Session 42 – Romans; Romans 9:25-29: Mark Lanier, 09/27/26

ROM 042_Romans PODCAST_Lanier_092726
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[00:00:00] Thank you, uh, everybody for being here. Thank you for if you're watching on the internet. One of the joys I have with this class that's kinda become a challenge for me is to figure out a way to introduce each week's lesson by putting you into the context of first century Rome. If this letter was being read, say, 57 AD in the churches at Rome, what would those people's mindset have been?

And if I can help put you into that, uh, it's helpful. I was running yesterday morning. Uh, as Pastor Jarrett and I are fond of pretending, we are runners. And, uh, we, we, we run, and we've got this running program that we do together, and we text each other and hold each other accountable. So yesterday morning, I was [00:01:00] running, and I had this stuff playing in my ears, and the fella who I was listening to said, "I wanna talk to you about five songs that came out this year," and then he started describing, um, uh, uh, the, the songs.

He, he was saying, you know, these songs that I better look at. And I'm thinking, "What year was that? Can I guess the year before he tells me the year?" And I thought, "It's somewhere between 1976 and 1978," so I've narrowed it down to three. I think that was 1976 I was wrong. It was- But I was right on the range.

If I had just stuck with the middle, it was 1977. But, but you can go back culturally and remember ... What were the songs? It was the hit. I, I honestly don't remember that. I just remember the year. Um, one of them was Fleetwood Mac, uh, uh, Dreams. Uh, uh, uh, [00:02:00] Players Only Love You When They're Playing, uh, uh, whatever that song is.

Um, because, uh, Stevie Nicks and, and, uh, uh, um, yeah, the, the guy on the guitar, what's his name? Lindsey Buckingham had just had a fight, and she wrote the song and blah, blah, blah. So he tells all the stor- backstory to the song. But I was thinking, I know I was listening to that at Coronado High School, and that was at '76, '77, '78.

I bet it was '76. It was '77. But anyway, you can go back and you can think culturally about things that were different. I got on a website the other day that said, "If you grew up in the 1960s, you can remember these things that people today would think are so weird." We, we still today, my ch- How many... All right, we've got some young people in here.

Charles, put your hand down. That's not you. We've got some young people in here. [00:03:00] We... Yeah, they're visitors. No, here we go. Okay, okay. Young lady, would I embarrass you immensely if I ask you to stand up and answer questions? Me? Okay, stand up. Now just shout it out. Do you email? Yes. She does. When you email, do you ever CC somebody?

Yes. She does. What does that mean? Copy someone on the email. How does CC mean copy someone?

Thank you for standing up. Now, if we go to Charles Mickey. Charles Mickey, stand up please. What does CC mean when you copy someone? Carbon copy. Carbon copy. You've never even heard of that, have you? There used to be these things called typewriters, clackity, clackity, clackity-clack. And there were not copy machines.

And if you wanted to [00:04:00] copy someone, you put this sheet of paper behind it with another sheet of paper. That middle sheet was called carbon paper, and the clack of the print would force it onto the paper behind it. You had a carbon copy that you sent. And now we just CC, and I'm thinking, "Well, that's wrong."

It should just be C. But if we understand culturally carbon copy, then we understand what CC- how we got to the CC that our younger generation now know means, "Well, that just means I'm copying them." So what I've gotta do, though, is not give you something as easy as something from the '60s or the '70s. I've gotta give you something from the 57s.

And I don't mean '57 Chevy. I mean 57 AD.

So in 57 AD, it would not be unusual for you [00:05:00] to go to in front and watch a ceremony in front of a Roman magistrate, where a slave kneels down and the Roman magistrate takes his lictor stick while someone is holding a pileus hat, cap, and he says to that person, "Nunc ego hominem ex iure qui-qui-quiritum, quiritum," excuse me, "liberum ecio."

That's what they said. Which means, you Latin scholars, "I declare this man to be free by the law of the curites." Curites was just a Roman word for the common people. This was a freedom ceremony where a slave was made free. This is how it was done. They didn't go down and file court papers. They would smash the indicia of [00:06:00] slavery, they would shave the slave's head, and they would put the pileus cap on the head.

