Romans 9 sermon revised

Romans 9 and the Purpose of God’s People

Romans chapter 9, starting in verse 1, hear the word of the Lord. I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

They are Israelites and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs and from their race according to the flesh is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever, amen.

But it is not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. Not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said, about this time next year I will return and Sarah shall have a son.

And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls.

She was told the older will serve the younger and as it is written, Jacob I love, but Esau I hated. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.

So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, for this very purpose I've raised you up that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

So then he has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? But who are you, oh man, to answer back to God?

Will what is molded say to its molder, why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel of honor for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of honor, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.

Even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. As indeed, he says to Hosea, those who were not my people, I will call my people. And her who was not beloved, I will call beloved.

And in the very place where it was said to them, you are not my people, there they shall be called sons of the living God. And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved.

For the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay. And as Isaiah predicted, if the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.

The Purpose of Things and the Purpose of Marriage

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, the purpose of a chair is to give people a place to sit. So you are using those chairs correctly. From what I can tell, everyone's doing fine with that.

Please don't sit on the ping pong table. It's not designed for that. The purpose of a pool stick is not to use as a weapon. Put it down. Okay, you don't like this message after we're done, please don't come after me with a pool stick.

Things are designed with a particular purpose. And sometimes, now sometimes those purposes can be changed. This building was originally built to be a gym for a segregated school to keep the races apart.

Frankly, it was built with a racist purpose. But people aren't the ultimate builders, are they? God had another purpose for it. And now it houses an integrated church and a youth ministry that now reaches many of exactly the same kids who would not have been allowed in here if the ultimate owner and builder hadn't decided he had a different purpose than the human builders.

But sometimes purposes can't be changed. That is, the purpose is so essentially a part of what something is designed for, you just can't change it. The car's gas tank is not designed to take in water.

You can pour water in there if you want, but don't be surprised if you ruin the engine. Your stomach wasn't designed to take in gasoline. Don't try drinking it. That's not your purpose or the purpose of the gas.

If you want to know what a thing's purpose is, ask, what was it made for? What do you do with it? Now just this past week, North Carolina voters were given a question as to the purpose of marriage. 61 of voters said that marriage was for the purpose of one man and one woman.

They essentially said marriage was made for joining a man and a woman and no other purpose. And if they had said the opposite, decided the other way, well they would be wrong. Man didn't create marriage, and so he can't change his purpose.

He can say he can, but he can't. That is, some things like marriage and chairs and ping pong tables and buildings and cars and gasoline, our bodies, they have purposes. And sometimes people misunderstand those purposes.

They don't understand what you do with it. They don't understand what it was made for. They think marriage is whatever they want to make it. That pool sticks are for use as weapons. That churches or schools are for keeping races apart.

That our bodies are only for our pleasure. Most of all, they often misunderstand the purpose of their own lives, their selves. They look at their lives, and they don't understand what they are made for.

What they are supposed to do with their lives, eat, drink, and be married, get rich, find that perfect love, family, all has got to be family. Family is everything, right, especially on Mother's Day. And the TV show, probably my favorite TV show, Breaking Bad, now at this moment you should be very concerned.

You have a pastor whose favorite TV show is called Breaking Bad. That should just like, what? But anyway, in that show, it's about drug dealers. Okay, now you're really concerned, I know. Meth producers.

And they show this scene a couple years ago, two Mexican brothers, about eight to ten years old. They're playing outside, and they're like in their backyard, I guess. And they get in, first they're playing, and then they get into a fight.

And well, their uncle, who's this drug kingpin, this big guy, the gangster leader, he's just watching back there, drinking his beer, sitting in a lounge chair. And one brother breaks the other brother's toys, and so the angry brother comes up to his uncle, and he complains about his brother, and the uncle tries to calm him, saying, you know, you're brothers, get along.

And the angry boy says, no, I hate my brother. It's in Spanish, but the uncle asks, are you sure? Si. So we ask the other boy, who broke the toy, he's back in the back, come over here. Get your dear uncle a beer from the ice chest, his ice chest right beside him, it's about half ice, half water, half cold water, get me a beer, he says.

