Fr. Stephen De Young: So now we have a little bit of a transition at the beginning of chapter nine. St. Paul is sort of moving to a new topic that he introduces here. He says, “I tell the truth in Christ. I am not lying; my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart.” So he invokes two witnesses: he’s got his conscience and he’s got the Holy Spirit bearing witness that this is true; and he has this grief and sorrow in his heart.

“For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law, the service of God, and the promises, of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who was overall the eternally blessed God. Amen.”

So this is one of the examples, the Fathers tell us—the other one being Moses—of the purest love that a human being can have, and that’s that St. Paul says he would be willing to face eternal condemnation and be cut off from Christ if it meant that his fellow ethnic Jews, his fellow Judeans, could find salvation in Christ; he would cut himself off. Moses at one point says the same thing about the people of Israel when God is angry at them. He asks that he himself be blotted out of God’s book of life, but that God not destroy them.

Q1: Now, this early, is it clear to Paul that very few Israelites are following Christ?

Fr. Stephen: At this point, yes, because remember St. Paul himself was out there with orders from the high priest, going from town to town, killing Christians. So they’re actively persecuting them. And then, after him embracing Jesus as the Messiah, as he went to preach the Gospel, remember there were groups of non-Christian Jews following him from city to city, trying to get him stoned to death and trying to get him killed. So not only is there a large segment of the Jewish community that hasn’t embraced Jesus as the Messiah, there’s a large segment that’s openly hostile to the Christians, to the brethren, sort of everywhere that he goes.

But St. Paul’s response to that is not to hate them back or to curse them or to say, “Well, they’re all going to go to hell for having rejected Christ,” but it’s to love them so much that he says, “I’d be willing to go to hell if they could find, if they could come to the knowledge of the truth and embrace Christ.” That’s why it’s one of those, the purest examples of love. So, parallel to the love of Christ, loving and forgiving the people who are murdering him.

And so he talks about all the things that the people were given, sort of recounting those things from the Old Testament.

Q1: It sounds like [Inaudible].

Fr. Stephen: Right, all these things that they were given, all these things, and not only all those things—that culminates with Jesus himself is their Messiah. He’s the Jewish Messiah; he’s the Son of David. So he came to them first; throughout his ministry, Christ said over and over, “I came to the lost sheep of the tribe of Israel.” And then going out to the Gentiles came later, after Christ had come to them and they had rejected him. And notice at the end there that St. Paul really clearly identifies Christ as God, for anybody who might want to think otherwise.

So what St. Paul is doing here is introducing a problem. There’s a problem. If Jesus is really the Messiah, if he’s really the Son of David who’s come—this is how God has visited his people to save them; this is the promise—why have so many of the Jewish people rejected him and showed so much hatred towards him? That seems to make no sense. You would think they would have received him joyfully, and then maybe some of the Gentiles, too, but instead what’s happened is this huge body of the Jewish people have rejected him, actively hate him, and then these weirdo pagans, who didn’t receive all these things—who didn’t receive the Torah and the Old Testament, and who didn’t have the priesthood and the Temple and the sacrifices, who didn’t have the prophets, who didn’t have all these things—they’ve embraced Jesus as the Messiah.

So this is weird. This is a problem. How has this happened? That’s what St. Paul is now going to address. So that’s the topic he’s introducing: How did this happen? And not just how did it happen, but why: Why would something like this happen.

So chapter nine, verse six: “But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect, for they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham, but in Isaac your seed shall be called.”

So he starts by saying, “Well, what does this mean? Does this mean all those things that God did—giving the Torah, sending the prophets, and all that—that came to naught? That came to nothing? Even Jesus’ ministry came to nothing because the people didn’t believe?” That’s obviously a problem. He says, “No, that’s not it, but not all in Israel are of Israel,” meaning—and then he further defines that. He says, “Not everyone who’s descended from Abraham biologically was part of God’s covenant people, from the very beginning. That’s why he goes to Isaac: “From Isaac shall your seed be reckoned.” So this isn’t something new that happened, where it used to be everyone descended from Abraham was part of the covenant and was God’s elect, and everything was fine, and then Jesus came and now, all of a sudden everything’s changed and all these people are cut off. St. Paul is saying this has always been the case. There have always been faithful and unfaithful in Israel, and there have been a lot of times when the unfaithful have greatly outnumbered the faithful in the history of Israel, if you read the Old Testament.

