God Hasn’t Given Up

Do you ever wonder if God ever gives up on people?

When you see how few people seem to want anything to do with Christ? Has God given up? Maybe he's written these people off, you think, or written off a whole generation.

The Apostle Paul knew that fear. He had just spent two chapters grieving over his own people, the Jews, who had the Scriptures and the promises and still turned away from their Messiah in droves.

And at the end of chapter 10, he pictured God with his hands stretched out all day long to a people who kept saying no. So the question, Paul realizes, is unavoidable. If Israel has rejected Christ like that, then maybe God has finally rejected Israel, and maybe he's done with them.

Before we get too far into the text this morning, we need to understand that this entire three chapter section is primarily about Israel. We need to be careful and keep it in context. We can apply it to the church and our neighbors and family, but remember, Paul’s writing primarily about God’s chosen people, Israel.

With that in mind, that question also matters far beyond Israel, because it's the same fear that grips your heart when someone you love walks away. You wonder if God will eventually give up on them the way you're tempted to.

Paul answers that question in the first verse, and he answers it definitively. Then he spends ten verses showing us why the answer will always be the same. Let's see what he says.

Open your Bible to Romans 11:1-10

Romans 11:1–10 NKJV

1 I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, 3 “Lord, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life”? 4 But what does the divine response say to him? “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5 Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace. 6 And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work. 7 What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded. 8 Just as it is written: “God has given them a spirit of stupor, Eyes that they should not see And ears that they should not hear, To this very day.” 9 And David says: “Let their table become a snare and a trap, A stumbling block and a recompense to them. 10 Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see, And bow down their back always.”

Paul asks the question straight out. "Has God cast away His people?" And before you can even brace for the answer, he fires back the strongest no in his vocabulary. "Certainly not!"

It's the same phrase he uses all through Romans when an idea is so wrong it needs to be put down, as they say, “with extreme prejudice.” May it never be. God has not cast away his people.

Look at the Evidence That God Hasn't Quit on His People (vv. 1-5)

Then he calls his first witness, and it's himself.

"For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin."

Think about what Paul is saying. If God had slammed the door on the Jewish people, then Paul, a card-carrying Jew from the tribe of Benjamin, would be standing on the wrong side of it.

But here he is, a Jew, saved by grace, preaching Christ. His own conversion is Exhibit A. You can't explain a saved Jew like Paul if God has thrown out all the Jews.

His answer, “God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.”

Then he calls a second witness, an old one, the prophet Elijah.

Remember Elijah's low moment. He had just come off the mountaintop victory over the prophets of Baal, and then Jezebel threatened his life, and he ran and collapsed under a tree and asked God to let him die.

He was sure he was the last believer standing. "I alone am left, and they seek my life." That's a man convinced God's people are gone and he's the only one holding on.

Then came God's answer. "I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal." Seven thousand. Elijah thought the count was one, and God had seven thousand he'd kept faithful, hidden from view. Elijah couldn't see them. That didn't mean they weren't there.

GREEK NOTE: When Paul says God "foreknew" his people, the word is proginosko. It's more than knowing about them in advance. It carries the sense of God setting his love on them and choosing them as his own before time began. God didn't reject the people he had already made his own. His foreknowing was a covenant commitment, and that kind of commitment doesn't get canceled.

So Paul brings it home to his own day. "Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace." Just like Elijah's day, there's a remnant right now. A group God has kept for himself. You may not be able to see them all, any more than Elijah could see his seven thousand. But they're there, because God always keeps a remnant. That's how you know he hasn't given up.

STICKY: If it's grace, it's all grace.

Now watch the two words Paul attaches to that remnant. It's a remnant "according to the election of grace." They didn't earn the place, and they didn't out-perform anybody to get it. God chose them by grace. And Paul will not let that word grace share the stage with anything.

We Must Rest on Grace, Because Grace and Works Can't Mix (v. 6)

Look at verse 6. "And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace." Paul is drawing a hard line here. Grace and works don't mix.

The moment you add your own effort to the equation as the reason God keeps you, you've cancelled the grace. It's like trying to pay for a gift. The second you put money on the counter, it stops being a gift. You can have it one way or the other, but you can't have both.

One Bible teacher put it this way. When we talk about an election of grace, those words mean the complete shutting out of every bit of human work from the question. Keep grace and works separate, he said, and don't try to mix them, because mixing them destroys the meaning of both.”

