy of God in the divine decree.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
God’s purpose will be established.
The issue is always the glory of God, not the failure of man.
GAL 3:26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
“Are regarded” - logizomai - points to the divine decree.
The divine decree is behind this entire section of the book of Romans.
Neither physical birth nor the character of the mothers, nor any other human factor, is the issue.
In eternity past, the omniscience of God knew that the firstborn, Esau, would reject Christ as savior, and fed that information into the computer of divine decrees.
The omniscience of God fed facts of reality in history into the computer of divine decrees.
Jacob was fed into the computer: “believer.”
Esau was fed into the computer: “unbeliever.”
1TI 2:3-4 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
ROM 9:15 is a quotation from EXO 33:19.
Moses and the Lord are speaking right after a real disaster happened: the “golden calf” incident.
God had threatened to destroy all Israel, and leave only Moses. He could start all over again with Moses.
Once you know the reference, you realize that this is actually sanctified sarcasm on the part of Paul.
The Lord had led Moses up to Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of stone, the Law. Moses would stay up there for 40 days and 40 nights.
EXO 20:23 “You shall not make other gods besides Me; gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.”
The Lord is making plans with Moses for how the Jews are going to use their gold to construct this replica of the Holy Tabernacle in heaven...
They are down below messing around with a golden calf, calling it their god. They took all their gold and made that instead.
They didn’t last a week on the Law program.
You want to talk about rights now?
He could have wiped out the angelic race and started over.
He could have scratched that human race idea and came up with an alternative.
Here we have the nation of Israel giving us a visual aid about the true condition of man.
Only here the grace of God comes in a complicated package: the doctrine of divine decrees.
In the Hebrew of Exo 33, “I will be gracious” is in the qal perfect. It means “I was always gracious.”
Our Lord provided for Israel always knowing how Israel would rebel against Him, reject Him, not believe the promises.
Mercy -
piel perfect of racham = the application of grace.
In eternity past, I put My grace in motion, and so woven throughout the decree is mercy, My grace in action.
In eternity past, God fed into the computer the fact that He has always been gracious.
It is going to come out of the computer as the application of this grace to the lives of His imperfect creatures.
That grace in action is mercy.
ROM 11:32 For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.
He wants to have mercy on...... EVERYONE!!
1TI 2:3-4 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
ROM 9:16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.
The energy that moves the plan of God forward is the mercy of God, not the striving of men.
The only standard God uses is the perfect righteousness of His Son, and we all fall short of that in our flesh.
TIT 3:5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,
1PE 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
He like we must ultimately rely on the mercy of God.
EPH 2:4-5 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ ( by grace you have been saved),