Romans Chapter 11 cont'd
In the same way today, there is a remnant of believing Jews who are a testimony of God's gracious choice. Now we've got to be consistent in our thinking. Salvation by grace and salvation by works are, by definition, mutually exclusive. We can't have it both ways. On this issue it's "all or none". So yes, what I am saying here is that the Jews, as a whole, have not obtained what they have been seeking, but a divinely select remnant of Jews have now obtained it through Messiah Jesus and the rest of the nation has become spiritually blinded. The prophetic scripture confirms this, "God has given them a spirit of slumber, they have eyes but cannot see, and ears but they cannot hear." David also prophesied this, "May their fellowship circle be deluded by a false security as a judgment for their hardness. Let their eyes be blinded and their ability to walk uprightly be taken from them."
Comments:
Throughout Romans, Paul has been retelling and re-framing the Big God-Story of international history and the history of Israel through the lens of hindsight provided by the Person and Work of Jesus Christ and his gospel. New realities and spiritual dynamics in both heaven and earth were inaugurated when Messiah came, bled the ground red and rose again...prophecies came to pass, paradoxes were resolved, mysteries were unveiled and choices of human hearts took on new weight. God, in Christ, had come "in person" onto the scene of the human drama to show forth a newly integrated puzzle picture that was only understood in its bits and pieces before this essential fulfillment of all that the Hebrew prophets foretold came to pass. Honestly, wouldn't we expect some new insights into the scriptures if God were to come among us and explain them himself? And so...he did.
Heb 1
1Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
Paul has been laying out some heavy news regarding the spiritual condition of both Jews and gentiles who are without Christ. For some, what he has been saying about Israel seemed blatantly contrary to the promises God made to their nation in the past. There is an implied generalized accusation hanging over the apostle, that if what he is saying is true, then God himself is a deceiver and this, of course, is nonsense. This categorization allowed many Jews (and gentiles) to scoff at the gospel and quickly dismiss it as an error. (Isn't it amazing how a little strategic spin on "truth" by the reorganization of "facts" can lead whole people groups astray?!)
In the passage above, Paul quotes Dt 29 and Ps 68 to defend his points biblically. Aspects of Ps 68 that refer to the sufferings of the Messiah Jesus on the cross may be cryptic in nature. But the reference to Dt 29 and the larger context of both chapters 28 and 29 go right to the main and plain heart of the covenantal contract that God initiated with Israel after he had delivered them from slavery in Egypt.
People in that culture clearly understood the sovereignty of a conquering king and his method of exercising his right to unilaterally dictate the terms of the national covenant that contained both the blessings of cooperation and the curses of non-cooperation. There is nothing cryptic about Dt 28 and 29, except in how it would actually play out in the distant future in the Big God-Story of the Messiah's coming and the implications of his gospel for all the nations of the earth. (By the way, the use of the word gospel in the NT was borrowed from the Greek world. It was used to refer to the messengers, "evangelists", who were personally sent ahead of a king to announce his soon arrival to the cities he intended to visit in person. It wasn't primarily "good" news...it was, even more essentially, "big" news.)
Dt 28:
68And the LORD will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer."
This little sentence above hints at the danger of a future situation in which the nation would be capable of violating the will of God's heart to the point that it could appear that he was not being faithful to his promise to save the nation. This is the stern and sober warning embedded in the covenant promises outlined in the context of Dt 28-29. For Jesus, Paul and the apostles to declare that the warnings of Moses had come to pass in their generation can never be construed as anti-Semitic or unbiblical. Just read again what Moses himself prophesied.
Dt 28
1"And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God...
15"But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you...
Dt 29:4 But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear... (When the writers of the NT quote an OT verse, it is often like a button that we might push on our computer screen that opens up a new window of text that sheds more light on the text we are presently reading. I belive that Paul's quote in Romans 11 of Dt 29:4 should obviously lead us back to the whole context of Dt 28-29. And these passages give prophetic insight into and biblical context for the main points that Paul goes on to make in Romans 11.)
