We are back in Romans - chapter 11 - starting at verse 1.  As we have been Roaming Through Romans - since chapter 1 - one truth that runs through everything that we’ve been seeing in Paul’s letter is that God loves people - us.  As messed up as we are.  As sinfully depraved as we are.  As totally deserving eternity apart from God in forever punishment for our sins as we are.  With all that God still loves people - us.

For 8 chapters - chapters 1 to 8 - Paul has been explaining God’s love for us.  God taking the initiative.  God reaching out to us.  God’s undeserved grace.  His unwarranted mercy.

Then - coming to chapter 9 - Paul takes on God’s sovereignty.  Sovereignty meaning that God is in complete control of everything.  God has the authority and power and right to do whatever God chooses to do - period.  And especially with His creation - us.  Paul has been showing us that God in His sovereignty chooses to work in His way to accomplish His purposes for His glory.

Going with that truth of God’s sovereignty - Paul wrote about God choosing Israel to be His… chosen people.  God choosing to give Israel some amazingly unique promises and blessings and a covenant relationship with God that was all about God using Israel to tell the nations that God loves them.

And yet, Israel - with everything that Israel had going it for it - what God had chosen to bless Israel with - Israel chooses to reject the very message they’ve been chosen to proclaim.  Israel chooses to reject their Messiah Jesus.  And in chapter 10 Paul taught us that God holds Israel accountable - holds us accountable - for the choices we make.  How we respond to God’s love and God’s grace.

Which might seem unfair - unjust.  God being sovereign - in total control of everything - including us - and yet God judging us based on the choices we make. 

Let’s be clear.  Within the sovereignty of God is the free will of man.  God in His sovereignty choosing to allow us the freedom to choose our response to His grace.

How that works… God only knows.  But He does.  Meaning that God - who in His sovereignty chooses to be gracious to us - God holds us accountable for our choice of how we respond to His gospel.  We’re together?  That’s a lot to process right off the bat.  Isn’t it? 

Let’s try to put some of that into the real time of where we live.

Pop quiz.  Going back to what we looked at in chapter 10.

“Creekside, have you heard the term gospel?  If so, can you give a brief explanation of what the gospel is?”

A good starting point - a good verse to focus on is... John 3:16 - a concise explanation of the message of the Bible:  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life”  (John 3:16 NASB)

Good News:  God loves you.  We are the world.

Bad News:  We’re perishing.  We need to understand and agree with God that we sin.  We’ve all - each of us - has done what separates us from God.  The holy God is perfectly justified and sending us into eternity in punishment forever without Him.

Good News:  God sent Jesus.  God taking on the flesh and blood of our humanity - Jesus dying on the cross in our place - Jesus took care of everything that needs to be taken care of between us and God.  Which really really is good news.  Isn’t it?

You Choose:  “whoever believes” - means that we need to individually choose to respond to what the sovereign God by His grace has done.  Your choice is...?

If any of us - if you - agreeing with God about your sin - if you’ve by faith - trusted God - welcomed what God - Jesus - has done for you - made that choice - know that beyond any doubt God makes right your relationship with Him.  You are saved from perishing.  You have the assurance of life with God today and forever.  That is the really really good news of the gospel.  Yes?

God’s love - and our desperation for His love - is where Paul has been for 10 chapters.  Coming to chapter 11 we are going on in Paul’s teaching about what the sovereign God is doing in history - and in and through the Jewish people - with the choices Israel is making - and what all that means for us.  Our accountability before God.  This morning we’re going to look at two questions and a warning.

Read with me starting at verse 1:  I ask, then, has God rejected His people?  By no means!  For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.  God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew.  Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel?  “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.”  But what is God’s reply to him?  “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knew to Baal.”  So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.  But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would not longer be grace.

First question:  Has God rejected His people?

Meaning - because God is sovereign - meaning that... God is in complete control.  If God is in complete control of whatever there is to be in control of - does Israel’s rejection of Jesus mean that God is orchestrating - controlling - Israel’s rejection of Jesus and therefore - bottom line - God has chosen to reject Israel.

Paul’s answer:  “By no means.”  In the Greek it’s more emphatic.  It reads in Greek “Meh genoito.”  Try that with me.  “Meh genoito.”  It has the idea “May it never come to be.”  No how.  No way.  Ain’t done that way.

Paul gives us two examples.  Here’s how we know that it ain’t done that way.  Two examples.  Evidence that God has never set aside - rejected - the Jews in regards to His promises to them - their individual salvation.

