Israel Divinely Chosen As A Nation
Before going on and seeing what God has planned for the Jewish
people as a nation, it must be understood what He has done with them in
the past. The Plan for the future, having been determined in God’s
providence in the ancient past, is that God will not be dealing with all
the descendants of Abraham but only through the line of Isaac. This
"election" or selection of God will continue forward. It is important
even for the present to determine who is a Jew in God’s eyes! The Old
Testament, and now Paul here in Romans, makes it clear that the future
promises and blessings given to Abraham will come through Isaac, and
then through Jacob and his sons, and they are to be finally fulfilled
when the kingdom is established.
9:6 Fallen out comes from two Greek words combined, ek=out, pempo=fall.
God’s Word has not collapsed and imploded on this subject. "There is
not a ‘falling out’ of the Word of God!" His Word has not failed as to
what He has said. Paul uses here a Perfect tense which could be
translated. "The force of what God has said in the past, has come all
the way up to the present." What He has said about the Jewish people in
the past is still applicable, still valid for today.
And, just because a Semite has roots back to Abraham does not mean
he is part of the covenant promise. God has confined the Abrahamic
covenant, in terms of its national promises, only to those in Isaac.
God’s Plan is still valid through the line of Abraham-Isaac-Jacob-the
twelve tribes! This will be explained further in the next verse.
9:7 God made it clear to Abraham that He was differentiating
between Ishmael who was born to Hagar the Egyptian handmaiden and the
true son God intended, who was born by a miracle to Sarah—Isaac! Many of
the tribal peoples of the Middle East come down through Hagar and
Ishmael. They are not part of the covenant promises. And these covenant
promises mainly, but not exclusively, have to do with the Promised Land,
over which the Messiah will someday reign.
Kroll rightly states:
Nicoll correctly concludes:
9:8 The preterists and amillennialists just love to misinterpret this
verse! They wrongly want to say that Paul is denying the Jewish racial
issue in what he is writing. They say the apostle is trying to blur or
obliterate the Jewish lineage idea out of his thinking. But this is
clearly not so, if one reads the entire verse honestly!
When Paul says "not the children of the flesh"
he is not denying their flesh! His point is that, while the children are
still of flesh, God has sovereignly made a distinction between Hagar
and Sarah, and their two sons. Sarah was beyond the point of conception
by her age. He pregnancy was by a miracle of the Lord!
Why is Paul working so hard to narrowly limit
the promised birth-line? Because of the issue someday as to who owns and
occupies the land. He will bring this idea to a conclusion in chapter
11. It is my opinion that Paul did not fully realize there would come
someday Replacement Theologians who would try to get rid of Israel, and
replace it with the church. However what he says here strikes at the
heart of the thinking of the preterists and the allegorical
amillennialists!
T. Robertson, though an allegorist, writes like a dispensational premillennialist on this verse. He says:
For a brief moment of sanity, Robertson is sticking to the text and not
allegorizing the passage! He is not claiming here Replacement Theology!
9:9 The apostle now quotes Genesis 18:10, 14 to show that God
sovereignly discriminates as He pleases. That discrimination will go
even further with the next generation and the birth of Jacob and Esau by
Isaac’s wife Rebekah. God is here defining what the nation of Israel is
all about. He is drawing the perimeters and determines what constitutes
the nation of Israel.
While Ishmael, Hagar’s son, is not mentioned,
his name is implied in the background of the passage. Again, Paul is
making it clear that no one other than a seed of Sarah and Isaac has a
right to the Abrahamic covenant. No later generation of Arabic peoples,
many being descendants of Ishmael, can claim the Promised Land!
9:10 Now Paul in his argument segregates Rebekah who
is the wife of Isaac. Wrongly some think the apostle is discussing here
the issue of the saved vs. the unsaved, but that is not what is in view.
He is talking about the line of the covenant from Abraham that marks
out the strand of the Jews who own the deed to the Land, and who are the
covenant people. Not all the covenant Jews will be saved, but still,
the Land promises belong to them. As Paul well states, for legitimate
Jews, Isaac is "the father of us all."
While Paul in Galatians will say that Gentiles are children of Abraham by faith, this
is not his argument here. "Who owns the covenant promises" is his
argument. And the answer is not the Church but the Jews through Jacob!