Now, the pileus cap was a cap of liberty The Romans had a goddess of liberty. Her name was Libertas. And you can see sculptures of Libertas and paintings of Libertas holding a pileus cap, which was a symbol of liberty. We know of Libertas as Lady Liberty. If you go up to Staten Island, the French made a beautiful bronze of Lady Liberty because of the freedom of coming to America, and that's our statue of Libertas, of liberty.

But this cap became a symbol of a slave made [00:07:00] free, and even becoming a citizen. The highest hope. In fact, you can find old Roman coins. I put one of the most famous ones of them up here, and you'll see the cap in the middle. On each side, you'll see a sword. This was a coin in Roman circulation. This coin was issued by Brutus, as in et tu, Brute?,

slayer of Julius Caesar. He issued this coin. In fact, you'll see ID Mar, which is March. Beware the Ides of March. That was the day he assassinated the emperor Julius Caesar. And he issued this coin to say, in essence, "I granted liberty to all of Rome by using the sword on the [00:08:00] Ides of March. I delivered you all from the slavery of Julius Caesar."

That's what he said by the coin. This is common knowledge. This-- I'm not giving you some wacko, bizarro, weird thing in the corner of the Roman Empire. This is the way it's been for 100 years when Paul's writing. This is a procedure that's happening. You go in as a slave, the short ceremony takes place, you go out a free man.

And when you left, you took a new name All right? Let me give you an example. We know about Cicero. Cicero had a secretary named Tiro. Now, Cicero's full name is Marcus Tullius Cicero, or we [00:09:00] would say Cicero. Marcus Tullius Cicero. His servant, Tiro, goes through this ceremony and gets a new name. He takes the name of his old slave owner, but he no longer has just the slave name.

Marcus Tullius Trio. Tiro, excuse me. That's the name he takes. Now, if we were reading the back of Romans, the very end, in Romans chapter 16, there's a host of names in Rome that Paul greets. And scholars have done a lot of work on those names and Roman names, and they have the names of slaves, and they have the names of freed people listed.

Paul lists the names of slaves and freed people. They have them in the church. These are people who would love to go [00:10:00] through the ceremony if they're slaves, but they remember going through the ceremony if they're freed

And Paul had those in his audience. Paul's audience, Paul's readers and listeners knew that a spoken word from an authority could turn them from slave to freed A spoken word from an authority. Now, to, to do that process in Rome, you had to either be a magistrate or you had to be, uh, of a certain military rank.

But you could, on a spoken word, touch of the stick, shave the head, put on the hat, change the name and status of a slave If you understand, and we keep in mind that [00:11:00] Paul's audience knew this well, some of them experienced it, others of them hoped for it, then we read it a little bit differently in today because Paul is gonna quote a prophet who watched God hold that ceremony for children whose birth names were curses

But in God's version, God doesn't simply free them. He doesn't simply rename them. God doesn't stop at making them a citizen. God adopts them as sons. This is a profound passage if we'll read it in context and understand it in the culture of the day. So I wanna, as we're doing each time, pick up from last week's verses.

We'll dig a little bit [00:12:00] deeper into them, and then we'll proceed forward into these new verses. Last week, we looked at the verses in, in Romans chapter 9 where Paul uses a metaphor that he borrows from the Old Testament, that he quotes from the Old Testament, that he uses from contemporary writings, the wisdom of Solomon, and Paul asked this question w- you know, the, does the clay say to the potter, "Why'd you make me this way?

Why, what, why, why did you make me for this purpose? Why are you..." Uh, is my sister Catherine in here? Catherine, the potter, she wasn't here last week, though I gave you the shout-out anyway. She, uh, she had a wedding in Galveston she was at. Um, but, uh, you know, sh- she doesn't-- I, I've seen her throw clay for 45 years.

I've never seen her once take that lump of clay and put it on the [00:13:00] wheel and bend down and listen for what it, it's gonna tell her it, it wants to be

that doesn't happen So, so the purpose of the vessel is not determined by the c- the, the clay doesn't make that choice. The, the, the, the potter makes that choice. And some pots it makes that are suitable for a wedding gift, some possi- pots it makes that are suitable for a bedpan. But that's the choice of the potter.

