By J.D. Walt

Prayer of Consecration

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.

Jesus, We belong to you.

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Scripture

What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written:

“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble
    and a rock that makes them fall,
    and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”

Romans 9:30–33 (NIV)

Consider This

I had another BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) today. 

Paul and Jesus were the same age (give or take a few years). They grew up in different places—about five hundred miles apart. They were both Jews. Relatively speaking, Paul was born into privilege; Jesus into relative poverty. Jesus—as the second person of the Trinity—was by order of magnitude in another category than Paul and yet both were otherwise ordinary first-century men. 

Perhaps most significantly, both of these men had the same purpose, goal, and ambition in life. They both wanted to see Israel, the people of God, fulfill their God-ordained role as the light of the world. They both wanted the kingdom of God to come on Earth as it is in Heaven. They wanted to see scriptural holiness spread across the land—the glory of God filling up the whole Earth as the waters covered the seas.

Both of these men were men of the Law—of Torah. They both knew the story of God inside out and upside down. And that’s about where their similarities end. When it came to their method their approach could not have been any more different. Let’s say Jesus and Paul would not have been friends. Paul led the movement within Judaism that believed the way forward was 100 percent straight legalistic obedience to the Law. We should probably point out the absurdity of this approach at the outset here. Let’s call it a legalistic observance of the Law that paraded as self-righteous obedience. Jesus despised this approach. 

It is oversimplifying it to say it this way and yet it is right. Paul set out to keep the Law with a legalistic observance.

but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.

Jesus came to fulfill the Law with overwhelming love. Paul would have considered Jesus totally irrelevant. Jesus would have considered Paul very dangerous. 

And in the irony of all ironies, Paul’s approach to the Law would nail Jesus to the cross. 

Nope, Jesus and Paul would not have been friends . . . until they were. 

They never met before Jesus was crucified. They actually met after Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended into Heaven. We will hear all about their meeting in the upcoming Wake-Up Call series on the Acts of the Apostles. (It is one of the great pieces of historical evidence for the resurrection itself.) Suffice it to say, after this meeting on that fated road to Damascus, Paul and Jesus would become best friends forever. In a move that would stun paupers and princes, Paul came over to team Jesus, and the rest is history. Talk about overwhelming love—Jesus picked Paul, his biggest detractor and the most fierce enemy of the church, to quarterback his team.

“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble
    and a rock that makes them fall,
    and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”

Jesus, the great stumbling block for the Jews (and all seeking to attain righteousness and salvation by their own efforts), became the solid rock on which Paul would stand and beckon the Jews (and everyone else) to stand with him. All other ground is sinking sand.

Prayer

Abba Father! What a story! What a Savior! Jesus, we belong to you. We love this story because it is all at once too good to be true and yet it is the truest story ever told. You take the chief of sinners, who prided himself as the paragon of righteousness, and turn him into a preeminent saint. You take your worst enemy and turn him into your best friend. What a Savior! It raises my confidence in what you might be able to do in my life, with me, even me. I just want to stand on this rock and bow in awe for now. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.

By J.D. Walt

Prayer of Consecration

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.

Jesus, We belong to you.

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Scripture

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he says in Hosea:

“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
    and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”

and,

“In the very place where it was said to them,
    ‘You are not my people,’
    there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”

Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:

“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
    only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out
    his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”

It is just as Isaiah said previously:

“Unless the Lord Almighty
    had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
    we would have been like Gomorrah.”

Romans 9:22–29 (NIV)

Consider This

Something deep within every single one of us wants to be God; even if we don’t want to admit it. At least we want to sit in the seat from time to time. This is the Achilles heel of being the image bearers of God. We have enough of the stuff of God in us we think we can do the job better than God—and clearly we can do it better than the guy driving the car next to us. We think we know best.

