What's new at Hope.
Mothers of young children are invited to join the MomCo@Hope on Friday, April 3, for an egg hunt, games, and the true story of our Risen Jesus! Join us in the Family Room at 10am. Bring a treat to share and one dozen filled eggs for each of your children. NO chocolate please!
Contact Jamie or Ashleigh for more information.
New to Hope? We’re glad you’re here! Text the word WELCOMEto 512-777-1826 to connect with our welcome team!
Palm Sunday is not just an entry or a parade — it is the moment Jesus was openly received as King, fulfilling prophecies from Zechariah and the Psalms in detail. The crowds were not launching a revolution, but acknowledging God’s chosen one. Palm Sunday is an invitation to receive Jesus for who he is, not just for what he can do — a King who brings salvation and fullness, not just for individuals, but for whole peoples and families.
Steve Hawthorne opened by noting that Palm Sunday is often overlooked or misunderstood, sometimes overshadowed by Christmas or Easter, despite being the most public moment in Jesus’ earthly life. He invited the congregation to stand and participate in reading, emphasizing the communal and responsive nature of Palm Sunday itself — a public recognition of Jesus and a call for God’s action.
Palm Sunday was not a random event or a minor episode. Steve stressed that all four Gospels reach a crescendo at this moment, devoting more space to this cluster of events than even the birth of Jesus. Unlike the “triumphal entry” of Roman generals — often parades of violence and conquest — Jesus’ entry was a deliberate, prophetic act. He arranged for crowds to gather at the temple grounds, teaching day after day as people pressed in for Passover. This was a planned, multi-day event, not simply a spontaneous parade.
Steve explained that while Jesus usually avoided crowds and withdrew to quiet places, here he orchestrated a public, unmistakable claim. The event was not a “triumph” in the Roman sense — it was not a victory march with prisoners and violence, but it did trigger fierce opposition, especially from the religious leaders. “This is not a shallow political insurrection,” Steve insisted. The crowds were not trying to launch a revolution; they were recognizing something bigger — and it was this recognition that led to the plot to kill Jesus (Luke 22:2).
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey… He shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus’ choice of a donkey was not accidental or merely a gesture of humility. Steve pointed out that in Israel’s story, a donkey was the royal mount — the animal of David and Solomon. When David’s son Adonijah attempted a coup, David ordered Solomon to ride the royal donkey to Gihon, where he was anointed king. This was the public sign of legitimate kingship (1 Kings 1:32–40).
“And they brought Solomon down to Gihon. There Zadok the priest took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. Then they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, ‘Long live King Solomon!’ And all the people went up after him, playing on pipes, and rejoicing with great joy, so that the earth was split by their noise.”
By riding a donkey down the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley, and into Jerusalem, Jesus was deliberately reenacting Solomon’s coronation. The crowds, aware of the symbolism, responded not by accident but by deliberate recognition of Jesus as the awaited “Son of David.”
“Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord.”
Steve unpacked the word “Hosanna,” explaining that it is not a generic cheer but a plea for rescue — “Save us, please!” The Hebrew “hoshia na” is an intensified, urgent prayer. The crowd was quoting Psalm 118:25–26, a psalm sung at Passover and deeply familiar. The word “Hosanna” is found only in this passage in the Old Testament. “It means to super-save us, not just a ticket to heaven, but salvation for whole families, peoples, and nations,” Steve said.
He noted how the Gospels record slight variations — “Hosanna to the Son of David,” “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David,” or “Hosanna in the highest” — each adding layers of meaning. The crowd saw this as God’s moment of fulfillment and responded with the language of worship and hope.
Jesus’ public arrival shook the city and forced the hand of those who opposed him. The religious leaders did not fear a Roman overthrow but feared the recognition of Jesus as King. “The chief priests and scribes… were seeking how they might put him to death, but they were afraid of the people” (Luke 22:2). Steve emphasized that this was not a failed political uprising, but a moment when the true nature of Jesus’ kingship was revealed — a kingship that brings peace and salvation “from sea to sea… to the ends of the earth” (Zechariah 9:10).
Even the disciples did not fully understand what was happening at the time. Only after Jesus was glorified — raised and exalted — did they remember and recognize the fulfillment of prophecy (John 12:16).
