Tag Archives: Romans

Lesson 40: Romans 10:18-21

Living in Florida we hear a lot about hurricane warnings. Many thousands of lives have been saved by the amazingly helpful warnings. Thankfully, we have not had an actual hurricane hit our area for many decades. But we have seen the horrible results of those category five storms and smaller ones that skirt the coast. Precious lives have been lost, thousands left homeless, and damage in the staggering range of billions of dollars.

When the storms are over, there are always those who become cynical. Some in Florida have complained that they were evacuated needlessly. The foolish come to ignore the warnings and are likely to become future victims.

Some ignore warnings even when the danger is obvious and imminent. One news report showed a car entering a street flooded with water. Ahead was another car that had been caught in the rising water. Only the top of its roof showed above the surface. The approaching car entered the flooded street anyway. As the front of the car slowly dipped below the surface, the news commentator said, “Sometimes, you’ve got to wonder.”

When I was a scout, our troop often went camping in the snowy Western New York winters at the Schoellkopf Scout Reservation, near Cowlesville. One morning the lure of a freshly snow covered hill tempted me to break the rules. It had been a typical late night of telling silly jokes, trying to out-do one another with scary stories, and good natured torments of one another.

The next morning, while everyone else was still in bed sleeping it off, I ventured out with my sled to the top of the long sloping driveway that let to the meeting hall. We had been warned not to be out of the cabins until we heard the morning bugle.

The crunching of the freshly fallen snow under my boots should have been a further warning, but I pressed on to the highest point, imagining the fast ride I’d have as the first one down the hill that day. I stopped at the top and placed my sled on the ground aiming at the steep slope in front of me. I took a moment to notice the beauty of the rising sun glistening on the crust that had formed over the deep powder underneath — that was the last warning, which I also chose to ignore.

Without another thought I flopped down on the sled which began sliding faster and faster. The frozen crust on top of the snow was slick. As I picked up speed I steered along the road feeling the cold air blow past my face.

Suddenly something unexpected happened! My sled broke through the crust of ice and continued on through the loose snow underneath. However, laying on the sled, I was just about at the level of the ice as my face tore through the sharp edges.

It hurt a bit and I was quite disappointed that my ride came to such a sudden end. So I dug out my sled and trudged into the cabin where others were beginning to emerge from their sleeping bags and gather around the little pot-bellied wood stove. When I walked in everyone went silent and stood there staring at me in shock. “What happened to you?” was the first thing I heard.

I managed to work up a smile on my rather frozen cheeks. But someone handed me a mirror, and to my shock, my face was covered with blood. I had cuts from the ice all over my nose and cheeks which took weeks to heal. You can imagine my poor parents when I showed up at home after the camp weekend was over.

There are warnings all the time. It’s wise to pay attention to them. In our modern age we get advanced warnings of storms, fires and drought. We have alarms that tell us when burglars break into our houses or cars. There are the warnings of parents, teachers and consumer agencies. But even the good advice does little good if we ignore it.

There are spiritual warnings too, that God lovingly gives to alert his children. They come to us in God’s word preserved for us in our Bibles. We need to take them seriously. God also put examples in Scripture of how others have responded to the warnings. Ancient Israel had done very poorly with the cautions of the prophets.

The Gospel was not what the Jews expected, or wanted. They turned the promises of grace into works of merit and special privilege. It was hard for them to accept the words of the Prophets that predicted God’s judgment on them, and that there would come a time when all nations will be equally blessed by God.

In our last study in Romans 10 we saw that Paul wrote in verses 12-13, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For ‘whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.’ ”

The Jews hated that message, and for it they persecuted the Christians. Romans 10:16-17, “But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘LORD, who has believed our report?’ So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

Unlike the Messiah the Jews came to expect, Jesus came as a suffering Messiah. His gospel included the Gentiles as equals in God’s Kingdom. This was not a new message. There had been warnings included in the prophetic word they should have recognized.

Romans 10:18, “But I say, have they not heard? Yes indeed: ‘Their sound has gone out to all the earth, And their words to the ends of the world.’ “

Paul was quoting a very familiar Old Testament texts from Psalm 19. In verse one it says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.” Then in verse four it says, “Their line has gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. …”

The Psalmist was speaking of how God makes himself known to all in nature. Everything he made is showing his glory and divine nature. It is so clear that even the unbeliever is said to be without excuse for not honoring God as revealed. Paul said in Romans 1:20. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.”

