The God(ness) of God: The God of Glory – Week 1

The introductory sermon to our new series titled “The God(ness) of God” covering Romans 9-11. The series addresses three main subjects in these chapters: The God of Glory 9:1-29, The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21, and The God of Future 11:1-36. This sermon is week 1 of The God of Glory and is an exegetical treatment of Romans 9:1-6a addressing the themes of the place of Romans 9-11 in the book of Romans, the pain of Paul the author, the privileges of the Israelites, and God’s powerful word. This sermon was originally preached April 13th, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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April 13th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36

I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
Week 1 – Romans 9:1-6a
A. Our Place in the Book of Romans
B. Paul’s Pain for his Race
C. The Privileges of the Israelites
D. God’s Powerful Word

Introduction

Good morning to you Jesus’ church. Well today we begin a new sermon series. The series is called “The God(ness) of God” and it is a unique series. It is unique in several ways but it is especially unique to us as a church since we started doing our sermons in series form, because it covers three whole chapters. Usually our series just cover several verses. It’s been a month since we finished our last series “Suffering and the Glory of God.” That series took us about a month and a half. This series will probably take around 3 plus months or so and take us into the summer.

There is just no way around it because Romans 9, 10 and 11 unquestionably all go together. So much so that some have thought they are almost like a whole other self-contained book, or afterthought, or add on to what Paul has already written in the first eight chapters. I’ll try and show you today how they really are connected and an important and necessary part of the book and we’ll get into the first five verses and part of verse 6 today.

This is an exciting series for several reasons. One, because of the questions it raises and answers. Things like how can you trust God’s word? Is God unfair or unjust if he only saves some and not others? Does God even do such a thing and if so why? What really is the gospel and how do you really become a believer in it? And what the heck is the deal with Israel? The Bible talks a ton about the Jews and Israel, why are they important and does Israel fit at all into the picture of what God has planned ahead in the future? Does God know or even determine the future? Those are good questions which deserve good answers.

All of these questions and the answers of Romans cause the reader and the author of Romans to say as the conclusion of these three chapters does, “Oh the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unreachable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways…For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever! (Rom 11:33,36). God is God and his God(ness) is truly put out on display in these chapters.

So it’s going to be a good time. And the other cool thing about this series is that after we’re done with it, there’s only a few chapters of Romans left and then we’ll finish the book! We’ve been at it for three years. That’s how we do it here at The Resolved Church and I’ll say the same thing I do at the beginning of every new series we start about why.

One, because of the cultural distance, time distance, and language difference between us and the books of the Bible you just can’t not do it that way if you are going to try and let the text really speak for itself and not just read into it whatever you feel like. Some preachers like to do that, they read a text and then just sort of use it as a springboard to jump to the moon and talk about whatever they want to talk about. Not here. You have the right to throw things at me if I anyone else up here ever does that! We love the Bible to much to disgrace it in that way.

So that’s the first thing, if you really want to study the Bible as a church you got to do it books at a time. The second thing which comes out of that is our view of church. The reason we can study whole books of the Bible and take a few years on it is because we do not see church as an event, or a temporary thing, or as just one compartment of your life. We see church as family, a permanent thing, that is our lives, long term. Now some of you are in college or the military and will only be here for a limited time. We love you and are glad to have you. But our goal is to actually impact the city of San Diego long term. So we expect that if you are really part of this church you’ll be here three years later and be here every Sunday that you’re not away on vacation or sick. We’re in this together, for the glory of God’s name in San Diego.

Okay, enough of my little plea for you guys to be regular in your Sunday attendance and not to move away. Let’s read the text and pray.

Lord God, today we begin the climb up a massive mountain. These next three chapters of your book are gnarly. And yet they unveil your greatness with astounding clarity. May we see that greatness, your God(ness) and be struck with awe and worship and moved to love your son Jesus. Help us today as we start this series, through these first few words would you break us so that we might truly be truthful with ourselves, would you really grant us a passion for people like Paul, the human author of this book, and may we find great joy in all the privileges we have in Jesus. Amen.

