This series covers our study through the book of Romans. These sermons with careful and slow exegetical expository coverage move through each chapter and verse following the theme and thesis of the book that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. These sermons were primarily preached by Pastor Duane Smets from April 2005 to November 2008 at The Resolved Church, San Diego, CA in its first three years of existence. Audio from the first year is unavailable.

   Audio & Manuscripts Below

The Gospel Thesis
 Listen     Read    1:1-7 |  An Introduction To Romans
 Listen     Read    1:2-6 |  The Validity, Content & Effect of The Gospel
 Listen     Read    1:7-15 |  Romans Is For God
 Listen     Read    1:14-15 |  Romans Is For Us
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  The Gospel Is The Power Of God Unto Salvation
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Thank God For Jews
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Justification By Faith
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Justification & Habbakuk
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  We Are Beggars. This Is True

The Problem Of Sin
 Listen     Read    1:18 |  The Wrath of God
 Listen     Read    1:18-21 |  What Is Plain About God
 Listen     Read    1:18-32 |  The Suppression of Truth and Consequences
 Listen     Read    2:1-11 |  Seek Glory (Part I)
 Listen     Read    2:5-11 |  Seek Glory (Part II)
 Listen     Read    2:11-16 |  The Impartial God
 Listen     Read    2:17-19 |  Circumcision of the Heart
 Listen     Read    3:1-18 |  Moribund No More
 Listen     Read    3:19-20 |  Put Your Hand Over Your Mouth
 Listen     Read    3:21 |  Righteousness From Without
 Listen     Read    3:21-23 |  No Distinction

The Promised Savior
 Listen     Read    3:24-25 |  Propitiation
 Listen     Read    3:25-26 |  Righteousness Demonstrated
 Listen     Read    3:27-30 |  One God & One Salvation
 Listen     Read    3:31 |  The Law Upheld
 Listen     Read    4:1-12 |  The Imputation of Righteouness
 Listen     Read    4:13-17 |  The Promise Secured
 Listen     Read    4:18-22 |  The Heritage of Hope (Part I)
 Listen     Read    4:18-22 |  The Heritage of Hope (Part II)
 Listen     Read    4:22-24 |  The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
 Listen     Read    4:25 |  Who Killed Jesus?
 Listen     Read    5:1 |  Peace With God
 Listen     Read    5:2 |  In The Throne Room
 Listen     Read    5:2 |  Rejoice In The Hope Of The Glory of God
 Listen     Read    5:3-5 |  Rejoicing and Suffering
 Listen     Read    5:6-8 |  Love and Some Verses
 Listen     Read    5:8-10 |  Salvation In Jesus Christ
 Listen     Read    5:11 |  Joy In God
 Listen     Read    5:12-14 |  We Are From Adam
 Listen     Read    5:15-17 |  Jesus Is Better Than Adam
 Listen     Read    5:18-19 |  The Guilt & The Gift
 Listen     Read    5:20-21 |  It’s All About Grace

New Life In Christ
 Listen     Read    6:1-4 |  Baptism: The Life of the Buried Dead
 Listen     Read    6:5-7 |  Sin & Union With Christ (Part I)
 Listen     Read    6:8-11 |  Sin & Union With Christ (Part II)
 Listen     Read    6:12-14 |  God Reigning In You
 Listen     Read    6:15-18 |  Master Jesus (Part I)
 Listen     Read    6:19-23 |  Master Jesus (Part II)

Bearing Fruit For God
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part I
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part II
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part III

Law & Gospel
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 1
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 2
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 3
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 4

Inner Confliction & The Gospel
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 1
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 2
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 3

No Condemnation In Christ
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 1
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 2
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 3
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 4
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 5

Walking According To The Spirit
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 1
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 2
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 3
  Listen    Read    8:9-13  |  Part 4
  Listen    Read    8:9-13  |  Part 5

