22 Apr. '07: Romans 9-11
ROMANS M 9 MESSAGE
Text: Romans 9-11
Introduction
I grew up in a fairly large family. As is often the case, I suppose, when you have a fairly large number of kids in a family, we siblings fought quite a bit. Sometimes we would fight verbally; sometimes we would fight physically. Sometimes we would even break up into teams to scrap with each other.
Although we kids fought like kids in other families, and though the homes that we grew up in were not particularly fancy, it seemed that one distinctive of our home was that kids in the neighbourhood and kids from our school wanted to hang out at our place. It was very common for us to have our friends in for dinner, we’d pull an extra chair or two at the dinner table. It was also not unusual for our friends to stay the night at our house. And once in a while, our friends, even though they may have come from very good families, would ask us at our dinner table say, “I want to be adopted into our family.”
We’d always say something like, hey “Bobby Brady” you’re white!”
I remember there was this kid who I got to know in my high school, who came from a good family and that lived in beautiful home. But, he ended up spending a lot of time at houses. We lived on a fairly large lot and some of our evergreens needed to be cut down. It was my job to cut the evergreens into logs, then chop the logs into firewood and stack them in our garage. But this friend from my high school ended up doing up doing some, well most of the work for me. He ended up staying at my home for weeks, chopping wood with me. My siblings complained to me from time to time, assuming I was forcing him against his will do my work.
When I would ask this guy if he wanted to go home, he would simply say, “I like chopping wood. I like it.. I’m getting a good work out…”
He’d stay for another week or two, and I would say, “Are you sure you want to stay?” And he’d say, “I haven’t finished my job yet…”
I don’t know if he really enjoyed chopping wood as much as he claimed, but I think he enjoyed hanging out at our house and with our wacky family.
I don’t know if you have ever had a yearning to be part of a particular family… Perhaps a family that you projected ideal qualities onto and idealized in some way. If you have ever had that yearning, you need to know that God, the only perfect father and mother in the universe (I’m using the words mother and father metaphorically)… the only one who is perfectly loving, wise and strong is raising up a family for himself.
Re-cap
Last Sunday, we talked about the identity of a son or daughter of God. A number of you were running in the Sun Run or attending the women’s retreat in the Fraser Valley so let me let me just give a brief re-cap of some of the things I said in that message.
I talked about how if you came from a family where your parents or significant people in your life… tried to script your life with ideas that reflected more of their own ambitions and insecurities, rather than the ecology of your personhood, that you may have been socialized to become a person whose significance is defined by what you do, what you achieve, what you have, what others think of you… The apostle Paul, as we found last week, describes this kind of person as a kind of “slave.”
In contrast to the slave, the person with the mindset of a son or daughter of God knows that he or she is defined not so much by what they do, or what they achieve, or what they have, or what other people think of them, but by the simple fact that they are deeply loved by God.
We talked about how a person can reborn into a family of God re-parented by God in a way that brings healing and freedom.
Many people think that being part of God’s family must be restrictive, but when we really become part of God’s family and realize how deeply we are loved by the one person who really matters, we set free to become our true selves and to pursue our true calling.
Paul in Chapters 9 through 11 builds on the concept of the family and describes how he creates his family…
(I’m not going to address every verse in these three chapters--that would take a very long time--but I will attempt to offer a sweep of some of the key images in these chapters. The image of family tree, the potter and clay and the wild olive branch being grafted into the tree. These are fairly difficult chapters in the book of Romans so stay with me).
As Paul writes Romans 9-11, he makes all kinds of allusions to the Old Testament. As writes, he is assuming that his listeners in Rome are familiar with the Old Testament. I know that many of you here are just beginning to explore Christianity but I would encourage you, if you really want to come to know the full scope of God’s plan, to make a commitment to read the entire Bible perhaps in the next year, and knowing the whole Bible, will help read the particular books.
When Paul in Romans 9:5 refers to a group called the patriarchs of the people of Israel, he assumes that his readers will know the patriarchs of Israel refer to… Abraham, his son Isaac, and Isaac’s son Jacob who would later be called Israel...