A. Our Place in the Book of Romans

The first order of business is to show how our verses for today and really the whole of Romans 9-11 fit within the overall design and thesis of the book. For those of you who have not been with us for very long, the book of Romans is a book about God and how he is glorious in saving all kinds of people through faith alone in Jesus Christ (Rom 1:16). That is the gospel, the good news that no matter who you are or how bad you are, and everyone is bad, there is salvation in Jesus Christ through faith in his person and his work on the cross.

Our last series ended looking at the last few verses of chapter eight that with a triumphant shout proclaim that nothing in this life can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. God has promised it in his word that neither “…tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword…neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:35,38-39).

No natural circumstance, no human power (including our own), and no spiritual power can come between the promise of God’s word that he loves and will love us forever with eternal blessings because put our faith in Jesus who died in our place, suffering the punishment that we deserve.

That was the grand conclusion of chapter 8. Then we come to chapter 9 which begins still in a tone of passion and great emotion and forceful sincerity, but the emotion changes from a tone of exuberant joy to a agonizing sadness…”I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish.” There are those, his kinsmen family heritage, who have not believed Jesus really is the savior and that they need him. That realization is devastating to Paul and not only that it creates a huge theological problem.

The problem becomes crystal clear in verse 6, look at it. “But it is not as though the word of God has failed.” We’ll talk about Paul’s ethnic heritage in a few minutes, but first hear the problem so that you can see why Romans 9-11 is written and connected to chapter 8 and the rest of the book and why it is all about God…But here is the issue…with Paul’s ethnic family, God made promises to them by his word, but now there is Jesus and most of his family has rejected him as savior, so does that mean God’s word failed? Can God’s promises change? If his word didn’t hold true for Paul’s family what makes you think this new promise of faith in Jesus will hold true?

That is the issue at hand here. Romans 9-11 is written to defend God’s God(ness)! Many have falsely thought oh, Romans 9-11 is just about the Jews, about Israel, so it really doesn’t apply to Christians. In fact, even where I when to Bible college, get this. I took a class on the “Book of Romans,” that is what it says in the college catalogue. But guess what. That class ended after Romans chapter 8. I asked the teacher why? He said, well chapters 9-11 don’t really apply to us as Christian because they are about the Jews, not us.

No, no, no, no. That’s wrong. Romans 9-11 is about God and whether or not he is really God and is glorious and can do what he wants and says he can do! And besides, he mentions Gentiles, that’s us, 6 times in these three chapters. It will not do to cut these chapters out of the Bible. If you’re going to cut these out then you don’t have a Bible, what you have is a “you.” Where “you” are the Bible, where “you” are God and where “you” decide what his word and where “you” determine what is true and right and what isn’t.

So that is why I have called this series “The God(ness) of God” series because these chapters are about the justification of God, they are not a side note or an excursus, they have to do with very matter of the gospel itself.

B. Paul’s Pain for his Race

Alright. I feel better now. I got that off my back. I’ve been angry about it for about 7 years now since I took Romans in college. The lesson is don’t ever take scissors to your Bible because your scissors will just break and there’s hell to pay for it.

Okay, let’s talk about Paul’s pain for his race. He starts out saying this, let’s look at verses 1. speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit.”

This is an interesting phrase. He basically swears four different times that he is telling the truth. “I am speaking the truth, in Christ.” Christ is leading him to say these things. “I am not lying.” An attempt to avert any charge of insincerity. And then he mentions a sanctified conscience. There is conscience, the inner sense of right and wrong and ought that is woven within the fabric of the human race…specifically in this case, that lying is wrong. But sometimes, our conscience can be conflicted and so he adds that the Holy Spirit is his witness. You ask well, how can you know that. The idea is that anyone else who has God’s Spirit would be able to discern the Spirit that was at work in his words.

Now granted we as sinful human beings can be pretty deceptive in attempting to gain someone else’s trust and love when we are really not being honest. I remember when I was in high school I got caught smoking on school grounds by the security guard and I was sent home and my parents were called and I was suspended. I swore to my parents I wasn’t smoking but that a friend who I was talking to was and when the security guard came he asked me to hold his cigarette for a second and I was the one who got caught. I swore up and down I was telling the truth and said things like, “Do you think I’d lie to you? I’m your son, I’m telling the truth!”

