August 03, 2014
Trusting God
Romans 9:1-12, 30-32
Preface to the Word
This summer we’ve been making our way through Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians, trying
to make sense of its main message and what it has to say to us today as followers of Jesus living
1,960 years later in a very different culture half-way around the world! One thing’s for sure –
the world may have changed dramatically over the centuries, but human nature has not! So we
realize that even this ancient apostle of the faith has to something to say to us today.
The modern reader of Romans is not helped, however, by the way our Bibles are broken down
into chapters and verses. It’s easy to think that new chapters begin new thoughts, like the
indentation of a new paragraph. But as it turns out, the chapter breaks are not always in logical
places and can confuse our interpretation of Paul’s lines of reasoning and logic. Other than using
chapters and verses to memorize passages from Romans, it’s almost better to ignore them and
try to read Romans as a letter.
So far we have covered the first 8 chapters of this ancient epistle. One Roman scholar, Paul J.
Achtemeier has outlined Paul’s letter in such a way as to show the major themes that are
carefully woven together.
Chapter 1 through 4:22 focus on God’s lordship and the problem of the past. He call’s this
section “Grace and Wrath.” Paul talks about universal sin and its consequences, reminding his
brothers and sisters from the Jewish faith that they are included in the consequences of sin,
despite the Law of Moses. The answer to universal sin, says Paul, is universal faith as
demonstrated by the patriarch, Abraham.
Starting with verse 23 in chapter 4 and continuing through chapter 8, verse 39 Paul dwells on
another major theme in his letter: God’s lordship and the problem of the present. Achtemeir calls
this section “Grace and Law.” Here Paul talks about sin and grace and law, pointing to the
disobedience of Adam and the obedience of Christ. He explains what it means to live “in the
flesh” and contrasts that with living “in the Spirit.”
Now we find ourselves in chapter nine and a new theme emerges: God’s lordship and the
problem of the future: “Israel and God’s Gracious Plan,” and it continues on through chapter 11.
I’m going to admit to you that this section of Romans is a problem for me. Chapters 9, 10, 11
seem so obscure and so removed from the concerns of the 21st century American life today. It’s
not that there is no good preaching material in these chapters, but it all gets buried to a degree
under Paul’s huge concern for his fellow Jews and how they fit into God’s unfolding plan of
salvation for humankind. The only sermon I’m going to preach on chapters 9, 10, and 11 will be
based on today’s scripture reading from Romans 9. I invite you to enter into Paul’s heart and
perspective as we hear some verses read from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible called
“The Message.” You can follow along with the insert in your bulletin. And then, I’m going to
ask you to bear with me as I try to make some sense of Paul’s reasoning…
Scripture Reading: Romans 9:1-12, 31-35
Sermon
I.
A. Paul wrote his letter to Rome more than 20 years after the resurrection of Jesus. In those 20
years, it had become increasing clear that Judaism, in general, would reject Jesus as God’s
promised messiah. Both in Palestine and in the lands of the dispersion, only a minority of
Jews was found in the Christian Church. Already the Church had become predominantly a
Gentile church. For Paul this was both a profound mystery and a tremendous sorrow.
B. The mystery was how this could happen. God’s promises for creation were given to his
“chosen” people who were elected by God from the beginning of recorded time to convey
God’s blessing to all people. In other words, God intended to bless creation through God’s
chosen ones. And here’s Paul problem. If God’s promised blessing of humanity through
Abraham and his descendants – a blessing that Paul was convinced was fulfilled in Jesus
Christ – then what if that he’s rejected by those descendants? What happens to the promise?
Isn’t it pretty much wiped out? And if God’s promised redemption is defeated by the chosen
people’s rejection, then what assurance is there that God’s promise of redemption for all of
creation offered in Jesus Christ can’t also be defeated the end?
C. So in these chapters we see Paul’s struggle with Israel’s inability to accept Jesus as the
Messiah. And his belief in the sovereignty of God made him wonder as he wrote his letter to
the Romans if, in some strange way, Israel’s rejection of the Gospel of Jesus might actually
be serving God’s larger purpose, somehow. He thought about the story of the Exodus and
how God blinded Pharaoh to what would have been for his own good, in order to open the
way for the Hebrews to escape from Egypt.
He wondered if Israel’s apparent blindness was only temporary and served a similar purpose
of letting the gospel “escape” from the narrow Jewish enclave into the wider Gentile world!
