Romans 11:1–6Scripture
My assignment this morning is Romans 11:1-4. However, I'm going to read 11:1-6, and I really want to read 11:1-10, so, but we'll just read 1-6 this morning, and I'm going to actually probably talk about the first two verses, because that's all I have time for. Here's what it says: "I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!" Paul says this a lot. "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 knee to Baal.'" Oh, I think that's abundantly fitting in this season, I truly do. "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 no longer be grace." Amen. We're going to read to 10, because I just changed my mind again, and we're going to do it. "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..." So how are they hardened? Were they passively hardened? Did God allow them to be hardened? Did God simply permit them to
Introduction
Be hardened? Did he just let men and their free will just go their own way until they were hardened? He speaks to that. "As it is written, God gave them," who gave them? 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 said, it's an echo, it's an echoing, if you will, it's echoing the heart of God: "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." In other words, I like this, my wife, Brook, mentioned this earlier this week, in some, maybe in a car, maybe at home, maybe in some meeting, I don't, how many of you can remember where everything happens in your week? Right? I cannot. I have a really hard time with that. Brook mentioned sometime, drew attention to this, "and bend their backs forever," that they would be burdened by the work to obtain what could only come through faith. Think of that. Think of that.
How often the church fights to be burdened rather than to be set free,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 3:31
fights to do it in their will and their volition and their strength rather than trust in the only one who can get us there. How often we fight for burdening, yet the Scripture plainly encourages and teaches and tries to set us free from this burden we keep fighting for. It's crazy. It's crazy. If you look at the landscape of your life, right, just think for a moment, just for a moment, just stop and think for a moment of where you have come from. Right, most of us would begin to picture, maybe this is me because I'm a pessimist, right, Brook would have to speak to this and she can nod or shake her head no here in a minute and let me know, maybe because she's a little Pollyanna-ish and I really, quite honestly, am infatuated with her Pollyanna style of life and living and annoyed by it, because I call myself, although I'm a pessimist, I call myself a realist. I tend to approach life based on what happened negatively to me versus what happened positively to me. Now maybe in Brook's mind, when she imagines her life, she thinks of all the wonderful things that have happened in time and life, and it's wonderful, but I think of all the pain that I have suffered. I don't know where you are, and when you reflect on your life and where you have come from, but the longer you live, the more you see the faithfulness of God in your life. It is evident that he is present. There are moments in your life, if you've lived any amount of time, even as a young gentleman or gentle lady, if you've lived any amount of time, there have been some pains you have navigated, some suffering, there have been moments of loneliness, of emptiness, that now you can look back and see, if not for God, you would have not made it. In the moment of those painful moments you thought he was absent, but when you look back, you see his handiwork in your life. And really, that's what we celebrate when we come together: his faithfulness in our lives. And really, quite honestly, as much as I don't want to preach on Romans 11, that's an encouraging way to start a sermon, right? I really don't want to preach on this chapter, because there are moments when I read through 11 I'm thinking, how much relevance does this really have for the people of Echo Church? Can we just talk about something else, like how to live through, how to make it through your day without killing everyone, or how to make it through your day and actually get to the end of your day and be happy that you lived that day, or to be strengthened in the midst of your greatest trouble, or maybe it is to have a more positive thinking, you like the Zig Ziglar kind of stuff, like "negative thinking is stinking thinking," and maybe we have a sermon, say, stop your negative thinking, it's stinking thinking, stop stinking thinking, and give you some practical tools on how to think better to help you in your Christmas season? Or maybe we could talk about how to love your family better in the midst of a time where everybody in the family is getting together and you know that somebody is going to set you off, right? It's going to happen. No, not for you guys looking at me like I'm crazy, like, no one makes you mad in your family. Or maybe we could talk about how self-control can help you in the midst of all of the fun little smorgasbords of death they serve up during Christmas. Maybe we could talk about practical things to help you live a
Point 1God is telling a story with your life
Better life.
But the gospel is not here and its central focus is not you. God is telling a story with your life.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 8:11
That's the point. He's telling a story with your life. Now for some of us, that might be offensive, because I don't want God to use my life to tell a story.