As a result, we are all amateur theologians, desperately trying to understand what is happening in us and to us and all around us and make sense of it and yes, to explain it to each other. I repeat—we are all amateurs—from the highly educated to the most unlearned. For better or for worse, we are all doing theology, all day every day; believers or not; willfully or unconsciously. Theology, or grasping after the logic of God, is our native language. Again, when you are made in the image of God, it’s what you do. Oh yeah, and you create other gods (aka idols) in the process (to try and fill in the gaps and make it all work for you), but we will save that for another day. 

So Paul is doing theology with the Roman church about this matter of the Jews and their future and his agonizing hope concerning such. And because we have weeks yet to discuss all this business, I would like us to take a minute to get some altitude, look down, and admire his method. For starters notice the three-word opener, which he repeats again in the same paragraph:

What if God, . . . ?

It is a beautiful way to open a conversation, isn’t it? What if God, . . . ? Ponderous, open, invitational, and yes, humble. When it comes to conversations about God, beware the NIDs and the SIDs: That’s shorthand for the “Never-in-Doubts” and the “Seldom-in-Doubts.” They mean well, but they are plagued with insecurity and as a result, they can’t risk faith, so they opt instead for an over-confident certainty. Faith pursues another outcome: clarity. 

What if God, . . . ?

Notice also how Paul pursues clarity. He’s not building on the philosophical constructs of Aristotle, Socrates, or Plato (who were important players but quite late to the game). Nope. For Paul, it’s Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He works from Scripture as not only his foundation but his four walls and infinitely vaulted ceiling. The story of Scripture serves like his stained glass: The windows through which all light enters and is filtered—and the lenses through which he sees and interprets all of life and the world; history and eternity. Monday he called on Sarah and Rebekah. Yesterday it was Pharaoh and Jeremiah. Today it’s Hosea and Isaiah. Paul knows this story upside down and inside out. He knows it not like an academic remembers facts and data but like an old man remembers his life story with all its twists, turns, and surprising transformations. The story of Scripture is the substance of his memory and the source of his imagination. 

What if God, . . . ?

That’s the starting place, isn’t it? It can lead to questions like, “How might God be working in this challenging situation or that intractable dilemma?” And, “What might God be saying to us in this moment of opportunity and possibility?” 

What if God, . . . ?

It’s also the ending place, isn’t it? On this point, no one says it better than Isaiah. We will give him the last word today. 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
      neither are your ways my ways,”
            declares the Lord.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
      so are my ways higher than your ways
      and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8–9)

Prayer

Abba Father! Indeed, we know this—your thoughts and ways are not our ways and thoughts. Your ways are higher, deeper, longer, and infinitely wiser than we can imagine or even comprehend. And yet you have written them down in a book, through a thousand stories that are one story, and all of it perfectly finished and beautifully fulfilled in Jesus. Come Holy Spirit and teach us to ask this question, “What if God?” and to let the question permeate our stories, big and small. I want to be that kind of theologian. I want to live a “What if God” life. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.

By J.D. Walt

Prayer of Consecration

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.

Jesus, We belong to you.

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Scripture

It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

Romans 9:16–21 (NIV)

Consider This

There is a backstory here in this letter—and all the other ones too. It runs both in the background and in the foreground all the time. It’s the story of Paul, the superstar Pharisee formerly known as Saul. 

I wonder as he wrote about the hard-hearted Pharaoh, if the ancient Egyptian despot served as a kind of mirror for him—of who he was becoming—under the very auspices of being chosen by God. Remember, Paul cruelly persecuted the early Christians and labored passionately to crush the church. To be clear, as he did these things, Paul was doing his dead-level best to do the will of God. He was “the story.” In retrospect, he must have remembered how his heart was as hard as a rock. Yet now the chief hater of the church had become its chief helper; the main detractor of Jesus of Nazareth had become his chief champion. This is so far beyond far-fetched that no one would even begin to make it up. It is impossible. And I think this is Paul’s point here. Nothing is too difficult for God because God is God. 