So if God proclaims his word in nature to all men indiscriminately, then why should the Jews complain about the gospel being proclaimed to all nations too? This is Paul’s reason for quoting this verse here. Have all heard? and are held responsible for honoring God? Absolutely!

Hengstenberg wrote, “the universal revelation of God in nature, was a providential prediction of the universal proclamation of the gospel.” If the word of God goes out to all by what he made, then the gospel should too.

Romans 10:19, “But I say, did Israel not know? First Moses says: ‘I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation, I will move you to anger by a foolish nation.’ “

So was this new information for Israel? No. Moses had warned that God would use an ignorant nation to make Israel jealous. Paul was quoting from Deuteronomy 32:21, “They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God; They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols. But I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation; I will move them to anger by a foolish nation.”

God would stir up this apathetic and proud nation. The word translated “to make jealous” is qinnae (קנא), which means “to stir up to zeal, enthusiasm, passion.” The word translated “to anger” is ca’as (כעס), means “to irritate, provoke to anger.”

Israel had stirred the wrath and anger of God by idolatry. The god they were worshiping was not the same as the one described in their Bibles. As they had provoked him, God would stir them up specifically to a passion of anger.

There it was! a specific warning if Israel did not repent of her rebellious ways. God would use a nation that was not his people to stir them up. It was going to be a prophetic judgment, and the sign would be the use of the Gentiles.

That’s exactly the result the gospel produced. In Acts 4:1-3 we see what happened when the first offer of the gospel came to the Jews, “Now as they spoke to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them, being greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening.”

As the gospel first started to spread, the book of Acts shows its results among the Jews. They were not content to not believe. They were stirred to rage over the gospel!

Acts 13:45, “But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy; and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul.”

Acts 17:5, “But the Jews who were not persuaded, becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace, and gathering a mob, set all the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.

Acts 17:13, “But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds.

Acts 22:22, “And they listened to him until this word, and then they raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he is not fit to live!”

Matthew Henry explains, “God often makes people’s sin their punishment.” In Romans 1:26-27 Paul said this directly, “For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.”

I wore scabs and marks on my nose and cheeks for weeks after my sled rebellion. My sin of not paying attention to the warnings brought a very natural penalty. It would have been fitting if God had given me over to do the same stupid thing again. But in his mercy, he didn’t. He taught me a lesson instead. I learned that it’s not smart to ignore the warnings when you see them.

More seriously people wear the scars of their sinful lusts and addictions in ruined bodies, shattered lives, and troubled souls. Israel was given over to the god she had cherished more than the true God. As you sin, God may give you over to your offensive behavior too! There is nothing so alarming than when a person who says he is a believer ignores God’s warnings. Particularly when he admits that something is sin, but continues in it anyway. That was the message God’s prophets brought to Israel that revealed her true lostness. That is the message that should send absolute alarm to the soul of any who hears it today.

Hearing the languages of foreign nations being spoken in their midst, was a sign to alert Israel. This is how God would sound his warning to the Jews for their unfaithfulness, that God would judge them by using the Gentiles.

This was predicted when Israel was still wandering in the wilderness. The warning is recorded in Deuteronomy 28:49 “The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand.”

Isaiah said it again when the Jews rebelled in later times. In Isaiah 28:11 it says, “For with stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to this people.”

In the New Testament, on the day of Pentecost, God marked the beginning of the New Era. The work of Jesus was finished, so the Temple, its priesthood, and sacrifices were ended. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon the Christians to mark God’s anointing of them as the ones he would empower to be Jehovah’s continuing Covenant People as the prophet Joel had predicted. This also marked the bringing in of Gentiles, and the end of the Jewish era. God supernaturally moved them to speak in other languages to confirm his warnings. As Luke records it in the book of Acts 2:4, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

This special experience was repeated as the Gospel came to other communities in the first few decades of expansion. Some in Corinth corrupted this prophetic sign as if it was a special continuing gift. When Paul corrected them he quoted directly from the warning in Isaiah 28:11. In 1 Corinthians14:21 he wrote, ” ‘With men of other tongues and other lips I will speak to this people; And yet, for all that, they will not hear Me,’ says the Lord.” He added that last part of Isaiah 28:12, “yet they would not hear.”