This is important for Israel, and it’s important for us as well. The Jews had built their standing with God on two things. Their heritage, being children of Abraham. And their merit, keeping the law with everything they had. Two things they could show God. And Paul says neither one is why the remnant exists. The remnant exists by grace, that’s it.

Here's why that's the best news in this passage.

If God kept his people because of how well they performed, then the day they stopped performing, he'd let them go.

A salvation you earn is a salvation you can lose the moment you fall short. But a people kept by grace are kept by something outside themselves. They're held by God's free choice, and that choice rests on him. God's free choice doesn't fail when they do.

So when you look at that person walking away and wonder if God has given up on them, ask yourself what God's keeping was ever based on in the first place. It was never based on them. It was based on grace. And grace doesn't quit when they do.

STICKY: If it's grace, it's all grace.

Now let’s look at verses 7-10.

Guard Your Heart Against the Hardening (vv. 7-10)

Paul has told us about the remnant that was saved.

Now he turns to the rest, and the language is sobering.

"Israel has not obtained what it seeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded." A better word than blinded is hardened. The elect found what Israel was chasing, right standing with God. The rest were hardened.

Now here's where we need to step carefully, because this is holy ground.

How does a heart get hardened? Paul quotes Moses and David to show us. "God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear." That's the language of a heart that has stopped responding to God.

Think about Pharaoh during Israel’s captivity for a minute, because Pharaoh shows us how the hardening works. The Bible says God hardened Pharaoh's heart. It also says Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Both are true, and they happened in an order. Pharaoh kept rejecting God, again and again, and the more he refused, the harder his heart got. First he would not, and then, in God's judgment, he could not. Light that keeps getting rejected finally blinds. That's the pattern, and Israel walked right into it.

GREEK NOTE: The word for hardened is poroo. It means to cover something with a thick callous, the way skin toughens over a wound until it can't feel anymore. A callous doesn't form in a day. It builds up over time, layer by layer, every time the truth is pushed away. The danger is the slow toughening that comes from saying no to God so many times you stop feeling the pull. It builds up a little at a time, more than it comes from one big act of rebellion.

Then Paul quotes David, "Let their table become a snare and a trap."

Their table was all their blessings, everything God had given them. Think of their Scriptures and their worship, all the privileges of belonging to him.

Those gifts were meant to lead them to Christ. Instead, the gifts became the trap. They got so attached to their religion that the religion itself kept them from the Savior it pointed to.

Hear the warning, church, because it's aimed at people who sit in pews also.

You can be surrounded by holy things and still have a hard heart. You can know all the songs and carry a worn Bible, sit in the pew your family has always sat in, and let all of it become a substitute for knowing Christ himself.

The most religious people in Israel were the ones who got hardened. So guard your heart. Don't let the gift become a snare, and don't let familiar holy things lose their hold on you.

STICKY: If it's grace, it's all grace.

APPLICATION

Here's what this passage asks of us. Put the whole weight of your standing with God on his grace, and take it off your record.

Here's what I mean. Many people live with a low-grade worry that God's opinion of them rises and falls with their performance.

Good week, God's pleased. Bad week, God's about done with me.

We treat our standing like a bank balance we have to keep topped up. And that worry does two things to us. It exhausts us, and it makes us afraid, because deep down we know our record won't hold.

This passage cuts that cord. The remnant isn't kept by works. It's kept by grace.

So this week, I want you to do one thing. When that voice starts up, the one that says God is finished with you because of how you've done, answer it with this. If it's grace, it's all grace. Say it out loud if you have to. My standing with God was never built on my performance. It was built on his grace, and grace doesn't run out.

And let that same truth reach the person you've been grieving over, the one who walked away. Their return was never going to depend on their record either. It depends on the grace of a God who keeps a remnant no one can see. So keep praying. Keep hoping. You may be looking at an empty field and God may have seven thousand you can't see.

VISION

Let’s not strive to earn what's already given. If you know Jesus as Savior, you know you’re held by a God who chose you and won't let go.

Let’s not write people off, because God didn't write you off. You look at the son who walked away and the coworker whose heart has gone hard, and you refuse to call them hopeless, because you serve a God who always keeps a remnant.

God hasn't given up on his people. He hasn't given up on you. Rest in that, and go tell somebody else. If it's grace, it's all grace.

Let's pray.