Example #1:  Paul himself.

Paul is ethnically Jewish - an Israelite - descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin.  One of God’s people that God foreknew - set aside by God to be God’s.

We know Paul’s testimony.  In Galatians Paul reminds us that God had chosen him before he was even born.  We know how Paul as a Pharisee - blaspheming God - with anger against the claims of Jesus and anger against the followers of Jesus - how Paul persecuted - ravaged - the church.  And yet God - foreknowing Paul - still drew Paul to Himself.  Jesus met him on the road to Damascus.  God changed Paul’s heart.  Paul - marveling at the grace of God - proclaims the gospel of salvation.  (Acts 22:3-21; Galatians 1:11-24; Philippians 3:4-6)

Paul is one example of millions of Jews that have come to believe in Messiah Jesus.

Example #2:  The prophet Elijah.

Paul draws our attention to Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal - 1 Kings 18.  We remember this.  Yes?  Mount Carmel.  The two altars.  The prophets of Baal - doing everything to make a false god somehow respond as a living god.  Then Israel’s God obliterating the altar Elijah had constructed.  God raining down fire from heaven and obliterating the offering - the wood - the stones - the dust - the water.

Paul’s point comes in what comes next - 1 Kings 19.  After the prophets of Baal are routed - high fives and fist bumps all around.  Major victory.   Elijah flees into the wilderness.  Runs in fear from Jezebel.  Jezebel whose sworn vengeance on Elijah.  So Elijah goes a day’s journey into the wilderness - sits down under a tree - and asks God to kill him.

You ever watch a game - football - basketball - whatever - and wonder if the refs are watching the same game?  How could they possibly make that call?  Kinda wonder what contest between gods Elijah was watching.  Win and hide.  Strange.

God comes to Elijah whose hiding out and God asks Elijah, “Dude, what are you doing here?”

Elijah tells God, “I have been very jealous for the Lord the God of hosts.  For the people have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”

Do you ever feel that way?  I’m doing all this stuff for God and I’m the only one.  I’m the only one standing up for God at school or work or in my family or even the church.  And I’m gonna get creamed.  I am so in trouble here.  This is so not right.  I am so alone.

What does God tell Elijah?  “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knew to Baal.”

“I’m still working here.  You may not see it.  But you’re not alone.  I’ve got 7,000 others who haven’t bowed to Baal.  A remnant chosen by my grace - a smaller group set aside from the nation as a whole - a spiritual remnant that’s still trusting Me.”  (1 Kings 19:10-18)

What Elijah forgot - and what we often forget - is that our perspective of what’s happening is limited.  We don’t see it clearly.  We don’t have a clue as to all of what’s really going on.  Most importantly, we don’t even come close to seeing it as God sees it.

What Elijah forgot was the unlimited power of the sovereign God.  God is not taken by surprise - overwhelmed - distracted - weak.  The powers of darkness haven’t somehow won the battle - pulled a fast one on God.

We may slip into thinking that way.  But Scripture tells us over and over and over again that God - in His sovereignty - is using all of what we see from our perspective as unfolding disaster and defeat - what often leads us into fear and despair - loosing sleep - God can and will use all of that to fulfill His promises - His plan - His purposes - for His glory.

“Why is this happening to me?”  “Why I am going through this?”  “What did I do to deserve this?”

What we see as a disaster is an opportunity for grace.  Grace is God at work.  God being gracious to us isn’t dependent on us.  That’s works.  Works is us at work.  Grace is God at work. We somehow try to bring God down to our level to work at the stuff of our life as if we were the one’s working all that out.

But we have limited knowledge about how God does what God does and why God does what God does.  And God doesn’t owe us an explanation.  We do not deserve anything better from God.  If God is going to call us and save us then that’s not going to depend on what we do.

Our choice?  We welcome by faith what God has already graciously done for us.  Let’s be careful.  Even that welcoming is a choice that is somehow and someplace within the sovereignty of God - God gives us the freedom to make to that choice.

Are we together?  Hang on to something.

Looking at Israel - or our lives - we may wonder what in God’s creation God is doing with Israel that it seems like God has rejected Israel.  But, we need to hang on to that God is still sovereign and God is still doing what God says He will do because God chooses to do whatever God wills to do which has nothing to do with what we think God should do or how we think God should do it but it has everything to do with God who will accomplish His purposes - His promises - without fail - to work His plan and purpose of redemption in human history - even bringing salvation to His people however He chooses to do that - regardless of whether we “get it” or understand whatever it is that God is doing.

