1.
Please
pray with me. May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock
and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word as we continue
our sermon series on, “A Christian
Response World Religions,” is taken from Romans 10:21-11:1, which says, (read
text). The message today is entitled, “A Christian Response to Judaism,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
In this section of his epistle to the Romans,
chapters 9–11, St. Paul bares a heart that’s deeply troubled. He has been
called by God to be an apostle of the Gospel to the Gentiles (Rom 10:20). But
most of St. Paul’s own people, the Jews, his own flesh and blood—the people
whom God had chosen 2000 years earlier to be his treasured possession—had
refused to believe that Jesus was the Messiah God had promised them long ago.
3.
Most of
us are Gentiles. We can’t claim to be “flesh
and blood” relatives of Abraham and St. Paul. But by the mercy of the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we are their spiritual heirs. We wild branches
have been grafted into the olive tree. While not born into the family, we have
been adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ, the Son of David, who
was born into and raised in a Jewish home. Through Baptism and faith in Christ
Jesus, we are sons of God and children of Abraham (Gal 3:26–29). So the Old Testament is our story too. For
that reason, we share St. Paul’s deep disappointment that Jesus’ own people
according to the flesh have by and large refused their long-awaited Messiah
(Rom 9:1–5).
4.
As we
walk through this section of Scripture together, Romans 9–11, we will hear
God’s yearning for his people through his apostle Paul. Enter into the pain of God, the pain of St.
Paul, over his brothers and sisters, the Jewish people. Let his desire for
their salvation fill your heart too (Rom 9:1–4a): “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.”
5.
Paul
reflects the love of Christ himself when he says he would even be willing to be
cursed by God if that would bring the blessing of salvation to the Jewish
people. Rom 9:4b–5: “Theirs is the adoption as 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 over all, forever praised. Amen.” Note how carefully St. Paul identifies
Jesus’ Jewish ancestry as his “human ancestry” (the Greek is literally
“according to the flesh”). That’s because Jesus’ mother was Mary—a Jewish
woman—but Jesus had no natural, human father. God the Father was his Father,
and he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we affirm in the
creeds.
6.
Our
response to Jewish people is different from our response to those of other
non-Christian religions. Jesus, our Messiah, and their Messiah, was actually sent to them first (Rom 1:16). That can’t
be said about any other religious group on earth. We’re indebted to them for the
patriarchs, the Torah of Moses, the Prophets, the Writings. Their ancient
Scriptures have become our ancient Scriptures too. Our Lutheran worship is
filled with passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. For example, we close the
worship service with the Benediction God gave to Aaron and the priests for
blessing Israel (Num 6:24–26). Many pastors raise their arms as Moses did (Ex
17:11–12). We pray and sing the psalms. Our style of worship and even our
church architecture flows from the OT as well as the NT.
7.
One of
the great tragedies that has damaged Christian outreach to the Jewish people
has been anti-Semitism. Sometimes anti-Semitism is a result of Christians being
ignorant of how much of our faith and practice is rooted in the OT. Some don’t
seem to realize that Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament. Shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus
prophesied that Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed. That happened in
A.D. 70. Following that Roman assault came another in response to the Bar
Kokhba revolt (A.D. 132–135). Jerusalem was made into a pagan Roman city and
renamed Aelia Capitolina. Jewish
people were scattered around the world. This period of exile lasted nearly 2000
years. Finally, in 1947, the United Nations granted Jewish people their old
homeland. Of course, we know the political consequences of that decision.
8.
At any
rate, for over 2000 years, Jewish people have been scattered, living as aliens
in various countries. Yet many became political, business, and cultural leaders.
Even today in our country many leading bankers, authors, comedians, musicians,
and university professors are Jewish. But when Jewish people have prospered
more than others, sometimes they have been envied and resented. During hard
economic times they have been blamed and made scapegoats; think of Hitler’s
Germany as an example.
9.
Throughout
the last 2000 years, many Christians too have shared the guilt—either by their
silent tolerance of anti-Semitism, or by their active participation in it. Some
have even used our Lord’s trial before Pontius Pilate to justify persecution of
Jewish people. Pilate washed his hands before the Jewish crowds who were
shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
He said, “I am not guilty of the blood of
this innocent man,” and the crowds yelled, “His blood be on us and on our
children.” With those words, some people even justified the Holocaust. They
forgot that Jesus had forbidden Peter to use his sword (Jn 18:10–11; cf. Mt
26:52).
10.
Human
nature is to desire revenge when we are injured or abandoned, when someone
doesn’t keep their promise to us, or maintain their part of an agreement. But our text says that God’s nature is to
remain faithful to his promises, no matter how unfaithful his people are. God
is patient, slow to anger, abounding in love. God in his compassion has allowed
the Jewish people to survive through the centuries of persecution, the
Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust. Once Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany
asked his famous Chancellor Bismarck to prove to him the existence of God. It’s
reported that Bismarck asked for a day to think about it, then the next day
Bismarck’s reply was simple: “The
existence of the Jewish people.” Remember the musical “Fiddler on the Roof”? That play about Jewish people in Russia says
they are like a fiddler on a roof. You would think they would topple, but they
have not. God in his mercy has preserved them.
11.
Our text
is about that mercy of God. As frustrated as God has been with them, as we read
in our text, he does not turn his back on them. “Did God reject his people? By no means!” (Rom 11:1). They may
reject him, and all but a remnant have; but God still shows kindness to them,
and holds out to them hope. What a
comfort there is for us also in these words! We have been “a disobedient and obstinate people” no less than Israel. Each of us
has been unfaithful to God’s covenant with us, his promises given us in Baptism
and reaffirmed in his Word.
12.
We have
failed to witness to the Christ. We have failed to offer our firstfruits to
God. We have failed to forgive those who have sinned against us. We have failed
to reach out to the needy and lonely and hurting around us. But has God
rejected you? By no means! You may be disobedient and obstinate—like Israel—but
you are his child in Jesus Christ. That’s
the Good News we celebrate because Jesus is the Messiah of God. He fulfilled
what the prophets of old had foretold. Jesus brought us the righteousness of
God. He made us right with him, now and forever. He brought us the “new covenant” (Jer 31:31) for the
forgiveness of sins, which the prophet Jeremiah had promised. He brings that
forgiveness to us even today at every Lord’s Supper: “This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the
forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:28). Oh,
that all the Jewish people would know and receive that gift! Read St. Paul’s
words in Rom 10:1–3: “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to
God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.”
13.
What
will happen to the Jewish people as a whole? Will large numbers of them be
brought to faith in Christ during the “last
days,” as some Christian churches believe? Scripture doesn’t promise that.
To be sure, God promises that “all Israel”
will be saved—that is, all Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ, all
Christians together will be saved (Rom 11:25–26). But the number of the human
descendants of Abraham who will believe in Christ, and the proportion of the
whole church that will be made up of Jewish Christians, those are mysteries
that haven’t been revealed to us.
14.
St. Paul
himself concludes these three chapters with the affirmation that God’s thoughts
and ways are far above ours: “Oh, the
depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are
his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out!” (11:33). Many things will remain mysteries to us. But
we do know the Good News. We do know
that Jesus is the Messiah of God, the fulfillment of the OT promises. We do
know the new testament in his blood: the forgiveness of sins, won for us and
for all on the cross of Calvary. We do know that we’re sent to declare with joy
and confidence this wonderful Good News—to Jewish people and to all people—so
that they too may inherit God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. Amen. Now the peace that passes all human
understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life
everlasting. Amen.
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