This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions. This is Pastor Tom Holliday. We are
taking a look together this week at Romans chapter 9, one of the most difficult
chapters in all the Bible to understand.

And because it's difficult to understand, one of the chapters whose truths can
most deeply impact our lives. Remember as we started this look at the book of
Romans, we said it's a history-changing book. And to change history, you have to
understand the five major truths that this book talks about.

We've looked at three of them already. You have to understand the truth about
sin, about salvation, about sanctification. We just looked at that in Romans
6-8.

When you turn the corner to Romans chapters 9-11, you hit a fourth truth that we
have to understand. You have to understand the truth about sovereignty. The fact
that God is in control.

And then when we hit Romans chapter 12, we're going to talk about the fact that
we have to understand the truth about service. Romans chapters 9-11 talk about
the nation of Israel and how God's sovereignty is shown even in His plan that
has been there for His people in the Old Testament all the way through to the
New Testament. His plan that's there for us now in Jesus Christ.

In Romans chapter 9, as Paul talks about God's plan, you find all the
accusations almost that man brings against God. They are faced in this chapter
with honesty. And I have to tell you that you will not, you won't totally
understand everything that's in this chapter, but I believe you will understand
God better by the end of this chapter.

This is a chapter of scripture that people have been worrying about, struggling
over, having anxiety over for thousands of years. Well, instead of worry,
struggle, or anxiety, I invite you to faith and trust. If there's doubts that
you have, bring them to Him and find faith and trust.

In Romans chapter 9, we really deal with our image, our view of God. You know,
there was a time on this planet earth where everybody thought the earth was
flat. And at that time, it was a very comfortable theory to live with.

It was safe, it was easy to understand, and it fit everybody's understanding. I
think one of our problems in a passage like Romans 9 is there are a lot of us
who've grown up thinking that God is flat. He's sort of safe, He's easy to
understand, He fits comfortably into the pattern that we've made for Him.

The truth is, God is bigger than any human box that we can design. And Romans 9
is the kind of passage that's designed to break through and kick out the sides
of those boxes that we've designed. The theme of the week is that God is bigger
than your mind, your thoughts, any box that you've tried to put Him into.

God's great honor to His creation, to us, is that He tells us things about
Himself that can be understood and accepted only by trust. Now, why are they
understood and accepted only by trust? Because they're greater than our minds
can comprehend.

God's mind is greater than our mind, so obviously He can see, He can comprehend
things that are greater than we can comprehend, and He tells us some of those
things about Himself, His actions in this world. Now, He could have said, "Oh,
they want to understand that. Don't tell them.

They'll just get confused. " But instead, He tells us, and He invites us to
trust. So with that in mind, let's dive into Romans 9.

Paul begins this chapter with a very personal statement. He says, "I speak the
truth in Christ. I am not lying.

My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow and unceasing
anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from
Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.
Theirs is the adoption of sons.

Theirs is the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple
worship, and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced
the human ancestry of Christ, who is God overall, forever praised. Amen.

" Paul begins Romans 9 with this very personal statement. He does the same in
Romans 10 and 11. For Paul, the question of the Jewish people is not simply
theoretical.

It is greatly theological. It is deeply personal, and you almost feel like you
fall off a cliff as you go from Romans chapter 8 to Romans chapter 9. Romans
chapter 8 ends with this huge crescendo of praise.

Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, but then Romans chapter 9, Paul
seems to just delve into these depths of depression. "I wish that I myself were
cut off from Christ, from all those great benefits he just talked about for the
sake of my people. " In one way, it makes sense.

As Paul talks about the greatness of God's love, he also feels in his heart a
depth of compassion for those who do not understand the greatness of God's love,
who aren't experiencing what he's experiencing. It's two sides of the same coin.
If I have great, great depth of joy in my life, excitement because of what Jesus
has done for me, it also can result in a depth of compassion for those who do
not have that joy.

So Paul doesn't express anger or accusation towards his people, towards those
who don't know Christ. He's in real agony. You may be in grief over a loved one
who did not yet know Christ, and I join you in that grief.

I understand that. Paul's grief was so deep, he expresses a willingness to take
their place in hell. "I would be cut off from Christ.

" As Paul talks about his people, his chosen nation, chosen by God, he paints
the picture of these people that God has chosen, adopted. They've been given
God's glory. They were given the covenants, the law, the temple, the promises,
the patriarchs.

Even the Messiah came through this nation. He says in the greatness of God's
choice of them, "I would give even my own salvation if they would now choose
Christ because that is God's intent. " In this chapter, as Paul talks through
God's choice of Israel and the fact that some have chosen not to follow Christ,
he's confronting a question.

The question's in verse 6, and the question is this. Did God's word somehow
fail? If Israel is God's chosen people, if they do have all of these benefits,
does not this mean somehow that God's word failed them?

And if God's word failed them with all the promises they have in the Old
Testament, couldn't God's word fail us? That's what he's really confronting
here. All these promises he's just shared with us at the end of Romans chapter
8, can you really trust them?

Because if God failed the people of Israel, couldn't he just fail the church now
and have some other new plan that comes up? Well, Paul confronts that question
head on. He has an answer.

Let me read for you beginning in verse 6. "It is not as though God's word had
failed. " Let me start that again.

He says, beginning in verse 6, "It is not as though God's word had failed. For
not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, nor because they are his
descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary," and then he
quotes from the Old Testament, "it is through Isaac that your offspring will be
reckoned.

