Notes From Jon

My series on Romans is not over yet, but it has taken a break for Advent.  In the meantime, I was able to deliver two more sermons – including this one covering difficult passages in chapters 9, 10 and 11.  I took these as a chunk because they seem to fit together as one long “tangent” Paul chases – albeit a very important and informative tangent.

As some previous entries, this post is more notes and commentary than sermon – I referred to these notes as I preached, but the final format was much different.

This week, we’re going to cover a little more ground than we have been so far.  At this point, Paul gets into a discussion that certainly has theological value, but is aimed more for his audience in the Roman church.

He gets into a discussion about the place of the Jews in God’s plan.  And he talks about it for three chapters.  This was a difficult topic for the Christians of the early church – they KNEW that their religion had sprung from Judaism.  Jesus himself was a faithful Jew!  And because of this, they knew the history of the promise that God had made to the Jewish people almost as long as they had existed – that he would be their God and they would be his people. Read the rest of this entry »