Romans 10:1-4 The Gift of God!

Romans 10:1-4  Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.  For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.  Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. 

The law is good.  Its regulations and sacrifices helped the Jews keep in right relationship with a perfect, holy God.  However, keeping all of the commandments, regulations, special days, holy sacrifices perfectly exceeds man’s abilities and the natural order of things.  What if someone decides to switch on an electric light, or to put out a house fire, or to sweep out a contaminant on the Sabbath?  Does that work violate God’s command to keep the Sabbath holy?  Where does holiness begin and end; is holiness a heart issue or an activity?  Does obedience to the law stem from endearing love or from slavish behavior?  Does picking up a leaf, sharpening a pencil, or brushing dried mud from boots constitute work?  Can you walk on grass, crushing it with your feet, but not cut down a tree?  Are there exceptions to the commands and regulations in a daily life?  When does holiness stop and secular life start?  Of course in today’s scripture, Paul writes about the hearts of the Israelites in their attempts to follow God’s ways.  Their obedience came from control and monitoring, not from heartfelt commitment.  In fact, we discover as we look back on the Jewish experience after they left Egypt that they were continually idolatrous.  They carried two allegiances in their hearts: one to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the other to their preferred heathen gods.  God often complained about their idolatry, their lack of fidelity to him.  He repeatedly judges them for their failure to serve their Creator wholeheartedly.  Jesus quoted Isaiah when He said, These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  (Matthew 15:8)  They expressed religious zeal, attempting to serve God through the law and regulations they received in the Wilderness, but their own self-righteousness contaminated their hearts.  Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.  They knew God demanded exactness, to do things exactly as he commanded.  They built everything: the ark, the tabernacle, the temple items, exactly as God ordered.  Nothing was to be too big or too small or as an approximation of what God ordered.  No, everything had to be exact, conforming to his will.  Also in their daily lives as individuals and as a community, they had to live lives of exactness, perfection, and holiness. Of course as with all humans born with Adam’s DNA, the Jews were rebellious in nature.  To force them to come under the will of another, even God’s will, ran contrary to their human nature, their willful spirit.  What they needed and what all men and women everywhere need is a substitute for their waywardness: an advocate before God.  They required someone who could satisfy all of God’s expectations of mankind.  Jesus Christ is that person.  Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.  

The Jewish people were chosen to bring to the world the answer to perfection, the answer to God’s exactness and his holiness.  Nonetheless, their own efforts to please God failed miserably, for they were not capable of following God unreservedly from their innermost being.  “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”  Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  (Matthew 22:36-39)  Their attempts to follow the laws and regulations did not change the intents and purposes of their hearts.  Their self-centered human nature dominated their everyday lives, their actions in community with others.  Their Adamic nature was predominant, even in their repentance: “We will do it.”  We will change; our efforts will prove that we can be like you God: holy and good.  Even in the Garden of Eden when the devil tempted Adam and Eve, he appealed to their desire to be co-equal with their creator.  He told them to eat the fruit.  For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.  (Genesis 3:5)  In the beginning, humans were so foolish as to believe that if they received the knowledge, they could follow it.  However, they could not follow the way of God’s rules and regulations, for their hearts were full of self: self-effort, self-satisfaction, self-correction, and the like.  Their Adamic personality was present even in their repentance.  They desired not God’s ways, his nature of love: they desired their will, their nature, their way.  They held to the rebellious nature of mankind, even to the point of worshipping strange gods made in their own image of licentiousness, worldliness, sin.  They sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness: loving God with their innermost being and loving others as themselves.  Jesus said to Nicodemus to know God, to enter into his kingdom, to perform his will of goodness and love, you must be born again.  Humans must experience a new birth, replace Adam’s nature in their spirits with God’s nature.  Peter says, All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead.  Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.  And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.  (1 Peter 1:3-5)  Someday our true nature will be revealed to all creation.  We are new creatures because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ.  

