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 Sabbath School Lesson These Sabbath School lesson files are prepared by staff member James Brenneman for his own personal use and for others who may find it convenient to have the texts from the Sabbath School lesson along with comments as space may permit.
August 28 to September 3, 2010 Memory Text: Romans 9:18 NRSV “So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses.”
Sunday – Paul’s Burden
Exodus 19:6 NLT “And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.’ This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.””
Romans 9:1-12 NLT “1 ¶ With Christ as my witness, I speak with utter truthfulness. My conscience and the Holy Spirit confirm it. 2 My heart is filled with bitter sorrow and unending grief 3 for my people, my Jewish brothers and sisters. I would be willing to be forever cursed—cut off from Christ!—if that would save them. 4 They are the people of Israel, chosen to be God’s adopted children. God revealed his glory to them. He made covenants with them and gave them his law. He gave them the privilege of worshiping him and receiving his wonderful promises. 5 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are their ancestors, and Christ himself was an Israelite as far as his human nature is concerned. And he is God, the one who rules over everything and is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. 6 ¶ Well then, has God failed to fulfill his promise to Israel? No, for not all who are born into the nation of Israel are truly members of God’s people! 7 Being descendants of Abraham doesn’t make them truly Abraham’s children. For the Scriptures say, “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted,” though Abraham had other children, too. 8 This means that Abraham’s physical descendants are not necessarily children of God. Only the children of the promise are considered to be Abraham’s children. 9 For God had promised, “I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” 10 This son was our ancestor Isaac. When he married Rebekah, she gave birth to twins. 11 But before they were born, before they had done anything good or bad, she received a message from God. (This message shows that God chooses people according to his own purposes; 12 he calls people, but not according to their good or bad works.) She was told, “Your older son will serve your younger son.””
Romans 9:1 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY Paul now turns from the triumphant and joyful climax of ch. 8 to consider a problem that fills him with “great heaviness and continual sorrow” (ch. 9:2). Why is it that the Jews, God’s chosen people, have so largely rejected the gospel?....First, Paul affirms his love and sorrow for his own people (ch. 9:1–3). He then declares that the cause of their rejection is not the failure of God’s promises to them (vs. 6–13). Nor is there any injustice on the part of God in this matter (vs. 14–29). The fault lies in their own rejection of “the righteousness which is of faith” (chs. 9:30 to 10:21).
Romans 9:4 COMMENTARY BY ADAM CLARKE The giving of the law] The revelation of God by God himself, containing a system of moral and political precepts. This was also peculiar to the Jews; for to no other nation had he ever given a revelation of his will.
Romans 9:7-9 COMMENTARY ANDREWS STUDY BIBLE Promise, rather than physical descent, defines the identity of Israel. For example, Ishmael, Esau, and the sons of Keturah were rejected although they were physical children of Abraham.
Romans 9:12 COMMENTARY BY ALBERT BARNES The eldest son, which was Esau. By the law of primogeniture among the Hebrews, he would have been entitled to peculiar honours and privileges. But it was said that in his case this custom should be reversed, and that he should take the rank of the younger.
Monday – Elected
Romans 9:12-13 Holman “12 not from works but from the One who calls) she was told: ‘The older will serve the younger.’ 13 As it is written: ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.’ ”
Romans 9:13 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY By referring to the history of the patriarchs Paul shows that God’s choice of spiritual Israel, in view of the failure of the Jews to fulfill the divine purpose, is fully consistent with His past dealings. God is not being untrue to any. In calling upon the Christian church to accomplish His purposes for the world, God is following the same principle He originally employed when He selected the Israelites and rejected the Edomites and the Ishmaelites. Now Paul proceeds to prove that neither does the present rejection imply that God is unjust.
Romans 9:14-15 20th Century NT “14 ¶ What are we to say, then? Is God guilty of injustice? Heaven forbid! 15 For his words to Moses are-’I will take pity on whom I take pity, and be merciful to whom I am merciful.’”
Romans 9:14 COMMENTARY BY ADAM CLARKE To what conclusion shall we come on the facts before us? Shall we suggest that God's bestowing peculiar privileges in this unequal manner, on those who otherwise are in equal circumstances, is inconsistent with justice and equity? By no means. Whatever God does is right, and he may dispense his blessings to whom and or what terms he pleases.