Paul points out that the Messiah Jesus Christ, who is God over all (vs.5), descended from these patriarchs. Why does Paul point this out? Paul wants to make it very clear both to his fellow Jews and to the Gentiles that the gospel that he is preaching about the faithful work of Jesus Christ on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins that enables people to receive the forgiveness of their sins and enter God’s family is not some fringe, radical teaching that is a departure from the Old Testament. Paul in Romans 9-11 is showing how God used the faithful work of Jesus Christ, the faithful Israelites, to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy that through the family tree of Israel God would create a family of his own.
As we trace Abraham’s family tree, we get a window into how God creates his family tree.
Abraham is the spiritual forefather of this family tree that God uses to bring Jesus Christ the one through whose sacrifice on the cross for our sins opens the way for people to be adopted into the God’s family… The line begins with Abraham and Sarah, then goes through Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah…
Abraham was chosen for a very special vocation by God and so why did God come to choose Abraham in the first place? We may assume was that Abraham was this person of extraordinary character and religious devotion, and would therefore he was singled out by God. But there is no evidence in Scripture that Abraham was this extraordinarily virtuous and religious person before God approached him. We know he had a tendency to lie under pressure, that he was willing to allow his wife to be “thrown to the wolves” in order to save his skin.
Abraham was not perfect--but for some reason that cannot be reduced to mere logic… God chooses seems to have chosen Abraham. We could God choose Abraham just because….
Then God chooses to continue the family tree through whom the world would be blessed through Abraham’s son, Isaac… who was miraculously born to Abraham when he was 100 years old and Sarah when she was 90 years old…
Why does God choose Isaac who is not Abraham’s first born, but his second born, in a culture where the first born son received all the privileges—including the entire family inheritance?
Again we can offer reason as to why, but the reasons cannot be reduced to some rational airtight set of arguments, God chooses Isaac just because…
Isaac marries Rebecca and through Isaac has twins. God again breaks the cultural convention of the time by choosing to continue the family line through whom the world would be blessed not through the older son Esau, but the younger Jacob…
Esau was the first-born; was more athletic, was his father’s favorite, yet God does not choose Esau, the first-born. He chooses Jacob, the second-born. God chooses Jacob just because…
Then again, as we move to the next generation, Jacob marries two sisters, Rachel and Leah. Rachel is the beautiful one. She was the one who could have been chosen as “the bachelorette” for the TV show or might have been cast as Juliette in a play, but Leah was homely… she apparently had some kind of defect with her eye… Leah was not popular with the boys. But when God chose to continue the line through which he would create his family, who does he choose? He doesn’t choose the one that looks like Halle Berry…he chooses the homely one…he chooses Leah just because…
And so the way that God chooses is very mysterious. He seems to break convention by often choosing the one we not expect, the second-born, the less beautiful of the two sisters, the outsider… he seems to choose just because.
Moses tells the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 7 "The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you." He choose you just because…
If God has chosen you, the fact that you are even in this room right now choosing to worship God in a secular city like Vancouver where there’s no big social advantage to being in church, it is a sign that you have been chosen…. Why has God chose you, just because…
Even though we pride ourselves in being rational, there are many things in our life that we cannot explain logically… why do you did like one song and not another this morning… just because… Why do you like salmon more than tuna… just because… or coffee more than tea just because… Why does a woman love a particular man… he may or may not be the handsomest man, or may or may not be the smartest man, and may or may not even be the most virtuous, she chooses him--just because…
Why had God chosen us… just because…
Then some of us ask the question, why are some chosen and why are others not chosen (chapter 9 vss. 16-18)?
In chapter 9 verses 20, 21 Paul describes God as a kind of potter and we people as the clay... People object to this image because it seems that God is capriciously showing mercy on some and judgment on others.
It bothers people to read that God shows mercy to some, but hardens others.
Paul in vs. 17 uses the example of Pharaoh. We read in the book of Exodus about how God through Moses called Pharaoh to free his people from slavery and let his people go and to worship God. And in Exodus read that Pharaoh obstinately refused again and again, and we read that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Though it is not completely explicit in the book of Exodus, it seems as though Pharaoh’s being hardened by God coincided with Pharaoh by choosing to harden his heart in the face of God’s command to let his people go.
We do know in scripture that the consequence of sin is typically not dramatic—zap—judgment from on high. But the consequence of sin is typically more sin. If we choose to harden our hearts before God, one of the judgments may be that God allows us to go our own way and to experience hardening of heart...
