I have some questions for you:

• Are Some People Predestined to Hell?

• Why Did So Many Jews Refuse to Believe in Jesus?

• Are the Jews Still the Chosen People?

You know you’re interested! Our final All-Church Bible Study of 2024 is Wednesday, 10/30, and we’ll be covering those questions as we look at chapters 9-11 in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. 6:30-8:00 PM. Sanctuary. Dinner beforehand.

P.S. Our new Romans reading guides are in! Pick yours up at Asbury, or email Sandie and she’ll mail you one. Readings begin on 11/1, and I’m really excited to work through this final section of Romans with you.

 This is going to be a fascinating evening, and I hope you’ll make every effort to attend. Bring friends!

Romans 8:36

36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

When Paul quotes from the Old Testament, he uses one verse or phrase as a hyperlink into a larger idea. Here he takes just one verse from Psalm 44, but the idea he wants to convey is powerful.

Psalm 44 is a complaint against God. This is how the psalmist begins:

44 O God, we have heard with our ears,
our fathers have told us,
what deeds you performed in their days,
in the days of old:
2 you with your own hand drove out the nations,
but them you planted;
you afflicted the peoples,
but them you set free;
3 for not by their own sword did they win the land,
nor did their own arm save them,
but your right hand and your arm,
and the light of your face,
for you delighted in them.

But the psalmist has a complaint against God, namely that in his day God seems to have forgotten the people:

9 But you have rejected us and disgraced us
and have not gone out with our armies.
10 You have made us turn back from the foe,
and those who hate us have gotten spoil.
11 You have made us like sheep for slaughter
and have scattered us among the nations.

If the people had been sinful or idolatrous, then the psalmist could understand that they were simply bearing the consequences for their actions. But the psalmist knows that the people are innocent of wrongdoing, and yet still they are being persecuted and oppressed:

17 All this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten you,
and we have not been false to your covenant.
18 Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from your way;
19 yet you have broken us in the place of jackals
and covered us with the shadow of death.
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God
or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
21 would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart.
22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered [Psalm 44:1–22]

Why would Paul quote Psalm 44:22 here, at the end of his great eighth chapter?

He is reminding the Romans that suffering is not a sign that they have done anything wrong or are somehow abandoned by God.

Suffering can be part of God’s redemptive plan, and the Jesus-people will face suffering.

But just like Jesus, God will use the suffering of His people for their good.