Tuesday – Mysteries
Isaiah 55:8-9 God’s Word to the Nations “8 "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways," declares the LORD. 9 "Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts."”
Romans 9:17-24 NRSV “17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh, "I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth." 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses. 19 You will say to me then, "Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" 20 But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, "Why have you made me like this?" 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; 23 and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?”
Romans 9:17 COMMENTARY ANDREWS STUDY BIBLE The purpose of election is (1) to proclaim the name of God in all the earth and (2) to have all come to the knowledge of the truth.
Romans 9:18 PEOPLE’S NT COMMENTARY God only made harder, by his judgments and by leaving him to his folly, one who had already hardened his own heart. That he was given over to madness is shown in the record. Even his magician said, "This is the finger of God"
Romans 9:18 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY In the Bible God is often represented as doing that which He does not prevent. Paul here chooses the latter representation as better suited to his purpose in this context. The hardening of a man’s heart is the result of rebellion against the divine revelation and rejection of the Divine Spirit. Paul has spoken earlier in this epistle of how God turns a man over to the inevitable consequences of his stubborn.
Romans 9:21 COMMENTARY ANDREWS STUDY BIBLE As Creator, God reserves the right to create as He wishes. This point should not be broadly interpreted to apply to every human situation, such as those born with congenital diseases. Paul’s point is limited to certain individuals and nations, such as Israel, Moses, and Pharaoh who were elected to reveal His glory.
John 14:9 KJ21 “Jesus said unto him, "Have I been so long a time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, ‘Show us the Father’?”
Wednesday – My People
Romans 9:25-29 NIV “25 ¶ As he says in Hosea: "I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people; and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one," 26 and, "It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God’." 27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. 28 For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality." 29 It is just as Isaiah said previously: "Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah."”
Romans 9:25 COMMENTARY BY ALBERT BARNES The meaning is the same in Hosea and in this place, that God would bring those into a covenant relation to himself, who were before deemed outcasts and strangers. Thus he supports his main position that God would choose his people from among the Gentiles as well as the Jews, or would exercise towards both his right as a sovereign, bestowing or withholding his blessings as he pleases.
Romans 9:27 COMMENTARY ANDREWS STUDY BIBLE Election does not guarantee salvation. Israel was God’s elect, but not every Israelite will be saved.
Thursday – Stumbling
Romans 9:30-32 ASV “30 ¶ What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who followed not after righteousness, attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith: 31 but Israel, following after a law of righteousness, did not arrive at [that] law. 32 Wherefore? Because [they sought it] not by faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled at the stone of stumbling;”
Romans 9:30 COMMENTARY BY ALBERT BARNES The apostle does not say that the sins of the Gentiles, or their indifference to the subject, was any reason why God justified them, or that men would be as safe in sin as in attempting to seek for salvation. He establishes the doctrine, indeed, that God is a sovereign; but still it is implied that the gospel had not the peculiar obstacle to contend with among the Gentiles that it had among the Jews. There was less pride, obstinacy, self-confidence; and men were more easily brought to see that they were sinners, and to feel their need of a Saviour. Though God dispenses his favours as a sovereign, and though all are opposed by nature to the gospel, yet it is always true that the gospel finds more obstacles among some men than among others. This was a most cutting and humbling doctrine to the pride of a Jew; and it is no wonder, therefore, that the apostle guarded it as he did.
Romans 9:32 COMMENTARY BY ADAM CLARKE Being ignorant of God's righteousness-of his method of saving sinners by faith in Christ, they [the Jews] went about to establish their own righteousness-their own method of obtaining everlasting salvation. They attend not to the Abrahamic covenant, which stands on the extensive principles of grace and faith; but they turn all their regards to the law of Moses. They imagine that their obedience to that law gives them a right to the blessings of the Messiah's kingdom. But, finding that the Gospel sets our special interest in God and the privileges of his Church on a different footing, they are offended, and refuse to come into it.
September 4-10 Memory Text: Romans 11:1 NRSV “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.”
Sunday – The End of the Law
Romans 10:1-4 NRSV “1 ¶ Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”
Romans 10:2 COMMENTARY BY ADAM CLARKE They believe their law to have come immediately from God himself, and are jealous of its glory and excellence; they conscientiously observe its rites and ceremonies, but they do not consider the object and end of those rites; they sin more through ignorance than malice; and this pleads in their excuse. By this fine apology for them, the apostle prepares them for the harsher truths which he was about to deliver.
Monday – The Election of Grace
Romans 11:1-7 20th Century NT “1 ¶ I ask, then, ‘Has God rejected his People?’ Heaven forbid! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected his People, whom he chose from the first. Have you forgotten the words of Scripture in the story of Elijah- how he appeals to God against Israel? 3 ‘Lord, they have killed thy Prophets, they have pulled down thy altars, and I only am left; and now they are eager to take my life.’ 4 But what was the divine response? ‘I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have never bowed the knee to Baal.’ 5 And so in our own time, too, there is to be found a remnant of our nation selected by God in love. 6 But if in love, then no longer as a result of obedience. Otherwise love would cease to be love. 7 What follows from this? Why, that Israel as a nation failed to secure what it was seeking, while those whom God selected did secure it.”
Romans 11:1-10 COMMENTARY BY MATTHEW HENRY The Jewish nation were as in a deep sleep, without knowledge of their danger, or concern about it; having no sense of their need of the Saviour, or of their being upon the borders of eternal ruin.
Romans 11:7 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY the believing Jews, like the believing Gentiles, are saved only by grace (Rom. 11:6; cf. Eph. 2:8). As for the rest of Israel, they have been hardened, not because God has cast them away, for He has not (Rom. 11:1, 2), but because they have sought to establish their own righteousness by their own works and have not submitted to the righteousness of God (ch. 10:3).
Romans 11:7-10 God’s Word to the Nations “7 So what does all this mean? It means that Israel has never achieved what it has been striving for. However, those whom God has chosen have achieved it. The minds of the rest of Israel were closed, 8 as Scripture says, "To this day God has given them a spirit of deep sleep. Their eyes don’t see, and their ears don’t hear!" 9 And David says, "Let the table set for them become a trap and a net, a snare and a punishment for them. 10 Let their vision become clouded so that they cannot see. Let them carry back–breaking burdens forever."”
Romans 11:8 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY By His grace God seeks to change this condition and to reawaken the powers of spiritual perception, while at the same time He presents to man the truths that pertain to his salvation. But when man persistently resists this grace, God, who will not force anyone against his will, withdraws His rejected grace and leaves man to the natural consequences of his stubborn resistance.
Tuesday – The Grafted Branch
Romans 11:11-15 Holman “11 I ask, then, have they stumbled so as to fall? Absolutely not! On the contrary, by their stumbling, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous. 12 Now if their stumbling brings riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full number bring! 13 Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. In view of the fact that I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, 14 if I can somehow make my own people jealous and save some of them. 15 For if their being rejected is world reconciliation, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?”
Romans 11:16-24 BBE “16 And if the first-fruit is holy, so is the mass: and if the root is holy, so are the branches. 17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, an olive-tree of the fields, were put in among them, and were given a part with them in the root by which the olive-tree is made fertile, 18 Do not be uplifted in pride over the branches: because it is not you who are the support of the root, but it is by the root that you are supported. 19 You will say, Branches were broken off so that I might be put in. 20 Truly, because they had no faith they were broken off, and you have your place by reason of your faith. Do not be lifted up in pride, but have fear; 21 For, if God did not have mercy on the natural branches, he will not have mercy on you. 22 See then that God is good but his rules are fixed: to those who were put away he was hard, but to you he has been good, on the condition that you keep in his mercy; if not, you will be cut off as they were. 23 And they, if they do not go on without faith, will be united to the tree again, because God is able to put them in again. 24 For if you were cut out of a field olive-tree, and against the natural use were united to a good olive-tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be united again with the olive-tree which was theirs?”