So he says, “That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. For this is the word of promise: ‘At this time I shall come, and Sarah shall have a son.’ ” So Abraham had another son, Ishmael. Ishmael was not the one whom God promised. And so the seed was reckoned through one. That seed is leading up to Jesus, as he’s just said.

Now, does this mean Ishmael isn’t “saved”? Ishmael was wicked? Ishmael went to hell? Not at all! All you have to do is go back to Genesis and read it. He was blessed by God and made numerous. Remember, the promise to Abraham was that nations, plural, would come from his loins. But that the line of promise has always been reckoned through one branch, and then there have been faithful and unfaithful.

Because, remember, he’s not just talking about the Jews now. He’s talking about the fact that there are faithless Jews, but also the fact that there are faithful Gentiles. And so he’s keeping both of those in view. So if Ishmael is just a bad guy because he’s not a Jew, that doesn’t really work for what St. Paul is talking about.

“And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac, for the children not yet being born nor having done any good or evil that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him who calls, it was said to her, ‘The older shall serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob have I loved, but Esau I have hated.’ ”

Okay. This is another verse that the Calvinists jump up and down on, and just say, “Look, before they’re born, before they’ve done any works, before they’ve done anything, God loves Jacob and he hates Esau, and the older will serve the younger.” Now, that understanding works—unless you’ve read the book of Genesis and you’ve actually read the story of Jacob and Esau, because first of all, “Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated” is not a quote from Genesis. It’s a quote from much, much later, in the prophets. It’s from Malachi 1:2-3. Much, much later. After the exile. And we’ll get into what it’s talking about in just a minute.

The quote from Genesis is St. Paul’s first quote: “The older shall serve the younger.” And what’s that referring to? Well, Jacob and Esau were twins, and Esau came out a couple of seconds first, which made Esau the firstborn and Jacob the secondborn, which would have meant Esau would have been the one that inherited the promises that had come down from Abraham, meaning what? Meaning, first of all, the land, the land of Canaan and the promise to be his God. And then he would have distributed that to his brother and to any other future brothers, because that’s how firstborn status works.

But instead, God, because he had a purpose in mind, chose Jacob, later named Israel, to be the firstborn of the two. And that happens because Esau, being someone who followed the flesh rather than the spirit, came back and was super-hungry one day, and Jacob offered to trade him a bowl of his stew that he made for his birthright, for the firstborn status. Well, that shows us a couple things about Esau. Number one, he falls into this category from chapter eight, of someone following the flesh and its desires—he’s just hungry, and “I need food,” and all the things you get—but it also shows his faithlessness, because if he really believed God’s promises, that he was going to inherit this huge piece of land, would he have sold that for a bowl of soup? No. No one in their right mind would, which means he didn’t really believe it. He didn’t really value it. He wasn’t faithful; he didn’t have faith. He didn’t believe. And so, because of that, he gives up his firstborn status. And then there’s sort of the trickery where Jacob gets the blessing from Isaac. But then Isaac also blesses Esau.

So in our Calvinist interpretation, Esau is evil, and Esau goes to hell. But is that what we see in the book of Genesis? The exact opposite. At the end of Jacob’s life, after he’s gone and had all his sort of wily trickster adventures, he’s going to run into Esau again. And he thinks, “Aw man, Esau is going to kill me. When he sees me, he’s going to kill me, because I swiped his birthright, I swiped the blessing, I’ve been up to all this chicanery and no good.” So he says, “Here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to see Esau, so what I’ll do is I’ll take my wives and my servants and my kids. I’ll give them gifts for Esau, and I’ll send them all ahead of me, so by the time I run into Esau, he will have seen all of these family members who are dependent on me and love me, and he will have received all of these gifts, and so then maybe he won’t kill me.” [Laughter] “So we’ll butter him up, and we’ll make him feel like a real heel if he kills me, because look at all these cute kids I’ve got. You don’t want to kill me. They won’t have a dad!”

So he does all this, and when he finally gets to Esau, what does Esau do? He throws his arms around him and hugs him and weeps, because he’s so happy to see him, because he forgives him and he loves him. This is not a faithless, wicked person. That’s not how the Bible presents him as a person. But he’s not the firstborn.