Well, I was smoking. I had a whole pack of Marlboro Reds in my car. I didn’t know about American Spirits or the fine art of smoking pipe tobacco while reading good theology back in those days. Back then it was just sex, drugs and rock and roll.

So maybe that is what Paul is doing here or maybe he is just seriously misguided. But I don’t think so. He’s not a young punk trying to get away with something and he’s not some crazy polygamous child raping cult leader in Texas. Paul is the real deal. There are a lot of imposters out there but there are only imposters when there is something real out there to copy and impost (is that a word)? So I think Paul is telling the truth here. In fact, it’s verses like this that help convince me that the Bible really is inspired by God and is his book.

Let’s go on, verse 2-3, they add even more to his testimony. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

This is intense emotion, “great sorrow” “unceasing anguish.” Sometimes “heart” in the Bible means what you think or what your motives and actions are. Not here. Paul’s heart is broken for his people because they have rejected Christ. His longing for them to know Jesus is so deep that he makes this hypothetical wish, saying if it were possible…it’s not possible because a sinful person cannot save another sinful person, which is why we need Jesus in the first place.

But Paul says here, if it were possible he would it give up, the greatest joy and security of his life, Christ himself, in order that his brothers would know him and believe in him. “Cursed” and “cut off” from Christ just so that others could know him. What love from a guy who started out the most successful part of his career by having Christians stoned to death. The gospel had changed Paul, so that when sees his race rejecting Christ, he doesn’t get angry…instead his heart breaks.

Now notice something. I’ve been calling the people who Paul’s heart is broken for “his family.” That’s because he says here “my brothers, my kinsmen.” He’s talking about his heritage, his ethnic roots, his race, his nationality, his kinsmen. But notice something with me, look at the verse again. It says, “my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” That phrase according to the flesh signals back to the earlier part of Romans chapter 8 where Paul taught us that once you become a Christian you become part of Jesus’ family, a new spiritual family. It doesn’t mean you don’t still have a physical, blood family, the one according to the flesh, but as a Christian you become part of the family of Christ.

And these verses teach us how the family of Christ is to feel about people who are not Christians. For far too long many Christians have prided themselves for being Christians, thinking they are better than everybody else. That’s the wrong attitude. Here is the right attitude, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” Our hearts ought to break so that people would really come to know the blessing of being in Jesus’ family. Does your heart break for people? Or is it just too clouded up with desires and pursuits of things that don’t really matter?

C. The Privileges of the Israelites

May God give us a pain like Paul’s for people. Well let’s talk about the privileges of the Israelites. This is where the theological problem starts, where according to these things it starts to look like maybe God’s word failed and is untrustable. Let’s read it, verse 4, “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.”

A few things. First, that he calls them Israelites is a big deal. Usually he calls them “Jews.” Jews is the national, political, ethnic name which comes from the name of the land, the territory of Judea. But Israelites, that is the name of spiritual heritage, it is the name God gave them through Jacob, it is the name which marks the status of favored or loved by God…the Israelites…the people of God. And then there is this list, 8 things which had marked them as Israelites, they “belong” to them.

We’re not going to get heavy into each of these things, but we’ll try to survey them, they all kind of go together like a poem or a song, you can’t see it in English but the Greek words rhyme, having the same endings. Which means they are all probably meant generally and we shouldn’t be too specific about any one of them. But I’ll still try to briefly survey them.

Adoption, where a child who is not a child by birth becomes your child in the full sense of the word. Israel was chosen to be adopted by God from among all the peoples of the earth (Duet 14:2).

The glory, times when God chose to show himself to Israel in mighty and powerful ways. The cloud in the form of a pillar that led Israel through the desert. The consuming fire that glowed on top of Mt. Sinai when God gave the ten commandments. The smoke that came down out of heaven and filled the temple. Instances where God peeled back the normal functions of physics to accompany his mighty voice in glory.

