Romans part XI
Notes
Transcript
Over the last two weeks we have been talking about Israel’s place in this New Covenant. Paul has been talking about how Israel rejected Jesus in favor of the old laws and traditions of the Old Covenant. Paul has been taking us through Israel’s history in order to point to Jesus as fulfillment of the Old Testament and hope for all people. We talked about Abraham and Sarah and how God chose Abraham and His family to reveal this promise. He doesn’t do so through traditional means but chooses Jacob the lesser son to continue this promised line through rather than the older son Esau. He continues in chapter 10 talking about Moses and how God had chosen the nation of Israel to be an example of holiness to the nations but in all these things from the beginning til now Israel has rejected Jesus and rejected the Gospel. Tonight Paul will continue the story by reminding us of Elijah and how even though Israel continually rejected God, He has preserved for Himself a remnant of faithful people to continue this plan of redemption through. We said it last week, God has been holding out his hand to disobedient and defiant people. The offer of grace and forgiveness is offered freely to all who would come and accept it.
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? Absolutely not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Or don’t you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he pleads with God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I am the only one left, and they are trying to take my life! But what was God’s answer to him? I have left seven thousand for myself who have not bowed down to Baal. In the same way, then, there is also at the present time a remnant chosen by grace. Now if by grace, then it is not by works; otherwise grace ceases to be grace.
Throughout this whole book Paul has been consistently telling us that in this New Covenant the law has no hold over us. We are free from the law. We are under grace. We are not required to make sacrifices or submit to festivals and works of the law because our salvation has been purchased for us by Christ on the cross and salvation has been offered to us freely by grace through faith in Christ alone. It is by confessing with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead that we are saved. We haven’t earned it. It was given to us in Christ. As the Romans read all these things I think it would be easy for them to say, “well if God got rid of all these things than Israel is included in that”. That would be a reasonable conclusion to make but I think there is something profound that Paul is including us in. In light of a New Covenant, the law has become obsolete. The law of God is now written on our hearts and the Holy Spirit now works in us to convict us of sin and sanctify us more and more into the image of Christ, and even though salvation is offered to all people God has not done away with His chosen nation.
Paul says if God’s plan was to abandon Israel than he would not have been made an apostle. Paul was an Israelite through and through. He was a descendant of Abraham, he was of the tribe of Benjamin. He new his ancestry well. So Paul argues that God has not abandoned Israel in the New Covenant for rejecting Him and being unfaithful in the same way He did not reject Israel in the Old Covenant when they had rejected Him and were unfaithful. Paul uses the story of Elijah the prophet. He was prophet at a time when a wicked queen and king ruled in Israel. The people had forsaken God to worship Baal. That is where we get that amazing story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven. The state of Israel that Elijah describes is bleak. They have killed the prophets, torn down the altars of God and have turned to worshipping Baal. Elijah felt like he was all alone. Things have to be pretty bad when Elijah feels like he is the only one in an entire nation that still worships God. But God reassures him. There are 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. By the grace of God there were still a remnant that had not turned away from the truth. It wasn’t by works it was by grace that this happened.
I think about my own life and I think about all the mistakes I have made and all the paths I’ve tried to walk and I am so thankful that God’s grace has brought me here. Had it not been for grace my life would look much different. One of my favorite hymns is Come thou Fount of Every Blessing and there is a verse that I think captures this.
Oh, to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be
Let Thy goodness like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, oh take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above
What the writer of this Hymn is says is that the grace of God has changed his life. Every day when he wake up he owes his life to the grace of Jesus. The writer asks God to use His goodness like chains to bind his heart to God because our hearts are drawn to sin and drawn to wandering away from God. But the writer asks that God chain his heart, to seal it for Himself so that He might not leave the God he loves. In my life this tendency to wander away like a sheep has been met by the gracious protection of my Good Shepherd. Many in Israel rejected God but there were some whose hearts were bound by grace. There were some whom did not bow to Baal and remained faithful to God by His grace.
What then? Israel did not find what it was looking for, but the elect did find it. The rest were hardened, as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear, to this day. And David says, Let their table become a snare and a trap, a pitfall and a retribution to them. Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and their backs be bent continually.
Israel didn’t find what they were looking for, why? Israel was looking for a salvation based on works. They were looking to idols and false gods. Israel looked to their flesh to find satisfaction to find purpose and as a result God gave them over to the lusts of their hearts. He blinded their eyes, He deafened their ears. The things that they were putting their hope in became snares and traps and their foolishness became their folly. Does that sound familiar? We talked about in chapter 1 how the same thing happened to the Gentiles.
Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.
And so in a way everything comes full circle. The gentiles rejected the truth for a lie and in doing so God chose to show grace to Israel so that the Gentiles might see and believe in the truth. Now Israel has rejected truth for a lie and God has chosen to show His grace to the gentiles so that Israel might see and believe in the truth.
I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous. Now if their transgression is riches for the world and their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be! But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also; and if the root is holy, the branches are too.
