Romans 11:5–10Scripture
Well, we're going to continue going strong in Romans even through Christmas, because this is the gospel. Whether we're in Revelation, wherever we are, we find our hope in him, in Christ, right? And so that is what the gospel is sharing today. We're looking at Romans chapter 11, and I want to extrapolate out something this morning that I think will be helpful for us. I'm going to read the whole section here, we're going to look today at 11:5–10, and I want to really just go back and I want to pull out just verse 5 today, all right? I just want to look at verse
Point 1God chooses a remnant by grace alone
5, all right. It says this: So too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. This is key. Now, as simplistic as this seems, you know that a remnant is chosen by grace. That seems simplistic in nature, it becomes problematic for us as we begin to process how God works in our world and specifically how he works with mankind. This is lost on us when we begin to diagnose things like election or predestination or the sovereignty of God, and Paul is going through painstaking effort to help us understand this is God's business. It is not your business. And here, if I were to summarize the book of Romans with one verse, it would be this verse. This is the verse that I would summarize the entire book of Romans with. So I think it's important for us to not get lost in the gravity of what he's trying to say, so I'll say it again: So too at the present time there is a remnant. How is the remnant chosen? It's chosen by grace. We'll read on and then we'll go back to chapter 5, verse 5, and we'll talk about that this morning. Verse 6: But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works.
Period. Other, that's actually a semicolon, but I'm just saying period. Otherwise grace would no longer be grace. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it is seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. How were they hardened is the question we should ask as we come into this place, and there is an answer here: how they were hardened. Were they hardened because God passively allowed lost people to be lost? Were they hardened because God passively allowed sinful people to be sinful? Were they hardened because everyone was sinful and God just allowed them to be sinful? No. As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, he gave them and made them 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, and a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.
This is God's business. Now, you may not like the fact that God functions in such a way, in such a fashion, but this is God's business, it's not your business.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 4:05
This is God's business. I'm going to read this one more time, this verse, and I'm going to go to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, we'll look at verse 25 through... I actually put 25–21, that is incorrect, so we will see if we can find it, hopefully it's not 21 through 25, and I inverted those numbers, but we will find it. 1 Corinthians 1:25 is the right text, though. So too at the present time there is a remnant, and that remnant is chosen by grace. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 1.
All right, let's go to 21, I think I inverted those numbers. Now let's go to 18, evidently.
None of my numbers are right. I really feel like this supports what is happening here when we talk about the remnant being chosen by grace, and I want to use 1 Corinthians because both of these are written, of course, by the same author, and he begins to speak here of how God goes about choosing a remnant, what a remnant looks like. I hope that we can walk away today being encouraged by the fact that God uses the remnant in a mighty fashion but in a way that you might not imagine, right? And the remnant, it's just really beautiful here. So verse 18: For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. Does this sound familiar? But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, to what? Ooh, to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.
Point 2God's strategy is the faithful few, not the many
Here is the point of what I believe Romans is trying to get to when he talks about the remnant, and what Corinthians is describing when he talks about what I believe is the remnant, in one sentence: in the plan and the purposes of God, the steadfast faith of a small, disadvantaged minority is more vital, it's more effectual, than the collective clout of the powerful majority. That's important today. That is important today in a world where everything has to be more, where we're constantly trying to one-up last year's escapades, where every Sunday service has to be better than the week before, where every Christmas service has to be better than the year before. Well, now we simply cannot adore and acknowledge and celebrate a simple nativity scene, people have to fly through the air and play drums on cables. Are you with me? Because more is better.
This is why in America we could end poverty and homelessness with our storage units alone,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 9:57
because we believe, and we have fallen into, and we have been disillusioned into believing that more is better. But with God it's not. This runs crosswise with God's purposes when we think about the church and we evaluate the successfulness of what God is doing in our midst. We evaluate it by headcounts rather than spiritual prowess or strength or Bible study or changed lives or righteousness, simply how many heads do we have in the building. We evaluate success by headcounts. We evaluate and determine whether a church is successful or not by how many butts are in seats. I used to do this. I used to measure the credibility of my calling, based on how many people were in the room, and then I would adapt the ministry to make that become our reality.