Let me tell you, he's not just telling a story with your life, he's telling us who he is with your life.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 8:25
And so we can't skip over 11, we can't, because 11 shows us who God is, and it uses the history not only of an individual but of a nation to tell a story of God's character and who he is. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And quite honestly, if we want to know God deeply and personally, we have to take him on his terms. We have to learn about what he loves and why he loves it. We have to learn about why God sometimes holds his hand from saving and sometimes he saves and redeems his people, and the same people he redeems he stands back and he labors in patience and lets them do things that he could stop them from doing but he doesn't, because he's telling a story with the nation of Israel, and it's a story of his character. And for us to just forgo it because we live in America, we're not a part of the nation of Israel, and this really could be a boring chapter, it's not about Israel, it's about God. It's not about Israel's character and their behavior, it's about God's, and he's using the nation to say something about his goodness. And so to understand his goodness, we have to understand the history of the nation of Israel, who they are and where they come from. We have to take God on his
Point 2We take God on his own terms
Terms. We can't dictate to God how he should be known and how he should reveal himself. How many of you ever struggle with that? You want to tell God how he should be and what he should do. We can't say things like, "Give me a dream," or "give me a list," or "give me human authority," that's a popular one today.
God will say, "I've given you the Bible and that is enough. That is enough. Go there and get to know me.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 10:59
You will know me from this story. Don't tell me how to make myself known. I'll tell you how you can know me. Go to your Bible and I'll tell you a story about who I am." And he does it through history. He does it through history. He's telling a story. But even when we go to the Bible to get to know God, we have to take his self-revelation on his own terms, and what we find when we take it as a whole is that there's a history in it. There's a history in it. I'm going to give you a few Scriptures that I think are pertinent this morning. In Jeremiah 13:11, maybe you can write some of these text references down and maybe go back and read through it, because I'm just going to kind of fly through here. I want to look at a few things in the Bible, or a few places in the Bible, where God is telling us what he's doing with Israel and what he's revealing about himself when he talks about Israel. It says that the people of Israel existed to the glory of God. Jeremiah 13:11: "For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the LORD, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory." Notice here he's using Israel to teach us about him. It says that Christ came into the world to die to make known the glory of God. On the eve of his death he said this in John 12:27-28: "Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name." With my life. Isn't that good? Oh, that would be our heart, to know that every waking moment, every painful experience, every joy felt, every goodness walked through, every hardship faced, every day persevered, every relationship endured,
God is telling a story with your life about his goodness. That encourages me.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:00
I don't know about you today, but it really encourages me, because I have moments of idiocy. Have you ever been there, right? And to know that even though I have these moments of idiocy, God, it does not derail him from telling a story about his goodness.
Now I know some of you want to be good all the time, but if you're good all the time, you're God all the time, and let me tell you, sometimes it is your idiocy that points to his goodness.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:27
This does not give you then an excuse to be an idiot all the time, but it does give us hope that God can take the biggest mess and tell the best story about himself. Ephesians 3:21 says, "To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever." To him. Your life is about his glory. It is not your own. It is not your own. It says that all secular rulers and institutions exist by God's decree in Romans 13:1. You're like, that's not fair, Shawn, we're not there yet. And for the display of his power and perfections, including his justice and wrath, he says in Romans 9:17, "For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, 'For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.'" God is even telling a story with somebody as impossible as Pharaoh, a story of his glory. I like that was an accident. I like that, he's telling a story of his glory. What about King Nebuchadnezzar? He discovers the truth, he recovers from his insanity, and says this in Daniel 4:35. Sweetheart, will you give me a tissue? "All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'" All of history, including what is happening all around us even today, and I read this week and I love it, is a canvas being painted by an infinitely glorious and very mysterious artist whose name is God, and the point of the painting is the revelation, the revelation of his glory, including and not limited to all the pain, all the horror, all the injustices, all the backdrop, as a backdrop for God's holy wrath and unimpeachable justice and sovereign grace. That's good stuff, right? I didn't write it, but it's good. It's good stuff. What is God like? We discover it in his story. We discover it in our story. What is your story?