And as the boy bends down to get his uncle the cold beer, the uncle grabs the back of his head and forces him down, pushes him down, his head under the water. And the other brother is just standing there, you know, who had been complaining.

And he begins to complain now about his brother, and he says, let him go, you know, he'll drown. The uncle says, but I thought you hated your brother. No! Well, you're going to have to fight for him. And the boy is still, the other one is still held under his head under the water, he's flailing about, he's trying to get out, he can't, he can't get any air.

He says, let him go, screams the other brother. Now he's distraught, having totally forgotten that just a minute ago he was saying he hated his brother. Now he's trying to save his life. And the uncle says, well, you're going to have to fight for him.

And so he begins to, the boy begins to hit and punch his uncle, not really able to hurt him. But the uncle then lets the boy go free, and then says to them both, standing there, la familia is toto, family is everything.

Mother’s Day, Family, and Twisted Purpose

Now family is everything, and the mother is the heart of the family, then Mother's Day has got to be a very big deal. What's the purpose of Mother's Day? I used to hear, I don't know where I heard it, but I heard it sometime from someone that the real purpose of Mother's Day is sinister, commercial, it's crass, it's all about money.

It was the purpose of Mother's Day was to sell greeting cards. That it was invented by these greeting card companies in order to make themselves rich. But I learned that's not really true. I looked that up.

I thought, for a while, a long time, I thought that was the real case, but I looked it up. Mother's Day was originated in 1907 when a woman named Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother, and then she began a campaign to make Mother's Day a recognized holiday in the U .S.

And although she was successful in 1914, she was already disappointed by the 1920s that it was becoming too commercial, too much commercialization. That is, she didn't really intend it to be a gimmick to make card companies rich or help expensive restaurants get a lot of business on the second Sunday in May.

Its purpose was to appreciate mothers, believe it or not. Of course, what's the purpose of being a mother? For the family? Is the family everything? Is that drug dealer guy in Mexico right? What about for being a mother, though?

Is it to give women a sense of value and purpose? But is being a mother a woman's highest purpose? Right at the heart of what is wrong with us as sinners is that our sense of purpose is so twisted that we often, really that we always, take things that are good in themselves.

Could be careers, could be businesses, relationships, could be money, could be sex, could be sports, could be motherhood, could be family. We take these good things and we make them our ultimate purpose.

And we'll even use religion to support those distortions of purpose. There will be preachers all over this country today praising, not God, but motherhood. Because after all, family is everything, right?

Israel, the Covenant Promises, and the Children of the Promise

Here in Romans 9, we find four questions answered, each showing purpose. Four questions, four purposes in four paragraphs. First, what about Israel? What's their purpose? Second, has God's promise failed?

The purpose of God's promises. Third, is God unjust? The purpose for unbelievers. Fourth, why does God still blame His purpose for His people? The first question is, what about Israel? What's their purpose?

Paul's been preaching to Jews all over and they're not believing. A lot of the people coming into the church by now are not even Jews, they're Gentiles. So what's the purpose of all this Old Testament of this Jewish nation?

He's touched on this briefly before, but not fully explained it yet. Israel thought that they were right with God because they inherited that status. It just kind of comes with being their race, their nation, their extended family.

They were children of Abraham and so they are children of God. It comes with the family. But Paul has been showing that people are made right with God by simply believing, not by earning it or deserving it or inheriting it.

If that's the case, then what about Israel? In chapter 2, he has already said, quote, no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly. That's kind of odd way of putting it. No one's a Jew who's one just by ancestry.

Being one of God's chosen people is not a matter of something you're born into, it's a matter of your heart. You can't inherit it. Then he tells them that they can't be saved by the religious rituals, they can't be saved by their law keeping.

And so he has, from the Jewish perspective, attacked the heart of what makes them special, their purpose. Now some of the critics who heard him speak in these synagogues that he's going to were probably scoffing at him that he just doesn't, he doesn't care for his own people.

He's unpatriotic. He hates his own extended family. What kind of person hates his own family? It's just the lowest kind of person who hates his own family. That's what Paul is. And they said, after all, that family is everything.

This traitor hates his own national family. And so Paul begins, what about Israel? Oh, and here, remember just a few verses earlier, because he's continuing from chapter 8. He said the Holy Spirit and Christ, they're interceding for us.

