Why Did God Hate Esau? Romans 9:13 and Sovereignty Explained

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, let's get right back to where we left off in our last program, and that'll be in again Romans chapter 9. I think that by the time we finish this afternoon, I'm going to finish chapter 9, hopefully. But anyway, for those of you joining us on television, I guess every once in a while I have to let our audience know that we tape four of these programs right in succession, and so that's why you'll see the same people in the same seat, and I might as well be up front with you. That's why you're going to see me wear the same shirt for a whole month, and I like people to know the reason that after all, this is just one afternoon of taping, and we just love these people coming in from all over eastern Oklahoma, and a couple from Arkansas, and we've even got one young man down from my hometown in Iowa today. So anyway, as I've said before, and I'll say again, we're not associated with any particular group. We're totally independent. We're very, very, very small, it's just my wife and I, and people get so shook up when I answer the phone. It's just unreal. And I say, well why in the world shouldn't I? Because after all, it's just Iris and I for the most part, my little daughter in law starting to help somewhat. But anyway, all we're here for is to teach the Word as I feel the Lord has opened it up to me, and I don't expect everyone to agree, you don't have to. But as I said in our last program, hopefully it'll cause you to search the Scriptures and see if I'm wrong or not. All right, let's go right into Romans chapter 9. We left off at verse 12, so let's read that again and go on into verse 13. Now it was said unto her, that is under Rebekah up there in verse 10 and 11, it was said unto her, the elder, which was Esau, shall serve or be under the younger, which is Jacob. Now God said that before the boys were ever born. And then verse 13, boy this throws a curve at people, I know it does. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. Now number one, I always have to qualify the definition of the word hated. It is not hate as we think of hating someone enough to practically do them harm. It's a comparative term. Now when even Jesus used the term, except you hate your father and your mother, you cannot be my disciple. Now He never expected any human being to hate their parents, but it was a comparative term. Then unless we can have such a love for the Lord Jesus, that by comparison our love for family is almost like a hatred. Now it's the same way here with Esau. It wasn't that God just had an intrinsic hatred for him, but His love for Jacob was beyond comprehension that it was as if Esau was hated. Now some time ago I was reading something of Spurgeon and that great English preacher in London in the 1800s. And a lady after service came up to him and she says, Mr. Spurgeon, she says, I cannot understand how God could hate Esau. And he says, lady, that's not my problem. My problem is, how in the world did he love Jacob? Isn't that it? Isn't that it? It's no problem to understand that he hated Esau because Esau was totally destitute of faith. He didn't think anything of what God said. But how could he love Jacob? Now we're not going to stop with Jacob. How could he love me? You know, I have to think back when I was a skinny little kid and that dear preacher's wife that I'm sure she wept bitter tears over me, but she never gave up till finally one day that dear lady led me to the Lord. And one day whatever I've been able to read, it's going to be part of hers because she was faithful. And so it is with all of us. Why did God love you? Have you ever asked yourself that? Why should he? No more than why he loved Jacob. All right, now we're going to see where Paul picks this up. It was an Old Testament statement, of course, in Malachi. Back to Malachi chapter one. Now Malachi, of course, you know, was the last book in your Old Testament. And so in Malachi chapter one, might as well start at verse one. Malachi 1, verse one. The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord, yet you say wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother, saith the Lord? Yet I loved Jacob. And then verse three. And I hated Esau, and I laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. Now again, you have to go back into ancient history. And the offspring of Esau, of course, were the Edomites. And the Edomites were mountain dwellers. And of course, whenever you've got people dwelling in the mountains, that means they're going to be in mighty good physical shape. Because when you climb those mountains every day for whatever purpose, you're building up your physical stamina. And so the Edomites had become a physically strong people. And they had built their homes and their vineyards and so forth up in those cliffs of the rock. And consequently, with their physical stamina, they got proud and arrogant. And they said, nobody, nobody can destroy us. But what did God say? Read on down through these verses, and you'll see what God said. He says, I'll destroy you. He says, I'm not