People object to the image that God is a potter and we are clay, but we have understand the context of these images drawn from passages about the potter and the clay from Isaiah 29,45 and 64 and Jeremiah18. They tell us of a period in Israel’s history when God is working with a rebellious Israel, like a potter working with clay that simply refused to go into the right shape…
When Paul speaks of God being a potter and us being clay as a metaphor, he is not intending to describe human beings as being passive, lifeless lumps of clay in hands of a God who simply shapes clay as he desires. Rather, Paul is alluding to texts in Isaiah and Jeremiah that describe what God will do if the people of Israel, like a lump of clay, fail to respond to the gentle molding of God’s hands.
Yes, there is a mystery of how God chooses his people and shapes his people. Romans 9-11 describe in very powerful terms that God is all-powerful and sovereign, and that he chooses whom He wills... But the Bible also speaks of how God doesn’t want any to perish and that human beings are responsible to respond to God’s call upon them… This mystery of how God is sovereign and all powerful and yet that human beings are responsible to for choosing whether they respond to God or not is a mystery---that will never be completely comprehended by us human beings (especially those of us from the northern hemisphere and the West—who can be frustrated if things don’t fit together in a way that is perfectly rationally and logically explainable).
One of my New Testament professors explained it this way. He said, “If you take a Shakespeare play, you could obviously argue that Shakespeare is the sovereign author of the play. But from a different perspective, as you read about one of Shakespeare’s characters, walking across a branch on a tree and then, as you read, the branch snapping under the weight of this character, you could also say it was the character who broke the branch. From a higher perspective, you could say it wasn’t the character who broke the branch, it was Shakespeare. That would be true. But it would also be true that the character’s foolish decision to walk across the branch, coupled with his weight, caused the branch to break. Novelists will talk, of course, about how they will write novels and their characters become these living beings who take on a life of their own. And so, as we think of this in terms of a play or a novel, I think that we can understand, at least at some level, it is possible for a playwright or a novelist to be sovereign and all-powerful over the story, and yet the characters truly do have a life of their own.
And so it in scripture, the scriptures talk about how God is truly sovereign, all-powerful, and that people come into his family, not because of their merit, not because of their effort, but because of a sheer act of mercy from God. The Bible also clearly indicates that the people of Israel and the people of the world have an opportunity to respond to the mercy of God and justly judged for failing to respond to that mercy. The paradox is that people are only received into God’s family because God shows them mercy, and yet, people seem to have the role in whether God’s family by whether they choose to respond to God’s mercy or not.
Do you sense have an object of God’s mercy? If so, have you responded?
So we have the image, first, of the family tree and God’s mysterious choices, and, second, of the potter and the clay.
Finally, I want to draw your attention to an image in Chapter 11 of a wild olive branch being grafted into an olive tree. Paul, in Romans 9, 10 and 11, is arguing that God’s intent was to raise a people for himself through the people of Israel. And yet, as Paul and his listeners are well aware, many Israelites have not responded to the opportunity to be adopted into God’s family through the faithful work of the faithful descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel… Jesus Christ.
So Paul asks in Romans 9:6, “Has God’s plan failed (since many Israelites have not responded to the opportunity to become part of God’s family through Jesus Christ)? He says, “(No because) Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.” What does he mean buy this?
We read in Galatians 3:7, the true children of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, i.e. the true people of God, are not necessarily the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, but those who have been adopted into God’s family through the work of Jesus Christ.
Paul says the physical descendents of Israel who put their faith in the faithful Israelite Jesus Christ are part of the spiritual Israel, the family of God. He says that those who are not the physical descendants of Israel, and but their faith in the faith Israelite Jesus Christ become part a spiritual Israelite, i.e. a part of God’s family.
Paul in Romans 11: 17-24 describes the Gentiles who become part spirit Israel as wild olive shoots.
Paul in Romans 11 tells us family of God in the end will be composed, not of just of Jews, not just of Gentiles, but of both Jews and Gentiles—as one family of God… this is the true Israel, the spiritual Israel, Paul says, and of all the true Israelites will be saved.