We would so then water down the gospel to the degree that butts would get in seats so that my ego would be able to sleep at night.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 11:31
But there comes a point where only one ego remains. It is either God or you. We prioritize abundance. That's why some of you can't sleep at night when you don't get many likes on your Facebook post. That's why many of you in this room, some of you in this room, maybe not the youngest people, but some of you have been guilty of paying for Facebook likes and Instagram hearts and things like that. You've paid actual organizations to purchase those for you so you can look like you have credibility, because we live in a world that believes that more is better and more means you are somebody. That's good stuff. Shawn, what do you mean, what are you talking about, I didn't even know that existed. Well, a lot of pastors did, because pastors four years ago when Instagram went and cleared out all of these spam accounts that they were buying, they were buying bot accounts.
Pastors in certain places of position, Instagram count went from 50,000 to 200 overnight.
Because we believe that more is better, but God doesn't believe that.
Matter of fact, if you look at the whole landscape of the gospel in its entirety, from the beginning to the end, you will find that God believes less is more.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 13:04
Matter of fact, if you look at the landscape of the gospel story, if you look at individual stories, if you just go home this week and you begin to look at stories, you will find that God expends great energy to move things from the masses to the few. There is a dwindling down that happens as God begins to search out and find the remnant. Actually, he didn't need to find them, he knows where they are because he predestined them from the beginning, but you need to understand he chooses the remnant to do the things he's decided to do.
The prestige, the skill, the sophistication of an imposing army has never advanced Christ's kingdom, ever, never, ever.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:02
In biblical history, God ordinarily accomplishes over and over again his work here on earth through the steadfast devotion of a faithful but otherwise unimpressive remnant. When the armies stand on the hill and cannot move forward, a young shepherd boy advances an army. The remnant he's chosen shifts the whole course of the military. We've lost this idea in our culture in America, it's lost on us completely, and that is not said for your shame, but rather it is said that you understand that you have hard work to do whenever you open up his Word, because you have been inundated with this idea that more is better, the idea that the triumph of his truth does not require carnal might or fleshly power or human ingenuity or popular consensus or vast armies or stylish prestige or the approval of the rest of the world. We don't need to try to fix the gospel to try to make it feel like less of a stumbling block or make it sound less foolish.
The gospel's good just the way it is. It's good enough just the way it is.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 15:44
I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it, and honestly there are people who are sick of the gospel and they love eating up all the other stuff. It's both our pragmatic approach to try and make the gospel of Christ more palatable to the academic elite, or more acceptable to the harbingers of political correctness, or agreeable to the high priests of science dogma, scientific dogma, or more impressive to the wardens of postmodern fashion, or more pleasing to the popular opinions of men. It's not our job to adjust the gospel to make everyone happy. You can't.
It is the gospel's purpose to make some softened and many hardened, and so to try to soften the gospel is to change its purpose and thwart what God intended it to accomplish.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 16:47
God's truth does not need to be propped up by majority opinion, and it does not need to be propped up by man's strength, and it does not need to be propped up by man's eloquence or his ability to shift and manipulate a room to get people to respond. I'm speaking to myself up in here, in case you didn't know. God ordinarily accomplishes his purpose through a ragtag remnant that looks very small, seems very feeble, but that is very on purpose.
