Romans 9:4-5 “Of Whom…2”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁴ones who are Israelites, of whom [is] the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the [temple] service and the promises. Of whom [are] the fathers, and out of whom [is] the Christ (that [is], according to the flesh), the One being God upon all, blessed into the ages. Amen.

Continuing to consider these advantages the Lord has bestowed on the Jewish people, we see Paul says, “of whom is the giving of the Law.” Once again, while the entire rest of the world was stumbling around, clueless as to who they were and what all this means, God Himself stepped into the world of Abraham’s descendants and gave them the Law. While the rest of the world had nothing but a fallen conscience to guide them, God Himself gave the Ten Commandments to the Jewish people. I suppose those of us who grew up in a world where “everyone” knew the Ten Commandments, we don’t even realize how blessed we were just to have that keen, sharp, direct understanding of simple “right and wrong.” We never had to wonder. For us, it was literally “engraved in stone!”

I would compare it to something as simple as taking a class. We’ve all had classes where the teacher was perhaps particularly stern and demanding, but they always made it crystal clear exactly what they expected. I personally never minded those teachers. I was raised to actually enjoy hard work, as long as I knew what exactly it was I was supposed to do. On the other hand, we’ve had teachers who perhaps were very nice people, but you could never quite figure out what they wanted. As much as I liked “nice” teachers, I would rather they be stern and demanding, as long as they simply make it clear what I need to do.

So it is with life. I am so, so, so thankful for the Bible, for a place where I can go and find true truth! That is the reason I’m studying Rom. 9. I want to know the truth. I want to understand life. And day after day and week after week, the Lord does show me what it all means. However, what am I studying? The Scriptures. And where did they come from? The Jewish people. I believe it is safe to say that every single writer of the Old and New Testaments was a Jew!

The Law was given to the Jewish people, and to this very day, any nation has been greatly blessed when they made any effort at all to build their world on the truth of the Bible, to build their legal system itself on the Ten Commandments. It’s no mistake that for 250 years America was a greatly blessed nation, when those Ten Commandments were literally etched on the walls of our Supreme Court. However, it’s also no mistake that we have fallen into what seems more and more to be hopeless chaos, since the 1960’s when we spit in God’s face and shoved Him out of our schools and our government and our lives.

Like the pagans of old, here we are again, stumbling around in the dark, trying (very unsuccessfully) to make it all work. On every side, people clamor for this or that to fix what’s wrong with us, yet the Bible would tell us it’s this simple: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Ps. 33:12). It seems impossible that this nation could ever turn back and put the Lord and the Bible back in their proper place, but then, “With God, nothing shall be impossible.” So, we’ll pray to that end. May we again appreciate the wonderful advantage it is just to have “the Law.”

While we’re on that subject, it’s worthwhile to note particularly why God gave the Law at all. It was in fact a guide to morality and truth (which we all desperately need), but because we, like them, are fallen sinners, that very Law becomes to us a curse. What did Paul tell the Galatians? “So the Law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith” (3:24). What is sad to see is that, from the very beginning, the Jewish people didn’t see that. When Moses gave them the Law, they replied, “All that the Lord commands us, we will do.” They actually thought they could. They actually thought they could keep the Law, and, as Paul will say later, they sought to establish their own righteousness. The entire Old Testament is, in a sense, a record of their complete failure and a stark warning to all the rest of us that we first of all need a Savior! Paul will elaborate on this later, but, for now, let’s remind ourselves what a blessing it was for the Jewish people to have that “schoolmaster” (as the old KJV translated it) to lead them to Christ. Just like us, Jesus stood ready to deliver all those who “would not so much as lift up their eyes, but prayed, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’”  You and I enjoy that same privilege if we would but read our Bibles – to see ourselves for who we really are and to cry out for a Savior – but let us be reminded, that Law came to us through Jewish hands!

Paul next refers to what I’ve translated “the [temple] service.” In the Septuagint and the NT, the word translated “service” is definitely religious service, as in the various activities at the temple. That is so much so that it can even be translated “worship,” in the sense, I guess, of all the temple sort of activities which amount to worship. In either case, how wonderful for the Jewish people to be able to worship the true God! Since humans are naturally religious, they will worship something, no matter whether it’s real or not. Thus, the whole rest of the world had their “religious” practices, but they were all delusions. They had to create their “gods” and figure out how to worship them. The Jews knew exactly who they were worshiping and how He wanted to be worshiped! As Jesus told the woman at the well, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we [Jews] worship what we do know…”

Then Paul refers to “the promises.” Oh, wow. It does our hearts good occasionally to pause and consider what an enormous blessing it is to have the Lord’s promises. Peter of course says it well, “He has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (II Pet. 1:4). “Very great and precious promises.” One way of looking at it all is that I would suggest one of our biggest problems as human beings is just plain fear (which I would suggest is the flip-side of the “evil desires Peter refers to). We fear the future. We fear what might happen. We fear we might lose. We fear we might get hurt. We fear, fear, fear. And how do we deal with it? We resort to all sorts of aberrant, self-destructive, often anti-social behaviors, to somehow manipulate our world and guarantee that in fact none of that will come true!

Enter the Lord and “very great and precious promises!” “Fear not,” the Lord says over and over. We could ask, “How can I not fear, when I can see a lot of potentially very bad consequences?” He comes back with a promise like, “All things work together for good, to them that love God…” “Be still,” He says, “and know that I am God.” “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Obviously, I could multiply these promises for pages and pages, but clearly, the answer for fear is to trust His promises. And the good news is that, as we would put away our fear and simply try to do the right things, we also stop engaging in all our childish behaviors that only get us deeper into trouble.

From the beginning, the Jewish people had a Bible filled with promises. Those promises gave them the freedom to just love and do right, trusting that whatever the Lord has promised will come true. Once again, what an inestimable privilege. The rest of the world had (has) no one to trust, but the Jews did, and so do we. That is a blessing!