Rabbenu

A Discussion of Messianic Judaism, the Emerging Messianic Jewish Paradigm, and Related Leadership Issues from the Preoccupied Mind of Rabbi Stuart Dauermann, PhD.

All Contents ©2004-2007 Stuart Dauermann - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Got Responsibilities?

[For N.T. Wright and too many other theologians] Paul is revolted by the very idea of God any longer maintaining a special relationship with carnal Israel. So too the ‘Gentile rejection of an ethnic-based people of god’ is, according to Wright’s Paul, ‘quite proper.’ God in Jesus Christ eradicates any theologically relevant difference between Israel and the nations and establishes a universal relationship with the individual members of Israel and the nations in terms of their common humanity as creatures of God who have fallen into sin and stand in need of the redemption offered in Christ.

But while this fits nicely with the idea of how God supposedly ought to relate to humankind according to the liberal indifference to particular bodily, ethnic, and corporate indifference, it is a long distance from God’s differential election, hardening, and mercy-showing, as Paul depicts it in Romans 9-11, in which the difference between Israel and the nations is always strictly maintained. The very basis of Paul’s key affirmation that God has not rejected Paul’s ‘kinsmen according to the flesh’ [09:2], ios that God has already saved Paul himself ‘an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin’ (11:1); that is, a fleshly Jew who, together with a larger rembant of fleshly Jews, stands in for the whole of fleshly Israel, already rendering the whole body of Israel holy and pointing toward its final salvation (11:16). It is this God who demonstrates faihfulness to fleshly Israel who can also finally be trusted faithfulluy to show mercy to all, both Israel and the nations; indeed, to the nations only in and through fleshly Israel, from whom, ‘according to the flesh, comes the Messiiah, who is over all’ (9:5).

Nor does Paul anywhere argue that, in Christ, Israel and the nations are now ‘the same’ at some higher or deeper level of human existence transcending ordinary carnal, cultural difference. Rahter, paul seeks the harmonious communion (table fellowship) of Jew and Gentile in their coproreal and corporate difference as the great sign of God’s reconsciliation in Jesus Christ.. Christ became a servant not of generic humanity, but of the circumcised , for the sake of the Gentiles in order that there might be mutual welcome between Gentiles and Jews and that the nations might rejoice ‘with God’s people’ (15:7-12). Such is the illiberal Paul [Douglas Harink, Paul Among the Post Liberals, 183].

The Salvation of the Gentiles
11 So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumblingb salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israelc jealous. 12Now if their stumblingd means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!

13 Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry 14in order to make my own peoplee jealous, and thus save some of them. 15For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead! 16If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy.

17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich rootf of the olive tree, 18do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. 19You will say, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." 20That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. 21For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you.g 22Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. 23And even those of Israel,h if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24For if you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.

All Israel Will Be Saved
25 So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters,i I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written,

"Out of Zion will come the Deliverer;

he will banish ungodliness from Jacob."

27 "And this is my covenant with them,

when I take away their sins."

28As regards the gospel they are enemies of Godj for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; 29for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, 31so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may nowk receive mercy. 32For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.

33 O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

34 "For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?"

35 "Or who has given a gift to him,

to receive a gift in return?"

36For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
I. Introduction
II. Paul’s argument
A. vv. 1-6 - The remnant that currently exists among the Jews is the foreshadowing of the salvation of all ethnic Israel.
1 I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? 3"Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life." 4But what is the divine reply to him? "I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." 5So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace
1) The remnant is a symbol of judgment in some passages. For example, see Romans 9:27 “And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, ‘Though the number of the children of Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved;’” which is based on Isaiah 10:22, a word of temporary judgment, “For though your people Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness.”

2) But it also has another meaning: it is as a symbol of hope
• Isaiah 11:10-16. 10 On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious. 11 On that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. 12 He will raise a signal for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. 13 The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart, the hostility of Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah, and Judah shall not be hostile towards Ephraim. 14 But they shall swoop down on the backs of the Philistines in the west, together they shall plunder the people of the east. They shall put forth their hand against Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites shall obey them. 15 And the Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the sea of Egypt; and will wave his hand over the River with his scorching wind; and will split it into seven channels, and make a way to cross on foot; 16 so there shall be a highway from Assyria for the remnant that is left of his people, as there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt.
• Isaiah 37:31-33 - “31The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward; 32for from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out, and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
• Genesis 7:23 – “He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark.” The term for Noah and his family being “left” on the ark, is the verbal form of the same root in Hebrew as remnant. In other words, Noah and his family were the remnant on the ark, and as such, were a sign and means of God’s renewed fruitful purpose for the earth. So is it with Israel: Israel is a remnant of hope---a sign of a continuing, salvific and fruitful purpose for Israel and the nations.
3) In Romans chapter eleven, Paul uses the remnant theme to indicate hope
B. Flow of the argument
1) In Rom 11:1-6, Paul anticipates the conclusion people might draw from chapters nine and ten, from the Gentile majority among Yeshua believers, with a comparatively feeble representation of Jews, from Paul’s fruitful ministry being among the Gentiles rather than among the Jews, and the outright hostility the Jewish people of his day were demonstrating toward his ministry [largely because he was opening the door so widely toward Gentiles as Gentiles, as we saw last week]. The conclusion some might draw from this is a wrong one: that God has rejected Israel. Paul’s response is “mei genoito--by no means!”
2) Paul is also at pains to affirm his solidarity with His people. This is especially necessary since he is going up to Jerusalem with an offering from the Gentiles which he has been collecting for years. This good will gesture serves at least two purposes:
• To cement good relations between the Gentiles churches and the home congregation in Jerusalem.
• Because Paul sees himself as an agent of the fulfillment of prophecy. The prophets predicted that the wealth of the nations would flow up to Zion in the latter days. He sees his efforts as being part of that fulfillment.
• When Paul speaks in Romans 11 of divine foreknowledge, it seems certain he has in mind the entire complex of ideas as expressed in Romans 8:29-30, that those whom God foreknew he also predestined, called, justified, and glorified. In other words, his language drips with the assurance that God is by no means through with the Jewish people yet, and that his foreknowledge of them is part of a cluster of saving intentions toward them, just as he uses God’s foreknowledge of the Church to as a word of assurance in Romans 8.
• • Paul refers to Elijah, and how he thought he was the only one left. In referring to Elijah, Paul focuses on the rebuke Elijah received: just as Elijah was wrong in judging Israel as being on the whole apostate, so anyone who thinks that God is through with Israel is wrong—despite appearances.
• • In verse six, Paul introduces his key term--the remnant. He presents the remnant not as evidence that a small smattering of Jews has been rescued, and that's about all, bur rather as evidence of God's continuing and dynamic purpose for Israel. The Remnant is the seed of a continuing, dynamic and saving purpose. And as we shall see, Paul presents the Remnant as the guarantee that Israel, despite all her stumblings, remains elect and holy to the Lord.
3) 7-16 The hardening is temporary and itself redemptive in purpose

7 What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, 8as it is written,

"God gave them a sluggish spirit,

eyes that would not see

and ears that would not hear,

down to this very day."

9And David says,

"Let their table become a snare and a trap,

a stumbling block and a retribution for them;

10 let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see,

and keep their backs forever bent."

11 So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumblingb salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israelc jealous. 12Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!

13 Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry 14in order to make my own people jealous, and thus save some of them. 15For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead! 16If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy.