" In other words, it is not the natural children. I was talking here about the
fact that Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, and he's relating Ishmael to
the natural children, his first child. It's not the natural children who are
God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as
Abraham's offspring.

"For this was how the promise was stated. At the appointed time I will return,
and Sarah will have a son. " And then in verse 10, he gives us a different
picture, a second picture.

"Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father
Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born, or had done anything, good or bad, in
order that God's purpose and election might stand, not by works, but by him who
calls, she was told," Rebekah was told, "the older will serve the younger, just
as it is written, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. '" And the question behind
this chapter is, did God make a mistake?

And Paul's answer is no. God's word did not fail. You can trust God's word.

The word failed here is a picture in the Greek language of a ship that has gone
off course. God's word did not go off course. Paul says God's word did not fail.

Instead, God is faithful. God is faithful. Throughout this chapter, we're going
to see lessons from the lives of Old Testament people, characters.

And here we learn both from Isaac and then from Jacob and Esau. From Isaac, we
learn that the promise is made not to the natural descendants, but to the
spiritual descendants. Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.

Natural descendants, those from Ishmael, those are not spiritual descendants.
That's the way Paul paints the picture here. What he's saying is, being a
natural descendant doesn't make you Abraham's child.

Paul says that the promises of God were not broken to Israel because in
actuality, those promises were not made to all the natural descendants of
Israel, but only to the spiritual descendants. Now, who is a spiritual
descendant of Abraham? Anyone who follows God's choice, anyone who accepts God's
plan of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, brought into this world.

Only those who have a Jewish heritage are the natural descendants, but the
spiritual descendants are all of those who have chosen Jesus Christ, who are
following the plan of God. The sobering thing here is the Jewish nation had
great advantages, but it was not enough. If you think this is just about the
Jewish nation, you're missing God's point here.

We too have great advantages. Now, they had the advantages of the Old Testament
and the temple and the fact even that the Messiah came from Israel. We have
great advantages, but it's not enough.

It's not enough to be saved. You can't be an American and that makes you saved.
You can't be born into a family where everybody is a Christian and that makes
you a Christian.

No, you have to choose and to rely on your natural advantages to hope that will
bring the spiritual benefit of a relationship with God is a mistake that Paul
said those of his countrymen were making with great sadness. He said they're
making that. It's a mistake that we can make today.

It's not enough to be saved to have those natural advantages. It's also not
enough to guarantee effective service for Christ. All over the world, I see
people who don't have the natural advantages that you and I might have, but are
effectively serving Christ and making a difference in this world because the
advantages are just tools.

It's our heart. It's our choice that really makes the difference. We learn from
Isaac that God is faithful.

It's not as if he rejected Israel. It's always all the way through, Paul says.
It's always been the spiritual descendants of Abraham who were Israel, God's
Israel.

We also learn a lesson from Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau, they were both
descended from Isaac. They were born at the same time and even before they were
born, the younger was chosen to lead the older.

Now why? Why? In order that God's purpose might stand.

God's purpose and election. And here we learn that election is not by our works.
It is by God's will.

It is by God's will. It wasn't because of anything that Jacob had done or Esau
had done. They weren't even born yet.

It wasn't because of anything that God saw that they were going to do. He even
tells us here in these verses. It was because of God's choice.

Now he says in these verses, "Jacob I loved and Esau I hated. " Many of us have
a struggle with that phrase. Remember Esau I hated.

Hated is a Hebrew idiom for preference. Jesus used it once. He said, "Unless you
hate your father and mother and brothers and sisters, you can have no part of
me.

" Well, he wasn't telling us obviously to hate someone in the phrase that we
would use it. The word hate means you prefer above. You choose something above.

And God chose Jacob above Esau. And remember that God's choice was confirmed by,
was worked out in Esau's own choice. Don't forget that Esau forfeited his
birthright by choosing to sell it to his brother.

But that's not the focus of this chapter. The focus of this chapter is on God.
And that focus reminds us that God is faithful.

God will keep his promises. The fact that he gives you choice does not mean you
are in control. God is in control.

And the God who is in control is a faithful God. Now here's why that's
important. If somehow you were in control, you couldn't rely on God's promises
because you'd be in control of his promises.

You couldn't rely on the fact that God would never, never abandon you because
somehow you were in control of that. But you're not. God is in control.

And God who is in control is a faithful God. As we walk through this chapter,
we're going to hit some confusing verses, some things that'll make you scratch
your head. But each day I'd like us to end by talking to this great and faithful
God that we can trust and thanking him for who he is.

Lift our eyes above ourselves and our human circumstances and get the focus as
this chapter invites us to do on God and who he really is. So what I'd like to
do, and we're going to do this each day this week, is thank God for his
character because this chapter is all about the strength in God's character that
you and I can rely on. Let's thank God for his faithfulness right now.

Let's take a moment to say God, thank you. Thank you that in a world where I
don't know what I can trust sometimes, and I have to sadly say I don't know
always who I can trust. I can always trust you.

You're a faithful God. You always keep your promises. You never break your word.

God, you are always there. And so today I decide to lean on your faithfulness,
to let that be my rock, my strength. God, use my abilities, use my
relationships, use everything you put into my life.

I am blessed by so many things. Let the rock, let the security that's underneath
all of that be your faithfulness so that even if something lets me down, even if
someone disappoints me, God, I will still know that you are faithful and I will
have the strength to live out the life that you called me. You've given me to
live.

Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. In Jesus' name, amen.