How should we live now as new creatures, born again through our faith in Jesus Christ’s works, a holy replacement for our works?  Knowing God’s marvelous work in us, our intentions should be to live lives of goodness by faith — seeking good rather than evil.  We should live as obedient children to his nature of holiness.  We should internalize the Spirit’s nature: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  (Galatians 5:22-23)  Our actions should be governed by the attributes of the Holy Spirit as we live in holy reverence to God in this alien world where we find ourselves.  Why reverence?  Because God paid a high price to ransom us from this world and its nature.  We read in the Word, He (Jesus) was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.  (I Peter 1:20)  At the beginning of time, God chose his Son, Jesus Christ, to be a ransom for the sin of humankind.  His death bought our freedom.  The price was the blood of Jesus Christ.  He became the captive of death, allowing us to walk out of the captivity of death to eternal life because of the blood of Christ that paid for our sins.  Sin always leads to death, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 6:23)  But He delivered us from the just consequences of sin.  We are born again, not to a life that will quickly end in death, but to an eternal life in the family of God.  Isaiah wrote that on Earth, we are like a flower that soon fades and the grass that withers.  But through the works of Jesus Christ, we will bloom and flourish forever, never losing our beauty, our luster, always pleasing in God’s eyes.  For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.  (1 Peter 1:23)  The Israelites were blinded to this work of God that comes through faith. They tried to earn a place of honor through their obedience to his directives, his regulations; but their flesh, their self-will could never completely please the God who demands one-hundred percent obedience, perfection.  In the final analysis, Paul says they needed to place their hope of salvation in the faith of Abraham and not their own works.  They had zeal, they tried to be right before God, even in their self-willed nature, but they needed to function with a knowledge of the truth.  God deserves complete obedience.  His world, nature itself, is run on exactness.  Without perfection, they could never please God.  CHRIST IS THAT PERFECTION; HE ALONE PLEASES GOD.  All of us who are hidden in Christ because of our faith in his works are pleasing to the Creator God.  Therefore we follow Paul’s admonition: Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.  (Colossians 3:2-4)  Amen!  

Romans 9:27-33 Jesus, the Rock!

Romans 9:27-33  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.” 

Hear the words of the Lord, is Isaiah’s cry to the people of Israel.  They brought contempt on themselves by their religious actions without the purity of their hearts.  The Israelite’s believed their laws, sacrifices, and regulations would win them favor with God, but what they failed to bring to God was a strong devotion from their hearts, a purity in their actions.  In a sense, they avoided God’s authority and dominion over them through their culture of religion and its accompaniments.  In their daily lives, serving God was more of a religious routine, a cultural demand, not an issue of their hearts.  Consequently, they tended to view God basically as an invisible authority, one who was unapproachable to them unless they went through the mechanisms of their religion.  Of course, they understood they were God’s chosen, delivered out of slavery to Pharaoh.  But this was an event in the past, not a fresh experience. They were a special people, but their hearts were far from God.  The prophet wrote of them: These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.  (Isaiah 29:13)  Because they did not embrace God’s will for them, they did not perform the tasks He wanted from them.  God indicts them on not taking care of the widows and the orphans: Wash and make yourselves clean.  Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong.  Learn to do right; seek justice.  Defend the oppressed.  Take your evil deeds out of my sight; take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.  (Isaiah 1:16-17)  Obviously, they did not take care of the widow, the orphan, the homeless because taking care of others was not essential to them.  In many ways they had lost the heart of God to bless all the Israelites.  Sadly, even while performing their perfunctory religious activities their hearts were far from God. They were living similar to the Gentiles, not as God’s chosen people.  They even were serving lifeless idols, not the Creator of all things.  Hear me, you heavens!  Listen, earth!  For the Lord has spoken:  “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.  The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”  (Isaiah 1:2-3)  The people did not truly understand God.  Their hearts were far from him.  God found their sacrifices and oblations intolerable to him, for they were brought with insincere hearts and wayward minds.