4) • In verses 7-10, he speaks of the "rest" of the Jewish people who are hardened. But what too many people miss is that even the hardening has a saving purpose, one in which God is glorified. We have been investigating this together, especially in our examination of Romans, chapter nine. This saving purpose is for the sake of both the nations and Israel. [Compare with Exodus 7:5, where God hardened Pharaoh’s heart that His name might be glorified. Just as he hardened the heart of the Gentile Egyptians for the sake of Israel, so he is now hardening the hearts of Israel for the sake of the nations. Notice the quotation from Isaiah: “God gave them a sluggish spirit, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day].
• This saving purpose for the Gentiles is not the final word--because Paul says "if their rejection [that of the Jews, in the main] means reconciliation of the (Gentile) world, what will their full inclusion mean but life from the dead?" God’s final word in his saving purposes for the cosmos is a word about Israel.
• And as we saw last week, even Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles was for the sake of Israel. “Although his ministry appears to concern itself solely with bringing salvation to the Gentiles, Paul wants his readers to believe that there is a deeper motivation behind his mission—that is, the salvation of Israel. Paul works for the salvation of the Gentiles, but that does not mean that Gentiles have taken center stage in God’s plan. God has not transferred his favor to the Gentiles at the expense of the Jews. He still has Israel in view and in fact, as we have seen, the process of salvation culminates with them. Here, then, Paul portrays even his Gentile ministry as a catalyst for the eventual salvation of Israel.” (Bruce W. Longenecker)
5) In verse 16 Paul changes metaphors, from remnant to first part of the dough offered as first fruits as compared to the whole batch, and the root, compared with the branches. The firstfruits of the grain harvest [see Num. 15:17-21] is the remnant of Israel, and the whole batch is the "all Israel" that will be saved; similarly, the root is the Remnant and the branches are the all Israel that will be saved, also including the wild branches grafted in from among the Gentiles.
Numbers 15:17 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 18Speak to the Israelites and say to them: After you come into the land to which I am bringing you, 19whenever you eat of the bread of the land, you shall present a donation to the LORD. 20From your first batch of dough you shall present a loaf as a donation; you shall present it just as you present a donation from the threshing floor. 21Throughout your generations you shall give to the LORD a donation from the first of your batch of dough.
• The point to remember here is that both the first fruits dough and the root are metaphors of hope and of continuing Divine purpose with regard to the Jewish people. And it is also stunning to contemplate that Paul argues that what is true for the firstfruits is true for the harvest—what is true for the lump, is true for all the dough [that the latter is made holy/acceptable by the former], and therefore what is true of the Remant also effects the standing of the rest, that is, the rest of Israel. In Paul’s comments on the Numbers passage, what is true of the part determines the status of the whole. This is clearly the flow of Paul’s argument.
C. vv. 17-32 - For Paul, Israel had, has, and will always have priority in G-d's dealings.

17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, 18do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. 19You will say, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." 20That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. 21For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you. 22Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. 23And even those of Israel, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24For if you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.

25 So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters,i I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written,

"Out of Zion will come the Deliverer;

he will banish ungodliness from Jacob."

27 "And this is my covenant with them,

when I take away their sins."

28As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; 29for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, 31so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. 32For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.
D. 17-24 – Paul reminds those from among the other nations (Gentiles) of their dependence on Israel.
1) The branches which were broken off are Jews who declined God’s offer in Messiah, those who stumbled over the cornerstone as they were destined to do.
2) The wild shoot/branches are those from among the nations who are grafted "contrary to nature" into the olive tree to share in the richness of the root.
3) Here Paul accomplishes three things:
• He chides his Gentile converts for any feelings of superiority.
• He reminds Jews that it is always possible for them to be grafted into the olive tree again--it is the most natural thing in the world. They are still natural branches, even in unbelief.
• He maintains a distinction between Jewish believers and Gentile believers in the purposes of God. It is not right that Jews should be absorbed into a vast Gentile majority and lose their distinction, nor is it right to say, “Well, we’re all just the samee aren’t we?” This is not what Paul says here. He draws a distinction between two kinds of branches. Even in unbelief, Jews remain natural branches. And even though Gentiles are part of the same olive tree as the Remnant, they yet remain grafted in branches. As Dan Johnson says, "For Paul, whatever the nature of his universal gospel may be, the particularity of Israel must never be forfeited."
E. 25-32 – Paul proclaims the final salvation of Israel
1) Israel remains elect. All Israel will eventually be saved
2) The "mystery" of which Paul speaks is probably the elegant manner in which God pulls this off--in a way which few if any would ever guess.
• Jews would wrongly imagine that the Gentiles could not experience salvation apart from becoming Jews.
• Gentiles would wrongly imagine that only by "becoming one of us" and joining the Gentile majority in the Church could Jews experience salvation.
• For Paul, God's outworkings are far more sophisticated.
F. vv. 33-36 – Paul praises the wisdom and grace God has ways of working things out that neither Jew nor Gentile would have guessed, and his ways guarantee that no flesh will be able to glory in God's presence.

33 O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

34 "For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?"

35 "Or who has given a gift to him,

to receive a gift in return?"

36For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
III. What might this mean for us as a congregation and for the future of the Messianic Jewish Movement? To answer that, the following is quoted from an earlier message.

I am proposing that at the very least we need a new definition of outreach such as this one: Messianic Jewish outreach is the remnant of Israel being what it should be, and doing what it should do with respect to God’s consummating purposes for the descendants of Jacob.
We are used to thinking of ourselves as the remnant of Israel. However, I wonder how many of us have given attention to the responsibilities of the remnant? Those responsibilities include at least the following.
(1) The remnant is supposed to serve as a sign that God has a continuing purpose for the Jewish people.
(2) The remnant is supposed to be a demonstration of that purpose - a proleptic preview, a sort of “preview of coming attractions.
(3) The remnant is supposed to be a catalyst assisting greater Israel toward that Divine purpose.

If effective Messianic Jewish outreach is ineluctably rooted in God’s consummating purposes for the descendants of Jacob, then, if we would be effective in outreach, our first order of business is to root out and attend to the God-given cues, especially in Scripture, of this ultimate purpose. How else can we be a sign of that purpose, a demonstration of that purpose, and a catalyst toward that purpose if we don’t know what it is?
What does Scripture say about God’s consummating purpose for the descendants of Jacob?
Repeatedly and often Scripture portrays God’s ultimate purpose for Israel in terms of a national return to covenant faithfulness as manifest in Torah obedience. And often, this return to covenant faithfulness is linked to the return of our people to the Land. Time permits mentioning only a few passages of Scripture which portray this connection between a Jewish return to the Land, and our return to the Lord as expressed in Torah-based covenant-faithfulness
One example is the thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy. Notice the repeated linkage of return to the Lord, return to the Land, and return to the Law, that is, Torah obedience.

30:1”Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God drives you, 2and you return to the LORD your God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3that the LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the LORD your God has scattered you. . . 6And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. . . . 8And you will again obey the voice of the LORD and do all His commandments which I command you today. 9The LORD your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand. . . 10if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Another example is the very familiar and central Messianic Jewish text, Jeremiah 31:31 ff., where again, renewal of the people is expressed in a return to Torah obedience.

Jeremiah 31:31 “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Perhaps the strongest prophetic text on this end-time return to the Lord, to the Land, and to the Law, is found in Ezekiel 36, beginning at verse 24. This text reads like a checklist which we need to ratify in all aspects if we would be true to Scripture.

Ezekiel 36:24”For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land.” (Regathering: We are all prepared to say “Amen” to this: Hallelujah, we believe in the regathering of our people to the Land). 36:25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.” (Renewal: We are all prepared to say “Amen” to this national spiritual renewal as well). 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (We say “Hallelujah” to this as well: national regeneration. . .a new heart of stone instead of a heart of flesh). But then things get “difficult”—at least for some of us wedded to an old and expiring paradigm. Read on.
36:27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” (Here is where we have for too long applied our brakes. But it is clear that this return to the Lord, this return to the Land, is evidenced and accompanied by a return to the commandments God gave to our people. This is all signed, sealed, and delivered through an “inclusio,” a verse ending this section which echoes what was said at the beginning of the section). 36:28 “Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God.”