The Jesus Family
  Listen    Read    8:12-13  |  Jesus Family Does Not Lose the Battles Which Count
  Listen    Read    8:14-15  |  Jesus Family Welcomes Members and Leads Them
  Listen    Read    8:14  |  The Family of Old
  Listen    Read    8:15-16  |  Adopted Forever
  Listen    Read    8:15  |  The Great Father We Call Abba
  Listen    Read    8:17  |  The Future of the Family

Suffering And The Glory Of God
 Listen     Read    8:18-25  |  Natural Evil & Moral Evil
 Listen     Read    8:18-25  |  The Groaning of God’s Spirit
 Listen     Read    8:26-27  |  Prayer & Suffering
 Listen     Read    8:28  |  How God Works it For Good
 Listen     Read    8:29  |  The Image of Christ
 Listen     Read    8:28-30  |  Predestination
 Listen     Read    8:31-39  |  Evil & The Existence of God
 Listen     Read    8:31-39  |  Barriers for the Believer

The God(ness) of God
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part I)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part II)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part III)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part IV)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part I)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part II)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part III)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part IV)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part V)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part I)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part II)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part III)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part IV)

Viva La Vida Christus: Living The Life Of Christ
  Listen    Read    12:1-2  |  All of Life is Worship
  Listen    Read    12:3-8  |  Humility, our Gifts, and Real Life
  Listen    Read    12:9-21  |  The Life of Genuine Love
  Listen    Read    13:1-7  |  Life Under Temporal Law
  Listen    Read    13:8-10  |  Life Under Eternal Law
  Listen    Read    13:11-14  |  Living in Light of the Day
  Listen    Read    14:1-2  |  The Principle of Preference (Part I)
  Listen    Read    14:13-15:3  |  The Principle of Preference (Part II)
  Listen    Read    15:4-13  |  The Principle of Preference (Part III)
  Listen    Read    15:14-33  |  Fulfilling the Mission
  Listen    Read    16:1-27  |  Entrusted to God

Listen to this sermon…       

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July 27th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36
Week 4 – Romans 11:32-36

Introduction

Good morning everyone. It’s good to gather as the church with you today. If you’re new or visiting San Diego I have to tell you that we don’t normally have as many men running around in tights and capes…there’s just an extra amount of that going on right now because it is the week of Comic-con, the annual comic book and now movie and pop culture convention that happens here in San Diego. It’s good times. Everyone sort of loses their brain and starts dressing up like superheroes and going crazy. You’re like in the grocery store buying eggs and you look to your right and you see Captain America buying beer…and you’re like where am I? San Diego, I love our city.

Well, my name is Duane, I am a pastor here under Jesus the head pastor and I get the weekly joy of preaching from the Bible for us all. This week is the final week of our summer sermon series, “The God(ness) of God” and not only that but it concludes the major doctrinal portion of the book of Romans as a whole. After this week we’ll take a break from Romans for the month of August. Our summer intern, Andrew Schey, is going to preach one week. I’m trying to get another Acts 29 pastor to come and preach one week. I’ll preach a couple special sermons…one famine in the Bible and how to trust God during times of economic crisis and one on being a member of Jesus’ church because we got a group of new members who just completed our membership class. Then at the beginning of September we’ll return to Romans for our final Romans series called, “Viva La Vida Christus: Living the Life of Christ” because the rest of the book of Romans, chapters 12-16 are all about how to practically live out our faith as a Christian. So that’s the plan, where we are headed.

For this week, let me try and pull us together and set up our verses. For eleven chapters now, Paul, the human author of Romans has been breaking down the gospel. He started out with a thesis, that the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.

To support his thesis he started at creation itself, how we all really do know there is a God, but how we all really do know that we have not loved, worshipped or served and honored God as we ought and how that is a really serious offense.

