God Over All

Please listen now to the reading of God's

word.

I am speaking the truth in Christ.

I am not lying.

My conscience bears me witness in the Holy

Spirit.

That 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.

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.

This is the word of the lord.

Thanks be to god. Please be seated.

When Toy Story 3 ended,

there was not a dry eye in the

theater.

Andy was about to leave for college,

and so he decided to give all his

childhood toys away to a girl named Bonnie.

So he drives to her house and as

he introduces each toy,

he tells tells her what the special

powers, the special characteristics of each of his

cherished toys are.

But at the end of introducing every toy,

Bonnie notices that there's another toy in the

box, and this surprises Andy because his cherished

toy, Woody, is there, and he's not supposed

to be there.

After a long pause and with the sad

piano music playing in the background tugging at

your heart,

Andy looks at Bonnie's eyes,

and he decides that he is going to

give Woody to her.

And he says, now, Woody, he's been my

my pal for as long as I can

remember.

He's brave like a cowboy should be,

and kind,

and smart,

but the thing that makes Woody special

is that he'll never give up on you,

ever.

He will be there for you no matter

what.

Andy then hands Woody to Bonnie and they

play together with all the toys one last

time.

After a while, when they're done, Andy gets

in his car,

and as he's leaving, he whispers,

thanks, guys.

And as he drives away, Woody says, so

long, partner.

It's a touching finale, seemingly the perfect ending

to this trilogy

of Toy Story.

But then, Disney and Pixar decided they need

to make more money, so they made Toy

Story 4,

and I'll never forgive them for it.

Similarly,

when we reach the end of Romans 8,

it feels like Paul has just given us

the perfect ending.

How powerfully

he declares

is

is God's love for us. He says that

nothing

can ever

separate us from God's love in Jesus Christ.

It's a triumphant,

glorious ending with lovely language, and we might

think

that Paul could have written a benediction,

signed his name to the letter, and giving

it to a courier to send it to

Rome,

but that's not what happens.

Paul continues for 8 more chapters

and it's not without purpose.

The 5 verses that we are considering today

are the introduction not just to Romans 9,

but to Romans 9, 10, and 11.

Chapters which address a critical question.

The question is this,

if God is sovereign in salvation,

as Paul has just taught us in Romans

8,

then why

are so many descendants of Abraham

not saved?

Did God's promises to Israel fail?

Paul needs to answer this question.

That is the reason why Romans 8 is

not the final chapter of this letter.

And today, as we explore verses 1 to

5 in Romans 9, we will see that

Paul will not back away

from the reality of God's sovereignty

in salvation. In fact, the main point that

I have for you this morning is this,

there is salvation in Christ

and nowhere else.

There is salvation in Christ

and nowhere else.

This is a weighty statement, and Paul certainly

feels

the burden of it. But as we will

see, it is also the foundation

of our hope.

So let's explore Romans 9 verses 1 to

Romans 9:1–5

5 under 3 headings.

1st,

Paul's profound pain.

2nd,

Israel's privileged position.

And 3rd,

Christ's preeminent power.

Paul's profound pain,

Israel's privileged position,

and Christ's preeminent power. So let's look at

the first of those headings, Paul's profound pain.

Let's look at verses 1 to 3 again.

I am speaking the truth in Christ.

I am not lying.

My conscience bears me witness in the Holy

Spirit.

That 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.

Having just proclaimed the excellencies of God's love

and saving power at the end of chapter

8,

Paul now begins chapter 9 with a double

oath.

Positively,

he affirms,

I am speaking the truth,

and he reiterates this assertion by restating it

in the negative when he writes, I am

not lying.

This demonstrates that Paul knows that his claims

have grave or weighty implications.

So with this double edged oath, he is

stating in no uncertain terms that he stands

by his words.

In fact, Paul underscores the solemnity of his

oath by invoking 2 witnesses,

Christ,

in whom he speaks the truth,

and the Holy Spirit who does not permit

him to lie.

In legal matters,

the requirement for 2 or more witnesses is

explicitly stated in the Torah

where in Deuteronomy

1915,

for example,

it states that a matter must be established

by the testimony

of 2 or 3 witnesses.

This principle was crucial in establishing the credibility

of a legal claim,

particularly in cases where serious charges were being

adjudicated.

By invoking Christ

and the Holy Spirit,

Paul alerts his audience to the seriousness

of what he is about to claim.

