Not All Israel Who Are Descended from Israel

In one paragraph

This message was the second week of a series walking through Romans 9 through 11, three of the hardest chapters in the New Testament. Pastor Gary focused on what he called the "B section" of a chiastic structure running through those chapters, which asks and answers the question: is it God's fault that Israel has not accepted the gospel? The whole passage orbits a central point he kept returning...

Read together

1. Romans 9:6 it is not as though the word of God has failed
2. Romans 9:6-7 not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, nor are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants
3. Romans 9:7 through Isaac your descendants will be named
4. Genesis 12 God calling Abraham to leave his land and promising to bless him and give him a son
5. Romans 9:8 it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God but the children of the promise
6. Romans 9:10-12 Rebecca conceiving twins by Isaac, and God saying the older will serve the younger
7. Romans 9:13 Jacob I have loved and Esau I hated
8. Malachi 1:1-5 God declaring I have loved you to Israel, and the contrast between Jacob and Esau/Edom
9. Romans 9:14 what shall we say then, is there injustice with God
10. Romans 9:15 I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and compassion on whom I have compassion
11. Exodus 33 Moses asking God to show His glory and God responding I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious
12. Romans 9:16 it does not depend on the man who wills or runs but on God who has mercy
13. Romans 9:17 for this very purpose I raised Pharaoh up to demonstrate my power and proclaim my name throughout the earth
14. Romans 9:18 God has mercy on whom He desires and hardens whom He desires
15. Romans 9:19 you will say to me then why does He still find fault, who resists His will
16. Romans 9:20-21 who are you to answer back to God, does the potter not have right over the clay
17. Romans 9:22-24 God enduring vessels of wrath to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, calling not from Jews only but also Gentiles
18. Hosea 2:23 I will call those who were not my people my people, and her who was not beloved I shall call beloved
19. Romans 9:26 in the place where it was said you are not my people there they shall be called sons of the living God
20. Romans 9:27 Isaiah crying out that though the sons of Israel be like the sands of the sea it is the remnant that will be saved
21. Romans 9:29 unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left a posterity we would have become like Sodom and resembled Gomorrah
22. Romans 10:9-10 if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead you will be saved
23. Romans 10:13 whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved, central point of the chiastic structure

Talk about it

1. Paul says he would wish himself cursed if it meant his countrymen could come to know the gospel. Have you ever felt that kind of weight for someone you love who hasn't accepted Christ? What does that feel like?
2. Gary walked through how God's promise ran through Isaac rather than Ishmael, and through Jacob rather than Esau, in ways that cut against what men would have chosen. Where have you seen God work in a way that made no sense by human logic, but turned out to be exactly right?
3. The sermon put Moses asking God to show him His glory right next to the statement 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy.' How does that context change the way that phrase lands for you?
4. Gary described the sovereignty of God in this passage as both terrifying and attractive, borrowing Rudolph Otto's word 'numinous.' What part of Romans 9 do you find most unsettling, and what part do you find most comforting?
5. The central point Gary kept returning to is that whoever believes and calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, regardless of ancestry or background. How does that promise sit alongside everything else in this passage about God's choice and decree?