That's why Paul says, "Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use", time, uh, uh, uh, something, uh, suitable as a wedding gift, something noble, and one for atime, a dishonorable use, something much more ordinary and, and perfunctory. And the difference between something that's honorable and something that's [00:14:00] dishonorable is the choice of the potter.

And so we talked about that, but it- it's one... Here's your go a little deeper in that verse. Paul's saying, "This is what the potter can do out of a lump of clay", a phyrra-- phy- phyrrha. Phyrrha is, uh, phyrrha is, is a lump of usually kneaded dough, but it's anything you knead. You watch Catherine with her clay, she kneads the clay before she puts it on the wheel, and so it's called a lump.

But it's no different. It's the same word for a lump of dough, doughy bread that you're gonna knead. It's something that's kneaded. Um, and, and so Paul uses that word here. "Doesn't the potter have the right to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?" Now, I gotta tell you, Tom Wright has better things to do than to watch this class.[00:15:00]

But if he ever watches this class- He's really good at showing how Romans 9, 10, and 11 fold over and touch each other, and Romans 9 and Romans 11 complement each other, and Romans 10 is a focal point, and he's real good at showing the chiasm is the scholastic word for it. We'll talk about that when we get to Romans 10.

But this is a little sneak peek of where this is useful, because what Paul's saying in Romans 9 about a lump of clay, he comes back to in Romans 11. It kind of mirrors it. And so he'll use, "If the dough offered as first fruits," again, now it's dough instead of clay, "but if the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump."

And lump is the same word in whether you're dealing with dough or whether you're dealing with clay. Paul is using that same word. The whole [00:16:00] lump. If the root's holy, so are the branches. What Paul's saying here, if you take this back to Romans 9:21 and you put it together, the potter has the right over the same lump to make one vessel for honorable, another for dishonorable.

But he's not talking about it's headed to the scrap heap here. He's talking about something that's headed for glory

Out of the same dough, it goes to glory. God's not trying to ruin your life. God's taking you to glory And then Paul continues with verse 22, "What if God, desiring to show his wrath, to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory."

Pluto. The riches of his glory [00:17:00] For vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory. Again, if we go to Romans 11, that parallel chapter in a way, "Oh, the depths of the riches," same word, "of His glory." The riches. This paragraph, that's in the doxology of Romans 11, the big praise at the end. This paragraph, in order to make known the riches of His glory, this is praiseworthy to God.

God is going about some incredible things here. And, and what Paul's done is he's sown some seeds to it for us to see, but we've got to read this in context of what he's writing So I still believe that he's trying to answer this question at this point of did God's word fail? And his answer is absolutely not.

[00:18:00] Mercy is never owed. He'll have mercy on whom he has mercy. He'll have compassion on whom he'll have compassion. Not only is mercy never owed, but he's shown us that God is free. He's, he's free in the way he acts. He's free to give mercy. He's free to harden. But You read this looking really carefully at how Paul words things, because Paul, if you go back to that passage, and this is still a little bit from last week, what if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

He doesn't say which God prepared. He purposefully writes it in a passive voice, even though he knows how to say He has prepared, because he does [00:19:00] it in the next verse. But Paul doesn't say that God has prepared for destruction. He just says, in a passive sense, "In order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared."

There it s- says God did it beforehand. Not only... Go back for a moment. Excuse me. "Which God has prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He has called, not from the Jews only, but also the Gentiles." So here are the three things that we wanna get into new today. First of all, Hosea talks about the God who renames, and that's verses 25 and 26 of this chapter.

Then Isaiah talks about the remnant that will be saved. That's verses 27 through 29, and then there's kind of a division on how to read this stuff, and I wanna give you a chance to make [00:20:00] your verdict, uh, and that'll be what we cover at the end. First, Hosea, the God who renames. So in the context and flow of what we've talking about, Paul says this: "As indeed God says in Hosea, 'Those who were not my people, I will call my people, and her who was not beloved, I will call beloved.'"

