Has God Failed? (Romans 9:1-13)

Several years ago when I was visiting our nations capital, I spent a day in the Smithsonian viewing the exhibitions of science and nature and historic moments in our national and world history. After the day was over, I wished I had another couple of days to explore the museum. One day is not enough; there is too many exhibitions for one day’s exploration. I don't know whether that kind of thing appeals to you, but I love museums. It helps me to grasp more clearly what those historical incidents were actually like. Romans 9-11 is somewhat like an exhibition, a museum, so to speak, of how God works in human history, how he redeems and saves the lost.

In Chapters 1-8, the apostle declared that humankind is helpless to save himself. There is not a thing we can do to save ourselves. We have power to choose, we are expected to choose, and we are free to choose, but, nevertheless, as Paul has made clear, God is behind it all. That’s hard for us to understand, so Paul turns the spotlight on Israel to demonstrate how God works. We will learn many important things from this section of the epistle to the Romans.

This is a sad and rather sobering story about Israel. Here is a nation that counted itself as having an inside track with God, and saw itself as the people of God, the chosen nation close to God, with various advantages which no other nation had. The Israelites regarded themselves, therefore, as having a privileged position with God. And yet Paul begins this section with a clear acknowledgment that this nation is far, far away from God; in fact, cut off from God, despite all the possibilities that they enjoyed as God’s chosen people.

Paul does not speak in anger at that fact, nor does he speak with accusations. He begins, as we will see in his opening words, with a description of the personal anguish that this causes him. Listen to these words:

Paul’s passion for the lost (9:1-3)

Paul is about to speak his mind, but wants his readers to know that he is speaking more than his mind. He is speaking out of his relationship with Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. What he is about to say then, is a truth founded in Christ himself, not simply his opinion. And what he says is this:

His heart is filled with “great sorrow and unceasing anguish.” This kind of sorrow is to be“overcome with grief.” And this unceasing anguish is “a constant and intense anxiety.” And what is causing this intense anxiety and overwhelming grief? His own “flesh and blood” who are “cut off from Christ.”

Perhaps some of you can identify with Paul’s anguish. You have friend or a family member who does not Ugh they have heard the gospel message, they refuse to repent of their sin and believe in Jesus. You pray and pray from a broken heart.

That was Paul’s anguish. His wish (“strong desire”) was to take their curse for them, and to be “cut off” from Christ instead of them.

New Testament scholar Charles Denney calls Paul’s passion for Israel “a spark from the fire of Christ’s substitutionary love’, for he is prepared to die in their place.”

We would do well to carry the same spark of passion out into the world of lostness around us: whether it be family or friends or workmates or neighbors or the people we encounter each day, people we don’t even know. Christ died for them, and we have the message of salvstion they need to hear.

In spite of God’s work to secure our salvation, people can be very stubborn: even God’s chosen people.

God’s blessings to those He chooses (9:4-5)

Paul confirms who he is speaking of: “They are Israelites.” Then he lists eight privileges that God gave the Israelites. These privileges pile up as a mountain of evidence that should have persuaded Israel to believe Jesus is the Messiah and to follow him. Yet, since Paul has declared that they were “cursed and cut off from Christ” they obviously did not.

God adopted them as his sons and daughters. Perhaps Paul had in mind Jeremiah 31:9. “I am Israel’s Father, and Ephraim is my firstborn.” This is reminiscent of Romans 8:14-16. “For all those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children.” This shows us that both Jew and Gentile come into God’s family in the same way: adoption. God chooses us. Later Paul will use another word to describe spiritual adoption: election.

God revealed to them his glory. Most likely Paul has in mind the dedication of the tabernacle in Exodus 40:34. “The cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” Israel previously witnessed God’s glory from a distance at Mt. Sinai, but at the dedication of the tabernacle, God’s glory was up close snd personal.

God gave them the covenants. There was the covenant God made with Abraham and then restated and confirmed with Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David. Israel is the only nation with whom God made a covenant. That sets them apart from all other nations, even to this day. Deuteronomy 4:7 states, “For what great nation is there that has a god near to it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call to him?”

God gave them the law. This was God’s unique revelation of His will and ways, written in stone by His very finger and delivered through Moses to Israel.

God gave them worship. Specifically, Paul noted “the temple service.” This includes all the regulations and instructions for the priesthood, the sacrifices, the special days of celebration and remembrance, and other instructions that guided Israel to worship God. All other nations and peoples worshiped false gods and designed their own ways to worship them. But God gave Israel personal instructions about how to worship Him and experience Him in worship.

God game them promises. Paul was referring to all the covenant promises God gave to his people. While Israel often failed to fulfill its promises to God, he never failed his people, and that is one of Paul’s primary points in this passage.

God gave them the patriarchs. The patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) received the three versions of the Abrahamic covenant noted above. The promises given to the patriarchs established Israel as the special possession of God, so the heritage of the nation came through them.

God gave the Messiah through them. This ultimate gift is the culmination of the blessings poured out on Israel. This makes the tragedy of Israel’s unbelief all the greater. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, was born a Jew, lived among them, fulfilled the covenant and the laws given to them, demonstrated by His power and teaching that He is the Messiah, yet they greeted this divine gift with unbelief.

At the end of verse 5 Paul clearly identified Jesus as God in flesh: He is God and worthy of our worship.

We recall a point in Jesus’ life and ministry when the leaders of Israel rejected this truth. John 5 tells the story of Jesus’ healing a paralytic at the pool of Bethesda. After Jesus healed him, “The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. Jesus responded to them, ‘My Father is still working, and I am working also.’ This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.”

Considering God’s history of endowing Israel with so many blessings and even becoming flesh and dwelling among them, how in the world did they miss it? Why could they not see that Jesus is the Messiah? Why did they not fall on their knees, like the healed paralytic, and worship Jesus?

