Living by Faith - Romans

Paul and Israel

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 35-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 035

Dictation Name: RR311S35

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before His presence with singing; enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we rejoice in Thy government. we rejoice oh Lord that it is not men but Thy will, Thy word, Thy law that shall prevail. Give us grace therefore to stand fast in terms of Thy word, to be zealous in Thy service, to do our duty as Thy servants in every sphere of life, that we may be more than conquerors through Christ our Lord. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word, grant that we may behold wonderous things out of Thy law, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from Romans 9, Romans 9:1-5, and our subject: Paul and Israel.

“9 I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,

2 That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.

3 For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:

4 Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;

5 Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.”

Romans 9 is usually seen as the classic text on predestination. This is not entirely true, because Paul has as much if not more to say on predestination in Romans 8, and he has much to say about it everywhere in his writings. But the reason why so much attention is focused on Romans 9 is because it is here he speaks of reprobation, and men resent this the most.

Some are ready to tolerate God predestinating them to salvation, but not to reprobation. Many resort to wild tirades against Calvin as though he invented the doctrine of predestination. One scholar, Lenski, a Lutheran commentator says and I quote: “The Calvinizing exegesis is so contrary to Gods righteousness, by faith alone.” The way Lenski sometimes writes one would think that faith was mans work, not the gift of God.

There is something more; Paul writes here with great grief, intensely personal feelings. In Philippians 3:5, Paul describes himself of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. Stock in Greek means family or kind, it does not refer to nationality. Now this is an important point. Nationalism is a rather modern thing; nationalism and patriotism are associated with political and geographical entities; when we talk about America we are talking about 50 states located in a particular part of North America, and with the Pacific group of islands. But this is something very different from what Paul has in mind, because when Paul speaks of Israel or the Jews he has a familistic and a religious association in mind. He is not talking about a nationality in our sense, but a family, because in antiquity a nation was made up of families and clans or tribes, all related, and having a common faith. So that, Paul refers to the Israelites as ‘my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.’ But it was not just a racial allegiance, nor was it even a racial allegiance, because we think of the family today as a blood fact. This is not so in the Bible, it is much more than that, it is primarily a religious fact.

This is why among Orthodox Jews to this day, if a son leaves the faith, the service of the dead is read over him. He is no longer a part of the family. He can have another family now, but he is no longer a member of his family, the service of the dead is read over him.

Moreover, Israel owed its origin to Abraham. Now, we see when Abraham went after Lot to rescue him he took with him from his own household 318 fighting men. This means he left probably and equal number of men who were too old to go to war, or too young; which means that there were approximately a thousand males, and we would have to assume, a thousand females in the household of Abraham. Now, of those who continued to be the people of Abraham in the next generation, Isaac, one out of 2,000 alone had Abrahamic blood, and we know clearly from Genesis 17:10-14 and other passages, that all these were circumcised, became part of the family of Abraham, so that the nation or people of Israel began with something like 1/2,000th Abrahamic blood. It was a family, and families then were more than merely blood; they could include adoption, they could include bringing them in through slavery and converting them and making them members of the family. It was a family that was essentially religious rather than racial or of blood.

Nationalism today is very different. Nationalism today is centered on political events; the fourth of July, Bastille day in France, the fifth of May in Mexico and so on, a very different thing. Moreover, then, the family origins of most nations were obvious in their names; Israel after Jacob or Israel, Asher, Assyria after Asher, Edom, Moab, Rome after Romulus. The family basis of groups was obvious; family and religion.

Israel thus meant a family to Paul, his family. And his families lack of faith, meant, he said, “great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.” His grief was like that of a parent whose child had gone astray, or someone whose very near and dear loved ones had gone astray. In fact the language that Paul uses here, one commentator says, is strikingly similar to one describing a heart attack. And Paul says in effect: ‘this is giving me a heart attack, what is happening to my own people.’ He is talking about a religious fact.

Therefore in verse 1 he says: “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not,” and he calls attention to the fact that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit bears his grief also: “my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,”

But we must remember that Paul was learned in the law, he wrote as a lawyer; and because of the Biblical law of evidences as we encounter it in Numbers 35:30, Deuteronomy 17:6, and Deuteronomy 19:15, he begins by not only a double but a triple witness. “I say the truth in Christ, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost.” ‘This is my witness and the witness of Christ and of the Holy Spirit with me.’

This witness, he says, ‘is to verify my grief, my consuming grief, a grief which is personal and religious.

So intense does he feel that in verse 3 he says “For I could wish” and the phrase means ‘I am almost ready to say let me be “accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:”

We have something here that echoes Moses, because we are told in Exodus 32:31-32

“31 And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.

32 Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.”

So intensely did Moses, feel, and Paul says: ‘I feel very much the same.’ We are reminded also in Paul’s intense grief of David’s over his wayward son Absalom, when he cried out: “Oh my son Absalom, my son my son Absalom, would God I had died for thee, oh Absalom my son, my son.” This strong family sense that Paul here manifests, has been basic to Judaism. It has been the reason for its survival. It continued to function throughout the early medieval era, even as it did in Abrahams day and subsequently, because great numbers of peoples in every country where there were Jews were converted to Judaism, so that genetically in each country the so-called Jewish population was genetically identical to the people around it.

Only now as a strong political sense is taking over and political convictions as against the old family sense, is a disintegration setting in to Judaism. When Paul says: “I could wish myself were accursed” the word is literally ‘anathema.’ The grief he feels is so great that he is almost ready to wish the unwishable.