So he set up this big problem and then he broke down how Jesus solves the problem…he came into the world to live the life we’ve failed at in loving and worshipping God and how he died on the cross to take care the consequence of our offense, rises again and then offers us all the benefits of new life, freedom from guilt, the law, and death. We get Jesus’ Spirit, adopted into his family…we get a promise and a confidence that all evil and suffering will be taken care of and it will all work together for good.

After that Paul went real deep talking about why God created at all and how it was all for his glory and how salvation from beginning to end has everything to do with him and not so much us and we learned about things like predestination, election, and God’s design to save people from all different backgrounds and people groups, and how God does in fact control and order the future and all of history. Massively deep, human brain limits pressing stuff.

It’s like he’s been taking us on a trek up Mount Everest. At first the hike was hot, but the trail was clear, and we walked slowly upward in the hot sun. A lot of talk about sin, death and hell. But as we moved on, the brush and the trees got thicker and taller, beautiful and comforting. We learned about Jesus and who he is and what he has done for us. Imputation, justification, freedom from guilt and the law. We didn’t realize there was so much to walk through and that he had done so much. Adoption, his spirit, being conformed into his image! As we moved up the mountain, it started to get a little colder and we had to put some more clothes on. Snow started to show. We hit some steep jagged cliffs and had to pull out the rock climbing gear to scale up the steep faces of inner moral conflict, suffering and evil. The last stretch has been the most arduous. We had to bust out ice picks and snow shoes. The air has got thinner and harder to breath. Election, predestination, God’s glory and his saving purposes, his design with gospel and people groups and his ruling over all of history. The last steps seemed almost impossible. If it were a meal we just felt too stuffed. But we saw the peak, pressed on and with one last step in verse 32 from last week, “God has consigned all to disobedience in order that he might have mercy on all” …we made it to the top and now we stand up and look out at the view from the highest of the highest peaks in all the world. We look down over the snow, over the tall trees which now look so small and so far back, we look over the valley and the city way down below…ALL THAT GOD IS AND HAS DONE!!!! It is breathtaking.

And Paul burst out in praise! Here’s our verses read ‘em with me. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

Let’s pray…Oh God, you are unfathomably rich and glorious and superb and wonderful and wise and incredible. There are not enough words in the human language to extol your greatness and your goodness. And all of it you have opened up to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. We are so thankful for you today. I pray that as we look at this great exclamation of praise from your book today that we would be moved deeply as we consider your depth. Would great humility overwhelm us as we recognize that you are a God who does all things well. And would the result be that our lives are a praise unto you, a continual offering devotion to you our glorious God. Help us in that way today I pray my Lord, Amen.

Well, I’m ready to go home. How can you take such an awesome passage of the Bible and say anything about it? I can’t improve upon it and it’s original construction is so sublime, it rarely needs much updating and interpretation for us all…it’s pretty clear, God is utterly amazing! This text stands on its own in a way that very few passages of the Bible really do. It is nothing short of breathtaking.

So, what I want to do for us today is to try and make clear the three distinct things said about God here…God’s depth, ways, and praise. We’ll look at them this way. One, God is deep, rich, wise and knows all. Two, God is beyond critique, advice and debt. And three, God is the source, sustainer and summary of all things.

God is Deep, Rich, Wise and Knows All

So first, “God is Deep, Rich, Wise and Knows All.” This is from the first sentence verse 32, “Oh the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God!” This first sentence just explodes with superlatives on how great and good God is. God is deep.

Some of you are into scuba diving. I’m told that you can only scuba dive about 300 feet, that’s with a oxygen tank on and everything because the deeper you go the pressure gets greater and greater. 300 feet. That’s not that much. The deepest place in the Ocean is the Mariana Trench, about 7 miles off the coast of Guam. It is over 36,000 feet deep. That’s more than 7 miles deep. You could take Mount Everest and turn it upside down and it still would not hit the bottom of the Mariana Trench…that’s deep.

