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Introduction
When God called Abraham, he stated that through his seed, all the nations would be blessed.
We know that it was ultimately because of Jesus that this happened.
Because of Jesus, all who believed were blessed with being reconciled to God.
But it was not just the fact that Jesus came to earth, lived, died, and rose again that the world would be blessed.
As we’ve been seeing the last few weeks, the nations—the gentiles—are being blessed with this reconciliation because Israel—the Jews as a whole—rejected their own Messiah.
Without their rejection, the Gentiles never are blessed.
What we see in all of this, is a truth about God; namely, God is purposeful in all that he does.
He never—never!—does
anything capriciously or without purpose.
As we open up the text, we’ll see that even when God’s work looks unfruitful, it is doesn’t mean that it is unfruitful.
In fact, God is using the present compost pile to bring about the greatest fruitfulness in the future.
So I want to make three observations in these verses that I hope will help us to trust God a little more today than when we came in.
God’s Plan
God’s Promise
God’s Purpose
God’s Plan
The first thing we see in these verses is that God certainly has a plan and Paul wanted the Romans to understand it.
What we need to understand first is that Paul gave a purpose in his telling the Gentile Christians about this partial hardening.
That word “lest” denotes purpose.
We could say, “so that you won’t be wise.”
It’s a purpose, and that purpose is that he does not want the Gentiles to become haughty, conceited, or prideful.
It is so easy for God’s people to become conceited when they misunderstand God’s plan.
We saw this earlier with the Jews in chapters 2-3 and now with the Gentiles in chapter 11.
God’s plan will never lead to pride in self, but only boasting in God.
If we are ever in the midst of God’s work and develop a haughty spirit, we have misunderstood someone’s role, whether our own, someone else’s, God’s, or a combination of the three.
Paul wanted the Gentile Christians in Rome to understand these roles.
God was saving the Gentiles and hardening the Jews and as we saw over the weeks, using the Gentiles to provoke the Jews to jealousy.
This was God’s plan at work.
Paul wrote just a few verses before, in Romans 10:19-20, that this was God’s plan from the beginning; both Moses and Isaiah made it known.
But now he shows his plan even more in verses 26-27:
Notice the mathematical emphasis in these verses.
There is a partial hardening.
There is the fulness of the Gentiles.
There is all Israel.
Let’s quickly break this down.
The partial hardening is geared toward Israel.
It’s not that the hardening is partial as if they are kind of hardened, but that Israel is partly hardened.
Not everyone is hardened against the gospel or against Jesus.
Remember, God always has a remnant.
The fulness of the Gentiles is a time, when the last of the elect Gentiles will be saved.
Thus, when as many Gentiles as come to Jesus as have been granted eternal life have received it, the Jews will begin to come in droves to their Messiah.
And so all Israel will be saved.
In essence, the Jews as a whole.
Remember that we’re not talking about Israel as a nation.
The nation that we know of today, is not the same nation of Israel in ancient times.So be thinking of Jews as a whole and not Israel as a place.
But the plan that Paul pointed out was that God would send his Redeemer, his Deliverer, his Savior to or from Zion.
If you read the Hebrew Bible, it will say to.
If you read the Greek Old Testament—the Septuagint—you’ll see from.
But the point is not whether he is from or to Zion (though both are true), but that he will banish ungodliness from Jacob, in essence: Israel.
God’s covenant with Israel, the Jewish people was to take their sins away.
Since this hasn’t happened yet, whether in Paul’s day or ours, then Paul understood that God’s plan was yet to be accomplished.
Remember that in chapters 9 and 10, Paul expressed desire for Israel to be saved.
He was willing to give up his own salvation if it meant it would happen.
But that longing to see God’s plan come to fruition in the present, did not cause Paul to lose heart over God’s plan for the future.
Brothers and sisters, we are not experiencing the movement of God like we’d like to in the present time.
But we must not fall prey to thinking that he is not at work or that his plan has failed.
God sometimes goes too slow for us, but his slowness is not really slow in the grand scheme of things.
God’s Promise
Which leads us to the second observation.
The first was God’s plan.
The second is God’s promise.
Peter reminded his readers
And as we read these next few verses, we find that God must keep his promise.
He may be slow in our estimation about fulfilling them, but the truth is that he is not as slow as we think and that he will keep them fully.
On the one hand, the Jews were God’s enemies because they rejected the gospel.
So as regards the gospel—in relation to the gospel—the Jews were rejected by God.
They were broken off of the cultivated olive tree.
All who reject Jesus are enemies of the cross.
They are enemies of God.
And this was to the Gentile’s benefit.
It was for their sake.
But that’s just a temporary state of being.
Because on the other hand, the Jews were beloved by God—not on the basis of the gospel.
God didn’t love them because they accepted the gospel.
It’s clear that they rejected the gospel.
In regards to election—in reference to it—God loved the Jews because of his promise to the patriarchs—to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Many movies have been based on a promise from one person to their friend to watch after their family if the friend ever died.
And for the rest of their lives, they visit, protect, and help that person’s wife, children, or whomever.
But what happens if the person never dies?
They continue to look after that person’s family forever.
Abraham was called a friend of God.
God made a promise to Abraham and God would see it through.
Paul sums it up with Romans 11:29 “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
What gifts?
The ones mentioned in
God called Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the Jews as a whole.
And Paul’s point here is the same point he made in Romans 3:3-4
Israel’s faithlessness doesn’t give God the right to revoke his gifts and calling.
Just because the Jews didn’t live up to what they should have does not mean that God regrets making his covenant with them.
That’s what irrevocable means: without regret, without a concern or worry.
God knew from the beginning what Israel would do, but he did not regret his calling or gifts.
He would not revoke them.
And this is not just for Israel.
This is for every single one of us.
I have talked with Christians who wonder if their faith is enough.
They wonder if it’s strong enough.
They wonder if it’s big enough.
They wonder if they’ve been faithful enough.
But it is not the size of our faith or the strength of our faith, but the spotlight of our faith.
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