Coming to verse 7:  What then?  Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking.  The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.”  And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.”

One huge problem with living by our works is that we lose our capacity to respond to God’s grace.

Have you noticed that a whole lot of people today have become so addicted to fast food and what makes up most of the American diet - with all its processed components and high sugar and fat and sodium content - that when they’re given a choice - way too often a whole lot of people will reject the healthy food in favor of food that’s slowly killing them.  The healthy food just doesn’t look and taste the same as what they’ve grown addicted to.

The table that Paul and David are saying is a snare and a trap - a stumbling block for God’s people - is the law.  God’s people trying to fulfill the law - working their own works at trying to be righteous - to get right with God.  To earn God’s approval.  They’re working so hard at that food that they’re rejecting the healthy food - the life giving food that God has offered them in Messiah Jesus.

The remnant - by faith - receives what God offers them.  The rest - living on a diet of the law - they’ve lost their capacity to respond to God’s grace.  They’ve got hardening of their spiritual arteries.  Eyes no longer see God’s truth.  Ears no longer hear the voice of God.

God’s been calling to them.  They’ve got His truth.  But they’ve failed to obtain what their seeking - like a healthy satisfying meal - what deep down they really need at the heart level - because they’re trying to deal with their sin problem by their own works and not relying on God’s grace.  So God says, “Have your way.”  (pun intended)

Has God rejected His people.  No way.  Ain’t gonna happen.  But God - in His sovereignty - will hold us accountable for the choices we make in response to His grace.

Question #2:  Did Israel stumble in order that they may fall?

Let’s read together at verse 11:  So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall?  By no means!  Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.  Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!

Remember the commercial?  “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.”  Has Israel fallen and there’s no way they’re ever going to be able to recover?  They’re down for the count.  Game over.  God’s promises and His plan are just not gonna happen.

Question #2 is really a question about where God is going with all this.

Listen to how Chuck Swindoll illustrates Paul’s point:

Imagine the best restaurant in the world opened in your town.  They have everything you can think of, from gourmet creations, prime rib, and seafood all the way down to grilled cheese sandwiches and hamburgers.  So you get a table for your party of six or seven and, because you’re short on money, all you can afford is a hotdog and a basket of fries to share among you.  At the table next to you, a party of fourteen has ordered the best, most expensive food on the menu.  A team of servers emerges from the kitchen and begins covering the table with the most delectable dishes you can imagine.  But as soon as the culinary parade has concluded, the host suddenly stands up and says to the owner, “Look, I’ll pay for the meal, but nobody wants to eat this.  This isn’t really what we wanted,” and they all walk out.

So, with a feast all prepared and paid for with no one to enjoy it, the owner glances your way and motions toward the abandoned table.  He smiles as he announces, “There’s nobody else in the restaurant and we’re virtually closed.  If you don’t mind eating with some of the busboys, the waiter staff, and me, you can have what the other party rejected.”  Before he’s finished the last sentence, your feet are under that other table and everyone is digging in.

Now, imagine in the meantime, the other part is halfway home when they say to one another, “Wait!  What were we thinking?  We’re hungry… so, let’s go back!”  But by the time they arrive, the doors are locked and you’re just enjoying the first course of that five-course meal.  So, there they stand, noses pressed to the window, watching you, your friends, and the hired help enjoy what could have been their feast.  (1)

“Jealous” in the Greek has an emphatic feeling of an intense passionate envy.  What - at the heart level - provokes us to action.  Being really hungry is really really intensely motivating.

Reading through what Paul writes - God is bringing good out of what appears to be a train wreck - a disaster for Israel.  Israel’s stumbling has opened the door for the Gentiles to come to salvation by faith.  That Gentile salvation is going to be on such a huge scale that Israel is going to be envious of the riches of what the Gentiles are going to experience.  That envy - that jealousy - is ultimately going to contribute the nation of Israel coming to her Messiah.  (Acts 13:42-47) 

What God has coming for Israel is blessings beyond comprehension.  The fulfillment of all that God has promised His chosen people.  What God has coming for Israel is not a thin strip of land - Mediterranean Sea on one side - ruthless enemies on the other. 

On a day yet to come the spiritual blindness - the deafness - is coming to an end.  God’s people will turn to God.  The children of Abraham will lift up Messiah Jesus who will reign - the King of kings and Lord of lords - reigning from Jerusalem directing the course of mankind.  Satan and his minions will be bound.  God’s righteousness will flood the earth.  Crime, disease, poverty, mourning, pollution, war, ecological and sociological problems, death will be a long forgotten thing of the past.

