Romans 9:24-29

Romans 9 deals with the general topic of God's dealing with the Jews. First, Paul looked at the stories of Isaac and Jacob which proves this: God never made any sort of blanket promise to all the children of Abraham; that the important thing was God's choice or election and not the biological bloodline of a certain man. This choice was sovereign and not based on the character or behavior of Isaac or Jacob.

Next, Paul looked at the story of Pharaoh from which we draw the following conclusion: God has a plan and makes his decisions the light of that plan. His decisions are purposeful; they are aimed at accomplishing something. And while God's working exists within the context of and coincident with human free will, God is sovereign over mankind and uses them to accomplish his purpose.

In this passage, Paul brings the discussion back to the issue of the Jews and Gentiles. In verse 24, Paul states his contention that God had chosen to show mercy to those "whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles."

To understand why this statement is so important, we have to understand the Jewish attitude on the matter.  Many of the Jews saw it this way; that the Jews—as a racial and cultural group—were God's people and that God's people were the Jews. They felt, to some extent, that those two ideas—the people of God and the Jewishness—were equivalent, that they were two different ways of saying the same thing. They would have felt that a Gentile could only truly be part of God's people by becoming Jewish and that a Jew could only cease to be part of God's people by cutting himself off from his Jewish identity. Obviously, this is a simplification, but—so far as I can tell—this is a general picture of a common Jewish mindset and it is this that Paul is largely trying to combat.

And this brings us back to the beginning of Paul's argument in Romans 9:6: “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.” In other words, God's plan for Israel was never solely dependent on or coincident with ethnic or cultural factors. Even Israel itself was not summed up by a physical descent from Abraham but by God's election—as proved by the stories of Ishmael and Esau. 

Paul's conclusion is that whatever the relation between these two things—God's people and the Jewish people group—they cannot be simply synonymous. And he argues that this is not something new or strange; this isn't a sudden change introduced by the gospel. Rather this is something that had been established by God's word years before. Paul quotes several verses from the Old Testament, from which we can draw several conclusions regarding God's plan and God's people.

Isaiah chapter 1 sets the stage for the prophecies of Isaiah. It gives the picture of Judah in a state of physical desolation which was the judgment poured on them because of their spiritual corruption. And Isaiah gives us this description: “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.  And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.” (Isaiah 1:7-9)

Sodom and Gomorrah were very wicked cities. And Judah had also become very wicked. Those cities were judged by God and Judah was judged by God. But there was one key difference. Sodom and Gomorrah were completely destroyed; the only ones to escape that destruction were those who did not truly belong to the cities in the first place. But God had not allowed Judah to be completely destroyed. There was a remnant. But it wasn't just that some people survived. It wasn't just that there were a few lucky ones. 

The reason why there was still a surviving remnant was because of the Lord of Hosts (or Lord of Sabaoth, as Paul gives it). This term pictures God as a military leader, as the one in charge of the army and the battle. In this case, He was the one leading the battle against Judah; He was the secret general behind the attacks of the enemy. But as the general, He also chose when to pull back; He chose not to force the battle to annihilation. He said to the armies of man, as He said to the forces of creation: “Thus far and no farther and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.”

This idea is seen clearly in Isaiah 10. Here God pictures the judgment on Israel by Assyria, but also the judgment that would come upon Assyria as a result of its pride and cruelty. And that leads us to the prophecy Paul quotes here. This is Isaiah 10:20-23 from the NET Bible: “At that time those left in Israel, those who remain of the family of Jacob, will no longer rely on a foreign leader that abuses them. Instead they will truly rely on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel. A remnant will come back, a remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people, Israel, are as numerous as the sand on the seashore, only a remnant will come back. Destruction has been decreed; just punishment is about to engulf you. The sovereign master, the Lord who commands armies, is certainly ready to carry out the decreed destruction throughout the land.”

Once again, we have this same idea. There would be judgment and there would be mercy. God was doing a work and would bring it to completion in his time. He would punish and He would preserve. Most of Israel would be destroyed but a remnant would be saved.

So, we reach our first conclusion from this passage, and it echoes the thought of our previous lesson: God is in charge of judgment and God is in charge of mercy. Ma kind can do some impressive things, but mankind cannot ultimately determine the course of history. The impersonal forces of nature, the strength of time and chance and circumstance seem to have the power to break down all that man does—but they do not ultimately determine the course of history. God is the one who makes the important decisions. 