22And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick— 23the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and wrath— 24all the nations will say, 'Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?' 25Then people will say, 'It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, 26and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. 27Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book, 28and the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.' 29"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
In the time of Jesus, much of the Jewish leadership and nation put their trust in their many religious and cultural traditions, thereby becoming self-righteous...others had compromised and mixed their faith with the corrupt Roman culture...while still others had turned to violence in seeking to establish the kingdom of God. These biases blinded them to receiving God's sent One and even from understanding the prophecies or heeding the clear warnings of their own patriarchs and prophets.
But many others, both Jews and gentiles, welcomed, believed and received Jesus for who he was and is and began a revolution that was paving the way for the renewal of all creation through the salvation of God in Christ Jesus the Lord.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Bridgeport Church
There's a great new church that has begun in the arts district of Kansas City founded by a young pastor, Samuel Newby, whom we have known since he was very young. His wife, Anna, and our daughter-in-law, Beka, grew up as best friends in NW Arkansas as well...life is sometimes a small circle of providential connections. Bridgeport Church is off to an amazing start and we have sensed the Lord's involvement with this new initiative in a strong way.
Last weekend, I had the chance to share a message I titled, Find Yourself, for the first time with this young congregation. I thought maybe you'd like to check it out along with some of the other messages on their simple and beautiful website.
A couple of weeks before our son, Sam, also had a chance to share a message with the Bridgeport crew.
http://www.bridgeportchurch.org/audio/01%20Michael%20Sullivant%20Teaching%201.mp3
Last weekend, I had the chance to share a message I titled, Find Yourself, for the first time with this young congregation. I thought maybe you'd like to check it out along with some of the other messages on their simple and beautiful website.
A couple of weeks before our son, Sam, also had a chance to share a message with the Bridgeport crew.
http://www.bridgeportchurch.org/audio/01%20Michael%20Sullivant%20Teaching%201.mp3
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Romance of Romans-Part 68
Romans Chapter 10/11
But did God give fair warning to the Jews about this irony of the Gentiles receiving something from God that they would reject? Actually he did! He prophesied through Moses, "I will make you jealous by blessing the outsiders, and I will make you angry by blessing those who are ignorant." Again he clearly spoke through Isaiah, "I will be discovered by those who aren't seeking me and I will reveal myself to those who didn't even ask." But about the Jews he sighed, "I have been stretching out my helping hands to a nation who just take me for granted- familiarity has bred contempt!
CHAPTER 11
So has God rejected the Jews wholesale? No way! I myself am a Jew, a natural descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. No, God has not given up on his chosen people. Remember the lesson of Elijah who miscalculated the number of faithful Jews in his own day and complained to God in prayer, "Lord, they have killed all the prophets and torn down all your altars. I am the only faithful one left in the land and they are now trying to kill me!" But God corrected his limited view by answering, "I have reserved for myself seven thousand people who have not compromised their faith to worship Baal." In the same way today, there is a remnant of believing Jews who are a testimony of God's gracious choice.
Comments:
Here at the end of chapter 10 and throughout chapter 11, Paul comes back around to address this vital question/theme that is woven into the fabric of his entire letter: If the life and message of Jesus the Messiah implies that Jews are not automatically in a right relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by being faithful to their religious traditions...then God must somehow be unfaithful to his own scriptural promises to the Jewish people, or an outright liar...unthinkable and unbelievable blasphemy.
Yet, throughout Romans, Paul has gone to great lengths to reframe these promises and remind his readers of very specific prophecies from the Jewish scriptures (like the two above that came through Moses and Isaiah) that warned the Jewish nation of the peril of not recognizing the Messiah when he would actually arrive on the scene. His point is that the Person and Work of Jesus confirmed and fulfilled the very scriptures that had been neglected, overlooked and edited out of the minds of the Jewish teachers and leaders...and therefore, the Jewish nation...by the time of Christ's appearance. The message of Jesus is anything but either unscriptural or anti-Jewish...he is and was the hope of Israel and thereby...every person, people group and the whole of God's creation.
