AP

Romans 10:18-21  But I ask: Did [Israel] not hear?  Of course they did: “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”  Again I ask: Did Israel not understand?  First, Moses says, “I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding.”  And Isaiah boldly says “I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.”  But concerning Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”

As I read these verses again today, my heart was moved along the lines of Paul’s as he expressed it at the beginning of this chapter: “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.”

I serve on the Australian Council of ‘International Mission to Jewish People’ (IMJP – formerly CWI, ‘Christian Witness to Israel’), and I have a feeling both for the resistance that exists among Jewish people to the Christian Gospel, and for the absolute joy a Jewish person feels when he or she becomes a Christian!

In today’s verses, Paul is quoting from Psalm 19 to show that Creation itself is sufficient testimony to leave everyone without excuse for not believing in a Creator (cf Romans 1:18-20).  He also quotes from the ‘Song of Moses’ in Deuteronomy 32 to give a Scriptural basis for what he will expand upon in the next chapter about God’s ‘Plan’ for the Jewish opposition: “I am talking to you Gentiles.  Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.  For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:13-15).  He then quotes from from Isaiah 65 and Jeremiah 35 to emphasise that none of this Jewish opposition actually took God by surprise anyway!

If all this moves your heart in the same way, will you join with me in praying regularly and often for Jewish evangelism, that many Jewish people in these days might “look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.” (Zechariah 12:10), and so turn to him, their Redeemer and King, in repentance-and-faith?

– Bruce Christian