A. Last Sunday’s Friend Day was certainly uplifting to me, I hope it was for you as well!
1. We had a number of visitors, and we had a special fellowship meal. It was a great day!
B. I heard the story of a man who was experiencing problems with his new computer, so he called the help desk.
1. The computer technician on the phone began using all kinds of computer jargon, which confused the man even more.
2. The man politely interrupted the technician and said, “Could you please give me the instructions as you would give them if I were a 4 year-old.”
3. “Okay,” the computer technician replied. “Son, could you please put your mommy on the phone?”
4. We are about to dive into one of the most challenging sections of Romans and I’ll try not to confuse anyone with religious jargon, but I won’t be speaking to you as if I were talking to 4 year-olds.
C. I would like you to do something with me.
1. When my friend Dan Williams preached through this section of Romans, he asked his congregation to do a mental exercise and to use their imaginations with him.
2. I want to borrow his exercise and I want for us to use our imaginations with this scenario.
3. After we place ourselves in the imaginary situation, I will ask you some questions about it.
D. Let’s jump forward in our imaginations to the year 2045; about 25 years in the future.
1. In your mind’s eye I want you to picture yourself as a missionary, and you are returning from China.
2. Imagine that you have ministering there for 25 years, and after a 25-year absence you are finally coming back the states for a visit home.
3. You have been working in the southern province of China all that time, and your ministry there has been successful beyond your wildest imagination.
4. The mission had been tough at first: mastering a difficult language and connecting with such an unfamiliar culture was hard, but eventually your ministry was effective as first hundreds, then thousands, of Chinese turned to the Lord.
5. As a result you have been able to establish congregations in all the major cities of the province.
6. These new disciples are very earnest in their commitment to Jesus and so dedicated to spreading their new-found faith that they are not only sending out their own evangelists, but for the past decade they have totally supported your work – for ten years now you have received no funds from America.
E. Now imagine that during your time in China you have witnessed another remarkable development: as the Chinese people convert to Christianity increasingly they are abandoning Communism and moving toward democracy.
1. They form study groups to discuss the writings of Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton; they eagerly memorize whole sections of the American Constitution; and they even begin to hold local elections.
2. Although the number of Christians in China remains a fraction of the total population, and there are still many millions to be reached, the future looks bright, and so after your furlough in the states you look forward to getting back to your ministry in China.
F. Now, here’s the hard part: suppose when you arrive back in America you are shocked to learn that in the last 25 years, while you were off spreading the gospel in China, there have been drastic changes in your home country.
1. You discover the United States is no longer a democracy, but a dictatorship.
2. Because of a lack of self-discipline, a shortage of civic involvement, an abandonment of patriotism on the part of the citizenry, Americans lost interest in self-government, and willingly allowed military dictators to take control.
3. Elections have been canceled, individual liberties have been abolished, and democracy is but a distant dream.
G. But wait – it gets worse.
1. When you visit the congregation which once had supported your mission work, you are even more disheartened to find the building closed, boarded up, an empty shell.
2. In fact, everywhere you turn you discover churches all over the nation have been abandoned.
3. The flame of faith which once burned brightly in your home country has all but flickered out – and you recognize with dismay that your own people, your own family, have abandoned Christianity in their pursuit of pleasure and materialism.
4. When you visit with your former friends and family you earnestly speak to them of their need for God, but they aren’t interested.
5. In fact, many of them violently resent your message, and some even threaten to turn you in to the authorities and have you thrown into prison.
H. Now that you are contemplating this unsettling scenario, here’s my first question: How do you think such an experience would affect your faith?
1. How would you feel if your own people, who once were strong believers, had rejected the Lord, while the Chinese were turning to the Lord?
2. Would you be tempted to believe that God had forsaken America?
3. Think about: what changes would it make in your understanding of the kingdom of God if you felt like an outcast among your own people, if you realized that the future of the church now rested in a foreign land, if the hope for faith and freedom resided in a still mostly-communist China?
4. If you discovered that your home country of America had abandoned Christianity, would it cause you to doubt the power of the gospel you had been proclaiming in a far-away land?
5. After all, your own people had once been Christians, and yet they had eventually turned their back on the Lord.
6. Does that mean the gospel has failed?
I. And here is my second question: How do you think your converts in China are going to react when you return and inform them that the people who had originally supported your mission efforts are no longer believers themselves?