When a person puts his or her faith in Jesus Christ, that person becomes a spiritual child of Abraham, which means that they have become a son or a daughter of God. When the terrorists in Pakistan were about to execute the North American journalist with the Wall Street Journal, Danny Pearl they made him say, “I am a Jew, and my father is a Jew.” And if you have been joined to God through Jesus Christ, you can also say, “I am a Jew, and my father is a Jew.”
I personally am Japanese, and I am Canadian, and I like to think to think I am Scottish because I admire a lot of people in Scotland’s history, but I am also a Jew, spiritually, in that I am a spiritual son of Abraham because I have been joined to Abraham’s family, the family of God through Jesus Christ…. Whether you are German or Chinese or Nigerian or Columbian or Australian, if you are joined to God through Jesus Christ, you are also Jew spiritually, a spiritual son or daughter of Abraham.
This past summer I had a very special experience. My mentor from North Carolina, an older minister now in his mid seventies, came to Vancouver with his wife and daughter, his granddaughter and some of his close friends from Charlotte.
Some of you met them here as they worshipped here on a Sunday morning in July. One night when they were here, my wife Sakiko and I had dinner with my mentor and his family and some of his close friends from Charlotte at a restaurant downtown near the beach.
As we walked into the restaurant and as they stood to welcome us to the table, as we shared the meal, and later as we spent that evening with them later in the apartment where they were staying near Stanley Park, I just felt this extraordinary sense of welcome and affirmation and love. Though it is very hard to put into words, I felt that night that I had a kind of second family.
As I alluded to earlier in the message, I am very grateful for the family from which I’ve come, but I feel that this family has received me with such warmth and openness and love. …They have walked with me through my joys and heartbreak, successes, as well failure. I really feel that I have been gifted with a kind of second family and that my life has been deeply changed and deeply blessed because of it.
If you will allow the faithful descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Israelite, Jesus Christ, to bring you home, I want you to know that you can also be part of a second family… a family with a perfect father and a mother, (and God being both perfect father and mother), where his children are of not perfect, but they are being perfect—sometimes very slowly)
As a result of being part of this family, you are going to connect with people in a deeper way than you would ever have otherwise, you are going to connect more deeply with people of other social backgrounds and races than you ever would otherwise.
Your life on earth--and your life in eternity--will so infinitely richer.
Pray…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
Text: Romans 9-11
Introduction
I grew up in a fairly large family. As is often the case, I suppose, when you have a fairly large number of kids in a family, we siblings fought quite a bit. Sometimes we would fight verbally; sometimes we would fight physically. Sometimes we would even break up into teams to scrap with each other.
Although we kids fought like kids in other families, and though the homes that we grew up in were not particularly fancy, it seemed that one distinctive of our home was that kids in the neighbourhood and kids from our school wanted to hang out at our place. It was very common for us to have our friends in for dinner, we’d pull an extra chair or two at the dinner table. It was also not unusual for our friends to stay the night at our house. And once in a while, our friends, even though they may have come from very good families, would ask us at our dinner table say, “I want to be adopted into our family.”
We’d always say something like, hey “Bobby Brady” you’re white!”
I remember there was this kid who I got to know in my high school, who came from a good family and that lived in beautiful home. But, he ended up spending a lot of time at houses. We lived on a fairly large lot and some of our evergreens needed to be cut down. It was my job to cut the evergreens into logs, then chop the logs into firewood and stack them in our garage. But this friend from my high school ended up doing up doing some, well most of the work for me. He ended up staying at my home for weeks, chopping wood with me. My siblings complained to me from time to time, assuming I was forcing him against his will do my work.
When I would ask this guy if he wanted to go home, he would simply say, “I like chopping wood. I like it.. I’m getting a good work out…”
He’d stay for another week or two, and I would say, “Are you sure you want to stay?” And he’d say, “I haven’t finished my job yet…”
I don’t know if he really enjoyed chopping wood as much as he claimed, but I think he enjoyed hanging out at our house and with our wacky family.
I don’t know if you have ever had a yearning to be part of a particular family… Perhaps a family that you projected ideal qualities onto and idealized in some way. If you have ever had that yearning, you need to know that God, the only perfect father and mother in the universe (I’m using the words mother and father metaphorically)… the only one who is perfectly loving, wise and strong is raising up a family for himself.
Re-cap
Last Sunday, we talked about the identity of a son or daughter of God. A number of you were running in the Sun Run or attending the women’s retreat in the Fraser Valley so let me let me just give a brief re-cap of some of the things I said in that message.