Israel had not paid attention to the warnings of the prophets. They re-interpreted the signs into privileges, instead of indicators of danger and pending judgment. The covenant penalties were about to fall, and the Gentile era was about to begin.

Even today, some imagine the sign of speaking in tongues as a continuing gift for the church. They make the sign of judgment into a badge of spiritual pride. Those who believe that God moves people to supernaturally speak in tongues today, sadly pervert one of the covenant alarms. Though unknowingly, they turn it into a distortion of what God said it would be.

Romans 10:20, “But Isaiah is very bold and says: ‘I was found by those who did not seek Me; I was made manifest to those who did not ask for Me.’ “

Again Paul used the Bible to show the Jews that God had already clearly warned them. He quoted from Isaiah 65:1, “I was sought by those who did not ask for Me; I was found by those who did not seek Me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ To a nation that was not called by My name.”

God was to be found by those not even seeking him, by Gentiles. What a humiliation to those in the unbelieving nation of Israel, and an amazing display of grace, that totally undeserved favor of God. Israel had forgotten her own past. She had not earned her place as God’s nation. It was God’s sovereignly imposed covenant alone that made an unworthy race into a people so richly blessed. The Gentiles were no more undeserving than was Israel, or than is anyone. God’s sovereign right to save those whom he chooses is confirmed.

Romans 10:21, “But to Israel he says: ‘All day long I have stretched out My hands To a disobedient and contrary people.’ “

God had patiently offered his warnings. Now he was giving this final prophetic sign to the Jews to call them to come back to his truths. Paul continued the quote from Isaiah 65:2 about God’s perseverance and longsuffering, “I have stretched out My hands all day long to a rebellious people, Who walk in a way that is not good, According to their own thoughts.”

God’s faithful love to his people continued, even though they ungratefully provoked him.

It is the foolish and immature who ignore clear warnings about dangerous things. There are flood victims who drive their cars directly into raging torrents of water. There are those who disable fire alarms so they won’t wake them up at night. Then there was that scout who took an early morning sled ride against the warnings of those in charge and the ominous signs that the hill was dangerous. There are those who read the warnings of Scripture about the offense our sin causes against God, of the judgments that will fall on those whose faith proves to be a deception, of the awesome price that was paid to overcome the serious consequences of our guilt, yet they continue in the same sin and self-arrogance imagining that somehow they will escape the consequences.

God’s warnings come to his erring children to call them back, not to torment them. Even a study like this one might be the sounding of a spiritual alarm in your heart. What will you do with that warning? Will you be like Israel and basically ignore it? Will you presume that since you are in a sound church, or have made a particular profession of faith, or been baptized into membership, or done some good things every day, or belong to a Christian family, that somehow God will count that as merit? Do you think you can impress God enough so that you can continue in sin with no consequences? What a foolish deception human hearts throw over the truth of God’s loving word.

Rather, when you see your sin it should humble you to think that by grace God loves you in Christ. Considering his undeserved mercy, and patient warnings, you ought to love him all the more!

How God has stretched out his hands to call you back when you wander. He has given loving warnings as a caring father to his children threatened with danger. He has been so loving and good, yet still he is relegated to such a low place in some lives.

He warns us that, though he bears long, he does not wait forever. In time the corrupt nature of some emerges above their empty claims. It becomes evident that they are not the Lord’s people at all.

Isaiah 5;3-6 tells exactly how that was to happen to unbelieving Israel, “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done to My vineyard That I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, Did it bring forth wild grapes? And now, please let Me tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned; And break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will lay it waste; It shall not be pruned or dug, But there shall come up briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds That they rain no rain on it.”

By grace, God calls you to be a loving and faithful part of his family. But his call also transforms your soul so that his warnings will not go unheeded. When you sense the conviction of the Holy Spirit it should be great cause for thankful praise that God is indeed your Father and persistently warns you as his child.

Prove that conversion by responding with sincere repentance and a passion for pleasing God in all you think, say, and do.

(The Bible quotations in this lesson are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)

Lesson 33: Romans 9:3-4

In chapters 9 through 11 in his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul is dealing with the true nature of the church. This section of Romans presents a very different view of the church than the popular one both then and now.