If you feel small today, God uses small things. If you feel forgotten today, God often chooses forgotten things.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 17:35
If you feel broken today, God changes the broken and uses the broken to mend the hearts of the broken.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:01
This is by God's design. It is not by our design, because if we were to design it we would do it much differently than he does it. It is a part of his strategy for redemption. He has chosen to use a remnant rather than an army of aristocrats and intellectuals. That is not merely the story of this passage, that message stands out everywhere in the storyline of redemptive history, and it's a message the church today desperately needs to come to grips with. The truth flatly contradicts virtually all the strategies and ministry philosophies that have dominated big-movement evangelicalism for the past four or five decades. Listen, just track with me here for a second. I've almost been in ministry for three decades, that's insane, how old am I getting, three decades. You know how many chachki junk drawer things I've seen the church do that has faded away into obscurity? You know how many things I participated in, how effective I thought it was in the moment, but in looking back realized it was built on man's pride and ego and not God's sovereign design? God does not need human ingenuity to design a fresh strategy for church growth with every new decade, and I honestly don't know why this is so hard for postmodern evangelicals to grasp. Actually, I kind of do, a little bit, because it wasn't long ago when I feel like I had an aha moment. That's why the church ain't the same today. That's why when people come back to Echo Church they're like, what is this, what is this? I literally, in the past three decades, just in my time, just in my time, I want to talk about some things. I want to lay for you a landscape of what I believe the Apostle Paul is talking about, because he's talking about God chooses a remnant and you want the masses, and it's by God's design. Why is it important that we embrace this? Well, it's important we embrace this because that's God, and it's his character, and it's his nature, and it's what he chooses to do, and if you then want something different than what he chooses, you misalign yourself with him. I've seen every fad created to stimulate church growth and falter and fail, ultimately doing more harm than good. Every movement that was supposed to be key for unprecedented church growth eventually burned down and left destruction and spiritual disaster in
Point 3Church-growth fads fail; the gospel is our hope
Its wake. I want to talk about a few of them that I've lived through in ministry, and some of you are not going to like these. Some of you have been guilty of being more faithful to the church growth strategy than you are to God, and you would fight to the death the strategy and you would forsake God in an instant, and I know that today because I was somebody like that at one time. So before you get prickly today or shut down and do not listen to me today, understand my heart here is to help us understand that the gospel is our hope, it is not a church strategy. All right, let's first then take the most trigger-inducing strategy that was used in my earlier days of ministry, and particularly my later years in youth and first early years in college, when I was serving as an associate, not an associate ministry but as a sponsor, if you will, in the youth group: let's take the bus ministry movement. One charge against the bus ministry is its inordinate emphasis on numbers rather than souls. It did not seek to attract people through the appeal of a dying Savior, it sought to attract children with bubble gum. It did not appeal to the spiritual man but rather to the carnal desires of man.
Therefore, in the end, the bus ministry emphasized numbers over spirituality. Was there good intentions in there? Sure. How many bus ministries are still working today? Are there? Yes, few. Why? Because it will never substitute for the gospel. Are you with me today? Let's move off that one, because that's the most trigger-inducing one. Let's move to another one that I experienced. Those who bought into this idea of seeker-sensitive philosophy, simply, we realized in time, could not preach the gospel with any kind of clarity or boldness, because the gospel is a stumbling block to Jews and it is folly to the Gentiles, as it says in 1 Corinthians and in Romans, and quite honestly that makes seekers uncomfortable in their seat. So if you prioritize the seeker, you must tone down the gospel and leave out the hard parts so people will be happy rather than holy. How do you know which one you are? If you'd rather be happy than holy, look at your life. Have you become less holy and more happy in the church? Could be you're a part of that movement. Come on, listen to me, I'm not saying you can't be happy at church, I'm saying there are some churches that prioritize your happiness over your holiness, and that's a problem. Have you found yourself slipping backwards in your faith due to what and whom you're around? That might be a problem. But don't let me bother you. It says wide is the gate to hell and narrow is the path to heaven, and few find it. So not only did the seeker-sensitive movement fail to convert Harry, because it didn't preach the true gospel, but it also had the opposite effect: it made the church worldly rather than holy. Moving on. Then there was, in my later years, not actually, probably mid to earlier years in ministry, there was this movement called, and you church people understand this, maybe those who have not been in the church their whole life will not, there was a movement called the emerging church movement. How many of you remember that? Few, like three, that's great. Just hang on in there. And that movement actually fell apart in less than a decade. So we thought it was about candles and dark rooms, but it was about much more than that. It was the old version of the new wokeism that's happening today. I'm glad it did fall apart in less than a decade, but before the movement disengaged, its most notable legacy left was a large number of millennials and Gen Z young people who were brought into that movement and later deconverted from Christianity completely through a deconstruction. Today most of them will tell you that they regard their apostasy as an awakening of God, a spiritual one. Today woke church is a discount version of the emerging church movement 20 years ago, and all the same rhetoric you hear from the woke church movement today was standard-issue postmodern propaganda in the emerging church movement era, and church wokeism will eventually spiritually impoverish every church that adopts that trend and set people on a course to hell. Are you with me today? Am I speaking clearly enough?
