Romans 9:1-18
Notes
Transcript
1-5 6-13 14-18
1-5 6-13 14-18
1-5
1-5
1
1
After the glory of chapter 8 where Paul tells us that we are God’s children and heirs to the kingdom through the work of Jesus Christ, and not only that but our future is secured in God who will never let anything separate us from his love, Paul seems to switch gears and prefaces his next statement with assuring us that he is speaking the truth.
2
2
Before admitting in verse 2 that he has great sorrow and anguish in his heart. Paul has a great burden in him that comes from the knowledge of the truths that Christ revealed to him. Paul is a Jew, and at one time an extreme zealot of a Jew, a persecutor of the Church of Christ, a Pharisee. Paul loves his fellow Jews.
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3
He shows his anguish in saying that he would give up his salvation and be cut off from Christ, condemned to Hell, the word translated to accursed is the Greek work anathema which means to devote to destruction in Hell, Paul would go that far if his fellow Jews, his kinsmen, his brothers would all be saved. Paul knows and has said in the previous chapter that nothing will remove the love of God from his elect, not even one’s self, but this is how deeply Paul cares and loves his fellow Jews.
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4
Not only because they are all his kin, they are from the house of Israel and the chosen people of God, they were separated and set apart from the rest of the people so much that the phrase Jew and Gentile literally meant the Jews, God’s people and the rest of the world, they were given the law and the covenants, God dwelt among the Jews and showed them his protection and grace.
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All of the great forefathers that had come before, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David and through this chosen people of God came Jesus Christ, God on Earth. Paul shares his anguish and sorrow that some of his fellow Jews are at war with God but what Paul does not do is question God and ask why. Paul knows and gets into it in the next verses that all of the genetic Jews will not be saved and he is grieved over it and wishes that he could sacrifice himself to save them but he does not question God’s plan, nor does he question his own faith or the sovereignty of God.
6-13
6-13
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Paul is assured and assures us that God’s will is absolute and will not fail and then explains why he is in so much anguish, not all that are descended from Israel belong to Israel. Not every ethnic Jew, a Jew by blood in line from Israel, are a member of the chosen saved people. There are some of Paul’s kin that are not going to be saved even though they are Jews, they are Jews in the lineage way but they are not Jews in the spirit.
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Paul then goes further and saying that even though these are offspring of Abraham they are not offspring of the spirit and that through Isaac Abraham’s offspring are named. This is saying that not every offspring of Abraham are to be the children of the promise but only the ones that God chooses as Abraham had other children not from Sara but from Hagar and Keturah but these children were not to be part of God’s people.
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8
Verse 8 explains this very clearly, just because there were other children by Abraham, children of his flesh, they are not children of the promise that God made to Abraham and Sara. God chooses who his chosen people are.
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The promise was that Sara would bear a child and through this child all of the blessings of God will be laid.
10-12
10-12
In another example of God’s sovereignty was God telling Rebekah the destiny of her twin sons, even though both of Rebekah’s twins were of Isaac, and before they were even born and had done any works, evil or good, to show that it is not any work of man that determines salvation but it is God that does the calling to salvation, God told Rebekah that her younger son Jacob would be loved by God and given the blessing and her older son Esau would serve Jacob and would not have the blessing of God and would be hated. Jacob line would lead to the Israelites and Esau the Edomites and eventually after many wars between Israel and Edom the Edomites were subjugated by David.
14-18
14-18
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So if God blesses Jacob but hates Esau does that mean he is unfair? Are God’s choices and his will unjust? Absolutely not! God is the creator of all things and as creator, and our Holy God and as such has every right to do what He wants.
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This quote is from Exodus 33:19 where God tells Moses plainly that He is the decider of who will receive mercy and compassion and who will not.
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Because it is God’s grace and sovereignty that determines who is chosen and shown mercy to and not anything that man can or will do, God’s grace is a free gift and not something that we can work for and earn.
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Even God’s choices of who to not have mercy on and harden their hearts is for God’s glory, God used Pharaoh, God raised him up to the position he had, to be the most powerful ruler on the Earth, so that God could show his glory and make him an example showing that God is greater and more powerful than even the most powerful person on Earth could ever be.
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God will have mercy on whom he will and will harden whomever he wills. There was not more good in Moses than in Pharaoh that caused God to choose Moses to bless and be the instrument of God to lead his people out of Egypt, there was not less good in Pharaoh that caused God to harden his heart and use him as a display of His omnipotent power. God shows mercy on whom he shows mercy and hardens whomever he wills.