I talked about how if you came from a family where your parents or significant people in your life… tried to script your life with ideas that reflected more of their own ambitions and insecurities, rather than the ecology of your personhood, that you may have been socialized to become a person whose significance is defined by what you do, what you achieve, what you have, what others think of you… The apostle Paul, as we found last week, describes this kind of person as a kind of “slave.”
In contrast to the slave, the person with the mindset of a son or daughter of God knows that he or she is defined not so much by what they do, or what they achieve, or what they have, or what other people think of them, but by the simple fact that they are deeply loved by God.
We talked about how a person can reborn into a family of God re-parented by God in a way that brings healing and freedom.
Many people think that being part of God’s family must be restrictive, but when we really become part of God’s family and realize how deeply we are loved by the one person who really matters, we set free to become our true selves and to pursue our true calling.
Paul in Chapters 9 through 11 builds on the concept of the family and describes how he creates his family…
(I’m not going to address every verse in these three chapters--that would take a very long time--but I will attempt to offer a sweep of some of the key images in these chapters. The image of family tree, the potter and clay and the wild olive branch being grafted into the tree. These are fairly difficult chapters in the book of Romans so stay with me).
As Paul writes Romans 9-11, he makes all kinds of allusions to the Old Testament. As writes, he is assuming that his listeners in Rome are familiar with the Old Testament. I know that many of you here are just beginning to explore Christianity but I would encourage you, if you really want to come to know the full scope of God’s plan, to make a commitment to read the entire Bible perhaps in the next year, and knowing the whole Bible, will help read the particular books.
When Paul in Romans 9:5 refers to a group called the patriarchs of the people of Israel, he assumes that his readers will know the patriarchs of Israel refer to… Abraham, his son Isaac, and Isaac’s son Jacob who would later be called Israel...
Paul points out that the Messiah Jesus Christ, who is God over all (vs.5), descended from these patriarchs. Why does Paul point this out? Paul wants to make it very clear both to his fellow Jews and to the Gentiles that the gospel that he is preaching about the faithful work of Jesus Christ on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins that enables people to receive the forgiveness of their sins and enter God’s family is not some fringe, radical teaching that is a departure from the Old Testament. Paul in Romans 9-11 is showing how God used the faithful work of Jesus Christ, the faithful Israelites, to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy that through the family tree of Israel God would create a family of his own.
As we trace Abraham’s family tree, we get a window into how God creates his family tree.
Abraham is the spiritual forefather of this family tree that God uses to bring Jesus Christ the one through whose sacrifice on the cross for our sins opens the way for people to be adopted into the God’s family… The line begins with Abraham and Sarah, then goes through Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah…
Abraham was chosen for a very special vocation by God and so why did God come to choose Abraham in the first place? We may assume was that Abraham was this person of extraordinary character and religious devotion, and would therefore he was singled out by God. But there is no evidence in Scripture that Abraham was this extraordinarily virtuous and religious person before God approached him. We know he had a tendency to lie under pressure, that he was willing to allow his wife to be “thrown to the wolves” in order to save his skin.
Abraham was not perfect--but for some reason that cannot be reduced to mere logic… God chooses seems to have chosen Abraham. We could God choose Abraham just because….
Then God chooses to continue the family tree through whom the world would be blessed through Abraham’s son, Isaac… who was miraculously born to Abraham when he was 100 years old and Sarah when she was 90 years old…
Why does God choose Isaac who is not Abraham’s first born, but his second born, in a culture where the first born son received all the privileges—including the entire family inheritance?
Again we can offer reason as to why, but the reasons cannot be reduced to some rational airtight set of arguments, God chooses Isaac just because…
Isaac marries Rebecca and through Isaac has twins. God again breaks the cultural convention of the time by choosing to continue the family line through whom the world would be blessed not through the older son Esau, but the younger Jacob…
Esau was the first-born; was more athletic, was his father’s favorite, yet God does not choose Esau, the first-born. He chooses Jacob, the second-born. God chooses Jacob just because…
Then again, as we move to the next generation, Jacob marries two sisters, Rachel and Leah. Rachel is the beautiful one. She was the one who could have been chosen as “the bachelorette” for the TV show or might have been cast as Juliette in a play, but Leah was homely… she apparently had some kind of defect with her eye… Leah was not popular with the boys. But when God chose to continue the line through which he would create his family, who does he choose? He doesn’t choose the one that looks like Halle Berry…he chooses the homely one…he chooses Leah just because…
And so the way that God chooses is very mysterious. He seems to break convention by often choosing the one we not expect, the second-born, the less beautiful of the two sisters, the outsider… he seems to choose just because.
