Romans #20 - Predestination Problems Unfair?
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Romans #20 - Predestination Problems Unfair? - Alrighty, if you got a Bible go to Romans 9, I just wanna take a minute before we jump in to one of the deepest and most difficult sections of the entire Bible. Just to give you a little bit of a good news praise report, things are going amazing at the Trinity Church. God has been exceedingly gracious and generous and He's done so through you. And I know the whole world stinks right now, but this is the best place to be, amen. - [Congregation] Amen. Things are going great here. Things are going great here. So just a little bit of a quick update as we head into Easter, which is our Superbowl and our biggest weekend of the year. It was a year ago this week that we actually closed along with most other churches in the country and across the world. And they were closed for Easter, which was a catastrophic loss for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we're really excited to be open and more than full strength this year, what God did during that season though, was incredible and supernatural. So we were closed and while we were closed, we did a lot of work to technology and property, thanks to your generosity. And then we reopened in June and we didn't know what was gonna happen. And God knew exactly what was going to happen. We added the Saturday 4:00 p.m. service's already full. So we'll be going to an additional service at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday night on Easter and we will keep that going forward. We have the two morning services, 9:00 and 11:00. Some of you may ask why won't we do more, well because the sermons are long, and we don't have time for any more services. And if you're new, I hope you pack the snack. It's gonna be the best few hours of your life. Okay, so that's how we do it here. So what's happened then when we reopened in June, we've seen the church supernaturally explode in every single way. Our attendance is up recently as much as 237%. The average church in America is running 36%. We are perhaps the fastest growing church in the United States of America. It's been incredible and we've seen... So you can clap for that. We have seen hundreds of people become Christians and get baptized. And if you're one of them, we'd love to baptize you coming up over our Easter services, Easter weekend. Since we reopened in June on just the weekends, we've added 1,500 children to our children's roster. If you add midweek, it's 2000 little kids like 10 and under, 2000 little kids have joined our roster. A few weeks ago to per meeting, I said, "Please pray for classroom space." The next day, the Lord answered that prayer, we've got a 7,000 square foot building opening up kitty corner to the property that allow us to do students because it's outgrown its space. Women's because they've outgrown their space, some additional space for meeting during the week. And also it will give us some additional parking because we need it, amen. If you've got any friends carpool with them. In addition, God answered that for and you've already been generous enough that the purchase of that, and also the rental of that, and the refurbishing of that is all paid for. So thank you for that. At the same time as well I asked, "Should we be praying for the backyard for the kids?" And we've made some good improvements, some more kids' spaces coming and we've got it all set up or swimsuit summer. We're gonna be running water slide park for kids all summer long so that when we tell them that Jesus loves them, they believe us. And all we got to do is just point to the water slide, hand them a Popsicle and tell them that this is practice for heaven, that's how we roll. So thank you in advance, you've already paid for all of that, you've been very, very generous. I also asked you at the prayer meeting recently to pray for a studio. And literally, that week, God provided a custom built television production studio that will allow us to send out more Bible teaching than ever. We close on it, Lord willing this week. And I wanna thank you in advance, we paid cash because we don't do debt and you've been very, very generous, so I just wanna say thank you. So here is what we've got going on. We've got good Friday coming up and Easter coming up, two Saturday night and three, I think it is Sunday morning services, it'll be our biggest weekend of the year. We're throwing a huge carnival outside for all the kids. We're advertising on a lot of different media outlets and we're seeing more Bible teaching going out than ever. Just recently, I'm on Sirius XM, I'm locally on a Salem station, also on pray.com and pray.com radio. And in recent months, we've seen as many as 10 million sermons listened to a month from the Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona as a worldwide headquarters for Bible teaching, amen. And so I just wanna say thanks. So lastly, here is what we've got going on. We've got a special offering between now and Easter. We're calling it old things new and what we're raising money for would be a park out front so that people have a place to mingle, finish the parking lot, counseling center, and also start to work toward multi site and another campus perhaps on the Northwest side, be in prayer. We don't have all of those numbers yet, but we're fundraising toward it. You've already been so generous, we've knocked out a lot of other things previously and we have a $530,000 matching gift. Every dollar you give between now and Easter gets doubled up to $530,000. And I gave you a large number and we're already 2/3 of the way there with a few weeks to go, we're within striking distance, God is incredible. And let me just tell you, it's really nice to be your pastor. It's just a so fun, people are like, "How are your people?" They're the best, our people are the best, our people are the best. And so as your pastor mot everywhere in America did they get to stand up and say, "God's awesome, you're awesome, it's awesome." But that's the report, okay? And I believe it's in large part because God honors and blesses his word. And I believe if we're under the word of God, we're in the the God is most likely to bless. And so if you are new, we're in Romans 9. And I've got a free book. You can go to realfaith.com, and we'll give you a free digital copy. If you want a hard copy, give a gift of any amount, we'll send it to you. There's also a free study guide. You can get the e-version online at realfaith.com or pick up a hard copy on the way out for free. These are ways that I wanna help you learn God's word and it's my favorite thing to teach God's word, I love it. And this week I have got one of the most difficult texts in the entire Bible. We're gonna talk about predestination, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and homosexuality. So you're all... If you're not offended, just wait, it's coming, okay? And I just wanna think in advance all the social media platforms for banning me in Jesus name, I'll pray, and we'll get into Romans 9. Father God thank you that I get to pastor these dear people who I love with my whole heart. And God I thank you that they make it really easy to love them, really easy to lead them, and really easy to like them. And God, we wanna be under your word. We wanna be obedient. We wanna hear from our father and we wanna be faithful sons and daughters. So Holy Spirit, we invite you to guide and guard our time together as we open your word, we pray you would open our hearts and minds so that we can understand your word and love Jesus in whose name we pray. All God's people said, amen. All right, we're in Romans 9. And what happens in Romans 9 and 10, Paul is telling us how we have a relationship with God. And you may not know this that God had you in His heart and on His mind before he made the world, that God knew that you were coming and He knew that you would be sinning and He knew that He would be saving. And God had this eternal plan for you that he implemented in history, knowing this in Romans 9 and 10, Paul anticipates five questions or objections and he answers them.