Are we together with Paul?  God hasn’t rejected Israel.  No way.  This is not game over.  God is using Israel’s rejection to fulfill His promises.  To bring the Gentiles to salvation.  And, to bring the Jews to salvation.

There’s something here for us to hold on to.  We may feel like we’ve messed up so bad that we are beyond the point that God is going step in and deal with whatever we’ve gotten ourselves into.  But God isn’t like people.  God never quits on His promises.  God will keep his promises to the Jews.  God will keep His promises to us.

Which brings us to verse 13 - which is Paul’s warning to the Gentiles.

Verse 13.  Let’s read together:  Now I am speaking to you Gentiles.  Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.  For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? 

Let’s pause.  Are we hearing Paul?  You Gentiles are the expansion pack of God’s ministry for me.  God sent me to the Jews.  First.  Then God sent me to you.  Which has expanded - multiplied - the scope of my ministry.  And that expansion of Paul’s ministry God is using to provoke a passionate response from the Jews - to bring them to Messiah Jesus.

Paul’s point:  Within God’s plan and purpose is the saving of people from all nations - even us here in Merced - within that plan and purpose is the reality that God is still working to save Israel.  You Gentiles need to be clear on this.  God is using you to bring Israel to Messiah Jesus - to eternal life with God.

Let’s go on.  Verse 16:  If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.

Let’s pause.  Paul is referring back to the offerings and sacrifices of the Temple.  For the Firstfruits offering a lump of dough was made and then someone would take a part of the whole lump of dough and present the part to God.  Paul is saying that if the little part of dough is holy - acceptable to God - then the whole lump of dough would also be acceptable to God.

Which Paul is using as an example of Abraham.  Point being that Abraham is like the firstfruits.  If Abraham was accepted by God then Abraham’s descendants will also be accepted by God.  If the root is holy - meaning Abraham and the patriarchs - then the rest of the tree - the branches - are going to be holy - acceptable to God as well.

Together?

Let’s go on - verse 17:  But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches.  If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root supports you.  Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.”  That is true.  They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith.  So do not become proud, but fear.  For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you.

Let’s pause and look at Paul’s illustration.

There’s an olive tree.  Planted by God.  Cultivated.  The roots are holy - Abraham and the patriarchs - God’s promises and covenants.  From those roots grows up a natural olive tree with natural cultivated branches - ethnic Israel - ready to produce high quality olives - fruit - according to the plan of the guy who planted and cultivated the tree - God.

Then the natural branches - ethnic Israel - are pruned away.  Why?  Because they haven’t produced fruit that comes by faith.

At this point things get a tad weird.  I’m not a horticulturist.  But - from what I understand goes on with Olive trees in the Middle East - it seems that wild olive branches tend to produce only small, hard, nubs of fruit that contain very little oil.  Pretty useless.

So in an act of horticultural madness that makes no sense from our perspective of how one does Olive trees - but makes a huge amount of sense if we’re focusing on the sovereign God who is gracious - the wild worthless olive branches are grafted in to the holy acceptable root system that contains all the promise of producing some amazingly wonderful fruit.

Something else we need to keep in mind.  If we were to graft a pear branch into a apple tree what kind of fruit could we expect from the pear branch?  Pears.  The nature of the branch - the fruit it produces - doesn’t change.  In the same way, wild olive branches produce wild olives even though they’ve got perfectly good sap running through them.  Grafting is about the value of the root system - the strength - the hardiness - the value of the promises - not the value of the branch.

Which - following Paul’s point - which we Gentiles need to keep in mind and not get arrogant about our position on the trunk.  Pretty foolish of us to start feeling superior because natural branches were removed and we got grafted in.  Wild is wild.  Natural is natural.  Roots is roots.

Paul’s point is not that one kind of branch is superior to the other kind of branch - more spiritual or more holy or more useful.  God’s grafting us in is about God’s grace not what wonderful branches we’re making ourselves out to be.

So - Paul warns us - we need to fear - to respect God.  To keep perspective on who God is and who we are.  We don’t exist unless God wills it.  We’re only saved by grace because God chooses it.  God offering us the opportunity to receive by faith what He’s done.  Breaking off and grafting in is according to what God wills.  What God is doing.  We need to see ourselves as a part of God’s plan and purpose.  It’s the roots - God’s promises - that support us.  Not the other way around.

