“The Mercy of God” (Romans 9:1-13)
1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The message from God’s Word this morning the 7th Sunday after Pentecost is taken from Romans 9:1-13 and will focus specifically on the verses following this passage from Romans 9:14-15, where the Apostle Paul says, “14What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! 15For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” The message is entitled, “The Mercy of God,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. In Genesis chapter 6 we find that God is so fed up with the sinfulness of the world that he decides to destroy it and begin again with Noah and his family. But, the human race that descended from Noah was no less sinful. In Exodus 32 we find that God is so fed up with the sinfulness of the Israelites, who have built and worshiped a golden calf right at the foot of Mount Sinai, that he decides to destroy them and begin again with Moses. Exodus 32:9-10 says, “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.’ ”
3. Instead, Moses interceded for Israel before God. In fact, he went so far as to do the same thing Paul does in today’s Epistle. He wishes himself accursed if only his people can be saved. Moses says in Ex. 32:32, “But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” Both Paul and Moses understood that our God is a God of mercy. God didn’t destroy Moses. God didn’t destroy Paul. Instead, God sent his Son, Jesus, into the world and destroyed him by death on a cross, that from this one man he might make a great nation, a holy people, a royal priesthood of those who are justified by faith.
4. Last week in the Epistle Lesson from Romans chapter 8 we heard that, “nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” If this is true, then how is it that Israel, God’s ancient people, could miss the blessing God’s mercy that He had given to them in Jesus? Paul’s love for his own people is so profound, so deep, that if he could save them by being cut off from Christ himself, he would do it. Do you see how the love of Christ has totally marked this man?
5. What blessings God had showed on His people the Israelites. Theirs was the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law through Moses, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs, and most of all, from their own flesh, our Lord Jesus, who is God over all and blessed forever. God’s blessings were overflowing for them.
6. Has the Word of God failed for them? By no means! Instead the Apostle Paul argues, for just being a descendant of Abraham has never truly made one be part of Israel. This is why God spoke through the Apostle Paul when he said in Romans9:6-8, “6But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 7and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 8This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”
7. Here Paul says that Isaac is the child of God’s impossible promise, and not Ishmael, the child of the flesh and human ingenuity. It’s the same with Jacob and Esau. It was through Jacob, the weaker homebody, the momma’s boy, that the promised descendant, God’s choice, might stand without regard to human exertion. Physical descent has never yet given birth to faith; faith is born of the promise. This is why no one is physically born a Christian, no you are born in sin from the sin you inherited from your parents. The way that you are truly born a Christian is through the hearing of God’s Word and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.
8. Does this mean then that God is unfair when in the history of salvation He chooses one and rejects the other? Isaac over Ishmael. Jacob over Esau. Moses and the children of Israel over Pharaoh and the Egyptians? No, the Apostle Paul declares. God isn’t unfair, but He is merciful. He says to us, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.”
9. So how big is the mercy of God? Is it big enough for all? There have been Christians who believed that God’s mercy was somehow restricted to a portion of the human race. They pointed to Paul’s words here about election to justify that, missing that Paul was speaking not of personal election here, but of God’s choosing the way to bring salvation into the world through His Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Remember that the same Paul who wrote these words to young pastor Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:4 that God, “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
10. Have you ever heard the expression, “Mercy, me!” But, if we could hear the thoughts of our sinful human pride, we would hear it again and again, with a slightly different inflection: “Mercy: Me?! Are you trying to tell me that I am in need of God’s mercy?” “Not me!” the Jew was tempted to think, “for I am of Israel, the chosen people of God!” “Not me!” the Gentile Christian was tempted to think. “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in” (11:19). “Not me!” thinks Grandma Schmidt. “My great-grandparents built this church. My dad was president of the congregation. My mother taught Sunday school. My catechism instruction was in German. And I am here faithfully, Sunday after Sunday!” No matter who you are, no matter what your background, you are never far from the temptation to think that your status among God’s people, his Israel, is the result of something good in you. But this is a false foundation, and if you build your hope on it, that hope will come crashing to the ground on the Day of Judgment. To save you from such false hope, God’s Law exposes your sin and leaves you with nothing but the Mercy of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and your salvation.
11. Whether you’re a Gentile or Jew, we attempt to deal with our guilt by such methods as denial, blame, rationalization, and comparing ourselves favorably against others. We might say, “I’m not so bad, I’m not like the murderer on death row, or the person who is addicted to pornography, or alcohol. I don’t lie like so many of our politicians today, I haven’t stolen something that doesn’t belong to me like the bank robber, or swear like a drunken sailor, I’m not that bad.” But, such attempts won’t deliver you from your guilt. At best, it will only hide it from your sight (but not God’s), only to have it undeniably revealed at the judgment. This is why whether we individually or publicly confess our sins, it’s so comforting to know that, in confessing our sins, we’re not telling God something he doesn’t already know. We’re simply facing a reality he already knows and has dealt with in and through His Son Jesus Christ for us.
12. Whether Jew or Gentile, we receive God’s mercy through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 6:23 says, “23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ. When we’ve been stared down, exposed and examined by the holy Law of God, we go from saying, “Why in the world would I need mercy?” to “Is there any hope?” Thank the Lord, who has justified us through His Son Jesus and His death on the cross for our sins. Because of what Jesus has done for you and me we can know for certain that through faith in Him God’s mercy is truly for us, regardless of who we are or where we have come from. Amen.
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