I recently started listening to the late Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones' sermons on Romans 9. I have really enjoyed all the messages I have heard so far, but at the end of his final sermon on verse 9, Lloyd-Jones seems to say that the Biblical example of Isaac and Ishmael proves election as a Calvinist would understand it , that is, God pre-determining (or predestining) those who would get saved and those who would go to Hell from before the beginning of time.
First of all, the Old Testament story of Isaac and Ishmael does anything but prove Calvinism. Abraham exercised his free will by having sex with Hagar, thus producing Ishmael. God transcends reality. He knows everything that is going to happen in this reality and, in addition, He knows every possible alternate reality and, furthermore, He knows what is going to happen if we change our minds, decide on another path and thus bring parts of an alternate reality into this one. Therefore, God knew what would happen if Abraham had sex with Hagar and He intervened in it by miraculously creating Ishmael, Abraham being in the physical state he was at so advanced an age. However, God also knew what would have happened if Abraham and Sarah had stuck to His preferred plan of Abraham producing a child through Sarah and Sarah only.
Second, Paul is simply using Isaac and Ishmael as he does in Galatians, to show the difference in this case between the majority of physical Jews who are in alegorical Hagar-Ishmael bondage to trying to accomplish their own salvation and those who are in allegorical Sarah-Isaac freedom, believing in and being children of God's promise.
Just as with Abraham's sin with Hagar and the unbelieving Jews of Paul's time, we should never take an ends justifies the means attitude and "Help" God along in His purposes through doing what we think is best contrary to His Word.
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