FATAL FALSE ASSUMPTIONS
by Steve Zeisler
The family of Michael Durant is waiting for news of him today in Tennessee.
He is being held captive as a prisoner of war in Somalia by one of the clans
that are fighting the United Nations soldiers. I have a son who is near
to an age when he might serve in the military, and I have been thinking
a bit about what it might be like to be in that family, for parents to realize
that their son is lying somewhere with a broken leg, with shrapnel and gunshot
wounds in his body, having been paraded naked through the streets. His future
is unknown, and it lies in the hands of desperate and unreliable people.
Let's think of what it would be like to be in their shoes, to be longing
to hear good news. They wait for a phone call or a knock on the door, for
somebody to say, "Mr. and Mrs. Durant, I have important news of your
son---" If that were to happen, there are two questions that would
come immediately to their minds: First, is the news good? And we can imagine
the official spokesperson saying, "Yes, it is marvelous good news!
In fact, your son is not only well, but he has accomplished the most miraculous
breakthrough---he has ended the war! And there will never again be starvation
in Somalia! He has single-handedly written a chapter of history in that
nation. And he will be restored to you soon. It is the best possible news!"
The second question that would occur to parents in that situation is, "Is
this true?" We are all familiar with the saying that has earned its
right to proverbial status over and over again: If something seems too good
to be true, it probably is. If a sales pitch is too remarkable or the advantages
are too overwhelming, there must be a catch. If all the evidence and all
the normal hopes and dreams have been drowned in good news, then we have
to ask, "Are you really telling the truth?"
We have come to the ninth chapter of Romans, the place in the argument of
Romans where we have to ask that second question. The first eight chapters
made the powerful case that the news from heaven is the best possible news.
The tragedy was a lot worse than we thought; we had no idea how desperate
our condition was. There are no mitigating circumstances, no way out. The
race is destined for death and hell and deserves it, and it cannot answer
the problem on its own. And yet God has acted graciously in Christ who is
our substitute. By his stripes we are healed, and by his Spirit we are empowered.
The news is so gloriously good that it defies description. The end of Romans
8, for instance, reminds us, "If God is for us, who can be against
us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all---how will
he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?...we are more
than conquerors...[nothing] will be able to separate us from the love of
God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Such good news!
But is this news too good to be true? How do we know that we can rely on
these marvelous promises of God? Haven't there been gods of other peoples
throughout history, other promise-makers. Is our God alone one who will
not lie? Haven't we all known men and women who have abandoned the Christian
faith as useless and unsuccessful in their lives, who once claimed to be
Christians but now claim to be something else because in their eyes the
good news failed and the promises weren't reliable?
The most profound way to ask the question, "Is the good news of Romans
1-8 true?" is to go back and see if God has kept the other promises
that he has made. Before the church came into existence. God made promises
to Abraham and to his progeny, the nation Israel. He made unique promises
to be their God and savior. And now Paul is going to turn and ask this painful
question: "Has the word of God failed for Israel? Has God rejected
his people after all?" If he has, how do we know that he will not reject
us as well?
The Experience of Israel
Chapters 9-11 contain a complex argument that answers both philosophical
and histroical arguments that arise from the experience of teh Israelites.
We are going to examine the promises God made and whether he has been true
to them or not. Romans 9---11 must be read as a unit that builds to a wonderful
climax. This is some of the most difficult material in the Bible. It is
going to challenge us both spiritually and intellectually. It will assault
our pride. Yet the hard questions must be answered. It is not enough to
just proclaim the good news without replying to the coubts, "Can I
be sure it really works? Has God's word never failed?" Romans 9:1-5:
I speak the truth in Christ---I am not lying, my conscience
confirms it in the Holy Spirit---I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish
in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from
Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of
Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants,
the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are
the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who
is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
An important observation we can make immediately about this paragraph is
how many times the apostle Paul refers to himself: "I am not lying...my
conscience...I have great sorrow...in my heart...I could wish that I myself
were cursed...." Over and over again he is speaking of his own heart
and his own anguish. Although he calls on the Spirit of God as a witness
to the truth of what he is saying, this is all about Paul. What makes this
striking is that the end of chapter 8 is all about God---the unbreakable
promises of God, the magnificent mercy of God, and the strength of his love
and commitment to us. Having just spoken of God so profoundly, Paul is now
speaking about himself. He does this for an important reason.