The human-bound mind wants to explain God and the ways of God in some kind of system or logic; some kind of “God has a reason for everything” system or “everything that happens is God’s will otherwise God can’t be sovereign” system. 

One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 

Paul is saying because God is God, all bets are off. Stop trying to figure this out. This is beyond your pay grade. He is giving them the first-century translation of, “Shut up.”

But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?

As Paul writes, he wrestles with God. He wants his people, the Jews, to be in on the cover story. They are, after all, God’s chosen people. Yet Paul knows God is doing something much larger here than just the Jews, and he knows he, himself, is a sign and symbol of it—the chief sinner becoming the chief saint. That’s the cover story: It’s all about Jesus. Paul’s life is now an illuminated backstory. 

Here’s the kicker: Paul thought he was the main story before he met Jesus. Now he knows his life is a backstory for the great cover story of Jesus. He never imagined it because it was beyond imagination. Now Paul is now running through the Rolodex of the whole Bible. With the Jews now seated as his jury, who can he call on here? Jeremiah! Yes, Jerry—what would he say?

“Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

God will be God so we must let God be God. So here’s the gospel in it all: Though we can’t understand God, we can trust God. Why? Because God is just? Sure. There is more though. Because God is mercy. And is this just some sort of divine philosophy we are supposed to accept? Nope. God has spoken a final word that will save the whole world—it’s the Word that brings divine justice and divine mercy together into the eternal revelation of divine love: 

Jesus. 

So many of us are still waiting to trust God until we understand God; when all the while, the truth is we will not understand God until we trust him. This is the very meaning of faith. And this gospel of Jesus will come to us by faith or not at all. Remember, faith is not believing something you aren’t sure is true; as in you just have to “accept it on faith.”  No, faith is trusting in the reality of someone you are coming to believe is The Truth. This is how your life becomes a backstory in the greatest cover story of all time. 

Yes, Jesus. 

Prayer

Abba Father, thank you for Jesus, your perfect image in human flesh. Thank you that if we have seen Jesus, we have seen you. Thank you for not standing outside of your creation but coming into it and not only the created reality but into us, your very image bearers. Jesus, we belong to you. Holy Spirit, would you impart to us the mind of Jesus that we might think thoughts after God; that we might not wait to understand before we trust—but that we might trust and then find we understand. You are the potter. We are the clay. We trust you God with our lives. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.

By J.D. Walt

Prayer of Consecration

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.

Jesus, We belong to you.

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Scripture

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, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” In other words, it is not the children by physical descent 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.”

Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses,

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
    and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

Romans 9:6–15 (NIV)

Consider This

The Bible is at the same time both super accessible and very complex. Sometimes the plain reading is the right reading. Other times the plain reading can tend to obscure the better reading of the text. Chapter 9 is such a text. Over the centuries, the plain reading of this text seems to point to what has come to be known in church history as the doctrine of double election predestination—the notion that God has predetermined that some will be eternally saved while many more will be eternally condemned. Despite some of the smartest people in the room as its advocates, the doctrine inescapably posits a caricatured monstrosity of the God of Israel and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Consider these two verses as illustrative of the point:

“Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
    and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

All of this is too much to take on in the Wake-Up Call over morning coffee and I am perhaps unwise for even opening the door, yet the text being what it is I felt obliged to at least take a practice swing. It brings us to one of the general rules from our How to Read the Bible Better class. We must read the verse through the lens of the whole of the Bible rather than reading the whole of the Bible through the lens of the verse. In chapters 9–11 Paul takes us on an odyssey of biblical interpretation and understanding. For starters, he asks no less than twenty questions in these chapters. He quotes from the Old Testament some thirty times. The clincher, however, comes with the key term he repeats in some form eight times. That word is mercy.

The story of the Bible, which is the true story of the heavens and the earth, is the story of the unrelenting mercy of God—the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God—as the song says. It is the story of a God who calls out to his broken image bearers from the day we hid from him in the garden of his delight to the day he cried out from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” and “It is finished!” and every single day since. It is the story of a God who walked into the darkest night of his people and shattered the shackles of their slavery and—”split the sea so we could walk right through it, drowning our fears in perfect love”—as the song says. 