Now, Paul doesn't just say, "As it says in the holy writings," which he does often. Paul doesn't say, "As it says," you know, "in, in scripture," as he does often. Paul doesn't say, "As, as it says in, in..." He's specific to Hosea, and Hosea is a book about a prophet married to a woman, [00:21:00] and there's a real backstory that every Old Testament reader of Hosea would know We live 2,000 years after the birth of Christ.

We know the stories of the parable of the Good Samaritan. We know that Jesus took fish and fed the 5,000. We know that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. We know that Jesus, and we can st- gave the Sermon on the Mount. We know Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer. We know all of those things 'cause we've read them over and over.

None of us were there for that, but we've read them over and over. Well, at the time of Paul, they didn't have the Gospels with those stories. They had the apostolic witness to it, but their Bible stories they knew are what we call [00:22:00] the Old Testament, and they knew the story of Hosea. Hosea is a prophet that God calls to marry Gomer, and, and Gomer is a, um A loose woman

She is, uh, well, we'll use the biblical word, 'cause otherwise my mom wouldn't let me talk this way. She's right over there This is worth warming up. Let's read nine verses of this together. The word of the Lord that came to Hosea in the days of the Kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of Judah, and King Jeroboam, son of Joash of Israel When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the [00:23:00] Lord said to Hosea, "Go take for yourself a wife of whoredom, a prostitute."

And have children of whoredom, where you're never sure if you're the dad or not because there's not a paternity suit For the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord. So he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. Doesn't say he was the dad And the Lord said to him, "Name him Jezreel, for in a little while I'll punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I'll put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel."[00:24:00]

Jezreel was their Gettysburg war site, a site of massacre, where the massacre had taken place of all of the family of Ahab. "I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. On that day, I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel." So name the child after a slaughterhouse

Name him Pearl Harbor

Name him, you know, Gettysburg. She conceived again and bore a daughter. Then the Lord said, "Name her Lo-ruhamah, because I'm no longer gonna have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them, but I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I'll save them by the Lord their God. I won't save them by bow, or [00:25:00] sword, or war, or horses, but by horsemen."

When she weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said, "Name him Lo-ammi, for you're not my people, and I'm not your God" Now that's the backstory. Let's put it on s- a slide. She has a son, then a daughter, and then another son. By the way, I've altered their images out of a respect for their privacy.

First son, his name is Jezreel. Now Jezreel is the slaughterhouse, but it also comes from two different words, a compound word, and it means God scatters in the sense of sowing seed. You know, like scatters, [00:26:00] 'cause that's the way they sowed back then, sowed seeds. And then the daughter comes along, and she's named Lo-ruhamah.

Lo is the Hebrew word for not. Ruhamah has its own meaning, mercy No Mercy is her name So you've got God scatters, you've got no mercy, and then you get a third kid, and the third kid is Lo-Ammi. Lo means not, Ammi, my people So his name is literally not my people. I mean, every time Hosea or his wife has to go out and call those kids in for dinner, they are proclaiming the judgment of God.

Hey, get in here. It's time to eat. Come on in. [00:27:00] God scatters. Come on in. No mercy. Hey, not my people. Get in here. That's what's happening here. That's what Hosea 1:1-9 means

But something transforms in the book of Hosea. So we can continue to read Hosea 2:21 through 23, because God says, "While I'm casting them off, while I'm scattering them, while I'm sending them thither," he says, um, "There c- going to come a day where things are different." And so we look at this in Hosea 2:21

"On that day I will answer," says the Lord, "I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth. The earth Shall answer the grain, the wine, [00:28:00] and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel. And instead of the idea of a scattering, of a, um, Gettysburg, of a bloodbath of war, it's going to mean a deliberate sowing of seed.

I will sow him for myself in the land. And I will have mercy or pity on no mercy And I will say to not my people You're my people And they will say to me, "You are my God." Now that's your backstory And so when we read this from Paul and we've got that backstory, it allows us to understand, uh-oh, there we go, what Paul means.