Steve highlighted that the Palm Sunday prayers from Psalm 118 are not just pleas for rescue, but also for God to “bring things to fulfillment” — to push his purposes to completion. He explained, “‘Hosanna’ is not just ‘save us’ — the Hebrew ‘hoshia na’ is a double intensifier: ‘really, really, we’re desperate, we’ve got to have it!’” He pointed out that in the Hebrew, adding ‘na’ before and after the verb stacks up the urgency and intensity of the prayer. “It’s a super-save us. Not just me, but us, families, peoples, nations. Not just a ticket to heaven, but ‘save us more and better than we’ve ever been saved before.’”
Steve also explained the second prayer, sometimes translated as “give us success” or “prosperity,” is an equally urgent call: “Push it, push it faster, push it harder. Make it greater. Help it get to where it’s going to go. Where are we going with this? Let’s get there!” He urged, “It’s not just save us from the worst — it’s to bring out the best. Come on, God, the gifts and glories you want to bring forth on families and peoples, bring it all.”
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
He read from Psalm 118:22–24, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing and it’s marvelous in our eyes.” Steve reminded, “This is on Jesus’ mind at Palm Sunday. Three or four days later, he quoted it to his enemies.” He clarified, “This is the day the Lord has made” is not just a 24-hour period, but “a season where God is working out his purposes across generations. It’s a marvelous thing that he’s doing — the day the Lord has made is when he does amazing things.”
He described the stone imagery, “You’re always looking for a rock — not the cornerstone, usually the top stone where the arch would be… the rock that got rejected, it got promoted to the chief place. This is God’s doing. It’s going to happen. It’s going to be fulfilled. So O Lord, save — yes, hosanna! — and bring things quickly to fulfillment, the finish.”
Steve called the congregation to “receive Jesus in such a way that we’re saying: Come on, Jesus, don’t just rescue me from what’s going wrong — bring forth the beauty and the life and the love that you have in mind. Fulfill all your purpose because God has a point and a goal and a hope for every people, every family, he wants to bring it. And when Jesus… that’s what he does with his kingship — he’s going to bring it.”
He invited everyone to think of “two prayers to receive Jesus: Say yes, you came — but it could mean you’re going to come again, to whole cities and families. He can save me more than I’ve ever been saved. Come on, Jesus. This is not about being a better religionist. No, he wants us to be fulfilled with his life and his love.”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord.”
He asked, “What is the point, the purpose God has for your life or your family’s life? Do you know what kind of hope, what kind of joy he could bring? That is one of the ways we can receive Jesus and not just have a donkey ride.” With a moment of humor, Steve said, “That one’s better than Shrek has. Shrek had a donkey, but he had to be there. But Jesus is going to bring it.”
Steve led the congregation in a physical response: “If you could hold your hands out like this — your right hand, that’s your ‘Hosanna’ hand.” He continued, “There’s someone I know, she’s really got a need. She needs saved. Come on, God, you can do it.” Then, “On your other hand: push it to the end. Come on, God.” He encouraged everyone, “You could be thinking of your right hand — there’s someone who needs saved. And then your left — bring things to fullness in their life.”
He prayed aloud, “Lord Jesus, you came and they shouted hosanna to you — and it was correct. You really want to bring rescue and salvation. So we want to ask you for ourselves and for the people we have in mind: O God, rescue them. Save them more than they’ve ever thought. They know they’re going to heaven maybe or something, but no — save them. Rescue them. And then push things to the fullness in their life.”
He added, “Some of the countries that we stood and called out earlier, we can ask you: come on, Lord Jesus. You’re the one, the king, not just of a country. You’re the king of the world. It’s not just a rock song — that’s a real thing. So we ask you, Lord Jesus, come.”
He led the congregation in saying, “Could you say ‘Hosanna!’” and then, “‘Bring fullness!’” The congregation responded aloud.
Steve closed in prayer: “So Lord Jesus, you’ve heard us and we want to ask for you to be exalted in this kind of way and all the fullness… We’re not asking to get fixed up for another week so we can do bad things again or something. No, we want you to be loved and served in all the places of the earth. So we ask in your name to hear us and receive us. So receive Jesus.” He then invited anyone needing prayer to come forward to the heart ministry teams and dismissed the congregation: “Go and be blessed.”
April 3rd’s Good Friday Service at 6:30 PM includes seven friends from our community reflecting personally over the seven last phrases that Jesus spoke from the cross and is interspersed with worship and silence. It is always a very beautiful and poignant time together. You’re encouraged to invite friends, family, and coworkers.
We recommend the service for children ages 6th grade and up but leave this to the parent’s discretion. Testimonies given may contain more mature content.
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HOW GOOD FRIDAY IS CONNECTED TO PASSOVER
Jesus shared Passover meal with His disciples after sundown the night before His death (evening is the beginning of the Jewish day). He also gave His disciples a new way to remember Him: Communion; the unleavened bread represented His broken body and the cup of wine represented His blood shed for us (John 20) just as the Passover lamb’s blood marking the enslaved Israelites’ houses caused the death of the first born to “pass – over” them safely. Jesus, the true representation of the Passover lamb, freely gave His life as a sinless sacrifice in payment for our sin (ours rightfully deserving death), freeing us from our enslavement to it, rescuing us from death – even as God freed the Israelites from Pharaoh’s slavery (Exodus 1-15). The Passover prefigured Jesus’ death – one Lamb for all humankind.
Learn more about Passover in Exodus And learn about The Last Supper, Good Friday, and Easter by reading about them in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – or by listening to the musical drama our own Dennis O’Donnell wrote partially from Exodus and John – or in this article about Passover and Jesus: Four Ways Passover Foreshadowed Easter.
Join us at T Bar M for men and young men ages 16 and up. We’ve got a great facility – with lots of amenities including a pool, disc-golf course, pickleball, volleyball, basketball, tennis, putt-putt, soccer, air hockey, and ping pong! Enjoy unstructured time for fellowship: as a group, with old or new friends, or solo time for fellowship with God.
EARLYBIRD DISCOUNT AND SCHOLARSHIP FUND
Sign up early and receive a discount! There are a limited number of single or double occupancy rooms – late registrations may be in a room with 2-3 other men (two queen beds). All registrants must complete and sign the waiver for the camp. Register on Realm today! ”
Cost concerns? There’s a scholarship fund. Don’t let money be the reason you don’t come. Hopites can check with Joe Friedman.
New to Hope? We’re glad you’re here! Text the word WELCOMEto 512-777-1826 to connect with our welcome team!
Romans 9 is not a dark secret tucked into an otherwise warm letter. Paul is grieving that his
own people are refusing their own Messiah, and he is answering the question underneath that grief:
has God failed? The answer is that God’s promises have never once depended on human cooperation —
which is precisely why mercy is still wide open to everybody.
Matt has an annual Good Friday tradition of arguing that God never relationally
abandoned Jesus on the cross, and he set it aside this year for a simple reason: he introduced
Romans 9–11 last Sunday, and picking it back up well after Easter made no sense to him. So we are
knee-deep, and he intends to go slowly.
The hardest part of reading Romans 9, Matt said, is keeping careful watch on what Paul is
not saying alongside what he is. One line unlocks the whole man:
“I decided
to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Not usually — always.
So the context for these three chapters is
Romans 1–8,
and Matt wants that used as a strict set of filters, letting some things in and pushing others out.
Jew and Gentile alike stand condemned under law. Jew and Gentile alike have one wide-open door of
mercy, and the door is a person. “There’s only one program of salvation because the program is
actually a person.” Those brought near in Christ are not merely admitted to the commonwealth of
Israel as guests — they are children of Abraham and heirs of God. And here is the test he offered:
“We will know we’ve read Romans 9 properly if it fills us with a desire to worship a wonderful,
gracious God. If we’re left with a fear of something secretly creepy and dark, we didn’t read it
right.”
“I am speaking the truth in Christ — I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy
Spirit — that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I
myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according
to the flesh.”
Gentile unbelief is a category we know what to do with: send missionaries, plant churches, keep
praying. Israel refusing her own Messiah is harder to process, and Paul does not process it calmly.
Matt used the grief itself as an argument. Some online take has it that grace through faith is for
Gentiles while Jews remain under Torah — but Paul has already said
no one is
justified by works of the law. If there were a second path, Paul would be boasting, not in
anguish. And God’s love here outstrips Paul’s: “Why would God’s love be outshone by some man’s
love?”
“They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of
the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race,
according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.”
This is the “much in every way” Paul promised back in
Romans 3:1–2.
You would fit hand in glove with the long-awaited one you grew up hearing about. And note what Paul
drops in passing: the Christ is God over all. Matt is firm that this is the right translation, and
that it is one of the plainest hints of Jesus’ divinity in the New Testament.