Nothing could be clearer: return to the Lord, return to the Land and return to the Law of God are all joined in Scripture. (And yes, I am well aware that it is reductionist to refer to the commandments, statutes and ordinances of Scripture, and to Torah in general as “Law.” But let’s face it, it makes for good alliteration).
In the Newer Testament, Romans 11 further explores aspects of this consummating purpose for the descendants of Jacob. Romans 9-11 ends in a doxology of astonishment. Paul is awestruck and astonished at the surprising outworking of God’s consummating purposes Who would have guessed that the people of Israel would turn down their Messiah when God sent Him? And who would have guessed that the nations of the world would come to a living relationship with the God of Israel without having to become Jews first? And who would have guessed that at the end of history, God would bring the Jewish people back to Himself in covenant faithfulness through this same Messiah—with the Jews returning to God in the context of Jewish life, in the power of the Spirit, and through the very same Messiah through whom the Nations of the world turned to this same God—while not having been required to embrace Jewish life?. How astounding! How miraculous! How unexpected and uniquely the work of God!
Is it not clear that this is what is astonishing the Apostle? Or do we imagine that the best God can pull off at the end of history, when “all Israel will be saved,” is that massive numbers of Jews will become Baptists, Pentecostals, or Presbyterians?
To just ask the question is to answer it.
We must remember that in Romans 11, Paul is contrasting the Jews and the nations as aggregates. He is not speaking of Gentile and Jewish individuals, but of these respective groups, the same dyad as is found throughout the Older Testament: Israel and the nations.
God’s final act toward the Jews will be directed to us as a people—he will bring the Jewish people to covenant faithfulness to Himself through the one despised by the nation [Isaiah 49; Zech 12; Isaiah 53].

Therefore, as part of the remnant of Israel, our responsibility is as follows:
1. Our outreach is accomplished as we serve as a sign that God has a continuing purpose for the Jews, a consummating purpose of a national turning to renewed covenant faithfulness in obedience to Torah in the power of the Spirit through Yeshua the Messiah.
2. Our outreach is accomplished as we demonstrate communally that we are a demonstration of that purpose - an anticipation, a preview of that covenant faithfulness which will one day be true of all Israel: a return to Torah-living in the power of the Holy Spirit, and to the honor of Yeshua the Messiah
3. Our outreach is accomplished as we catalyze and assist greater Israel toward that Divine purpose.

If this analysis of Scripture is true, what will be the results for how we pursue outreach?
First, outreach would no longer be adversarial and confrontational. We would commend all religious Jewish efforts toward Torah-based covenant faithfulness. For example, when religious Jews come to our conferences to oppose what we stand for, we would commend them for their attempt to honor God in the context of Torah obedience, while still differing with them in their disparagement of faith in Yeshua. In our communities, we would seek to assist and applaud all efforts by religious Jews to honor God in the context of Torah. We would not feel obliged to adopt some sort of adversarial posture.
Second, we ourselves would form communities committed to this kind of Torah-based covenant faithfulness, for we could not be faithful to our remnant responsibility unless we served as a sign, demonstration and catalyst of this kind of faithfulness with respect to God’s consummating purpose for all Israel. But our Torah faithfulness would be unique to ourselves in some ways due to the impact of Yeshua and the Emissaries on our halacha, our honoring of Yeshua, and our experience of the Spirit.
Third, our mission to the wider religious Jewish world would be to advocate faith in Yeshua and the power of the Spirit as Divine means toward their own greater covenant faithfulness. This moves outreach beyond simply individual soul salvation. While not discounting this, it would be bigger, and also true to the sweep of Scripture. We would be seeking to take the wider Jewish religious world further in the direction in which they are already heading—in the power of the Spirit and through Yeshua the Messiah.
Fourth, in addition to affirming and yet further catalyzing and challenging religious Jews, our ministry to secularized Jews would be very strong: a call back to the God of our ancestors and the ways of our ancestors, and a call back to Jewish community through Yeshua the Messiah in the power of the Spirit.
Fifth, the support of church people for our efforts would involve their applauding us for being fully Jewish rather than wooing us to be more like themselves. They would realize that moving deeper into Jewish life is our Divine destiny and our remnant responsibility.
Sixth, we would be returning to a communal concept of outreach rather than an individualistic one
All of this is crucially important for a number of reasons: (1) It is important because it better aligns Messianic Jewish outreach with the revealed purposes of God for the Jewish people. (2) It is important because it is an antidote to culturally determined and limited sales-oriented approaches to the task. (3) It is important because it instantly neutralizes the adversarial posture that we have inherited from generations past which ill-serves the greater purposes of God. (4) It is important because it calls us also to a return to Jewish covenant faithfulness. (5) It is important because it challenges us to expand and reevaluate the role of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our congregations and our Union. And finally, (6) it is important because it addresses the biggest problem, the biggest obstacle, in Messianic Jewish outreach.
The biggest obstacle in Messianic Jewish outreach is the widespread assimilation of Jewish believers. The Jewish community has a right to assume that when the Messiah comes, he will make Jewish people into better Jews. When the perceived effect of the faith in Yeshua is that Jewish believers become assimilated and indifferent to Jewish life and community, the Jewish community has a right to say: “Don’t be ridiculous! Put your Bibles away and don’t waste your time trying to convince us! How could this Yeshua be the Messiah if he makes Jews into goyim?” This objection has all the truth in the world behind it. But our own return to Jewish covenant faithfulness, which is the will of G-d for the remnant and for all Israel, has the added benefit of making this objection null and void.
Is God’s final act in history going to involve making millions of Jews into Baptists or does Scripture rather affirm that God is going to trigger a massive return of His people to Him in Jewish covenantal faithfulness, where he will write the Torah of Moses on their hearts, through Yeshua the Messiah and in the power of the Spirit?
What kind of paradigm shift in Messianic Jewish outreach is this analysis calling us to? What is supposed to be the shape of Jewish faithfulness to God? And what does it mean for us to be the faithful remnant? What is the shape of this remnant faithfulness?
If we really care about Messianic Jewish outreach, if we are really the remnant of Israel, if we are serious about Scripture, shouldn’t we at least be giving deep consideration to what I have proposed by way of a fundamental change in perspective, a paradigm shift?
What is the remnant supposed to do? Can we as a movement be faithful to God without rightly answering this question?

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Israel’s Destiny is Good News for the Cosmos

Much of this message is based on Dan G. Johnson, "The Structure and Meaning of Romans 11." In CBQ. Vol. 46, No 1/January, 1984:91-103.

I. Paul’s argument
A. vv. 1-6 - The remnant that currently exists among the Jews is the foreshadowing of the salvation of all ethnic Israel.
1 I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? 3"Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life." 4But what is the divine reply to him? "I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." 5So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace
1) The remnant is a symbol of judgment in some passages. For example, see Romans 9:27 “And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, ‘Though the number of the children of Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved;’” which is based on Isaiah 10:22, a word of temporary judgment, “For though your people Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness.”

2) But it also has another meaning: it is as a symbol of hope
• Isaiah 11:10-16. 10 On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious. 11 On that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. 12 He will raise a signal for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. 13 The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart, the hostility of Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah, and Judah shall not be hostile towards Ephraim. 14 But they shall swoop down on the backs of the Philistines in the west, together they shall plunder the people of the east. They shall put forth their hand against Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites shall obey them. 15 And the Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the sea of Egypt; and will wave his hand over the River with his scorching wind; and will split it into seven channels, and make a way to cross on foot; 16 so there shall be a highway from Assyria for the remnant that is left of his people, as there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt.
• Isaiah 37:31-33 - “31The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward; 32for from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out, and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
• Genesis 7:23 – “He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark.” The term for Noah and his family being “left” on the ark, is the verbal form of the same root in Hebrew as remnant. In other words, Noah and his family were the remnant on the ark, and as such, were a sign and means of God’s renewed fruitful purpose for the earth. So is it with Israel: Israel is a remnant of hope---a sign of a continuing, salvific and fruitful purpose for Israel and the nations.
3) In Romans chapter eleven, Paul uses the remnant theme to indicate hope
B. Flow of the argument
1) In Rom 11:1-6, Paul anticipates the conclusion people might draw from chapters nine and ten, from the Gentile majority among Yeshua believers, with a comparatively feeble representation of Jews, from Paul’s fruitful ministry being among the Gentiles rather than among the Jews, and the outright hostility the Jewish people of his day were demonstrating toward his ministry [largely because he was opening the door so widely toward Gentiles as Gentiles, as we saw last week]. The conclusion some might draw from this is a wrong one: that God has rejected Israel. Paul’s response is “mei genoito--by no means!”
2) Paul is also at pains to affirm his solidarity with His people. This is especially necessary since he is going up to Jerusalem with an offering from the Gentiles which he has been collecting for years. This good will gesture serves at least two purposes:
• To cement good relations between the Gentiles churches and the home congregation in Jerusalem.
• Because Paul sees himself as an agent of the fulfillment of prophecy. The prophets predicted that the wealth of the nations would flow up to Zion in the latter days. He sees his efforts as being part of that fulfillment.
• When Paul speaks in Romans 11 of divine foreknowledge, it seems certain he has in mind the entire complex of ideas as expressed in Romans 8:29-30, that those whom God foreknew he also predestined, called, justified, and glorified. In other words, his language drips with the assurance that God is by no means through with the Jewish people yet, and that his foreknowledge of them is part of a cluster of saving intentions toward them, just as he uses God’s foreknowledge of the Church to as a word of assurance in Romans 8.
• Paul refers to Elijah, and how he thought he was the only one left. In referring to Elijah, Paul focuses on the rebuke Elijah received: just as Elijah was wrong in judging Israel as being on the whole apostate, so anyone who thinks that God is through with Israel is wrong—despite appearances.
• • In verse six, Paul introduces his key term--the remnant. He presents the remnant not as evidence that a small smattering of Jews has been rescued, and that's about all, bur rather as evidence of God's continuing and dynamic purpose for Israel. The Remnant is the seed of a continuing, dynamic and saving purpose. And as we shall see, Paul presents the Remnant as the guarantee that Israel, despite all her stumblings, remains elect and holy to the Lord.
3) 7-16 The hardening is temporary and itself redemptive in purpose

