<TITLE>06. Par 18-21</TITLE>L-18 Now, last evening, and the evening before, we taken Abraham... Now, as a little background so we can go right straight to the point, get the prayer line started. And now... And tomorrow night, maybe, the Lord willing, we want to begin a new subject and run it through Sunday. Notice.
Abraham... What was it now? God called Abraham because he was a good man? No. God called Abraham by election. God elects people. And over in--in the Book of Ephesians the 1st chapter and about the 5th verse, Paul states the word "predestinated" us to the adoption of sons. Now, that doesn't mean that God just puts you in a little channel and runs you through, and you can't help if you--how you go, when you--you... Would be no reward. But God gives you the free moral agency to make your choice, but God will keep His believer.

L-19 And "predestination" is a hard word among a congregation of people, because predestination... Really "foreknowledge" is a better word. And predestination looks back to foreknowledge, and foreknowledge looks on to destiny. That God, being infinite, in the beginning knew the end from the beginning, therefore He knew what people would do, so He could foretell what would take place, for He knew what would be. Therefore He... Before Esau or Jacob, either one was born, God could say, "Esau I've hated, and Jacob I've loved," because He foreknew what they could be. He never made Esau the way he was. He wasn't willing that Esau would be that way, but Esau, by choice, God knew would take that way. So that's how He knows us today. He knows your heart. And if... You might be able to fool your neighbor; you might be able to fool your pastor; but you'll never be able to fool God, 'cause He knows your heart.

L-20 Therefore He, by election, He chose Abraham, for He knew what Abraham would do. You remember when He called him out there and said He'd not keep the thing a secret from him? When He was going down to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, He said, "For I know that Abraham will teach his children; I know it," God Himself. "I know that Abraham will send this message on down from one to the other generation."
But God foreknowing that, and knowing that Abraham would do it, then He told Abraham in the beginning that He would save him and save his Seed after him, and would give him the--the unconditional covenant that He made with Abraham. Not because Abraham was good, but because God was good.

L-21 And every believer in here is a Christian tonight, because, not that you're good, but because God was good to call you. You couldn't come yourself; your--your nature's against you.
You just couldn't, as I said the other night, make a pig believe he's wrong eating slop, because it's his nature. See? Now, the only... A leopard could not change his spots. No matter how bad he would lick, he'd only brighten it. And you don't want reformation; you don't want to try to reform, or do a little better, you've got to be changed completely inside, and the nature come from within, and it'll work out. But get it right inside at the beginning. And you begin with a soul before the world was ever formed, when God created man in His own image. Now, you got to get that right, and that's what has to be borned-again, not your thinking. It takes care... It moves with this. But get this right, and this will be all right too. If you just get your heart right, your intellectuals will move right with it.
Now, how that He called Abraham, seventy-five years old, and also Sarah, being sixty-five, told them about a baby they were going to have. And Abraham waited twenty-five years before the baby ever come, testifying every day, perhaps, that he was going to have the baby, him and Sarah. And how was he going to have it when it was getting more impossible all the time? But he didn't look at how old Sarah was, or how old he was getting; he looked at what God had promised. Amen. Do you see it?


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