Hey there, I'm so glad you stopped by for this podcast. We hope so much we can serve you today.

I want you to understand the context of it because if we are just looking at this and just reading

the tone of Romans 9 all by itself, we can come out with perhaps the harshest picture

that the entire New Testament and much of the Old Testament ever paints of God. So let's go back

and look into our context and see what's up here. Now here's another place I want you to go with me.

Even if you need to just glance in the table of contents and check out where it is, I want you to go

with me to the book of Jonah. If you want to go to Matthew and start backing up, you can. You will

find Jonah right between Obediah and Micah. Amen? Yes. Yes. Now remember what God said. I will

mercy whom I will mercy. I will show compassion on whom I'll show compassion. I reserve the right

to show compassion to anybody I want to. Now I am not telling you that that means that there are not

people he goes that no matter what you think, I know this situation better than you, no matter what

you think I am God and that is not my choice. I'm not saying that that is not the case as often as not.

Certainly it is. But I want you to understand last week we threw out the question in class.

We said what kind of God do we have? Because how we're going to be able to take the scriptures that

you and I have to discuss and really these are the two hardest lessons after this and it's why I

wanted to read all the way through to 11. We gained much more understanding and we see so much of

the tender heart of God and his pursuit of Israel. I mean there is no doubt that is what he's after

in these chapters. It's a very pursuit of Israel. But for now I want to make sure we see

somewhat some glimpse of the heart of God that's behind this. All right. Many of us know the story

of Jonah and landing in the belly of the great fish. He had been told to go and to preach

to the Ninevites and tell them to repent and of course he refused to do that wound up in the

belly of the fish. God had it spit him out and then begins him sending Jonah back again. It says

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