Grief and Praise
When we ask the hard questions of God and require that the difficult issues
be brought front-and-center, in the long run the answers are going to have
a lot to do with the kind of person we are---whether we can feel some of
the agony and grief that Paul feels here, and whether we can praise God
as he did here at the end of verse 5. (Verse 5 anticipates a much more remarkable
doxology at the end of chapter 11: "Oh, the depth of the riches of
the wisdom and knowledge of God!...For from him and through him and to him
are all things.To him be the glory forever! Amen.") The section of
Romans that is going to ask the hard questions has bookends: the grief and
anguish of the man bringing the questions to light, and the praise of God
that fills his heart. We are going to find answers, and when we do our faith
will be built up, not torn down; we will draw nearer to the Lord, having
heard these things---if we experience what Paul does here. If we can feel
the same sort of anguish that Paul felt for those who are outside Christ,
and at the same time praise God with the profound language that he does
we are ready for the wrestling that lies ahead.
In 9:3 Paul makes a statement that is unparalleled in the Bible. And to
call the Holy Spirit as his witness and say what he says here staggers me,
frankly. He says that he is willing to suffer eternal damnation, to be cut
off from Christ for the sake of those who do not know him, if it were possible.
(In chapter 8 he just said that it is not possible to be separated from
the love of God in Christ, but were it possible, he sees himself willingly
making that choice.) I can name people for whom I would give up my life,
but I don't know anyone for whose sake I would reject salvation.
Why didn't Israel respond to its Messiah. If God had made all these promises
and he would keep his word, then why did the Jews who had all the advantages---the
history, the opportunity, the Scripture---reject and condemn their Messiah?
Doesn't it make us wonder if God really keeps his promises? That question,
although unspoken, is hanging in the air. Verse 6 answers it by saying it
is not the word of God that has failed.
We are going to briefly consider two ideas about the Jews to begin with.
The first has to do with the advantages and the privileges that the Jews
were given and that they squandered. The other is a foolish interpretation
of history that they arrived at when they tried to make sense of their family
tree.
Squandered Advantages
The Jews assumed that the list of privileges that begins in verse 4 had
indebted God to them, that the fact that they were given privileges. But
Paul looks squarely at their advantages and says that they have been squandered.
God is not obligated, because he has given to a people or to an individual
time and time again, to continue to give to them. We must appreciate what
he has given; we must choose gratitude, not arrogance. We need to look hard
at what these privileges are and ask if folks like us are not also presuming
upon the Lord by thinking that because we have already received so much,
we will forever continue to receive.
Let's look at the list of advantages: the adoptions as sons, the divine
glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship, the
promises, and the patriarchs; and from them was traced the ancestry of Christ.
There are four themes in that list of eight advantages.
The first theme is security. They had the security of having God commit
himself to them by covenant. That covenant was a legal document ratified
in heaven when God spoke to a terrified Abraham, amidst smoke and sacrifice
(see Genesis 15). The Jews were adopted as God's children; they stood in
his family. And theirs were the patriarchs, we are told. They could look
back to these great men of faith who were their fathers and who lived lives
that would be examples to them. And there was a feeling of security in knowing
that legally they belonged in a family and a community and that it couldn't
be taken from them because the covenant had been ratified. We know the same
security as Christians. The covenant in our case was ratified by an empty
tomb. We can have the same security as Israel had in that we have a community,
a place to stand, a home; we belong because we have been adopted as sons.
The second theme is insight into the way things really were. In Paul's list
of advantages he speaks of the promises or the prophesies, and the giving
of the Torah, the law. This was an enormous advantage for the Jews. They
were told by the prophets how God would work in history. They would see
things unfold as they were promised and realize that they were given insights
that no other nation had. And they were given the law of God which told
them right from wrong so that they didn't have to live in a confused, crazy
world; tossed like a boat on the waves of a wild sea, having no sense of
moral direction. They had a moral anchor in the law. Again, we have the
same advantage. We have been given the Scriptures, not just the Old Testament
but the New Testament, and all of the loving care that God has taken to
tell us the truth so that we live insightful lives.
