Thank God for Jews
This is part II of an exegetical sermon on Romans 1:16-17 titled, Thank God for Jews and looks at the nature of “means” and salvation, why it says to the Jew first, how that relates to covenantal and dispensational theology, and the importance of realizing that Jesus was a Jew. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Duane Smets on May 15th, 2005 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA. Audio unavailable.
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The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
May 15th, 2005
“Thank God for Jews”
Romans 1:16
Introduction
Today we are going to focus in on the little phrase in the last half of the sentence in verse 16 of Romans 1, “…to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.” My goal is for us to feel the Jewishness of the gospel so much that it moves us to marvel and thank God for The Gospel being through belief first for the Jew. In order to get us there we’ll talk about the “Means of Salvation” “Why the Jew First” “Two Big Words” and “Jesus was a Jew.”
Means of Salvation
Look at the phrase, “to everyone who believes.” This phrase does two things for us. One, it establishes the means of salvation, belief. Two, it levels the plane, all salvation, for everybody, is by belief.
By “means” what is in mind is the active agent, not the substance of salvation. For example, if i want to nail two boards together, hitting a nail with a hammer is the means of getting to the point when i will have two boards nailed together. So believing is the the means. It is the human activity involved in moving toward the object of salvation.
And this is Jesus, the message concerning him. If salvation is something I want then I need to be actively involved in this thing called believing. That’s what the phrase “to everyone who believes” does for us. It tells us “how” we get to Jesus which is the the message concerning him.
When Paul says at the beginning of the sentence, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes” what he is doing is noting how God has set things up. God has set it up so that salvation is only in The Gospel. The Gospel is Jesus as we learned a couple weeks ago. So the way or the means you get to Jesus is belief.
So that is the first thing today, belief is the means of salvation.
The second thing is it levels the plane. When we read, “to the Jew first and then the Gentile” we can easily get bent out of shape, thinking that’s not fair or something. But the text has already said here that both Jew and Gentile expereience salvation the same way, through belief.
If you want a fancy phrase, it is the “universal scandal of particularlity.” This applies to a lot of things in Christianity…there is a universal aspect to things and there are things that are very particular.
Here the universal is belief. Everyone that is ever or will ever be saved or be kept in a process of salvation will experience that through belief. Only belief. There is something particular about Jews but the universal is that belief is the means of salvation for everyone, Jew and Gentile.
Why the Jew First
Now let us turn to the particular. This, at first read is a seemingly odd phrase, “to the Jew first.” This is the point where any of the first hearers who were Jews perk up. For a Jew their ancestry was extremely important beacuase it meant that they were priviledged.
This privilige was completely intertwined with their identity. It is why they made detailed geneaologies. Listen to this statement made by Joachim Jeremias who wrote this little book called “Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus” citing the Jewish Midrash of the time, “For the Jew, considered they possessed merit (for salvation) form legitimate ancestry.”
This raises the exact question this text forces us to ask, is there “merit (for salvation) from legitimate ancestry”? The question is “What is the deal with the Jews? What is the deal with salvation and the Jews? Are they special somehow? Do they possess merit for salvation form ancestry?”
To answer this question…I want to first point out that they didn’t think they were special for no reason at all. Listen to Amos 3:1-2 “Hear this word which the LORD has spoken against you, sons of Israel, against the entire family which He brought up from the land of Egypt, ‘You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth.’”
Countless times, Israel, the Jews are referred to as “God’s chosen people.” So this is the real question behind the question of what is the special about the Jews….”Why did God choose Jews?”
He did choose them. It began with Abraham, the father of the Jews. Abraham was a godless
Babylonian Pagan. God comes to him in Gen 12. God tells him to leave his land and God will make him into a great nation.
So then we we ask the question, why Abraham? Here is the answer we get from the Bible, Deut. 7:7-8 “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers.”
So let me phrase the question again, “Why did God choose Jews?” The answer is God promised some guy that he would make a new ethnicity from one of their bloodline. That guy turns out to be Abraham. Why did God choose to do this? Why abraham? The answer here that the Bible gives is, God simply chose. It was nothing because of who Abraham was or because of who humans were or what they had done. God simply chose for a reason unknown to us.
Paul will spend all of chapter four in Romans talking about this so I’m going to stop here concerning Abraham. But there are a couple more things we need to talk about before we get to dealing with why this issue of priority and the significance of the Jews.
So let’s back up…because what we are dealing with is a major issue of how we read this book. Implicitly, one of goals in this teaching and in all my preaching is to teach you how to better read your Bible. When we back up on this question of Jew first and then the Gentile we run into a hermenutical question.
No one questions that the Bible is a book about God and how to know Him. So essentially it is a book about salvation. The question is always how. Of all religions that is the question.
Two Big Words
Within Christianity, there two main answers to this questions have been developed. Two main hermeneutical, or interpretive approaches to this question: covenantalism and dispensationalism. Now I know those are big words. So hang with me. Think hard for a moment.
Covententalism looks at the Bible and the unchanging God of the Bible and see that God has always worked through covenant that salvation has always been by grace through faith in Christ. Before Jesus Christ historical entrance into the world, believers looked forward in faith. After Christ’ ascension, believers look backward in faith. Jesus is seen as the fulfillment of the law and that all the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is written about Him.
Dispensationalism looks at the Bible and argues that God worked with different people in different ways at different times, different dispensations. Thus the result is Jews and Christians really end up being on two sort of tracks or ways of salvation.
So the tension we are faced with right here with the Jew being first is a hermenuetical or interpretative one.
The dispensationalist accuses the coventalist of reading Christ into the Old Testament where he really is not being referred to and as a result unwarranted exegesis takes place that does not consider the history and culture.
