Next to the election and college
football, it is the most talked about subject in 21st century
America. You guessed it—Jews and
Gentiles.
Workspaces, coffee shops, up and down
the halls in the high school it is all that people are talking about, right?
I’m sure that in the next and
thankfully final presidential debate the topic will surely occupy at least half
of the time. How is God dealing with the
Jews and the Gentiles?
I will concede that Israel does come
up in the news on a regular basis but the conversation about Jew and Gentile is
mostly confined to Bible studies and sermons.
Can’t we just skip this chapter and get on to more relevant stuff? This is 2016, almost 2017!
I would think that there were many
Roman believers that initially lost interest or may have even been offended at
this point. Jew and Gentile were a
Jewish perspective of the world. Paul
was writing to believers at the seat of power in that day’s empire.
There was Rome. There were Roman colonies. Everyone else was just a conquered
nation. Paul was writing to a people
whose thinking was or at least had been that there was Rome and there was
everyone else and everyone else didn’t matter so much.
In fact, to say Jew and Gentile might
even be a little offensive to the Hebrew people as well. These people were not really called Jews
until Babylon and thereafter. The Hebrew
people taken from Jerusalem were second or third class citizens to the
Babylonians. Many of these people rose
to high positons in Babylon and remained faithful to the one true God, but they
were generally despised.
So what’s up with this Jew and Gentile
stuff? Why does it matter to me?
Jesus is Lord. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have professed with my mouth and believe in
my heart. I want to love one another. Yes, I know that Jesus was born into this
world as a Jew to parents who lived by the law.
Do I really need to know the whole Jewish kit and caboodle? Let’s just take the New Testament and run
with it.
I agree! Let’s take the New Testament and run with it,
but let’s do it fully equipped for every good work. We who live in this age where we don’t read a
Facebook post longer than a paragraph or watch a video if it takes more than 15
seconds to load need to understand that we are part of a very big story.
Some hear the word story and think
fiction, but the story is just one way to communicate. Only some stories are fiction. Jesus used stories, many are called
parables. God has been telling a story
since the creation of the world.
We are grafted in to His
Story that he has told since he spoke everything into existence. God created then God chose.
Adam and Eve were not Hebrews. They were people, creatures made in a divine
image. Out of this human race he chose a
people to know more closely and through which to tell his story.
Israel was chosen by God to receive an
identity as a special people—a treasured people if you will. The men were chosen to receive a sign in the
flesh. The entire nation was chosen to
receive God’s law. Paul even called it a trust. These same people were chosen to receive a
land promised long ago to them.
And they were the people chosen to
deliver the Savior of the world to the world.
For God so loved the Jews that he sent his one
and only Son that whichever of his chosen people would believe in him…. Wait
one minute! That’s not the way the verse
reads.
Why not? Was Jesus not sent to the lost sheep of
Israel?
Yes!
And he was sent to save all who would call upon his name and believe in
him!
God’s desire is that none perish and
all come to salvation in Christ Jesus.
This is a love story—the greatest love story if you will. Now in this great love story there may be
some tragedy, and hurt, and pain as we often find even in love stories authored
by men, but God’s love and his salvation are extended to all.
We have been grafted into this
tree. We were a wild branch and now have
been grafted into this tree and we find that it’s a good thing.
But unlike an actual branch, we want
to know where the goodness comes from.
We want to know where our life sustaining fullness comes from. We want to know how deep the roots go.
We who do not have the human blood of
Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob want to know that we truly belong in God’s
family. We want to know that we are
connected all the way to the roots.
Jesus said that he was the vine and we
are the branches. Without him we can do
nothing. Paul used an olive tree to
illustrate our connection to God.
But to get His Story from one chosen
people to the world, it would take a hardening of his own people and an atoning
sacrifice of divine blood.
The Savior came from these chosen
people but most would not know him. They
were drunk, in a stupor, blind to the salvation to the world. Prophecy foretold this with words such as
stumbling block and cornerstone.
We may wonder why it had to be this
way but we must not doubt that God is the author of this story—of His
Story. He wrote it start to
finish.