He wondered if perhaps God’s intention was not that Jews should be left behind, but that
they would eventually be built back into the broadened movement of their own historic faith.
D. Paul’s tremendous sorrow about all of this came from his observation that his fellow Jews
remained unawakened to what was most certainly their promised future, that what God had
promised to Abraham – to bless him and his descendants so that they, in turn, would be a
blessing to humanity – had come true in the messiah named Yeshua. His heart ached for his
brothers and sisters, for he believed they were unaware of the new era in the life of humanity
that had dawned in their very midst and from their own people.
E. As a Pharisee, Paul was the same way once. But in his conversion to Christ, Paul recognized
that what had happened in the ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus and what was
happening with his disciples was not something totally new or disconnected from the past,
but a ongoing continuation of God’s saving action that had given Israel its unique mission as
God’s chosen people. It seemed to Paul that his beloved Israel, lulled into complacency by
its pride in its heritage, had lost sight of its calling as the agent of God’s purpose on behalf of
all humankind.
II.
A. Paul’s great despair, however, was not as strong as his absolute conviction that God simply
cannot be defeated and that God’s promises are going to prevail. After all, since God’s
people are not those born of a certain race, but are persons given new birth by God’s
promise, God’s purpose of blessing humanity through an elect people cannot be frustrated.
God has and God will raise up a those people, a new people if God needs to… a people God
blesses and a people through whom God will bless creation.
For Paul, God’s people are not those born as the children of Abraham. God’s people are
those “born from above,” to borrow a phrase from John’s Gospel They are not God’s people
by genetics, but by faith.
B. And Paul built his argument on stories like that of Abraham and Rebecca. In Abraham’s
story, the old patriarch was worried about keeping the family line going so he had a son
through a slave girl since his wife, Sarah, was beyond the child-bearing age. Remember that
story?
But it wasn’t Abraham’s first-born son that ultimately defined God’s people. God fulfilled
God’s promise of blessing by giving Abraham a son through his old, barren wife Sarah. They
named him Isaac. As Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in our scripture reading today, “It
wasn’t Abraham’s sperm that gave identity here, but God’s promise.” Paul was challenging
his fellow Jew’s presumption of “chosenness” by arguing that it isn’t one’s lineage that
matters, but one’s trust in God and God’s power to fulfill what God promises. The true
children of Abraham are those who share Abraham’s faith, not his genes.
C. He makes the same point with the story of Rebecca giving birth to twins – Esau and Jacob.
If lineage mattered, then Esau, the first born, would naturally have been God’s chosen vessel
for defining the people of God. But before they were even born or capable of doing right or
wrong – God determined that Jacob would carry on the promised blessing of God for
humanity. In other words, God decides how the promise will be fulfilled, not human beings.
Our destiny – the destiny of creation – is in God’s hands no matter what obstacles may come
along.
And Jesus of Nazareth is now the One through whom God is honoring the ancient promise
of blessing and redeeming humanity through Abraham’s descendants, defined by faith not by
sperm!
Paul was extremely sad that more of his countrymen and women could not see this.
D. In the previous chapter, chapter 8, Paul pens this hymn of God’s love:
“Who, then, can separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble do it, or hardship, or
persecution, or hunger, or poverty, or danger, or death?... No, in all these things we have
complete victory through him who loved us! For I am certain that nothing can separate us
from his love: neither death nor life, neither angels or other heavenly rulers or powers,
neither the present or the future, neither the world above nor the world below - there is
nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is
ours through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
E. Building on this bedrock affirmation of faith, Paul takes a glimpse at God’s lordship and the
problem of the future… and he sees nothing there... except, of course, the glory of God! He
sees God eventually having God’s way with creation in spite of all the forces at work to
disrupt God’s intention, so “that the whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to
corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God” (Rom. 8:21,
New Jerusalem Bible).
Those who place their confidence in God’s love, given as a gift in Christ Jesus, will not be
disappointed in their hope in God, whose power raised Jesus from the grave. It is this hope
for the future, that God’s people – chosen precisely because of their faith – claim for
creation.
III.
A. A couple of things came to my mind as I read these words from Paul’s letter.
1). The first thing has to do with the way we see ourselves as God’s people today. Like the
Israelites Paul was writing about, I think many of us Christians today settle into an
understanding of ourselves as God’s people because of the family we were born into or
because of the religious training we received as we grew up. I can say this pretty honestly
because that is how it has been for me. I’ve always considered myself a Christian, and
therefore one of God’s people. My family was church folk. I went to Sunday school
regularly. I was taught right from wrong and good from bad. I was socialized and
conditioned as a Christian and it became a core part of who I am. Maybe it’s been the same
for you.