Israel failed because of the insincerity of their hearts and their lack of faith.  They also failed to realize that laws and sacrifices could not eradicate man’s sinful nature, a nature that will not bow down to God.  Rebellious men and women want their way all of the time.  Such an embedded nature makes us enemies to God.  The Israelites displayed this enmity between God and man when they lost sight of their Creator God.  How can that enmity be broken, only through a sacrifice that breaks down this wall of separation between God and man.  A perfect sacrifice that is acceptable to God had to be found.  Of course, Jesus Christ is that sacrifice.  God accepts his works, not ours.  Jesus’ works cleanse our hearts completely.  As John wrote, But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  (1 John 1:7)  Our souls become pure; our spirits become oriented toward doing good rather than evil.  God’s work is perfect.  As we grow in the knowledge of the Lord, love should become a motivating factor in everything we do.  Now, Israel fell short because even in serving God through laws and regulations, faith should be present.  The foundation of all the laws and regulations God gave to the Israelites was based on faith in God.  In Romans 4, we see that Abraham won favor with God because he believed God makes something new out of something that was not as with creation itself, and he believed God resurrects the dead.  Otherwise, God is in control of life.  In every living person, life exists because God exists.  God is eternal, life is eternal.  Faith is foundational to every religious ordinance or lifestyle that pleases God.  Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.  This is what the ancients were commended for.  By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.  (Hebrews 11:1-3)  Examples of faith other than the laws and regulations themselves are the lives of the ancients.  Noah believed a new thing was going to be made out of the old; a new creation was going to exist.  Abraham believed many nations would come through him; he believed a new thing would be done with Sarah and his old bodies.  Joseph believed his people would occupy a new territory.  Moses believed a new land would be given to the Israelite slaves.  All of the ancients believed in the resurrection of the dead.  Their faith in life forever superseded their ideas of extending life here on Earth for a while.  They had special burial plots for those who died.  Joseph even wanted his bones to be delivered to the new land.  Life for them did not stop at their demise.  Their God was eternal; He could make them eternal.  Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.  (Hebrews 11:35) 

Faith establishes peace with God, not our own works and efforts.  For we are temporal, not consistent in our daily lives.  Sometimes we do well, serve God well; other times, we wobble, fail to please him with our lives.  Consequently, we need someone who is always faithful, always on task, always pleasing God.  Of course, that is Jesus Christ, who is claimed only through faith.  His works are our works through our strong belief in his works on the cross for us.  We substitute his life for ours.  Every believer stands with our brother, Paul, saying, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  (Galatians 2:20)   Laws and regulations never can make us acceptable to God.  If we tried to be acceptable to God through our inconsistent manner, we would lead ourselves into failure and punishment.  Without faith in a complete work that Christ accomplished, we would face the same judgment as Sodom and Gomorrah.  The Israelites’ rebellion of the heart led to God’s judgment on them.  Their religious activity became perfunctory, without substance.  They lacked a true belief that the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob was the Creator of all things and that He demanded allegiance and obedience.  Their hearts of faith became cold; consequently, they fell under judgment.  Their faith in him was indifferent.  They believed they could satisfy any god through religious activity and laws.  But faith in the Living God leads to righteousness; laws and regulations alone lead to death.  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.  The stumbling stone is Christ Jesus.  His works, not ours, achieve righteousness.  People are frustrated by this fact.  They want another way, one that includes them, their efforts, in this salvation message.  A remnant of society, of the Jews, of every nation will believe in this good news, but most will choose works, their goodness, over Christ and his good works.  May everyone reading this breakfast cast aside his or her feeble efforts to achieve right standing with God and turn to Jesus whole-heartedly.  Do not let him be a stone that causes you to stumble; rather, let him be the Rock that is the foundation of your life.  Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, and I will never be shaken.  (Psalm 62:2) 

Romans 9:18-26 Loved of God!

