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Romans chapter 8 – it’s a wonderful passage with a thrillingly positive message about life in the spirit and victory in Christ. We are more than conquerors!
- Now we might expect Paul to expand on this theology, to wax lyrical about the wonder of being in Christ ans knowing God personally and all the glory of God revealed in the salvation he give us.
- But he doesn’t – in fact there’s quite a sharp change of tone – a twist in the story
Romans 9:1. I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit –
He’s saying something that is of great significance. It’s a ‘don’t ignore this’ statement
2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
Sadness and anguish? What is Paul so upset about?
3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel.
Paul feels so intensely for his own people that he would even be cut off from Christ if, by doing that, they could be connected to him.
This is the heart of a true pastor – You’ll give your life for the people you serve and live with! You would go to hell if it meant their salvation.
- (and, can I say, I see this heart attitude more rarely today. I was talking with a senior minister recently who bemoaned that his assistant checked off every hour of the day as to whether he was engaged in church work or not. The purpose of this exercise was to ‘protect his family and his work-life balance’
- That man will never be a real pastor to real people because they won’t know whether they’re loved or not. Sad.
Not so Paul! So what does he tell them (and us) to do to be the people that God wants us to be?
Live up to your heritage!
And what an incredible heritage they had!
Do you ever look around and wish you were someone else?
- wish that you’d had someone else’s upbringing or advantages – it may be someone famous whom you admire, or someone unknown whose life you want to emulate – but you can’t simply because you had a different entry into life or a different path through it.
- You may sometimes have wished you could be in the royal line of succession – 3rd in line to the throne, or that you’ll have a world-changing child
But spiritually speaking, advantages like this had been handed to Israel on a plate!
If ever there was a people who was blessed by God, It’s Israel!
4 Theirs is the adoption to sonship;
theirs the divine glory, (or divine reputation)
theirs are the covenants,
theirs is the gift of God’s law,
theirs is the temple, the worship and the promises. 5
Theirs are the patriarchs,
and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah himself!
talk about privilege!
But something went wrong. Time after time the leaders of the nation of Israel either ignored God’s plans for them or actively opposed them.
So time after time God had to send good leaders, or prophets or other people to bring the nation back to a place where they were living for him again.
To see this most clearly, read the book of Judges. IN that fascinating book there is a cycle of decline, and apostasy and salvation.
- God sees the state his people are in and sends a person (a Judge – better translation = saviour) who rescues them from their waywardness.
- These people are not always the rich and famous. They include Gideon – a man with a real problem over self-image – and (shockingly for the time) a woman. Thus confirming God’s anointing of women for leadership in their situation.
- But then the whole cycle repeats itself.
This wasn’t the nation as God designed it – or desired it – so what went wrong? They didn’t always live up to their heritage. but why?
Was it God and his word not being powerful enough, was it the people who didn’t listen to him? Or was it something else?
Paul addresses this in v6
6 It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
So it’s not God’s word that is at fault, it’s something fundamental about the people he had chosen as his nation.
Don’t forget that this passage (whole book actually!) needs to be understood in the light of the ancient history of the nation of Israel.
- The nation was begun through 3 patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and finally Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel.
- It was his uncompromising faith that was to be the dominant factor in the identity, the DNA, of the nation. That’s what they were supposed to be and to stand for.
So Paul says something that at first seems enigmatic
6 … For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
Not everyone who has Israel (the man) as a distant ancestor has Israel (the lifestyle) as their spiritual DNA – and so be part of the true nation of Israel.
That is a sobering thought – and is just a true today as it was then. Not only in the nation of Israel in the middle east, but here in the church of Jesus Christ.
- Not all people who name the name of Christ (call themselves Christians) actually develop the DNA of Christ in their lives.
- It is easily possible for you to come to church, say you are a Christian, do good things in the community and be a generally nice bloke and miss out on true faith in Jesus Christ. >>>
And the same logic is true of Abraham
7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children …
So Paul sums it up in verse 8
8 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 [his people] (=Abraham’s offspring.)
It’s the people who rest their lives and prospects on God’s promise of freedom and forgiveness and new life who are the real Christians.
- Can I ask you (as kindly but as clearly as I know how) is that you?
- I really don’t want you to go through life thinking that because you’re a good, nice, generous, hard-working person that you’re therefore a Christian.
Say >>> to the Lord
- and then, as you work out that commitment, that declaration of intent, you discover God giving all the benefits of being in his family – freedom, hope for the future, forgiveness of sin – the works!
That makes you a true Christian, not just a look-alike Christian.
(and if not I would really like to have a chat with you and help you take a first step.)
Live with God as your sovereign!
In Jewish thought at the time the fact that God had chosen Israel to be his people was seen as a guarantee of being blessed for ever.
They also believed the converse, that if you were not one of God’s people (i.e. you were a gentile) you were automatically rejected by God.