And he begins this claim,

as we read in verse 2, in this

way,

that by saying that he has great sorrow

and unceasing

anguish in his heart.

Think about how quickly

the mood has changed in just a couple

of verses in Paul's letter to the Romans.

Paul goes from praising

the ineffable

glory of God's unchanging,

unrelenting, and unbreakable love for His people

to expressing the depth of His sorrow

in His hurting heart.

Why such a violent descent

into this emotional

abyss?

This he tells us in verse 3,

where Paul writes,

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.

It now becomes clear

that the thing that is burdening Paul,

the reason why he is experiencing great sorrow

and unceasing

anguish,

is that so many of his kinsmen according

to the flesh,

that is

to say, so many Jews

have rejected the Messiah,

and are therefore accursed

and cut off from the blessing

of eternal life.

In other words, the reason for Paul's profound

pain

is that he is not by any means

indifferent

to the grave predicament

and wretched estate of his fellow Jews.

In the first eight chapters of Romans, Paul

has convincingly shown from scripture

that all human beings,

whether Jew or Gentile,

inherit a sinful nature from Adam,

a nature that separates us from God.

Furthermore, Paul has argued that in his mercy,

God has given his son as a propitiation

for sin,

so that Christ sacrifice

atones

for the sin of anyone who is united

to him by faith.

This of course is very good news indeed.

That is what the word gospel means after

all, good

news. Because God offers salvation

to sinful men and women

as a gift.

The problem of course, is that according to

this argument,

if you are outside of Christ,

then you are still in your sin and

cut off from communion

with God.

And even though almost all of the first

believers in Jesus and almost all the initial

recipients

of this amazing gift of eternal life in

Jesus Christ

were Jewish,

as the gospel began to expand,

more and more Gentiles

came to give their lives over to Christ,

and so

too, more and more Jews

began to refuse

to accept Jesus

as their long promised and long awaited Messiah.

This meant that many physical descendants of Abraham

were forsaking the promise

that the patriarch of their faith had received

from God himself.

The promise that all the families of the

earth would one day be blessed

through Abraham's offspring.

And Paul

is not indifferent

to the great

tragedy

that has therefore befallen his people.

His heart is heavy

because many of the people he knows,

people that he grew up with, people that

he broke bread with,

even family members were in great peril facing

the prospect of the eternal

curse

of hell.

Such is the burden

Paul feels that he makes a rather remarkable

statement.

He writes in verse 3, for I could

wish that I myself were accursed and cut

off from Christ.

Now sometimes,

Paul is misunderstood.

In fact, sometimes he's mistranslated

at this point. To me here that he

wants to trade his place

with his fellow unbelieving Jews, that he would

be willing to forsake

Christ so that his countrymen would be saved.

That is not what Paul means here.

He who earlier in the letter berated those

who would say, let's sin more so that

grace may abound,

is not now going to express his personal

desire to become sin himself, so that grace

may abound to others.

That's not what he means.

Paul does not write, I wish that I

myself were accursed and cut off from Christ

for your sake. He doesn't say that. He

says, I could wish

that I myself

were cursed and cut off from Christ.

Theologian Charles Hodge comments that the grammatical force

of the Greek verb that Paul uses here

implies the presence of a condition

that is known to be impossible.

In other words, Paul is saying,

I could wish that I myself were accursed

if it were possible to do so.

It is a Hebrew idiom

to indicate his profound pain for them.

It's like he's saying, believe me, such is

the extent of my sorrow for you, fellow

Israelites,

that if it were permissible

for me to desire

to be cut off from the Messiah

so that you instead would cling to him

for your salvation, surely, I would not shy

away even from desiring that.

But that, of course, is an impossibility.

He who genuinely loves Christ

would not ever

trade him for anything or for anyone,

and that is the catalyst

for the sadness that Paul feels regarding his

countrymen.

Paul has found the Messiah

and has answered the Messiah's loving call, and

it breaks his heart

that so many of his fellow Jews have

not.

There are 2 things that I want you

to learn from this.

The first is this,

the doctrine of election

is not merely an intellectual concept

or an academic exercise,

rather, it is the divine revelation that ought

to stir our hearts.

One does not get the impression

that when Paul wrote this section of Romans,

he did so,

with a glass of Scotch in his hand

and with a cigar on his lips, with

Alexa playing Beethoven in the background. That's not

at all the vibe that one gets from

the beginning of Romans 9.