See, oftentimes you think your life points to you, but your life tells a story about God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:06
But we're not talking about you this morning, are we? In 11 we're talking about who? Who are we talking about? Ultimately God. But the name of Israel. I did this, and I think most commentators agree, oftentimes when you read commentary, one of the things that they do in commentary is they try to find a few verses that summarize the whole chapter. When you're reading through here, there seems to be a mainly a mutual agreement on which verses tend to summarize Romans 11.
Point 3God shows mercy to both Gentile and Jew
Here they are: Romans 11:30 through 33. That's the verses. So let's do that, just turn there. "For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" I broke this verse down into a few thoughts, a few things. One, the Gentiles were disobedient to God. That's the picture we get in these verses. The Gentiles were disobedient to God. There was a long history of letting the nations go their own way while God focused his redemption, his redemptive work, on Israel. Number two, then there was a decisive disobedience of Israel as she rejected her Messiah and stumbled over the stumbling stone, which was Christ. So we see this picture, okay, we see this picture of God working to redeem his people and be faithful to his people, and we see them constantly reject God, his ways, we see God holding his hand out with them and laboring with them, and them reject and stumble over the very hope of their salvation, which was Christ. This is the story. This disobedience then led to mercy for the Gentiles as the gospel spread among the nations. And notice then in verse 31 that this is not mere sequence, this is God's divine plan. It says, "They, Israel, have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you, Gentiles, they also may now receive mercy." This was orchestrated. That's important.
Man, I don't know about you, but I don't want to live my life thinking that there is no fundamental reason for anything.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 21:46
It comes down to the fourth step: Israel receives mercy because of the mercy shown to the gentiles. God aimed to show mercy, listen to this, to both. Therefore, in verse 32, he co-signs both to disobedience that he may have mercy on them in spite of their disobedience. Is that encouraging? Both the Gentiles and the Israelites, they were both disobedient, they both stumbled, and we get a picture that this happened that we might see the mercy of God and who he is in the midst of our rejection of him.
Oh, he's merciful, and oh, how merciful he is with idiocy. That's good news, right?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 22:50
He's faithful. There're going to be a lot of people in your life who walk from you, get tired of you, but
God is not through with you. He's telling a story about his goodness with your life.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 23:20
That's good news. Good news. It's good
Point 4God does not reject the people he foreknew
News. Romans 11:1 through 6, then, I believe, breaks down this way, and you could write it down, and I'm probably going to only talk about one or two, because, just because, right? First, it speaks of something God does not do, all right? That's number one: he does not reject his people. That should make you just want to throw something out of your lap, run into the wall in excitement, right? Just really should. He does not reject his people. That's good news. Verse 1 says this: "I ask, then, has God rejected his people?" The answer: "By no means!" We should get a T-shirt and just say "by no means," and then say, "by, you know, Paul," like the Apostle Paul, that's his favorite saying in Romans, in case you, "by no means," absolutely not.
Some of you feel like he's rejected you. If you even care about him rejecting you, by no means.
Has he rejected you? Let me encourage you today, let me just encourage you with this. Romans 1 speaks very plainly of people, right, who are depraved, who don't care about God, who know his ways and refuse to live according to his ways, and they don't even care when they break his law. It speaks very clearly, let me let it speak, and they encourage other people to do the same. If you care, that's a good sign that the Holy Spirit's at work in your heart. And let me just give you a call for pause here, because we tend to speak in definitives, and I think we should, I don't think we should speak in gray areas, but it's a process. God's doing something with you, right? And you should be comforted in the idea that Israel has been an idiot, in idiocy, for thousands of years, messing up, stumbling, getting up, messing up, stumbling, getting up. Now this should never become an, we should never move to an attitude of fatalism where we just don't care because God's just going to save who he pleases, but at the same time we need to be encouraged by the fact that God is merciful, and we see plainly his mercy in the midst of your lack of ability to be good. It, listen, I get very scared about saying this kind of stuff because I feel like people will take advantage of this and then just truly just decide to do everything they want, but if the Spirit is in you won't want to be an offense to God with your life. But let me just, on the other side of this, say sometimes God is telling his story through your stupidity, right?
