Romans 9:6

Romans 9:6

Romans 9:6 says, "Not as though the Word of God has taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel." The delivering of the gospel to the Gentiles was very difficult for many of the Jewish Christians of the first century to understand. The foundation of the nation of Israel was very clear. It was established by God. The future of the nation of Israel was also very clear, because of the many promises that had been made over and over in the Old Testament. How could it be that Jews and Gentiles were now on an equal basis in the economy of God? How could it be that salvation was now offered equally to Jews and Gentiles through Jesus the Messiah?

We now know that we live in a time when the nation of Israel has in a sense been set aside, in spite of the existence of a country in the Middle East today that is called Israel. This period of time in which we live began in the first century. It is the time of the Gentiles and the time of the trodding down of Jerusalem by the Gentile nations. God’s promises that were made to the nation of Israel will one day be fulfilled, but not until God finishes the work that He is doing in this age of the church that has already lasted almost 2,000 years.

Paul said that the Word of God had not been made of no effect. No matter how much we fail to understand, there is always an explanation to what is going on around us, and these things will always be consistent with the Word of God. If you cannot see that what is happening around you fits right into the Word of God, then you do not understand the Word of God. You will always be able to count on the scriptures. The earth may tremble beneath you and the buildings might be destroyed around you, but God’s Word will stand true forever. Jesus said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."

In the rest of Romans Chapter 9 Paul tells us things about the nation of Israel so that we might understand why they were set aside and why they were removed from the place of being used by God. No nation in the history of the world was ever established by the direct intervention of God in the way that Israel was. What happened to them, what led to their downfall? Romans 9:7-8 says, "Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, in Isaac shall your seed be called. That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed."

The first thing to recognize about the nation of Israel is that even when God was working through them, before the coming of Jesus the Messiah, that they still had to come to God individually by faith in order to be considered a child of God. That is one of the main things that is learned from the example of Abraham. Abraham had many children, but only one of them was called the child of promise. The other children are called the children of the flesh. God promised Abraham that Abraham would be the father of a great nation. When Isaac was born, the promise that God had made was beginning to be fulfilled. The entire situation of Abraham and his children, and Isaac being the child of promise, was created by God to teach us the value of faith, and to show to us that we could inherit the same promises about the future, if we also had faith. "The just shall live by faith." "Justification is by faith." "If you have faith nothing, shall be impossible unto you." In order to become rightly related to God, we must do so the same way that Abraham did: through faith, and in our case, faith in Christ. We cannot rely on our heritage or our birth-rite or our blood lineage. If we do, we make the same mistake that many Jews have made. Anyone who has adopted a religion based upon family tradition has also made that mistake. Jesus stood before a group of Jewish people one day and said, "Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish." The Apostle John, who was a Jew, wrote about Jesus coming into the world and said in John 1:11-13, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." When you realize that God has always dealt with individuals, and always will; then the fact that He put aside the nation of Israel for a time is not such a big change in the way that God deals with the human race after all.

Romans 9:9-13 says, "For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come and Sarah shall have a son. And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calls; It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."

Another thing to consider in the fact that God chose to deal with Israel and then He chose to stop dealing with them; is the fact that God can do whatever he wants to do. No human has the right to question God. The only creature in the universe who can do whatever He chooses without answering to anyone is God. When God established the nation of Israel, it was His choice. No human planned it or accomplished it. God did. The same is true about every person who has ever lived on the earth. God has given life to each of us, and He created each of us for a purpose, and that purpose will be fulfilled. Before Jacob and Esau were even born, before either of them had done good or evil, God decided that the creation of the nation of Israel would come through Jacob and not through Esau. It had nothing at all to with human will or human behavior: but it had everything to do with the plan and the purpose of God.

Romans 9:14-18 says, "What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs but of God that shows mercy."

Do not misunderstand. God’s mercy is not arbitrary, nor is it dispensed unequally. But God does set the rules. When He has mercy, it is because He has decided to have mercy; and when He does not, it is also because He has decided not to. If you receive mercy, it means that you do not get the punishment that you deserve. God would be righteous and just if He gave no mercy, and if He simply gave us all what we deserve. By the nature of who God is as the righteous judge of the whole world, He does not owe mercy to anyone. Therefore, we can be eternally grateful that one of the main attributes of God is His great and abundant mercy.