As [00:29:00] indeed he says in Hosea, those who were lo-ammi, not my people, I'm changing the name

The Romans knew what a name change meant. I'm changing the name. I'm gonna call them my people. God's gonna set them free. And her who was not beloved, uh, that's no mercy, lo-ruhamah. The, the, the one with no mercy, not beloved, I will call Mercy

And so Paul continues, "In the very place where it said to them, 'Lo-ammi, you're not my people,' not only will I say they're my people, but I'll call them children, sons of the living God." And we find that in [00:30:00] Hosea as well. You gotta back it up to Hosea 1:10, but Hosea 1:10 gives you the same thing. It gives you this passage that Paul's referencing.

Paul says

Yet the number of people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can neither be measured nor numbered, and in the place where it was said to them, "You are not my people, lo-ammi," it shall be said, "Children of the living God." He's gonna change their name, but not just change their name. God adopts them.

And that's taking what the Romans knew well and putting it on a whole new level. Now If you know the story of Hosea and Gomer and the [00:31:00] children, you know he's talking about the nation of Israel And if you know he's talking about the nation of Israel, you might be saying, "Well now, why is Paul doing this?

Has Paul, you know, missed a step?" Because that's the nation of Israel. I mean, this is at a time where you've got the northern tribes, Israel, and the southern tribes of Judah. The kingdom is split, and Paul's talking about a prophecy that applied to the northern people That's not really on subject of what Paul's doing in Romans 9.

Oh, yes it is. Paul didn't miss a step. What Paul's pointing out is God's in the renaming business, and he can rename people. God can, can rename people. He can take the outsider and bring them in. We're Gentiles. I'm Goy[00:32:00]

I got to speak to the Jewish Community Center. Goy is, uh, an outsider, a, a, a non-Jew. Singular. Goyim is plural. I got to speak to the Jewish Community Center. I had-- Larry, I had 250 good Jewish people listening to me, and I was introduced as the only Gentile in the room And it allowed me to use the old Jim Hoffmeyer line, "I know what you're thinking, ladies and gentlemen, what's a goy like me doing in a place like this?"

We know Paul is saying that God can bring the outsiders in. He can set us free. He can name us. He can do whatever he wants. But what about the insiders who refuse God? What about the, the Jews of Paul's day who refuse the Lord? He can bring in the Gentiles, the Goyim are welcome, [00:33:00] but what about the insiders?

And so now Paul changes from Hosea to Isaiah. And here, if Hosea tells us about the God who remains, Isaiah tells us about the remnant of Israel that will be saved. But he doesn't simply say it, he shouts it. Look at what Paul says as he continues to write, "And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel." This word cry out, krazo in the Greek, um, looks like crazy.

Totally different heritage. Crazy comes from a German, uh, uh, lineage, and it deals with, uh, actually cracking pottery and stuff. But, um, uh, this is, uh, uh, krazo is a word we don't really have a word from it that I know of anymore in our language today, but it was the idea [00:34:00] of, of not simply speaking or saying.

Paul could have said that, but Paul uses the word cries out, krazo. He shrieks in another context. He shouts in another context. This is the word that's used for John the Baptist in John 1:15, that he is shouting out the cry in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord." Shouting it out over the din of other things for people to hear.

Look at Mark 9:26 and, uh, the way it's used there. Mark 9:26 gives you a good flavor for this word that Paul is, is reaching for when he describes what Isaiah's saying. It's a cry, like of anguish or something. Uh, in, in Mark, uh, 9:26, let's see if we're there Um, [00:35:00] Jesus, uh, uh, this is when a boy's brought to Jesus, and the boy's demon-possessed.

And Jesus says, "I command you to come out of him and never enter him again." Then it says, "After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse." Same word. You know, this was not the demon just, "Okay. Hey, how's it going, Jesus? I'm pretty chill." Chill demon. This is a demon who is

I mean, you, you get a picture here. It's a shriek. Um, Luke 9:39 is another good use of this word to show you that it's not simply just an announcement. Um, Luke 9:39, here, same thing. Jesus heals the boy. "A man from the crowd shouts, 'Teacher, I beg you to look at my son. He's only a child. Suddenly, a spirit seizes him, and all at once, he shrieks.'"