This God, our God, is on a mission that can only be described with the word mercy. It is a mercy so comprehensively intense he has identified and bound himself up with us forever in history and eternity. 

Say it with me church: “For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

God has thrown open the doors of his kingdom and invited everyone inside. The door is Jesus. And he ultimately chooses all who choose him. Though many will not choose him, he wills and works that all would. And he’s given us one job—to participate in this most merciful work of redemption. 

Prayer

Abba Father, thank you for your mercy, which is over all your works. Thank you for giving mercy a name: Jesus. Thank you for swinging wide the door of your kingdom to sinners like us who you are making to be saints like him. And thank you for imbuing us with Jesus’s very magnetism, the Holy Spirit, who draws people to you through us. More of that Holy Spirit! More! And thank you, like Peter said, that you are not slow to keep your promises but rather patient, “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” We choose you, Jesus. I choose you. Thank you for choosing me. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.

By J.D. Walt

Prayer of Consecration

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.

Jesus, We belong to you.

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Scripture

I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through 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 people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs 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 the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

 Romans 9:1–5 (NIV)

Consider This

We come now to a part of the letter I have all but ignored over the years. I say this by way of confession. I have no good excuse other than exegetical laziness and a lack of concern for the human race. And now, I shall make my best effort at repentance. 

Paul, having come to the close of his magisterial elocution and declaration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, now faces his worst nightmare. His own people are rejecting the gospel and its God. He takes it head-on now:

I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit

The story of the God of Creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is the true story of the whole world. It is everyone’s story. It is not, as post-enlightenment modernity would have us believe, one choice among the pantheon of gods and religions, and philosophies on offer in the marketplace. There is no other true story. Sure, there are myriad myths and philosophies and belief systems and so forth, but there is only ultimately one true story. This does not mean we need to despise, downgrade or denigrate the multitudes of other stories and their tellers floating around out there in the world. We simply do not believe them. We believe the story of creational monotheism as revealed in the Hebrew scriptures which has come to its ultimate redemption and fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, the Lord and Messiah, Savior of the World—crucified and risen from the dead—and now ascended to the right hand of God where he awaits a final return to the earth where he will consummate the new creation. 

The people called Israel were raised up by God to declare and demonstrate this, the true story of history and eternity; of the heavens and the earth, for the blessing of the whole world and the glory and praise of God. They are the chosen stewards of this story, which is their story, for the whole world. Look how Paul says it:

Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs 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 the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

Unfortunately, the people called Israel (largely due to their leaders) are actively rejecting Jesus of Nazareth as the Jewish Messiah and Savior of the World. This is hitting Paul with blunt force as he writes the next major section of his letter to the Romans (9–11). The grief overwhelms Paul because their rejection of Jesus is tantamount to a rejection of not only the whole story of God but of God himself. Paul is crushed. 

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

The entire purpose of Israel, the people of God—to declare and demonstrate the story of creation and redemption for the salvation of the world and the glory of God—is on the brink of utter abrogation. Paul sees the finish line finally in sight for his beleaguered people, this long-game nation, and they are falling down in the final stretch. He can’t take it. He’s willing to pay the ultimate price for the team. This statement shows us the depths of Paul’s despair:

For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel.

So here are two questions for us as we sit now within a decade of the two thousandth year of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

My answers are yes and not really; or maybe sort of.

Prayer

Abba Father! Lord Jesus Christ! Blessed Holy Spirit! Would you awaken us to the true and real story of it all? And would you forgive us for our failure to hold sorrow and anguish over our slumber? And would you forgive us for constantly putting our own little stories at center stage—which is to say would you forgive us for not really believing the big story? We so desperately want to awaken to our moment in your movement. We want to play our part in this cosmic story of creation and redemption. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.