God Has Not Failed Series

A story told among Jews in Yeman, Afghanistan, Iraq and Russia concerns two beggars who use

to wonder in the streets collecting alms. They use to pass the king's palace, and he always gave

them charity. One of the beggars always praised the king for his goodness and generosity, while

the other always thanked God for being generous to the king, which enabled him to help his

subjects. This was painful to the king and he asked him, "Why do you thank someone else when

it is I who am generous to you?" The beggar answered, "If God were not generous to you, you

would not be able to be generous." The king decided to teach this beggar a lesson. He ordered

his baker to bake two loaves of bread and to put precious stones in one of them as a gift from the

king. He ordered that his loaf with the jewels be given to the beggar that praised him, and the

ordinary loaf be given to the other beggar.

When this was done and the two beggars left the palace, the beggar who praised the king

observed that his loaf seemed heavy and badly baked. He asked his friend if he would exchange

loaves with him. His friend wanting to do a good turn agreed, and they switched loaves and went

their separate ways. The beggar who praised God began to eat and found the treasure. He

offered thanks to God that he would no longer have to go to the palace to beg. The king could

not understand why he did not return and the other beggar did. He asked him, "What did you do

with the loaf given to you the other day?" When the beggar told him of the switch he made the

king realize that it was God alone who makes rich. The finest and cleverest plans of men will not

realized if God wills otherwise.

God is sovereign and His purpose is accomplished regardless of the actions of men. The

Jews have always believed this, and that is how they account for their existence as a people in

spite of all the efforts of men to eliminate them from the stage of history. The folk tales of

Judaism are filled with stories of the sovereignty of God on their behalf. No people has endured

so many efforts to destroy them. Sholem Asch in his book One Destiny describes how the Germans

in 1942 set out to eliminate the Jews. They surrounded the Jewish Ghetto and cut off

all escape routes, and then they began to round up all Jewish children and pack them into freight

cars to be taken to execution centers. Infants were torn from their mother's arms. Many a mother

had to be killed before her arms could be wretched from the child. Others threw themselves and

their children down from upper stories to die at their own hands. With bare fists they fought

against guns and swords, and, of course, lost. Every child from a day to 16 years old was

liquidated.

What they did with the adults then is too ghastly to describe. If ever there was a

God-forsaken people, it was the Jews, and yet when the horror was over they not only survived,

but in 1948, after many centuries of waiting, they even regained their homeland, and Israel was

restored as a nation. Sholem Asch writes from a committed Jewish perspective: "Who will dare

to assert that the fact that the Jews have survived every trial of their faith is a completely

naturalistic phenomenon-that it was due entirely to their own will and strength of character? He

who dares to say this is either spiritually a cripple who is entirely incapable of comprehending a

transcendental occurrence, or a godless cynic whose heart is a nest for the lowest passions. Go

down on your knees, man, from the miracle in front of your eyes, the miracle of the preservation

of Israel. If ever there has occurred in human history and event that frightens us with its

incomprehensiveness and unrealizability, an event which is shrouded in a veil of profound

mysticism, it is this miracle of the survival of the Jewish people."

The Jews believed strongly in the sovereignty of God, and they know His purpose can never

fail. This is precisely the theme that Paul is developing in this passage. He also believes that

God's purpose for Israel can never fail, but he also knows that the rejection of Christ by the Jews

makes it appear as if God's Word to them had failed. He has just listed all of the blessings of God

that the Jews had, and yet he is in deep distress because they are lost without Christ. If they have

failed to gain the ultimate benefit of their covenant with God, then the plan of God appears to