Don't Throw It All Away Series

DON’T THROW IT ALL AWAY

Text: Rom. 9:1-5

Introduction

1. Illustration: President Abraham Lincoln, in a National Proclamation of Prayer and Repentance in 1863 wrote, “We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” (The Presidential Prayer Team Website)

2. President Lincoln certainly had a way with words. A few weeks ago, I stood in the National Cemetery in Gettysburg and read the words to his Gettysburg Address, and I wept. But you know, when I read these words of his it makes me want to cry all the more because nothing has changed!

3. We still have forgotten God, we think that the blessings we enjoy are because we deserve it, and we are too proud to pray to the God that made us.

4. We need to come to the realization that all of the problems that we are now enduring are not financial, racial, or political; they are spiritual. And unless we return to God nothing is going to change!

5. The feelings that I have today for America are not all that different from what Paul had for Israel.

a. Grief Over Israel

b. God’s Blessings On Israel

6. Would you please stand with me, out of respect for the Word of God, as we read Rom. 9:1-5.

Proposition: Like Israel in Paul’s day, America needs to return to God.

Transition: First, Paul talked about his…

1. Grief Over Israel (1-3).

A. Unending Grief For My People

1. Paul begins this section of his letter by going over and beyond to express his love and concern for his Jewish brothers and sisters.

2. In v. 1 he says, "With Christ as my witness, I speak with utter truthfulness. My conscience and the Holy Spirit confirm it."

a. At the beginning he emphasizes his own sincerity and declares what is basically an oath.

b. He starts out with Christ as my witness, which is what a person might do in a courtroom today by placing their hand on the Bible and declaring that they are telling the truth.

c. He anchors his testimony in union with his relationship with Jesus. In a sense, Christ is the first witness of Paul's concern for Israel: the other two are his own conscience and the Holy Spirit.

d. Paul's conscience, that inner sense of right and wrong, provide a valid testimony not because it is without error but because it comes by the Holy Spirit.

e. The Spirit is the vehicle by which Paul's conscience witnesses rightly to his feelings, not just because they are his feelings but because they are right.

f. We should notice that this statement is framed by in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

g. He wants his readers to understand that he is not speaking on his own accord, but he is controlled by both Christ and the Holy Spirit in his feelings towards the Jewish people.

3. So why does Paul go to such lengths to express his sincerity? In vv. 2-3 he expresses his concern for his people when he says, "My heart is filled with bitter sorrow and unending grief 3 for my people, my Jewish brothers and sisters. I would be willing to be forever cursed—cut off from Christ!—if that would save them."

a. This statement of Paul's goes along with that of the prophets, particularly Jeremiah who was known as the "weeping prophet."

b. Jeremiah 4:19 (ESV)

19 My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh the walls of my heart! My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent, for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.

c. Paul is expressing his own grief over Israel's current state. In fact, he goes so far as to say that he would be willing to be cursed and cut off from Christ if it would bring them to salvation in Christ.

d. The word translated "cursed” normally has a prayer connotation attached to it, and Paul is saying that he would ask God for it if it would bring the Israelites to Christ.

e. He was willing to face eternal condemnation if it would bring the Jews to their senses.

f. He would even be willing to be separated from Christ if it would work.

g. He cared so deeply for them that he would be willing to take their punishment upon himself.