“But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel
belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring… This means
that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the
promise are counted as offspring.”
Before anyone builds a system on the allegory, Matt insisted on the story it sits on. Abraham had
children by three women: Hagar the Egyptian slave, then Sarah, then six more sons by Keturah after
Sarah’s death. Eight known sons; one miracle baby. Seven of the eight are not in the ancestry of
Jesus, so the promise plainly is not genetic — and Abraham’s own faltering did not stop it either.
Paul names the promise himself, and it is not about anybody’s afterlife: about this time next
year I will return and Sarah shall have a son.
Which is what Abraham “discovered according to the flesh” in
Romans 4:1.
Matt put it plainly: you can have a baby with a woman. You cannot make the promised baby happen. That
has to be an act of God.
“Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad — in order that God’s
purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls — she was
told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’”
Neither reward nor punishment, and not a verdict on two eternities — a question of which lineage
raises up the savior of all lineages. On hated, Matt did the obvious work: Paul and Jesus
were not speaking English. In Hebrew, to love one and hate the other can simply mean choosing one
over against every other option. Jesus uses the identical idiom —
whoever does not
hate his own father and mother cannot be my disciple — while also commanding us to love our
neighbors, our enemies, and to honor father and mother. And the line Paul quotes comes from
Malachi 1:2–3,
where it is about two nations, not two men.
In Galatians
4:21–26 Paul runs the same move: two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman, read
allegorically as two covenants. Are these women actually covenants? No, they are women. Paul is
using the story to picture something larger — and nobody reads that passage and concludes Hagar
went to hell for being an Egyptian slave. Besides, the covenant Sarah stands for is grace, in which
everyone who calls on the Lord is saved. The whole argument is aimed at one seed:
the promises were
spoken to Abraham and to his offspring — one person, who is Christ.
Matt drew the sharp edge: if being a blood ancestor of Jesus were how you got to heaven, you and
I are up a creek. Nobody can become one now.
Handed over by her master, alone in the wilderness, she is found by the angel of the Lord, who
addresses her by name and promises to multiply her descendants; she answers by naming God
“the God who
sees me.” Later, with her son dying of thirst,
God hears the
boy and promises to make him a great nation — and does. Ishmael lives to a full age and is
buried with honor. God intervenes for this woman twice. Nowhere, cover to cover, is she said to be
cut off from his kindness. She simply was not cast in the role of bearing the promised seed. The
same holds for Ishmael and Esau. And the consistent teaching stands:
God shows no
partiality, but accepts from every nation the one who fears him.
Read Romans
9:14–16 as the question it answers — God choosing which line carries the promise — and the
charge of injustice loses its footing. Our fear is that “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy”
secretly means I will be stingy with whomever I please.
It is the opposite. What grated on Paul’s contemporaries was that God is so merciful the whole
thing has been broken wide open. “So what if I’m bringing all these scummy people that don’t
deserve it? Deal with it.” Matt’s verdict on that attitude: “That’s the kind of attitude we want
around here.” And the it that depends not on human will or exertion is not a private
eternal verdict; it is the grand purpose of God carried, protected and fulfilled across
generations.
“For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my
name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”
People feel sorry for Pharaoh, so Matt told the story in order, the same slow way he told
Abraham’s.
“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in
the wilderness.’ But Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel
go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.’”
Pharaoh was not aching to free his slaves until God stopped him. He refused first. Hardening, as
Matt pictured it, is God freezing that frame and enlarging it: “His obstinance. Not my forced-upon-him
refusal. I’m going to freeze frame it, press pause, and blow it up super big” — because God can make
his name famous on the world stage even when the people who were supposed to help are not
cooperating. Which is the whole point in context. The Jews of Paul’s day were the ones you would
expect on the front lines of the gospel; many are refusing it; and God’s promises are not in
jeopardy. “He never fails. Why would it depend now on human effort when it never has before?”
There is opposition to the gospel in America and worldwide right now, and the people carrying
the standard are weak and often incompetent — Matt put himself first in that line. Neither has ever
caused God to fail. “Even if today you as an individual turn into a fierce opponent of the gospel,
God can still use you to make a great name for himself.” His closing note was worship, not
argument: the burden of all this rests on God’s shoulders, he is steadfastly committed to mercy even
when that drives us nuts, and Romans 9 turns out to have nothing dark in it at all.