7 What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, 8as it is written,

"God gave them a sluggish spirit,

eyes that would not see

and ears that would not hear,

down to this very day."

9And David says,

"Let their table become a snare and a trap,

a stumbling block and a retribution for them;

10 let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see,

and keep their backs forever bent."

11 So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall? By no means! But through their stumblingb salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israelc jealous. 12Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!

13 Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry 14in order to make my own people jealous, and thus save some of them. 15For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead! 16If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy.

4) • In verses 7-10, he speaks of the "rest" of the Jewish people who are hardened. But what too many people miss is that even the hardening has a saving purpose, one in which God is glorified. We have been investigating this together, especially in our examination of Romans, chapter nine. This saving purpose is for the sake of both the nations and Israel. [Compare with Exodus 7:5, where God hardened Pharaoh’s heart that His name might be glorified. Just as he hardened the heart of the Gentile Egyptians for the sake of Israel, so he is now hardening the hearts of Israel for the sake of the nations. Notice the quotation from Isaiah: “God gave them a sluggish spirit, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day].
• This saving purpose for the Gentiles is not the final word--because Paul says "if their rejection [that of the Jews, in the main] means reconciliation of the (Gentile) world, what will their full inclusion mean but life from the dead?" God’s final word in his saving purposes for the cosmos is a word about Israel.
• And as we saw last week, even Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles was for the sake of Israel. “Although his ministry appears to concern itself solely with bringing salvation to the Gentiles, Paul wants his readers to believe that there is a deeper motivation behind his mission—that is, the salvation of Israel. Paul works for the salvation of the Gentiles, but that does not mean that Gentiles have taken center stage in God’s plan. God has not transferred his favor to the Gentiles at the expense of the Jews. He still has Israel in view and in fact, as we have seen, the process of salvation culminates with them. Here, then, Paul portrays even his Gentile ministry as a catalyst for the eventual salvation of Israel.” (Bruce W. Longenecker)
5) In verse 16 Paul changes metaphors, from remnant to first part of the dough offered as first fruits as compared to the whole batch, and the root, compared with the branches. The firstfruits of the grain harvest [see Num. 15:17-21] is the remnant of Israel, and the whole batch is the "all Israel" that will be saved; similarly, the root is the Remnant and the branches are the all Israel that will be saved, also including the wild branches grafted in from among the Gentiles.
Numbers 15:17 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 18Speak to the Israelites and say to them: After you come into the land to which I am bringing you, 19whenever you eat of the bread of the land, you shall present a donation to the LORD. 20From your first batch of dough you shall present a loaf as a donation; you shall present it just as you present a donation from the threshing floor. 21Throughout your generations you shall give to the LORD a donation from the first of your batch of dough.
• The point to remember here is that both the first fruits dough and the root are metaphors of hope and of continuing Divine purpose with regard to the Jewish people. And it is also stunning to contemplate that Paul argues that what is true for the firstfruits is true for the harvest—what is true for the lump, is true for all the dough [that the latter is made holy/acceptable by the former], and therefore what is true of the Remant also effects the standing of the rest, that is, the rest of Israel. In Paul’s comments on the Numbers passage, what is true of the part determines the status of the whole. This is clearly the flow of Paul’s argument.
C. vv. 17-32 - For Paul, Israel had, has, and will always have priority in G-d's dealings.

17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, 18do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. 19You will say, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." 20That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. 21For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you. 22Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. 23And even those of Israel, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24For if you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.

25 So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters,i I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written,

"Out of Zion will come the Deliverer;

he will banish ungodliness from Jacob."

27 "And this is my covenant with them,

when I take away their sins."

28As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; 29for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, 31so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. 32For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.
D. 17-24 – Paul reminds those from among the other nations (Gentiles) of their dependence on Israel.
1) The branches which were broken off are Jews who declined God’s offer in Messiah, those who stumbled over the cornerstone as they were destined to do.
2) The wild shoot/branches are those from among the nations who are grafted "contrary to nature" into the olive tree to share in the richness of the root.
3) Here Paul accomplishes three things:
• He chides his Gentile converts for any feelings of superiority.
• He reminds Jews that it is always possible for them to be grafted into the olive tree again--it is the most natural thing in the world. They are still natural branches, even in unbelief.
• He maintains a distinction between Jewish believers and Gentile believers in the purposes of God. It is not right that Jews should be absorbed into a vast Gentile majority and lose their distinction, nor is it right to say, “Well, we’re all just the samee aren’t we?” This is not what Paul says here. He draws a distinction between two kinds of branches. Even in unbelief, Jews remain natural branches. And even though Gentiles are part of the same olive tree as the Remnant, they yet remain grafted in branches. As Dan Johnson says, "For Paul, whatever the nature of his universal gospel may be, the particularity of Israel must never be forfeited."
E. 25-32 – Paul proclaims the final salvation of Israel
1) Israel remains elect. All Israel will eventually be saved
2) The "mystery" of which Paul speaks is probably the elegant manner in which God pulls this off--in a way which few if any would ever guess.
• Jews would wrongly imagine that the Gentiles could not experience salvation apart from becoming Jews.
• Gentiles would wrongly imagine that only by "becoming one of us" and joining the Gentile majority in the Church could Jews experience salvation.
• For Paul, God's outworkings are far more sophisticated.
F. vv. 33-36 – Paul praises the wisdom and grace God has ways of working things out that neither Jew nor Gentile would have guessed, and his ways guarantee that no flesh will be able to glory in God's presence.

33 O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

34 "For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?"

35 "Or who has given a gift to him,

to receive a gift in return?"

36For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
II. What might this mean for us as a congregation and for the future of the Messianic Jewish Movement? To answer that, the following is quoted from an earlier message.

I am proposing that at the very least we need a new definition such as this one: Messianic Jewish outreach is the remnant of Israel being what it should be, and doing what it should do with respect to God’s consummating purposes for the descendants of Jacob.
We are used to thinking of ourselves as the remnant of Israel. However, I wonder how many of us have given attention to the responsibilities of the remnant? Those responsibilities include at least the following.
(1) The remnant is supposed to serve as a sign that God has a continuing purpose for the Jewish people.
(2) The remnant is supposed to be a demonstration of that purpose - a proleptic preview, a sort of “preview of coming attractions.
(3) The remnant is supposed to be a catalyst assisting greater Israel toward that Divine purpose.

If effective Messianic Jewish outreach is ineluctably rooted in God’s consummating purposes for the descendants of Jacob, then, if we would be effective in outreach, our first order of business is to root out and attend to the God-given cues, especially in Scripture, of this ultimate purpose. How else can we be a sign of that purpose, a demonstration of that purpose, and a catalyst toward that purpose if we don’t know what it is?
What does Scripture say about God’s consummating purpose for the descendants of Jacob?
Repeatedly and often Scripture portrays God’s ultimate purpose for Israel in terms of a national return to covenant faithfulness as manifest in Torah obedience. And often, this return to covenant faithfulness is linked to the return of our people to the Land. Time permits mentioning only a few passages of Scripture which portray this connection between a Jewish return to the Land, and our return to the Lord as expressed in Torah-based covenant-faithfulness
One example is the thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy. Notice the repeated linkage of return to the Lord, return to the Land, and return to the Law, that is, Torah obedience.