Let’s go on - verse 22:  Note then the kindness and the severity of God:  severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in His kindness.  Otherwise you too will be cut off.  And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.  For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.  

Paul’s illustration displays both the kindness and severity of God.  God’s kindness in making faith in the gospel the only requirement.  God’s severity in disqualifying anyone who refuses faith.  God is kind towards those who cast themselves on His mercy.  God is severe towards those who refuse His mercy.  Anyone will be cut off from the people of God for unbelief.  Anyone can be grafted in on the basis of faith.

Jews - part of a nation that’s rejected Messiah Jesus - cut off ethnic Jews can be grafted in by faith.  Gentiles - coming by faith to Christ Jesus - Gentiles can be grafted in.  The bottom line is... faith.  The choice of faith that is freely given to each of us by the sovereign God.  God who holds us accountable for the choice we make.

Processing all that - let’s be careful.  Reading through what Paul writes here a lot of people have gotten hung up on the idea that it’s possible to be cut off once one has been grafted or grown in.  We need to be careful to not read into Paul’s illustration more than what Paul is illustrating.  Paul - here - is not saying that an individual who’s a true member of the people of God - based on faith - can then lose or forfeit his or her place on the trunk - loosing or forfeiting our salvation.

Paul is warning us.  A very strong warning not to be taken lightly.  Warning us against spiritual arrogance.

Paul - up to chapter 11 has been warning the Jews about spiritual arrogance based on their relationship to the roots.  The Jews hanging on to their ethnicity and history and having the law and being the chosen people and expecting that that was what it took to be in tight with God and His root system.

Paul is now warning the Gentiles - us.  Today, there are number of people who think they are part of God’s family - part of the Body of Christ - the Church - and they are not.  We all need a spiritual reality check.  Often.

Spiritual arrogance comes when we’re more impressed by our accomplishments than by what God by His grace has accomplished.  We look at all the things we do and we impress ourselves not realizing how empty and ordinary they are.  All our efforts at being Godly people - at being religious - at being good Christians - strike us as being so amazing and they’re nothing.  Not really.  None of that impresses God.

Spiritual arrogance comes when we confuse intimacy with God for equality with God.  God reaching to us - God calling us to a relationship with Him - God reaching to us is about God reaching to us not about us - our great value and worth and intellect and spiritual insight on things.

It’s way too common and way too easy for us to have some God given inkling of who God is and turn that into our own brand of spirituality or Christianity or what it means to get right with God - or whatever deity is out there.

Someone said, “If God is your co-pilot, switch seats.”  God is God.  We’re not equal to God.  We’d have no clue about anything spiritual if it wasn’t for God.  And that inkling is about God not us.

Spiritual arrogance comes when we devalue others because we esteem ourselves so highly.  Israel did that.  They played the “Chosen People” card and looked down on everyone else as being “less than”.  Sometimes the church assumes a position of spiritual arrogance because we think we have an inside track with God.

When we loose sight of our own depravity we lose sight of God’s grace.  His mercy.  We start thinking that we’re end users of all He’s blessed us with.  We can become the Creekside Evangelical Free Club.  Hanging with our people.  Doing our thing.  Living our brand of casual Christianity.  We loose sight of God’s command - His purpose of using us to reach others with His gospel.

Marmeladov - a character in Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”, is a drunk.  But he knows God’s mercy.  At one point he’s ridiculed by patrons at a tavern.  Marmeladov responds by telling them what he expects God to say at the final judgment.

“You too come forth,” He will say, “Come forth, ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of shame!”  And we shall all come forth without shame and shall stand before Him… and the wise ones and those of understanding will say, “O Lord, why doest Thou receive these men?”  And He will say, “This is why I receive them, O ye wise, this is why I receive them, O ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.”  And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before Him… and we shall weep… and we shall understand things!  Then we shall understand all! (2)

Humility is huge when it comes to grace and faith.  There is no place in the Body of Christ for complacency with our salvation.  No place for spiritual arrogance.  No place for us to assume our position based on our merit, value, or worth.  We come by grace through faith alone.

_________________________

1. Charles R. Swindoll, “Insights on Romans” - Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2010.

2. The Gospel in Dostoyevsky, 1988 by Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA - cited by Scott Grant, “Mercy For All” - Romans 11

Additional Reference:  Steve Zeisler, "Roots" - Romans 11:1-31
 

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®  (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.