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FROM THE PASTOR'S STUDY

Topic: Romans 9-11 Chapter Nine: Message Outlines (Include Audio)

Romans 9:14-18 (2)

by Darrel Cline
(darrelcline biblical-thinking.org)

Chapter # 9 Paragraph # 3 Study # 2
February 4, 2018
Humble, Texas
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(027)

Thesis:   Benefits come our way because God is "The Mercy Giving God".

Introduction:   What would you say of God if you discovered that He had turned your experience of existence over to someone whose only interest in you was for you to be a tool in his hands to bring himself the satisfactions of all of his appetites? Alternatively, what would you say of God if you found out that He had retained all of the outcomes of your attitudes and actions for Himself to decide?

In fact, these are the only options on the table. Some might say, "Whoa, wait a minute; there is a third option: He could turn all of those outcomes over to me". However, this is a false deception. Its assumptions are two: first, that you are not one who views all others as tools to bring you to the satisfactions of all of your appetites; and, second, that you could pursue all of your appetites without subjecting others to your dominion over them. If, on the first hand, you are not pure enough to only have the best interests of others in mind in all of your attitudes and actions, for God to turn your experience of existence over to you is, in fact, the turning of your experience of existence over to someone whose only interest in others is that they be tools in your hands to bring you, yourself, the satisfactions of all of your appetites. This is the first option. And, on the other hand, if God has retained all of the outcomes of your attitudes and actions for Himself to decide, you have no other option because He is, after all, both omniscient and omnipotent, and it is fruitless for you to resist the reality. His only "other" attitude would be for Him to abdicate His identity as God and give that identity to you alone of all of His creation and creatures; everyone else would be subject to your appetites. If you want to be free of the appetites of others, you must allow them to be free of yours -- unless, of course, you want to be the "only" real God (making you Lucifer).

As we approach Paul's teaching in Romans 9:16, these are the only two options on the table.


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