Romans 9:1-33
“Lumpy Mercy”
August 21, 2011 - Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

         You look in your mirror and they’re not there anymore. You have this sinking feeling. Your friends in another car were following you, but when you took the last turn, they missed it. Your blinker was on and there was sign for your destination. They shouldn’t have missed it, but they did. There’s no cell phone reception here, no way to go back and find them without getting lost yourself, no way to correct the error. All you can do is agonize and hope they realize their mistake and turn back.[1]

         Multiply that agony at your friends’ wrong turn a hundred times and you might come close to the feeling Paul expresses at the beginning of Romans 9. Verse 2 tells us he had “great sorrow and unceasing anguish.” His own people, the Jewish people, have most of them taken the wrong turn.

         How can Paul get in one verse from the end of Romans 8 which exults that nothing “in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” to “sorrow and unceasing anguish?” As he wrote those words about nothing separating us from God’s love, it came to him that many of his own people were in fact separated from that love because they had rejected Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah.

         Verse 3 is Paul wishing he could go back to help his people. If giving up his own standing in Christ would do any good for them he would. If getting lost himself would help them find the way, he would do it. But it was more impossible than turning around on the highway to find your friends who took the wrong exit.

         Paul sees a huge, sad irony in it all in verses 4 and 5. The Jews had it all. They were the chosen, they saw God’s glory, they were in God’s covenant, they received the holy law, they were instructed how to worship, and God promised His faithfulness to them forever. Even more, the Messiah, Jesus Himself, was a Jew. He came from the very race and nation that refused to accept Him. The end of verse 5 implies that the Messiah is the one “who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” In rejecting Jesus, they rejected their God.

         That’s the problem here and in the next couple chapters. If what we read up to now is true, if God fulfilled all His promises to Abraham and the Jewish people in Jesus Christ, if God is truly been faithful to the covenant with His people, then how can it be that so many Jews are going down the wrong road? That’s the question burning in Paul’s mind now.

         Verse 6 considers and rejects one possible answer, “It is not as though the word of God had failed.” The fault is not poor communication on God’s part. The signs were there in Scripture and in all that Jesus said and did. The road was marked. No, God’s word did not fail. Something else happened.

         “For not all Israelites truly belong to Israel, and not all of Abraham’s children are his true descendants.” We’re back now to Romans 4, the thought that Abraham’s family is bigger and different from Abraham’s physical, biological offspring. Chapter 4 verse 16 says the promise of God comes by faith, not only to those descended from him and knowing the Law, “but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham.”

         Paul goes back to Jewish history to prove verse 7, that not even all Abraham’s biological descendants were “his true descendants.” He’s thinking of when Abraham looked at his old wife Sarah past child-bearing age and thought having a son with her serving maid might be how God would fulfill His promises. So Ishmael was born to Hagar. But no, God said and Paul quotes in verse 9, “…I will return and Sarah shall have a son.” That was Isaac, and Isaac became Abraham’s line, the next patriarch of the Jewish people.

         Maybe God wanted Isaac because he was a legitimate son of Abraham’s true wife. But that’s not the reason. The very next link in the chain are Isaac’s own two legitimate sons by his single wife Rebecca. Jacob and Esau are twins, born seconds apart. Legally, Esau is the first born, the one by human propiety who should have inherited the right to be the next patriarch and father of God’s people.

         Instead, God chose Jacob over his brother Esau. We have trouble with verse 13, God saying, “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.” But it’s a Jewish expression meaning that God preferred Jacob over Esau. Jesus tells us in Luke 14:26 that we have to hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters and even our own selves to follow Him. But it means we must prefer Jesus over anyone else, not that we literally hate our family. The same is true here. God preferred Jacob to Esau. He preferred Isaac to Ishmael.

         Yet what kind of answer is that? Isn’t God just playing favorites? Verse 14 asks the question for us: “Is there injustice on God’s part?” Is God acting fairly if He just loves one person more than another for no reason at all?

         But Paul wants us to see here is that God’s choices for Abraham’s family are not based on the merits of these people. He didn’t choose Isaac because he was morally better than Ishmael. Jacob especially is much more of conniver and sneak than his simple brother Esau. They are not chosen because of their goodness or good works. They didn’t deserve God’s preference and favor. He gave it to them out of mercy.

         At the center of the chapter, Paul’s answer to his big question is mercy. He quotes Exodus 33:19 in verse 15, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy…” and then concludes in verse 16, “So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.” Jesus says the same thing in our Gospel lesson in Matthew 16:17. After Peter comes up with his wonderful confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, Jesus says, “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” It’s God’s work, not ours.

         Verse 17 gives another Old Testament example in Pharaoh, who had his heart hardened to refuse Moses’ request to let the people go so that God could bring Israel out Egypt with power and miracles. Verse 18 draws the conclusion, “So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses.”

         At this point, many of us are ready to object to Paul in exactly the way he says we will in verse 19, “Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” If God just chooses whomever he likes, what can we do about it? It’s all been decided beforehand. We’re “predestined,” to use the classic theological term. Why bother if it’s all up to God?

         It’s ironic. Verse 19 is an objection to what Paul is saying, but Augustine and all sorts of people took it to be the truth. They think Paul is talking here about individual salvation. God is playing “eenie meenie miny mo,” over the human race before He’s even made the world. He just arbitrarily picks out on one hand the folks He’s going to like and save, and on the other hand chooses the ones He’s going to hate and damn forever.

         Predestination is not what Paul is talking about here. He is worried about the fate of Israel. It’s not about how individuals get saved and go to heaven. He’s trying to figure out how God can allow so many of His own people to reject Jesus and turn down the wrong road. He’s thinking about God’s work with a whole race here, not this man or that woman who’s chosen or not. He talks about Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and Pharaoh as types, metaphors for the groups they represent rather than “predestined” individuals.

