How are we distinctive?

Making A Difference

For the first week of my families most recent holiday, we stayed at a caravan park in Harrington with my extended family. If you’ve never been there it’s a beautiful part of the world.

Almost every day we took the family to the beach for a swim and a play in the sand. But even though we were only a relatively short walk from the beach at Harrington, we drove about 5km to the nearby Crowdy Beach, and the reason, simply because Crowdy Beach was patrolled whereas Harrington wasn’t.

Now it was interesting that we got through most of the week, and for most of the extended family they hadn’t laid eyes on Harrington Beach.

As it happened, I had been to the closer beach. In fact, I have this pattern where when I get to a holiday, I suddenly become interested in fitness, and so I had taken to some early morning runs along Harrington Beach.

Now when one member of our group said they wanted to see Harrington Beach, I remember saying - well, it is beautiful, but the reality is that it’s really just a repeat of what you see on Crowdy Beach.

In fact, the description of the beach could almost fit any number of beaches up and down the east coast of Australia. It has a long stretch of that beautiful golden sand, bordered on one side with the green growth on the sand dunes, and the other side with the rolling waves.

But yet, despite my quick remark that it wasn’t worth seeing because it’s just the same same, later I thought this probably wasn’t the best advice. Harrington Beach was special.

It was special to me because I had a beautiful encounter with a sea-eagle where for a few hundred metres it seemed to stay close to me.

It was special because at one end you have the Manning River come out.

I dare say it would have been a very special place for the Biripi people.

While at first glace, there is a lot of similarity from one beach to the next, each has it’s own unique distinctive, and each are special.

The same is true for us as people. Each of us a unique and distinctive. We’re each special in our own way.

But yet, just being unique is not the whole story. The question is, what are we doing with our distinctiveness.

Today, however, I don’t want to focus so much on your uniqueness as an individual, but about our distinctiveness as the people of God.

Because God has called us for a purpose, and as God’s people, we should be making a difference.

Link with Romans

Today I’m restarting our journey in Romans, and we’re at the part where Paul starts to deal with the Israelites, exploring some of their distinctiveness, but in particular, a very noticeable failure to make the most of it.

Romans 1-8

But first, it’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves a bit about the journey of Romans to get to this point.

Now some of you might recall the series we did. It was a series we were doing back in the winter months of last year, so I’ll forgive you if its gone out of your mind.

The first eight chapters essentially set out the gospel story.

After a brief introduction, Paul goes to quite some lengths to describe the problem of sin. The bottom line however is that every single person is a sinner. But the gospel, literally the good news, is that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We can be reconciled to God because of what he has done for us. All that is required is faith.

And this whole section has this amazing climax in chapter 8 which starts with the words: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”.

What about Israel?

Now, at a few points throughout these early chapters, Paul make a reference to “first to the Jew, then to the Gentile”. There is this distinctiveness about the Jews. Something special about them.

But there is also this undercurrent in his thinking, that Israel have not really taken a hold of the gospel as they should have. They have been given so much, but yet somehow, on the whole, they’ve missed what’s really important.

Well, I’ve described it perhaps as an undercurrent in his thinking in the first eight chapters, but when we get to chapter 9, this idea takes the focus.

And it is as this idea takes the focus, that we really start to see what it means to be this distinctive people of God, and for it to actually make a difference.

So let’s look at that now.

Israel’s distinctiveness

The chapter starts with Paul expressing his utter dismay at what has come of his own people - the Jews.

The first verse has Paul almost stumbling over his words trying to express the sincerity of what he’s about to say. Word which are causing him great sorrow and anguish.

And in verse 3 he expresses the sentiment - essentially that he wishes anything that his people were not in the state they are.

The status of his people is implied here - but the implication is clear. The people of Israel have missed the gospel. They have not taken it up and accepted Jesus as their messiah.

Now just to be clear, despite Paul’s anguish of heart, he’s still well aware of that which makes Israel distinctive.

And we can see this in verses 4 and 5.

He starts by saying that it is the Jews who have adoption to sonship - which essentially is saying that they were the people that God chose.

