The Unexepcted Israelite

Interlude

Friends, I want to welcome you back into Romans 9:6 this morning as we pick up right where we left off last week.

Last week we examined Paul’s confident assertion that the word of God has not failed. We saw that Paul climbs on the back of the prophet Isaiah to make this claim, and that by making it, he declares that Isaiah’s covenant word to the barren woman and to the rejected woman has, as Isaiah said, been fulfilled. We saw that the themes of barrenness and rejection originated with Sarah and Hagar, and were passed down to Isaac and Ishmael, who became prototypes for how God deals with all people, as either a child of the flesh or as a child of the promise. We saw that despite the barrenness, God will bring forth life out of death. We saw that despite their rejection, God’s sovereign and saving grace extends even to those who would be rejected for a time. We saw that both the barren woman pattern and the rejected woman pattern culminate in the story of the virgin Mary, who brings forth the true and better child of the promise, the firstborn of many brethren, as great as the sand of the seashore, and that despite her virginity, she would bear no shame, no rejection, and her husband would not need to put her away quietly, for her child is born of the Holy Spirit. Finally we saw that Christ as the suffering servant brings the covenant made with Sarah and with Hagar to it’s fulfillment, becoming the firstborn of many brethren and the faithful husband of his bride, the church.

Moses and Isaiah saw this future, Jesus accomplished it, and Paul lived in it.

Therefore, Paul can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is not as though the word of God has failed.

So as we pick up verse 6 this morning, I want to open with some implications of this affirmation of the unfailing quality of God’s covenant word.

Some implications

Paul is building his entire argument, and has built his entire life and ministry on this reality: God’s word cannot fail. It cannot err. It will, without doubt, do exactly what God has ordained for it to do: declare and deliver his covenant to his people.

For us in the 21st century, we need to hold as fast to this truth as Paul did.

I think often times today we sort of hold up the Bible as our holy text, our only authoritative rule for life and faith, and do a great job of giving lip service to the word, but sometimes we don’t live like it. I see in myself and in many other Christians the tendency to occasionally operate as if the word of God will somehow fail, and is somehow less than absolutely true.

There’s some low hanging fruit here. The church is rife with people today who roundly discard the Bible’s teaching on the role of women in church leadership. Look no further than a number of prominent figures in the Southern Baptist Convention including Russell Moore and Rick Warren who routinely have women such as their wives take the platform at their church services and preach, in blatant defiance of Paul’s command in 1 Timothy 2:12

1 Timothy 2:12 NASB95

But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

Warren and Moore and others, at least by their actions, indicate that God’s Word has failed in the area of women’s roles in the church.

The church is also full of people who who want to affirm homosexual lifestyles and other deviant sexual behavior. Look no further than the Revoice “ministry” which exists, and I quote directly from their website: “To support and encourage gay, lesbian, bisexual, and other same-sex attracted Christians—as well as those who love them—so that all in the Church might be empowered to live in gospel unity.” Think about this in the context of any other category of sinful behavior. What if there was a ministry devoted to supporting and encouraging murderous Christians? How about stealing Christians? How about lying Christians? We would say first, that’s crazy, and second, it’s not possible to be a murderous or lying or stealing Christian. You can be a former murderer who is now a Christian. You can be a former liar who is now a Christian. You can be a former thief who is now a Christian. But you can’t be both. To follow Christ is to be washed and sanctified from the filth of your former way of life, and that includes homosexual behaviors and desires. Yet a growing number of professing Christians and churches are promoting an ethical system that tries to allow homosexuality and Christian conviction to coexist. Revoice thus believes that God’s Word has failed when it says in Leviticus 18:22

Leviticus 18:22 NASB95

‘You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.

But this is low hanging fruit. I would be surprised if anyone in the room wanted to fight me on either of these things.

But for us today, the unfailing character of God’s word has piercing implications for us.

Do we trust that God’s promises will not fail even for us?

Do we trust that when we’re looking for work that God will provide all our needs according His riches in glory? Or do we toss and turn at night and run the rat race during the day, agonizing over whether or not you’ll find work?

Do we trust that when intrusive thoughts come barging into our heads, creating worst-case scenarios and causing anxiety, we can cast all our cares on Him, for He cares for us? That He will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus? Or do we dwell on those thoughts and allow them to ruminate, further creating anxiety and worry?