When Paul became a Christian, he left behind the confusion of God’s word he had come to accept as a Pharisee. Some of his former Rabbi friends thought he had turned against God’s ancient church, but that was far from the truth. It was his love for the true church that troubled him so much. He called them back to what God had originally revealed about the coming Messiah.

He grieved deeply over their abandonment of the truth. The first 3 verses of Roman 9 say, “I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh,”

Paul cared deeply for the family of God, and for the reputation of his Heavenly Father. He was calling Israel back to the terms and promises of the ancient Covenant.

Israel had been entrusted with great privileges and blessings, but she had not honored God with them. She had perverted them and confused them. Israel was set up by God to display his glory to the rest of the nations. She was to preserve the promises and covenant for the time of the coming of Messiah. By the time Messiah actually came, she had for the most part corrupted what God entrusted to her.

Paul got very specific about the advantages God had entrusted to his ancient church in the next two verses.

Romans 9:4-5, “who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.”

The Israelites were adopted as the special people of God and pronounced to be his children. For example, God told Moses to tell Pharaoh “Thus says the LORD: ‘Israel is My son, My firstborn.’ ” (Exodus 4:22)

They were chosen as God’s family, by grace, above all the other nations. In Deuteronomy 14:2 it says, “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”

This did not mean that each Israelite was redeemed to new life and forgiven for his sins. The Covenant of God with the nation was external as a way of revealing his Sovereign glory. By circumcision each person identified himself with Jehovah and in a special way represented God in this world.

Some took on that covenant sign as if it meant far more. They assumed that simply by being a member of the ancient form of the church God would be bound to bless them, save them by their profession of his name only. However, they changed what God said, and by complex rules justified ways that offended God. They were rebellious children. As his family outwardly, they were specially held accountable.

This is one of the key ideas in understanding the whole Bible. It is central to understanding this next section of the book of Romans.

God establishes an outward church representing his blessings of grace. This outward organization of professing believers and their families is called the Visible Church. It is what we can see of God gathering a people to himself. It is the outward form God set up.

There is also an Invisible Church. This is made up only of those truly redeemed by Christ. These are those he saves from sin by the death of Jesus in their place. Since only God knows for sure who these are, and we cannot judge this without error, to us the boundaries of that membership must remain un-seeable, invisible. God gathers these saved ones into his visible church to live as a spiritual family, and there to represent him in the world.

All who are truly redeemed are commanded to join in the worship, fellowship, and discipline of the church. There is no biblical justification for believers refusing to be a part of the visible church. There is no biblical justification for thinking that all members of the visible church are redeemed.

The New Testament church continues that covenant body of believers. There is a new sign commanded to mark them out in the name of the Triune God. The sign of purification in the Old Testament has been fulfilled as it took the form of what we call “Baptism”. All who are baptized are marked outwardly as the children of God. God seals them as participants in his covenant. This does not mean that all who are baptized into the church are redeemed individuals. We must avoid confidence in the mere outward form of Baptism.

All Israelites were called to be part of God’s covenant nation, but not all Israel is true Israel (Romans 9:6). The members of the covenant are both those who receive its blessings, and those who receive its curses. A church is only honoring to God if it church honors God’s word and ways. The majority of Israel had abandoned its true spiritual family obligations in Paul’s day. There are those churches today which are a false family too.

Being called outwardly the sons of God is a wonderful privilege. However, we need to be legitimately adopted children of God, born again spiritually so that our profession is not just outward, but comes from a converted heart. We show evidence of this transformation by caring for the rest of the family, and respecting the truths our Father has entrusted to us.

Jehovah had shown his glorious presence in the midst of his chosen people. He appeared on Mt. Sinai, showed himself as their protector in the fire and the cloud, and revealed his glory which filled the Tabernacle (Exodus 40:34) and the Temple (2 Chronicles 7:1-2).

The glory of Israel was the glory of God which was shown among them. His presence distinguished them from all other nations. Deuteronomy 4:33-36 says, “Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live? Or did God ever try to go and take for Himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD Himself is God; there is none other besides Him. Out of heaven He let you hear His voice, that He might instruct you; on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire.”

Sadly, they turned his glory into something abstract and magical. They took comfort in the outward appearances, but ignored the spiritual realities they represented.

