Sermon Tone Analysis

| Our Father, who art in heaven,Hallowed be thy Name.Thy kingdom come.Thy will be done,On earth as it is in heaven.Give us this day our daily bread.And forgive us our debts,As we forgive our debtors.And lead us not into temptation,But deliver us from evil.[For thine is the kingdom,and the power, and the glory,for ever and ever.]Amen

|     Phil.

4:4-7  *4*     Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!      5     Let your gentle /spirit /be known to all men.

The Lord is near.

6     Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.      7     And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

|

 

Romans 9

            It is difficult to take a passage of Scripture and preach from it as if it stood monolithically over us but that is the task of the circuit preacher.

Last time I was here I preached on Ephesians 1:1 fully intending on preaching the *entire* book expositionally.

But seeing as it has been 2 months since I have been here and at the pace of one verse per sermon, in order to finish the book for you fine folks would take me 144 and a half years.

At this point I am not willing to dedicate that much time to seminary training so I have decided to try and do justice to a much larger passage today.

We will still be *considering* Paul, but this time we will look at his letter to the Romans and, more specifically, chapter nine.

*1*     I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit,

     2     that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.

3     For I could wish that I myself were accursed, /separated /from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh,

     4     who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the /temple /service and the promises,

     5     whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever.

Amen.

*6*     But /it is /not as though the word of God has failed.

For they are not all Israel who are /descended /from Israel;

     7     nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants will be named.”

8     That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.

9     For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.”

     10     And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived /twins /by one man, our father Isaac;

     11     for though /the twins /were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to /His /choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls,

     12     it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger.”

13     Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

*14*     What shall we say then?

There is no injustice with God, is there?

May it never be!

     15     For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

16     So then it /does /not /depend /on the man who wills or the man who  runs, but on God who has mercy.

17     For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.”

18     So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.

*19*     You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault?

For who resists His will?”

     20     On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it?

21     Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

     22     What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

23     And /He did so /to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,

     24     /even /us, whom He also called,  not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.

25     As He says also in Hosea,

“I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’

And her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’

”

     26     “And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’

There they shall be called sons of  the living God.”

     *27*     Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, “Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved;

     28     for the Lord will execute His word on the earth, thoroughly and quickly.”

29     And just as Isaiah foretold,

“Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left to us a posterity,

We would have become like Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah.”

*30*     What shall we say then?

That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith;

     31     but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at /that /law.

32     Why?

Because /they did /not /pursue it/ by faith, but as though /it were /by works.

They stumbled over the stumbling stone,

     33     just as it is written,

“Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense,

And he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.”

The church in Rome was founded by Jewish Christians but the emperor Claudius had the Jews expelled from Rome sometime in the *40’s AD.* Thus the church was an entirely Gentile congregation until Claudius’ death in 54 AD.

The Jews were then allowed to return to Rome but a tension developed as Jews and Gentiles had differing ways of expressing their faith in Christ.

Paul thus must address a church *experiencing* tension between two valid cultural expressions of the Christian faith.

Given this situation, what the Roman Christians needed was what we would call racial reconciliation and crosscultural sensitivity.

*Paul* reminds Jewish readers that they are as damned without Christ as Gentiles (chaps.

1–3); that spiritual, not ethnic, descent from Abraham is what matters (chap.

4); that Jews are also descended from the sinner Adam (chap.

5); and that the law does not justify Israel (chaps.

7, 10).

*He* reminds Gentiles that they were grafted into Judaism and therefore dare not be anti-Semitic (chap.

11) and that they must respect the practices of their Jewish siblings (chap.

14).

Christ and Paul (chap.

15) are agents of racial reconciliation, and unity (chap.

16) is the paramount issue.

Protestants have traditionally stressed justification by faith, a doctrine emphasized in Romans and Galatians, because *Luther* found this doctrine helpful in addressing indulgences and other ecclesiastical corruptions in his day.

But it is important to understand not only this doctrine but also why Paul needs to stress it.

Most Jews already believed that the Jewish people as a whole were saved by God’s grace, and Jewish /Christians/ recognized that this grace was available only through Christ; the issue was on *what* terms /Gentiles/ could become part of God’s people.

In arguing for the ethnic unity of the body of Christ, Paul argues that all people come to God on the same terms, no matter what their ethnic, religious, educational or economic background; Jesus alone is the *answer* to all humanity’s sin.

Paul stresses justification by faith, a truth most of his readers would know, especially so he can emphasize reconciliation with one another, a reality they still need to learn.

This stressing of the difference between Jew and Gentile is what has led some to read into the text that chapter nine is talking *about* the election of nations to sevice and not individuals to salvation.

The problem with this is two-fold, first this is not what the text says, those who do this want to find a way *around* God’s sovereignty in electing individuals to salvation so they can maintain their own autonomy, and second, who are nations comprised of?

Individuals, so this is no real solution ultimately.

James Boice calls Romans 9 the most difficult portion of the entire Bible.

The controversy mainly surrounds the *interpretation* of Paul’s idea of election.

Is Paul talking about election to salvation or election to service?

Based on the scripture at hand, Paul is talking about God sovereignly electing people to *salvation.*

To interpret this chapter as speaking of election in any other manner does violence to the text, and such an interpretation can only be arrived at through eisegesis, the reading into the scripture of one's own presuppositions.

Paul begins the chapter with a testimony of his truthfulness through the Holy Spirit.

“I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not *lying,* my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart” He then speaks of wishing he could himself be condemned to hell on behalf of his fellow Jews.

“For I could wish that I myself were accursed, /separated /from Christ for *the sake* of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the /temple /service and the promises, whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the *flesh,* who is over all, God blessed forever.

Amen.”

This comes on the heels of chapter eight where Paul says: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”

He says nothing can separate us, but then wishes for his own separation on behalf of his brothers.

This is reminiscent of *Moses* in Exodus 32 when he cries out to God, “But now, if You will, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!”

Both men understood that God would *never* do this, but the passion they had for their brothers was so strong they would, if they could, sacrifice their own eternal wellbeing for them.

Paul gives us a testimony of Israel and her place in God’s plan in vs 6-8:

“But /it is /not as though the word of God has failed.

For they are not all Israel who are /descended /from Israel; nor are *they* all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants will be named.”

That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.

He tells of all the blessings God has poured out on her, even of the privilege of being the race through whom the Messiah would come.

When Paul talks about the promises, he is speaking about the promises God made to Israel.

*These* are promises God made to Abraham and his offspring.