What about the people descended from him? Because there’s a people descended from him: Edom, the Edomites. And that’s actually who the Malachi quote is talking about: the Edomites, much later. So the Edomites were just right off the bat bad people, right? No. If you go to Deuteronomy 2—and for time’s sake, I won’t go there and read it all now, but if you go to Deuteronomy 2, when the people of Israel are on their way to the land—they’re freed from Egypt, they’ve wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, now they’re going to come into the land of Canaan—they come up to Edom, because it’s in the south part. And the land of Edom, by the way, is part of the land that God promised to Abraham: a small part of it, but it’s part of it. And God says, “You’re not to take so much as one foot of land from the Edomites.” He says, “Because they’re your brothers.” He says, “I brought them to this land and gave it to them. I drove out the giant clans, the other guys who were here, and gave them the land, just as I’m about to give you Canaan. So they’re your brothers. You can trade with them, you can visit with them, but you’re not to take up arms against them, and you’re not to take a foot of their land, because it’s not yours; I gave it to them.”

So they’ve inherited—not the prime inheritance, but they’ve received part of Abraham’s inheritance. God’s brought them to the land and driven out the former residents before them, just as the people of Canaan. And they’re brothers. So they’re not wicked and evil yet. Well, maybe they got wicked and evil real quick after that. Oh, one more thing to add before that: When Moses flees Egypt—Moses murders the Egyptian, goes on the lam; he runs—whom does he go and stay with?

Q1: The Midianites.

Fr. Stephen: The Midianites, who are descended from Esau’s grandson, Midian. So the Midianite tribes are made up mostly of Edomites and a few Ishmaelites. Who is Moses’ father-in-law?

Q1: Jethro.

Fr. Stephen: Jethro, who is—?

Q1: A Midianite.

Fr. Stephen: And—?

Q1: A priest.

Fr. Stephen: A priest of God Most High. Camped next to the mountain of God. Which is where Moses first meets and learns the name Yahweh, who’s already being worshiped by the Edomites. The whole time they were in Egypt, the descendants of Ishmael and Esau were out there in the desert, worshiping Yahweh the God of Israel, the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Esau.

In fact, archaeologically, the earliest references to the name Yahweh we’ve found are from the 11th and 12th century BC, in Egyptian documents, who refer to him as the God of the Midianite tribes, out in the desert. There’s no mention of Israel whatsoever. He’s the God of those Midianite tribes. So they haven’t fallen away. According to the Septuagint, according to—well, I should say according to the Greek Old Testament—at the end of the book of Job, it identifies Job as Jobab, Esau’s great-grandson. So the Edomites in the Torah: not wicked, not evil. They’re your brothers.

Now, Malachi. Why when we get to Malachi, at the end of the exile, are the Edomites hated? Why are they condemned? Well, if you read Obadiah, which was all directed at the Edomites, and you read in the context in Malachi where this quote is from, at the time that Judah was being taken into exile by the Babylonians, the Edomites not only refused to help them against the Babylonians, but refused to help the refugees. In fact, they were robbing people; they were robbing Judaites as they were being taken into exile, mocking them, scoffing at them, using it as an opportunity to take territory in Judah, to move into their territory. And so they’re condemned for having mocked, looked down upon, victimized their brothers in Judah.

Q1: And then did they resist those who returned as well?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, they weren’t friendly to those who returned. But one of the most famous Edomites in the Bible most people don’t realize he’s an Edomite, because Edomite is the origin of Idumean, and that’s what Herod was.

Q1: I knew that.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Right? So it’s something that happens much later. So the examples of Ishmael and Esau that St. Paul is using here are not examples of “these are faithful ‘saved’ people, and these are wicked ‘unsaved’ people.” He’s talking about the fact that there’s one line through which the inheritance is reckoned, through which the firstborn is reckoned.

And where does that firstborn status end up? What have we just been reading in chapter eight? Jesus. There’s always been one firstborn, and now that firstborn is Jesus. So if you want to be an heir of the promises, you have to be a co-heir with Christ, just as if you wanted to be an heir of the promises, you had to be a co-heir with Isaac, you had to be a co-heir with Jacob. Now Christ is the firstborn par excellence, who inherits all creation. If you want to be an heir, you have to receive it in Christ. And so, if these people, though they’re descended from Abraham, reject Christ, reject the firstborn, they’re not going to inherit; they’re not going to inherit apart from him.

And you see that with the two quotes he gives with the Edomites. Edomites early on were co-heirs; they were fellow inheritors because of their relationship with Israel and then Judah. But then, when they turned against Judah, were at enmity with Judah, they lost their inheritance; they were cut off, even though they were still biologically descended from Abraham.

And so this is the same thing. That’s how these people have been cut off, through their [faithlessness]. By rejecting Christ, they’re now cut off from the inheritance that was theirs originally, but that they can only receive as co-heirs with Christ, the firstborn. So he’s talking about not salvation but about firstborn status.

