Romans 10:14-21 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Romans 10:14-21

• Margaret has four daughters. Each daughter has a brother. How many children does Margaret have?
  • Anticipating the wrong answers and the objections, you can have an argument ready to present the answer
  • Paul takes time here in the last part of chapter 10 to anticipate some questions that will be thrown his way regarding Israel and their rejection of Christ
  • There is a concise and almost abrupt quality to the writing
    • It may well be that what we have here is the notes of some address which Paul was in the habit of delivering to the Jews to convince them of their error
  • In the previous passage, Paul has been saying that the way to God is not the way of works and of legalism, but of faith and trust. The objection is; but what if the Jews never heard of that? It is with that objection that Paul deals; and, as he deals with it in its various forms, on each occasion he clinches his answer with a text from the OT
• Romans 10:14-15
• 14 How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.
  • The first objection is; you cant call on God unless you believe in Him. You can’t believe in Him unless you hear about Him. You can’t hear about Him unless there is someone to proclaim the good news. There can be no one to proclaim the good news unless God sends someone to do so
  • What’s Paul’s answer to that objection?
    • He quotes Isaiah 52:7
    • “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news.”
  • He says basically that Isaiah described these very messengers long ago
• Romans 10:16
• 16 But not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our message?
  • The second objection is that Israel did not obey the good news, even if your argument is true. 
  • What do you say to that?
    • Again, Paul turns to Isaiah to say that Israel’s disbelief was only to be expected, because in despair Isaiah said:
      • Lord, who has believed our message? (Isaiah 53:1
    • It is true that Israel did not accept the god news from God, and in their refusal they were simply running true to for; history was repeating itself
• Romans 10:17-18
• 17 So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ. 18 But I ask, “Did they not hear?” Yes, they did: Their voice has gone out to the whole earth, and their words to the ends of the world.
  • The third objection is really just a restatement of the first
  • What if they never got the chance to hear the good news
    • Paul now goes to Psalm 19:4 to say, “Yes they did.”
    • Their voice has gone out to the whole earth, and their words to the ends of the world
  • You can’t say that Israel never got the chance to hear; for scripture plainly says that God’s message has gone out to all the world
• Romans 10:19-20
• 19 But I ask, “Did Israel not understand?” First, Moses said, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that lacks understanding. 20 And Isaiah says boldly, I was found by those who were not looking for me; I revealed myself to those who were not asking for me.
  • The fourth argument is pretty much, what if Israel didn’t understand? 
  • The meaning is basically “What if the message was so difficult to grasp that even when Israel did hear it, they were unable to grasp its significance?
    • This is where the passage is considered to become really difficult to interpret, but Paul’s answer is basically
    • Israel may have failed to understand, but who didn’t?
      • The Gentiles.They grasped the meaning of this offer, even when it came to them unexpectedly and unsought
    • Paul quotes two passages
      • Deuteronomy 32:21, “I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that lacks understanding
        • God says that because of Israel’s disobedience and rebellion, He will transfer His favor to another people and they will be forced to become jealous of a nation which has no nation
      • Isaiah 65:1, “I was found by those who were not looking for me; I revealed myself to those who were not asking for me.”
        • God says that, in a strange way, He has been found by a people who were not looking for Him at all
• Romans 10:21
• 21 But to Israel he says, All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and defiant people.
  • Finally, Pauls insists that all through history God has been stretching out hands of appeal to Israel, and Israel has always been disobedient and defiant
• Paul is laying the argument that there are certain kinds of ignorance which are inexcusable
  • There is the ignorance which comes from neglect of knowledge
    • There is a legal principle which says that genuine ignorance may be a defense, but neglect of knowledge never is
    • People cannot be blamed for not knowing what they never had a chance to know; but they can be blamed for neglecting to know things that were always open to them
    • If you sign a contract without reading the conditions, you can’t later complain if it is discovered that the conditions are different for what was originally understood. If we fail to equip ourselves for a task when every chance is given to us to equip ourselves adequately for it, we must stand condemned
    • As individuals, we are responsible for failing to know what we might have known
  • There is the ignorance which comes from willful blindness
    • We have an infinite and fatal capacity for shutting our minds to what we do not want to see, and stopping our ears to what we do not want to hear
    • A person may be well aware that some hat, some indulgence, some way of life, some friendship, some association must inevitably have disastrous results; but that person may simply refuse to look at the facts
    • To turn a blind eye may be a virtue in a few cases; in most cases, it is foolishness
  • There is the ignorance which is in essence a lie
    • The things about which we are in doubt are far fewer than we would d like to think
    • There are in reality very few occasions when we can honestly say “I never knew that things would turn out like this.”
    • God gave us conscience and the guidance of the Holy Spirit
    • Often we plead ignorance, when if we were honest, we would have to admit that in our heart of hearts, we knew the truth
  • There is a paradox in this passage. 
  • All through this section, Paul has been driving home the personal responsibility of the Jews. They should have known better; they had every chance to know better; but they rejected the appeal of God
  • HE began the argument by saying that everything was of God and that human beings had n more to do with it than the clay had to do with the work of the potter
  • He has set two things side by side; everything is of God, and everything is of human choice
  • Paul makes no attempt to resolve this dilemma; and the fact is that it cannot be resolved
  • It is a dilemma of human experience. We know that God is behind everything; and yet, at the same time, we know that we have free will and can accept or reject God’s offer. It is the paradox of the human situation that God is in control an d yet the human will is free