Romans 9:18-26  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, 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.’”

In the above scripture, Paul addresses God’s sovereignty in the creation of the world and of man.  We hear again Paul’s cry for the Children of Israel that we have already read: I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through 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 people, those of my own race, the people of Israel.  (Romans 9:1-4)  His Jewish people seem like a piece of pottery thrown on the floor, unacceptable to God.  Jesus said at the end of his Sermon on the Mount: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.  (Matthew 5:48 KJV)  The mold of humankind could never be perfect with man’s efforts alone, no matter how many laws or regulations people followed.  After Adam’s fall, the pottery would never be in God’s perfect image unless the mold was perfect, of course that is Jesus Christ.  God knew what the Jewish people would do when the Messiah was revealed in their midst.  They would reject him.  If they would have accepted him completely; their position of being God’s chosen would have been confirmed completely.  And maybe, the plan of redemption of all people in the world would have ended within Israel.  The Roman yoke would have been thrown off by the miraculous works of the Christ, and Israel would have become a power in the world, but what would have happened to the redemption of every person in the world?  How could all people be saved and brought into intimate communication with God if Jesus was in Israel only, implementing his perfect work?  If Jesus had been limited to one group of people, He would have been working merely with the senses of this world, not with spiritual realities in the dominion of heaven and Earth.  The plan for the Jews’ national salvation had to be thrown aside at that time.  God had chosen a better plan, a way for all people to find the God who created them.  To the Jews, a plan to include the Gentile world in God’s perfect will seemed an anathema.  They were the chosen, the blessed, not the “others”.  They were the lump of clay chosen for honor by the Master Potter.  In the Old Testament, God said of the Jews, for whoever touches you touches the apple of his eye.  (Zechariah 2:8)  Why now are they seemingly cast aside, unable to grasp the reality of Christ coming to them and to the world in their time.  But in God’s redemption plan, He will do what he wants to do to show his glory, his magnificence.  The Messiah, Jesus Christ, did not come according to the will of the Jewish people, out of their goodness.  No, He came in God’s time, by his plan, his determination.  But when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman.  (Galatians 4:4)  When no one expected him, Jesus came born of a lowly virgin to a hostile Jewish leadership who did not receive or accept him.  They became the clay of dishonor.  They did not set Jesus on the throne.  God foreknew all of this: their recalcitrant behavior, their rebellion.  He understood this story even before He sent his Son to them.  He offered Jesus to a people who thought they were the only ones who could ever be acceptable to God, but God had other plans.  By their rejection of his plan, God made Jesus the Savior of whosoever will throughout the world.  All people who would accept Jesus became the chosen: chosen to enter the kingdom of God forever, with an intimate relationship with God.  

Jesus said, I must go away so that you will have the Holy Spirit within you as your guide, comforter, counselor.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.  (John 14:16)  Jesus did not come to a few, he came to the world because God chose this way, this story.  After Adam’s fall, God’s image in man became distorted.  Man’s self-will replaced God’s will.  The works of man are contrary to the works of God: So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.  (Galatians 5:16-18)   We find that God’s plan of salvation came to free all of us who are trapped in the imprisonment of the fleshly lifestyle.  We are displeasing to the holiness of God, for even our thoughts wander to self-willed desires and motives.  Our fallen nature is part of us.  Paul said there was something inside of him that he could not control.  We all have that something inside of us that is uncontrollable.  That old nature will come to the surface at some of the most inappropriate times.  The inner person will embarrass us or condemn us when we are weak in our resolve.  Otherwise, we are all lumps of dishonor, sometimes greater than other times, good for the garbage bin.  But God’s workmanship of placing us into the mold of Christ is perfect.  All who are IN CHRIST are in his shape: PERFECT, accomplished by the blood of Jesus Christ.  We who are IN CHRIST are no longer mere creatures of the flesh, but we are the redeemed, in the mold of Jesus Christ.  Because of sin, we were unacceptable to God, outside of his favor and grace.  Rather than destroy us as He did in the day of Noah, He allowed us to exist doing our own will.  We were imprisoned in our way of life.  For God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience, so he could have mercy on everyone.  (Romans 11:32, NLT)  But in his mercy and grace, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to set us free to serve God in his household forever.  So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.  (John 8:36)    

