From Rejection to Reconciliation

From Rejection to Reconciliation

Romans 11:13-15, 29-32

August 22, 1999

Goal: That the hearers renew their zeal for evangelism.

Who are the elect children of God?  The question itself contains the answer.  Those whom God chooses are His elect children.  The answer seems somehow incomplete.  We want to know exactly whom the chosen children are, especially whether I am included.  The answer remains as it was.  It’s like biting into a sour lemon.  It makes us pucker in objection. 

Yet from lemons comes one of the more refreshing drinks on a hot August day, lemonade.  When people take a bad situation and make something good out of it, we say they have turned lemons into lemonade.  Our goal today is to see, in a figurative way, how God makes delicious lemonade with the most sour of all lemons, as He moves people from rejection to reconciliation. 

The Lord faced a bad situation.  You have all probably heard the story of how God took a pagan man called Abram, gave him a promise, and made him a great nation of people that continues to this very day.  Out of Abraham God created His favored people that have come to be known as Israel, the Jews.  The apostle recalls God’s favor on them, saying:

“Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.  Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!  Amen.  Romans 9:4-5. 

What wonderful blessings these are.  We might expect all to be forever well under this divine choosing and blessing.  Such is not the case, however.  People do not instinctively give glory to God.  Not even those He chose. 

          Humanity tends to favor itself, first, and foremost.  The consequence of this egotism is separation from God and His favor.  It means spiritual death with respect to God.  If not changed in the course of ones life on earth, it also means eternal death and separation from God.  The sourness of this bad situation is evident.  It is not as though God rejects His people.  Quite to the contrary, people reject God.  Sin turns man sour against God.  But God is capable of taking what is sour and making it sweet. 

          Figuratively speaking, God sent Jesus to absorb the “sourness” of sin on the cross.  Thus, He turns a bad situation into good, and uses it to bless everybody.  Unlike us, He adds no sugar to change the sourness.  He actually removes the sourness by putting it into Jesus and destroying it on the cross.  Through the cross, sinful man becomes a whole new creation of God, which is a new condition of being pure and refreshing to God’s taste, like lemonade is to us. 

The resurrected Lord sends messengers to the Jews, the chosen and blessed people of God.  Many of them rejected the Good News of Jesus the apostles told.  They rejected the very Savior of Israel they were looking for.  To God they are dead. 

So, the Lord faced another bad situation, another lemon. 

To deal with this “lemon” the Holy Spirit sent Paul, a Jew, as apostle to the people who were not of Jewish descent.  Many Gentiles rejoiced in the Good News and accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord through faith.  The reconciliation to God Jesus provides for all was given to them. 

          Even the Canaanite woman mentioned in the Gospel reading serves as an example of this reconciliation.  She is not a Jew, yet, her faith in Jesus, reveals her as a person God calls a true Jew and child of Abraham.  “In other words,” Paul says in chapter 9:8, “it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”

          There are other examples of God’s mercy being for the non-Jew throughout Scripture.  Whether the widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17, or the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4, or the Ethiopian in Acts 8, they all receive mercy and blessing from the Lord, yet they are not descendants of Israel, not Jews according to race.  They had no special claim on God.  Yet, God blesses them as His people. 

Through Jesus, God is not ashamed to call all people His beloved and blessed children.  Does this mean that God has rejected the Jews?  No way!  Paul says, “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.”  They cannot be changed.  They always stand as the hope of all nations.  Verses 30-32 explain this more clearly. 

“Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.”  For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.”

The point is this, no one is a friend of God who does not believe the Son, and what He has done for all people.  “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word of Christ.”  The message conveys the promise, the promise conveys the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God conveys the faith to believe the truth.  Thus, Paul hopes the faith of the Gentiles who receive the apostolic message will arouse jealousy among his own race, the Jews, that they too might be saved.  

Many Jews have believed in Jesus as the Messiah God promised them.  Today, Moishe Rosen, the head of Jews for Jesus offers insight into the Jewish mind.  He wrote this (hold up the book) little book entitled, “Y’Shua, The Jewish Way to Say Jesus”.  In our community, here in Hale, people of Jewish descent believe Jesus is the promised Messiah and Savior.  You might even know Peggy William’s.  Perhaps these examples will help you to understand the words of Paul: “Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel … It is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.” 

Now get this.  Just as Paul was an important player in God’s plan of salvation, so are we.  Giving praise to God for his mercy to all people, we invest time, effort, and money in proclaiming the Good News of Jesus.  Let there be no mistake about this.  It is not what we do or have done that moves people from rejection to reconciliation.  It is what God has done in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Through Him we are enabled, like Paul, to make lemonade when life hands us lemons.  Not lemonade that quenches bodily thirst, but the lemonade that quenches our eternal thirst for God. 

No wonder Paul breaks forth in glorious praise to God:

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!  “Who has known the mind of the Lord?  Or who has been his counselor?”  “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?”  For from him and through him and to him are all things.  To him be the glory forever!  Amen.”