Calvin’s comment here is very much to the point when he writes: “The settled boundary of love is that it proceeds as far as conscious permits. If then we love in God and not without Gods authority, our love can never be too much.”

In verse 4 Paul continues to cite Israel’s heritage of grace: “Who are Israelites;” (his kinsmen) “to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;”

So he lists some of the blessings of grace, the adoption of grace that they are made the sons of God, so that they are called by God: ‘my first born’ a type of Christ. The glory, the tabernacling presence that went with them in the wilderness, dwelled in the tabernacle and then in the temple. The covenants, so that they became the people of the covenants made from Adam through Moses and Joshua, and all things that pertain to the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises. As Psalm 147:20 says: “He hath not dealt so with any nation.”

Paul’s grief rests on faith and family, and the two are inseparable for him. He tells us in this verse and the next what it means to be of Israel, to be called to be the children of God, and in verse five he continues what it means to be of Israel: “Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.”

Paul adds to this list of privileges in the heritage of faith the Fathers or the patriarchs of the Old Testament, from whom, he says, Christ came in terms of His human nature, his humanity; but He is also God incarnate, God over all, God blessed forever.

Christ came out of Israel, but He is more than an Israelite. Israel belongs to God and to Christ the Son. Paul here prepares us for what he is going to say a little later in this chapter verses 19-21, when he compares the nations and the peoples to clay that the potter works, and he says: “Hath not the potter power over the clay?” and he says: “Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, ‘Why hast thou made me thus?’” so he says, the nations, all of them, including Israel, are made by God for His use, and for His use alone. He is Lord over all, and the sovereign.

The greatest prerogative of Israel, Paul says, was to bring forth Christ. And having rejected the incarnate glory, Israel was then cut off for a time. There is an analogy here to the modern era, because if God cut off Israel for rejecting His Son, will He not in due time cut off every modern state for rejecting Him? If He did that with His first choice, will He not reject Britain and the United States and all the nations even more readily? Paul in fact makes that point in Romans 11:19-21.

“19 Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in.

20 Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear:

21 For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.”

So Paul issues a warning. If God can do this to Israel, do you think He will hesitate to do it your nation, to your people? The nations of Europe and the Americas do not serve Christ. They can plead a higher culture and morality than other nations, even as Israel could do in Christ’s day; but this will no more spare them than it did Israel. To reject the wisdom of God, Jesus Christ, is to hate life and to love death, and it is this love of death that marks our time; and it is to this that we are called, to work to change this to the will of life, to faith in Christ. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, shake us out of our indifference by Thy grace, and make us a people zealous in Thy service, that we may confound the forces of humanism, might overthrow the power of the enemy and establish Thy kingdom in its power and in its glory. We beseech Thee our Father, be merciful unto us, strengthen and bless us, and prosper us in Thy service, in Jesus name amen.

Are there any questions about our lesson now? Yes?

[Otto Scott] Do you see any parallel between the Jewish refusal to accept Christ and the contemporary refusal of the disparate to accept brotherhood with the rest of humanity?

[Rushdoony] I think, yes, Judaism today and Christianity today are repeating the sins of the first century, that they are alike placing themselves under the judgement of God, that they are alike saying that: “What we want is more important than what God wants and what is best for the world and the various peoples thereof.” We are all caught up, all the peoples, Jews and church members alike, in precisely the same kind of sin, and to an appalling degree.

Any other questions or comments?

You see Paul gives a great deal of time in this chapter and the succeeding ones to this whole issue, because as those verses I read from the 11th chapter indicate, he was aware of the parallel, he was aware of the fact that Gods new chosen people could be as blind and foolish as Gods old chosen people; so we have been warned as much as Israel was, and in a sense more so because we are the ones who study all of this, and when people come up with nothing out of this except a desire to be raptured out of it all, what they are asking for is to be raptured away from Christ and the responsibility Christ lays upon His people, because they are saying: “we want no responsibility as Christians. Don’t make us live by our faith.” Yes?

[Audience Member] I think there is another aspect to that, because when they have to undergo Gods testing they turn to the rapture to get free of it.

[Rushdoony] Yes, rather than being tested and tried they want the rapture. And I have never had any one of the rapture people ready to answer me when I say: “What makes you think we can be spared when the people in Armenia and in Russia, and in Cambodia and elsewhere have not been spared their tribulation?” They seem to feel that they are a particularly privileged group, that when God says He chose Christians, He meant them; and there is a fearful pride in that, and it is the kind of thing Paul and others point to in Israel in their day: “Let the world be damned as long as I am raptured.” It is monstrous.

Yes?

[Audience Member] It occurred to me that dwelling on this, which they do, is like a copout; I mean, the person that wants to drop out of life that turns to drugs, you know, outside of the Christian world has his ways of doing it, but in other words I think that I know some Christians that will rather dwell on it and think about it and study it and look forward to the rapture, as though it is a release to them.

[Rushdoony] I think that is a very good analogy, it is the churches version of turning on with drugs; very well put.

[Audience Member] I think maybe it’s time we started preaching the old fire n’ damnation to Christians.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, that is what Paul is doing, he is warning them. Any other questions or comments?

Well, if not let us bow our heads in prayer. Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for Thy witness to us through Thy servant Paul, and we pray our Father that Thy people throughout the world may waken to their responsibility to Thee, and to one another in Thee, and that we all might in Thy service accomplish great things by Thy Spirit and power. Bless us to this purpose we beseech Thee.

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.