Branches stripped off of his chosen
people so that wild branches might be grafted in—that’s how the hook to the
story on the back of the book would read.
The transgression of the chosen made
way for the salvation of the many might get you to read the first chapter. This is the story of our great and mighty God
working within his own creation.
Sometimes, we who are part of that
creation and part of that story wonder, why did it have to be this way? Did
his chosen people really have to stumble for us to be brought into the favor of
God? These are some interesting plot
twists.
C’mon God, you could have just started
with everybody. You could have made us
right with you in the beginning. You
could have given the law to everyone. If
you would have given the law before the people made the Tower of Babel we
wouldn’t even have to translate it.
Time and again it seems that we as the
crown of God’s creation question God’s ways.
We want to know the why. We want
some answers. What sort of answer do we get?
We get what Jesus told Peter as he prepared to wash his feet. “You won’t understand this now, but later you
will.”
Of course when Jesus gives Peter a
little bit of the explanation, Peter wants an entire bath. We have a hard time being satisfied with the
part of the story that we are given.
God’s ways are higher than our
ways. His thoughts are higher…
Being a Gentile, I guess I can live
with that as I am the beneficiary of the way the story went. In His
Story, God’s love and salvation has come to me.
Don’t you wish that Paul had known—that
he might have had foreknowledge—that one day there would be a United States?
What?
Then he could have classified people
as Jew, Gentile, and Americans. Why
should we get lumped in with the Gentiles?
I may not quite understand His
Story completely, but I am glad that God’s love was for the Gentiles
and Americans, but it seems that God’s chosen people were just used and then
kicked to the curb. Bummer.
Paul reminds his readers in the 1st
and 21st centuries that the story of God’s chosen people is still
playing out.
When the number of Gentiles and
Americans—I sure hope that I don’t bite my tongue while it’s stuck in my
cheek—becomes complete, then God’s people will come to know the fullness of God
that we know in Christ. They are surely
not left out.
Now if we who are like a wild branch
grafted into a cultivated tree know the abundant love and life rooted in that
cultivated tree, how much more will the original branches know that life and
love and abundance when they are brought back in?
But it all seems to be a rather
circuitous route. What did God think he
would accomplish by telling His Story this way? It’s not like he couldn’t have hired a couple
dozen studio consultants to polish this story of which we are now a part. What did he accomplish by doing it this way?
That all would come to know God
through his grace and mercy. Hebrew,
Gentile, and even American all have the same route to life, life abundant, and
life eternal.
It is the grace, favor, and mercy that
we know in the person of Jesus Christ.
The Hebrew people—Israel—would have
and continue to have a special part in His Story but they would come to truly
know their God as we know him, by his mercy and grace.
Paul ended this chapter with what many
of your Bibles label a doxology. Why
would he do that? It is not the end of
the letter. Why bring in this special
insert of glory and praise now?
Perhaps it is because up to now he has
intertwined so many things—knowing there is a God, sin, falling short, grace,
salvation, discipleship, and being a part of His Story.
If you grew up a Hebrew, this was
always a part of the story that you knew.
As a Gentile coming into God’s family, this is what Paul Harvey used to
call, the rest of the story. As the apostle Paul continues, we will spend
most of our time in the area of discipleship.
How are we to live in response to
God’s fantastic mercy and grace? We are
going to get into some discipleship in the chapters to come.
For now, know that God continues to be
directly involved in his creation working with both those he chose through
Abraham’s lineage and those whom he has called out of the world by his Holy
Spirit to follow Jesus and take his good news to the world.
Be thankful that the Author of all things has
written us into His Story not as an
extra but having very much a lead role in working out this wonderful gift that
we know as our salvation so that we too may bring glory to God.
Living out our salvation to bring
glory to God is our part of His Story.
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and
knowledge of God!
How
unsearchable his judgments,
and
his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who
has known the mind of the Lord?
Or
who has been his counselor?”
“Who
has ever given to God,
that
God should repay them?”
For
from him and through him and for him are all things.
To
him be the glory forever!
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment