God always keeps His promises

Today’s verse is Romans 11:33.

³³ Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!

I wonder how many times verses like this are in the Bible. So many verses tell us it’s impossible for us to understand God, but we try anyway. And half the time we think we succeed.

Since this is such a common theme throughout Scripture, I thought I’d expand a little bit and see specifically what Paul was talking about in this particular verse. And it sort of surprised me. Not that I’m saying I know so much about Scripture, but I don’t remember reading this bit in Romans 11 before. I reviewed it in the King James Version, and then I remembered reading it but it really never made a whole lot of sense to me. I mean — it did. But it didn’t strike me as totally awesome until I read it this morning in actual modern English.

Romans 11:28-32

²⁸ Many of the people of Israel are now enemies of the Good News, and this benefits you Gentiles. Yet they are still the people he loves because he chose their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ²⁹ For God’s gifts and his call can never be withdrawn. ³⁰ Once, you Gentiles were rebels against God, but when the people of Israel rebelled against him, God was merciful to you instead. ³¹ Now they are the rebels, and God’s mercy has come to you so that they, too, will share^[k] in God’s mercy. ³²For God has imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone.

These verses just before the verse of the day go into a little bit of background behind the Church Age. God chose the Jews, the people of Israel, to be His people, but they turned away from Him enough that He finally left them to their own devices. He did this so that He could allow His Word to come to the rest of the world. The Gentiles. Everyone who isn’t Jewish. That means me and just about everyone I know.

The Old Testament was all about the nation of Israel. The New Testament, after Christ’s death, burial, resurrection and ascension, is about Gentiles. The Church Age. And we’ll be in the Church Age until Christ comes back for us.

It’s complicated. It’s like the plot of a good novel, plenty of twists and turns that don’t make sense until you read the whole story. Because I’m sure if you had talked to many of the people alive during this time, none of it would have made sense to them. I mean, now, we can look back and understand that God shifted His focus away from the people of Israel to pursue those of us who weren’t Jewish. If He hadn’t done that, the U.S. wouldn’t exist. (I know a lot of people don’t believe the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, and I’m not going to get into that debate now. But even you who don’t believe we were founded as a Christian nation can’t argue that Christians didn’t participate in the foundation of this country, that people didn’t come here for freedom to practice true Christianity.) In any case, if God hadn’t shifted His attention to allow Gentiles to come to Christ, I wouldn’t be here. And that’s a fact.

Of course, part of the covenant God made with Abraham was that the whole world would be blessed through him. So God turning His focus to Gentiles was partly to fulfill that promise. But think about the Jews at that time. Not all of them had turned away from God. Not all of them had wanted Christ crucified. Not all of them had been rebellious. But their whole nation was punished. Their whole nation was enslaved and broken apart.

I’m sure at the time it must have felt like the world was falling apart. But God had a plan. It was all part of the story He was creating. The people of Israel needed to be left on their own to realize what God had done for them. The Gentiles needed to be told about God period; they’d never heard about Him before. And when the Church Age is over, God will shift His focus again to the nation of Israel and bring them back to Him as He always has because no matter how much they screw up, they are still His chosen people. And God made a promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and God always keeps His promises.

Isn’t that incredible? Thousands and thousands of years after God made a promise to one man, He will keep His promise to rescue that man’s millions of descendants. How awesome is that?

I can’t really understand how God’s mind works. He knows all the knowledge in the universe. Shoot, He created all knowledge in the universe. But He isn’t just knowledgeable; He’s wise. And there really is a difference. And God is on a level that nobody can comprehend. He can see the whole picture. He can undertand every in and out of every situation. He can see every reprecussion, every consequence, every action, every choice we have ever and will ever make. So there’s no way I can understand why He does the things He does.

But what I can understand is what really matters. God keeps His promises.

It doesn’t matter that Abraham screwed up time after time. It doesn’t matter that his kids were screwed up. It doesn’t matter that his family became a nation of people who were disobediant and rebellious. It doesn’t matter that they all turned away from God more times than anyone can keep track of. God made a promise to Abraham, and God is going to keep that promise. (Note: Please don’t think I’m hounding on the Jews. I’m just trying to make a point. If we’re having a contest between the U.S. and Israel about which one has flipped God off more, I actually think the U.S. is in the lead . . . )

So when God makes a promise to me, I know I can trust Him. And that’s really all we need to know. Anything else would be too much for us. Anything more would terrify us.

God never makes mistakes. And He always keeps His promises, no matter what.

That’s good enough for me.

Best kept secret

Do you have secrets? I do. There are a lot of things that only I know. A few of them I’ve shared with others, but there are still some things that I haven’t told anyone. Some secrets are very deep and important. Others are less important, like the name of a character in a manuscript I haven’t written yet. In either case, no on else knows these secret things.

Whether it’s wise or not to keep something secret probably depends on the motivation for hiding the truth. I know as an author keeping a ending of a manuscript secret is a good idea; otherwise, no one will want to read your book. Conversely, keeping a secret about breaking the law or doing something that is morally wrong for fear of getting caught isn’t a good idea.

Although secrets are good and find in some cases, keeping secrets isn’t the best option, generally speaking. People aren’t meant to live secret lives. We’re always better off if we live in the open, being real, being genuine.

The verse this morning got me thinking about secrets but not in the context you might think.

Colossians 1:27-28

²⁷For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.

 ²⁸ So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect^[a] in their relationship to Christ.

These verses come right after a verse where Paul is explaining that for many generations past, the entire message of God, the whole story of God’s plan, was kept a secret from different people groups other than the Israelites. Now, I can think of a few examples in the Old Testament where the Israelites reached out to different cultures and one or two people would respond and become God Followers. But it was rare. The Old Testament is all about Israel, its history, its failures, God’s triumphs, its kings, its children, the mistakes they made.

All Israelites all the time.

Is that because of Abraham and God’s promise to him? Is it becuase God knew non-Israelites at the time wouldn’t be receptive as a whole to Him? I don’t know. All I know is that when the New Testament starts, the entire culture of Israel has changed. And when Christ arrives on the scene, He doesn’t just reach out to Jews, He reaches out to non-Jews. The Bible calls them Gentiles. And they follow Him.

And at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, after Christ has raised from the dead and is ascending into heaven, He gives what people call, the Great Commission, ordering His disciples into the world to preach the truth to people who don’t believe. Jesus sends them out into the world to all people.

This is what Paul is talking about in Colossians. The riches and glory of Christ are for the Gentiles too. It doesn’t matter if we’re not Jewish, Christ died for all people. And everyone can be saved.

Christianity isn’t a club where only the super important are allowed entrance. That’s the way a lot of churches treat it, but that was never how Jesus lived it. He loved everyone. He healed everyone. He accepted everyone . . . well, everyone except the arrogant religious elite. But even among the religious elite, a man named Nicodemus showed humility and came to Christ with questions, and Jesus never turned Him away.

There are more stories than I can count in the New Testament about Jesus interacting with Gentiles. Some of the Books of the New Testament were even written to Gentile churches.

The truth of God’s Word was once kept secret from anyone who wasn’t a Jew. But that was in the past. The message of Scripture and the truth of what God has done shouldn’t stay secret anymore. But we are always tempted to keep it that way, because we have bought into the lie that faith is better kept as a secret.

It’s hard, though, because you want to be treated normally by your coworkers and your friends, and I know I get scared because I don’t want people to think I’m a freak. So most times I back off and bite my tongue. But Christ isn’t supposed to be the best kept secret in the world; He’s supposed to be the Person everyone wants to know, the Friend everyone wants to talk about.

Christianity isn’t exclusive. Neither is God. And I’m glad for that, otherwise I wouldn’t know Him. The Jews are God’s chosen people, but right now we’re in the Age of the Church, focusing totally on Gentiles. But the Age of the Church won’t last forever. So we need to do what we can to reveal the secret of Christ to the rest of the world before we run out of time.

Live for Christ while you can because the day is coming soon when there won’t be anyone left to tell Christ about. If He’s a secret now, the day is coming where His secret will be out and you won’t be able to tell anyone about Him anymore.