New to Hope? We’re glad you’re here! Text the word WELCOMEto 512-777-1826 to connect with our welcome team!
Before Hope Chapel opens Romans 9–11, Matt wanted to fix the lens. The context for these
chapters is not modern politics, not John Calvin, not our gut feelings — it is Romans 1 through 8.
Paul has one gospel, and it holds all the way through: there is one program of salvation, and the
program is a person.
Matt opened by naming the two reactions Romans 9–11 reliably produces — total boredom
and total obsession — and then made an announcement that turned out to be part of the sermon. An
Orthodox Jewish congregation in Austin approached Hope Chapel several years ago wanting friendship
with evangelical Christians, and the two have done events together since. Jews in this city, he said,
still feel isolated and unfriended. He signed up for Shalom Austin’s emails and prays for his Jewish
neighbors every time one arrives. “Some of us, some of the time we’ll hang out with some of them,
and that’s enough, because we’re friends — and if there’s ever a crisis, we’re one phone call
away.”
Hence the title. “The context for Romans 9 through 11 is not modern politics or John Calvin, our
gut feelings or assumptions,” Matt said. “The context for Romans 9 through 11 is, like, so much
Romans 1 through 8.” Paul is not capable of preaching the gospel, taking a hard turn into a diatribe
that is not the gospel, and then circling back once he has got it out of his system. He was hired by
Jesus to plant churches among different peoples, and in every city he preached the same thing —
Christ,
and Christ crucified. Matt’s working description of Romans: a really long book of Galatians.
The emperor Claudius expelled Jews from Rome. Five or six years pass, the Spirit is fruitful, and
every convert in the city is a Gentile, because the Jewish population is gone. Then Claudius dies,
the edict lapses, and Jewish believers come home to a church whose leadership and culture have
shifted underneath them. Now picture several hundred people — Roman citizens and non-citizens,
Jewish-background and Gentile-background believers — and a couple expecting a son. Do they circumcise
him? It is what has always been done. And the Gentile family across the aisle is asking the reverse
question: we never used to do that, but it is right there in the Bible, so should we start? “A crisis
of conscience,” Matt called it. “Good theology is pastoral.”
Galatians was almost certainly written first, and it is the noise Romans is answering. A person is
not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ
(Galatians
2:16) — and by works of the law Paul means the hot topics: circumcision, kosher
restrictions, Torah generally.
“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ
Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
Matt was careful here. This is not the erasure of who you are — you are still male or female, you
still have your Greek language and your grandmother’s cooking. What is gone is the edge. No one has
an advantage over anyone. And being a child of Abraham really is special — which is exactly why it
lands on Jesus, the promised seed. You are included because you are hidden in him.
“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for
the flesh, but through love serve one another.”
Freedom is not a bug in the system, Matt said; it is the feature and the goal. If you have ever
wondered whether the end of
Romans 7
was Paul’s picture of the ideal Christian life — sin in one corner, the law in the other — this is the
correction. The normal Christian endeavor is not law compliance versus sin. It is free people
serving one another in love.
Preaching like that generates a firestorm. Some hear glory; others hear insult. Are you saying the
Torah is bad? Are you saying it is bad that I am Jewish? So Paul writes a long letter with a long
to-do list, and Matt laid out the distinctions it has to hold at once. Freedom from Torah is not
hostility toward Torah. Gentiles not needing to become Jewish is not a dislike of Israel. Jewish
believers do not need to become Gentiles either. God has not picked a side in an ethnic dispute — he
picked a particular seed of Abraham.
“Proof of God’s great and abounding love for Israel is Jesus, her Messiah.”
The same care shows up in how Paul retells Abraham. In Paul’s day the story was commonly told as:
Abraham did what God said, and that is why he was righteous. Paul slows it down —
he
believed, and it was counted to him as righteousness. The obedience is real, and it comes out of
the faith. Scandalous retelling; technically correct.
“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in
the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the
righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but
according to the Spirit.”
Legalism always tries to sneak back in, this time in spiritual clothing — as if the righteous
requirement gets fulfilled in the few, the proud, the top-shelf Christians who walk by the Spirit.
Read on to Romans
8:14: those who walk by the Spirit are the children of God, are those in Christ. The terms are
co-referential. It is all of them.
