Space-Filling Thoughts

  Moses and Pharaoh, by Abraham van den Hecken  In order to have a true and lasting hope in God, it helps not only to know that God is true to his word but also how God is true to his word.  The apostle Paul communicates both these things in Romans 9.  We’ve already seen that the thesis statement of chapters 9-11 is verse 6: “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect.”   God has not and will not allow his word to fall to the ground or become ineffective.  Here we have the statement of the fact.  But we also see how this is true, and the next part of verse 6 sums up that part of the argument which he will work out in the following verses: “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.”  In those words, Paul is teaching us that the promises of God by which he guarantees salvation to Israel do not depend on physical descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but rather upon something else.  That something else is God’s unco...