Readings:
Isaiah 45
Proverbs 20
Romans 11

Isaiah 45

God calls the pagan king of the Persians to do his will. This is showing that God can use whomever he pleases, regardless of their origin or even if they serve him or false idols. It doesn’t matter because he is the only God in existence and is the God of the entire universe, so he can use and help whatever land or people he wants, and he can punish any nation for its transgressions. T

his is really shaking the people out of this illusion that they’d been slipping into, that the Pharisees would eventually embrace wholeheartedly, that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was only concerned with the descendants of Jacob and nobody else. This is obviously not the case, especially when he flat out tells Moses and the gang that he’s using them as divine judgment on the inhabitants of Canaan because of their sins. Why was he concerned with the sins of the Canaanites? Because they also fall under his universal jurisdiction so to speak.

Romans 11

Paul asks lots of rhetorical and hypothetical questions in Romans, but this one is very important, especially for the early church that was almost entirely Jewish converts. He reminds his readers that even in Israel’s darkest days God preserved a remnant but they were preserved then and now through grace, and not because of works.

Paul says that through the hardness of their hearts the covenant has become available to the gentiles, because it was by birthright first to the Jews and then the gentiles. He compares the gentiles that have come to believe as not a whole new tree but a graft onto the original tree of the old covenant. The roots of the tree that supports our entire religion is the Old Testament, the prophets, the story of salvation all the way back to Noah and Adam. That’s the foundation that the New Testament is built upon, and the church is built upon.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
Isaiah 46-48
Proverbs 21