30:1”Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God drives you, 2and you return to the LORD your God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3that the LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the LORD your God has scattered you. . . 6And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. . . . 8And you will again obey the voice of the LORD and do all His commandments which I command you today. 9The LORD your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand. . . 10if you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Another example is the very familiar and central Messianic Jewish text, Jeremiah 31:31 ff., where again, renewal of the people is expressed in a return to Torah obedience.

Jeremiah 31:31 “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Perhaps the strongest prophetic text on this end-time return to the Lord, to the Land, and to the Law, is found in Ezekiel 36, beginning at verse 24. This text reads like a checklist which we need to ratify in all aspects if we would be true to Scripture.

Ezekiel 36:24”For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land.” (Regathering: We are all prepared to say “Amen” to this: Hallelujah, we believe in the regathering of our people to the Land). 36:25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.” (Renewal: We are all prepared to say “Amen” to this national spiritual renewal as well). 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (We say “Hallelujah” to this as well: national regeneration. . .a new heart of stone instead of a heart of flesh). But then things get “difficult”—at least for some of us wedded to an old and expiring paradigm. Read on.
36:27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” (Here is where we have for too long applied our brakes. But it is clear that this return to the Lord, this return to the Land, is evidenced and accompanied by a return to the commandments God gave to our people. This is all signed, sealed, and delivered through an “inclusio,” a verse ending this section which echoes what was said at the beginning of the section). 36:28 “Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God.”

Nothing could be clearer: return to the Lord, return to the Land and return to the Law of God are all joined in Scripture. (And yes, I am well aware that it is reductionist to refer to the commandments, statutes and ordinances of Scripture, and to Torah in general as “Law.” But let’s face it, it makes for good alliteration).
In the Newer Testament, Romans 11 further explores aspects of this consummating purpose for the descendants of Jacob. Romans 9-11 ends in a doxology of astonishment. Paul is awestruck and astonished at the surprising outworking of God’s consummating purposes Who would have guessed that the people of Israel would turn down their Messiah when God sent Him? And who would have guessed that the nations of the world would come to a living relationship with the God of Israel without having to become Jews first? And who would have guessed that at the end of history, God would bring the Jewish people back to Himself in covenant faithfulness through this same Messiah—with the Jews returning to God in the context of Jewish life, in the power of the Spirit, and through the very same Messiah through whom the Nations of the world turned to this same God—while not having been required to embrace Jewish life?. How astounding! How miraculous! How unexpected and uniquely the work of God!
Is it not clear that this is what is astonishing the Apostle? Or do we imagine that the best God can pull off at the end of history, when “all Israel will be saved,” is that massive numbers of Jews will become Baptists, Pentecostals, or Presbyterians?
To just ask the question is to answer it.
We must remember that in Romans 11, Paul is contrasting the Jews and the nations as aggregates. He is not speaking of Gentile and Jewish individuals, but of these respective groups, the same dyad as is found throughout the Older Testament: Israel and the nations.
God’s final act toward the Jews will be directed to us as a people—he will bring the Jewish people to covenant faithfulness to Himself through the one despised by the nation [Isaiah 49; Zech 12; Isaiah 53].

Therefore, as part of the remnant of Israel, our responsibility is as follows:
1. Our outreach is accomplished as we serve as a sign that God has a continuing purpose for the Jews, a consummating purpose of a national turning to renewed covenant faithfulness in obedience to Torah in the power of the Spirit through Yeshua the Messiah.
2. Our outreach is accomplished as we demonstrate communally that we are a demonstration of that purpose - an anticipation, a preview of that covenant faithfulness which will one day be true of all Israel: a return to Torah-living in the power of the Holy Spirit, and to the honor of Yeshua the Messiah
3. Our outreach is accomplished as we catalyze and assist greater Israel toward that Divine purpose.

If this analysis of Scripture is true, what will be the results for how we pursue outreach?
First, outreach would no longer be adversarial and confrontational. We would commend all religious Jewish efforts toward Torah-based covenant faithfulness. For example, when religious Jews come to our conferences to oppose what we stand for, we would commend them for their attempt to honor God in the context of Torah obedience, while still differing with them in their disparagement of faith in Yeshua. In our communities, we would seek to assist and applaud all efforts by religious Jews to honor God in the context of Torah. We would not feel obliged to adopt some sort of adversarial posture.
Second, we ourselves would form communities committed to this kind of Torah-based covenant faithfulness, for we could not be faithful to our remnant responsibility unless we served as a sign, demonstration and catalyst of this kind of faithfulness with respect to God’s consummating purpose for all Israel. But our Torah faithfulness would be unique to ourselves in some ways due to the impact of Yeshua and the Emissaries on our halacha, our honoring of Yeshua, and our experience of the Spirit.
Third, our mission to the wider religious Jewish world would be to advocate faith in Yeshua and the power of the Spirit as Divine means toward their own greater covenant faithfulness. This moves outreach beyond simply individual soul salvation. While not discounting this, it would be bigger, and also true to the sweep of Scripture. We would be seeking to take the wider Jewish religious world further in the direction in which they are already heading—in the power of the Spirit and through Yeshua the Messiah.
Fourth, in addition to affirming and yet further catalyzing and challenging religious Jews, our ministry to secularized Jews would be very strong: a call back to the God of our ancestors and the ways of our ancestors, and a call back to Jewish community through Yeshua the Messiah in the power of the Spirit.
Fifth, the support of church people for our efforts would involve their applauding us for being fully Jewish rather than wooing us to be more like themselves. They would realize that moving deeper into Jewish life is our Divine destiny and our remnant responsibility.
Sixth, we would be returning to a communal concept of outreach rather than an individualistic one
All of this is crucially important for a number of reasons: (1) It is important because it better aligns Messianic Jewish outreach with the revealed purposes of God for the Jewish people. (2) It is important because it is an antidote to culturally determined and limited sales-oriented approaches to the task. (3) It is important because it instantly neutralizes the adversarial posture that we have inherited from generations past which ill-serves the greater purposes of God. (4) It is important because it calls us also to a return to Jewish covenant faithfulness. (5) It is important because it challenges us to expand and reevaluate the role of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our congregations and our Union. And finally, (6) it is important because it addresses the biggest problem, the biggest obstacle, in Messianic Jewish outreach.
The biggest obstacle in Messianic Jewish outreach is the widespread assimilation of Jewish believers. The Jewish community has a right to assume that when the Messiah comes, he will make Jewish people into better Jews. When the perceived effect of the faith in Yeshua is that Jewish believers become assimilated and indifferent to Jewish life and community, the Jewish community has a right to say: “Don’t be ridiculous! Put your Bibles away and don’t waste your time trying to convince us! How could this Yeshua be the Messiah if he makes Jews into goyim?” This objection has all the truth in the world behind it. But our own return to Jewish covenant faithfulness, which is the will of G-d for the remnant and for all Israel, has the added benefit of making this objection null and void.
Is God’s final act in history going to involve making millions of Jews into Baptists or does Scripture rather affirm that God is going to trigger a massive return of His people to Him in Jewish covenantal faithfulness, where he will write the Torah of Moses on their hearts, through Yeshua the Messiah and in the power of the Spirit?
What kind of paradigm shift in Messianic Jewish outreach is this analysis calling us to? What is supposed to be the shape of Jewish faithfulness to God? And what does it mean for us to be the faithful remnant? What is the shape of this remnant faithfulness?
If we really care about Messianic Jewish outreach, if we are really the remnant of Israel, if we are serious about Scripture, shouldn’t we at least be giving deep consideration to what I have proposed by way of a fundamental change in perspective, a paradigm shift?
What is the remnant supposed to do? Can we as a movement be faithful to God without rightly answering this question?

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Will Paul's Prayer Be Answered? Yes!