God allowed the Messiah to come through the Jewish lineage as the blessed vehicle to bring redemption to all people.  Abraham’s faith that God could make something out of nothing and resurrect the dead brought the Jewish people great favor.  God blessed, protected, and taught them, even in their slavery.  They were a lump of clay of great honor.  God chose them above all other people.  He placed the law in their community, giving them regulations to follow for more blessing.  He had them sacrifice animals to cover their sins, keeping them in communion with God and sparing them from God’s wrath upon sin.  They were God’s chosen to salvage a human race in rebellion against its Creator.  Why then are their ears blocked, unable to hear and to accept the good news of Jesus the Messiah?  Paul concludes that God is the potter.  He determines with whom He will work and when He will work.  Jesus came at God’s appointed time when the oppressive Romans were in control of his chosen people, Israel.  This era of subjugation to the Romans was the appropriate time for God to implement his plan of salvation.  Jesus had to die as a lamb outside of the city gates by the hands of this foreign power.  Of course, He died because the Jewish elite wanted him dead; they were envious of Jesus’ power over the people.  Jesus’ popularity and message were causing them to lose their position and authority as religious leaders.  The chosen, those who had been molded by the law and its regulations to be acceptable to God, were now being challenged by a message of faith in Jesus Christ.  For Jesus’ followers believed faith alone IN HIM makes one acceptable to God.  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not of works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  (Ephesians 2:8-10)  Jesus makes people holy, in right standing before God.  Of course, faith has always been the acceptable mold, instigated by Abraham, hidden in the DNA of the Jewish people.  The seed of Messiah was theirs.  Not only within their DNA but in the reality of Jesus Christ coming to them, serving them, and ministering to them.  The Messiah came to their society, fulfilling the law and its regulations that they labored under unsuccessfully.  The Jewish people were a lump of clay for special purposes.  They brought the Christ to the land of the living in the flesh.  This was God’s plan from the beginning of time.  The Jewish people, the lump of honor, brought God’s eternal blessing through the Messiah to the lump of dishonor, the Gentiles,   As Paul quotes from 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.  Today, may we rejoice that the heavenly Potter has formed us in the image of his Son, that we who were not a people are called the children of God!  

Romans 9:10-17 No One Should Perish!

Romans 9:10-17  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.  

Moses brought a people out of captivity in Egypt whose hearts had been hardened by the culture of the Egyptians.  The Israelites from the seed of Jacob were an ethnic group set apart as God’s chosen people.  Jacob in many ways was a scoundrel, but God planted the promise of Jesus in his loins.  The children of Israel fell into corruption in Egypt, for they served other gods enthusiastically.   Even when they knew their deliverance from slavery was miraculous, performed by the God of Moses, they still brought their Egyptian gods into the wilderness.  They complained often about Moses’ God and about not being in Egypt where they had shelter and a variety of food.  Egypt was in their minds at every problem in the journey.  When Moses went up on Mount Sinai, they formed a golden calf to worship with Aaron’s help.  Although their hearts were often in Egypt, God blessed them even though they did not honor him.  Why did God honor them even in their rebellion?   He remained faithful to his people because they held the Seed of Promise.  Their armament, their society, their culture, with the law of God’s structure and restrictions around their behavior, were to make it possible for the Messiah to come through their linage.  God protected the Jews even though they were often attentive to gods other than the God of heaven.  The promised seed, Jesus Christ, would come through the Israelites, Jacob, not Esau.  God saw this before the twins were even conceived biologically.  The Lord said to her (Rebekah), “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.”  (Genesis 25:23)  Before the story of these two lives, Jacob and Esau, would be carried out on Earth, the timeless God already knew this story.  He already knew that Esau would give away the Promised Seed for red stew.  “Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?”  But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.”  So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.  Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew.  He ate and drank, and then got up and left.  So Esau despised his birthright.  (Genesis 25:32-34)  In essence, Esau despised his right to have The Promise come through his bloodline.  A very serious part of God’s plan from the beginning of time was to bring his only begotten Son as the deliverer of all humanity from the slavery of sin.  For Esau, a hunter of game, to choose a mundane activity of this world and its pursuits over God’s plan to redeem all humanity was a grave mistake.  God knew Esau’s inclinations; he knew what Esau held preeminent in his life.  He knew Esau’s behavior on Earth would reject God’s plan of redemption.  Now, Jacob was no angel.  He was a conniver, a man living to get ahead, but Jacob was a man of the people: Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents.  (Genesis 25:27)  As with Jacob, Jesus was a man of the people.  He went from town to town to save the needy.  Consequently, Jacob carried Jesus’ seed.  God’s plan of redemption went through Jacob and not Esau.  He loved Jacob because He foresaw who he was and would be.