And here he calls them to bear witness to him, that what he's saying is true. He says, I am in great distress. I love my people as only someone who is really a part of them can love them. They are my country and my people.

Last September 11th, I told the story of how on the first September 11th, 2001, I really felt, it just occurred to me that the idea, the feeling, my country and my people is from the title of a book by a Chinese man, Lin Yutong, describing and sometimes criticizing his own nation, his own culture, China, written in 1935, when China at that time was suffering much from the invasion by the Japanese.

And he ached for his own people, even though he was sometimes severe in criticizing his own nation. But he said, my country, my people, I am sometimes severe in criticizing my own country and my own culture.

But on September 11th, 2001, as I watched towers fall in New York, Pentagon on fire, I thought, my country, my people. And that's what Paul does here in those first five verses. Now sure, he is strong in his condemnation of their own belief, the way they've distorted the word, the way they've made it self-serving and all of that.

But he says that if I could, I would give my soul away to save theirs. They are, in verse three, my kinsmen, according to the flesh. He's saying they are my family. And family is so much. He'd exchange his soul for theirs if he could, but he can't.

Because to God, natural family is not everything. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, he says.

In other words, they've got all these glorious things in the Old Testament. And even the natural family of Jesus himself, the Messiah, who he calls at the end of verse five, speaking of Jesus, God over all, bless forever, amen.

So far from hating his own people, like he was accused of, he says he would be condemned for them if he could. His extended national family means that much to him. After all, look at all they've been given, all the Old Testament manifestations of God.

And finally, the perfect manifestation of God when he came in human flesh in the Jewish nation. What was the purpose of that? That is, he's asking, what about Israel? What was it made for? What do you do with it?

They said, we're God's people. God chose us. And to that, Paul says, yes, God revealed himself to you, and through you, he gave some of the greatest blessings to you, and I really wish you were God's true people.

I'd exchange my status as one of God's people, and give it to you if I could, but I can't. And you're not, not all of you, family is not everything. Family is not salvation. No one is a part of God's family simply because they were born into the right human family.

If that's true for the Jews, with all the blessings they get here, think of that, that's true for the Jews, and that's what Paul is saying with their covenants and their patriarchs and their promises.

It's certainly true for us. Every one of us, every one of our children has to believe for himself. That's why we don't baptize babies as much as we want them. We earn it, we should earnestly desire for them to believe and to be one of God's people.

We just can't guarantee that just because they are born to us. We want them to be. We work for them to be. We pray for them to be. We just can't be assured they're born in our family. We know they are.

We can't. We don't know that. We desperately want that to be the case. It should be one of our passionate prayers. Some of you may have what Paul describes here for some of the members of your own family.

Great sorrow and unceasing anguish because they're not yet truly believers. You might even be willing to exchange your salvation for theirs if that's what it took, but you can't. And it doesn't help to suggest that somehow that we can put them in a right relationship with God by baptizing them before they know what they're doing or manipulating them, pressuring them.

Salvation doesn't come that way. Israel didn't get it that way. We can't. Family is not everything. Well then what of Israel? Did God's promise, all these promises to them, all these blessings to them, did that fail?

I mean, they're not believing now. They're not one of God's people. So did it just fail? No, Paul says. So the second question, did the promises fail? No. For the simple reason that the promises were never directly for them, not literally to that earthly family.

In verse 6, the promises, these covenants, these patriarchs, all these things in the Old Testament were first given to them and through them, but the Word of God did not fail because it says, verse 6, not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

Literally it says for not all who are from Israel are of Israel. That is, family is not everything. There are people who are born to Israel. That's their race, that's their nation, but they are not the chosen people.

They're not the people of God. They are the people he talked about in chapter 2, where no one is a Jew who is one outwardly. They're just outward Jews, but not inwardly one of God's people. That is, those people who are physically descended from Abraham, they're Jewish by ethnicity, but they don't believe in Christ.

They are not, as far as God is concerned, real children of Abraham. So the question is, did God's promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David and the prophets about Israel being blessed, did all those promises, did they fail?

