Sons of the Living God
Scripture Texts: Romans 9:24-29
We have been working our way through this challenging chapter nine in Paul’s letter to the Christians in the church in Rome, a racially and ethnically mixed congregation of Jews and Gentiles. If we could get ourselves into the minds of those Christians we would find this chapter a scandal to the Jews and a comfort to the Gentiles.
Vss. 24-26
First, Paul scandalized the Jews by saying not all Israel is Israel, not all the children of Abraham are true offspring. Then, he doubled down and quoted God saying, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” Then he said God has mercy on whom He choses to have mercy, on some but not others.
And now if all of that is not enough, what if God choosing to display His glory made vessels of mercy not out of the Jews but out of the Gentiles? Say it ain’t so? No way. Impossible.
The Jews despised the Gentiles, that vast pagan horde, that uncircumcised, unclean, unbelieving, irreligious, law breaking, Sabbath breaking, idolatrous people.
In those days, if a Gentile became a God-fearer, a God-worshipper he was still a second class citizen and could only go into the court of the Gentiles. He couldn’t get any closer to the Temple than that.
It is hard for us to enter into the scandal of God choosing to include Gentiles in the vessels of mercy. And on top of that, there would only be a remnant of the Jews saved because the majority rejected their own Messiah, they denied Jesus.
To support this scandalous proclamation Paul turned to the OT prophets and quoted Hosea twice and Isaiah twice. In other words, this should not have come as a surprise, it was right there in the Bible all along. The glorious truth is the failure of the Jews and the inclusion of the Gentiles was always part of God’s plan to extend His salvation to the likes of Gentiles, to us.
Why did God harden so many of the Jews? So that the Gospel would overflow to the Gentiles who would become objects of mercy and experience the riches of God’s glory and grace. That the whole world would know the riches of the glory of God.