Do we trust that the grace of God is great enough to reach into the dead hearts of even our most obstinate family members, and make them alive together with Christ? Or do we stop praying for them and proclaiming to them because they’re a lost cause?

Friends, the unfailing, unerring character of the word of God means we can trust it with all circumstances of our lives. Listen to the words of Joel Beeke:

Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 1: Revelation and God Practical Implications of the Bible’s Veracity

Since the Word of God is pure truth, we can and should place our complete trust in what God has said. To trust in the Bible for truth is to trust in the God who cannot lie. We glorify God when we trust in his Word, especially when everything around us militates against that trust (Rom. 4:19). We honor God by trusting his Word, for we thus treat him as the God who never lies and is able to do what he says. Furthermore, when we trust in God’s Word, we discover that he is a “shield” to us (cf. Gen. 15:1). We experience his saving grace and loving presence with us. Without faith in the Word, it will not profit us, but by faith in God’s Word, we please God (Heb. 4:2; 11:5–6). Inerrancy is not a cold, academic doctrine, but a great encouragement to faith and the foundation of all sustaining comfort and solid hope, for we know that God will never break his promises to us in Christ. The doctrine of inerrant veracity allows us to answer the question When the Bible affirms something, should I believe it? with an unqualified yes.

Paul believed God’s Word could not and would not fail. Do you?

So up to this point, Paul has used the language of Isaiah to indicate that despite the unbelief of Israel, God’s word still stands, and will not fail. But at this point he has merely made the statement. He has not proved it. Now we will turn to the proof that Paul provides.

The Unexpected Israelite

To prove that God’s Word has not failed, Paul makes an earth-shattering statement. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel, and nor are they children because they are Abraham’s descendants.

Redefining Israel

Now the reason that this is a massive statement is that Paul is essentially redefining terms here. He is telling his readers that they need to understand him not in purely empirical or biological terms, but in a different way. This is difficult for many modern interpreters of Scripture who like to apply Enlightenment rationalist rules to Scripture. These types of people will often tout the phrase literal interpretation. We take the Bible literally! Now don’t get nervous. I would affirm with you today that the Bible must be taken literally. The problem is that many modern Christians have misunderstood and misdefined the word literal. In fact, if you get online right now and look up the definition of the word literal, it will say something along the lines of the “simplest and most natural” way of taking the word or statement. This definition pits a literal definition against, for example, a spiritual definition, a symbolic definition, a typological definition, or a host of other “alternative” definitions or interpretations. Here’s the problem with that. That’s not what literal means. Literal means “according to the letter,” or according to what was written. So if you want to take something literally, you’re not necessarily taking it in the simplest or most natural way that it could be understood. To take something literally is to take it according to the letter, or according to what the author intended when he wrote. So we very much believe in literal interpretation, but we believe in according to the actual definition: we are trying to get after the intentions, the mind, the purpose of the author. And Paul is teaching us how to do this here, and he’s teaching us that the “simplest and most natural” way to understand his own writings is not always the right, and therefore literal way to understand him, and by extension the rest of the Scriptures.

So in essence what Paul is saying here is that literal Israel is not biological or ethnic Israel. Paul is presenting to us the concept of “true Israel.” And for Paul, true Israel is a much different group of people than ethnic or biological Israel.

RC Sproul helps us understand this in the concept of the visible church versus the invisible church:

Romans True Israel

Paul reminds his readers, they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham (vv. 6b–7a). He has to work against the idea that salvation is passed on biologically or through the visible nation of Israel. Following Augustine, we distinguish between the visible church and the invisible church. The point of the distinction is that not all members of a visible church are redeemed. Not everybody in the visible church is numbered among the elect but only those in the invisible church. It’s called “invisible” because we cannot read the hearts of the congregation. I don’t know who has made a true profession of faith. Some might have made a profession with their lips but their hearts remain far from God. I cannot read people’s hearts, but I can hear their words. People cannot read my heart, but God can. The invisible church is absolutely manifest to the scrutiny of Almighty God. He knows his own, and though we may seek to fool our fellow citizens about our state of grace, nobody has ever fooled God about the state of his or her heart.

So how does Paul define true Israel, if they are not biological descendants of Abraham?

True Israel are those who come through Isaac.