In spite of all God’s attempts to keep Israel as His chosen people and to bring salvation to the world through them, they were cut off from Christ. Except for a remnant of Israel, the gospel was received by Gentiles; and after the 12 apostles and Paul were gone, the gospel spread primarily through Gentile nations, not Israel.

Did God fail? That’s the question Paul answers in the rest of this passage.

God’s Word that never fails (9:6a)

First, Paul concluded that the word of God does not fail. “Now it is not as though the word of God failed” (6). This week in our devotional guide we will explore five Scripture passages that reveal the eternal nature and power of God’s Word.

For example, Psalm 119:89 states, “Lord, your word is forever; it is firmly fixed in heaven.”

I’m also reminded of 1 Peter 1:24-25, where Peter quoted Isaiah 40:6-8. “For All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like a flower of the grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

God never breaks a covenant. God always keeps His promises.

And, according to Isaiah 55:11, “…so my word that comes from my mouth will not return to empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.”

Israel’s rejection of the Messiah is not God’s failure; it’s theirs. And Paul explained why God hasn’t failed.

God’s Elect (9:6b-13)

Here again, Paul takes us on a tour of God’s history with Israel, and he makes four important points about the nature of God’s election — His choosing people for salvation.

“Not all who descended from Israel are Israel” (6b). What did Paul mean by this? Do you remember Paul’s discussion of how a person is made righteous? Was it by works? Was it by birth? No. In Romans 4:3, we read: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.” True Israel is not a nation built by bloodlines, but a nation built by faith in God’s promise.

Paul explained this in verses 7-9. Not all of Abraham’s children were his descendants. Remember, not only Isaac, but Ishmael was also Abraham’s son. But God did not consider Ishmael’s blood line as descendants of Abraham. Why? Because that wasn’t God’s plan and promise. “On the contrary, your offspring will be traced through Isaac” (v. 7). Ishmael was the product of Abram’s and Sarai’s disobedience. Isaac was the product of God’s promise.

Verse 8 continues the thought: “That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring.” God chose Sarah to give birth to God’s promise, not Hagar, her servant.

The point Paul was making here is that God doesn’t fail, nor HIs Word. People who receive the word (the promise) fail. Faith to believe and act on God’s promise, not ancestry or bloodline, determines whether one is a child of God.

Paul gave another example in verses 10-13: the story of Jacob and Esau. It is a story full of deception, intrigue, and trickery. Jacob and Esau were twins, born to Isaac and Rebekah. If you remember, Esau was born first, but the second son, Jacob, came out “grasping Esau’s heel with his hand” (Genesis 25:26), so he was named Jacob, which means, “one who grasps the heel.” In Hebrew culture, the first-born son received the father’s blessing and a double portion of the inheritance. A man’s bloodline ascended through the oldest son. So, humanly speaking, we would expect that the promise to Abraham, through Isaac, would continue through Esau. But that was not the case. Verses 12 quotes the promise God gave to Rebekah: “The older will serve the younger.” Why would God choose to break tradition? The quick answer is to say that God is sovereign, and He can do whatever He pleases. The harder answer is is verse 13: “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.”

That’s hard to understand. Does God really hate? Doesn’t the Bible teach us that God is love, and that He loves all people? After all, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son.” We need an explanation regarding this hate.

The explanation is linguistic. The word hate here is not the same as our English word hate. To be honest, our English translations cannot always catch the context of the biblical languages. For example: If I were speaking to a non-English speaker and invited them, “Come to the party with me; it’s going to be a blast!” What would the translator do with the word blast? Unless he was extremely fluent to understand English idioms, my non-English speaking friend might be reluctant to accept my invitation.

Let me put hate in its biblical context. In the Gospel of Luke, we hear Jesus explain discipleship this way: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.” Was Jesus commanding me to actually hate my parents and siblings, as we understand hate today? No, He wasn’t. He couldn’t have, because Exodus 20:12 in the Ten Commandments tells us to, “Honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord you God is giving you.” And in Matthew 5:17, Jesus said, “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

There must be, then, a nuance of the word hate in these passages that we need to understand; and here it is: it means “to prefer one over the other.” The word hate in this passage is a matter of preference, not the hate we mean in our English word. So what Jesus was teaching about discipleship is that we must prefer Him over every other relationship. And what God was promising in Genesis 25:23, quoted in Romans 9:13, is that God preferred Jacob over Esau. God has a perfect plan that matches His perfect promise. Though Jacob had his own flaws, for sure, don’t forget that Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. Feeding his immediate hunger was more important that his father’s blessing. God, who knows all things, including all people and their future choices, chose well.

But here’s Paul’s point that we cannot miss. We see it in verse 11: “For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand.” In other words, Israel is not Israel because of their merit, but because of God’s choosing. We are saved by grace, not works. Salvation is completely God’s work and none of ours, which makes it all the more precious.

What does this all mean for us?

Let’s review what we have learned so far:

God chose Israel and blessed them with many blessings so that they could bless the nations, yet Israel rejected the Messiah.God’s word never fails. He never abandons His promises and never breaks a covenant. A true Israelite is determined by spiritual kinship, not ethnic origin. A true Israelite is one by God’s election, not by personal merit.

Now comes the work of applying what we’ve learned to our living today. Let’s do it with questions.

Is there a need in your life to which God’s Word speaks, but you are having difficulty believing him?

Life’s hardships and disappointments have a tendency to cause our confidence in God to fade.

Are you relying on any physical inheritance—parents, church, denomination, or you own prior spiritual achievements—to bring authenticity to your relationship with God?

Have you been deceived in any way into thinking that God chose you for salvation because of my personal attributes or merit?

Do you have the same passion as Paul for the lost?