more years for her. The Bible says that God saw that Leah was hated. This was not hatred in our sense of the word, but rather preference. Again, our Saviour speaks about one hating his mother and father in order to be completely “sold out” to Him. This doesn’t mean that to be a disciple of the Lord that we must “hate” our parents. I t is a case of preference; loving the Lord more than anyone else. As further proof for this interpre tation, we think of God’s love for Esau in that He looked and watched over Esau, blessing him abundantly. So the hatred here has no reference to what we think of today. As we consider God’s eternal pur pose, we have no grounds on which to accuse Him of being unfair. One can never understand this as long as he has the idea that God owes him some thing. The Lord owes us absolutely nothing. He can bestow His grace upon whomosever He will. Only when we fully realize this fact can we truly appreciate the doctrine of grace. Then we can really rejoice that we have be come the objects of His special favor. God knows the end from the begin ning and blesses us not because of what we will do, but because of His matchless love and grace. Dr. Milton (. Gould (right), pastor ot the First Baptist Church of Downey, California, and past-president of the Biota Alumni Association, welcomes incoming president Re*. Harry Bas- com. Mr. Bascom is head of the Southern California Christian ia ii Workers.
Children Of His Sovereignty
I srael has always been a unique peo ple. They were children of promise, children of grace, children of God’s election as well as children of His sovereignty. In Romans 9:14 we read, “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God for bid.” The question is really, “Does God bless unrighteousness? Does He reward injustice?” The answer, of course, is a very obvious “no!” Yet, as one looks at the life of Jacob it might appear as though God does re ward deceit. Such a conclusion is fa r “off base” since God has already flatly said that Jacob was chosen not because of his works. God knew what Jacob was going to do. There was nothing in this man’s life to commend him for such a high position which God bestowed upon him. Verse 15 tells us of God’s own pur pose in the matter as He reveals, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” The two words may seem to be synony mous, while actually they are not. The word “compassion” means “to act with feeling.” It describes our inward state, for, generally speaking, our outward conduct is determined by the way we feel inside. “Mercy” on the other hand deals with the external situation. As a result, God points out to us that it is not because man de serves His goodness, but only because of what he says. This simply means that if God were to give man what he really deserves, man would be in hell today. A moment here for a parenthesis. Some suggest the fact that the reason God blesses us is because we have been good to Him. Such an erroneous view presupposes that we have been faithful in meeting God’s require ments. Stopping to think about it, however, each of us would have to admit that this is one thing we do 12
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