Romans No.20 All God's Children

Let's turn to the passage that a pastor will be speaking to us from later, from Romans chapter 9, and just the first eight verses under the title, All God's Children. Romans 9 chapter 1. I speak the truth in Christ. I am not lying.

My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption of sons.

Theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship, and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised. Amen.

It is not as though God's word had failed, for not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.

I was tempted to get us all to sing Father Abraham Had Many Sons tonight, but I thought that might be a bit too vigorous, but it's a wonderful song, isn't it? I'm one of them, and so are you. I have great difficulty with that first hymn. We have other words.

They're not very theological. Let's just clear these decks for a moment. Let's have our Bibles open, shall we, that lovely passage of Scripture, Romans chapter 9. Lovely inasmuch as it opens up some rather intriguing questions.

I'm not too sure that I have the ability to supply all the answers, and the first few verses actually is fairly easy for us to grasp. It becomes more exacting for the preacher as he moves on towards the latter part of the ninth chapter and into the tenth, but we're looking at the first eight verses under the general heading of all God's children. I once felt very sorry for a BBC reporter.

It's not often that I feel sorry for reporters. I think very often they're just a little bit too trenchant in their comments and too aggressive, but this religious reporter actually was interviewing Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, and the subject came up of the Apostle Paul. Now I think that Martin Lloyd-Jones, along with F.F. Bruce, are perhaps the greatest authorities on the theology and on the psychology of the Apostle Paul this century.

They seem to have got very much to grips with the heart of the man, what he was like, and the teaching that he expressed, I think, so clearly. And this reporter was trying to tell Lloyd-Jones that Paul the Apostle was a very hard man, a pharisaical type. He never really softened, and I saw the doctor's brow puckering, and I was waiting for the blast that was surely going to come from his lips with his Welsh brogue, and eventually he let her have it, good and proper, and he took on a tour de force of Paul's ministry as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.

He painted, in just a very few words, the illustrious apostle taking his leave of the elders of the Ephesian church, you remember, on the seashore of the Mediterranean, and how the man's face was creased with tears. He talked to her about the great passion that he had, the great love that he had for his own people, and so on and so forth. He really pulled out all the stops, and all credit to this lady.

She acknowledged that she'd really made a public gaffe in what she had suggested about the Apostle Paul. But it is true to say that there are many people who think of Paul, and perhaps think of theologians in general, as being intellectual people without a great deal of warmth of soul, and yet that was very far removed from the fact, as we see here in the ninth chapter of Romans, illustrating the psychology of the Apostle Paul, a man who was not just all head, but was a heart man, a man who had great feeling. You see, it seems to me that the type of person that you are in prior days to conversion is not necessarily obliterated by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I think the Holy Spirit refines. He refines personalities. He can even take natural gifts that you had in your pre-conversion days, and elevate them, sanctify them, and use them in the most remarkable fashion.

Again, I refer to Martin Lloyd-Jones. He once did a brilliant analysis of an American who I won't name, and the fact that after his conversion, he set up schools for evangelism in various parts of America, and the doctor was very concerned to know what he had been before he was converted. And it turned out that he had been a dance band leader, but not just an ordinary dance band leader.

He had set up schools of dancing throughout the United States, and I still remember the doctor again in his Welsh accent saying, you know, very well, I told you, I told you. He transferred his ability as an organizer, sanctified it by the power of the Holy Spirit, and there he was using these gifts of administration in the kingdom of God for the furtherance of the gospel. Now the Apostle Paul, he was a passionate man, wasn't he, before he was converted.

After all, you discover him in the Acts of the Apostles, going to the chief priests in Jerusalem, asking them for letters of authority so that he can go to Damascus and rid the Jewish community of every trace of Christian influence. And it's that same white-hot passion, wrongly used in pre-conversion days, which the Lord takes and sanctifies and retains within the psychology of the Apostle Paul. So you find him here laying bare his heart in the most extraordinary fashion, and telling us something about the great desires that he has for the advance of the gospel amongst his own people, the Jewish nation.

