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Jan 17, 2021

God Questions

Passage: Romans 9:14-18

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Romans

Keywords: mercy, justice, questions, wrath of god, fairness

Summary:

This section of Romans 9 often leads people to question the justice or fairness of God in choosing the people of God. This message helps us grapple with the justice, mercy and wrath of God in a way that will draw us closer to Him, not push us away.

Detail:

God Questions

Romans 9:14-18

January 17, 2021

 

INTRO:  One of the wonderful…and torturous…things about being human is our ability to question. 

  • Questions lead us to new learning.
  • Questions can solve serious problems.
  • Questions can create new discoveries in health or manufacturing, relationships and spiritual development.

But questions can drive us crazy too.

  • They can keep us awake at night.
  • They can cause people to reject good, safe, legitimate medical treatment.
  • They can create doubt, destroy relationships and ruin really good things.

The same holds true for questions about God. 

Romans has some 75 questions in the course of the whole book.  We’ve got a bunch of them right here in today’s text.

            If you’ve been with us for the past few weeks, you know that after 8 chapters of Paul teaching in Romans about different components of the Gospel of Christ, we’ve landed smack dab in one of the thorniest, most question-provoking section of the entire Bible. 

            Why is that?  Because these chapters confront us with several qualities and actions of God that challenge both our minds and our comfortable view of God.  They plunge us headlong into the meaning of some important theological words and concepts that not everyone agrees about, words like…

  • Foreknowledge
  • Predestination
  • Election
  • Sovereignty
  • Free will
  • Justice

So, what I’ve chosen to do rather than give you just one interpretation of how the two different theological camps talk about these terms and passages is to try and let the passages speak for themselves, not say more and not say less than what they teach…and let you wrestle with the conclusions.  At the end of the day, what you believe about the differences between these two theological camps of Calvinism and Arminianism does impact how you will view other related theological concepts like grace or eternal security.  So, your conclusions will have implications.

            But when you boil it all down to how it will impact your day-to-day living and your moment-by-moment relationship with God, there are strong believers on each side who have the best, most wonderful and intimate of relationships with God…and there are weak believers on each side who have confused, tepid, sick and disappointing relationships with God.  I have not found that one’s position on the precise meaning of these passages necessarily directly dictates the kind of relationship you will enjoy with God. 

            So, take a deep breath, decide you will hold these challenging truths humbly both towards God and people (either of whom may disagree with you