“Will Paul’s Prayer Be Answered? Yes!”
A Teaching Presented April 16, 2005
Ahavat Zion Messianic Synagogue, Beverly Hills, CA
Rabbi Stuart Dauermann, PhD

In chapter Romans chapter 10, Paul expounds upon the mechanics of Israel’s stumbling, and how, having stumbled, for the most part and only for the time being, Israel is on the outside looking in at the benefits God has provided in Messiah. We must not forget that this stumbling is temporary, redemptive, and divinely purposed. And as has been hinted at already and will be stated directly in Romans 11, they have not stumbled so as to fall beyond recovery [mei genoito!].

As mentioned last week, to rightly understand Paul’s discussion, we must hold certain ideas in tension with one another. Among these are the contrast between things as they are and things as they will be because of God’s electing purposes for Israel and the nations. As we mentioned last night, we must not judge Israel’s final state by their current condition of being apparently set aside.

Richard B. Hays nicely summarizes the general historical context around the time of the writing of Romans, when he says this:

“By the late first century, the success of the preaching mission to the Gentiles had begun to create a manor crisis of communal identity. How was the community interpret the events of the time” There were ‘too many Gentiles, too few Jews,’ in this new messianic community, which therefore was increasingly in danger of losing its Jewish identity altogether, particularly in the light of the community’s fateful decision not to require Gentile converts to be circumcised and keep the Jewish dietary laws [Richard B. Hays. The Moral Vision of the New Testament. San Francisco: HarperSanFancisco, 1996:410].

Hays suggests that the entire letter circles around two basic issues:

• Is the grace of God extended to Gentiles who do not observe the Torah? The answer is a resounding “Yes!”

• If God receives Gentiles by grace without requiring circumcision and adherence to the Torah, does that mean that he has broken the covenant with Israel [and abandoned them as his people?] To this, the answer is a resounding “No!”

Chapter ten revolves around Israel’s not understanding something. But what is it that they did not understand? Our reflexive answer to this answer to this question is “Messiah. They did not understand that Yeshua is the Messiah.” The problem with this guess as to what they did not understand, is that neither the broader context nor chapter ten or Romans itself supports this interpretation as being comprehensive enough. In other words, this answer is only partially right. One needs to remember the following about the context.

1. The congregations of Yeshua-believers are increasingly heavy on Gentiles, and light on Jews
2. The Jewish community has, throughout Paul’s ministry, been outraged by Paul’s receiving Gentiles into the people of God without requiring of them that they first become Jews—being circumcised as a precondition to a lifestyle of obeying the Torah of Moses
3. Paul is on his way to Jerusalem where he is going to deliver an offering from the Gentile churches, which he views to be both a peace offering cementing the relationship between the churches among the Gentiles and the home congregation in Jerusalem, and a vindication of his ministry as a partial foreshadowing and fulfillment of the prophetic promises that the Gentile nations shall be a blessing to Israel in the latter days.

If one considers this context into which Paul is prooftexts used in this chapter, one will see that they do not deal with the Messiahship of Yeshua, but rather with another disputed first-century issue. And what is that? What was it that Israel did not “get?”

The issue they did not get was that the Gentiles were to become fellow-members of the community of Israel but without accepting circumcision or Torah. In addition to not realizing that Yeshua was the Messiah, Israel stumbled over not realizing that Israel’s being temporarily set aside while God worked out his will among the nations was something that had already been prophesied in Scripture. As we read chapter ten of Romans, we can see how the Older Testament texts Paul chooses address this issue.

We can also see how the discussion in chapters ten and eleven is framed by the prayer Paul alludes to in 10:1—that Israel might be saved. Toward the end of chapter eleven, he gives God’s triumphant answer to that prayer. But for now, let’s examine chapter ten, and see what Paul says about Israel’s stumbling—what they did not understand—and what we can see about God’s saving purposes.

10:1-21
1 Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. 2 For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. 3 Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

Israel did not realize what God was doing in Messiah, being preoccupied with the sense of privilege that comes from being Jewish and adhering to the demands and status associated with being the people of God and his Torah, they failed to grasp the magnificent new thing God was doing in the coming of Yeshua—and, even more to the point, failed to recognize that this was the prophesied in Scripture.

4 Messiah is the end [that is the goal point] of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

They failed to understand that the Messiah is the goal point of the Torah [in which they took pride], so that there might be righteousness for everyone who believes—both Jew and Gentile. They failed to understand that God was going to bring the Gentiles into his redeemed community in a manner attested to by Torah [and the Prophets], but not requiring of these Gentiles that they obey Torah! This is central to Paul’s argument here—he is still discussing and contrasting what God is doing with Israel and what God is doing with the nations.

He then brings Torah in as a witness to what he is saying, that God had a bigger plan in mind that would encompass not only Israel but also the nations. This is NOT a plan that negates or replaces Torah. Rather it confirms what Torah was saying about what God would do among the Gentiles and what God is doing among the Jews. This hearkens back to what Paul says in Romans, chapter two: 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31 Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Here in chapter ten, he continues demonstrating how what God is doing among the Gentiles and among the Jews in Messiah.

5 Moses describes in this way the righteousness that is by the law: "The man who does these things will live by them." 6 But the righteousness that is by faith says: "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?' " (that is, to bring Messiah down) 7 "or 'Who will descend into the deep?' " (that is, to bring Messiah up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart," that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: 9 That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

It is important to realize that he is not simply contrasting two approaches righteousness in verses 5-10. The “but” at the beginning of verse six has the thrust of “furthermore.” It is an amplification of the fullness of God’s saving purposes. Otherwise, we have Paul using Moses to refute Moses, which will not do. Rather he is saying, “Yes, the righteousness that is according to Torah [for the Jews] involves a way of life where one enjoys fellowship with God, but furthermore, the Torah speaks of a way of faith, a way of dependence upon what God does independent of what we can do. It is a way of operation attested to in Torah, wherein the issue is not what we do, but what God has done. Don’t worry about ascending to heaven or descending to the depths—about doing great things, but rather rely upon the great thing that God has done. This is a reality, a dynamic testified to in Torah, and demonstrate in our day in what the God of Torah has done in Messiah. This argument underscores Paul’s portrayal of how Israel continues stumbling over Messiah…not realizing what the God of Torah was doing in him.

But the discussion goes on to underscore the broader context of Israel’s stumbling—what God is doing among the Gentiles, and how this great fact and Israel’s stumbling were both prophesied in Scripture. Notice especially the inclusiveness of the quote texts in verses 11-13. This is part of Paul’s point, the foreordained inclusion of the Gentiles. Notice too how Paul vindicates his own ministry through his statements here [another of his concerns].

11 As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." 12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile - the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." 14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"

Paul then turns to underscoring again how Israel stumbled, not understanding what God was doing in Messiah especially as it involved what he was doing among the Gentiles, and how this stumbling was part of the foreordained and prophesied purposes of God. Notice the rhetorical questions in verses 16-21, all questions concerning “Well, what about Israel? Has God left them in the dark and left them behind in a dishonorable manner?” Notice how he vindicates God’s honor by piling up the Older Testamental quotations. God is not dishonorable in how he is handling Israel and the nations. He foretold and foreshadowed these things repeatedly—this is all part of Paul’s argument throughout Romans 9-11, where he vindicates the honor of God.

16 But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" 17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Messiah. 18 But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did: "Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." 19 Again I ask: Did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, "I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding." 20 And Isaiah boldly says, "I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me." 21 But concerning Israel he says, "All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people."

Having described Israel in their stumbled state—a state which Paul knows to be not only tragic, but also divinely ordained, purposeful, salvific, and temporary, Paul then asks the question that might arise in people’s minds as they contemplate the apparent petering out of Israel’s momentum. He asks and answers the big question that has been laying behind all of his discussion, “11:1 So then, did God reject his people? By no means!”

Next week we will look at the conclusion of what God has up his sleeve for his still chosen people Israel . . . and the Gentiles as well. Meanwhile, two quotations to whet your whistle:

“As J. C. Beker writes, ‘At the end, Israel’s beginning, that is, its election by God, will be confirmed” (Longenecker, p. 102).