The covenants, the legal agreements God made to bless Israel forever. The giving of the law, the rules and guidelines of how Israel would show their love and devotion to God.

The worship, most likely meaning the temple sacrificial system. The word “temple” is not in the Greek if you have an NIV translation, that’s just it adding words to the Bible, which is why I don’t like the NIV. Even though Israel worship probably infers the temple worship here, you can’t just add words to the text, were supposed to interpret the Bible not add to it.

The promises, God made all kinds of promises to Israel, promises to bless them, increase them, secure them and save them. The whole thing got started with Abraham when God promised to make him into a great nation.

The patriarchs are the key men who God chose to reveal himself to when he gave all these promises. Men like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And then there is the greatest promise of all that God would send a messiah, a savior, a Christ into the world. This Christ would be a God-man. He would be God himself and yet fully human at the same time and his human side would come from the blood line, that phrase “according to the flesh,” from the Israelites.

What privileges! To be adopted, shown glory, have a covenant from God, a way of worship, hope-filled promises, a rich history of holy ancestors, and most of all to have God himself come to save and fulfill all these things once and for all and for him to come from your family! What blessing!

The tone here is of unbelief. With all these things how can this be? How can so many of my brothers reject Jesus and thus seem doomed to hell? If anyone should believe in Jesus, it’s them and if they’ve rejected him what does that say about God and his promises and covenants and adoption and future glory? This is where the next few weeks will take us. The answers to these questions. For now we’ll just finish up today by briefly looking at verse 6 and talking about Jesus.

D. God’s Powerful Word

Verse 6 is the beginning of Paul’s response. “But it is not as though the word of God has failed.” So he summarizes all 8 of the things he just mentioned as “the word of God” which is one of the reasons why I’ve included the first part of verse 6 today.

Isaiah 40:8 says, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” I couldn’t help but think of that verse from Isaiah when looking at the connection between the way verse 5 of Romans 9 ends talking about God’s forever blessing and the way verse 6 picks things up talking about the word of the Lord.

Verse 5 ends with Paul bringing up Jesus as the grand apex and fulfillment of all the privileges, it seems really like he digresses in personal worship. He’s saying, “man, my brothers got the law, the temple, the patriarchs, and the messiah comes from our line.” But when he mentions the messiah, “the Christ” he can’t help himself and he sidesteps to praise. Look at it. “Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.”

Now there is some controversy about how to grammatically construct this phrase and whether or not it is really calling Jesus God here. I think it is but I’m not going to get into it because we don’t need this passage to say so to establish to say so, plenty of other passages do. I just wanted to let you know it’s there.

So here is the point and here is how I want to wrap things up. Everything is about Jesus. It is an oversimplification in regards to the extent Paul will go to explain this. But God’s word did not fail and cannot fail because it makes it’s mark in Jesus who is for all. He is the Christ, the promised fulfillment “who is God over all” as verse 5 states.

What that means for you and for me is that we ought to give the whole of our lives to Jesus because everything is about him. I mean we’ve been talking about history, the patriarchs and God choosing them out of all the families of the earth! All of history and all the families of the earth are a pretty wide scope, the span of our life here on earth is a pretty narrow scope. If all of history and all of the world is about Jesus then how much more should all of our lives be about him?

Conclusion

Let’s conclude today by seeing how Jesus fulfills all these privileges for us. In Jesus we get adopted into God’s family. In Jesus we get connected to the glory of God. In Jesus we receive a new covenant in his blood, a covenant of forgiveness. In Jesus we have the one who fulfills the law perfectly for us where we have failed. In Jesus we have one worthy of our worship and he is not confined to a temple in the middle east, we can worship him anywhere in Spirit and in truth. In Jesus all the promises of God are yes to us through him. In Jesus the patriarchs become our spiritual fathers and examples to follow. In Jesus all our longings are met. The long awaited messiah of our hearts is found in Jesus who is the Christ.

So I say to all of us today, put your faith in Jesus, trust in no other savior. Any and every need you have is met in him. Let’s be humble before him and may our hearts break for others to know him and his goodness.

Let’s pray.