Now it's interesting for us to note that when Paul, recognizing the fact that he is a Jew, when he thinks of Jews, he doesn't make the same mistake that many Jews were making in the days of our Lord Jesus. And I think that some Jews of the more religious brand in Israel, even today, are making. And that is feeling that because they are Jews, automatically God is on their side.

Now you've got to be very careful in making this sort of criticism, because it's possible for one to be misunderstood. A Jew per se, just because he is a Jew, does not necessarily have God with him in all that he does. Now in the days of our Lord, you remember he is John the Baptist, this fiery preacher who comes in from the desert and starts to preach on the banks of the Jordan.

He has such a charisma that people turn out from the villages and the small towns to listen to him. And he has to disabuse them of this notion that simply because they are Jews, they are right with God. And John astonishingly says, look, God could take the stones around the banks of the Jordan and turn them into sons of Abraham.

The fact that you were born naturally in descent of Abraham does not necessarily mean that you're right with the Lord. John, as you remember, preached a message of preparation for the Messiah and had people baptized on confession of their sins, hoping that as a result they would be better placed for the ministry of God's own ambassador. Well, the Apostle Paul, too, does not confuse his nationalism with some sort of theological immunity from the judgment of God.

If the Jews do what is wrong, then indeed they will be judged by the Lord. The Apostle recognizes that the gospel in the very real sense is to the Jew first. You remember how he tells us this in the opening statement in the first chapter.

I'm not ashamed of the gospel, verse 16, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. But when the Apostle recognizes that the gospel is directed to the Jew first, he again is not suggesting that in any way the Jew is better off than the Gentile before God, if the Jew, like the Gentile, has broken God's law. But Paul does believe that as a Jew, he himself has a right to take the gospel on first hearing to the Jewish community.

And so you'll find him in the Acts of the Apostles as he goes to Antioch, then as he goes to Iconium. The first place that he seeks out as he moves from one town to the next town is the Jewish synagogue. And if they'll hear him, then he'll stay.

If they won't respond to what he has to say, then he'll go to the Gentiles. But I say the Apostle Paul in no way mixed up the way that God had blessed singularly the Jewish nation in days gone by. He no way mixed that up with some sort of conviction that suggested that willy-nilly, however the Jews behaved, they were right with God and God's blessing would be upon them.

Now it seems to me that sometimes Paul's argument about Jewish responsibilities and their failure to live up to the standards that God set, sometimes seems to me that he's almost at the level of suggesting that to be a Jew really no longer has any advantage in the Christian dispensation. After all, he's made the astonishing comment in the 28th verse of the second chapter of this epistle, a man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly. He's arguing in effect that the word Jew, which in the Hebrew language actually means praise, is descriptive of all men and women, be they Jew or Gentile, who live their lives in such a fashion that it brings honor to the Lord.

And just at the end of chapter 2, when you've almost come to the conclusion that Paul is therefore saying that there's no natural advantage that the Jew has in being a Jew, he then backs off a little. And in the third chapter, in the first verse, he puts up the question and answers it. What advantage then is there in being a Jew? Or what value is there in circumcision? And you expect him to say, well there's no advantage at all.

But he confuses you by saying, much in every way. But the confusion is just temporary, because he's going to expand upon that comment, he's going to enlarge on it later in his epistle. So the Apostle, although he seems at times to indicate that the Jews, because they have breached God's law and they've had so many advantages and thrown them to the wind, though he sometimes seems to suggest that therefore God is through with them as individuals and as a nation.

He backs off from that assertion, and in these rather remarkable, challenging chapters, 9 through to 11, he starts to sketch out, as he grasps the truth by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, what the position of the Jew actually is. And really, it's at this point that we have again to come to grips with the warm heart of the Apostle Paul. When he opens this ninth chapter, his Jewishness comes out very strongly, doesn't it? I speak the truth in Christ.

I am not lying. My conscience confirms it in the Holy Ghost. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.

Now, the language there is very strong. If words mean anything at all, it is conveying the state of heartbrokenness that Paul has as he's confronted with, at a large scale, the unbelief of Israel. He wants them to hear the gospel.