That doesn't mean you should try to live in it and become a professional at it, but it doesn't stop him from revealing himself as being merciful and good.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 26:34
Amen. That should encourage you. So the next time you do something stupid, man, in your home and your wife looks at you with that stank eye, you start to get, please don't ever do that again, that was a scary, I'm not even sure what happened there, Brook gave me a stank eye, and it was, I don't want to ever see that again, when she looks at you, maybe just tell her, "God is revealing his mercy through my stupidity." No, don't ever do that. Don't ever do that. Don't ever do that. I'm just kidding, I kid. But know this, but do know this:
God is not limited by your mistakes.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 27:34
If God was telling, if you were telling a story with your life about you, then you should be very concerned about everything you do. God is telling a story about him. And honestly, then, on the other side, part of being a new creation is him telling his story, that how he can take a life that does everything wrong and mold it and form it and lead it and sanctify it to be set apart in ways that it could not on its own do. So do you see the dichotomy? He uses stupid, and he changes stupid to not be stupid. Do you see it? It's both. And so we don't stay in the stupid lane, God, but we don't, in our own will and by our own volition, then change. The Holy Spirit changes our life, because it's a story about him. It's not you telling a story about you.
See, I feel like we're bent over with the work of trying to be good because we're trying to tell a story about us.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 28:48
Point 5He chose them by grace, not by works
Number two, then, it speaks of something God did. He foreknew them. Now look at here, I love this, and some of you have been asking me, Shawn, why are we talking and hammering about predestination so much and foreknowledge so much? Why are we talking about this? Can't we just get off the subject? And my response has been, we're talking about it because Paul's talking about it, and we're going verse by verse right now. There are a lot of different views on predestination. I believe that it is important that we get this thing right. I'm really not sure where the line is between primary issues and secondary issues. I'm really not sure. I think the line gets more hazy for me, because if God's talking about it's primary, and he's trying to tell us something here. So why is it important then? In verse 2, God says, "God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew." He keeps saying this over and over again, guys, it's everywhere. Romans is replete with this language. Here, in my feeble attempt this morning, here's why I think this is so important. He is moving, he is moving everything that happens in your life to before you were created, and before creation ensued in general. It was pre-creation. God had a plan.
The reason why your perspective regarding foreknowledge and predestination is essential is because it unburdens you and burdens him.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 30:38
Okay? You are, in essence, yoked to what he's predetermined, what he foreknew. You're yoked to it as a believer. You're actually yoked to it as a nonbeliever, because he determined it. You're like, Shawn, so do we not have a will at all? Yes, we do, but it works in constraints to his will. It's constrained. And I'll say this again, and I've said it multiple times, a person in prison, and it speaks of slave language and bondage language and chain language, it speaks of these kind of languages. It says that once you're freed from sin, you're enslaved to Christ. Why does it speak in terms like this?
Because you're yoked to what he's predetermined. Ultimately, a person in prison has a will and expresses that will, and sometimes he goes in solitary confinement because he hit somebody over the head with a tray at lunch period, and he had the freedom to do that, but he can't just walk out of the prison, amen, because he's a slave, he's in chains. We once were slaves to sin, but God freed us and made us a slave then to righteousness. But although you're made free, you're free from sin, you're not completely free, you're a slave to righteousness now. So then it becomes problematic when you have someone who says they've been freed from sin who lives as if they don't care about righteous living, right? He foreknew them. You're chained to what he's determined, and God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Then it speaks to something God did and does, still is doing. Here's what it says: he kept for himself a remnant of faithful people in Elijah's day and in Paul's day. Verse 4 says this: "I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal." And verse 5: "So too at the present time there is a remnant." Number four, and finally, it tells us at the end of verse 5 how God did it. So how did he do it? He chose them by grace. He didn't choose the Gentiles because they were good, he chose them by grace. He didn't choose the Israelites because they never stumbled over Christ and because they were good, he chose them by grace.
He doesn't choose you because you're good. He chose you by grace. He chose you in spite of you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 33:45
So don't be burdened.