The covenantalist accuses the dispensationalist of ignoring both Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5 that he fulfilled the smallest letter and least stroke of a pen regarding the law and Jesus’ teaching in Luke 24 where opened up the Scripture to show how all the Old Testament was pointing to Him. The covenantalist is also uneasy with the apparent denial that justifcation has and will always be by faith alone…we’ll get to that in the next couple weeks.
We here at The Resolved Church teach covenantalism because we believe it to be the most Scriptural and because both Jesus, Paul, and Peter are quite explicit about how the Old Testament is to be seen. However, at the same time, we hear the concerns of the dispensationalists and recognize the need to exercise proper exegesis that takes into account the historical and cultural background on every passage.
Now, I’m guessing you might be thinking what does all this have to do with “the Jew first and then the Gentile”? Here is the connection and it makes all the difference.
Jesus Was a Jew
I want to show that “to the Jew first” is all about Jesus. But before I do, let me show you how a dispensationalist might approach this text.
In a dispensational approach, they would say the Jews were saved first or had the opportunity of salvation first. The Jews sort of get a first chance, or first dibs and then the Gentiles get a chance if the Jews reject. Then they say, later in the future, in a new dispensation of time in God’s historical program, Jews will believe.
Some dispensationalist would go so far as even saying that Gentiles must first become Jews and then they can become Christians (which is one of the interpretation that gets shot down at the first at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15).
I argued last week that this passage is not giving witnessing techniques as so many attempt to use it for. If that’s so and if the dispensational approach doesn’t really cut it then what is the firstness in the covenantal approach? It is the unfolding of God’s plan.
The covenant approach begins with covenant. God acted, he created. God initiated and made covenants with patriarchs beginning with Abraham. God created a people for himself. God instituted his kingdom. God sent the messiah Jesus. Through Jesus, God has put out a message for all peoples.
So primarily, the firstness here begins with recognizing that Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was a Jew who said in John 4:22 “salvation is from the Jews (that is, through the Judaic line salvation comes from the Messiah who is a Jew).”
And salvation from the Jews is what God has said all along. We already mentioned Abraham. Now for a quick second see how God continued that and extended it to the whole group of people whose lineage came from Abraham.
Check out the covenant God made with Israel in Ex.19:4-6 (read). Israel was meant to be a light unto the Gentiles that they would bring God’s salvation to the rest of the world. They were the mediating priests to the world.
So what we get here is a purpose statement for Israel. Why they existed. Here it is again restated in Isaiah 49:6 “I have made you a light among the Gentiles that you might bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”
Now here is the amazing part! This never happened in Israel’s history. For a brief time during Solomon’s reign some nations started to pay attention to Israel but more because of her riches than her Redeemer. The vision of Isaiah 49:6 and Exodus 19:6 never really happened until Jesus Christ shows up on the scene. Jesus preaches kingdom of God and peoples from all the nations flock to him. Jesus dies on the cross, rises again, ascends to heaven back to his throne and then he sends his Jewish Apostles out unto the world to win all peoples to the Jewish messiah.
The gospel is very very Jewish. But through its Jewishness all kinds of non-Jews get to come to know God.
Now let’s go back to romans. The Jew first then the Gentile. Jesus is a Jew, he is their messiah. They come first. For those who believe first for the Jew. Then unto Gentiles. You and I are here today because the gospel went first to Jews and then to Gentiles.
So this passage says two things. One if you are a Jew, embrace Jesus as messiah. Two, if you are Gentile, embrace Jesus the Jewish messiah.
Let me say it a different way. Jew first. He is genalogically their messiah. But this messiah is theologically for all peoples. The Jew is first. Not in merit. But in the revelation, or unfolding of God.
My hope is at this point is that we have some level of better understanding about this passage. The issues involved. The feelings of a Jew. And how it is all related to God and the way that he has decided to do things.
And that is good…having a better understanding but there remains an uneasiness in me. WE could have ended here simple with a charge for us to believe in Jesus. And that is good, you should. But I think this text drives something at us to provoke us. And that is where I want to end up today.
Conclusion
The things with I think provoke us are affectional things…how we naturally respond. When I read “to the Jew first” and don’t like it, I think there are two things going on in me.
One, I’m at odds with God, discontent with him and how he has done things. Two, I’m lacking a gratefulness for Jews.
So with the first one, when our hearts challenge of God’s righteousness, goodness, fairness of God, here is how we ought to respond…
We don’t want fairness. Fairness means God does not give us any hope for salvation and just wipes everyone out. Both the first sin in the Garden of Eden and all sin since is a questioning of God’s ways. It is foolishness thinking a finite being of us to question God’s ways and think we could know or do better. The proper response to God’s choosing Jews first is to say, “God, it is amazing that you chose anyone.” It’s amazing that God did something at all. What a wonderful being!
When we recognize a lack of gratefulness for Jews in our hearts I think there’s a few things going on there.
One I think we’re experientially detached from the text and forget how loaded the race issue was when Romans was written. Two, ungratefulness is at root of sin…not thanking God for his good gifts and instead challenging him on what he doesn’t give. Three, we forget Jesus was a Jew and the Apostles were Jews. If it were not for Jews loving non-Jews there would be no us. The proper response from us is to say, “God give us love for Jews.” We must beware of thinking our that any ethnos is better.
This text calls for wonder at God’s working in making Jews and saving through them. It is a wonder because he has set it up that way a long time ago. Jews are a special people in that they have played a special purpose in the unfolding of God himself unto the world. May our hearts marvel at the infinite wisdom of our God. May we love and be grateful for Jews and may we love our Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray.