He says that the Jews have the divine glory - which is to say that God’s splendour chose to dwell among this people.

It was the Jews in which God entrusted the covenants and receiving the law. It was the Jews through whom we get the temple worship and the promises.

And in a very special way, Jesus, the Messiah, traces his human ancestry through this people, right back to the patriarchs.

There is a lot special about them - but yet in many ways, this just confounds the problem. How can such a privileged people make such a mess of it?

Why Israel fell

Well, from verse 6 Paul starts to explore this idea of what has happened.

And I need to make a warning here. This chapter has troubled many Christians, which I’ll explore as I go - but I’m going to maintain that it shouldn’t be troubling. In fact, within this chapter, I’m going to argue that we will see exactly what it is that should help us not only be a distinctive people, but also for our distinctiveness to actually make a difference.

Did God’s word fail?

Now, as Paul often does, it’s like he’s debating some imaginary opponent. He imagines the problem they might raise, and then gives the arguments against it.

So, let’s see the first problem we come to when we think about Israel’s failure to fully take hold of blessings that came from Jesus.

The perceived problem is that God’s word had failed.

Essentially, the argument would go that God had promised that Israel would be blessed. But understanding that the true blessing flows through Christ, then we can see that for the majority of Jews that do not accept Jesus, they have been cut from the true blessing.

So, have we seen a break down in God’s word?

Well, Paul tells us quite plainly - no, you’re mistaken. And the reason… “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.”

Essentially, he’s saying there is a new kind of Israel that is now inheriting the promise - what we might refer to today as Spiritual Israel.

This is the great mystery that Paul often talks about. The mystery that now the Gentiles, that is, the non-Jews, are heirs of the promise.

This is not to say that physical Israel is not important - they are, in fact, Paul will come back to this, particularly when we get to the eleventh chapter. But to understand God’s promises, we need to shift our narrow focus and look at it from his much bigger persepctive.

Now I won’t go into all the detail of the argument that follows, other than to paint a basic sketch of his main point.

Essentially, Paul makes the point that being the physical descendant of Abraham was never a guarantee to be part of the promise. If you know this part of your bible well, you’ll pick up the reference well enough.

Abraham had both Ishmael and Isaac as children, but the special blessing only went through Isaac.

And then Isaac had two children, Esau and Jacob, but the blessing only went through Jacob.

We could explore this in more detail, but the main point needs to be emphasized - having a physical descent may be of some value, but it is not everything, and it never has been everything - there is more to the story. But don’t for a minute think that just because the physical descendants haven’t all received the blessing of Christ that somehow God’s word has failed.

Is God unjust?

Now the next two problems that Paul deals with, from my way of thinking a both related.

You see the problem relates to the fact that God chooses some and not others.

And so we get to the first of these two related problems. If God chooses one person and not the next, how is this just?

Well the answer to this is that if we want to talk about justice, then everyone deserves condemnation. This was a point that Paul went to quite some lengths to make back in the first few chapters of this book.

But the fact that God decides to have mercy doesn’t negate his justice.

As Paul states in a very matter of fact kind of way in verse 18: “God has mercy on whom he want to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden”.

Why does God blame us?

But this starts to put us in some tricky territory.

It’s particularly this line which seems to imply that God is actively hardening hearts against him. If he is hardening your heart, then how can you resist his will. And if you can’t resist his will, then is it even fair to blame us?

And so this is the other related problem that we find. Is it fair for God to blame us?

Now it’s worth pointing out that there are two schools of thought that Christians tend to move towards. On one side, we have those who place a big emphasis on God’s sovereignty. And on the other side, we have those who place a big emphasis on human free will.

When we try to hold both ideas together, which is what I’m actually going to advocate, we come up with some compatibility issues, perhaps the biggest being what is noted here in this passage.

You see, if we push the idea of God’s sovereignty, which lets face it, this is what Paul seems to be doing here, then human agency seems to be gone. As I’ve just mentioned, that seems to be the case when it says that God is hardening whom he will harden.