Now, obviously Paul didn’t know that. The deepest sea in the middle east is the Mediterranean, it’s about 15,197 feet…that still really deep. But he probably didn’t know that either. For him, he just knew it was deep and didn’t know how far down that water went, too far for anyone at that time to know. Paul thinks of that and then thinks of God and says…”that’s what God is like, he is bottomless in his wisdom and knowledge, there is no end to it. It is deep.”

And not only is it deep but it is rich. It’s like if you could get to the bottom, then what you would find there is the greatest discovery of treasure ever known. Currently, the greatest discovery of treasure is said to be the $13 billion dollars worth of 18th century jewels and gold coins discovered off the coast of Chile Robinson Crusoe’s Island in the Central Pacific. That is some riches.

In the first century the richest person probably would have been the Roman Emperor, Octavian. It was actually defeating Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt and taking all her riches…gold, silver, jewels, everything that helped him come to power and Octavian becoming both the world’s richest and most powerful man at the time.

Currently, the world’s richest man is a guy named Warren Buffet who is a stock market investor and shareholder. He recently passed up Bill Gates who was the richest for like 13 years. Warren is currently worth around $62 billion dollars while Bill Gates only has about $58 billion dollars. That’s pretty rich.

But neither the Chile Robinson treasure nor all of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates money combined compares to the riches of God. Deuteronomy 10:14 says, “…to the Lord God belong(s) heaven, the heavens of heavens (and) the earth with all that is in it.” God owns it all. In Psalm 50 God even names some of the specific things he owns…”every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.” God owns it all. He is the richest person of all.

God is rich and God is deep. His depth and riches are so great but even at that they are only meant as small mere analogies that fall short of expounding how great his wisdom and knowledge are. God’s wisdom and knowledge are far greater than the deepest of the deep and the richest of the rich.

Wisdom and knowledge are so similar they are almost interchangeable. They get at two main ideas. One, that God knows all things. All truth resides with him. There is nothing he does not know. Wisdom gets more at what he does with what he knows. God does not just know facts but he knows how to sensible and keen in what he does with his knowledge. He does not just know things but know what to do with them and how to do it in a good and proper way. God is wise.

In Romans, we just finished talking about God’s plan for the future, how he is ordering history a certain way, in order that people of all different races and cultures and background might be saved through Jesus and how that started with one people group the Jews, branched out, and then will come back and end with that same people group. Not one of us would ever have conceived such a plan. Not one of us would have ever even thought to do things that way. God’s knowledge and wisdom is so great. His whole plan of salvation is ingenious. God is so wise and so knowing.

But I don’t think it’s enough that we just hear that and think, oh yeah. God is omniscient. He knows all things. There must be a sense of it in our hearts…where we recognize his greatness in that.

The apostle Peter comes to mind. After Jesus died and rose again, in one of his resurrection appearances, he hangs out with Peter for awhile to restore him. Peter had denied knowing Jesus three times. So when Jesus is hanging out with Peter he asks him twice, “Peter, do you love me?” Each time, Peter says, “Yes Lord, I love you.” Jesus asks him a third time, “Peter, do you love me?” And the third time, Peter breaks down and he says this, “Lord, you know all things. You know I love you.” Do you have that sense in your heart? Do you worship a God today that you look to and you say, “Jesus…you know all things and I love you.”

God is Beyond Critique, Advice and Debt

Well, let’s move on to our second point for today, “God is Beyond Critique, Advice and Debt.” The second part of verse 32 up through verse 33. “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’”

We have another exclamation and then two rhetorical questions. First the exclamation, “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” Here we turn to God’s decisions. What he has done. This text once again acknowledges and asserts that it is God who is ruling over history and all that happens in this world and all that occurs in each of our individual lives. It takes all of that, looks at it and says…how could we even begin to search or understand all that goes into God’s decision making process, his judgments…and on top of that how or by what standard would we use to critique the decisions he makes…they are inscrutable! Any scrutiny we could provide we be vastly insufficient and unequipped.