Don't be burdened and bent over with works. This is about him.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 34:16
The first thing, I'm going to go through this quickly and I'm going to close: God has not rejected his people. That's point one. In verse 1, Paul's argument in verse 1 that God has not rejected his people, and I'm going to say this, and this is the main thing I want you to get as we set precedents. Basically, I'm only going to get through verse 1 because I don't have time, and I'm going to end on time. I'm only going to get through verse 1, and there are the three other points, the three other verses, but if you don't get this right, you miss the whole point, because he begins to use foreknowledge and he begins to use terminology like predestination, he begins to use things like "chosen people," and you can get it convoluted really quick here. Paul's argument in verse 1 that God has not rejected his people is that he himself is a Jew. That's the defense. God has not rejected his people. Absolutely not, by no means, and then he uses the defense that he's a Jew. "I ask, then," he says, "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." So the people Paul is concerned about in verse 1 must be, then, and this is important, you have to attach this to this, a, the physical ethnic people of Israel. Now why this gets difficult is because in previous chapters we have spoken of the true Israel, those God has predestined, those God has chosen, and now he is speaking about the nation. We went from speaking about individuals, that even in the nation of Israel there are Jews who were still saved, who God predestined, who he chose, right, and the true Israel is not necessarily labeled by whether you are a jew or not. You can be a Gentile and be a part of the true Israel because he chose you, right, and he predestined you to be adopted as sons and brought into and become his people. But now he's talking about the nation, the ethnicity of the nation of Israel, and Paul uses the defense that he is one of them. So the people Paul is concerned about in verse 1 must be the physical ethnic people of Israel, not the church of the Jews and the Gentiles which he talked about in previous chapters. Are you with me? God has not rejected ethnic Israel. That's what Paul says, because I am an ethnic Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin. Some have asked, does that mean that all Jewish people who ever lived will be saved then?
That's the next comment, now, or the question. The answer to that question is no. Jesus and Paul sound the same note on this question, as do the prophets in Ezekiel 18:20 and Daniel 12:1-2. Jesus says it this way: "I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom," Israelites, "will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 8:11. He said to the Pharisees, "You serpents," Matthew 23:33, "you serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?" So will all the nation be saved? No, only the true Israelites, only the remnant will. And Paul said in Romans 2:8-9, "For those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the greek." So there is no thought of every individual Jewish person eventually being automatically saved because they are a Jew. Can we put that to rest? "It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God," Romans 9:8. That principle has not changed. Paul has not forgotten what he has said previously. No Jew or Gentile individual is saved because of his ethnic background. However, he is talking about ethnicity here, but as you wrestle with the text, when he's talking about the special privilege the Jews have, and that he has not forgotten them, he is not undermining everything he said up to this point. Well, if not every individual Jewish person, what does Paul refer to when he says in verse 2, "God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew"? Some argue this, some argue this, some argue that it simply means the remnant, that it refers to in later verses, the verses we'll talk about next week, the remnant mentioned in verse 5. So here's the verse: "So too at this present time there is a remnant chosen by grace." They will apply that God has not forsaken his people to the remnant, in other words, Paul and other jews in his day that are believers on the Messiah, and so there is a faithful remnant who will inherit the promises made to Israel, and so God has not rejected the remnant, those he foreknew, in the remnant. That's almost the right answer, but there's a problem with it, and i'm just going to give you, I'm just going to try to answer this, drop a bomb and be like, peace out, and let you wrestle with it, but you need to know this when you go into your small group, especially my small group today, and you begin to work on the lesson for next week, we've got to get this right. There's a problem with believing that he's referring to the remnant, because that's not what we see in verse 1. We're asking, what, when it said this, "Has God rejected his people?" The problem verse 1 is raising is not that there's no remnant. Chapters 9 and 10 were clear that there was a remnant of Jews who were saved. The absence of a remnant was not the problem. The problem in these chapters is that it looks like corporate Israel, taken as a whole, alive in any given generation, is mainly perishing and ultimately cut off from Christ. That's the issue raised in verse 1, that when you look at the nation of Israel, it does not look like God is for them at all. That's what I think Paul refers to when he says "God has not rejected his people": the people of Israel, taken as a corporate whole in any given generation, God has not rejected them. That's how you apply that. That's how you apply that. Now, this is going to seem like a cliffhanger, and then I'm just going to walk off the stage, you're going to wonder what that's all about. I'm giving you, in my opinion, an essential tool to properly dissect this Scripture, all right? It will prove helpful. It will prove helpful.
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