So verse 14: “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not!” Meaning: didn’t God make these promises to these people and now they’re not going to inherit them? So is God unrighteous? Does God not keep his promises?

Q1: Certainly not!

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Certainly not! That’s actually… What’s translated here as “Certainly not” is a Greek phrase that’s in a weird verb tense. It’s called the optative, or weird mood called the optative. It’s only used 64 times in the Bible, and almost all of them, 85% of them, are St. Paul saying this here: “Certainly not” or “May it not be” or “May it never happen” or something along those lines. So this is sort of part of his… this is one of his phrases. You know, there’s certain people when you listen to them as a teacher, you know. You have sort of verbal tics, verbal phrases you use. This is one of St. Paul’s: Me genoito.

“For he says to Moses: I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. So then it is not of him who wills or of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” So God said to Moses, “I’m under no obligation.” This is… accusing God of unrighteousness is saying he didn’t meet some obligation, like he, once he made these promises to Abraham and to his seed, well, now he’s obligated to bring to salvation all of Abraham’s descendants—no! [Laughter] He said to Moses, “I’ll have compassion on whom I will have compassion, and I will show mercy…” He’s under no obligation to do any of this for anyone. He does this freely, out of love.

And so when he says, “It is not him who wills or him who runs,” this is not something we earn. There’s not a way for us to do something that then obligates God to give us salvation and give us this inheritance. [Laughter] “Well, I met requirements A, B, C. I’m descended from Abraham, I got circumcised, I wore the tassels on my garments, I didn’t eat any pork, so you now have to make me an heir…” [Laughter] No.

“The Scripture says to the pharaoh: For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show my power in you, and that my name may be declared in all the earth. Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens.” So he’s saying about pharaoh, referring to this hardening—this is one of the things that perplexes people that shouldn’t as much as it does, in the plagues, in the ten plagues, in Exodus, roughly, I think, 8-12. I think 12 is Passover. In the ten plagues, there’s a mixture after each plague. Sometimes it says, “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened,” sometimes it says, “Pharaoh hardened his heart,” sometimes it says, “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” and they’re just sort of mixed together with no real rhyme or reason in terms of how exactly it’s working in each case.

But what St. Paul is pointing to here is a particular explanation of that, which is that God is using Pharaoh to accomplish something in the plagues, that Pharaoh, because of who he was and the things he had done, specifically the thing that really sets this off at the beginning of Exodus in Exodus 1, is that the people of Israel have begun, it says—it’s usually translated “grow numerous” or “have been fruitful,” but all of this language is language that’s picked up from Genesis, because the instruction that God gives to Adam and Eve after they’re created and then again after they’re expelled from paradise and then again to Noah after the flood is what? “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” And that word that’s translated “being numerous” is the same word that’s translated “teeming” in the King James Version in Genesis 1, about the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, that the sky and the sea are teeming with life; they’re just full of life. Because this is what God does: he brings life.

So at the beginning of Exodus, Israel’s doing that: they’re being fruitful and multiplying, teeming with life. And Pharaoh says, “We’ve got to put a stop to this, because pretty soon there’s going to be more of them than there are of us. They’re going to try and take my power.” And so what does he do? First he tells all the midwives who do the Egyptian equivalent of prenatal exams—and the Egyptians, without going into graphic detail, had ways of telling whether a fetus was male or female—and so what he literally tells them is that when they go to the Israelite women, they need to determine whether the baby is male or female, still in the womb, and if it’s male they need to abort it. What it literally says in Exodus 1 is: “When you see that infant upon the potter’s wheel,” because in Egyptian religion there’s a god, Knum, who has a ram’s head, and he forms human beings on a potter’s wheel. So it says, “When you see the baby on the potter’s wheel, when you see the baby forming in the womb, and determine if it’s a male; if it’s a male, you abort it; you kill it.” And so the midwives come back. The midwives don’t want to do this, and so the excuse they give when they come back to Pharaoh is: “These Israelite women are really hearty women. They don’t call us to do prenatal exams. And by the time we hear that they’re pregnant, we show up: they’ve already had the baby, because they’re tough.” [Laughter] “They just woman up and go through it.”

And so then what does Pharoah say? Pharaoh says, “Okay, anyone who sees a male Israelite baby, throw it in the river and drown it.” So he’s massacred untold thousands of Israelites, killed these children. And so this is why all the plagues build up to the Passover and the death of the firstborn of Egypt, because God is balancing the scales. He’s making things right, and he’s making a display to everyone that the gods of Egypt don’t have any power to withstand him. He says several times during the process that he’s executing judgment against the gods of Egypt, of which, remember, Pharaoh considered himself to be one. He considered himself to be a god. So he shows conclusively they don’t have the power of life and death; they can’t stand before him.

And this display is made not only to them, but because Egypt was the most powerful nation in the world at the time, it was made to everybody. When Joshua and Caleb, the spies, show up in Canaan and show up with Rahab, Rahab says, “Yeah, we heard about what your God did to the Egyptians, and we don’t want no part of that. He’s God for sure!” [Laughter] And so for that to happen, for God to accomplish that purpose, for him to establish justice for what Pharaoh had done in all this, Pharaoh couldn’t chicken out halfway through the plagues, as weak as he was. He couldn’t chicken out halfway; he was in for a penny, in for a pound. So this is what St. Paul is pointing to. For God to accomplish his end goal, his end purpose, Pharaoh’s heart had to be hardened for a time.

Now why is this important? Because he’s making this comparison—as this discussion continues, he’s going to make it more explicitly—to the Jewish people who have so far not believed and not accepted Jesus as the Messiah. He’s saying that this isn’t accidental. God has a purpose in this. There’s a reason why this is happening. And by the time—it’s going to take until we get to chapter 11, but in chapter 11, he’s going to very explicitly say what that purpose is. But he’s saying now already—he’s dropping the dime that God has a purpose in this, in them not accepting Jesus right now. And that’s going to come to fruition later.

“You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault, for who has resisted his will?’ ” So he’s saying, “Well, then, how can he condemn these people if this is part of his purpose?” If he’s going to bring good out of this wickedness, well, then, why is this wickedness so wicked? This is a question we ask about, like Judas.

Q1: I was just thinking that.

Fr. Stephen: Well, didn’t something good come out of it? [Laughter] Or, you know, Joseph says to his brothers that them trying to murder him and then selling him into slavery, he’s like: “Well, God meant it for good.” So does that justify what they did? “Oh, it’s okay that you tried to murder your brother and sold him into slavery, because God brought good out of it.” St. Paul’s going to say no. [Laughter]

It says, “But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” So he’s going to continue this example, but the immediate example is: You make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor. What he’s referring to here, not to be overly graphic, is he’s saying a potter makes one pot to drink water out of, and he makes another one to use as a chamberpot, to go to the bathroom in it. And, you know, is one pot going to complain, “Why do I have to be the one who gets…?” [Laughter]

Q1: I think I would complain.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Right? But they’re both serving a purpose. They’re both serving a purpose. Now he’s going to continue.

“What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And that he might make know the riches of his of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?”

So what’s he referring to here when he talks about vessels of wrath? Well, this language occurs back in the book of Jeremiah, and in the book of Jeremiah, where this language is used, Jeremiah, speaking for God, is talking about the nations of Israel and Judah. One could ask the question—let’s talk about the northern kingdom of Israel first. Ten tribes, including Manasseh, the most numerous tribe, so really ten and a half. So, by far the lion’s share, the lion’s share of Israel. Most of those tribes, like Dan, for example, if you read the book of Judges, was idolatrous from the beginning. From the beginning! The rest of them, as soon as they got their first king as a separate kingdom, Jeroboam, son of Nebat, sets up golden calves in Bethel and Dan, and they all worship them. Sets up an apostate religion right at the beginning. The northern kingdom of Israel existed for 200 years. All of it was just idolatrous. I mean, Ahab and Jezebel, they’re all worshiping Baal. They’re all pagans; they’re all wicked. And God wipes them off the face of the earth, in his wrath at the end of 200 years.

Why did they exist in the first place? Why have those ten and a half tribes? Why let them sit around and be wicked for 200 years? Why give them the Torah if they were never going to follow it? That’s what St. Paul is paralleling this to. If these people weren’t going to accept Christ, why do they even exist? Why did they receive the Torah in the first place? Why did they get the Old Testament part? Why did they get that first half if they weren’t going to accept the more important second half? If they weren’t going to accept it? And St. Paul is saying, “Look back at the old covenant!” How many were called versus how many were chosen versus how many were faithful? How many were brought out of Egypt? First of all, that whole generation, except for two people, died in the wilderness. [Laughter] But how many were brought out of Egypt? You know, their children went in the gate, but how many were brought out of Egypt and were never…?

And this is what St. Paul is referring to. So he says God makes his power known—he made his power known with Pharaoh. Why let Pharaoh exist? Why let him be king? Why, right? God used him to display his power to the world, and his wrath, his justice, his holiness. He did the same thing with Israel. Can Israel, the northern kingdom, can someone—can Jeroboam son of Nebat come to God and say, “Hey! Why’d you make all these promises to me and give me the Torah if I wasn’t going to get anything?” Well, no.

Q1: Well, Jeroboam would be talking to his golden calf instead.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] God actually sent a prophet to him when he first became king, and said, “If you follow all my ways and keep all my commandments like David, I’ll give you an everlasting dynasty just like his.” And of course he didn’t, so he didn’t.

So the question, St. Paul says, is basically asking: “Well, God, why did you do all these good things for me? Why did you give me this life and let me do all these things if I’m just going to be wicked and go to eternal condemnation?” So he shouldn’t have done even those good things for you? Is that what you’re saying? St. Paul is saying God allows this. He deals patiently with these people for 200 years, in the case of the northern kingdom of Israel; with all the people who were rejecting Jesus in his day, including St. Paul himself for a while. He’s patient with them because he has a purpose. And in some cases, that purpose may just be to show his power and his glory.

Q1: I guess in a lot of cases we don’t know the purpose.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and in other cases it may be something else that they’re going to come… But he says, in any case, Judah saw what happened to Israel, saw what happened to the northern kingdom. So there’s one purpose. There’s one purpose: Judah saw what comes of faithlessness. And so that’s one purpose—there’s going to be more, but that’s one purpose that St. Paul mentions here. “That he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had prepared beforehand for glory.” He made those preparations beforehand, like we were talking about, so we see what comes of faithlessness, by God dealing patiently with the people who are faithless: it’s that we see where that path leads.

And this happens all the time, on a very practical level in our lives. Speaking for myself, I have relatives whom I look at as role models and people to be emulated, and I have relatives and family members who are sort of cautionary tales, who’ve gone down the wrong path, and other people who know them and other people who look at that and say, “Okay, that’s where that leads. That’s not where I want to go.” And that’s what St. Paul is appealing to here at a macro level.

Verse 25: “As he also says in Hosea, ‘I will call them my people who were not my people, and her beloved who was not beloved, and it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people’; there they shall be called sons of the living God.”

Now, that was understood by a lot of the Jewish people to mean: Oh, well, earlier in Hosea God had said to his people, “You are now lo-emi; you are now not my people.” The promise back then had been: I will be your God and you will be my people. Now you’re not my people any more. Why? Because he hadn’t been their God for a long time, and so he finally says, “You are not my people.” But then the prophecy in Hosea is that the day will come in the same place, the same land, in Jerusalem, when I will say to those who are not my people, “You are my people, and you are my beloved.” They understood that to mean: Oh, God’s going to come back to us Jewish people and accept us again.

But St. Paul understands this differently, because, as he just said: from both Jews and Gentiles. He understands this in terms of what happened at the exodus, that God brought a people into being who didn’t exist before. There was no nation of Israel before the exodus. God creates a nation. He creates a nation. That’s important because, you notice, he doesn’t choose one of the 70 nations that already existed to be his nation and then throw out all the other ones. He creates a new one. He creates something new. In the same way, St. Paul is saying, he’s now created—he’s now come back and created this new people. It happened in Jerusalem. It happened in Jesus Christ, remember, who’s the firstborn, and it’s through him that the inheritance is reckoned.

“Because Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel, ‘Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. For he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.’ ” God isn’t going to let this go on forever. He says, even though there’s as many of them as the sands of the sea, the remnant—the remnant is going to be preserved. And this remnant—he’s going to go on and describe it more, but this remnant is the core now of this new nation and this new people into which people from other nations, Gentiles, have been grafted in.

“And as Isaiah said before, ‘Unless the Lord of Sabaoth has left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah.’ ” So this is even more specific. “Unless he left us a seed”—singular. So what’s the difference between Judah and Israel? Why does Judah still exist and Israel ceases to exist? Well, because it’s from Judah, the tribe of Judah, that Jesus comes, who is the seed. Were it not for Christ, Israel would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah, meaning wiped from the face of the earth.

So even in the old covenant, the preservation of the remnant was so that that remnant could produce Jesus as the firstborn, as the one who inherits. So even that is a transition, but that it was for the sake of Jesus’ birth.

So I think this is probably—even though we’re not quite at the end of the chapter, this is probably a good place to stop for the evening.