“Although his ministry appears to concern itself solely with bringing salvation to the Gentiles, Paul wants his readers to believe that there is a deeper motivation behind his mission—that is, the salvation of Israel. Paul works for the salvation of the Gentiles, but that does not mean that Gentiles have taken center stage in God’s plan. God has not transferred his favor to the gentiles at the expense of the Jews. He still has Israel in view and in fact, as we have seen, the process of salvation culminates with them. Here, then, Paul portrays even his Gentile ministry as a catalyst for the eventual salvation of Israel.” (Bruce W. Longenecker)

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Has God Abandoned Israel as his ‘Plan A People’”?

(This is a teaching presented April 9, 2005 at Ahavat Zion Messianic Synagogue, Beverly Hills, California. )

The issue of whether God has bailed out on Israel, say, for their unbelief concerning Yeshua, was a real question for the believers in Rome to whom Paul wrote his letter. It remains a real issue today, as there are many who either teach or simply assume that this is the case. However, imbedded in this contention is the poisonous implication that God himself is fickle, and that he was either unable or unwilling to accomplish his saving promises and plan for Israel, attested to in the Older Testament, as we saw last week.

As we begin this lesson, I present two juicy quotations that foreshadow where we are heading today as we examine Romans chapter nine. (We will cover chapters ten and eleven next in the next week or two].

“Paul’s announced and defended conviction is that the word of God has not failed (9:6). In a remarkable rhetorical tour de force Paul writes the entire passage from 9:6 to 9:27 using nearly twenty active verbs depicting God’s action, but using only a few verbs, all passive, with respect to humanity. He thus makes the point absolutely clear, namely that the current ‘plight’ of Israel after the flesh is entirely the result of God’s decisions. Thus Lloyd Gaston rightly asks: ‘How is it that people can say that chapter 9 deals with the unbelief of Israel when it is never mentioned, and all human activity, whether doing or believing, whether Jewish or Gentile, is expressly excluded from consideration?’”

“[Is it not true that Romans 9 is about] God’s dealings with Israel, namely that God will remain faithful to Israel, despite the fact that the Gentiles [the non-Israel nations] now seem to be receiving God’s mercy while Israel does not? Further, [is it not true that] Paul insists that the current condition of Israel’s ‘hardening’ is entirely God’s doing, Israel’s actions and moral conditioning . . . do not enter the picture at all. . . . [Paul notes], with reference to Jacob and Esau, that’s God’s purpose was declared to Rebecca ‘before they had been born or had done anything good or bad’ (9:11). God’s choosing ‘the younger,’’ Jacob, is not injustice on God’s part precisely because the issue is not about moral success or failure [as to who is more deserving, remains deserving, or not] but about God’s mercy and hardening, enacted not with respect to a moral condition, but strictly with respect to a divine purpose that must be accomplished.” [Douglas Harink, in “Paul Among the Post Liberals”]

What is the main issue Paul is seeking to answer in Romans 9-11? To identify this underlying issue we must first remember that he is the apostle to the Gentiles, writing to a racially mixed, but mainly Gentile congregation. Second, we must seek to discern what might be on the minds of these congregants having already heard the first eight chapters of this book read to them. We must also remember that these people will all want to know about the security of their redemption in Messiah. But why might that security be an issue for them? This brings us to the heart of the matter. They will want to know, and Paul is seeking to address, this question: “How can we depend upon God’s faithfulness and unfailing love, when we consider that for the most part, the Jewish people, God’s chosen, seem to have been cast off to the side?” And the argument can also be made that there were those Gentiles in the Roman congregations who were already looking down their Roman noses at the Jews with whom they associated. [This is why he warns them in Romans 11 to not be arrogant toward the natural branches]. Paul may then be seeking to correct a growing Roman conviction that God has soured on the Jews and grown sweet on the Gentiles.

This would of course be a matter of concern to the Jewish believers in the church at Rome, but also a matter of pastoral concern for Paul, who knows that such an attitude about God’s turning from loving the Jews to instead loving the non-Jews, as ego-stroking as it might be for the Gentiles, also undermines the stability of the faith the Gentiles embrace, for if God could go sour on the Jews, he could do the same toward them. So if God is bailing out on the Jews, everyone loses, both the Jews and the Gentiles. Paul knows this, and in these chapters seeks to explain why he knows this to be not true. It is important for Paul to defend God’s faithfulness to the Jews, to demonsrate that, despite appearances, they have not been abandoned.

Romans 9-11 must be seen against the background of Romans 1-8, and especially the rousing ending to Romans 8: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” [Romans 8:38-39]. To which the rejoinder might well be, “O yeah, Paul? What about the Jews? Are they not separated from the love of God in Messiah Yeshua our Lord? Has not the love of God for Israel reached a dead end due to Israel’s wholesale rejection of Yeshua [in the case of some], and ignoring of Yeshua [in many more cases]? How can you say that nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God when it seems so clear to some of us at least that the Jewish people, apart from faith in Israel’s Messiah, have in some sense been separated from the love of God. And more to the point, when it seems clear that the love that God has for them as run out, and in a sense, failed, how can we have confidence in the love this God has for us? How can we have confidence in the triumphant love of God for us when God’s love for Israel, instead of ending in triumph appears to be ending in failure and abandonment?”

This question about the dependability, sufficiency, and longevity of God’s electing grace foundational to these chapters.

I want to suggest that Paul’s response to all of this is to emphasize the following:

1. God’s love for Israel has not failed nor faltered;
2. Israel’s status with him remains secure;
3. The faltering of Israel, their stumbling, is itself part of the Divine plan and thus no reason for God to withdraw his mercy to them as a people, nor for us to doubt that mercy, although;
4. Faltering in faith does bring negative consequences for the time being
      a. For the Jews, natural branches being broken off
      b. And again, for the Jews, some generations suffering the consequences of living out that partial hardening, but even        this suffering is part of God’s redemptive purpose through Israel;
      c. For the Gentiles, faltering in faith is also something to avoid, (11:2) "For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.”
5. Since God’s loving election of Israel remains secure, the Gentiles can have faith in the stability of His love and purpose for them,
6. They need not worry that God’s love for them will be falter or be withdrawn. However- -
7. Neither should any of these Gentiles be arrogant toward Israel as if they are God’s new favorites;
8. The salvation of all, Jew and Gentile, is by electing grace,
9. All should seek to live lives worthy of that love and divine favor
10. And the Gentiles should seek to play their part in hastening that day when
11. The manifest pleasure of God will again rest upon Israel, when all Israel will be saved, resulting in the consummating redemption of the cosmos.

It may help here to reinforce our conviction about what Paul is up to here. If we accept as a fact that Paul is seeking to reassure his largely Gentile audience, how would it be of comfort to them to know that God had abandoned Israel because of their unbelief? It would be of no comfort at all, because any perceptive Roman recipient of the letter would say, “What is to keep God from abandoning us if we too fall into unbelief?” And, reading between the lines of his letter, it appears that there is some tension between the Jews and Gentiles in the Roman congregations, with the latter beginning to feel superior to the former. How would a message about God’s turning away from Israel his people resolve that tension? Not at all! No, he is not focusing on Israel’s abandonment, God forbid, but on God’s elegant and sovereign electing mercy to Israel and to all.

The way Paul reassures his recipients is by pointing out the following:
      • God has been faithful in all his dealings with Israel
      • Their faithlessness and stumbling is part of the will of God. . .something He engineered, something for which they were also chosen, is for the benefit of the Gentile
      • In his faithfulness, God will once again restore Israel to glory
      • Therefore, be assured that God will prove faithful to you Gentiles
      • And avoid ever being self-congratulatory concerning your own chosenness status—you were chosen only because God exercised his freedom in extending mercy to you, just as Israel has been chosen the same way.

Excellent Christian theologian, Douglas Harink, thinks clearly on these matters, and ably refutes the false presuppositions many hold concerning the writings of Paul and what hel supposedly alleges about God and the Jewish people. One of those parties whom Harink critiques is the famous British theologian N.T. Wright. Here is part of what Harink says about why Wright is wrong!