Now, it's more like

it's more likely that if you were to

hold

the original copy of Paul's letter to the

Romans,

you could identify entire words that were distorted

and smeared

by the tears that accompanied their composition.

On the one hand, the biblical revelation of

God's sovereignty and salvation,

that he foreknows and foreloves those whom he

predestines

to save,

ought to move you to tears of joy,

especially when you consider at what cost

your redemption was secured.

Beloved Christian, when is the last time you

meditated on this amazing truth?

When is the last time that you ruminated

on the depths

and richness

of God's love for you?

A love that is undistracted,

unfailing,

undaunted,

unrelenting,

unstoppable,

unbreakable,

unending,

and perhaps most stunningly,

undeserved.

Ponder the matchless excellencies

and astounding grace of Him who loved you

first, and you will never forget

the love you had at first.

On the other

hand, the biblical revelation of God's sovereignty and

salvation

ought to not only produce in you tears

of joy,

but also

tears of sorrow

as you consider the wretched inheritance of those

who reject Christ.

What brings me to the second thing I

want you to learn from these verses,

that

like Paul's heart,

your heart

ought to break for the lost.

The Christian faith is not

a therapeutic

tool

to help you live your best life now.

It is the only cure that will save

you from the curse of hell

and enable you to live forever.

Dear Christian, the great physician has given you

this most precious

medicine.

You've tasted it, and it has healed you.

It has given you life.

And yet, everywhere you turn people are at

the point of perishing. They are this close

to sealing forever a dark future without joy

and without hope.

They're so close to do it, when a

drop

of this blessed elixir of life,

a drink from this fountain of paradise would

eradicate the curse that now condemns them,

and inject their spiritual veins

with the life giving blood of the one

who conquered death and lives forever.

By His wounds we are healed.

We must be a church that proclaims the

gospel of life giving grace through the priority

that we place on worship,

through the warmth of our hospitality,

through the transparency of our confession of sin,

through the sincerity of our repentance,

through our reliance in God's mercy,

through the persistence of our prayers for the

lost,

through the constancy

of our service in the community,

through our integrity in the workplace,

through our kindness in the neighborhood,

through our generosity with those in need,

through our compassion

for those who are hurting,

through our forgiveness for those who hurt us,

and through our unwavering commitment

to glorify God by making disciples of Jesus

Christ through the power

of the Holy Spirit. Listen, if we can

remain indifferent

to the hopeless condition of the lost,

if our hearts can continue unmoved

by the peril of those who are without

Jesus,

if we do not share the Apostle's

unceasing anguish for those who reject Christ,

then we may have no portion in the

one who wept for Jerusalem

as he was approaching it to give his

life.

For this church

to be a force of healing and restoration

in this community,

then our hearts must first be broken

for those who are wasting away without hope.

The Prince of Preachers, Charles

Spurgeon, puts it like this,

if sinners be damned,

at least let them leap to hell over

our dead bodies.

And if they perish,

let them perish

with our arms wrapped about their knees,

imploring them to stay.

If hell must be filled, let it be

filled in the teeth of our exertions, and

let no one go unwarned

and unprayed for.

There are so many blessings in this community.

We enjoy so many privileges

here.

Beautiful trees,

and lakes, and trails.

Plenty of opportunities to bike, and to swim,

and to golf, and to play basketball, and

tennis, and yes, for people like me, pickleball.

We have good schools, don't judge me.

We have good schools,

we have amazing restaurants,

We have great shopping. This community seems to

have it all.

But therein, consist the great tragedy

that is the precise source

of Paul's profound pain.

You may have all things,

but if you don't have Christ, you have

nothing.

None of the rich resources will redeem us.

None of these entitlements will endure.

Because on judgment day, none of these advantages

will avail.

And this brings us to our second heading,

Israel's privileged position.

In verse 4 we read,

they are Israelites.

To them belongs the adoption,

the glory, the covenants, the giving of the

law, the worship, and the promises.

In this verse and continuing into verse 5,

Paul enumerates many of the privileges of Israel.

He first refers to the Jews as Israelites.

This is actually the first privilege

that Paul lists since Israelite is the covenant

name of God's chosen people.