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”  How far does God’s mercy and grace extend?  Is it only for the chosen few?  Is the pain and suffering of the cross only for the elect or the predetermined ones?  This will always be a theological question that mere men will discuss endlessly.  Yet as believers we know many scriptures tell us, The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.  Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.  (2 Peter 3:9)   Our desire to understand God and his ways is always embedded in the nature of a rebellious people.  However, the deliverance from Egyptian slavery for the Jews demanded obedience, to place the blood of a lamb or goat around the doorframe.  All the Israelites knew what they should do to get away from Pharaoh’s control.  The blood around the doorframe of the entrance to every dwelling was necessary for them to be delivered from the angel of death.  God said, On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every first born both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.  I am the Lord.  The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.  No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.  (Exodus 12:12-13)  The angel of death during his passover would be looking for that blood.  Unless they performed this activity just as Moses described, the angel of death would kill the firstborn of that household.  If they failed to follow Moses’ directions, they would face the same consequence that all the Egyptians would face that night: the first born male in the household would die.  This deliverance through the evidence of blood on the doorframe would separate the Jews from the Egyptians.  They alone would receive mercy and compassion that night.  Because of the blood of sacrificed animals, the Israelites would experience the grace of God.  We who are alive IN CHRIST have placed the blood over the doorframe of out lives.  Our journey is now the story of the cross.  The Promise has come, and we who are alive IN CHRIST have the Promise within us.  By placing the blood around their doorframe, the Israelites were living by faith.  By performing this act, they said that there was something bigger in their lives than just the commonness of everyday living.  Faith is believing that God offers us something greater than ordinary existence.  Of course, faith is believing in the reality of God, as Creator and resurrector of life.  The story of life is not our story about our efforts to find God, but God’s story of finding us, delivering us from Egypt.  God’s mercy and grace have come to all who are hidden IN CHRIST.  WE IN HIM AND HE IN US IS THE GREAT MYSTERY OF LIFE. 

