Pentecost 12 Romans 9:1-5

August 31, 2014

Brothers and sisters in Christ, “Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.” (Romans 15:4)

One of my mother’s relatives took an interest in genealogies and spent years gathering information about our family history. It only goes back about 200 years and goes as far as this generation, but it’s as thick as a Chicago phone book. It’s astounding to see hundreds and thousands of names of people whom I’ve never met and have no idea who they are, but to whom I am somehow related. These are my roots, where I’ve come from.

As we read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, God tells us about our family history, too. It doesn’t go back just a couple hundred years - he takes us all the way back to the beginning, to our roots in Adam and Eve. That means we are related to every person who has ever lived and ever will live. But much more importantly, in the Bible God shows us our spiritual history. He takes backto our roots in the promise of a Savior he gave to Adam and Eve after their fall into sin and traces it all the way to the doorsteps of our lives. The names, places, and events written in the past are only a background for the main message in God’s Word: God is not willing that anyone should go to hell, but that everyone comes to repentance and faith inJesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

This is what God is telling us in history of the children of Israel, the physical descendants of Abraham. All 39 books of the Old Testament focus on them. Of all the people on earth, God chose this onebranch of the human family tree to be the ones through whom he would bring his promised Savior into the world. So when our children bring home Sunday School lessons from the Old Testament or we read or hear something from the Old Testament, these aren’t just interesting stories about interesting people and events of long ago or lessons in morality. This is God in action for our salvation and for the salvation of anyone who believes in Jesus Christ.

Here’s how Paul describes the great honor and privilege God showered on the people of Israel: “Theirs is the adoption of sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all.”

No other nation on earth heard God call them his children. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”
No one else had God appear to them as he did to Abraham and his descendants. For forty years in the wilderness the Israelites saw the glory of the Lordaccompany them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. His glorious presence was with them in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple in Jerusalem.
No other people on earth heard God speak to them as he did at Mount Sinai so they couldknow exactly what God expected of them in the ten commandments.No one else received covenants that sealed them as his peopleor had the very Word of God spoken through his chosen prophets and written down for them by his inspired writers.
All other nations formed and worshiped gods of their own dark imaginations, gods who did not exist and who could not save. The true and living God opened his heart to Israel and taught them how to worship him, focusing on his very real grace of God and his very real promise of forgiveness and eternal life in the coming Savior.
Only the people of Israel could claim great heroes of faith as their ancestors and trace the promised Savior through them all the way to a manger in Bethlehem, where he was born of a Jewish mother, and then put on a cross outside the Jewish capital city of Jerusalem, where he offered his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
No other nation could say, “God himself chose to come to earth in the flesh and blood of our people.”

The apostle Paul was a physical descendant of Abraham and part of this wonderful legacy, too, but it meant nothing without Christ. Paul learned that Jesus was the reason for Israel’s very existence, and in Jesus is where Paul found his real roots – his spiritual roots. And that’s where we find our spiritual roots, too.

You’d expect a nation with this rich spiritual history to be bursting at the seams with joy in Jesus, but Paul found the exact opposite. They rejected, resisted, and rebelled against the good news about Jesus. The Jews were the most bitter enemies of all the apostles, especially Paul, as they took the message to the world. Jesus had wept over Jerusalem’s hardness of heart before they crucified him in hateful rejection. Paul now sheds his own tears for them: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.”

We may be shocked by Paul's willingness to trade places with them in hell if it meant saving the Jews, but I think we can understand what he’s saying. Have you ever said of your sick child or suffering spouse or another loved one, "I would gladly take your place?" Or if someone you loved deeply was in need of a kidney transplant, would you hesitate to say, "Let me give you mine"?

If someone you love is going to hell, wouldn’t you want to do whatever you could – not matter what the cost – to make sure they didn’t go there? Even if we have only a touch of Paul’s zeal for the lost- if we believed with all our hearts the truth of the passage, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life"(1 John 5:12)-we would have no need for special mission offerings, appeals for congregation support. Our worker training schools would be bursting at the seams and our mission fields would be filled to meet every opportunity.We would not think about how our church can serve us but how we can serve the Lord with glad and sincere hearts. We would fervently pray for and sincerely reach out to those who are slipping away. Our worship services and Sunday School would be filled and visitors would be invited by every member. Bible study would be eagerly attended to learn as much as possible of God's Word.

You see, you and I have a rich spiritual history, too, and there is a warning for us in the unbelief of the Jews. We have even more than they! We have the entire revealed Word of God. We can see clearly how the Old Testament was fulfilled in the coming of the promised Savior. We’ve seen his life, heard histeaching, watched him die, and sung triumphant hymns about his resurrection. We’ve been buried with him in baptism and raised to new life as children of God. We know that our sins are forgiven for Jesus’ sake. We know that every day we are at peace with God, that he hears our prayers, andthat he guides us with his Word. We have the certainty that if we were to die today we would be in heaven with Jesus. We have all this, yet like so many in Israel, it can all be taken for granted or simply dismissed by busy, self-focused lives. And as was true for them, so for it is for us: “How shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3)

“Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us.” Trace your spiritual roots back to Israel and stand in awe at what God did for them and what he has given to you in Christ! And now, who would better know how much Jesus means to others than we do? Who is better equipped to share the good news about Jesus with the world than you or me? And most importantly, who else would care? Amen