He's done his best to explain the gospel, but by and large, as he's traveled around the Mediterranean world, the Jews have rejected what he has to say. But Paul hasn't rejected his nation. He recognizes his Jewishness.

He recognizes his responsibility. He also recognizes that God, too, is not through with the Jews as such. Now, Paul is so concerned to impress upon his congregation his own interests in the Jews that he uses strong language to convince us that what he actually is saying, he's saying sincerely.

I speak the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. Now, the Apostle sometimes is at pains to stress this when he's preaching even in other areas.

For instance, when he writes to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 11 verse 10, he says, as surely as the truth of Christ is in me. When he writes to the Galatians, Galatians 120, I assure you before God. Paul is a man who is utterly honest.

John Calvin, in a verse that I gave you, a quote that I gave you last week or the week before last, says that he never, as far as he was aware, ever mishandled Scripture. And when Paul preaches, he preaches as though God is present, as indeed he is. So when the Apostle moves into this autobiographical comment and reveals something of his heart's interest in his own people, he said, I want you to believe this.

I'm not lying. I really feel for these people, the Jews, who largely have rejected what I have got to share from the Lord. And now the passion of Paul so comes out here that it becomes a challenge to you and to me.

You see, you have a great difficulty, don't you, unless you're a very, very charmed family circle that you're representing. You have somewhere within your band of relatives, those who don't know the Lord. And it's not easy to come to terms with that, is it? Maybe your husband, maybe your wife, maybe thoughts of your parents who've already gone, maybe your children.

I find one of the hardest things coping with the fact that I preach regularly here by God's grace to four or five hundred people, and there are those within my own family circle who are not the Lord's, as far as I know. And it breaks my heart. And here is the Apostle showing us that sort of passion that is necessary for us always to cultivate before God as we come on their behalf in intercessory prayer.

I mean, the third verse is really one of the most astonishing in the whole of the Bible, certainly in the whole of this epistle. I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. You remember years ago centuries ago how the future of the nation of Israel is in jeopardy.

The Hebrews have been pushing their way through Sinai. Those 40 years, they weren't the most glorious worthy in the history of the Jews by any means. In fact, they were as prolonged because of their disobedience.

God never intended them to spend 40 years in the wilderness. It was really only a journey of a few months. But there they went round and round.

Why was this? Well, basically because they rejected the Word of God and the law of God, and they showed themselves, I quote, the authorized version of Scripture to be a gainsaying and a disobedient people. And the point came when God Almighty seemed to have lost patience with them. And he suggests to Moses that he should wipe out the whole of these people and make from Moses himself a better class of people, more fitted to enter into the fulfillment of the promises of God.

Do you remember how Moses owed credit to him? He says, no Lord, blot me out of your book, but whatever you do, don't annihilate your people. Now Paul, in a similar fashion, is not asking for annihilation. He's even suggesting, and he's into the area of almost absurdity, he's even making the proposition that he might be able to barter his salvation on behalf of these people, the Jewish people, whom he loves so desperately and whom so many are under the wrong assumption that simply because they are descendants of Abraham, they're right before God.

Paul says, Lord, let me be accursed. Let me be damned in order that these people might be won for you. I think that perhaps we will have approached something more towards being powerful intercessors when we have got such a passion for souls that we're even prepared to engage in what seems the logical level nonsense before God.

It says William Booth, some men's passion is for gold. Some men's passion is for action. Sorry, some men's passion is for art.

Some men's passion is for fame. My passion is for souls. And that was true of Paul.

He wanted souls. He wanted the souls of the Gentiles. And although he was an apostle to the Gentiles, he nonetheless never lost sight of the fact that he was a Jew and that Jews needed the Lord.

People need the Lord. They did in those days. They do in our day.

And here's the illustrious Paul, intellectual mind that he was, praying passionately and emotionally before the Lord for the salvation of his people, the people of Israel. Now, it's not that in any sense the Israelites were without tangible evidence of God's blessing. In fact, in a very remarkable fashion, and the apostle has indicated this before, we've referred to the first verse of the third chapter, in a very remarkable way, God has singularly blessed these people, hasn't he? Amos, you remember speaking for God and bringing a criticism to the Israelites, says in the prophecy that bears his name, you only have I known of all the families of the earth.