And we do this because we would rather join the masses on the way to hell than the remnant on the way to heaven.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 27:06
That's the facts. So are you saying, Shawn, you have to be a part of a small church? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But God does often his work not in the masses but in the few. That's his way, and if you are a part of the few, you will not feel welcome in the masses, a.k.a. The 7,000 who refused to bow a knee to Baal when the rest of Israel, 2.5 million, did. Are you with me today? I'm sure it wasn't fun for them when they didn't bow a knee, and P.S., they didn't refuse to bow a knee because they refused to bow a knee, because God predestined them to be the remnant. They did not become a remnant because they chose to not bow a knee. Are you with me? Because one is by grace and one is by works. All right, all the modern and postmodern church strategies I have seen in my time in ministry, and in Echo Church, that we have actually implemented in this church in our earlier years, we have seen every single one, 100 percent, we have seen them fail, and their failures were predictable because they all attempted to circumvent the divine strategy God implemented that Paul explains in Romans and outlines here in 1 Corinthians 1. It chose to ignore the idea that God accomplishes his work through an unappreciated, unexpected, unimpressive remnant whose only non-negotiable qualities or qualifications is their steadfast faithfulness, which comes from God's purposeful design, not their human will. That's what Romans is talking about. Don't let it be lost on you what he is saying here, because he is speaking to the masses about a remnant. Don't let it be lost on you what he is saying here: God chooses a remnant. Across the whole sweep of redemptive history, major revivals and large congregations of believers is actually quite rare.
You do see them occasionally in church history, but they are rare. Even in the apostolic era they are rare. You don't regularly see 3,000 souls added to the church in a day. That's not a regular occurrence. That happened after Pentecost, and there was a significant revival in Acts chapter 5, but the truth is the New testament churches we know about, the ones described in the book of Acts and the churches mentioned in the Epistles and written about to Christ in the book by Christ in the book of Revelation, were in fact, they were not megachurches. They understood that friendship with the world was to be hostility with God. In fact, they understood that friendship with the world makes them an enemy of God. In order for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven, the Almighty does not need to win in the general elections. Can I get an amen? I'm watching your Facebook page in a year, I'm watching it. I'm going to repeat that for you, hyper-political religious people today:
In order for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven, the Almighty does not need to win the general elections. In fact, the only election that counts in eternity is God's choice,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 31:18
and is spoken about in Romans, and our text tells us that he has chosen not many wise and not many noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world, weak things, and despised things. That's what God has chosen, in case you were wondering. So you make your decisions all day long and use your intellect and use as much wisdom and discernment as you can when you go to the election polls and you cast your vote, but just know that your vote won't determine the history and the future of eternity for the world.
God decided before time began. It's his choice, it is not yours.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 32:06
So spend less time on your prophetic channel prophesying who will be the next president and determining who you think should lead us into the great awakening in America, or Kansas City because of some ridiculous football game, or some game that will be won and now revival will break out. It won't happen because some game is won and some prophet prophesied it. Post when the apostolic prophetic era closed and the canon was made, stop then putting your hope in those things and put your hope in the Lord. That's good stuff. That's good stuff, you know I like it. That's okay, I'm not popular everywhere, that's okay. I'm kind of not becoming popular anywhere, I'm on a roll, just keep going down this path, you know what I mean. The purpose, and I wrote this on my Facebook page, and I don't just put the stuff on there for no reason, I put it on there because I'm thinking about the sermon, so if you want a sneak peek, look at my Facebook page or Twitter or Instagram or something stupid like that.
Right, the pursuit, I put the pursuit of fame, this is what I've learned, this is my summary of what I've learned in my idiocy of ministry: the pursuit of fame and notoriety often functions as a diversion from the reverence owed to God and the magnificence befitting his name. It rarely serves to bring God glory and often serves to bring us glory. That's why we have people pitter-pattering their way to bookstores to hear about the famous person and what they have to say, ignoring the gospel of God to us, to every single man, from God's mouth. We will shove that to hear the famous guy and what he had to say. It is ridiculous. And the famous guy got famous because he rallied the masses with chachki junk drawer trinkets to church, constantly one-upping to get a name for himself, so you'll read his book over God's book. Are you with me? And make him rich so that you will be poor when it comes to the truth found in God's Word. Are you with me today?
