ROMANS UNWRAPPED 160

"For this is the word of promise.........."     Romans  9 v 9

Paul is answering the suggestion that the word of God has failed, has gone off course, because Israel appear to have lost their blessing.   This is a typical attitude of people who have gone astray wanting to blame everyone else but themselves for their loss (in this case God).   The fact is God's word never fails, will not go off course; indeed His eternal plans are very much on course, as Paul is about to unfold.   Notice the phrase at the end of verse 8  "the children of the promise are counted for the seed."   Then at the beginning of verse 9 he says  "this is the word of promise."   What is being compared here are the children of the flesh, that is those produced purely by natural means, and the children of the promise that is those produced by supernatural means by the word of God.   It is like what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John chapter 3  "Ye must be born again"; born from above, born of God, born of the Holy Spirit.   Therefore God's blessing is based on Himself and on His word and not on human merit or works or natural lineage.   This is the meaning of the word of promise.   The examples taken up in verses 9 - 13 are of the birth of Isaac and that of Jacob one of the twins born to Rebecca.   Here Paul highlights two aspects of the divine promise.   Firstly, in connection with Isaac, Sarah his mother was naturally speaking beyond bearing, as was his father Abraham's ability to produce children.   So the birth of Isaac was supernatural, accomplished only by the miraculous power of God.   In the case of Jacob and Esau, God made a prediction concerning their progeny that what would happen would be the reverse of the natural order.   Esau having been born first of the twins, would have the natural right to the family rank, but God reversed this by His sovereign prediction, and, as it turned out, this is exactly what happened; the families of both brothers lived to fulfill the divine prediction.   This has nothing to do with eternal destiny but simply a statement of what would happen and hindsight proved that what was stated prior to their birth was accurate.   The business of God hating and loving has to do with the works that they actually did.   The prediction was made before they had done actually any good or bad, but the history showed that God was absolutely right in His choice.   God does not hate people, He hates their evil works,   The second quotation from Malachi takes place many hundreds of years after the birth.   

The whole point of this is that God's word is solid, is moving towards a very definite and blessed goal.  What God says will happen, and history proves that all blessing comes to mankind when we accept the word of God without question.   Paul is here lifting two small examples of human history as determined by the living God that would lead inexorably to the birth of Christ out of the nation of Israel, that would in turn bring blessing to the entire world.   In the course of that, God chose Isaac instead of Ishmael and He chose Jacob instead of Esau.   Since our finite minds could not possibly grasp the workings of a supreme and Omniscient God, whose  "ways are past finding out."   Romans 11v33,  our role is just to accept God's ways and bow to His word and not charge Him foolishly with our lips.   He has perfect knowledge, we do not; His ways are perfect, His word is sure.   What will be will be, ours to simply believe.  

So then the sovereignty of God is not based on human privilege or human effort but on the sovereign purpose of an all knowing God whose choices are right and cannot be challenged.   There is no suggestion here that none of the sons of Ishmael could be blessed by God, or that none of the sons of Esau could be so blessed; it is simply as Paul says in Acts 17v 25-27  "He giveth to all life and breath and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from everyone of us for in Him we live and move and have our being."

In short God is God and we are His creation and Paul will continue this teaching along the same lines in the rest of the chapter.   We must look to ourselves for our own failures, and trust implicitly in the living God for our futures. All blessing, or otherwise, for every one of us, depends on our attitude to CHRIST, WHO IS OVER ALL GOD BLESSED FOREVER. AMEN!

SO LET IT BE.............IT WILL BE!!