Tremendous responsibilities have been given you because of the privileges that have been bestowed upon you. Now, it's those privileges that have been bestowed upon Israel that Paul now highlights, and he does so because the reminder of that indicates the interest that God has in his ancient people. It also indicates the enormous responsibility that the Jews have in rejecting the gospel and in falling foul so often of the law of Moses.

What were the blessings, the timeless blessings that God bequeathed upon his ancient people? Well, there's the apostle verse 4, there's the adoption of sons. You know, sometimes the Old Testament, when it refers to Israel, calls Israel the son of God. In fact, when you get into the minor prophets, you discover Hosea speaking on behalf of God and talking about Israel as though Israel was a little child that God found in the wilderness, brought him to himself, and looked after him during the time of adolescence, and so forth.

In a very special sense, theirs was the adoption of sons. God narrowed his concerns in Old Testament times very much down, though not exclusively, but nonetheless to a large degree, to the children of Abraham. Theirs is the adoption of sons.

They've known God more than any other nation. There's the divine glory, tangible evidence of the power of God has been given to the Israelites on so many occasions. You remember when the tabernacle was constructed in the wilderness, how the glory of God, known as the Shekinah, glory hovered over the tabernacle? And a similar phenomenon occurred in Jerusalem, when the temple which displaced the tabernacle, a permanent, beautiful wonder of the ancient world, had been constructed.

The glory of God hovered over the temple. And they had the instructions as how to worship the Lord, the cultic pattern of sacrifice and offerings, and so forth, made very clearly to them, not to other people in the world. Theirs, says the apostle, are the patriarchs, the great men of the book of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, these illustrious characters who had such a remarkable understanding of God and to whom God drew near in almost unique ways.

And from them, the Jewish people, is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised. See what the apostle is doing. He's bringing together all the blessings that the Hebrew people have received down the years.

And he's saying that the greatest blessing that Israel has known is that from the loins of these people, so to speak, has come the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised. You can take that ascription that the last part of verse five is actually qualifying Jesus and showing him to be divine, or you can take it as being the response from Paul's own heart to the goodness of God, who has piled blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace, mercy upon mercy on the Jewish people. So this is Paul reviewing the legacy that the Jews have, his own people.

And yet, despite all this, these people are largely still away from the Lord. So is it that God's word has failed? I mean, that's in effect what Paul is suggesting for us at least to consider in the sixth verse, isn't it? Is it not as though God's word had failed? Now, how can that be? Because even the Old Testament Hebrews recognized the power that there was in the word of God, and the anonymous writer of the Hebrew epistle says that the word of God is sharp and penetrating. It's sharper than any two-edged sword.

God's word always achieves its objective. Well, the word of God was given to the Israelites in Old Testament days in a way that no other nation received it. Well, says the apostle, has that word failed? After all, my people largely have rejected the Messiah, and God has said that he's going to bless Abraham's descendants.

He will make Abraham's descendants as numerous as the stars in the heaven and the grains of sand on the seashore. But you've unbelief, eclipsing the Israelites as far as knowledge of God is concerned. Has God's word therefore failed to Abraham? No, says the apostle, and here is really revamping reasoning that he's already brought to our attention in the second and fourth chapter.

Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. What does he mean by that? Well, he'll tell you, verse 7, nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.

In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. Now, if you think that that reasoning is familiar, you're quite right. He's brought this to our attention before, but it's very important that you understand it.

What basically is he saying? Well, he's taking you back to the historical incident when Abraham is informed by the Lord, along with Sarah, that they are to be parents. Abraham believes God. Sarah finds it a little difficult at first, but it seems as though she too comes to an understanding that what God has said will happen.

Though she's old and her womb at the natural level has withered, these two come to believe what God has promised. They believe in faith, and the faith of Abraham is credited to him for righteousness. You remember that expression? There were two crises experiences in the life of Abraham.

The first was the birth of his son. Could he really father a child? And the second was the offering of Isaac, at least the potential offering of Isaac, as a sacrifice to the Lord. Abraham was prepared to do it.