Romans 11:22 COMMENTARY BY ADAM CLARKE engrafting: often, in this operation, a part of a branch is cut off; in that part which remains in connection with the tree a little slit is made, and then a small twig or branch taken from another tree is, at its lower end, shaved thin, wedge-like, and then inserted in the cleft, after which the whole is tied together, clayed round, &c., and the bark unites to bark; and the stock and the scion become thus one tree, the juices of the whole stock circulating through the tubes of the newly-inserted twig; and thus both live, though the branch inserted bears a very different fruit from that which the parent stock bore.
Wednesday – A Mystery Revealed
Romans 11:25-27 NRSV “25 So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written, "Out of Zion will come the Deliverer; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob." 27 "And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins."”
Romans 11:26 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY
1. That Paul is not teaching universal salvation for either Gentiles or Jews has already been shown. Furthermore, why should only the generation of Jews living in the time of the end be assured of salvation by some kind of divine decree? Paul has expressed his hope that “some of them” (v. 14) might be saved. It seems evident from this that he believed that many would reject all efforts to save them, and that accordingly he never envisioned the conversion of the entire nation.
2. Some commentators hold that the faithful remnant to which are added those Jews who accept Christ during the Christian Era, constitute the “all Israel” who will be saved. This view is based on the observation that Paul’s burden in ch. 11 is the salvation of his fellow Israelites. He contrasts their salvation with that of the Gentiles. The two groups are distinguished throughout the chapter by the Jews’ being referred to in the third person and the Gentiles in the second. The salvation of the former is described by the expression “all Israel shall be saved”; that of the latter by “the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.”
3. Other commentators hold that “all Israel” represents spiritual Israel. This view is based on the belief that Paul is here completing his illustration of the olive tree. He has shown how the branches representing the unbelieving Jews were broken off, and the wild olive shoots, representing the Gentiles, grafted in. He has shown, also, how the severed branches could be reunited with the parent stock. By the grafting in of these branches the tree representing spiritual Israel would again be made whole. “All Israel” would thus represent the totality of those saved, Jews and Gentiles, who together constitute “all” of true Israel.
Thursday – The Salvation of Sinners
Romans 11:28-36 20th Century NT “28 From the stand-point of the Good News, the Jews are God’s enemies on your account; but from the stand-point of God’s selection, they are dear to him on account of the Patriarchs. 29 For God never regrets his gifts or his Call. 30 Just as you at one time were disobedient to him, but have now found mercy in the day of their disobedience; 31 So, too, they have now become disobedient in your day of mercy, in order that they also in their turn may now find mercy. 32 For God has given all alike over to disobedience, that to all alike he may show mercy. 33 ¶ Oh! the unfathomable wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgements, how untraceable his ways! Yes— 34 ‘Who has ever comprehended the mind of the Lord? Who has ever become his counselor? 35 Or who has first given to him, so that he may claim a recompense?’ 36 For all things are from him, through him, and for him. And to him be all glory for ever and ever! Amen.”
Romans 11:29 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY God has not changed His mind about Israel. The nation failed and was rejected, but a remnant will be saved. God is not sorry that He called and gave gifts to the seed of Abraham. Men may fail, and God may vary His method, but He never abandons His purpose. Paul expresses this truth as a reason for believing that God still offers pardon and salvation to the people whom He called and chose and on whom He has showered so many blessings.
Romans 11:30 SDA BIBLE COMMENTARY The Jews, whom God had chosen to be His ambassadors to the world, had failed miserably in their task of world evangelism. Hence it was not until the time of the Christian church that the invitation to salvation was extended to the Gentiles.
Romans 11:31 NIV “so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.”
Romans 11:31 COMMENTARY BY ALBERT BARNES The immediate effect of the unbelief of the Jews was to confer salvation on the Gentiles or to open the way for the preaching of the gospel to them. But its remote effect would be to secure the preaching of the gospel again to the Jews. Through the mercy, that is, the compassion or deep feeling of the converted Gentiles; through the deep and tender pity which they would feel for the blinded and degraded Jews, the gospel should be again carried to them, and they should be recalled to the long-lost favour of God. Each party should thus cause salvation to come to the other--the Jews to the Gentiles by their unbelief; but the Gentiles, in their turn, to the Jews by their belief.
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