True Jewish-ness or being a part of biblical "Israel", as Paul has set forth over and again in this incisive letter, is simply not about ethnicity...it is about, and was always foreseen as, a divinely sovereign and grace-based supernatural birth that results in a spiritual heart transplant for anyone who truly believes in Messiah Jesus. Besides...just to remove two more obstacles to faith...there has always been a "remnant" of enthic Jews who have believed in and followed Jesus that, by itself, ranks as a sign of God's faithfulness to his prophetic promises to the ancient patriarchs and king David. Furthermore, a powerful case can be made that there are yet-to-be fulfilled prophecies about many more ethnic Jews coming to embrace Jesus as Messiah who will, through faith in him, return to the commonwealth of Israel before the return of Jesus. Even in our own generation, many thousands of ethnic Jews all over the world have come to faith in Jesus.
But did God give fair warning to the Jews about this irony of the Gentiles receiving something from God that they would reject? Actually he did! He prophesied through Moses, "I will make you jealous by blessing the outsiders, and I will make you angry by blessing those who are ignorant." Again he clearly spoke through Isaiah, "I will be discovered by those who aren't seeking me and I will reveal myself to those who didn't even ask." But about the Jews he sighed, "I have been stretching out my helping hands to a nation who just take me for granted- familiarity has bred contempt!
CHAPTER 11
So has God rejected the Jews wholesale? No way! I myself am a Jew, a natural descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. No, God has not given up on his chosen people. Remember the lesson of Elijah who miscalculated the number of faithful Jews in his own day and complained to God in prayer, "Lord, they have killed all the prophets and torn down all your altars. I am the only faithful one left in the land and they are now trying to kill me!" But God corrected his limited view by answering, "I have reserved for myself seven thousand people who have not compromised their faith to worship Baal." In the same way today, there is a remnant of believing Jews who are a testimony of God's gracious choice.
Comments:
Here at the end of chapter 10 and throughout chapter 11, Paul comes back around to address this vital question/theme that is woven into the fabric of his entire letter: If the life and message of Jesus the Messiah implies that Jews are not automatically in a right relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by being faithful to their religious traditions...then God must somehow be unfaithful to his own scriptural promises to the Jewish people, or an outright liar...unthinkable and unbelievable blasphemy.
Yet, throughout Romans, Paul has gone to great lengths to reframe these promises and remind his readers of very specific prophecies from the Jewish scriptures (like the two above that came through Moses and Isaiah) that warned the Jewish nation of the peril of not recognizing the Messiah when he would actually arrive on the scene. His point is that the Person and Work of Jesus confirmed and fulfilled the very scriptures that had been neglected, overlooked and edited out of the minds of the Jewish teachers and leaders...and therefore, the Jewish nation...by the time of Christ's appearance. The message of Jesus is anything but either unscriptural or anti-Jewish...he is and was the hope of Israel and thereby...every person, people group and the whole of God's creation.
True Jewish-ness or being a part of biblical "Israel", as Paul has set forth over and again in this incisive letter, is simply not about ethnicity...it is about, and was always foreseen as, a divinely sovereign and grace-based supernatural birth that results in a spiritual heart transplant for anyone who truly believes in Messiah Jesus. Besides...just to remove two more obstacles to faith...there has always been a "remnant" of enthic Jews who have believed in and followed Jesus that, by itself, ranks as a sign of God's faithfulness to his prophetic promises to the ancient patriarchs and king David. Furthermore, a powerful case can be made that there are yet-to-be fulfilled prophecies about many more ethnic Jews coming to embrace Jesus as Messiah who will, through faith in him, return to the commonwealth of Israel before the return of Jesus. Even in our own generation, many thousands of ethnic Jews all over the world have come to faith in Jesus.
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