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Our Scripture lessons this morning are from Deuteronomy 1:34-40 and Romans 9:6-13:
May God bless this the reading of His holy and infallible Word.
I am sure that most of us have known someone who uses the excuse “the church is full of hypocrites”!
Some use this excuse of not believing in Christ; others use it as an excuse of not coming to church: and I think we all are frustrated and sadden by hypocrisy.
In Romans 9, Paul is broken hearted by Israel’s hypocrisy and unbelief.
Apart from a tiny minority, the Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah.
You must understand how shocking this was, in that same chapter Paul writes:
Do you understand what Paul is saying?
Israel was the Old Covenant church; they were the “insiders”, the Gentiles were the “outsiders”.
If anyone was to believe in the Jesus as Messiah, it would have been the Jews, it was the Gentiles, the “outsiders” who were responding to the Gospel in droves.
What was going on?
As we heard earlier, Paul explains “it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise”.
Just as we confessed earlier from the Westminster Larger Catechism, the visible church (be it the church of the Old or the New Covenant), has within it a smaller subset of true believers who are the invisible church.
We see this in our text today, at the time of the rebellion that took place at Kadesh-barnea there were over 603,000 fighting men between the ages of 20 and 60.
Of this number, only two, Caleb and Joshua were true believers!
We speak of this true church being “invisible”, because normally, God does not identify true believers by name as He does in Deuteronomy.
However, YOU can know which church you belong to.
Are you, like Caleb and Joshua, members of the invisible church, or are you a hypocrite like this vast army was?
To answer this question, we need to understand three things:
Who are the Children of the Flesh?
Who are the Children of the Promise?
How Can I Confirm by Calling and Election?
First we will look at...
The Children of the Flesh
When Paul speaks of the “children according to the flesh”, he is speaking of those are direct, physical decedents of Abraham.
Even today we speak of “Jews”, meaning people who are genetically related to Abraham.
Isaac was not Abraham’s only son: his first-born son was Ishmael, and then there were six other sons by a third wife and Genesis 25:6 suggest there were other sons by concubines!
All these sons had sons; and so, you can see that there is a vast number of physical decedents of Abraham!
We see much the same thing in the New Covenant church, world-wide, most people profess to be “Christians”.
Many do so because they were born into a “Christian home”.
Others do so because they are baptized, go through a confirmation class, or make a profession of faith.
Some of these people are true believers, but many are not.
In many ways, the critics are right, the church is full of a bunch of hypocrites; and this makes many question, “Why does God not just purge the church of false believers?”
Jesus gives us the answer in the parable of the weeds:
To purge the church now, would destroy the church and its mission.
Although the visible church is far from perfect; the church is God’s ordained means for advancing His Kingdom in this present evil age.
It is within the church that sinners are saved, even hypocrites!
This brings us to the second point:
The Children of the Promise
Who are these children of promise?
Are they children of promise because they are better than other people?
Not at all! Earlier in his letter to the Romans, Paul make it clear that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23) and that “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (Rom 3:9).
In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul says prior to conversion we are “dead in our trespasses and sins”, slaves of Satan and just objects of God’s wrath!
In Romans 9, Paul makes it plain that God does not chose who will be a child a promise based upon any foreseen merit or faith.
Some will object saying, “This is not fair!”
Paul anticipated this objection, and explains:
Paul’s point is that election has nothing to do with justice, but rather election has everything to do with mercy.
In Deuteronomy, we find a beautiful picture of this: Caleb was an Edomite!
Ethnically he was not a son of Jacob, but of Esau! Do you understand the significance of this?
It tells us that just as not all Israel is “Israel”, not all Esau is “Esau”!
This is Good News, it is Gospel, because as we have just learned all of us were born spiritually as Edomites.
This means that God elects, not on the bases of foreseen merit, but rather upon His mercy.
In mercy, God makes us spiritually alive so we can have true faith!
At this point, all of you should be asking yourselves, “Is my faith real, and am I an object of God’s mercy?”
There is a way to know the answer to that question, and that is what I want to talk about now.
Be Diligent in Confirming Your Calling and Election
In his second letter, the Apostle Peter writes:
What qualities is he speaking of which we must practice?
The first of these is faith in God’s promises:
When the promises of God are preached in the visible church, there is “divine power” being unleashed that can make us spiritually alive.
As I am preaching this morning, are you finding your heart being drawn to God in faith?
Then respond!
If you find yourself responding to God in faith, you now need to test that faith.
The second quality Peter says we must have is obedience, produced by faith.
Notice what our text says about Caleb:
Obedience is always the fruit of saving faith.
The two go hand and hand.
Now I want to clarify something, although we are no longer slaves to sin, our old sin nature remains to harass and tempt us.
Do not look to perfect obedience, but progressive obedience.
Is the Holy Spirit giving you victory over sin?
If so, you can be assured you have saving faith and you are one of God’s elect.
Yes, there are hypocrites in the church, because it is the place sinners are transformed into saints.
Perhaps your faith and obedience are not in accord with your profession.
What better time to set things right than today?
Today there can be one less hypocrite in the church if you whole-heartedly trust and obey God as Caleb and Joshua did.
Make sure you are a part of the invisible church, not just the visible church.
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