Even in Israel’s sin God was able to work it for good. Through Israel’s transgressions and rejection of Jesus, the message of the Gospel was made available to the nations. God has not abandoned Israel but has brought the nations into the story so that all people including the Jews might be apart of God’s family. Paul says that if Israel’s failure has brought this much good to the world imagine what it would look like if Israel wouldn’t reject Christ. Paul has an urgency and a passion for his people. His obligation is to the gentiles but his prayer is that his ministry wouldn’t just be used to save gentiles but Jews also. Paul’s desire is that the gentiles also wouldn’t make the mistake of being selfish with the Gospel. In Israel’s history the idea of being God’s chosen people and this set apart nation led them to thinking themselves greater than other nations, more important, more worthy of God. In many ways their arrogance caused their blindness to the truth. They became so proud of being a descendant of Abraham that when Jesus came they didn’t care. The gentiles now have an opportunity to correct the mistakes of Israel. Would they become arrogant and selfish with the grace of Jesus or would they devote themselves to growing God’s kingdom? Paul urges them to remember Israel and dedicate themselves to the truth.
We are now by grace part of the family tree of Abraham. The stories in the Old Testament tell our story. Paul talks about our faith like a tree and God as our gardener.
Now if some of the branches were broken off, and you, though a wild olive branch, were grafted in among them and have come to share in the rich root of the cultivated olive tree, do not boast that you are better than those branches. But if you do boast—you do not sustain the root, but the root sustains you. Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” True enough; they were broken off because of unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but beware, because if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Therefore, consider God’s kindness and severity: severity toward those who have fallen but God’s kindness toward you—if you remain in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in, because God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut off from your native wild olive tree and against nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these—the natural branches—be grafted into their own olive tree?
The process of grafting is really neat. You take a branch from one tree and attach it to another tree. It lets the new branch grow into the existing tree and benefit from the already established tree. We as gentiles have been grafted into the family tree of Abraham. We were a wild branch but we have been made a part of Israel. Paul says that there were branches that were cut off making way for us to be grafted in. The Israelites that reject Jesus have no part of the tree. They once did but have been removed because of their rejection of Christ. This made way for us to be brought in by faith. Paul says the branches that were removed can still be made part of the tree again. Grace works in and through us to produce new fruit. We went from being wild branches, disconnected from faith, to now being fruit bearing branches in the family tree of Abraham. This is part of why Paul says not to throw out Israel in the New Covenant. By grace we get to celebrate those stories of God’s faithfulness to Israel as stories of God’s faithfulness to us. Had God not chosen Israel, had He not made a covenant to preserve them, we might not have seen the day when we would call God our Father. This is why we continually read and study the Old Testament with the new. All Scripture is useful to us because Scripture tells the story of God’s love towards His people. It is God’s kindness and His severity working together to preserve and protect His people until Jesus could come and open the door for all people to be included and it is His kindness and severity that has made the way for the Gospel to reach us here in 2024 in Clovis, New Mexico.
For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.” “This is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.” From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.
It would have been easy for the Romans to hate Israel for persecuting Christians or to be proud of themselves of being chosen by God, but Paul reminds them again that God is working in all these things to bring about grace. This inclusion into the family of faith is not grounds for arrogance but opportunity for service. Christ saved us from our sin. He brought us out of the kingdom of darkness and made us citizens of His kingdom. We were rebels and traitors and He made us His own. Just because Israel was currently an enemy of the Gospel it did not change their need for it. Today there are people who desperately need to hear about Jesus. They need us to be willing to share the Gospel unashamedly and without discrimination. If we look at our faith and at our relationship with Jesus as something that makes us better than others we have missed the point of the Gospel. And like the Israelites there might be some humbling that takes place so that we remember who really deserves the credit. Every person falls short of God’s glory. We all are in need of a savior. We don’t sustain ourselves. The branches don’t do the heavy lifting the roots do. If we forget what Christ has done for us we forget what it means to be a branch and to produce fruit. A faith that is anchored in our ability to produce fruit is a dead faith and a dead branch. We need to put our faith in something greater. Our faith isn’t in our ability to produce but in what we belong to. We are attached to something greater than us and that is Christ Himself.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes, and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me. If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples.
The only faith that lasts is one that is rooted and abiding in Christ. He causes us to produce fruit. He sustains us. It is by God’s grace we have been grafted into this tree and it is God’s grace that keeps us. Jesus is our hope. He has been working through all of human history to bring about His grace and His glory. Who could have predicted the way God has gone about this task? Who could have ever come up with such an amazing story of redemption other than God. He has demonstrated His love to us in a fantastic way. All of these things coming together in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Paul ends this chapter with a hymn of praise.
Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? And who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
God’s wisdom and knowledge is infinite. His ways are beyond our understanding. Why has He chosen Israel? Why has He done all these things the way that He has? Because He is wise and because He is good. In our study of God it is important to understand that we will never fully understand. He goes beyond our understanding. He doesn’t need our advice or our counsel. He doesn’t owe us any explanations or favors. He is sovereign and just to do as He pleases but He has chosen to make Himself known to us. To bring us in on His plan and call us friends and family. All things belong to Him. All things were created by Him and for Him. He deserves all the glory forever.
If we were reading this as a letter like the Romans would have been doing this would have been a good place to pause and reflect. The Gentiles failure to follow God, Israel’s failure under the law to follow God, and Mankind’s broken condition. We are all dead in sin. We all fall short of the glory of God. Yet, God chose Abraham to reveal this plan of redemption by faith. Through Abraham God was bringing a blessing to all nations, a new Adam and new father of mankind not in the flesh but of the Spirit. A way to be born again into a new life in Christ by grace through faith. We were slaves to sin, dead under the law, but He has brought us from groans to glory. We now have victory in Jesus and there is nothing that can separate us from His love. He has payed the penalty of sin by His death on the cross, and even though many rejected Him, including His own people, God is offering to all people a relationship with Him by grace. Take pause. Behold the God’s glory.
Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? And who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.