The Rest Were Hardened - Part 4

...and unsearchable and full of glory, and we get to be a part of pressing toward the consummation with all our might, it may happen in our day that all the Gentiles whom God ordained to gather in will be gathered in, then the hardening, the veil will be lifted. Therefore, an exhortation before I go to point 3, how then should you live in view of this? You should live the way Paul lives. Chapter 9 verse 3, but to God I could take their place, my kinsmen according to the flesh, I have unceasing anguish and a broken heart. That's chapter 9 verse 3, then chapter 10 verse 1, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they might be saved. And very soon in a week or two we'll go to chapter 11, what is it, 13 or 14, I magnify my ministry to the Gentiles so as to make my kinsmen jealous, if by any means I might save some. That's the way we should live, oh Bethlehem. If we take this doctrine of election and become elitist and separatist and withdrawn from a needy, perishing, dying world, how wicked we will be. Let us let biblical teaching have biblical effect. Third question, what's the basis for this hardening? This is the hardest question, isn't it? What's the basis for this hardening? Verse 7, what then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. The elect obtained it. Last week, from verses 5 and 6, I tried to show that that obtaining, the elect obtained faith, the elect obtained participation in the remnant, the elect obtained justification, life, forgiveness, redemption, salvation, hope of everlasting joy with God, the elect obtained it. I tried to argue that was all of grace and not owing to anything in us at all. The non-elect, the non-chosen, those who Paul says here are hardened, are not passed over because they are worse than the elect. And the chosen are not chosen because they are better than those who are hardened. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. I was not rescued, John Piper was not rescued from my unbelief because I am better than any Jewish person in Minneapolis or any Gentile person. And if you think that your membership in Christ, that your being justified and being part of God's elect family is owing to something that you did to earn it, then you nullify the grace of God. And we were rescued from unbelief by sovereign grace alone. So then, how shall we describe the basis of the hardening? If all of that is true, if the election is so gracious and free and I can point to nothing in me that caused God to put his favor upon me in election, how shall we describe the basis of hardening? Stop here and let that one sink in. That's a really hard question, right? Do you feel the hardness of that question? Would you like to come finish this sermon for me? Well, here's my effort, because we're walking on the edge of some of the deepest, weightiest mysteries in the universe here. So here with mercy and here critically and here with biblical assessment and here humbly. I think to answer the question how we describe the basis of the hardening is that we must always say two things. We must always stress the absolute freedom of God in what he does in electing and hardening. And the other is we must always stress the guilt and the accountability of all men. Let me try to unpack that for a minute, show you what I mean. I'm going to always in this pulpit, while I see things the way I see them and while I'm part of this eldership, because I think if I saw things differently, they would call me to account given the agreement we have in these things. First, in the act of hardening, God is free and is not ultimately constrained by any act or any condition of man outside himself, outside God. We saw this in Romans 9, the very issue. We said, we saw God's glory depends on his freedom. If God is not free, that means free from any constraint outside himself in determining ultimately what he does, he's not glorious. That's what we argued in Romans 9 from verses like these. Romans 9:15, quoting God from the Old Testament. I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. And then he infers this. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. Verse 18, so then he has mercy on whom he wills and he hardens whom he wills. And that's Paul's effort to stress freedom. God is free. Maybe next week if we have time, I'll ask you to contemplate with me the horrifying implications of believing that human beings can control the decisions of God ultimately. I'll ask you to think about that with me if we can move that way next Sunday. So the first thing we say about the basis of hardening is that God is not finally or ultimately constrained by human willing. We do not provide the ultimate decisive causes for the actions of God. God does. That's what it means for God to be God and God to be all glorious. Here's the second thing that always has to be said when you reckon with the nature and basis of hardening. Namely, something that's in a word in verse 9 that I intentionally skipped so that I would come back to it. Maybe you wondered why. Let's read verse 9. David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block, and here's the word, a retribution for them. Retribution, so in describing the dynamics of hardening, in describing the experience of hardenedness, he says it's like a retribution. Well, retribution means you're being punished for something. Retribution gets that guilt. Retribution gets that accountability. The point is they deserved that the snare and the trap and the stumbling be experienced as hardening.