Proper 15: Epistle, Romans 11:1-2a, 13-15, 28-32

There’s a lovely gospel song from years back that has the most wonderful reminder as its title. It’s called, “Oh, How He Loves You and Me.” It was the theme song for many decades of a radio broadcast from a Los Angeles church. I cut my teeth as a young Christian on the preaching from that wonderful pastor and I get a lump in my throat whenever I hear the song because I associate it with the days when I learned so many precious Bible truths for the first time. I still listen. The pastor is now 81 and has pastored there more than 50 years.

All that to help point out the power of precious truths like the one pointed to in the song above.  The Apostle Paul is in a section, as we have seen, where he is dealing with God’s ongoing love and method with the people of Abraham. Israelites, Paul calls them and Jews as well. Sometimes we refer to them as “God’s chosen people” and indeed they were. Chosen for a purpose. Paul begins chapter eleven, “ I ask, then, has God rejected His people?” The rhetorical question assumes a “no” answer and indeed God has not. God’s choices are not made capriciously. There is nothing as settled in substance as God’s love and in Deuteronomy 7, Moses reminds the Israelites that God chose them simply because He loved them. Remember that song? “Oh How He Loves You and Me.”

Paul continues in our reading to explain that God’s choice people largely rejected the Messiah sent for them and then the preaching of the message moved out to those pesky Gentiles. That’s most of us. But God did it to move those precious “chosen” to jealousy. “I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them” (Romans 11:13b-14). Not all. Paul knows they won’t all come to Messiah Jesus, but He’s trusting God’s promise that some will have their hearts opened to the truth. Now don’t get the wrong idea. The Gentiles aren’t just a second thought and a convenient tool. No sir! The Gentiles have also been on God’s heart since the beginning. As Paul says in another place, “God wants all men to be saved.”

But the masterful method of God is on display here and Paul rejoices to be a part of it-rejoicing in every Gentile saved as he hopes that those of his own blood will also come. God knows what He’s up to. Has He given up on the children of Abraham? Heavens no! Literally. And those who are Israel, both Jew and Gentile will come because God says so. “Oh how He loves you and me. Oh how He loves you and me. He gave His life, what more could He give. Oh, how He loves you. Oh how He loves me. Oh how He loves You and me.”

Amen!