“Paul thus becomes in Wright’s hands an evangelical theologian of individual sin, repentance, conversion and acceptance of Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior through faith, upon receiving an offer of salvation. We might also note how voluntary and self-moved all of this appears in Wright’s construal. It is individual Jews, now as generic human beings [rather than as members of a covenant people] no different from Gentiles, who, in response to the new possibility of salvation in Christ, ‘see ‘ what God is doing to Israel, ‘abandon’ their ethnic covenant status, ‘come to faith in,’ ‘grasp in faith,’ or ‘embrace’ Jesus Christ, in so doing, ‘regain’ their covenant status—individual Jews on the proverbial sawdust trail. Perhaps Wright hardly intends it, but in his hands the biblical understanding of the chosen people of Israel is reduced to Jews (with Gentiles) as individual seekers and choosers of Christianity, who participate in the new movement primarily through self-moved individual faith rather than through election into a specific corporate body. While this fits nicely the idea of becoming Christian in the tradition of evangelicalism and revivalism, it is, as we have seen, a long distance from the way in which Paul renders the logic of his gospel—God setting his heart upon and sovereignly electing (and hardening and showing mercy to) and destining for salvation one fleshly people out of all the nations of earth and saving the nations by grafting them into this people” [Dougla Harink, "Paul Among the Post-Liberals"].

We would do well to realize that many times we operate on the false assumption that God deals with us and everyone else as individuals as part of an undifferentiated humanity, and that ethnic origins mean nothing to God. [In fact, some theologians lean in this direction!]. This would be so were it not for the fact established throughout the warp and woof of the Bible, and taught on last week, that, for the sake of the salvation of all, God has worked uniquely among the people of Israel. In fact, this special chosenness of Israel is the foundation upon which Paul builds his entire argument in Romans 9-11, because before he says anything else, he says this about the Jewish people: “Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.”

With all of the foregoing in mind, let us quickly survey the argument in Romans 9-10.

9:1 I speak the truth in Messiah - I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit - 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Messiah for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

Why does Paul have unceasing grief and anguish in his heart? It must certainly be because those Jewish people who have not found what he has found, who have not been drawn as he has been drawn, are missing out on something. In fact they are missing out on something that the Gentiles have entered into. Let’s hold on to that thought and return to it later.

6 It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." 8 In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. 9 For this was how the promise was stated: "At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son." 10 Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad - in order that God's purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls - she was told, "The older will serve the younger." 13 Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."

It is crucial to see, perhaps for the first time for some of us, what Paul attributes as the cause of Israel’s “missing out” status. Once we look at this carefully the answer is clear. The Israel of Paul’s day and largely of our own is missing out because of the operations of God’s electing purpose. He specifically says that this missing out has nothing to do with Israel’s no longer deserving God’s favor. Using the example of Jacob and Esau, he points out how one was chosen and the other “before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad - in order that God's purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls.” So, according to Paul here, what is the cause of Israel’s stumbling, of Israel’s “not getting it,” of Israel’s “missing out”? It is the electing purposes of God. Paul will have more to say about this as we go along. His argument broadens and continues:

14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." 16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. 14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." 16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

In verses 14-18, Paul deals with part of the crux of the matter as far as the Romans are concerned: the dependability, faithfulness and honorableness of God. Paul expresses their rhetorical question: ”What shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!!” This is the big question: is God undependable and is God unjust, because upon the answer to this question lays the entire burden of whether they [and we] can feel safe with God and confident of his continued support and love. The current translation uses the phrase, “not at all.” This is “mei genoito” in the Greek. It is the strongest possible disavowal, which is why some translate it as “God forbid.” You might as well translate it “Not on your life” or “No, no, a thousand times no.” Paul uses this phrase to totally and sharply refute a suggestion which he cannot allow to go unrefuted. Here, his point is that it is totally untrue that God is unjust to choose whom he will and not others. He refutes this through reference to the Torah, quoting Exodus 33:19 (“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion),” and 9:16, ("I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth"). Paul draws the clincher for us, stating clearly the principle he is getting at: “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”

We need to see these statements within the context of what Paul is trying to do: defend the faithfulness of God and the sufficiency of his gracious election. We can readily see how the statements made above about how God having mercy on whomever he chooses would be of some comfort to the Romans. If God wants to have mercy on them, then that settles it. As Romans 8:33-34 puts it, “Who can lay any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Messiah Yeshua, who died, more than that, who was raised from the dead, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” So again, we see that the sovereign choosing of God, his electing mercy upon Israel, is a comfort to Paul’s mixed audience of mostly Gentiles and some Jews. And this mercy to Israel is not theirs alone. It is also extended toward the Church from among the nations,

Recognize of course that if Paul’s argument was about God abandoning Israel due to Israel’s failure, this would be of no comfort to the Roman believers. They would have to live out the rest of their days worrying if they were next to be dropped off of God’s A-list.

However, the recipients still know that despite election, God still holds us responsible for our actions and our unbelief, (and yes that is paradoxical). So Paul, being a well-trained Roman rhetorician, expresses the unspoken question of his recipients. He also answers their question with some questions of his own and again strongly reinforces his main message: the free choice electing love of God.

19 One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" [This is their unspoken question about human responsibility and how unfair it is that God holds us responsible, while saving some and not others] 20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'" 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? 22 What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath - prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory - 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?

25 As he says in Hosea: "I will call them 'my people' who are not my people; and I will call her 'my loved one' who is not my loved one," 26 and, "It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.'" 27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. 28 For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality." 29 It is just as Isaiah said previously: "Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah."

Notice especially this final quotation from Isaiah which acknowledges that it is only because of the mercy of God that any of us are saved at all. This being the case, we have no grounds to complain about whom God saves and whom he does not, and whom he is working with at this time and whom he is not working with at this time. It is all God’s unmerited favor, his free-choice mercy. Under such mercy we can be comforted, but not self-congratulatory. And we must continue seeking to live as to deserve the grace we have freely received.

Paul next brings in a statement that would seem to place the responsibility for Israel’s failure, for her stumbling, her “missing out,” squarely on the shoulders of the Jewish people, who pursued “a law of righteousness” and did not attain to the righteous standing they sought “Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.” Here indeed Israel is portrayed as having missed out due to having not understood how God was at work: They pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works” which it was not. According to some scholars, the problem was that Israel, still assuming that salvation was entirely a Jewish possession, and that keeping Torah, Jewish status, and salvation were synonymous, did not understand that all along God had planned to bring the Gentiles in on this as Gentiles, apart from obedience to Torah but through Messiah. In other words, the Jewish people were out of step with what God was doing, and thus, being out of step, stumbled.

But the unspoken question is, “Does Israel’s failure therefore cancel the nation’s hopes of being in the end recipients of his mercy?” To answer this correctly we must not miss the fact that Paul says it was God who tripped them up. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. This is part of the electing purposes of God: their stumbling over the stone was for the sake of the progress of God’s plans in the midst of the earth. It was for the sake of the salvation of the Gentiles. So their stumbling, as tragic as it was, was no surprise to God, nor was it out of his gracious plans. Later on, Paul will again shout "mei genoito" over the idea that Israel stumbled so as to fall beyond recovery [see Chapter 11]. Paul is not confused, although many others are: the Jewish people have stumbled, but they are not out of the race, and they will reach the finish line!

Of course, the Gentiles getting in on the blessings with the chosen people on the outside looking in is still a cause for some amazement and concern. Paul expresses for them their chagrin at this, and reiterates his point, adding a description of how and why for the time being and for the sake of the salvation of the nations Israel stumbled over the stumbling stone God has placed in their way,

30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31 but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. 32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone." 33 As it is written: "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

It is helpful to note the totality of this quotation in verse 33: we must never forget that the rock over which Israel stumbled was the rock of salvation. And as we will see later, it is through their stumbling over this rock, that the Gentiles found the salvation the rock provides. Even the stumbling was redemptive and purposeful. And in the end, the people of Israel will fully embrace that rock as their own.

Conclusion [for the time being]!]:

As we will be seeing more fully in the next session or two, Paul is working with certain issues held in tension. Among these is what is happening for the time being and what will ultimately be true—for the time being Israel has stumbled and the Gentiles are to the fore, but ultimately, all Israel will be saved. And, as we will see in our discussion of Romans 11, he also deals with the tension between what God is doing among the Remnant and his electing purposes as well for the Rest who have been hardened. In both cases, the challenge is to not mistake current appearances for ultimate realities.

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