J. So, why am I asking you to imagine this gloomy scenario?
1. Am I trying to be a prophet of doom? Not really.
2. Now, you should know that some historians are suggesting that this imaginary scenario is not as fanciful as you might imagine.
3. They argue that, maybe not in 2045, but if present trends continue in both America and China, it is not impossible that our grandchildren might live in just such a world by the year 2099.
4. I hope and pray that it does not, and I personally believe that Christianity will continue to be a part of the heritage and life of this nation.
5. But, I also know that while Jesus promised that his kingdom would never fail – that it would remain on the earth until his return – he never guaranteed that it would be found in any particular nation or ethnic group.
6. Whether the flame of faith continues to burn brightly in the particular nation of America is, to some degree, up to all of us.
K. My purpose today is not to present an alarmist message for our nation.
1. In fact, I’m not actually thinking about America at all.
2. The reason I’ve asked us to picture such a future scenario is so that we can accurately understand a past situation.
3. Only if we can place ourselves in the shoes of the imaginary missionary I have described…
a. Only if we can imagine the emotional impact of seeing the gospel embraced by an alien nation while at the same time it is rejected by our own family, by the very people from whom it originated…
b. Only if we can picture ourselves in the emotionally awkward position of someone who is caught between two worlds: the familiar, but now faithless culture of our birth, and a thriving fellowship of foreign believers…
c. Only then will we be able to truly understand the pain of the apostle Paul.
L. This hypothetical exercise of our imagination that we have engaged in today wasn’t hypothetical at all for the apostle Paul!
1. In Chapters 9 through 11 of Romans, we see Paul struggling with the very issues I have just described.
2. If we roll the videotape of our imagination backward from the 21st century to the 1st – and if we substitute “Gentiles” for “Chinese,” and replace America with the nation of Israel – then we will be prepared for today’s text from Romans 9.
3. Paul was the missionary who found great success among a foreign people – the Gentiles – while suffering the personal pain of seeing the gospel rejected by very nation from which it originated, his own people, the Jews.
M. That’s why he says what we read here in verses 1-5: 1 I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience testifies to me through the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the benefit of my brothers and sisters, my own flesh and blood. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple service, and the promises. 5 The ancestors are theirs, and from them, by physical descent, came the Christ, who is God over all, praised forever. Amen. (Romans 9:1-5)
1. Paul is very much aware that the Jews had been God’s chosen people: after all, it was the children of Israel who had kept alive the worship of the one true God.
2. It was his people who had zealously observed the law of Moses, with its message of a covenant extended by the Lord.
3. Over all those many centuries it was the Jews who had cherished the promise of the Messiah to come.
5. In these verses, Paul lists no less than 8 spiritual advantages they had received: “adoption... glory... covenants... law... temple worship... promises... patriarchs... (and the greatest privilege of all)... the human ancestry of Christ.”
6. The Jewish people enjoyed all of these spiritual blessings – they were the most prepared people on earth to receive the Messiah, and yet when God's Son finally arrived, the Jews rejected him - meanwhile the church increasingly became filled with Gentile believers, who hadn’t even been looking for a Messiah!
N. That’s why it would be understandable if we detect a slightly defensive tone in Verse 6 when Paul insists: “Now it is not as though the word of God has failed…”
1. Today we take the legitimacy of the gospel for granted, but those first and second generation evangelists had a real credibility problem, and a genuine theological problem, on their hands.
2. It could be put most bluntly this way: “If this Jesus of Nazareth was such a great guy, why did his own people kill him? And if this Christ that you are preaching really was the Messiah that God promised the Jewish people centuries ago, then why didn’t the Jews accept him?”
3. And even if the Gentile audiences didn’t stumble over that objection, even if they accepted the message of the gospel with open arms, then their very acceptance brought up a related issue, a problem not with the gospel, but with God himself: “Did the God of the Jews reject his own people? Wasn’t He able to save his own chosen nation? After all those centuries of making covenant promises to the Israelites, had His word suddenly failed?”
O. Unless we understand this background, then we are going to misunderstand the passages we will cover in our next couple of sermons as we think about God's election, and predestination, and sovereignty.