So for Paul to say that some Gentiles were being accepted by God ahead of some Jews who were descendants of Abraham was totally shocking! “God can’t do that!” they would say “He can’t choose them – that’s … unconstitutional!”
But Paul is reasoning that God is sovereign and therefore he has the right to choose whom he will without fear or favour, with or without our approval.
And he gives an example
10 … Rebekah’s children (Esau and Jacob – who later became Israel) were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac.
11 Yet, before the twins were born or had any chance to do good or bad 12 … she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ 13 Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’
Now because these children had yet to be born, this decision could not have been made on the basis of what they had done – good deeds or bad deeds.
So God is choosing to bless one and not the other because he is sovereign
Some people feel very uncomfortable about the quotation from Malachi ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ We need to remember that in the Bible the love-hate contrast was made as a comparison and not a black-or-white picture we would read into it today
For example, Jesus said If a man doesn’t hate his father or mother he cannot be my disciple”
- He wasn’t telling us to hate our parents, he’s saying your love for me needs to be seen as hatred in comparison to your love for your parents.
That’s what we have here with Esau and Jacob. God had to choose between them and he made a choice. He is sovereign
This has led some churches down a blind alley. If the group of people who are saved is God’s sovereign choice then we don’t need to evangelise. If God knows and chooses the people who are going to be saved we don’t need to bother telling people, that then becomes God’s job.
But this ‘logic’ has some highly uncomfortable consequences.
- If I were to believe that I don’t have to share my faith it breeds complacency. I just sit back, revel in salvation and forget the state of the spiritually lost!
- I don’t see that modelled in the Bible at all!
Furthermore I want to say to these people “… and who, then, is going to tell them?” Paul said “How will they hear without a preacher (a herald)”
- that is where the church comes in.
- We have been given the responsibility to do this >>>
- My friends we must do it!
One of the purposes of Sunday worship is to equip and inspire us to be salt and light where the Lord places us.
- From here, Chris sends us out into the community where we live and work to be his mouthpieces and his examples.
- We must live as if everyone we rub shoulders with is one of God’s sovereignly chosen children, waiting to be adopted into his family.
This is the heart behind our alternative gatherings
- increasingly the church is not thought of as the place to be or to get spiritual answers from. We, therefore, need to go out into the community to create places where people can hear about, talk about and engage with Christ
I imagine a the door of salvation having and inscription on it “Whoever will, may come” and anyone can enter. However, when I go through the door I turn round and see another inscription “chosen from before the foundation of the world!”
- So when you go to work this week, assume everyone you meet is chosen!
- Let’s be clear about this – I am not a universalist. I do not believe that everyone will end up in heaven. I believe there is a hell and there will be people in it. But that is God’s sovereign choice (affected by our response to his initiative)
- But so far as we are concerned, we should regard everyone as part of the chosen and let God (who is going to be seen to be infinitely just) do the sorting out.
Because of this, we could see God as rather unjust – and Paul anticipates this objection
14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? No way! 15 For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’
16 Therefore, salvation does not depend on our human desire or effort, but on God’s [infinite, outgoing, compassionate] mercy.
Keep your heart soft!
So this begs another question
If, as one of God’s hugely privileged children I come to him and discover that I’ve been chosen by him, what about people who resist and reject him?
17 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.’ 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
Pharaoh is a case in point. When Moses was rescuing the Children of Israel from his oppression, time and time again God showed Pharaoh how powerful he was. Then for a few weeks Pharaoh would relent and it would appear that C of I were on their way. But then Pharaoh would harden his heart and change his mind.
God says he has ‘raised up’ this man to show his own power.
It would be easy to assume that God is playing some kind of cosmic chess game here in which Pharaoh is a pawn. But that would be inaccurate.
When this expression “raised up” is can mean to raise from the dead (1 Cor 6:14) or it can mean “to cure” (James 5:15) or “to establish in a position above other people (like John the Baptist John7:52)
In Pharaoh’s case it seems that God gave this man his internationally influential position so that when his hard-heartedness came in head-to-head conflict with God’s purpose, it’s going to be obvious to everyone that God is God (not Pharaoh)
It became clear that arrogantly opposing God’s purposes is is futile and idiotic!
It wouldn’t matter whether Pharaoh was born in a hovel or a palace, his harness of heart would be just as serious!
This has huge implications for us!
Don’t became hard in your heart.
It’s probably a less-than-subtle temptation to anyone with a position of leadership or influence. If you have people working for you, or you have power in your company or organisation, beware the temptation to cynicism and hardness of heart.
A hard hearted leader is a vicious leader. He’s a man or woman whom people fear rather than respect. Empathy goes out of the window and control sets in.
I know a lady (she’s a friend of ours) whose church was going through a rough time. The assistant minister was misbehaving and threatened to take half the church with him to start up an independent outfit just down the road (literally!)
I remember talking to her about this period and she said to me “I asked the Lord so often to keep my heart soft”
Recap >>>
Pray >>>
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