Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #12 of Genesis, chapter 25, and we are going to read Genesis 25:23:

Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

We have been looking at some Scripture that discusses God’s election program or His predestination program.  We went to Romans 9:10-11:

And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)

It was the purpose of God according to election, and we started to look up how God uses this word “purpose” and it comes from a Greek word that indicates something that is “set before,” so it was the “setting before” of God, according to election.  And we know that is what God’s election program is, as He chose certain individuals to save before the foundation of the world. 

We went to Ephesians 1 and we read in a couple of places where the word “purpose” was used, and it was also in connection with God’s plan of predestination.  There are a couple of other verses we can look at where the word “purpose” is used.  By the way, it is #4286 in Strong’s Greek Concordance.  In Ephesians 3, we read that the mystery was made known to the Apostle Paul, as it says in Ephesians 3:3:

How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words,

Here, the mystery, in particular, was that God had made known to him the truth that people from all nations on the earth (not just the Jews, but the Gentiles) would be fellowheirs according to the promise; that is, they would also be counted for the seed of Abraham in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.  That is how God can use that figure of “circumcision of the heart” making Gentiles “spiritual Jews” through salvation, or through the “cutting off” of their sins in Christ, if Christ had paid for their sins.

There are numerous verses in the Old Testament that plainly state that fact, if one has eyes to see, but it was hidden from the understanding of the Jews of the Old Testament.  And it was not until the first century A. D. after the Lord Jesus had gone to the cross that God opened the eyes of Paul.  He also opened the eyes of Peter through the vision he was given on a housetop of unclean animals being let down on a sheet three times, according to the purpose of God.  “Arise, Peter; slay and eat.”  Peter responded, “Not so, Lord: for nothing common or unclean hath at any time entered into my mouth.”  And the Lord said, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.”  And, immediately, three ambassadors of a Roman soldier, Cornelius, came to his house and requested that Peter come to Cornelius, a Gentile.  Then Peter began to understand that the unclean animals identified with the Gentiles.  So God was making this known to His people. 

It was a “mystery” because a mystery is simply that which is hidden in the Bible, and that which is hidden also identifies with the fact that Christ spoke in parables, and the Bible is the Word of Christ.  It is all in parabolic form in the sense that it is all “hidden truth,” whether it is explicitly identified as a parable, or not; or, whether it is in the book of Proverbs; or whether it is a parable in the historical sense, such as Abraham offering up Isaac; or whether it is a seemingly plain statement such as, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.”  And there is an enormous amount of hidden truth in John 3:16 concerning the “begotten Son.”  We did not really understand that until relatively recently when God opened the Scriptures.  The entire Bible is hidden truth that no man can understand unless God grants grace through His Spirit to open up our eyes to see it.

That is what is happening here with the Apostle Paul, as it says in Ephesians 3:5-11:

Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel: Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:

It was His “eternal purpose.”  This all had to do with the church, and this would be the “eternal church” that consists only of God’s elect, the invisible church.  Through God’s saving of this church and bringing it together as a body, it would witness to the principalities and powers in heavenly places of His manifold wisdom.  And it is all according to the “eternal purpose,” and when we follow that word “purpose,” it leads us to the foundation of the world.  For example, we can turn to 2Timothy 1:8-10:

Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God;  Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel:

You see, God has saved us not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.  We can go to Romans where we read of Jacob and Esau, and God chose or elected Jacob, and He decided to love him and save him that the purpose of God according to election might stand.  And, here, in 2Timothy 1, that purpose that has saved the whole company of the elect children was made in “eternity past.”  It was a purpose before the world began, just as we read in Ephesians 1, and I want to go back to this in Ephesians 1:4:

According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

And, remember, I mentioned Jeremiah 31:3 where it says He has loved us with an everlasting love, because it goes back before the world was into eternity past.  We also read in Psalm 103:17:

But the mercy of JEHOVAH is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children;

His mercy is from everlasting upon us.  And why is that?  It is because we were saved before the world began as God made choice and elected us to obtain salvation.  He ordained for this to happen before the foundation of the world.  No – that does not mean before He spoke to create the world, but remember that “the foundation of the world” is the point at which Christ died as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.  But it was from “everlasting” that God chose Jacob, before Jacob had done good or evil.  It had nothing in Jacob.  It had nothing to do with Jacob except he qualified as being a sinner.  Esau also qualified as being a sinner.  They were dirty, rotten sinners.  They were both desperately wicked sinners.  God looked at both and said, “I will choose Jacob.”  And, again, the only cause or reason that the Bible gives us for God choosing Jacob (and not Esau) was that it was according to God’s good pleasure, as it says that in Ephesians 1, which I will read shortly.  It was according to God’s good pleasure.  He desired a people for Himself, and in order to obtain that people, He made decisions: “I will save this twin, but not that twin.”  Of course, all humanity was before Him as far as His knowledge was concerned – He knew everyone that would come into this world.  So He began the process of separating the sons of Adam, as Deuteronomy 32:8 tells us.  As it were, God said, “I will save Abel, and not save Cain.  I will save Seth, but I will not save this other son of Adam.  I will save Noah.  Noah will find grace in my sight, and some of his family.”  He saved eight souls out of a world of, perhaps, a million or two.  God made choice.  “I will save Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  I will save Joseph.  I will save Moses and Aaron.”  God was making choice.