A third theme is the experience of spiritual beauty. It says they saw the
glory, the Shekinah of God, the great pillar of fire that went before
the people of Israel at night and the cloud that went before them during
the day, which indicated the presence of God during their wilderness wanderings.
And later they worshiped in the marvelously adorned temple that Solomon
built. They had a sense of the majesty and the beauty of God in worship.
We have the same opportunities: to write the praise of God in song and sing
it, and to behold the Lord in the heavens and realize that he is declaring
his beauty everywhere we turn, in people and in nature. We can have our
souls made grand by the beauty of the Lord.
Lastly, the Jews had the honor of being the family of Messiah, the one whom
God would send as the answer. They were the family who would welcome him
into the world. And as Christians we are the family he has taken with him;
we are his brothers and sisters. We have that honor as well.
Security, insight, beauty, and honor were privileges that the Jews squandered.
Just because God had been good did not mean that they had no more response
to make. The day broke finally when the Lord himself came to his people,
and they rejected him despite all the opportunities they had to be prepared
to receive him. Their rejection must serve as a warning to us. We are people
of privilege as well, with all the advantages of church and family, truth,
music, and insight; and given an opportunity tomorrow we could turn our
back on them completely. Having been raised with every advantage, we cannot
predict that we will choose the right thing.
I came to Stanford as a freshman in the fall of 1967, and a fellow I knew
who came from a high school near mine ended up living down the hall from
me. He was a transcendent figure even among a lot of other bright and talented
people. He was athletic, good-looking, charming, and brilliant. He came
from a prominent family in southern California and had a strong religious
heritage. He was a privileged person.
But the last I heard, this man was living under a bridge somewhere in Los
Angeles County. Everything he owns is in a shopping cart that he pushes
around. The only time his talents as a leader and thinker are put to use
is when he occasionally rallies other homeless people to shout rebellion
and frustration at city hall officials and others. Humanly speaking, he
had all of the privileges of the world, but for reasons that are beyond
me he decided to junk them.
Having been given a great deal does not predict that we will have a great
deal more. We find that we still have to make choices spiritually with what
we have been given. The word of God has not failed because the Jews, with
so much to their advantage, did not choose to follow Messiah.
How To Read A Family Tree
The second idea about the Jews that Paul addresses in this section in verses
6-13 is to talk about their foolish interpretation of history:
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
natural children 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 had one and the same father, 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 the Jews were doing was looking back on their history and making the
assumption that if they could trace their parentage back to Israel (Jacob),
Isaac, and Abraham, then they could presume on the physical descent; they
were owed something by God. But Paul says, "Look at history again.
Abraham had more than one child. Only one was a child by miracle, only one
the child whom God invested himself in, upon whom was the promise of blessing.
The issue is not just who your ancestors are. The question is also whether
you have faith. Has God invested himself in you, and has there been a response
to him in your heart?"
Look at this series of names and see if you know who these people are: Zimran,
Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. After Sarah died Abraham married
a woman named Keturah, and these were their six sons. Ishmael was born before
Isaac, these six men after Isaac. But only Isaac was the child of promise.
Life comes from God by miracle, by his touching and awakening faith and
the heart's responding in faith.
Rebekah's Sons
Then the toughest question of all that Paul asks here is the question of
the two sons of Isaac, who had the same father and the same mother, who
were born at the same time. Yet (as Rebekah was told before they were born)
before they had done anything one way or the other to indicate that one
was more attractive or more godly than the other, God said, "This one
is mine, and that one is not."
Here is an interesting article that appeared in the newspaper recently:
"I go zoom," was all the three-year-old boy had to
say after grabbing his parents' car keys and taking a wild joy ride. Florida
highway patrol troopers remained stumped as to how Mikey Sproul, who stands
just 30 inches tall, was able to hit the gas pedal and maneuver at the same
time. The toddler's steering was a bit suspect. He hit three cars in less
than a half mile during the ride Friday, but no one was hurt, including
him.