God’s glorious presence among us in the church today is shown in a different way. It is no longer shown in voices from heaven, pillars of fire, and clouds. It is shown in three basic ways. God is seen among us in the pure preaching of the Bible which is his holy word. He is seen in the elements of the Sacraments when rightly administered. And he is seen in the lives of his redeemed people as taught, led and comforted by the faithful shepherding of church leaders ordained to represent Christ’s headship.

The corrupted forms of the church today abuse these advantages. The Bible is used by some only as a source book for arguments, or as a book of inspirational stories and quotes. The sacraments are either reduced to mere symbols, or elevated to magical ceremonies. The church authority structure is modified to fit various political theories and business models. The glory of God’s presence is therefore obscured and turned into a mockery.

Being privileged to bear these signs of God’s glory among us, we need to make sure we preserve them faithfully to the honor of our Heavenly Father.

The word “covenant” in the Old Testament is the ancient word berit (ברית). It means a solemn set of promises imposed by a Sovereign Lord upon the threat of death. There was always a symbolic shedding of blood when a covenant was ratified. It symbolized the just punishment deserved by covenant breakers.

God’s covenant to redeem some from the fallen human race was special. He would come as Messiah to suffer the punishment in place of his people. This is called the Covenant of Grace. There is only one such covenant in Scripture. God made it known in stages, each time revealing more about his plan, each time ratifying it with those he chose to bring it to his people: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, then finally Jesus Christ and his Apostles. In each case it was the same Covenant of Grace, but an ever-clearer picture of Redemption.

Nothing more clearly marked out Israel as special to Jehovah than that in her era she was the special object of God’s gracious covenant promises. The Christian Church is the present form of that same covenant. We live in the predicted age of the Messiah’s Kingdom as promised and described by God through his prophets.

Israel had confused the meaning of God’s Covenant. She assumed that the outward advantages of living under God’s protection as a nation were all the covenant was about. However, the outward form was to illustrate what God does for individuals by grace. Being in the visible covenant nation of Israel no more removed a person’s guilt before God, than does being a member in the visible Christian Church today.

Those today who bear the covenant sign of Baptism, and who come under the care of the shepherds in a local church, and yet do not come to trust in Christ alone as their Savior and Living Lord, bring disgrace upon Jehovah and his covenant. They bring further condemnation down upon themselves.

As Covenant Children of God we need to restore the ancient promises and duties. We should trust in the amazing Grace that is ours by the love of God through Jesus Christ.

The term used here is not just a reference to law in the narrow sense of rules and punishments. It encompasses all that God has revealed to us as a standard by which everything we believe and do is to be tested. These principles are not just to be looked upon as mere literature. Anyone from any nation could get a copy of the written word of God.

This verse has to do with God’s act of giving a revelation which was unique to Israel. God gave his word to his people through the prophets, and by his own hand on Sinai. Though they were the nation God trusted to guard his word, they had added their own ideas and corrupted its teachings.

The church today is also entrusted with the Bible as God’s revealed truth. Bibles are more available today than at any other time in history. They are sold in astounding numbers, and are electronically available free for home computers, smart phones, and tablets.

The church as a whole has not guarded God’s word as he has commanded. Some new translations change the text to fit man’s own ideas of what he thinks it ought to say. One current trend is to take out the male language about God so that he might be our Mother God as well as our Father. This misses the whole point of why male language is used, or why maleness even exists. They re-word the commandments to permit homosexuality, promiscuity, and divorce.

In many churches the preaching of the word is neglected. Instead of a systematic teaching from the Scriptures there are only brief homilies on morals, self-esteem, personal psychology, or social problems. At the other extreme the only message some hear preached week after week is how to be born again and do evangelism.

God has given his people a written word to love and obey. We need to learn and re-affirm the full range of teachings given to us in God’s word.

The word translated here as “services” is latreia (λατρεια). It means the forms of worship God commands. By his word, God has always regulated how his is to be worshiped. Israel had desecrated the forms and attitudes God called for in gathered times of worship as a congregation. The Lord did not just prescribe what was to be done outwardly in the Temple. He made it clear in his word that only certain practices and motives please him when his people gather for worship at the call of the Elders.