Hearkening back to Genesis 32

and to Genesis 35, where God changed Jacob's

name to Israel, one who strives with God,

and reiterates the promise there that he made

to Abraham

to be his God.

Paul then mentions

that to the Israelites belong the adoption.

In other words,

out of all the nations of the earth,

God chose to bless and favor the descendants

of Abraham,

committing himself to be their father, and to

receive them as his beloved children,

with all the special care and attention

that that entails.

Next, Paul mentions

that to the Israelites belongs the glory.

This refers to the fact that God blessed

Israel

with His intimate presence among them by dwelling

among them in a peculiar way especially in

the tabernacle

and in the temple.

The next privilege of Israel that Paul mentions

here is the covenants.

The infinite,

eternal,

omniscient,

omnipotent God freely chose to bind Himself to

Israel by way of covenant,

committing himself to be their god,

to love and protect them as his people,

to shepherd and care for them as the

shape of his pasture, and to eventually bless

all the nations

through the promised Messiah.

Next, Paul mentions the giving of the law.

This refers to Israel's great privilege of being

the recipients

of God's written law,

and therefore, having unique insights into God's holy

character.

Knowing

the way that

knowing therefore the way that leads to life.

Understanding the seriousness of sin,

and the penalties that it incurs,

and most importantly,

showing the people of Israel

their desperate need for a savior.

Next, Paul mentions the worship.

This refers to the entirety of the sacrificial

system, including its festivals,

its rituals,

and its pomp, which reminded the people of

Israel that their whole life

belongs to God and that He alone is

worthy of all of their devotion

and service and loyalty

and love.

Next, Paul mentions the promises.

This undoubtedly refers to the messianic promises,

which when fulfilled would bless all the nations,

but which were revealed to Israel alone,

and therefore gave them a unique

and abiding hope.

Finally, in verse 5, Paul mentions 2 more

privileges of Israel, that to them belong the

patriarchs

and that the Christ would be from their

race

according to the flesh.

That is to say, according to Paul,

such was the privilege

of the people of Israel

that their whole existence was encompassed and surrounded

by the entirety of God's promises,

that their ethnic makeup

and composition was marked at its boundaries by

Abraham and the patriarchs at the source,

and by the glorious Messiah

at its culmination.

Think about it. The promise of hope for

all mankind

is contained therein,

in that gap between Abraham

and Jesus. And it was the unthinkable privilege

of the Israelites

to be the physical purveyor of such hope.

Paul's pain

was so profound precisely

because Israel's privilege was so pronounced.

In the theater of God's redemptive work, Israel

had the best seats in the house.

But when the leading actor came,

they decried his performance

and abandoned their seats in utter contempt, looking

elsewhere for answers and hoping in vain for

satisfaction.

For you see, the drama of redemption

can be staged nowhere else.

For no one else has the creativity to

direct it,

and no one else has the ability to

perform it, and no one else has the

capacity to produce it.

That is the great tragedy

of Israel

that Paul so deeply laments.

That God gave them the best seats in

the theater, but they care not for the

drama.

And when they were invited to join the

lead actor on the stage of redemption,

they forsook his call and settled for the

amenities instead.

Listen, Israel alone

beheld the majesty of the golden chain of

salvation,

but she despised its value, choosing instead the

glitter of

the golden

calf.

Oh, may this never happen

to us.

For the church is also the recipient of

great privilege from God.

Their privilege was to be called Israelites,

but our privilege is to be called Christians.

We bear the Messiah's name.

They were adopted out of all the nations

of the earth, but we are adopted out

of Adam's cursed house.

They enjoyed the glory

of God in the temple, but we enjoyed

the glory of Immanuel,

God with us.

They beheld the future promises

of the covenant through signs, through symbols, and

through types, but we befold the fulfillment of

the covenant through the bread and the wine.

They were the recipients of the law,

but we are the recipients of grace.

They worshiped in the temple through the service

of the Levites, but we worship in spirit

and truth through the intercession of our High

Priest Jesus Christ.

Theirs were the promises of the Messiah,

but ours is the Messiah himself and his

finished work.

Theirs were the patriarchs by lineage,

but ours are the patriarchs by faith.

Christ was from them

according to the flesh, but Christ is for

us

according to the spirit.

These are all amazing privileges indeed. Privilege that

no one else has outside the church.

And yet, if Christ remains outside you,

then these privileges are of no enduring benefit

for you, and your future shall be marked

by bitter tears.