Moses tells the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 7 "The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you." He choose you just because…
If God has chosen you, the fact that you are even in this room right now choosing to worship God in a secular city like Vancouver where there’s no big social advantage to being in church, it is a sign that you have been chosen…. Why has God chose you, just because…
Even though we pride ourselves in being rational, there are many things in our life that we cannot explain logically… why do you did like one song and not another this morning… just because… Why do you like salmon more than tuna… just because… or coffee more than tea just because… Why does a woman love a particular man… he may or may not be the handsomest man, or may or may not be the smartest man, and may or may not even be the most virtuous, she chooses him--just because…
Why had God chosen us… just because…
Then some of us ask the question, why are some chosen and why are others not chosen (chapter 9 vss. 16-18)?
In chapter 9 verses 20, 21 Paul describes God as a kind of potter and we people as the clay... People object to this image because it seems that God is capriciously showing mercy on some and judgment on others.
It bothers people to read that God shows mercy to some, but hardens others.
Paul in vs. 17 uses the example of Pharaoh. We read in the book of Exodus about how God through Moses called Pharaoh to free his people from slavery and let his people go and to worship God. And in Exodus read that Pharaoh obstinately refused again and again, and we read that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Though it is not completely explicit in the book of Exodus, it seems as though Pharaoh’s being hardened by God coincided with Pharaoh by choosing to harden his heart in the face of God’s command to let his people go.
We do know in scripture that the consequence of sin is typically not dramatic—zap—judgment from on high. But the consequence of sin is typically more sin. If we choose to harden our hearts before God, one of the judgments may be that God allows us to go our own way and to experience hardening of heart...
People object to the image that God is a potter and we are clay, but we have understand the context of these images drawn from passages about the potter and the clay from Isaiah 29,45 and 64 and Jeremiah18. They tell us of a period in Israel’s history when God is working with a rebellious Israel, like a potter working with clay that simply refused to go into the right shape…
When Paul speaks of God being a potter and us being clay as a metaphor, he is not intending to describe human beings as being passive, lifeless lumps of clay in hands of a God who simply shapes clay as he desires. Rather, Paul is alluding to texts in Isaiah and Jeremiah that describe what God will do if the people of Israel, like a lump of clay, fail to respond to the gentle molding of God’s hands.
Yes, there is a mystery of how God chooses his people and shapes his people. Romans 9-11 describe in very powerful terms that God is all-powerful and sovereign, and that he chooses whom He wills... But the Bible also speaks of how God doesn’t want any to perish and that human beings are responsible to respond to God’s call upon them… This mystery of how God is sovereign and all powerful and yet that human beings are responsible to for choosing whether they respond to God or not is a mystery---that will never be completely comprehended by us human beings (especially those of us from the northern hemisphere and the West—who can be frustrated if things don’t fit together in a way that is perfectly rationally and logically explainable).
One of my New Testament professors explained it this way. He said, “If you take a Shakespeare play, you could obviously argue that Shakespeare is the sovereign author of the play. But from a different perspective, as you read about one of Shakespeare’s characters, walking across a branch on a tree and then, as you read, the branch snapping under the weight of this character, you could also say it was the character who broke the branch. From a higher perspective, you could say it wasn’t the character who broke the branch, it was Shakespeare. That would be true. But it would also be true that the character’s foolish decision to walk across the branch, coupled with his weight, caused the branch to break. Novelists will talk, of course, about how they will write novels and their characters become these living beings who take on a life of their own. And so, as we think of this in terms of a play or a novel, I think that we can understand, at least at some level, it is possible for a playwright or a novelist to be sovereign and all-powerful over the story, and yet the characters truly do have a life of their own.