Because Israel doesn't believe now that they aren't getting these blessings that Paul had been talking, celebrating in chapter 8? Did the promise fail? No. Because the purpose of those promises was never for them.

They aren't Israel. They were never intended by God on being the people who got those promises. At the end of our passage we read, near the end of the chapter, verses 27 to 29, he concludes this idea by telling us that most of those who are naturally descended of Israel, most of them are destroyed.

Only a few, a remnant, are left as true believers, inheriting the promises. Because it never was purposed to be for literal, physical Israel. So the purpose did not fail. Notice in verse 6, God's word did not fail.

That means if it didn't fail, it succeeded, right? Following the logic, if it doesn't fail, it succeeds. God's promises in the Old Testament accomplished exactly God's purpose for them. Exactly. In other words, ask yourself, what were these covenants and these promises, all this stuff in the Old Testament that he lists, what was it made for?

Well, they were made for saving God's people. If some Jews then, or even some Christians today, now are confused, and they think the promises were about literal Israel, then that doesn't mean God's word failed, or we're still waiting for it to succeed in some future time, but that their understanding of it has failed.

They think family is everything. And here, Paul begins to give proof from the Old Testament itself, that, you know, the Jews claim, we have Abraham as our father. And here he says in verse 7, you know, not all are children of Abraham because they were his offspring.

You claim naturally you descended from Abraham, but, you know, big deal, that doesn't mean you're one of his offspring. After all, Abraham had lots of children. Read the book of Genesis. Like Ishmael.

Take Ishmael, for example. It was, you know, Ishmael was not included. It was instead, Paul says, through Isaac shall your offspring be named. That is, of all the descendants of Abraham, it was only Isaac who got the promise.

God chose Isaac, not Ishmael, or many of the other children that he literally had. And so he tells us in verse 8, this means that it is not the children of the flesh, these literal children, who are children of God, but the children of the promise who are counted as offspring.

Those born to Abraham naturally did not get the promises of God. The Jews then, and some confused Christians today, think that God's promises are inherited just by ancestry because of who your mother and father are.

But Paul is saying that family is not everything. It doesn't work that way. Now have God's promises failed? Because so many Israelites now are not believing. Absolutely not, he says. The children of the promise are counted as offspring, not just the literal children.

Now people think the promises of God failed when they don't understand the promises. But when you understand that there is a people, defined not by ethnicity or race or nationality or family, this people, he calls the children of the promise, understand they're not literally Israelites, they're from all kinds of different nations, but they are, in God's eyes, children of the promise.

They inherit these promises. When you understand that, you understand that God's promises achieved exactly their purpose. The purposes of God's promises, all through the Old Testament, was for them, for us, if we're one of those children of the promise.

Jacob and Esau, Election, and Divine Mercy

Ah, but some will say, okay, okay, okay. Not all, I understand, I said I'm a child of Abraham, not all, okay, you're getting technical here. I understand not all children of Abraham are God's people. We'll agree the Ishmaelites are out, sons of Ishmael and those other children Abraham had.

But all of us who are children, literally, of Abraham and Isaac, we're in, all of us. Family is total, everything. But to that, Paul says in verse 10, when Isaac and Rebekah had their children, two boys, exactly the same time, they're twins, they were born.

Now were both of those boys children of the promise? They're both from Abraham and Isaac, that's what you said, are they both children of the promise? Aren't they both inheritors of God's promises? He says no, Esau is out, even though he's a son of Abraham and Isaac, no Esau.

Ah, but some will say, okay. But he's only out because, you know, Esau was bad, he's just a bad egg, he lost it. He lost his birthright because of what he did. Esau could have had it, but he lost it by his works.

Really? And what does verse 11 here say? God's selection of Jacob as being the one who would be the child of the promise was before, he says, before they had done anything good or bad. That promise came when Rebekah was pregnant, okay, the older would serve the younger.

Before they were even born, the word of God came that Jacob, the younger, would be the chosen one over the older Esau. And it's not good enough to say, well, okay, okay, but God looked forward, you know, God knows everything, so He looked into the future and He gives this promise to Rebekah that it'll be Jacob over Esau.

He could look forward in the past, but Paul says at the end of verse 11, okay, just closing every loophole here, he's a smart guy, he can think, he knows what you're going to try to get around. And he says that God's choice for Jacob was not because of works, okay.