That's the [00:36:00] same word. He cries out. He shrieks And that's what Paul's saying Isaiah's doing. And remember, this is a lament that started out as a lament with Paul in the beginning of-- Paul says, "I would be accursed if, if I could take care of Israel that way." And this is deep anguish. Paul's not using simple words.

He's using words of emotion and words of, of, of, of grief and words of attention and words that are compelling And so he quotes Isaiah, "Though the number of the sons of Israel be as sands of the sea," actually that little bit's from the Hosea stuff. Very classic of an Old T- of a rabbinical scholar to, uh, link chains together of Old Testament scriptures and, and to take the end of one chain and start a next chain with the end of the old chain.

So before he starts Isaiah, he [00:37:00] finishes off Hosea. Um, "Though the number of the sons of Israel be as sands of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved." Now, where's my young lady again? Hi. Just, uh, you're young enough I'm allowed to ask. You're, you're, like, less than 25, right? I'm 16. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's less than 25. She's 16. When you were young, did they still have take your daughter or your granddaughter or whomever to Workday? Never did that. When I was a younger man. When I was younger, so much younger than today

I never needed anybody's help in any way. But now these days are gone and I'm not so [00:38:00] self-assured, and now I find... No, uh, when, when I was younger, we had Take Your Daughter, but then they decided that was sexist, so it's just Take Your Kid to Work Day. Take Your Child to Work Day. Okay? And, and my kids loved it.

Uh, they, they, they... I'd take them to work Well, that's not a new invention. Isaiah had Take Your Child to Work Day. In fact, you can read about it in Isaiah verse, chapter seven, verse three. "And the Lord said to Isaiah, 'Go out to meet Ahaz'" He's the king. "'And take Shear-jashub your son.'" He takes his son to work.

"Dad, what are we doing today?" "Today you're going with me to work." "Where are you going?" "I'm gonna go prophesy to the king that he's ruining the country." "Wow, Dad, is that safe?" "I don't know, but it's take your son to work day, so you're coming [00:39:00] with me. Let's go together." And he's got his son who's a walking prophecy because Sha'ar Yashub means literally a remnant shall return.

Isaiah 10:22 through 23 is what Paul quotes. In Isaiah 10:22 through 23, we have

The following

Isaiah 10:22 through 23. Let's start with 20. On that day-- And by the way, we've had some real good stuff. We've had the stuff about Jesus already happening, along with, uh, uh, you know, the coming king is, is [00:40:00] here. Um, then we've got, uh, uh, the arrogant Assyrians being judged. But there will come a day, on that day, the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on the one who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.

What Israel and J- and Judah had a tendency to do is to make political alliances with people who would then come and gobble them up. And instead of trusting on the Lord, they would trust in these foreign powers, and the foreign powers would always just use them and abuse them and take them. But they will then lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth, and a remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the Mighty God.

For though your people, Israel, were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness, for the Lord God of Hosts will make a full [00:41:00] end. I want you to see this: only a remnant of them will return. Now, Paul quotes this, and as Paul quotes it, he says Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them, instead of will return from captivity, Paul says will be saved.

Now, this is a Greek word, sozo is the verb. It means to preserve. It means to rescue. It means to save. Paul's not dancing the Hebrew. Paul is using a word that the Hebrew translators used when they translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek 100-plus years before Paul. So this idea of [00:42:00] saved, when we read this, only a remnant of them will be saved.

If we're just reading this with our mentality, all we think about is salvation, like they're going to heaven, not to hell That's not at all the, the mentality of-- First of all, the heaven and hell mentality is a little bit different than, than, but that's another day. But, but what this is, this has at its root the idea that they'll be saved from captivity.

They'll be sent back. They'll shub in the Hebrew. They'll return. And so you see this verb, sozo, it can mean eternal salvation certainly, but the idea is to rescue, to preserve, to save. To save from death, that's eternal salvation. To save from disease, that's to heal. To save from captivity, that's to rescue So you can see this same verb [00:43:00] being used in Acts 27:20.