Now this would seem to sort of contradict what I’ve been saying up to this point. True Israel comes from Isaac, and Isaac is Abraham’s son, so true Israel is still biologically descended from Abraham.

Yes, but not so fast. Paul clarifies in verse 8. True Israel consists not of the children of the flesh, but of the children of the promise, or as the NIV says, not of the children of physical descent.

True Israel as Children of the Promise: A Return to Sarah and Hagar

How are we to understand this? We have to return to the story of Sarah and Isaac, and Hagar and Ishmael. Now last week we discussed Sarah and Hagar and Isaac and Ishmael a little bit as they relate to Isaiah’s declaration of God’s unfailing word, but they now serve to support Paul’s assertion in an even more explicit way here.

Let’s give you the short version of the story, the full version of which you can read in Genesis 15-17, and again in Genesis 21.

God promises Abraham a son, he and Sarah assume that because of their age and barrenness up to that point, that they will not be able to have a son according to the natural and God-ordained means, so Sarah offers her Egyptian servant Hagar to Abraham as a kind of surrogate. She conceives and gives birth to Ishmael. God comes back and tells Abraham that he will have an heir from Sarah. Abraham asks for the blessing to be given to Ishmael and God says no, he will bless Ishmael and provide for him, but the covenant will be with Isaac.

So what’s the point here? Moses is demonstrating two realities in this narrative, and Paul calls upon those realities to serve his argument.

Reality 1: The covenant is not with children of flesh but with children of faith. The point here, as the NIV translation states so plainly, is not physical descent. The point is that Isaac was born based on the promise of God that Abraham and Sarah believed. Ishmael was born based on the natural and physical processes and abilities of Abraham and Hagar. So Isaac’s conception and birth become a picture of the new birth. Moses, through Isaac’s story, is teaching his readers and us what it means to be born again. The new birth is equally miraculous, equally sovereign, equally in accordance with faith as Isaac’s birth. Isaac’s birth thus teaches us about the new covenant, a covenant not based on Abraham’s abilities or Sarah’s abilities or our abilities, but based solely in the gracious work of God. Rightly then do we refer to it as a covenant of grace, not a covenant of works. It is based not on the ability of Abraham or Sarah to produce a child, because they can’t, but it is based on the miraculous work of God in creating life out of death, which leads to the second reality:

Reality 2: The covenant is a covenant that brings life out of death. Sarah’s womb is as good as dead, both because of her barrenness and her age. Isaac comes forth alive in accordance with God’s promise, out of that which was dead.

So by calling upon the narrative of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac, Paul is teaching us something critical about how God saves people: He does it by a life-giving miracle, causing what once was dead to live again, causing dead hearts to beat, causing dry bones to walk, causing dead men to cast off their graveclothes and walk forth in victory.

This all comes together for Paul in the teaching of Isaiah, where the life-bearing capacity of the barren woman and the restoration of the rejected woman and the establishment of their protection in chapter 54 are accomplished by the work of the suffering servant in chapter 53, who is the first to fulfill the life-from-death pattern. By the power of God, the child of promise Isaac emerged from the dead womb of Sarah, and by that same power the suffering servant Jesus Christ emerged from the dead tomb of Joseph! And because that life was a free gift of grace, accomplished by nothing more and nothing less than a miracle of God, God can now offer it to anyone he likes, regardless of status or race or gender or age or ability or obedience or anything. Therefore, Isaiah and Paul can declare with confidence, the word of God has not failed. Come to the waters, you who are thirsty, and drink water from the wells of Christ, water that will satisfy eternally. Come to the table, and eat of the bread of his body, and never hunger again, for He is the bread of life. See the marks on his head, his hands, his feet, marks of the blood he shed to ratify the new covenant, the covenant that overflows with the mercies of David. And once you have drunk deeply and eaten til you are satisfied, stand up from the table, forsake your wicked ways, your unrighteous thoughts, and return to the Lord and walk in his compassion and mercy.

That’s the unfailing word to each one of us here today, a group of unexpected Israelites. Israelites not because we are descended from Abraham by flesh, but because we are descended from him by faith. Abraham trusted God to bring life out of death, and so also have we. And as a result of that faith, we are brought into a covenant of grace in which we stand in full assurance that God’s Word cannot fail.

