Broken Branches

Recap Ears That Cannot Hear

We continue in our sermon series on the early church. We have been working our way through Paul’s letter to the Romans. Last week we looked at the idea of ears that cannot hear. Israel was set apart to be holy and to be a blessing to the other nations around her. Unfortunately, that nation failed to do so. Instead, they abused their relationship with the LORD, thinking they could continue doing whatever they wanted. They began to follow other gods, specifically the god Baal. These false gods have ears, but they cannot hear, they have eyes, but they cannot see. We become what we worship.

We know that God’s power was lost on them because we see them throw their faith into the hands of other principalities. They look to other gods for their worship and salvation. They look to other nations to save them from their coming oppressors. During the history of the kings, they will eventually reach out and seek an alliance with Egypt so that they can fend off the Assyrians. Ridiculous, right? Egypt was the very nation that God Almighty freed them from. Rather than look to the very God that delivered them from their oppressor Egypt, they look to their former oppressor to save them. This is the history of the people.

We looked at the fact that Elijah was just one voice that was willing to stand up for God. He takes the prophets of Baal to task and proves that God Almighty is the One True God. The prophets of Baal are then rounded up and executed. I mentioned last week that the land was going through a severe drought. Shortly after God shows up and demonstrates His power, the rain comes and the drought is over. You would think there would be much rejoicing and repentance on behalf of those that were following these false gods. Yet we see throughout the Scriptures where the Israelites continue to go back to the trough of idolatry and paganism. They don’t put their trust in God. They put their trust in other things. Things that are not as nearly as powerful as God.

They don’t expect God to show up. Do we expect God to show up? Or are we looking to other things to save us? Are we looking for other entities to do the work of the church? Nothing is more powerful than God. We see Him regularly show up and take care of His people. We see Him go before the Israelites and defeat their enemies for them, despite the odds not being in their favor. Yet, they have a struggle with Him. They wind up not trusting Him to do what He says He is going to do. I am sure that we can all relate. When God renames Jacob to Israel, it is after Jacob spends the night wrestling God. Israel literally means he struggled with God. I dare say that we can run into the same issue if we are not careful. Of course, our goal should be to just do what He wants us to do. It should be to simply follow His commands. However, struggle at least indicates that we want to do God’s work, but we get sidetracked. If we didn’t care, there wouldn’t be any struggle. Struggle can be a good thing because it helps us grow. Growth is imperative in our walk with Christ. Our walk with Him is not static. We either grow in Him or we fall away from Him. We don’t just stay in the same spot.

Today we are going to look at what it means to become part of the family of God. Essentially, when we come to know Jesus, we are brought into His family. We didn’t do anything to earn it, He did the work. We are now grafted into the family tree. We are not just brought under the umbrella of grace. Instead, we become one of God’s children.

If you have your Bibles, please turn them to Romans 11:11-32

Romans 11:11–32 CSB

I ask, then, have they stumbled so as to fall? Absolutely not! On the contrary, by their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous. Now if their transgression brings riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fullness bring! Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Insofar as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if I might somehow make my own people jealous and save some of them. For if their rejection brings reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? Now if the firstfruits are holy, so is the whole batch. And if the root is holy, so are the branches. 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? I don’t want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you will not be conceited: A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, The Deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins. Regarding the gospel, they are enemies for your advantage, but regarding election, they are loved because of the patriarchs, since God’s gracious gifts and calling are irrevocable. As you once disobeyed God but now have received mercy through their disobedience, so they too have now disobeyed, resulting in mercy to you, so that they also may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may have mercy on all.

There is great imagery being used in this passage. There is concern about the Jewish brothers and sisters that have rejected God. God did not abandon them, they abandoned Him. Yet in that deadness, God will grant life. Some of them are going to come back to Him. They that are dead will be brought back to life. That’s essentially what happened to all of us that call upon Jesus as Lord and Savior. We were dead in our trespasses, but God pulled us out of that pit and made us His own. We were lost, but He found us. This imagery of death turning to life is similar to Ezekiel’s encounter with God in the valley of dry bones. It is just like it sounds. There is a valley filled with bones. It’s just a bunch of skeletons. God tells Ezekiel to prophecy to these dry bones. That sounds pretty ludicrous, right? The owners of these bones have clearly departed. They are not there anymore. Ezekiel does what God commands him to, though. He prophesies to these bones. Then he hears something. The bones begin to form up as skeletons. Then when the skeletons are put together, muscle and sinew grow on them, then flesh. There is an entire army of flesh and bone standing before Ezekiel at this point. Ezekiel 37:12–13 “Therefore, prophesy and say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says: I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them, my people, and lead you into the land of Israel. You will know that I am the Lord, my people, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.”

We don’t have that power, only God has that power. Yes, Ezekiel was the one that prophesied to the bones in the valley, but it was God that did the work of bringing them back together and making them whole again. Ezekiel was faithful and did what God commanded. However, it was not his words that assembled this army, it was God that did it. God is the One that brought those bones to life.

I think it is interesting that Paul states God is bringing Gentiles over to be followers of Yahweh. The entire idea of using our human tendencies for jealousy to achieve that purpose makes sense. By bringing these other people in, they become jealous because now it is not that it is only the Israelites that are God’s chosen people, but the ones that choose to follow Jesus. Jealousy can be a huge motivator for some people. Part of the problem is that the Israelites had taken for granted their status. They did not use that as something to treat as sacred and live accordingly. Instead, they abused that privilege. They put their faith in their lineage, not in the One true God. When they see people coming to know Jesus and becoming part of the family of God, it should spark some level of jealousy in them. Back when I was in the Navy, I had several Sailors that worked for me that were great. They went above and beyond in pretty much everything they did. Since I did not control promotions, the only thing I could do was set them up for success. So my top performers got a lot of my time and effort poured into sending them up for Sailor of the Year, awards, and evaluations. In the evaluations, there were a certain number of early promotes and must promotes I could give to my personnel. I could give promotables to everyone. That was the standard, “hey this person is doing their job adequately”. Well, wouldn’t you know it, but every time our eval cycles were complete and the Sailors found out who got what, there would be several squids that wanted to complain about how it wasn’t fair that someone else got a better eval than them. All I could really say is that if they wanted a better eval than the other Sailor, they had to work harder than that person. Some of them rose to the occasion and took on more responsibility. Their jealousy motivated them. However, there were some that were just jealous and complained about how things are not fair, but refused to do the work.