Make sure

that no privilege,

benefit or blessing is the anchor of your

hope.

You may possess all the privileges that the

church offers, but unless

you possess

Christ,

you are a poor beggar bereft of any

hope.

Only Christ saves

because only Christ can

save.

And this brings us to our final heading,

Christ's preeminent power.

As I've explained several times during this sermon

series on Paul's letter to the Romans, one

of the reasons that Paul writes this letter

is that Jewish and Gentile Christians were arguing

as to who was more worthy to be

the leaders

in the Christian church.

Jewish Christians argued that since they were given

the law and the sign of circumcision

and even the Messiah according to the flesh,

they were more worthy of being the leaders

in the church.

Gentile Christians on the other hand argued that

since most of the Jews had rejected Jesus,

and more and more Gentiles were coming to

Christ, in fact becoming the minority

of the church, despite not having the law,

despite not having circumcision,

they should be the ones leading the church.

The problem

with both the Jewish and the Gentile position

is that they were still dividing humanity along

ethnic lines

and trying to weigh which side was better

or more worthy.

Paul's answer

back in Romans chapter 2 and Romans chapter

Romans 2 · chapter mention Romans 3 · chapter mention

3 is that neither side is worthy.

He writes, for all who have sinned without

the law will also perish without the law,

and all who have sinned under the law

will be judged by the law.

In other words,

all are equally unworthy

because all have sinned and fall short of

the glory of God.

So if neither Jewishness

nor Greekness brought one closer to God, then

what did?

The answer of course is yes. Neither Jewishness,

nor Greekness,

but godliness.

Godliness.

Salvation will be found in neither the Jewish

man, nor in the Greek man, but in

the God man.

Look at verse 5.

To them belong the patriarchs,

and from their race according to the flesh

is the Christ who is God over all,

blessed forever.

Amen.

Paul writes

that the Christ,

the Messiah

is from the Israelites according to the flesh.

By implication,

this means that there is another non fleshly

aspect to the Messiah

which does not find its provenience in Abraham,

nor even in Adam himself.

Stunningly,

Paul writes here in no uncertain terms that

the Messiah is not merely from God,

but that He is God overall, blessed forever.

Some scholars have tried to walk Paul back

a little bit here. They've tried to change

the translation of this text, but neither the

Greek grammar, nor the Greek sentence structure, nor

the Greek manuscript evidence justify

any other reading except the one that we

have here. Christ is God over all.

Unapologetically,

stunningly,

Christ is God over all,

blessed forever.

In fact, Paul had already stated this much

at the beginning of this letter, in Romans

Romans 1:3

chapter 1 verses 3 and 4 where he

writes about the Son of God that He

was descended from David according to the flesh,

and was declared to be the Son of

God in power,

according to the spirit of holiness

by His resurrection from the dead.

So if you hear nothing else today,

hear this.

Whether you are Jew or Greek,

American or Mexican,

Arab or Indian,

German

or Asian, black or white, republican or democrat,

8 or 88.

There's only one way of salvation.

Jesus Christ,

the man who is God

overall.

Because He is the promised offspring of Abraham

according to the flesh, He is able to

save those who sin in the flesh.

And because He is the eternally preexisting

Son of God,

who is God over all things, over all

circumstances,

over all powers, over all peoples, His salvation

cannot fail.

You know, at the end of Toy Story

3, the reason Andy is surprised that Woody

is in the box, that he is of

the toys that he is giving away, is

because Woody is not supposed to be there.

Woody himself had climbed into

the box.

And the reason he did this was because

he wanted to ensure

that his friends would find a loving home,

even if it meant that he would leave

his own home.

Perhaps the reason Woody's selfless act in this

children's movie is so moving

is because it resonates with the most selfless

act

in the drama

of redemption.

The Son of God chose to get into

this dirty box,

into this fallen world in order to ensure

that we would find a loving home.

No one else would do it because no

one else could do it.

Jesus became a sinless man

to save his sinful people.

If you trust in Him, you can be

sure that He will never give up on

you ever.

That He will be there for you no

matter what, always.

Because He is

the only sinless man,

faith in Him alone

is absolutely necessary.

And because He is God overall,

faith in Him

is entirely sufficient.

Won't you turn to Him?

Bend the knee

and enjoy rest and peace forevermore.

Let's pray.