So with this whole question of Jewish privilege, the point to remember is that the Jews themselves would never have had any special place in God's plan if it were not for God's mercy. The Jews never would have survived the course of their own tempestuous history if it were not for God's mercy.

Moreover, we see from this how God accomplished his purposes even in the context of man's rebellion. Israel had turned away from God and into sin. You would think that would ruin God's plan to use Israel, and yet God still used Israel; God brought judgment and God preserved a remnant. It's not clear what Isaiah is referring to when he talks of a returning remnant, but we do see how something like that happened with the Babylonian captivity—God brought judgment on his people and yet brought back a remnant and continued to work through and use them leading up to the time of Paul.

This all brings us to the idea of sovereignty which we talked about earlier—that God is the ultimate authority in this world and that God uses that authority to accomplish his purposes. There is debate about how to interpret the words of verse 28, but the big idea seems to be that God will accomplish that which He sets out to do, without difficulty and without delay. Often times we set out to do something and we would like to get it done immediately, but we simply can't. But God never has those problems—God's work is never put off because of external problems. God's work may take many years; it may seem to be dragging on and on from our perspective, but from God's perspective, with every situation, He is making short work of it. 

And all of this becomes even clearer as we look at the book of Hosea. Throughout the book of Hosea, God uses Hosea's rather dysfunctional marriage as a vehicle to describe His relationship with Israel. Specifically, God told Hosea to give his children symbolic names. And this is the name he was to give to his second-born son: “Then said God, Call his name Loammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.” (Hosea 1:9-10)

In Hosea 2, God describes Israel deserting him, like a woman leaving her husband. It tells of both the judgment and the mercy He would bestow, both of which were to lead Israel back to Himself, ending with the promise that He would once again establish Israel after all the judgment she experienced; and the chapter ends with these words: “And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.” (Hosea 2:23)

So, here is the reality we have to deal with. There was a point at which God told the Jews—at least a large portion of them—that they were not His people and that He would not be their God, though with that came the promise that someday He would again be their God and they would be His people. But if there was even a single point in which the Old Testament explicitly said that the Jews were not—at one period of time—God's people, then that means these two ideas cannot be simply synonymous. Being God's people and being Jewish cannot be one and the same if God, in precise words, told the Jews that they were not His people. And in Paul's thinking, this seems to connect to the words of Isaiah about God leaving a remnant, a seed. Isaiah seems to have been thinking of literal survivals, but there is a symbolic way in which this points to the fact that often it was only a small remnant, a small number of survivals who remained faithful to God among the multitudes of the Jewish people. Even when Israel was as the sands of the sea, it was only part who were truly God's people.

But the argument goes further than that. Because God told Hosea that the Jews, who had been cast off, who had gone astray, those who had forfeited the right to be God's people, would someday become His people—that there would be a restoration, a renewal. And that proves that this whole concept of 'God's people' is not a static, unchanging reality. 

Joshua 24 gives Joshua's final challenge to the people of Israel before his death; it's the speech that ends with the famous words 'as for me and my house.' But it begins with a history lesson. “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.” (Joshua 24:2) Do you see what that means? Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, the pioneer and the receiver of the covenants, the boast and pride of Jewish tradition—Abraham came from a family of idolaters. He came from a family which, while it may have known the true God, was not singly faithful to Him. Abraham's family and seemingly Abraham himself were in practice pagans; they did not take the Lord as their God and God did not own them as His people—until God called them and Abraham in faith responded to that call.

Being God's people is not a static concept dependent on genealogy and culture. Simply being a son of Abraham does not make you part of God's people, any more than being a son of Terah makes you a pagan. Being a Jew does not make you part of God's people, because the Jews of Hosea's day—at least many of them—were not God's people. And if an idolater from a pagan family like Abraham could become one of the foremost saints of the Old Testament; if the faithless, backslide Jews of Hosea's day could have a hope of restoration, a hope of becoming once again God's people, then that means there is hope for anyone.

This brings us back to Paul's proposition in verses 23-24, that God was going make known the riches of His glory to those who he had called, not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles. The Jewish nation—as a cultural and a political unit—was important to God's plans. God used them in a special and unique way. But the Old Testament itself makes it clear that God never intended, never promised an exclusive or blanket acceptance to the Jews.  Not all of the Jews were God's people and not all of God's people were Jews. These two groups intersect but they are not synonymous. This leads us straight into the conclusion of Paul's argument in the following verses.