He didn't look forward and say, Jacob did the good thing and Esau did the bad thing, so I'm choosing the good thing. No, not because of works. That is, there was nothing about Jacob's actions or his character that forced God's hand to choose him over Esau.

It wasn't because of something Jacob, something in Jacob or something in Esau, but because of something in God Himself. He tells us that at the end of verse 13, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. It was that there was a love in God for Jacob, but not for Esau.

Even though they were both literally descended, Abraham, Isaac. Now, that's a shocking verse, chapter 9, verse 13 there, which is actually quoting from Malachi. So it's echoed again here, it's inspired twice by the Holy Spirit.

So if you want to get around that verse, you know, it's been inspired twice. You can't get much stronger than that. And no matter what we want to say, that God is loving to everyone and that's true, He is kind and generous to everyone.

Here, clearly, God loves Jacob in a way that is different than the way He loves Esau. Now why? What's the purpose in that, in loving Jacob? Well, He told us that in verse 11, that God's purpose in election might continue.

That is, God loved Jacob and so chose Jacob. Not because of Jacob, you know, Jacob was kind of a jerk and chooses some people for a purpose. Now, and that purpose isn't to make them look good, it's not to us, no.

He has a purpose in election and to achieve that purpose, He chooses the children of the promise. Well, that's why the Word of God did not fail. It was never intended to be just for the natural children, the natural Israelites.

It was intended for all His children from every race and nation. And you can be certain, it will not fail, achieving its purpose. Nobody can beat it. But if that's so, the third question then, is God unjust?

Isn't it unjust? Many people ask, for God to, they would say, arbitrarily choose one person, choose to love them, I'm choosing this Jacob, but not this other, Jacob, yes, Esau, no, isn't that unjust? And with that, He deals in verses 14 to 18, is there injustice on God's part?

He asks this question. Here comes the emphatic, by no means, absolutely not. We say God is unjust. If He doesn't have mercy on those we decide He should have mercy on, that's our idea of justice. God, I've decided these people should have mercy.

You're not doing what I say, you're unjust, really. And this is what we are, some are trying to do when they baptize babies, they're saying that God has to have mercy on this baby because He was born into my family, family is everything, my family is everything, because He was born in a Christian family.

But God is not, He will not be controlled. It's not that He doesn't want to have mercy, that's not what we're saying. It's only that He refuses to allow His mercy to be turned on and off at our choices.

You know, we come forward, the right invitation, we say the right prayer, we get baptized, whatever. God has to have mercy on us, it's like turning on a switch. And then we complain that He's unjust, God you're unjust, if He doesn't play along with us.

But He's not unjust, He is merciful, He's just not under our control. In verse 15 He says, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. Notice there, God's purpose is to have mercy, definitely.

That's the purpose of all those covenants, the law, the worship, the promises, all of that. It wasn't just to give those Jews a way to save themselves, it wasn't because He only cared for Israel, His purpose was to have mercy on all kinds of people, and He achieved it.

But is God unjust because He chooses some and not others? Absolutely not. You know, if He wanted to damn us all, He could have done so, just left us alone and been perfectly just. He didn't have to do anything, but He will have mercy and compassion.

But the great God who created everything, who is infinite and powerful, is not going to have His mercy under our control. I will have mercy on whom I will. God is saying there, it's up to me who gets mercy and compassion.

Vessels of Mercy and the Final Exclamation of Praise

So that final question, why does God still blame, just kind of fades away, doesn't it? What were we thinking? Come on, with all these good things, riches of glory that He's sharing with us, He doesn't have to do that, but He does.

We thought to ask, why does He still blame? He's making us for glory. We whom He calls from every nation who were not His people. We who were not beloved, but He decided to love us anyway, who didn't deserve or inherit His love.

He called us His sons and daughters. Oh, God is mighty. He's awesome. He's God. He could have wiped us all out like Sodom and Gomorrah, but He has a people that He decided to know, to call children of promise, to have mercy and compassion on, to shape into vessels into which He can pour out His glory.

That's very, very good. And so the real question, really the exclamation at the end of all this, amazing love, how can it be?