I just want you to get a feel for it, 'cause we need to always be people who read scripture intelligently and not like it is a computer program or a mathematical formula. And so if you look at Acts 27:20, Paul and, and his crew are in a ship r- storm at sea. Where, where are we? 27:20, the storm at sea. There it is.

All right. So there's, "A moderate south wind begins to blow. The ship's caught on. By the third day..." Let's go down to there. "By the third day, with their own hands they threw the ship's tackle overboard. Neither sun nor stars appeared for many days. No small tempest raged. All hope of our being saved was at last abandoned."

Paul doesn't mean our hope of, of going to heaven was gone, we were [00:44:00] going down with the boat. He's talking about a rescue. Um, Hebrews 5:7, another great example of this word, uh, m- meaning in a sense rescue or, or return. Hebrews 5:7, "In the days of his flesh-" Jesus offered up p-prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who is able to save him from death.

You know, God didn't save Jesus from death in the sense of God gave Jesus salvation. Jesus was God. He didn't need God to give him salvation, but God redeemed him from death. He rescued him from death. He resurrected him. So if we understand that... Now, having said that, I'm not saying Paul is using this word without an understanding of its salvation overtones, [00:45:00] because we'll see that as we move through the coming passages of scripture.

He'll talk about all who call on the Lord will be saved. But the way he's quoting it here from Isaiah, it's talking about, the Hebrews 5:7, it's talking about it in the Isaiah sense a little bit differently than maybe we read it. By the way, that is the same verb that's used in Ephesians 2:8-10. "For by grace you have been saved, through faith, not by works."

So it, it, it's used by Paul. It's used by Paul in the next chapter. It's used by Paul in previous chapters in a salvation sense. But what we've got right here is something much different. Mark 5:34, in the interest of time, I won't go there, but you've got it. So, "Though your people be as..." So here's the Isaiah passage, "Though your people, Israel, be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return."

And it's [00:46:00] will return in the Hebrew, because that's the shub word. That's the idea, that they'll come back. It's translated into preserve or rescue or saved. But you see the sense of this. A few of them will be saved. Now, in fact, if you go back and you go to the passage before it in Isaiah, they'll be saved, returned to the Lord.

So the-the-there's some overturns here. But we just wanna read it carefully, and I, and I, I wanna add one more thing, and then we'll go on. Paul quotes Isaiah, "Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea," but Isaiah's actually says, "For though your people, Israel..." Uh, that's where Paul's merging and using the Hosea.

It's not that Paul's bad at, at remembering his scriptures. So here we've got this passage. Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, "Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them [00:47:00] will be saved." Now, what do we do with this? Well, I think if we go back and read this as people in 57 AD, there had to be a problem that Paul faced every synagogue he spoke in Every time he had to be facing this question, big question.

If Jesus were the Christ, wouldn't the people of God accept him? Maybe he's not the Messiah because the people of God turned him away. And Isaiah want, uh, and Paul is making it abundantly clear to people, look, most of Israel missed the boat all the time Don't put confidence in their ability to discern the will of God.

Even Isaiah take your kid to work day doesn't budge [00:48:00] Ahaz. But God's always gonna have a remnant, and God is speaking to a church in Rome where the, the Jewish population got sent out from Rome And have just returned. So they understand what this is like. This, this is a fresh mentality. And Paul finishes this section with, "The Lord will carry out His sentence upon the earth fully and without delay."

Now, you may be saying, "Okay, I didn't quite get all of that." If so, I'd love to say, "Well, I'm sorry I'm a poor teacher," and that is true, but there is redemption. So come back next week because we're gonna pick up with these verses, and I'm gonna dig a little bit deeper into them, too, because there's still more gold we need to mine, and maybe I'll do a better job explaining it next week.

But I don't wanna leave without finishing where Paul finishes, and that's Romans [00:49:00] 9:29, "As Isaiah predicted, 'If the Lord of Hosts had not left us offspring'" Offspring, sperma, seed, "we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah." If the Lord hadn't left us offspring. That's not a new word. He's used it earlier in the chapter where he said, "Not all children, not all are children of Abraham because they are his seed, but through Isaac will the seed be named."