The Jews had misrepresented the Sacrifice as a means of removing sin without a Savior. The creeds of Israel’s faith were no longer the biblical teachings, but the doctrines of Rabbis. The tithes and offerings were supplemented with other means of getting money for the ancient church. Their prayers had become proud declarations, instead of humble confessions of gratitude. Israel had so confused worship, that the temple itself would be destroyed in God’s judgment. The final destruction of this desecrated structure took place by the Roman armies in 70 AD during the ministry of the chosen Apostles.

Today the corrupted form of the visible church has turned worship into a time of entertainment, morality lectures, and mystical sights, sounds, and experiences. The goal is to get more people to come, instead of to give God glory in the ways he asks. Instead of the mandated reading of God’s word, prayer, psalms, creeds, sacraments, collections, benedictions, calls to worship, the leadership of Elders, and an atmosphere of holy respect, their worship includes new inventions added to the elements given in God’s word. Some of the new elements are outrageous. They have been known to bring in mimes, magicians, clowns, dance troupes, skits, film-clips, and pyrotechnics. Some do not even know that the Bible has a lot to say about the elements of worship. The current ignorance of God’s word is no excuse.

As those who are given the form God calls for in worship, our duty is to maintain the services God has given. Otherwise we will be like the popular, but unfaithful nation of ancient Israel.

There were many promises specially made by God to the Jews, particularly the ones about the coming Messiah.
The word “Christ” is our Western form of the Greek word Christos (χριστος) which means “anointed”. The Hebrew word for “anointed” is Mashiakh (משיח). In the time just before Paul, they had killed this Anointed One who was the greatest promise of all. In spite of the promises, they rebelled again and again to the disgrace of the God who blessed them.

Similarly, many in the church today redefine the promises made to them. They replace them with things they wish were true, things borrowed from paganism, humanism, and from a terribly uninformed reading of the Bible. Instead of God’s word about forgiveness of sin, inner peace, and the future hope of glory, people flock to hear a gospel that promises health, wealth, and fun. Gone from many churches is the gospel message of God’s amazing grace.

What God has promised is better than all the health, wealth, and emotional experiences one could imagine. Like unfaithful Israel, we need to return to the promises God has actually given us, and again behold the superior value of what our Creator said are the most important things.

It was from the Covenant People of the time before Christ that we have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Elijah, all those ancestors who are the spiritual teachers of us all. Paul was reminding the faithless Jews of the blessed heritage God had given them. Tragically, just as their ungodly predecessors persecuted the Prophets, they were now persecuting the Christians, those continuing to put their whole trust in the promised Messiah.

We have a wonderful heritage as God’s people. We need to treasure that history.

This promised Savior came from the Jews. He was an Israelite according to the flesh, yet they turned from this great honor and crucified him. He was not only an Israelite as to his fleshly nature. He was also God by nature.

Romans 9:5b, “… who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.”

These words strongly affirm the deity of Jesus Christ as the Sovereign Lord over all. No other interpretation of this fits the grammar, the flow of the context, or the argument Paul is laying out for them here.

Many who call themselves the Christian church today do not believe Jesus was the eternal God. They have stripped him of his deity, and made him a mere example of kindness, and a lonely martyr.

God had richly blessed ancient Israel with wonderful advantages, but she had traded them for superficial substitutes. The time had come for Israel as a people to give an accounting before God. Paul was not teaching that God was abandoning his true people. He was warning the corrupted ones in Israel that they had rejected God’s promised Messiah. He was calling them back to the principles and promises they had abandoned. As a nation they had drifted far from what they were called to be, so they were soon to lose that national privilege. The true church within the corrupted nation would grow beyond racial and national boundaries to include believers from all groups of people.

The churches today also have great advantages. To them is entrusted wonderful blessings as the called out visible body of Christ. But to those who bear the name of Christ’s church in vain, to those who re-write the promises to fit their own self-centered dreams, to those who would rather be comfortable than faithful, to them is promised the just and certain wrath of God.

We are called to represent God’s covenant family as those transformed by Christ. What kind of children are we in God’s family? Do we live to honor him? or to dishonor his name? The health of the church as a body is the health of the parts of that body. Each of us in our daily lives must appreciate, guard, restore, and represent the truths God has revealed to us in his word. We must strive in the power of our now Resurrected Savior to bring this gospel to those who are still in darkness. We ought to live as those who no longer belong to themselves, but to the Savior who bought them with the price of his own life.

(The Bible quotations in this lesson are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)