Mikey's trip started just after midnight, when as his parents slept he climbed
their five-foot bedroom dresser and snatched the keys. Dressed in nothing
but his underwear, he hopped into the 1979 Mercury and fired it up. While
backing out of the driveway and shifting into drive, he hit two cars at
an auto repair shop next door. After a spin through a convenience store
parking lot he swerved onto busy US Highway 41. When Warren Wise saw the
car coming toward him he pulled off the road into a ditch, but that didn't
prevent a third collision. "It was like he made a sharp turn and ran
right into me," Wise said. That's where the ride ended, but no charges
were filed.
The race car world ought to be keeping track of this child. There is something
amazing about him, and we can predict a remarkable future for him. In contrast,
the point Paul is making is that before the child Jacob was born, before
anyone had any reason to know anything about him, God was chose him. It
was not because that child was more attractive or stronger or greater, or
had any more reason to presume on God. It was because of the sovereign determination
of God.
We had a family reunion last weekend. There was a whole bunch of people
at our house for forty-eight hours of lots of talking, eating, and hustle
and bustle. My two-year-old niece and an eighty-eight-year-old great-aunt
and everyone in between were there. It made me consider how we think about
ourselves as families, and it reminded me of what Paul is saying here. We
tend to look at the most successful people in the family and say, "That's
really the type our family produces." But we leave aside the sister
who is in rehabilitation or the uncle who is in jail. Those are aberrations;
they don't really represent the real "us." The real representatives
of a family are the people who do well and are attractive.
Paul is saying that we are not to read into family histories the ideas that
all the members who did well indicate how terrific we are, that they make
the case that we deserve everything we get, and that advantages come to
us and must continue to come because of something that is special about
us. Many of Abraham's children left the story. They became wild antagonists
to the people of God. Esau's children became the nation Edom which betrayed
Israel. Yet, in this family tree we see God's activity in choosing some
for himself, giving them faith and encouraging them to life.
That ought to produce gratitude, not presumption. So Paul is trying to remind
the Jews, "Don't just look at the special line and consider yourselves
to have God indebted to you. There must be a response of gratitude and appreciation,
not presumption on God." There must be a miracle for us to experience
the life of faith in Christ. God has to change our hearts, and we have to
allow the change to take place.
But that is really the good news, isn't it? If he were to love us not just
because he chose to love us but because we were special, because we could
claim a right to it, because we had been given privileges and deserved more,
or because others in the line that we looked back to were treated graciously;
that wouldn't require a miracle to take place in our hearts. But in fact
his choosing is based only on him. We can't un-deserve his love because
we never deserved it to begin with.
My friend who is living under a bridge in Los Angeles County might look
at people around him and say, "Those poor souls never had a chance.
They were beaten and abused and hurt and mistreated; that's why they are
homeless and wretched." But if he were to think this way, he would
have to admit, "I was given every chance. I'm here because I chose
to be here; I made a wretched mess of things."
Yet the fact that privileges may be followed by bad choices does not even
then disqualify us. We can't look at failure and inadequacies on our part
and assume that God will not attend to us, because there was nothing attractive
in us that won his love to us to begin with. We find in Scripture a seeking,
choosing, and penetrating God. If he loves us and has awakened love in our
hearts, then we don't need to fear that the word of God will fail. That
is the great declaration of verse 6. God does keep his promises. The news
is good, and it is not too good to be true. If we read Israel's history
right, we realize that he never rejected his people; he is continuing to
keep his promises. And there is a great day coming when the whole nation
will come to faith again.
Finally, I would like to ask you to go back and re-examine the apostle Paul's
description of himself in the first paragraph of this chapter. Look at the
real grief he felt for people who had missed the Lord (verse 2,3). Look
at the same time at the praise that he offered to God for his greatness
(verse 5). In Romans 9-11 we face some very hard questions; if God is doing
all this sovereign choosing, there are some pretty difficult implications.
But I invite you to place yourself to the degree that you can in the shoes
of the apostle Paul, and not ask the questions merely intellectually, but
feel the sorrow he felt for those who don't know the Lord, and be sure of
the praise of God that goes with it. If we can hold those two things together
during this study, the philosophical and historical difficulties will strengthen
us.
Catalog No. 4349
Romans 9:1-13
Sixteenth Message
Steve Zeisler
October 10, 1993
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