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.  As with Esau and Jacob, God knew the story of Pharaoh before he played out his life in Egypt.  God knew Pharaoh would not use his power well, and his heart would turn to stone.  Pharaoh had absolute power in Egypt.  He could determine life or death for any person living in his land.  Pharaoh’s heart was never soft, but as he experienced the plagues his heart became even harder.  Pharaoh knew he was losing authority to another power.  In losing his pretense of absolute power, he would lose his authority over the Egyptians.  The plagues were affecting his reign of power with the Egyptians, so he did what he was forced to do: he rejected Moses’ request to free the Israelites.  But when the angel of death came, cutting off of his lineage by killing the firstborn son, this meant an end to his family’s reign.  His dynasty would come to the end if all of his sons were killed, so he finally let the Israelites go.  His heart was hardened by power.  God allowed that hardening for his benefit, to show to the Israelites who were still enmeshed in Egypt that a greater power than Pharaoh existed on this earth, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The Children of Israel were set free by the blood of animals.  They would live for a little longer on Earth, but now they would live in freedom.  We who are IN CHRIST have been set free forever on this earth and for eternity.  The blood of Jesus Christ has spared us from the angel of death.  Every day we celebrate the Passover through our lives as Christians.  Grace and mercy have come to us.  Without knowing what sin is and the hardening of our hearts through the experience of this world, we would not know the magnitude of salvation.  The world is caught in the slavery of violence, heartaches, troubles, pain, eternal death.  But we who have heard the call of God through Jesus Christ the Lord have discovered a new life.  As Paul told the church at Ephesus, But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  (Ephesians 2:13)  We are new creatures who live this new life.  We have been delivered from slavery, for the Promise found in Jacob’s loins has come to us.  As scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”  For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  (Romans 10:11-13)  Thank you, Lord, for bringing us near by the blood of your Son, Jesus.  Thank you for providing a perfect Passover Lamb to bring us from death to life!  

ROMANS 9:6-9 Promise of Faith!

ROMANS 9:6-9  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.”

In the above passage, we see Paul identifying a special group of people from the Jewish heritage that God called to redeem man from his waywardness.  These people are those who have THE PROMISE IN THEIR LOINS.  Of course we know that this line of Abraham’s progeny will carry the seed of promise: Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ would make a way for humanity to be blessed by God.  We see in Genesis that humanity had totally embraced corruption in the Garden of Eden.  After the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, we see mankind’s self-will contaminate the whole world, moving away from the goodness of God to the evilness of man.  The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.  (Genesis 6:5)  When Noah’s ark landed after the flood, he presented God with sacrifices of birds and animals,  thanking God for his faithfulness to him and his family by sparing them from the destructive flood.  God accepted his sacrifices, probably because they took the place of God’s wrath on Noah and his family.  Sin is to be dealt with by the sentence of death.  These animals and birds died in place of Noah and his family.  However, God knew that the flood and these sacrifices did not rid mankind of his wickedness.  Inside of men abode a rebellious spirit, a spirit that strove to free itself from the constraints of God’s goodness and righteousness.  Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.  And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.  (Genesis 8:20-21)  We see God in these words reiterating the hopelessness of the human race.  Mankind would continue to exist, but he would exist in the milieu of sin, under the control of the evil one.  As Paul explained in the New Testament, So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and MAKING ME A PRISONER OF THE LAW OF SIN at work within me.  What a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  (ROMANS 7:21-24)  Since God cannot tolerate man’s sinful nature, outside of Christ, mankind will always be open to God’s judgement of death.  After the flood, God promised not to destroy mankind by water, but due to sin man’s very existence would be one of trouble, sorrow, and death, never experiencing fully the grace and mercy of God, and for sure, never inheriting eternal life with God.  