That's this idea. There's o- There- We are counted as his offspring. So we've got a God who renames. We've got a remnant that will be saved And then somewhere in here, we've gotta start making, uh, [00:50:00] a decision on how we read this. So I wanna kind of give you a divide, and then you get to pay your money and take what you want.

It's your call. See, on one side of the divide, as I read them at least, you've got two guys, Doug Moo and John Piper, who've written amazing commentaries and works on this. Uh, Doug Moo I've interviewed in our class. John Piper and Doug Moo have spoken at our library, uh, um, been there, uh, uh, repeatedly. And they're great, great guys, and they are really smart, and they are wise in the ways of the Lord.

And then on the other side, we got guys like Tom Wright and Jimmy Dunn. Uh, Jimmy Dunn, by the way, is no longer with us. He's now passed on, but he wrote the Word Bible Commentary on [00:51:00] Romans. Uh, th- uh, this was his niche I never met Jimmy Dunn, though obviously many of his students, and I've read a lot of his stuff.

Uh, Tom Wright I regard not just as one of my favorite scholars, but a, a, a very good friend, a dear friend, and I care for him, uh, on a personal level. Um, don't agree with him on everything, but, but, uh, he's probably right and I'm probably wrong on most of those things where we disagree. I, I mean, he's just really, really good.

And, um, th- these two over here read this, by my perception, I'm-- I can't quote them, differently than these two over here, by my perception. And I may get an email from them saying, "You totally misrepresented me to your class." In which event, mea culpa. I'm sorry. It's my fault. [00:52:00] But these two over here, Moo and Piper, read this passage and they read it to say God's electing purpose goes all the way down to individual salvation, who is saved and who is not Tom and, uh, J- James Dunn, Jimmy Dunn, said God's ele- say God's electing purpose is salvation historical.

He's going to save His people. He's gonna save His church. It's not talking about the individual souls right here. It's talking within this parameter of God's salvation work in history to bring salvation to His people, and His people will include not just those remnants of the Jews, those remnants of Israel, but those of us from the Goyim who get grafted into the tree.

[00:53:00] And God has said He will save us, and He has worked through history to bring the salvation of Jesus Christ to us, and He has called us as a group into that salvation. Now, understand, these guys, all four of them, Moo, Piper, Wright, Dunn, and others of their ilk, are all careful scholars with the highest view of Scripture, reading the same Greek text and landing in different places And if you want me to tell you how I read this I'm gonna teach you a very important principle life is hard, and then you die

But I can give you some gimmes that I think all five of these guys would-- or four of these guys would agree on. Here's [00:54:00] your-- Gimme in golf is when you get it so close to the hole that people say you don't have to putt it in, you just pick the ball up. That's a gimme. Here are your five gimmes. Mercy isn't owed And it's not earned.

You don't earn it by how you're born, who you're born to, or how good you are. And God's freedom includes God's ability to harden where it's important for his purposes

And the people who are called by God are Gentiles and a remnant of Israel. Amen. And nobody is beyond God's ability to rename them. Hunc ego hominem ex iure Caritum liberum esse io. I declare this man to be free by the law of the Carites. God doesn't just rename you, He makes you a child. Yes. And [00:55:00] that gives us our points for home.

One, live from your new name, not your old one. If Cicero's secretary Tiro takes on Cicero's name, let's take on the name of our Father and be image-bearers. We've received a spirit of adoption, Paul wrote in the previous chapter, by whom we cry Abba Father. Number two, never measure God's faithfulness by a head count

God's in the remnant business. God's pulling out from among those who run from Him. And point number three, nobody's name is final. So if you've got someone that you want to know the Lord or be drawn close to the Lord, keep praying, because those who are not my people, I will call my people [00:56:00] Amen? Amen.

Lunch topic: Where do you see God transforming and renaming? And with that, it's noon, and it's time for me to bless you, and we depart. Lord, in the name of Jesus, I ask your blessings on all of us. May we be your people, may we be your children, and may we live in a way where everybody is stunned by the transparent love that we reflect, that you have for the nations, for the people.

May we walk holy and bring a good repute to your name that we bear. We pray through the power of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen