Romans 9

Think about every place that you have not been.

Every thing that you have not experienced.

Think about a time that someone went on a great vacation and you were home. They were posting pictures on Facebook and then you meet after the trip and they explain it to you in detail. But because you weren’t there, the impact wasn’t the same.

Because you didn’t experience it, your hearing of the vacation doesn’t hit in the same way.

This is what Paul is trying to get across to the hearers of chapter 9 in Romans.

Chapter nine shows us the power and divine will of God. That He is sovereign. And in that, because He is the creator, sustainer and, redeemer of all creation, He calls us to submit to that power.

Here is the big idea we are going to uncover

God is much bigger than we could ever know and much more merciful than we could ever know. But we know who He is through faith in Christ.

For the next 3 chapters we have a parentheses of a topic that Paul wants to cover.

Now Paul was from the Jewish faith and He is writing to both Jews and gentiles. People who came from the promise of God and people who were invited into the promise of God through Christ.

And Paul tells them that they have been a part of the promise, they have been a part of the history

Romans 9:4–5 ESV

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

They had everything given to them. They had all the knowledge all the stories. And they still missed it.

We have a limited perspective and make choices based on that perspective. But even in science throughout history people are constantly proven wrong.

For the Jewish nation,

They missed the Messiah. They didn’t wholesale recognize Jesus. And so He is saying to the Jewish faith

look to where God is pointing. You don’t have to miss it!

and also

Look to how wide God’s mercy is. It is better than we knew.

God has acted in every space that we have not

Romans 9:6 ESV

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel,

We have a definite end. We get tired, hungry, we sleep. We die. That is all a part of the human condition. And while we all know that we rarely ever admit our limitations. We know in our bodies we do these things but we still have a belief that our perspective, how we see the world, is entirely true.

Paul is saying to the Jewish people that even though they had truth after truth after truth handed to them, when they faced Jesus, they misses the completion of God’s salvation.

Even their perspective was finite. Paul is saying just because not every Jewish person is saved and just because there are Gentiles who are being saved doesn’t mean the word of God has failed.

In fact, it’s doing what it is supposed to do.

Our relationship w God is always asymmetrical. We believe for some reason that our lives w Him are balanced between our work and His grace. But it is not balanced at all.

Because we think it’s balanced we often feel that God acts and behaves and thinks like us. God is very much unlike us and His relationship w us is on His terms. And He operates His way. When he shows mercy it is His not ours. His mercy is Him entering our lives. It is gift not payment.

Paul is asking the question, is God unjust for showing mercy and compassion to people who don’t belong to Israel?

Paul is pointing to God’s reality that He alone gives grace and mercy. That He alone provides salvation, not based on our history, knowledge, or behavior, but on God’s will. And because it is God, we know that He acts justly. We trust His character. Even when we can’t fully see it.

You may be asking why should I give my life over to something that’s not me and that has its own will? You are already living that reality through giving your life over to algorithms. At least in this case we know the character of the One who we are giving ourselves over to. We have slowly allowed the takeover of our data, information and lives and are more than ok with it. But we seem to have much more difficulty with the God who invites us to surrender the same things but with reciprocative care for the weight of our lives.

We live in a very interesting time of history. Partially because of the speed at which things are changing and partially because of what is changing us. 100 years ago there were no privacy laws because there was not a thought of having to guard your own privacy or information.

Things have changed drastically. And in that change we are being asked to hand over loads and loads of data to an algorithm that can make our lives easier.

My Facebook story.

This isn’t conspiracy theory stuff and this isn’t a luddite approach, I’m just making the case that we have no problem transcending our information to the cloud, but we often have big problems submitting our lives to a God that is bigger than us.

What happens if something moves beyond our reach? Fear. Look at ai. Moving beyond our ability to control. It ultimately places us within our finitude. And we don’t like that. Second rule of humane technology.

If that tech confers powers somewhere, there will be a race to manipulate that power.

We are on the cusp of a technological shift that I think is larger than the computer revolution 40 years ago.

And for many of us, we are like…ok.

My point is not the shift in culture but it is that we have no problem with the amount of power shifting in our technological culture which doesn’t have a great track record of caring for us. But we seem to have a hard time submitting to the God who has a great track record of caring for His people.

We need something larger than us who has a track record of using power to save others.

Every place where we have found an end is a place where God has already conceived a beginning. He determines our means and ends. And He is merciful. He isn’t tame but Hes good. God exists in every space we do not and wills in every place where we do not. Every definition of anything beyond our reach belongs to God

Colossians 1:15–20 ESV

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

What does it mean that God is everywhere present and powerful and exists in every situation we do not?

It means that His character is also everywhere present where we are not.

God’s mercy is more expansive than we could ever know

Romans 9:14–19 ESV

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?”

I’ve read this chapter a number of times and it always came across as a little callous. A little harsh.

But the point Paul is trying to make is

Just because things didn’t go the way you thought they would go, does that mean that God got it wrong?

Are we in a place where we can adequately and comprehensively justify God’s activity in the world?

Paul isn’t saying God isn’t merciful. He is saying how can we even get a handle on what God’s motives are from our perspective?

We can empathize with this. Think of all the things across history that we have thought we had gotten right but instead were wholesale wrong.

The sun revolved around the earth

We were born as a blank slate. No understanding of genetics or dNa yet

Miasmic theory of disease. That up until recent history there was the thought that disease was carried in the air like pollution like a poisonous vapor

What happens when we are called to trust a God who is by definition always bigger than us?

The quality of God’s mercy is not strained if we don’t understand the reasons why He makes His choice.

This is a hard one for our modern sensibilities. Because we believe we are the arbiters of truth, we cannot handle it if we cannot know the motive for every choice. So then we hand down judgments based on our assumption on how things should be. And we believe that we have sense of what all truth should be. But our limited version of truth is not the right perspective of God’s unlimited version of mercy.

How do you handle it when God’s mercy is more expansive than we thought?

How do you handle it when God’s mercy isn’t found in the places you thought?

Let’s look at the final passage in this chapter.

Romans 9:30–33 ESV

What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

A righteousness that cannot be attained is attained. It is not through pursuit but through the revelation of Jesus on our behalf.

Paul points out that it is not through our striving that gets us to salvation in Christ but through Christ’s action that gets us to Him.

But we can have faith that builds a bridge between what we don’t know and what God knows.

Faith allows us to live in the reality of a much bigger God and much bigger world.

We live already in a world that is much bigger than we could understand. That is normal. That is our daily experience.

So it is not a big surprise when we are called on to see God in faith even when we don’t fully understand.

This is not blind faith. This is a leap of faith. This is living beyond what we know.

When we try to live within the small sphere of what we know, Christ will be an offense.

But when we understand we are not in the middle of the universe, We are not the center. Then we are never put to shame.

Allow yourself to take a step in faith. beyond what you know. To trust that God will lead.