He paused on a word that causes trouble. Holy does not mean moral purity; it means
belonging to God, marked by his presence. You may own tongs identical to the ones in the temple, but
those are the Lord’s. A flawless, gloriously fluffy sheep on a hillside is not holy — it is profane
until it is given to God. So: how much of God’s presence is borne by Christ, God in flesh? “A billion
out of ten. So in Christ, you’re smack dab in the middle of the Holy of Holies.”
Because we use Romans as an evangelistic tool, we hear all and picture everyone at the
mall. True — but think in categories too. Matt suggested a reading practice: every time Paul says
all, hear both Jew and Gentile.
“The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no
distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace
as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
Paul earns that in Romans
1–2: he starts with offenses that carried a death penalty under the Old Testament, and then turns
on the Gentiles, who never heard Torah but do by nature what it says and are therefore a law to
themselves — and are breaking that too. Everyone is under judgment. And
no
human being is justified by works of the law; through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
So was any of it pointless? Watch Paul refuse the easy answer.
“Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To
begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.”
Not “nothing.” Not “rubbish.” Much, in every way. The prophecies, the law, Sinai, the cloud, the
thunder — an extraordinary dignity. And when Paul asks whether some were unfaithful, his answer is
that human unfaithfulness cannot cancel God’s: “Nothing could stop this Messiah train. It’s got no
brakes.” Yet three verses on he asks
whether
Jews are any better off — and answers no, not at all.
Matt’s illustration, which he apologized for in advance: a rudimentary clinic overseas tells you
it looks like cancer. You fly home to the best hospital in the country, gold instruments, lasers,
and they tell you the same thing — and you feel relief, because now the diagnosis is perfect. The
doctor has to clarify. Our equipment is better than theirs. That is not the same as curing you.
“The power of sin is the law,” he said, reaching for
1
Corinthians 15:56. Torah showed sin with flawless clarity. Clarity is a gift. It is not a
remedy. Which is why the two ideas people keep welding together are unrelated: Jesus fulfilling the
righteous requirements does not imply God rejected Israel or reversed himself on his own Torah.
“These ideas are as distinct as diagnosis is from remedy.”
God has never wanted to be a tribal deity for one tribe — from
the
promise to Abraham onward it was always all the families of the earth, which is where Paul begins
the letter (Romans
1:5). But the unity that results is not a negotiated middle where Gentiles learn to pray with
shawls and Jews learn to eat bacon.
“For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the
dividing wall of hostility… that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so
making peace.”
“He doesn’t show that there can be peace and here’s how and here’s twelve steps,” Matt said. “He
is our peace.” One, not two, and not neither.
Here is where the tension in Romans 9 actually sits.
“Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by
faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in
reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.
They have stumbled over the stumbling stone.”
Read carefully and the direction reverses:
“Behold,
I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling… and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
That is not God rejecting people. That is people rejecting God — and Jesus, their Messiah, is the
giant open door of love and mercy, still open. Matt flagged the vocabulary problem honestly: the
Jews in the Gospels sometimes means the authorities, and Paul himself uses the word warmly
elsewhere. You have to track with him. “But it’s not any harder than reading Harry Potter.”
So Jews are not replaced by Gentiles — all the families means all the families, not most of them.
And Colossians
3:11 stands: not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free,
but Christ is all and in all. Which yields Matt’s sharpest rule of thumb. If the hot take you are
hearing — from a blog, from a video, from your uncle — is not Christ and Christ crucified, it is a
wrong turn, and any approach that leans hard on being ethnically one way or another is wrong by
default. Our fleshly minds fixate on the outside;
a
Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.
He closed where chapter 9 begins.
“I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were
accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the
law, the worship, and the promises.”
The anguish is the argument. If there were a second path — Torah compliance for one group, or a
quiet universalism for them, grace and faith for everybody else — Paul would be fine. No tears. He is
in pain precisely because there is one door, and some of his own family are standing outside it. “So
if you reject that, it’s not God saying no to you. It’s you saying no to God. Of course Jesus is the
only way to God — he is God.” Matt paused over
verse
5 the way Paul does, ending in a doxology: “Even Paul sometimes has to stop and be like, amen.
That was good.”
And then the turn outward, because these chapters end in mission. This is not gobbledygook from a
long time ago written to fill some time. God is establishing the body of Christ in every single
family on earth, there are still families to pray for and speak to, and the people in that room are
part of it — some of them going out, others welcoming the world that comes to Austin. “But what we
want is Christ and Christ crucified to be the message. That’s the only message.”