God is God, and He has set up the principles for how humans enter into His mercy. First of all, God can only be merciful to us because Jesus came and died for our sins. Any mercy that any human has ever received from God has always been based upon the sacrificial death of Jesus the Messiah. Receiving mercy means to enter into a relationship with God whereby the punishment for your sins that you ought to have received, you will never receive and you need never fear receiving, because you now have been given God’s mercy. The whole situation involves your sins and your guilt. Unless a person admits their sinfulness and admits their guilt to Jesus, they will not receive God’s mercy. The requirement to receive God’s mercy is to repent of one’s sins. The number one problem in America today is the number of sins that are committed, but are not repented of. Jesus said, "Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish." Second Chronicles 7:14 says, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

Another thing that is very clear in scripture is that no one can receive God’s mercy, until they are invited by Him to do so. That is why believers are the "called" of God. And that is why Jesus said in John 6:44, "No man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him." The scripture is also very clear that God attempts to draw all humans to Himself. Jesus said in John 12:32, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." And John said about Jesus in John 1:9, "That was the true light, which lights every man which comes into the world."

At some time in the life of every person, God attempts to reveal Himself to them. He invites them, and He attempts to call them by His Spirit. When this life is over, the saddest story about the human condition will be the massive numbers of people who said "no" to God. Just before the crucifixion of Jesus, He stood on a hill and looked out over the city of Jerusalem and said in Matthew 23:37, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kills the prophets, and stones them which are sent unto you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you would not!"

Romans 9:17-18 says, "For the scripture says unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore has He mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom he will he hardens." God gives to each of us the power of choice. When He calls us, we can choose to come to Jesus for forgiveness, or we can choose to go our own way. We do not know how many chances that He gives to each of us. He would be justified if He gave us no chance, but we know from scripture that He does at least give us each one chance to repent. We also know that the chances to repent are limited. They are at least limited by the length of your life, but they are also limited by how often God comes to you to call you.

It appears that what happens in the lives of some people who are so resolute, so determined, and so obstinate in their opposition to the calling of God that eventually God stops calling them and He lets them have the destiny that they themselves have chosen. Proverbs 1:29-31 says, "For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices."

In Romans Chapter 9 Paul uses Pharaoh as an example of a person to whom this happened. Pharaoh did not receive the mercy of God. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. But God did not harden Pharaoh’s heart until Pharaoh had hardened his own heart. God gave Pharaoh what Pharaoh chose. That is one of the principles of God’s mercy. He offers a limited number of opportunities to receive His mercy. I do not know what the limit is for you, but there is a limit. One of the worst things that could ever happen to you is for you to go your own way instead of God’s way in regards to repentance and finding the mercy of God through Christ.

Anyone who does resist God to the limit, will find that even they will be used in the ultimate purpose of God. God is able by His infinite power and wisdom to both give them the just conclusion to their existence, and at the same time to also use them in the fulfilling of His divine purposes. Romans 9:19-23 says, "You will say then unto me, Why does he yet find fault? For who has resisted his will? No, but O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus? Has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared unto glory."

What happened in the case of the nation of Israel is that they lost their chance. They lost their chance because on a national level there were too many sins and they did not repent of the sins when they had a chance to do so. "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." God is patient with the sinfulness of man, and God usually gives many chances to repent. But there is a limit. In the case of the nation of Israel, God dealt with them for hundreds of years. But there was a line drawn in the sand. Once they crossed that line, it was over. Most of the book of Jeremiah deals with the theme of how the nation of Israel had been set aside because of their sins. God talks to Jeremiah and tells him that it is no longer any use to even pray for the nation of Israel because they had entered into the spiritual condition where they were no longer ashamed of their sinfulness. They were religious but lost. They wanted to claim that they believed in God without turning from their sins. The world was too much with them. They wanted it both ways. They wanted to enjoy the pleasures of sin, and at the same time to have the blessings of God. But they went too far into sin, they missed their chance to repent, they crossed the line that God had set for them, and they entered into the condition where a righteous God had to chastise them. God said to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 8:12-13, "Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among those that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith the Lord. I will surely consume them, says the Lord: there shall be no grapes on the vine, no figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them."

Obtaining the mercy of God through the repentance of sin has always been the essential ingredient in retaining a relationship with God. There must always be a certain amount of healthy introspection in the life of a follower of Christ, whereby one must on a regular basis turn away from any sin and turn back to God. Those who fail to do so will find themselves quickly fallen into spiritual weakness and coldness. Israel as a nation failed to do so and so they have been set aside for the current age in the work of God. But individual Jews can still be saved because Jews and Gentiles are now regarded on an equal basis; and so Romans 9:24 says, "Even us, whom he has called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles."

There was a time over 2,000 years ago when you could identify the people of God on a nationalistic scale. You could go to a certain nation, the nation of Israel, and say, "This is the people of God." But that time is no more. Now the people of God is made of those from all nations and all races and all nationalities. This change that would take place in the way that God dealt with the people of the earth was prophesied in the Old Testament, and Paul quotes the book of Hosea in Romans 9:25-26 and says, "As he said also in Hosea, I will call them my people which were not my people; and her beloved, which were not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, You are not my people: there shall they be called the children of the living God."

Perhaps you are not yet a child of God. If not; you can become one today, whether Jew or Gentile, if you turn from your sins and turn to Jesus for forgiveness.

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