Paul sees no surer evidence than the proliferation of grace to the Roman church that God’s Word has not failed. And for my part, I see no surer evidence than that same grace poured out in each one of you that God’s Word has not failed.

So we’ve seen that Moses and Isaiah typify and predict this new covenant in their writings, we see that Jesus fulfills it in his birth and in his resurrection, and we see that Paul and the Roman church are living in it, and by extension, we are living in it. And what Paul is doing for Rome and for us in these verses is slowly but surely establishing his primary point in these chapters: Salvation is a sovereign and miraculous work of the grace of God. Just as Isaac could not be born apart from a miracle, so also we cannot be born again apart from a miracle. Simply put, Paul with Isaiah and Moses is teaching us today that salvation is by grace alone, not of works, lest anyone boast. We are not saved by our heritage, by our blood, by our actions, by our choices, including even a “choice” to believe or repent or follow Jesus. None of those things save us. If anything we do results in our own salvation, no longer does our salvation rest in God’s hands, but in our own.

This is the Reformation doctrine of Sola Gratia, or grace alone. In other words, salvation comes only by grace. Only by a free gift of God, offered by the Father, accomplished by the Son, applied by the Spirit.

This doctrine ought to impact us in a few ways.

First, it ought to impact our evangelism. How? This can be controversial, because many folks out there say something like this: If God does all the work in salvation, and if He is totally sovereign and if there is absolutely nothing I can do to save myself or anyone else, why preach the gospel? It’s pointless. God will save who he’s going to save. To that I would respond, if there’s nothing I can do to save someone else, if there is no power in me to make a dead man live, the only recourse of action I have is to proclaim the gospel, the good news that Christ saves. Secondly, I can preach with confidence because I know that it’s not my skills or abilities or persuasive tactics that bring the gospel in a blaze of glory to the heart of my hearers. Only God can do that, and if He can do that, I don’t have anything to worry about. I need only preach the gospel with my words and with my works, with what I say and what I do.

Second, it ought to impact our prayer. People will often say “well if God is sovereign and has ordained all this, why pray? It won’t change anything,” and to that I would say that that is exactly why you should pray. If God is not sovereign, if God is not powerful, if God has not set all things in order according to His character and will, prayer is utterly futile. If God is not sovereign, I might as well pray to a rock or to a tree because they have the same amount of sovereign power and control over the course of my life as God. Let me be clear here: prayer works because God works. Prayer is powerful because God is powerful. Prayer accomplishes much because God accomplishes much. In prayer, we attach ourselves to the powerful promises of God’s word and works.

Third, it ought to impact our assurance. If we have anything to do with whether or not we are saved, we’re doomed. There are folks out there who say “well God does 90% of the work and then that last 10% I respond, and I take care of it.” That is outrageous. That’s like saying a ship that is constructed 90% by a master shipwright and 10% by a dead person will be seaworthy. No way! That thing will sink in 5 seconds. That’s like the heart surgeon getting 90% done with a quadruple bypass and then handing you the scalpel and saying “there ya go guy, finish her off!” That’s like the pilot of the airplane coming on the intercom on your flight and saying “Alright everyone, we’re about 30 minutes from touching down in Los Angeles. Please fasten your seatbelts and invite Bob to the cockpit. He’s going to land the plane while I grab a bite to eat and use the lavatory.” Ludicrous. But if the shipwright builds 100% of the ship, if the surgeon completes the quadruple bypass, if the pilot lands the plane, we have full assurance that it’s going to be done the right way, and we’ll end up safely out of surgery or at our destination. Now imagine how much greater our hope, our assurance, our confidence should be when we know that our salvation is completely in the hands of the almighty, sovereign creator of the universe. Therefore we can sing with Ada Habershon:

When I fear my faith will fail, Christ will hold me fast.

When the tempter would prevail, He will hold me fast.

He’ll not let my soul be lost, His promises shall last.

Bought by Him at such a cost, He will hold me fast.

Our lives, our salvation, our glory are held fast in the sovereign hand of God our Father and Christ our Savior. Let this be no small encouragement to you this morning as you consider the sovereignty of God’s grace in our salvation.

So we’ve seen Paul declare the sovereignty of God’s promise, displayed in Isaac and accomplished in Christ. But he is not done with his demonstration from the Old Testament of the matchless grace and mercy of God, so we now must turn with Paul to verse 10, and the story of Jacob and Esau.