But doesn’t God get scrutinized all the time? I mean it seems to me that is often one of the biggest barriers for people in becoming a Christian. Because something bad or unexpected has happened in their life or in the course of history, which they think ought not have happened and if there was a God or a good God who cared, he wouldn’t have let it! Right?

God gets critiqued and accused of his judgments and his ways all the time. For many, the idea that you must believe in and receive his Son Jesus purely as a free gift, is too hard for them. They don’t like that idea or think it is right. They think God made a bad judgment and bad way of salvation. For many they think that predestination and real human choices are incompatible and so they either force out human response, or divine election out of the equation. They think it does not stand up to human reason and so they critique and judge the way the Bible clearly lays out.

Maybe that is you and you have a hard time with God’s judgments and ways today? Maybe it’s over something entirely different? You can fill it in with anything you may be struggling with today when it comes to God. Here is the answer this text gives. Some things you just can’t understand because you are a small little human being and God is a big big God. He has a big big brain and you have a tiny tiny brain and it is silly for you to think your tiny little brain could understand huge enormous brain so quit trying and just love God and his Son Jesus.

You have to have some compartment in your faith as a Christian for mystery. Now I say that carefully because we are a culture who loves mystery. Mystery is it’s own genre of books, movies, and TV. Mystery. I used to love reading the Hardy Boys when I was growing up…they were always trying to figure out some mystery. In Scooby Doo they drive the mystery machine. There was this ridiculous movie called “Mystery Men” with Ben Stiller. Then there was the long running TV show, “Unsolved Mysteries.” There is a skateboard company called Mystery Skateboards. You can go to a “Mystery Dinner.” And perhaps the most ridiculous is something called, “The Mystery Method” which defines itself as, “a step-by-step system to meet, attract, and seduce or date beautiful women.”

Now I say all of that sort of in jest. But I think there has been somewhat of a collective shift in our culture and our time period in history where mystery has almost become virtuous. Here is what I mean. We live in “the information age.” We have the google and wikipedia at our fingertips. There is so much out there to know and it is so accessible that we have all collectively realized that there is no way one human person could know everything. So, we have become very very tentative about ever taking a stance on anything especially when it comes to things like God and putting faith in Jesus…because we are afraid we will discover some new knowledge and find out it is not true and then we will look stupid for being wrong. So postmodernism and pluralism…just saying whatever way works for you and there is no one right way has become popular. You just can’t know. We punt to mystery at the first sign of any conflict.

So I think there is something very bad and very dangerous about mystery. We need to be careful. That is my warning. But at the same time we must have some compartment in our Christianity to say that some things are beyond us about God and even the gospel itself, there is mystery. I don’t know how Jesus if fully God and fully man at the same time in one person. I don’t understand the Trinity. I can’t figure out for the life of me why Adam sinned or why God chose the ones he did before the foundation of the world. Big capital “M” Mystery to me. And when it comes down to God future plans and his working in the world, especially when things don’t go the way I think they should…mystery.

It is beyond us to comprehend. John Calvin warns us well here. He says this, “If any one will seek to know more than what God has revealed, he shall be overwhelmed with the immeasurable brightness of inaccessible light…the riches of God’s wisdom are deeper than our reason can penetrate to. Whenever then we enter on a discourse respecting the eternal counsels of God, let a bridle be always set on our thoughts and tongue…so that our reasoning may at last end in admiration.” Good words from a man who penetrated as far as he could.

So let me ask you, are you okay with mystery? If you’re going to be a Christian, you’re going to have to be okay with not understanding some things and still moving forward in faith and love for God and his people. That’s what this text teaches us.

The two rhetorical questions make it even clearer. A rhetorical question just means the answer is obviously negative. So here in this case, when Paul quotes the Old Testament Scriptures and says, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’” The answer to both the questions is NOBODY. No one. No one can know the mind of the Lord or be his counselor. No one has ever given him a gift that put God in debt to them.