We repeatedly see that God's power is made perfect in human weakness, not in human strength.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 34:37
That should be encouraging for you today. That does not give you an excuse to go out and try to live as stupid as you can so that you can be weak so that he can be strong. Paul says, absolutely not, don't do dumb stuff like that. Don't then, because of your weakness, fall into fatalism and try to be as weak as you can so God can be strong. We see that all the way back in Genesis. To preserve the human race so that you and I might be redeemed, God saved eight people on the whole earth. Where's the megachurch there? Are you with me? Shawn, are you against megachurches? No, but in this world, in America, we align mega things with successfulness, and mega things as movements of God, and everything else as trash. Be careful with that. That's what I'm saying, that's all I'm saying, be careful with that. In a land of abundance, be careful how you view the remnant, because God chooses the remnant. Honestly, I wrote this here and I think this is hilarious. This was the greatest climate change in the history of the world. Environmentalists would have been picketing in the streets over this ridiculous plan to save humanity. This is who would orchestrate such climate change that would damage the world to redeem his people. You mean to tell me that God is going to destroy the environment, upset it on the grandest scale, to redeem people? Seems foolish. God's wisdom often does. That's what it says in 1 Corinthians and Romans. Are you with me today? I know you guys have agendas and you guys have things that you have partnered with and you stand in the streets and you fight for and you picket for and you Facebook comment about and you align with organizations that have certain beliefs, but I want you to understand, be careful to not align yourself with something that is against God because it seems wise to you. It often is foolish to him. Oh, that hit all of you. That hit me, that hit me. I'll move on, I won't get specific, because I do want to have a house not
Point 4Gideon's shrinking army shows God's way
Burned down before I sell it. That would be great. Gideon was, I don't have time to go into all the stories, let me give you a few. Gideon was the youngest in his family, so he was the least, and he had the smallest clan in all of Manasseh, I think that's right, if that's wrong I'm sorry, I'm stupid, I just didn't write it down so I'm just throwing it out there, but God chose him to fight the Midianites. He chose the youngest and in the smallest clan in Manasseh to fight the Midianites. The angel of the Lord actually addressed Gideon this way: O Gideon, O mighty man of valor. What?
What? Come again? Mighty man? I'm the youngest, most insignificant, smallest clan, mighty man? And when the word gets out that the angel of the Lord had come and spoke to Gideon that he was going to go and fight against the Midianites, actually 32,000 men showed up from Israel. God then speaks to Gideon again and says, I want you to have all the men stand before you and I want you to ask anyone who is fearful to leave. 22,000 men left. It was dwindled down to 10,000 men. Gideon thought, well, it's going to be challenging, but 10,000's better than nothing. And then God said, hey, that's too many. So this is the antithesis, it is the opposite, it is the ridiculous.
God doesn't use the many, he uses the few over and over again.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 39:32
Why? Because it's hard to put your hope in the few.
It's easy to put your hope in the many, and because you won't put your hope in the few, you can only put your hope in God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 39:49
That's the point. That's the point. God then, through this little test of having the men, the 10,000 men, drink from the water a certain way, narrows it down to 300. We know the story, that God brought such confusion on the Midian army that they began to turn on themselves and kill each other. It's insane. And the 300 didn't even get to do anything because they just killed each other, pretty much. God then dwindles the number down to 300, lest Israel, it says in the Bible, lest Israel honor themselves by saying, by my own hand have we been saved. How many of you have said that, minus the half? How many of you have said that, by my wisdom, by my shrewdness, by my intellect, by my abilities have I achieved what I have achieved? No, I say that is not true at all. There were two things regarding David that displeased the Lord. First was the Bathsheba thing, we all know that very well, that is the story told when we were young. David peers off his balcony and sees Bathsheba bathing. How many of you think that's comical, her name and all? And then he gets her husband killed in war by putting him on the front lines. But there's a second thing that we often don't talk about that displeased the Lord, and it has to do with numbers. David took a census of all the military might of Israel, and it said that the Lord's heart grew greatly displeased with David for taking this census. Why? Because God does not accomplish his work by the masses but rather by a remnant. Under Ahab and Jezebel, Israel's population was reportedly 2.5 million people. So in that, just so you can understand this as we go through this, have and will go through this, so only 7,000 did not bow a knee to Baal. Let me give you the percentages on that for you, percentage people: that is actually 0.28 percent of 1 percent. It's no wonder Elijah was discouraged, you would be too. But God had a winning strategy to preserve his truth in Israel with a small remnant. The battle is his, the strength is his, let him who boasts boast in the Lord. I'll close with this Scripture, 1 Chronicles 29:11–13, and we will close. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and we praise your glorious name.
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