But in moments of insight, reflection, and candor I know that being born in a Christian
household and being active in church does not a faithful disciple of Christ make. The point
at which beliefs and actions move from religiosity to a life-defining trust that Christ is the
way to God, the truth of God, and the power to live the life of God is the point at which a
person becomes a Christian... the point at which one surrenders his or her self to the power
and the grace of God. This is one reason I’m glad the church has shifted its emphasis away
from trying to make good church members to making disciples of Jesus Christ for the
transformation of the world!
Martin Luther once pointed out that no one can take your bath for you, no one can die your
death for you, no one can have your faith for you. Neither mom nor dad nor the preacher nor
your best friend can accept your commitment to live for God or to trust in his grace. Being
God’s people is not a matter of physical birth, but of having the spirit born of God’s
promises.
God has no grandchildren!
2). The other thing that Paul’s words say to me is that we are not fools for placing our trust in
God or for expecting that God’s plans to redeem creation will succeed. I remember how
Leslie Weatherhead wrote about what he calls God’s “ultimate will” in his little book on the
will of God. He said:
“The picture in my mind is that of children playing beside a tiny stream that runs down a
mountainside to join a river in the valley below. Very little children can divert the stream
and get great fun out of damming it up with stones and earth. But not one of them ever
succeeds in preventing the water from reaching the river at last... In regard to God we are
very little children. Though we may divert and hinder his purposes, I don’t believe we ever
finally defeat them; and, though the illustration doesn’t carry us so far, frequently our
mistakes and sins are used to make another channel to carry the water of God’s plans to the
river of his purpose.
“The omnipotence of God, you perceive, does not mean that by a sheer exhibition of his
superior might God gets his own way. If he did, [our] freedom would be an illusion and
[our] moral development would be made impossible. No ‘end’ which God has in mind can
be imposed from without; for God’s end, the at-one-ment of all souls with him, must come
from [our] choice of God’s way, not the imposition of God’s will in irresistible might which
leaves no room for choice. Power means ability to achieve purpose. Since the purpose is to
win [our] volition, any activity of God’s which denied or suppressed [our] volition, in that it
would defeat the purpose, would not be a use of power but a confession of weakness and an
acceptance of defeat.
“When we say that God is omnipotent, we do not mean that nothing can happen unless it is
God’s will... We mean that nothing can happen which can finally defeat him.”
Such assurance feeds our hope and steadies our anxious souls. God is undefeatable and
keeps the promise of redemption. Our destiny remains in God’s hands.
B. In a recent commentary, the popular Christian author Anne Lamott wrote:
The last two weeks have been about as grim and hopeless as any of us can remember… The
drunken Russian separatists in Ukraine with their refrigerated train cars? I mean, come on.
Vonnegut could not have thought this up. Dead children on beaches, and markets, at play, in
the holy land?? Stop.
The two hour execution in festive Arizona? Dear God.
And let's not bog down on the stuff that was already true, before Ukraine, Gaza, Arizona, like
the heartbreaking scenes of young refugees at our border, the locals with their pitchforks.
The people in ruins in our own families. Or the tiny problem that we have essentially
destroyed the earth-- I know, pick, pick, pick.
Hasn't your mind just been blown lately, even if you try not to watch the news?
C. These are difficult days and it’s easy for our “mind to be blown” as the creation groans in
pain trying to give birth to something holy, and good, and redemptive. But what about our
faith? Is our faith blown away, too? Are we tempted to surrender our hope, our confidence
in God and in God’s power to fulfill God’s promises, to bless the earth through God’s
people?
Paul’s counsel to the Christians in Rome is this: God still reigns… a God who is reflected in
Jesus, born quietly in humble surroundings – blossoming into a full-blown Word of love,
hope and grace, and dying to make a dream come true that is better than our wildest dreams.
D. “Rest in this thought about God’s ultimate will,” Weatherhead pled in his little book on the
will of God.
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things
which God hath prepared for them that love him.
“Trust God. Rest in the nature of God. The One who began this strange adventure we call
human life will also control the end. ‘I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,
the first and the last.’ The last word is with God That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves…
“‘One far-off divine event’ whose nature no one may dream, but which we may call the
accomplishment of the ultimate will of God.”