This week Pastor Aaron Holt preached Romans 9. If you have been following along with us in the book of Romans, you know that Romans 8 ends with one of the most powerful declarations in all of Scripture. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. And then you turn the page to chapter 9 and the mood shifts completely. Paul is in anguish. He is grieving. Because the question he is sitting with is: if God's promises are so good and nothing can separate us from his love, then why have most of the Jewish people rejected Jesus as the Messiah? Have God's promises failed?

That question is the engine that drives all of Romans 9, 10, and 11. And Pastor Aaron gives you the interpretive keys you need to read these chapters well -- chapter 9 is about Israel's past, chapter 10 is about Israel's present, and chapter 11 is about Israel's future.

He works through the whole chapter and surfaces three major promises. God's grace is greater than your failures. God's mercy is greater than your understanding. And God's purposes are greater than your circumstances. Each one is unpacked carefully, and he does not shy away from the hard parts -- election, predestination, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, the potter and the clay. He handles all of it with clarity.

Eran opens by naming the central tension of Romans 9: what do we do when what we expected from God doesn't match what we experience? He points to Israel — recipients of every covenant blessing — still rejecting Christ as the test case. Where in your own life does it feel like God hasn't held up his end of a promise? How does Paul's answer — "it is not as though God's word has failed" — land for you in that situation?
Eran argues that faith cannot be inherited — at some point every person has to claim it from the inside out, not perform it from the outside in. Are there areas of your spiritual life that are more habit, family tradition, or cultural identity than genuine personal conviction? What would it look like to own your faith in those areas rather than simply carry it?
On the question of God's fairness, Eran makes this point: "If God is fair, we all lose — the wages of sin is death, and that's fair. You don't want fairness, you want mercy." Where in your life have you been demanding fairness from God when what you actually need is mercy? How does that reframe what you're asking him for?
Eran uses the image of a pilot: you don't need to understand how a plane works to trust the person flying it — trust is built on confidence in the one who's in control, and understanding often comes later. In your relationships, where do you require understanding before you'll extend trust? How does the model of faith — trust first, understanding follows — challenge that pattern?
Eran closes with the promise from Hosea: God takes those labeled "not my people" and calls them "my people." He rewrites the names spoken over us by failure, loss, diagnosis, or shame. What label has been spoken over your life — by someone else or by yourself — that God may be in the process of rewriting? Identify one specific way this week to live as if God's word about you is more true than that label.