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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
“It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.’”
“Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by Him who calls—she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’”
“What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’”
“It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power in you and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden.”
“One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?’ But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? ‘Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”’ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?”
“What if God, although choosing to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the objects of His wrath—prepared for destruction? What if He did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory—even us, whom He also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As He says in Hosea:”
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not My people; and I will call her ‘My loved one’ who is not My loved one,” and, “In the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”
“Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: ‘Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. For the Lord will carry out His sentence on earth with speed and finality.”
“It is just as Isaiah said previously:”
“Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.”
What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written:”
“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame.”
Romans 9:6-33
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
A large number of people who read Paul’s letters or came to hear him in person during his missionary journeys were Jews. Paul was a Jew at one time and a very fervent one at that. His pre-Christ reputation continued to follow him well after he had converted to Christianity and this was of critical importance as he sought to bring the Gospel to all parts of the world and to all people whether Jew or Gentile.
The latter part of this statement is what created lots of challenge to the work Paul was trying to do for the cause of Christ and as we see in this chapter of Romans (and will see in the next as well), the apostle wasn’t afraid to expose and shed light on the primary spiritual problems within the Jewish nation, the nation of Israel. He wasn’t afraid of speaking truth even though he knew it wouldn’t be received well or even rejected. This is because he knew how much was at stake, the very souls of a nation and people he loved deeply.
So what is the message that Paul makes in this passage which covers the remaining verses of Chapter 9?
There are three key takeaways.
First, God is sovereign over everything. Period.
There is no debating this truth.
Nothing existed before God and all things were created by Him. Therefore, He stands in authority and power, omnipotent over all creation. No created thing can rival the Creator.
Second, given that God is completely sovereign over all things, this means He can control and dictate how things go. He can elect to set things in place and then make changes as He sees fit, and it’s the absolute obligation of mankind to remain obedient to whatever God desires. No mere mortal man can alter or eliminate what God had ordained.
Combine these two factors, God’s ultimate authority and total right to do what He wants to do and apply it to the matter of the Jews and you have the third take away from this passage. For a large majority of the Jews were not willing to acknowledge God’s right to make major spiritual changes such as alterations to His covenant agreement with His people.
Going back to Old Testament days, God made a covenant with the Israelite people. They would be His people and, in turn, He would be their God. He was the God of Israel and the Jewish people had an exclusive spiritual relationship with Him. But even within that special arrangement, God still operated in sovereignty over the Israelites and Paul offered several examples.
First of all, from a spiritual perspective, not all descended from Israel were Israel nor were all of Abraham’s descendants his children. God was in control and He established things according to His will and way. Abraham would never have had a son if God had not deemed that it would happen and even though Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, only Isaac was specifically chosen by God to carry on the spiritual lineage of Israel.
Isaac would go on to have two twin sons, Esau and Jacob, but although Esau was the first born, it was Jacob that God had chosen to bear the twelve sons who would lead His twelve tribes, the twelve tribes that would go on to inherit the nation of Israel, the new name that Jacob would later be given by God.
Even going back to the days of Moses and the reign of Egypt’s leader Pharaoh, we find how God even carried complete influence over leaders of other nations. He hardened Pharaoh’s heart but this wasn’t some abrupt alteration of the Egyptian ruler’s personality or behavior. No, left to his own devices, Pharaoh willingly chose to harden his heart and defy God on several occasions before God made the hardening permanent.
In the end translation, God had the sovereign right to have mercy on who He chose to show mercy to, to have compassion on who He wanted to show compassion to, and to harden anyone He wanted to harden.
He also had the right to establish the means by which salvation could be gained and this is exactly what He did through the redeeming work of sending His Son Jesus from Heaven to earth. God, fully able to bring His wrath on sinners as easily as He brought mercy and grace, chose to exercise amazing patience with His people, the objects of His wrath. Rather, than leave everyone on the road to destruction and damnation, God decided to prepare a way for people to exchange a judgment like what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah for the glory of Heaven and everlasting life with Him. This wasn’t an offer given exclusively to the Jews but to all people.
In other words, through Jesus, God called both the Jews and the Gentiles to accept Jesus as Savior and find eternal life. They would all be considered to be His people through faith in His Son.
This was the new covenant God instituted with His people and it was an upgrade of the highest spiritual magnitude over the prior covenant.
But there was only one problem. The Jews weren’t willing to let go of the old covenant and their legalistic religious practices that defined their Judaism. God wanted to make it clear that salvation could never be obtained by works but rather by faith and grace only. The only way to be saved was to believe and trust in Jesus as Savior. The Messiah promised by the Old Testament prophets had come in the flesh and yet He was soundly rejected by the very Jews He came to save.
Indeed, many Jews in Paul’s day continued to reject Jesus and thus the reason why he invested time, not just in his letter to the Romans but in other letters as well. He hoped to change the hearts and minds of the Jewish people and lead them out of damnation and into salvation.
The message still rings true today, not just to the Jewish people who have continued to deny Jesus as Savior, but to all who have snubbed God’s offer of salvation through Him. That’s what makes these efforts of Paul more than 2,000 years ago still relevant.
Tomorrow, we’ll continue to see Paul make his point regarding God’s sovereignty, His right to alter His covenant as He sees fit, and His desire to see all people saved, whether Jew or Gentile, as we look at chapter 10.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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