going to let you prosper, because coming out of Esau, they were anti-God. They had no time for God. And then He comes down, and He says in verse 4, Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return. In other words, God had already thrown down their houses and everything once. But they say, We will return and build the desolate places. The Lord says, They shall build, but I will throw them down. And they shall call them the border of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever. And then He says, And your eyes shall see, and you shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel. In other words, what God is saying, that even these Edomites in all of their pride and their physical stamina and so forth, hey, they were nothing under a sovereign God. But little old weak Israel, God could make them whatever He wanted. All right. Now then, if you'll come back to Romans, this is where Paul quotes from then when he says, But didn't God say, Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated? Now remember what I said in the last program, we're going to come into these verses that are really tough. I'd rather just skip the rest of chapter 9 and go to 10, it would be a lot easier, but we can't do that. We have to take it as we come. And for us as believers now, this is not a problem, because as I've already stated, you can look back at your past experience, and you can see that you were chosen from before the foundation of the world. For a lost person listening to me, you're still on the other side of the door. You're still looking at whosoever will may come. I was reading, I think it was William R. Newell a while back, and he ran into a gentleman in Michigan during his ministry. And that gentleman made the rash, senseless statement, Well, if I'm in the elect, I've got nothing to worry about, and if I'm not, there's nothing you or anybody else can do about it. I'll go to hell anyway. And he said, Mister, wake up. You don't have to worry about being elected. What you have to worry about is, what are you going to do with the gospel? Are you going to believe it, and then be one of the elect, or are you going to reject it and go to your doom? And that's exactly where I have to leave it. But now, you see, we're going to see in these verses from verse 14, almost the end of the chapter, the sovereignty of God. He can do whatever He wants to do, but being the righteous, holy God that He is, He will never do anything that is unfair. Now, that's what we have to keep in front of us constantly, that God will never be unrighteous. He will never treat somebody unfairly. All right, verse 14, what shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Oh, what's the answer? God forbid, or banish the thought. For He saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God who showeth mercy. All right, now, let's go back again, all the way into Israel's history. Here God has raised up the deliverer, Moses, to go down into Egypt and confront Pharaoh, which we'll be looking at here in a little bit, but in the end result, He brings Israel out of Egypt, brings them around Mount Sinai, He's already giving them the manna, and He's going to provide all their physical needs, and He's getting ready to give them the Ten Commandments and set up the whole system of the law. But while Moses is up in the mountain, what takes place down at the base? Oh, Moses had been gone a few weeks now, and he's going to be gone for a total of a month, 30 days. But while Moses is up in the mountain, the children of Israel ask, Aaron, make us a god. Since we've left Egypt, we haven't had any gods, and we don't know what's happened to this Moses. He's disappeared up there in the mountain someplace. And you know what happened? Aaron said he threw some gold in the fire, and then out came this calf, you know. It's unreal what grown men can think of. But nevertheless, here they began this worship of that golden calf. And when Moses and Joshua came down off the mountainside, Joshua says, Moses, do I hear music? Do I hear laughter? And Moses soon caught on, and he says, more than that, Joshua, they're dancing. Well now, you know the account. They weren't just dancing, dancing. They were in lewd, lascivious dancing. They were naked. And that pagan worship around that golden calf. Now then, what did God have every right in His righteousness to do with Israel? See? He had every right in His righteousness to literally wipe them off the face of the map. Was He ready? Yes. He was hot, the Word says, in His anger. And He says in so many words to Moses, I'm going to destroy them all, and in so many words He tells Moses, I'll start over with you again. But what does Moses do? Oh, he falls on his face before God, and again, I think for almost 30 days, he pleads with Jehovah God, spare these people. Don't let the Egyptians be able to crawl. Well, look what happened to those people that got away from us. Their God destroyed them in the wilderness. Moses, don't let them be able to say that. And so he pleaded, and he pleaded. All right. Now then, on what basis did God spare Israel? One word, mercy. Mercy. That was the only