1. We need to know, up front, that this has historically been a contentious section of Scripture!
2. A whole system of theology called Calvinism has sprung out of a misreading of Romans Chapters 9-11.
3. I believe the main reason this section of the Bible has been used over the centuries to develop doctrines that are not in harmony with the heart of God, is because they have been read out of their cultural context.
P. Let’s jump ahead in chapter 9 to verses 30-31: 30 What should we say then? Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained righteousness—namely the righteousness that comes from faith. 31 But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not achieved the righteousness of the law.
1. So there’s the whole issue in a nutshell – and we need to constantly keep it in mind as we read Chapters 9-11, for it is the great paradox of the New Testament.
2. God’s chosen people, who had been waiting expectantly for centuries for the Messiah, rejected God’s Son when He finally came, while the Gentiles, who weren’t even looking for a Savior, accepted him eagerly!
3. The terrible irony of that situation, the difficult emotional and theological struggles that Paul experienced, are all but lost on us today, because we are primarily a Gentile church, in a Gentile culture.
4. Most of us have never stopped to wonder why there are no Jewish believers in our congregation, because we are some 20 centuries removed from the great reversal of the first century.
5. It doesn’t shake our faith or challenge our theology today when we look around our assembly and don’t see any Jews.
6. But that absence is remarkable when we remember that Jesus was a Jew, that all of His apostles were Jews, and all of the first churches were exclusively Jewish.
Q. This is the logical place for Paul to bring up this issue, because you will remember how Chapter 8 closes on such a triumphant note: 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38-39)
1. So Paul declares that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
2. At this point Paul’s readers in Rome might very well ask: “Wait a minute – what about the Jews? They were chosen by God, and yet now when we gather in church the Jews are in the minority. Did God fail to keep his promises to Israel?”
3. Those, then, are some of the questions that Paul must answer in the coming verses and chapters.
4. As we explore those coming verses and chapters, we will be launching out into deep, deep waters of the subjects of election, predestination, and God’s sovereignty!
5. But before we get in over our heads, let me close this sermon by affirming four foundational truths:
R. First, we must keep in mind that it is possible to have great spiritual advantages, and yet end up lost.
1. Did you “grow up in the church”?
2. Well, don’t assume for a moment that your upbringing and that advantage guarantees a path to salvation.
3. The example of the Jews makes it clear that people can be blessed bountifully and still be lost if they don’t have a relationship with Jesus; if they don’t believe in Jesus and walk and live by faith.
S. Second, we must keep in mind that anyone can be saved, but not everyone will be saved.
1. Some people even with the greatest advantages and opportunities may end up lost.
2. Jesus solemnly warned about this in the Sermon on the Mount, when He said: “13 Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. 14 How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)
3. Then Jesus said these words just before ending the Sermon on the Mount with the illustration of the wise and foolish builders: “ 21 Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’ 23 Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23)
T. Third, we must keep in mind that our salvation is not due to our physical birth, but to our spiritual rebirth.
1. Coming back to our text in Romans 9, Paul makes this point in verses 6-9: 6 Now it is not as though the word of God has failed, because not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Neither are all of Abraham’s children his descendants. On the contrary, your offspring will be traced through Isaac. 8 That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring. 9 For this is the statement of the promise: At this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son. (Rom. 9:6-9)
2. The gospel of John addresses this point in the very first chapter: He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:10-13).
3. A person must be born again of the water and the spirit to be saved (John 3:5).
U. Finally, we must keep in mind that we must be saved by faith, or we cannot be saved at all.
1. Let’s jump ahead to Romans 10, where Paul says: 9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation. 11 For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame, 12 since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call on him. 13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. (Romans 10:9-13)
2. Let’s go all the way back to the first chapter of Romans and be reminded of the key verse that introduces this whole concept of being saved by the righteousness of God credited to us by faith: 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith. (Rom. 1:16-17)
V. Praise God for all that He has done for us in Christ.
1. Praise God that He chose the Jewish people and sent the Messiah through them.
2. Praise God that both Jews and Gentiles can be saved through Jesus.
3. Praise God that we can be saved by the righteousness of Christ credited to us by faith.
4. These are all things we must keep in mind as we journey through the deep waters of chapters 9 through 11 of Romans.
Resources:
Romans, The NIV Application Commentary, by Douglas Moo
Has God’s Word Failed? Sermon by Dan Williams
