Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

Genesis 25:23 NKJV

²³ And the LORD said to her:
“Two nations are in your womb,
Two peoples shall be separated from your body;
One people shall be stronger than the other,
And the older shall serve the younger.”

Malachi 1:2-3;

² “ I have loved you,” says the LORD.
“ Yet you say, ‘In what way have You loved us?’
Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?”
Says the LORD.
“ Yet Jacob I have loved;
³ But Esau I have hated,
And laid waste his mountains and his heritage
For the jackals of the wilderness.”

Romans 9:10-16

¹⁰ And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac

¹¹ (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls),

¹² it was said to her, “The older shall serve the younger.”

¹³ As it is written, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”
¹⁴ What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not!

¹⁵ For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.”

¹⁶ So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.

Jacob has so little to recommend him. In many ways he is not likeable. He shows faith and commitment and is obedient when God called him. But he never states a deep affection for God as David does, nor does he show a faith in God’s promise as did Abraham. What is it that sets Jacob apart to the high and holy privilege he received?

There is only one answer possible. It is God’s choice of Jacob. This choice was made before Jacob’s existence and it was made without respect to anything he would do. It was a gracious, sovereign, unconditional choice.

It was a choice to national success. That was accomplished. His heirs became a great and mighty, a prosperous and influential nation. It was a choice to earthly success. He became wealthy. He inherited his father’s wealth. He had a large and healthy family. He, in every vicissitude of life, received God’s care and deliverance. Socially and civilly, Jacob was promoted by God on the basis of divine election.

This still does not explain Jacob. He was a believer. Here the Old Testament writers and the New Testament writers - especially the author of Hebrews - leave us to understand this without doubt. Paul goes further. In Romans nine Paul tells the reader that Jacob is God’s poster boy for divine sovereign election. There are a number of particular concerns relative to God’s promise to and treatment of Israel answered in this context. But there is the fact of God’s choice of Jacob as the guarantee that every believer has the rock solid foundation of God’s almighty choice as the certainty of both the beginning and completion in his walk with God.

Election is in the Bible. It is in the Bible as a sovereign unconditional act of God. It needs no human defense. George Sayles Bishop writes,

“Election is a doctrine which no human reason could have discovered. It is a doctrine against which the human reason universally, at first, and always rebels. It is a doctrine, however, to which the human reason, if ever saved, must consent. “He that is of God, heareth the words of God. He that receiveth not My words, hath one that judgeth him; the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.” (John 8:47, 12:48)” The Doctrines of Grace, pg 181, George Sayles Bishop, D.D.