And so it in scripture, the scriptures talk about how God is truly sovereign, all-powerful, and that people come into his family, not because of their merit, not because of their effort, but because of a sheer act of mercy from God. The Bible also clearly indicates that the people of Israel and the people of the world have an opportunity to respond to the mercy of God and justly judged for failing to respond to that mercy. The paradox is that people are only received into God’s family because God shows them mercy, and yet, people seem to have the role in whether God’s family by whether they choose to respond to God’s mercy or not.
Do you sense have an object of God’s mercy? If so, have you responded?
So we have the image, first, of the family tree and God’s mysterious choices, and, second, of the potter and the clay.
Finally, I want to draw your attention to an image in Chapter 11 of a wild olive branch being grafted into an olive tree. Paul, in Romans 9, 10 and 11, is arguing that God’s intent was to raise a people for himself through the people of Israel. And yet, as Paul and his listeners are well aware, many Israelites have not responded to the opportunity to be adopted into God’s family through the faithful work of the faithful descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel… Jesus Christ.
So Paul asks in Romans 9:6, “Has God’s plan failed (since many Israelites have not responded to the opportunity to become part of God’s family through Jesus Christ)? He says, “(No because) Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.” What does he mean buy this?
We read in Galatians 3:7, the true children of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, i.e. the true people of God, are not necessarily the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, but those who have been adopted into God’s family through the work of Jesus Christ.
Paul says the physical descendents of Israel who put their faith in the faithful Israelite Jesus Christ are part of the spiritual Israel, the family of God. He says that those who are not the physical descendants of Israel, and but their faith in the faith Israelite Jesus Christ become part a spiritual Israelite, i.e. a part of God’s family.
Paul in Romans 11: 17-24 describes the Gentiles who become part spirit Israel as wild olive shoots.
Paul in Romans 11 tells us family of God in the end will be composed, not of just of Jews, not just of Gentiles, but of both Jews and Gentiles—as one family of God… this is the true Israel, the spiritual Israel, Paul says, and of all the true Israelites will be saved.
When a person puts his or her faith in Jesus Christ, that person becomes a spiritual child of Abraham, which means that they have become a son or a daughter of God. When the terrorists in Pakistan were about to execute the North American journalist with the Wall Street Journal, Danny Pearl they made him say, “I am a Jew, and my father is a Jew.” And if you have been joined to God through Jesus Christ, you can also say, “I am a Jew, and my father is a Jew.”
I personally am Japanese, and I am Canadian, and I like to think to think I am Scottish because I admire a lot of people in Scotland’s history, but I am also a Jew, spiritually, in that I am a spiritual son of Abraham because I have been joined to Abraham’s family, the family of God through Jesus Christ…. Whether you are German or Chinese or Nigerian or Columbian or Australian, if you are joined to God through Jesus Christ, you are also Jew spiritually, a spiritual son or daughter of Abraham.
This past summer I had a very special experience. My mentor from North Carolina, an older minister now in his mid seventies, came to Vancouver with his wife and daughter, his granddaughter and some of his close friends from Charlotte.
Some of you met them here as they worshipped here on a Sunday morning in July. One night when they were here, my wife Sakiko and I had dinner with my mentor and his family and some of his close friends from Charlotte at a restaurant downtown near the beach.
As we walked into the restaurant and as they stood to welcome us to the table, as we shared the meal, and later as we spent that evening with them later in the apartment where they were staying near Stanley Park, I just felt this extraordinary sense of welcome and affirmation and love. Though it is very hard to put into words, I felt that night that I had a kind of second family.
As I alluded to earlier in the message, I am very grateful for the family from which I’ve come, but I feel that this family has received me with such warmth and openness and love. …They have walked with me through my joys and heartbreak, successes, as well failure. I really feel that I have been gifted with a kind of second family and that my life has been deeply changed and deeply blessed because of it.
If you will allow the faithful descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Israelite, Jesus Christ, to bring you home, I want you to know that you can also be part of a second family… a family with a perfect father and a mother, (and God being both perfect father and mother), where his children are of not perfect, but they are being perfect—sometimes very slowly)
As a result of being part of this family, you are going to connect with people in a deeper way than you would ever have otherwise, you are going to connect more deeply with people of other social backgrounds and races than you ever would otherwise.
Your life on earth--and your life in eternity--will so infinitely richer.
Pray…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
posted by Shigematsu at 10:19 AM
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