There are some Israelites that are going to see the Gentiles coming to the family of God. This will incite jealousy and they too will come to faith in Christ. Or they will just grumble and complain.

Jealousy is part of the human condition and can be effective. We are not the only ones to be jealous, though. God Himself is jealous. We see several Scriptures where God describes Himself as jealous. Zechariah 8:2 “The Lord of Armies says this: “I am extremely jealous for Zion; I am jealous for her with great wrath.””

There is a big difference, though. God’s jealousy is perfect, but ours is born out of selfish desires and envy. Human jealousy is focused on self. A jealous person wants something or someone back for his or her own benefit. In the case of God’s jealousy, He is not concerned about Himself. He wants Israel back for their benefit, not His own. God is completely self sufficient. As we have said before, He does not need us to continue being God. We can do absolutely nothing for Him. We are the ones that receive the tremendous benefit of having Him in our lives.

Paul uses another horticulture example here. It’s the idea of grafting other branches onto a tree. However, Paul gives us a bit of a different example here. In those days, if there was a wild olive tree that would not grow fruit, the way they would get the fruit to grow on the wild tree was to graft a cultivated branch onto the wild olive tree. That would get the wild tree to begin producing fruit.

Here, God has done the opposite. He has taken the branches off of the wild trees that were not bearing fruit and placed them on the cultivated tree. The reason for that is because it is the root that makes the branch bear fruit, not the branch that makes the root strong. John 15:4 “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.”

Prodigal son?

Firstfruits. They are not beyond salvation. We are never too far gone. If a root is holy, so are the branches.

We cannot miss in here the warning against falling into the trap of pride. The Israelite pride led them to issues where they thought they were better than they actually were. They received blessings from God, but rather than take those blessings and use them for the people around them, they used their blessings for themselves. Essentially, the faith became all about “me” and it was not about God at all. It happened to them and if we are not careful, it can happen to us as well. Rather than our faith being all about God, the One who saved us, it can become all about the individual and whether we are happy and comfortable. That’s a dangerous road to tread. The Gospel is not about us. It is about the One true God that came and died a gruesome death so that we could be forgiven, when we come to worship, we don’t come to have our needs met, we come to worship God. He is the One in the audience we should be aiming to please. If we get to the point where we think that Sunday morning worship isa bout the self and having our needs met, we are headed into dangerous territory. It is a real problem that a lot of churches are struggling through. This week, the Southern Baptist Convention met. They are focused on a couple of hot button items and there was some attention given to it. However, one man sent an opinion piece out essentially saying that these issues they are focusing on are not really hot button issues in most churches throughout the US. Instead, this author posited that the real issue was the problem of church and worship becoming a matter of what I want, rather than focusing on God. It’s all over the place, where Christianity is getting turned into the story of “me” rather than the story of God and what He did for me. Finding acceptable modern day worship music is very difficult these days because a lot of these artists are producing clean music and they are communicating a level of the gospel, but a fair amount of them focus on the self and how special they are. Look at me, I’m so special, I’m so great and that is why God sent His Son for me. I left the 99, but I’m so special that God left them too to come and get me. Do you see the problem? It takes the focus off of God and puts the focus on the self.

Paul is giving a warning to the believers during his time, but he is giving us the same warning for out times. It is a trap that is easy to fall into. We know this because sadly, the same thing happened a long time ago to the Israelites. They went and they made their sacrifices just as they were commanded to do, but they lost the worship aspect of it. Instead, it was just a duty, something to be done, rather than an act of worship. The believed they were special because of their lineage. That’s why John the Baptist has such harsh words when the Sadducees and Pharisees come out to see him as he is baptizing people. Matthew 3:7–10 “When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance. And don’t presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones. The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

John gives them the pathway to success, produce fruit consistent with repentance. Are we producing that kind of fruit? Or are we comfortable in our sinfulness, content to just do whatever we want because we think we are special and God is going to spare us from His wrath?

I don’t know about you, but when I read these things in the Bible, I am terrified. John 15:1–2 ““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.” What happens to the branches that are not bearing fruit? All they are good for is to be thrown in the fire. That’s it. If that doesn’t scare us, I don’t know what will.

As God’s people, Paul is giving us this warning to not be arrogant. Instead, we should be afraid. God did not spare these natural branches that broke away. Since He did not spare these natural branches why would He spare us, the wild branches?

As believers, we are called to bear fruit. I was having a conversation a few weeks ago with another pastor buddy of mine. We were talking about discipleship and how we can tell whether we are growing in Christ or not. We came to the conclusion that the easiest way to evaluate is whether we are bearing the fruits of the spirit in our lives or the fruits of the flesh in our lives. Works of the flesh include sexual immorality, jealousy, strife, dissensions, and selfish ambitions. The fruits of the Spirit are the opposite. Galatians 5:22–23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.”

We are living in a culture where sin is tolerated and normalized. The fruits of the flesh are on prominent display. My hope and prayer is that we, as God’s people, don’t get to be like that. My prayer is that we will daily wake up and grow closer to God and repent of the sins He identifies in our lives.