         Paul discovered that God’s mercy is not arbitrary, but it’s lumpy. It’s lumpy in several ways. First of all God shows His mercy and delivers His wrath to people in groups, in lumps. Individuals are important. God loves and values every man, woman and child, but God works with us together, in groups, in nations, in families, in communities, in lumps.

         So in verses 20 to 23 he takes another picture from the Old Testament, from Jeremiah and especially from Isaiah 45:9, the image of the clay questioning the potter about what he’s making out of it. In Isaiah 45 the point is all about what God chooses to make out His children, that is Israel as a group. Paul is worried about Israel as a group having rejected Jesus, having turned away from their Messiah.

         God’s mercy is lumpy. We’re all the same lump, the same human race, Paul says in verse 21, but out of that one lump, God fashions both “vessels of honor” and “vessels of dishonor” (that’s a more literal translation than “objects for special use” or “ordinary use). God divides the lump of humanity into people that will either honor God or dishonor Him.

         He still loves them all. Read Ishmael’s story in Genesis 21. God took care of him. In Genesis 33 it looks like God prospered Esau and even reconciled him with Jacob. And though Pharaoh came to a bad end, God was incredibly patient with him, gave him every chance to change his mind and let Israel go. Verse 22 says that God, “has endured with the much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction.”

         The image of the potter’s clay in Jeremiah conveys the possibility that a group of people can change, can repent, can turn to God in faith and become a vessel of honor, a “vessel of mercy” as Paul calls them in verse 23. God patiently and mercifully gives the whole lump the opportunity to become good work, even though some in the end still reject him and end up broken pots like Pharaoh.

         To understand this chapter we need to remember God’s plan. God chose the Jewish people, chose Abraham, chose Israel so that He could bless and show mercy to the whole world. God always planned to bring Jesus the Messiah into the world through Israel so that through Israel the whole world could be blessed. That’s chapter 4 of Romans again.

         So verse 23 says God’s reason for being patient with Israel, even when Israel turned from Him, which it did often, was “in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory… ” The really crucial part follows in verse 24, “—including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles.”

         God’s plan was always to work through Israel to bring Jesus to save anyone who would turn to Him and include them in the new Israel by faith. God’s Word has not failed, God’s promises have not failed, God is saving Israel. It’s just that who Israel is has changed. Not all those born Israelites believed, and not all who believed were Israelites by birth.

         That’s the point of the quotations from Hosea in verse 25 and 26. Those who seemed to be rejected, those who did not appear to be chosen, actually become chosen in Christ.

         Still and all, God has mercy on the literal, biological race of Israel. Some will be saved. Verses 27 to 29 quote Isaiah promising there will always be a “remnant” of Israel who remain, who turn to God in faith. Paul points out at the beginning of chapter 11 that he himself is one of that remnant. There is never any excuse in any of this to look down on Jews, to become anti-Semitic. They remain special to God.

         As we’ve seen all along through Romans, God always planned to offer mercy to everyone. Israel, Abraham’s biological descendants, were the starting point and vehicle for that mercy for all people. That makes them special forever but it also makes mercy for them lumpy in another way. They turned from God and took their lumps, but God still worked out His plan. Again, it’s not human will or effort, it’s God’s mercy that counts.

         Paul wants to satisfy both his readers and himself that God’s mercy really did and still does include his own people. But he has to admit that for Israel it’s not all been smooth. It’s a lumpy mercy, in many ways.

         At our men’s Bible study and breakfast we sometimes make pancakes. I’ve found no better way to make them than to use a prepared mix I learned about in the Boy Scouts. The directions are basically to just add water and stir. But right on the package you get this caution: “There will be some lumps in the batter.” In other words, don’t worry about the lumps. Don’t keep stirring and stirring trying to get everything to come out smooth. Paul realizes that however he stirs things, however hard he tries, things are going to come out lumpy for some of the people he cares about most.

         When you pour that lumpy batter on the griddle, the pancakes come out beautifully. Ask the guys who eat them on Friday mornings. And God’s merciful plan still comes out beautifully despite the lumps, despite the fact that some people turn from God, despite the fact that people who should know better go the wrong way and take their lumps. His mercy is still there, still at work for anyone who wants it and will accept it by faith.

         Which brings us exactly to where this chapter winds up and where Paul has been all along. In verses 30 and 31, Paul contrasts the Gentiles, who weren’t trying for God’s righteousness and yet get it by faith, with Israel, who tried by keeping the Law to be righteous but failed. They failed because being right with God comes by faith, by faith in God’s mercy in Jesus Christ.

         It all comes down there. Israel went the wrong way because they couldn’t accept the greatest lump of all. “They have stumbled over the stumbling stone,” it says at the end of verse 32. Paul’s thinking of what Isaiah said and quotes him in verse 33, “See, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

         I talked to someone at Courtsports on Friday who was stumbling over why Jesus needed to die on the Cross. “What purpose was there in all that suffering?” he wondered. Jesus Christ is the huge lump in God’s mercy. He is that rock that either makes us stumble or the rock on which we can anchor our lives. He’s the lump that completes God’s recipe for mercy. Whether you’ve heard it all your life, like Jewish people did, or whether it’s fresh news, Jesus Christ brings God’s mercy to you.

         Don’t stumble on the rock. Don’t choke on the lump. Don’t try to make it all come out smooth and right by your own efforts. Place your faith in that solid lump of mercy in Christ, and you’ll never be ashamed.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2011 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj