Receive God's word and affirm His sovereignty

New Guest: Like this one, most posts are devotional; those related to CAR BIZ can be found by searching the blog archives for that title. You might start with 'Welcome,' the first post, dated November 12, 2008, where I introduce myself and the blog. As you read, I encourage you to record any reflections or comments you may have, for the entries here serve best as the first remarks in a conversation.

Blessings and best wishes,
Dr. Will

Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Devotions: Ps 12-14; 119:1-24; Deut 1:1-18; Rom 9:1-18; Mt 23:27-39

Lord, I appeal for Your help, because the faithful have vanished! Everyone lies, flatters and speaks with a double heart. You must protect the poor and the honest from these criminals. Your promises are pure and refined; so defend us, as the wicked prowl on every side and vileness is exalted among mortals. I will trust in Your steadfast love and rejoice in Your salvation; I will sing Your praises, for You have dealt generously with me. Only fools deny God’s existence and power; God seeks human integrity, and terrorizes the wicked. Let God’s deliverance shine forth, and let God’s people rejoice! Blessed are all who walk in God’s testimonies; Lord, help me to live with integrity, according to Your word. I can keep my way pure by living so; I seek You with my whole heart; don’t let me stray from Your commands. I have treasured Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You. Let me live by Your word, that I may behold wondrous things out of Your law. Heal me from the contempt of enemies, and let me delight in the counsel of Your holy word.

These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel as they encamped east of the Jordan before entering Canaan. It is a eleven-day trek from Horeb to Kadesh; it took Israel forty years! Before he died, Moses undertook to summarize God’s law: YHWH our God said to us in Horeb: you have stayed too long at this mountain. Take your journey to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, to the Shephelah and lowlands and the Negev and the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites as far as the Euphrates. Behold: I have put the land before you; go in and take possession of the land which YHWH swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as an everlasting inheritance. Though I, Moses, was not able to bear this great people, yet YHWH has multiplied you, and you are numerous as the stars of heaven. May YHWH, your fathers’ God, make you a thousand times greater yet, and may He bless you as He has promised. God directed me to tell you: Choose wise, understanding and godly leaders for me to appoint over you. And so were appointed leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens, and other officers, throughout your tribes. I charged these leaders to judge impartially among you, not fearing any human influence—for judgment belongs to God. The cases too difficult for the appointed leaders, you were to bring to me. And we did all this.

Paul shares his burden for his Jewish people as he writes to the Roman Christians: I tell you the truth in Christ, and my conscience affirms it in the Holy Spirit: I have great sorrow, unceasing anguish in my heart. I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my Jewish brothers and sisters, my racial kin. They are Israelites; as such, they have the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the gift of Torah, the worship and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and the Messiah came through their line. Let God, Who is over all, be blessed forever. Amen. God’s word has not failed; not all descended from Israel are now the Israel of God; genetic descent is not spiritual inheritance—not all the descendants of Abraham are now Abraham’s heirs. The scriptures specified, ‘Your descendants shall be designated through Isaac.’ This means that it is not the fleshly descendants who are God’s children, but the children of the promise, whom God reckons as descendants and heirs. The promise was this: ‘About this time next year I will return and Sarah shall have a son.’ Likewise, when Rebecca conceived by Isaac, by God’s sovereign election, God’s message to Rebecca was, ‘The elder will serve the younger.’ And it is also written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ How can we respond? Is God unjust? By no means! As He told Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ It is God’s decision! It depends not on human will or actions, but upon God’s mercy. As scripture said to Pharaoh, ‘I have raised you up expressly to show My power in you, so that My name may be proclaimed in all the earth.’ So: God has mercy as He wills, and He hardens the hearts of whomever He wills.

Jesus continued to confront His Jewish opponents: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful outside but full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. You look righteous in public, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build tombs for the prophets and monuments to the righteous, claiming that if you had lived in your fathers’ day, you would not have joined them in shedding the blood of God’s prophets. But in this, you witness against yourselves, that you are indeed the sons and heirs of those who murdered the prophets. Very well: fill up the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? I send you prophets and wise men and scribes; some you will kill and crucify, some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. I tell you most solemnly, all this will come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone those God sends to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Now understand this: your house is forsaken and desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord.’