Now for those who emphasize God’s sovereignty, they tend to love this passage, particularly when Paul starts using the image of a potter who creates out of lumps of clay - and the potter gets to choose whatever he wants to make.

Those who emphasize human free will struggle with this passage - but it shouldn’t necessarily be this way.

You see, while Paul does maintain God’s sovereignty, the point he’s actually trying to make is that this doesn’t mean we are without blame - in other words, we can’t negate human agency.

If you actually look closer at Paul’s argument, what he actually says is (verse 20): “But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?”

In other words, he just saying, look, God has a bigger perspective here. We can’t understand it. We just have to accept that what God is doing is best.

What I believe Paul is saying is that actually, you can have it both ways. We can believe whole-heartedly that God is completely sovereign, and that we have human free will.

To be honest, there is a bit of a mystery in that, but just because it’s beyond our full comprehension doesn’t mean it’s not true.

For God’s glory

Now if we keep following Paul’s line of argument, what you start to see him do is essentially say, well, look, rather than calling God unfair, let’s start to see it from his perspective. Forget, your own limited perspective and see it anew.

Just look at verse 23… “What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known...”

I almost take this to mean, look, even if we don’t understand, God is doing something really special and we should trust him. Sure we might not see how it fits with human free will, but at the end of the day, we just have to trust that it does.

Paul finishes this argument with a series of quotes from Hosea and Isaiah.

The point being made from these quotes is to again highlight that we are all unworthy and that it is only through God’s mercy that any are saved.

A matter of faith

Okay, so we need to start bringing this back together - in fact, you can tell that this is what Paul thinks to. You’ll see at the start of verse 30 he asks the question: “What then shall we say?”

Remember, Paul is trying to explore why it is that the Israelites haven’t received the blessing when they were so central to the whole process that God was doing.

Or, as I’ve slightly re-framed it, why is this distinctive group not making the difference like they should.

Well, the conclusion to the whole thing, is in the way the Israelites tried to pursue their righteousness, that is to say, that special place they have with God.

The Israelites tried to pursue it through the law - in other words, through their own efforts. The Gentile believers, however, in some ways had an advantage. Partly because they didn’t have that long heritage of the Jews, they were much quicker to understand that righteousness was only ever to come through faith.

And so faith becomes the key to understanding all of this.

You see, I’m actually going to argue that it is faith that helps us bridge this supposed gap between God’s sovereignty and human free will.

Faith requires human agency, yet it is also a gift from God. It is through faith that we truly begin to understand what free will is, and that it mysteriously fits into God’s sovereignty.

It is faith that stops us foolishly thinking that our human endeavours is all there is - something which is essentially the error the Jews made.

They had misunderstood the promises, thinking that somehow they could earn it on their own - but what they really needed was faith.

Making a difference

And this is the key that I want to come back to in my idea of how we are going to make a difference.

You see, we can talk all we like about how we are to be the salt and light in our community. We can talk about how we will care for the poor and vulnerable. How we will give a voice to the voiceless. We can talk about how we will stand with integrity and speak words of truth.

But all this talk will be absolutely useless without one key ingredient.

Because without this key ingredient we’re essentially saying that we can do it on our own.

We can only pursue our difference by living a life of faith.

To do this, it means handing everything over to God.

It’s one of the reasons that prayer is so important in everything we do. Because through prayer, we’re reminded that we need God.

Having faith means trusting that God’s promises will come true. It is one of the reasons that bible reading is so important. Because as we read God’s word, those promises and truth become central to our lives.

Conclusion

We can get caught up in this chapter about how God’s sovereignty and human free will play out - but the reality is that these discussion so often distract us from what is really important - that is, that God just wants us to have faith so that we can truly become the people of God. The Spiritual Israel.

Don’t get caught up in the struggle of wondering whether you are part of God’s elect or not. Get caught up in examining whether you have the faith that God is asking for.

Because that is what God wants - he wants faithful people.

And as we cling to him in faith, that when we will truly start making a difference in this world that God has placed us.

Let me pray...