Yet in today’s verses, we see God coming to the rescue of a doomed creation.  Through Isaac God intended to bring Christ, THE PROMISE of eternal life, into existence.  This favored segment of humanity will carry the SEED of the promise in their DNA.  Because Abraham the father of Isaac was a man of faith, believing God created all things and secondly that God could raise people from the dead, He received a promise that God would make him a father of many nations.  Since this promise is fulfilled in Christ Jesus, millions of Christians populate the world.  Abraham’s progeny from Issac forward received this same promise, and the Jewish people would be cherished by God because they carried the promise within their beings.  The promise Abraham received was passed from one generation to the next.  Paul points out that not all of Abraham’s physical descendants were recipients of this promise.  We know Ismael, Abraham’s first child, did not inherit this promise from God, for he was born out of Abraham’s desire to fulfill God’s promise to him.  Ismael was a product of works, not grace—the product of Abraham’s will, not God’s will.  Abraham’s volition, not God’s will, was evident in the birth of Ismael.  The Bible says that God does not share his glory with any man, not even a man of great faith.  I am the Lord; that is my name!  I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.  (Isaiah 42:8)  God’s actions will be honored, not Abraham’s.  In this excellent example of works and grace, Abraham’s work, his attempt to fulfill a plan, does not satisfy God’s perfect will.  God’s grace that leads up to the THE WORK OF JESUS CHRIST satisfies God’s complete, exact nature.  Consequently, Isaac was conceived, a miracle in itself, a product of God and not of man.  We know that Abraham and Sarah were physically beyond birthing a child; therefore, Isaac is a supernatural work of God.  Likewise, Jesus was a supernatural child, conceived not by the action of an earthly father, so was Isaac supernatural in the sense that two humans beyond the physical ability to produce a child conceived Isaac.  Through Isaac, God begins to fulfill his promise to Abraham.  Isaac personifies God’s will, his  nature of mercy and grace.  At the appointed time I WILL RETURN, and Sarah will have a son.  In recounting this story, Paul disarms the Jewish idea that all Jewish seed will be blessed, for they carry within themselves the human ancestry of the Messiah.  Paul says the Promise comes not just through the physical nature of ethnicity, nor through their religious identity, but through faith.  Abraham was the father of faith.  The ancestry of Faith produced the Messiah, not the physical or religious nature of a specific ethnic group.  The grace and mercy of God produced the Messiah, not the physical, religious, or societal traits of any one people.  THE PROMISED seed was carried through the biological existence of the Jewish people.  This faith was conceived from Abraham’s faith, carried through to the day of Jesus, when Abraham’s faith that God could raise the dead was realized.  Jesus was resurrected and so will we be resurrected to meet our Savior in the air.  

God’s will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.  His will is to bless all people on the Earth through the Messiah, Jesus Christ.   Eternal life is the gift of God that Paul expounds upon in today’s scriptures.  The promise to Abraham was really a promise of eternal life, existence forever, and that eternal life could only come through THE PROMISE, JESUS CHRIST.  He would come through the seed of Abraham, and the passage of that seed would go through the progeny that God selected, not merely a physical action, but a spiritual action.  The Jews carried this promise from one generation to the next, always with a hope that the Messiah would soon come to rescue them from sin and death.  The Messiah did come from their physical identity, conceived by the Holy Spirit, through the virgin Mary.  The Jewish ancestry is not what is important, but the ancestry of faith is the important factor in the realization of the Messiah.  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.  We who are alive IN CHRIST because of our faith in his works before God and not in our works shall forever inherit life.  This is our inheritance: But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have be saved.  (Ephesians 2:4-5)  We, from every country, are children of Abrahams’s faith.  We believe as Abraham believed that God created all things and that He raises the dead.  Because of that belief in the works of Jesus Christ, we are new creatures.  Our birthdate begins at the time of our faith in the Messiah’s work.  We are known as born again creatures, inheriting the likeness of God, not man.  We are not of one ethnic group, but we are still family.  We are not familiar with all of our brothers and sisters in the family of God at this time, but one day we will know all of them by name, for we are brothers and sisters in this holy family.  Our names and our nationalities are different, the way we think and act have earthly peculiarities; but we are more like our elder brother, Jesus Christ, that any other characteristic.  Our basic nature is his, so we love beyond human understanding.  We even love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  Isaac was born to parents too old to have a child: his was a supernatural conception.  We who are alive IN CHRIST were destined for oblivion before we met him.  Who could deliver us, conceived under the auspices of sin, evil in the way we think and act, away from God as all humanity is away from God?  Christ could!  He brought life to all of us who were dressed in soiled rags, destined for destruction.  Praise God, we are clothed in new garments, beautiful in every way, illustrating God’s great love for humanity.  At the appointed time, God comes!  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  (2 Corinthians 5:17)  Rejoice, dear friends.