This discussion is about a literal, historic issue: the physical line of
the Jews who are the inheritors as determined by God. Isaac was "one
man" and the physical father of those who were to receive the promises.
9:11 While spiritual and personal election may be in
view in the verse, that is not Paul’s main point in his argument. He is
still showing how God’s covenant promises are working out in God’s
divine history and providence. The apostle uses two words for election: The noun out-calling (ek, log-an) and the simple verb to call (used as a present participle), kaleo. Purpose in Greek is two words put together: "to before put in place."
God is by His sovereign plan orchestrating history! Human beings are
not. This is what the apostle means by saying "not out of works but out
of the calling." The word election in both of its forms in this
verse can often refer to spiritual election and predestination but here,
the point is continuing in Paul’s mind that God is determining the
covenant line from Abraham, Isaac, and now Jacob (and not Esau).
Who inherits the covenant from father Abraham,
including the eternal ownership of the Land? It is not any of the people
of the Middle East unless they are descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and
now Jacob!
9:12 This poignant story is told in
Genesis 25:19-26. The Lord told Rebekah that there were two nations in
her womb (v. 23), two peoples, and, "the older shall serve the younger"
(v. 23b). Esau came forth from the womb first, but Jacob (meaning the
one who supplants), grabbed his brother’s heel, signifying a propensity
to be the first, or to take the lead over his older brother (v. 26).
This all happened under the direction of God’s providence and
sovereignty. And that is the point Paul will make from the story.
Referring back to Romans 9:11, we see that the apostle makes it clear
God’s work of divine election and choosing is involved. Again, the main
point is about the covenant promises before the issue of personal
salvation.
The Lord’s choosing of Isaac over Ishmael, and
His selection of Jacob over Esau, comes down in history to us today. Who
owns the title deed to the Land, and with whom is God working to
re-establish the Abrahamic covenant? The covenant issue shades both Old
Testament history, and the history of our times. The children of Ishmael
and Esau always fought with their kin, the Jewish people who came
through Isaac and Jacob. And, the animosity continues today, though God
has brought the children of Isaac and Jacob back to inherit the Land.
This is part of the root cause of the tension now in the Middle East.
9:13 "It has been written" is a Perfect Passive Indicative from the verb grapho.
This is the common way to show prophetic fulfillment or to indicate
that the action of the verb comes down even to that moment! With the
Perfect, the action starts in the past and comes up to the present. It
could read: "It was written in the past and, what was recorded, comes
all the down to today!" What God determined by choosing the younger over
the elder impacts us even now, in the present. The impact of God’s
determination, concerning His people through the line of Jacob (and not
Esau) is still with us in the Middle East! Again, not every Jew of this
line will be saved because they must individually make a personal
commitment to Christ. But still, the promise of the Land comes through
this line of Jacob (not Esau, nor Ishmael).
Though you cannot see it in the English, both
personal nouns, Jacob and Esau, have articles in front of them. Thus:
"The Jacob," and "The Esau." Both names represent the clans, the
families, not simply the individuals. Paul is quoting Malachi 1:2-3.
Malachi is addressing the Southern Kingdom of the tribes of Judah and
Benjamin. The prophecy is heavy to the prophet and he writes: "The
burden of the Word of the Lord" (v. 1).
On these awesome verses in Malachi the great Old Testament scholar, Dr. Merrill F. Unger, writes:
Malachi
1:4 may tell us why God so hates Esau (v. 3). Esau’s inheritance was
with the jackals (v. 3) because this is what he wanted. He did not prize
the Promised Land that in theory he could have had. He was a man of the
wilderness, but he wanted Jacob’s territory still because he said: "We
have been beaten down, but we will return and build up the ruins" (v.
4a). However God answers, "They may build, but I will tear down; and men
will call them the wicked territory" (v. 4b). Unger adds that when the
millennial kingdom comes that is promised to Jacob and his descendants:
"When the restored Israelite remnant would see Edom (the land of Esau)
irreparably ruined but Jerusalem rebuilt and restored, they would
recognize God’s love rather than voice their querulous complaint, "In
what way have you loved us?" (v. 2).