thing that God can fall back on. I think it was John Darby who used the term, and I have to give the man credit, because I'm sure that's why I read it. Here in all of His holiness and righteousness, He had every right to destroy the nation. But He withdrew, Darby says, He withdrew into His sovereignty, and in His sovereignty He poured out mercy. Isn't that fabulous? And all the way up through Israel's history, when they would fail God in His promises, and they would go into idolatry, and they went into this, where would God have to withdraw every time? Back into His sovereignty, and in His sovereignty He would pour out mercy. All right, now let's come all the way up to the cross of Calvary. Here Israel has demanded His death, Rome is pounding the spikes into His hand. What could God have done? He could have cleansed the human race, the earth of the whole human race, but again what did He do? He withdrew into His sovereignty, and as the sovereign God of the universe that could do whatever He wanted to do, and as Christ hung on that cross, now seated in that Palestinian soil, what did God pour out? Mercy, mercy, not just for Israel, but for the whole human race, only because He's sovereign. Now in any other circumstance He would have had to destroy the human race, He would have had to destroy Israel, He would have had to destroy you and I, and again, even today, why does God continue to offer salvation to the human race? Why when you listen to the news at night, when you read your newspaper, when you see what's going on in all echelons of our society, what keeps God from just totally doing what He was going to do to Israel? His sovereign grace, see? And that's where we are. He is sovereign and in grace. He poured out His mercy there at the cross of Calvary. Remember I mentioned one of the programs some time ago? I had a gentleman from Tennessee, I'll never forget it, called one Sunday afternoon and he said, Les, he said, is the sinner's prayer appropriate today? Well, that's kind of a loaded question, but I caught it quick enough to say, no, that's not appropriate, because what's the sinner's prayer? God be merciful to me, a sinner. That's not appropriate today. Why? God has already poured out His mercy. He did that at the cross, and for us to pour out His mercy is a double take, and it's saying, well, God, you better do it again. No, He doesn't have to do it again. He's already poured out all the mercy of a sovereign God, and so now what do we do? We appropriate that mercy by faith, and we say, yes, Lord, I know that Your mercy was poured out. Now I believe it. I appropriate it. It's mine, see? And that makes all the difference in the world if we don't understand what God has already accomplished at the cross on our behalf. All right, but now then, let's come on back to Romans chapter 9, and so this is what He's referring to, that when Moses was flat on his face after the episode of the golden calf, we won't take time to go back and look at it. That's when God told Moses, I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion, and I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, because I am sovereign. I am the final authority. All right, now verse 16, so then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God who showeth mercy. Turn back with me to John's Gospel, John's Gospel, chapter 1, verse 13, and oh, this flies in the face of human thinking, but we have to go by what the book says, not what the human mind thinks. John's Gospel, chapter 1, down to verse 13, speaking of them who had become believers, and he says, which were born, that is, into the family of God, the born ones, the Greek word is teknon, the born ones, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but how were they born? Of God, see? Now as Jesus was dealing here in John's Gospel, he's still with the nation of Israel in his earthly ministry, isn't he? What was the great opposition to Jesus of Nazareth during his earthly ministry? Turn over with me to chapter 8. John's Gospel, chapter 8. Well, I'll tell you what the problem was. These Jews of Jesus' day, especially the Pharisees with whom he had most to do, were proud of their what? Their lineage. They were proud of their genealogy. They weren't the children of Esau. They weren't the children of Ishmael. Hey, they were the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and you see it over and over. And so when Jesus came and confronted them with their sin, why couldn't they see their sin? They were relying on their genealogy. Hey, we're the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We don't have a sin problem. Oh no? Look what Jesus says now in chapter 8 of John's Gospel. Well, let's just begin verse 36. If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. I know, Jesus said, that you are Abraham's seed. Now see, doesn't that tell you what I just got through saying? What were they claiming? Hey, we have no problem. We be of Abraham. All right, he says, I know that, but you seek to kill me. Because my word has no place in you. Quite an accusation, isn't it? My, as the sons of Abraham, who thought they were righteous, they should have been able to embrace Jesus and realize who he was. Why couldn't they? Because they were blind. All right, read on. Verse 38, Jesus is speaking, and he says, I speak that which I have seen with my Father, and you do that which you have seen with your Father. Wow, what's he doing? He's slapping them in the face that they weren't of the same Father that he is. But oh, they take it and they throw it back at him with a horrible answer. And they answered and said to him, Abraham is our Father. And Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would do the work of Abraham. You'd be people of faith. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I have heard of God. This did not Abraham. In other words, when God spoke to Abraham, Abraham didn't respond in self-righteousness and say, hey, away with you, we're going to kill you. No, Abraham, the man of faith, recognized who God was when he came into his life. Verse 42. No, verse 41. Jesus said, you do the deeds of your father. Oh, now watch this. And they responded, we be not born of fornication. We have one Father, even God. Oh, do you realize what they're throwing at him? See, they didn't believe in his virgin birth. What was the story going through Nazareth? That Mary and Joseph, even if he was the father, had conceived out of wedlock. And I imagine the story was already going around that Joseph wasn't even the father. And so they're throwing this whole thing that Jesus of Nazareth was a result of fornication, an immoral act. Oh, I'll tell you what. You have no idea how low these people were. Verse 42. Then Jesus said unto them, if God were your father, you would love me, for I proceeded forth and came from God. Neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do you not understand my speech or what I'm saying? And he answers his own question, because you cannot hear my word. It never registered with him. Now, verse 44. Now again, this is getting to be strong language, and Jesus is saying it. You, he says to these Pharisees, you are of your father, the devil. And the lusts, the desires of that father, the devil, you will do. Your father was a murderer from the beginning. Your father, I'm putting it in only for emphasis, abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. And I tell you the truth, and you believe me not. Which of you convinces me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do you not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words, you therefore hear them not, because you are not of God. And then look at the next verse. You think Jesus knew what he was talking about? Boy, you better believe it. Then answered the Jews and said unto him, Say we not well, that thou art a Samaritan, and you have a demon? Unbelievable, isn't it? And Jesus answered, I have not a demon, but I honor my father, and you do dishonor me. But what I want you to see is, what were these Jews relying on? Their genealogy. They were the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But even though they had that unique opportunity, they had the Scriptures, they had the Word of God, they had the priesthood, but what were they? Wrapped in unbelief, and they could not comprehend. All right, now then come back to Romans, verse 16 again. So then it is not of him that willeth. In other words, a person can't just say, oh well, since I am of a particular genealogy, since I am of a particular nationality, since I am of a particular race, I'm going to be a child of God. Oh, don't work that way. You don't do that. And that's what Jesus was speaking about in John's Gospel, chapter 1. All right, then the other word used here is he that runneth. Well now, what's the purpose of running usually? Well, to get from one place to another. And so the whole concept here is, it isn't up to a man to make up his mind, well I'm going to do this for God, and I'm going to go from here to there for God. This is what I'm going to do. No, it doesn't work that way. It is absolutely contrary to the workings of a sovereign God. All right, now then come down to verse 17. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, now we come down to Pharaoh of Egypt, the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Now what is that verse applying to? Well you see, after the plagues that had stricken Egypt, even though it was the ancient world and they didn't have communication as speedy as ours, did the Word get across the then known world, what had happened in Egypt? Absolutely! Even the Canaanites, clear up there in present day Palestine, by the time the Jews got there, they knew what had happened down in Egypt, and they knew that the God of the Israelites had destroyed Egypt. The pagan Canaanites up there, years later, still talked about how the God of Israel dealt with Pharaoh, how that the God of Israel laid Egypt waste. And when you go back and read ancient history, Egypt was in a shamble. Others just came in and took it over, really. But yet, God did all this with Pharaoh in order to accomplish His sovereignty. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, OK 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, OK.