On what basis? Well, on the basis that God had spoken. God had said, I will bless you through Isaac. How on earth will God keep his word, however, if I obey him and slay my child? He can only keep his word by raising from the dead Isaac.

And you remember the argument of the letter to the Hebrews that in effect, Abraham did receive Isaac back from the dead. His faith was such that he was prepared to act on what God had said. Now that's the bottom line with Paul.

If you are prepared to act on what God has said, then you stand in direct descent from Abraham. So when in the seventh verse, the apostle says, nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children, he is referring to Israel in the flesh, natural Israel, and he's saying that there are some who are natural descendants of Abraham, and yet they don't have a similar faith as Abraham had. And as a result, they really are not his children.

In terms of the fulfillment of this promise, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. Abraham believed. And when you and I trust the Lord Jesus as Saviour, whether we're Jews or Gentiles, on a basis of that, we are brought into a faith relationship with the Lord, and we can reckon Abraham to be our father.

So verse 8, in other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. So what have we learned by way of review so far this evening? Well, we've been dealing with the easier bits. We've learned that the apostle Paul has said that he has a great concern for the salvation of Israel to the extent that if it were possible to barter his eternal security to bring about the redemption of his people, then he would do so.

He's also gone on to tell us that the Israelites have had great precious blessings that have held them in good stead up to this time, at least potentially. He's gone on also to argue that God's word to Abraham has not failed, because alongside the obvious descendants of Abraham, there are an untold multitude, numerically, of people who have followed the pattern of Abraham and therefore are his children, and God's word has been fulfilled in as much as they too, like Abraham, have trusted God and have responded to his requirements on their lives. There the apostle breaks off, at least there we'll break off from the apostle's reasoning, but perhaps it does lend us or bring us into a right attitude for what now follows for the next hour or so as together we spend time before the Lord.

You see, Paul was confronted with people who were very hardened to the gospel, and it broke his heart. You and I are confronted similarly with people who are hardened to the gospel, and what we need to do is to pray like the apostle Paul prayed. Someone has said, Samuel Zwemer, who was a missionary to the Muslim world, prayer is the gymnasium of the soul.

We've got to wrestle as Paul wrestled for the salvation of the Jews, and we've got to wrestle knowing this, that God's word does not fail. His promises will be fulfilled, and so we come before him and we plead for the salvation of our loved ones as the apostle Paul pleaded for the salvation of his ancient people, and the reasoning that Paul enters into from the ninth verse and onwards, well, we'll have another look at that next week. Let's come to the Lord right now.

Father God, we thank you for the passion of a man like Paul, so much that might have dispirited him as far as his own people was concerned, and yet he never lost sight of the fact that he was a Jew. He longed for the salvation of Israel, and although many were brought into the covenant that you made with Abraham, and Paul rejoiced in that. He saw the Jewishness of Gentile people who, in like fashion, were obedient to God as Abraham had been, but he still longed for obedience to be part and parcel of the response of the Jews, his own people, to God.

Now Lord, we're in the same situation. We thank you that multitudes are coming to you around the world, perhaps in larger numbers than ever in the whole history of the Christian church, but Lord, we've got mums and dads. We've got brothers and sisters.

We've got children, and they don't know you, and our heart's desire is that they might be saved. Lord, we do believe in the power of intercessory prayer, and we want to enter into the gymnasium this evening. We want to fight with all the weapons at our disposal.

We thank you that we have your word. We complete its promises. You've told us that the heathen you'll give for our inheritance, we want to name some of those heathen before you.

And Lord, we're not just praying with our heads. We're praying with our hearts, and when we don't have words to be able to articulate what we're really trying to say, we're asking that you'll read our hearts and make a response, and whether we stay engaged in this agony of prayer, or whether we have to slip away to our own homes, keep us in such an attitude that we're able from time to time to wrestle as we send up the burdened request of our hearts for the salvation of loved ones in the name of Jesus. Now, just to give opportunity for those who've already been praying and perhaps want to leave to do so, has anyone got a...