I am going through Biblical history to keep it straight in my mind, but God did this before the world was and before there was any world history.  It would take us quite a while to look at all the billions of people that have entered into this world; and we might never finish that task, with all our limitations, but God could do it instantaneously.  He saw billions and billions of people and He determined to save a few out of the many, perhaps as many as 200 million, the number referred to in Revelation 9.  That may be the actual total of all God would save, and that is an enormous number of people, but in comparison to billions, it is few.  So let us say that God saved 200 million people and He has now separated the sons of Adam.  On one hand, there are those that identify with Jacob, which are those He has chosen before they had done either good or evil.  And, on the other hand, there are all the rest that God had not chosen and who would never have their sins forgiven.  Eventually, they will be destroyed, and they will finally be gone forever, which is God’s just right to do.  He is Sovereign God.  He is the Potter. 

God has made multitudes of creatures, and the most important creature was made in His own image, but they rebelled against Him, ruining themselves.  They had ruined the special relationship they had with Him and destroyed it.  So, at that point, God could justly, rightly and legally condemn them, or Biblically condemn them.  We use the word “legally” because we are under the law of governments in this world, but the supreme law is the Law of God, the Bible, so legally, or Biblically, God could destroy the whole human race.  They have rebelled against Him, and the wages of sin is death.  He warned them that in the day they would eat of the forbidden fruit, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” or, as it literally states, “dying, thou shalt surely die.”  He doubled it.  And man disregarded the warning and rebelled against Him and died in his soul.  God could have destroyed man in both body and soul.  Adam and Eve could have dropped dead, and God could have finished the human race then and there.  Or, He could permit the world to go on and permit everything to work out as it has and allow the world to go on for thousands of years, and then, finally, just burn up the whole thing, and it would be gone forever.

Instead, in His infinite wisdom in the counsel of eternity within the Godhead, God determined what He would do.  He is the great King of the kingdom of God, the King of all kings and the Supreme Ruler.  He is absolutely good and perfect, and righteous and just.  And, yet, in all His other creations…and, by the way, we can gather from the Bible that God has created vast numbers of other creations that are distinct and apart from this creation.  We are not talking about “aliens in space.”  We are talking about creations that cannot contact any part of this creation, just as this creation can never contact any part of those creations.  (But I do not want to go off on a tangent in that area).  But God has created all these other good worlds, universes or other creations, and there is not a problem in any one of them.  We know that He had to allow man to rebel, as the counsel of God and the wisdom of His design were not “caught by surprise” by man’s rebellion.  He basically permitted it to set this whole thing up by allowing man to sin because there was an aspect of His love, grace and mercy that could never have been seen or witnessed by the principalities and powers that dwell within His glorious kingdom, and that is “forgiveness.”  Man has wronged the Creator, and sinned against the Almighty, and that puny little creature has shaken his fist at the Almighty, and that creature has become evil and wicked and unclean.  He is a tiny thing and, yet, he dared to rebel and disobey, and some would literally shake their fist at God and speak against the One who created them, Holy God.  Of course, God’s righteousness and justice demands, “Destroy that creature.” 

And, yet, in order to highlight and to put on display for all to see His great love and mercy, God worked out a salvation program wherein He took these evil acts, thoughts and deeds and all these sins against Him, and He laid them upon His own Person, one Being of the Triune God, the Word, who would bear those sins and die for those certain ones that had been chosen and separated under the heading of “Jacob,” as it were.  All their dirty, rotten sins were laid upon the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.  (I cannot call him “Son” because He did not have that title before the foundation of the world when God determined to do these things.) By the way, the word “predestinate” is a compound word that means “before determined,” so before the foundation of the world, God predestinated or “before determined” to do these things. 

You know, this is an incredible story.  It is an incredible true story that is the Gospel.  God has basically allowed the whole world to continue operating with all the awful and horrible things that have been done in this world in order to reveal this story and to reveal what He had done. 

So these transgressions were laid upon the Word, Jesus Christ, and then God said, “This will show my mercy and grace.  And, yet, there must be justice and righteousness.  I can take away the sins of those that are laid upon Christ.  I cannot just wave my hand and make them go away.  They are offenses that must be paid for, and the Law requires death as payment.  Therefore, I must strike Jesus.  I must strike the Word.  I must slay Him, and He, as the innocent and pure sacrificial Lamb, must die.  He has done no wrong.  He has done no sin.  He is the spotless Lamb and, yet, I must slay Him.”  And God did so at the foundation of the world, as Christ was bearing the names of the elect, like the high priest of Israel would bear the names of the children of Israel on his breastplate.  Christ was bearing the names of Jacob and all the elect, and bearing their sins – every sin they would ever commit, from their conception to their death.  Every sin they had ever imagined, including sins they were not aware of, and there were multitudes of sins that were cast upon Him, and He died.  He died.  Death to God.  Death to the Word.  Death to Jesus Christ.  And He paid that penalty.  And only because He is Almighty, infinite God was He able to overcome death, the death of the cross and the death of shame and the curse.  He rose from the dead.  God the Father raised Him up because the Law’s demand had been satisfied.  And only then at the foundation of the world was the declaration as the Lord Jesus arose, and declared to be “the Son of God.” 

And, by the way, that word “declared” is part of the word for “predestination.”  It is also a word that is translated as “determined.”  He was “determined to be” the Son of God, and it happened at that point in eternity past.