I love these questions because they draw out so well our own absurdity at times. I mean don’t lie. You’re not human if you don’t get frustrated at life and with God at times. I do. And then this verse comes and says, “Ah, so you want to give God some advice eh? Okay, what’s you’re advice, what’s you’re counsel?” “Ah, Umm, Ah…never mind, I don’t know.” How are you going to tell God what do and how can you tell him how to do anything any better. He see and knows everything in his mind.

Life is full of these cause and effect relationships between things. This effects this which effects this and in turn it changes this. God sees and knows intimately how it everything effects everything and how it all plays out. There’s no way we could see that and know that and then be qualified to give him some advice on it. Plus he gave us our reason in the first place so how could we add to anything that he does not already know. It’s just funny when we stop and sit back and think about it.

The second question, is even more telling of us and I think it points out a trap many of us fall into at times. Have you ever given God a gift? Think about it for a second. If you consider yourself a Christian and you’ve given your life to God, was it a gift you gave him? That’s the trap. It is easy to think yes, when the answer is clearly no. Our life was his in the first place and he does not need anything. Our salvation is wholly his work and on top of it God doesn’t need us. We have nothing to add to him or give to him that he does not already have and own.

Or what happens with many people is they become overwhelmed with how much God has done for them in Jesus and so what do they do after they become a Christian? They start trying to pay God back! You can’t do that! It’s an infinite gift for one and two you demean the gift if you start trying to pay it off like a credit card bill. What we are to do instead is to thank God for his gift by asking for more gift. That’s how he gets his glory. By him always being the giver and us always being the receiver. The minute we absurdly think we could be the giver we have attempted to try and reverse roles with God and make him the creature and us the creator.

Here’s the point. God is not in debt. Period. To no one. And he never will be. There is nothing greater than God or that would be God. He is the greatest. God is beyond critique, God is beyond advice, and God is beyond debt.

And again like with his knowledge we have to just accept that but be effected by it. Jesus healed a man who was deaf once. He put his finger in his ears, prayed a prayer and his ears were opened. When Jesus did this Mark 7:37 says the crowd was “astonished beyond measure” and one person spoke up and said, “He does all things well.” Do you worship a God today that you look to and say, “Jesus, you do all things well.”

God is the Source Sustainer and Summary of All Things

Let’s move on to our final point for the day, “God is the Source Sustainer and Summary of All Things” from verse 36, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

From him. God is the creator. All things have been made by God. God is the source of everything. The very first words of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1).” God is the creator.

Through him. God is the sustainer. God holds all things together. If he were to let go for an instant the whole world would fall apart. Hebrews 1:3, God “upholds the universe by the word of his power.” And not only externally with the laws of physics but our daily lives. Acts 17:28 “In him we live and move and have our being.” God is the sustainer.

To him. God is the summary. God is the goal of all things. God is the appointed end all things. Everything meets it’s ultimate destiny in God. Nothing means anything apart from him. God is the summary of all. Revelation 22:13 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” God is the summary.

What does this mean for us theologically? This is a very poetic passage, some even think it may have been a hymn the early church sang. But there is some deep theology here. Two things. One is for each of us personally and the other is for us corporately as a whole church.

First, the personal note. From him, through him, and to him. This is what I like to say is having a “God entranced view of all things.” Jonathan Edwards gets the credit for that phrase but I like it a lot. You see we have such a tendency to put God in a compartment. Where he is just a Sunday thing. Or just a couple days of the week thing. Or just a part of each day thing, maybe in the morning. That is not the view of God in the Bible. The view in the Bible is that God has to do with everything! From him, through him, and to him. Jonathan Edwards says this, “True saints have their minds, in the first place, (are) inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glory…of God. And this is the spring of all their delights (Religious Affections).” From him, through him and to him. God glory is always our ultimate focus and our goal.

The second thing, for us which is an application of the personal to us as a group. Good theology results in good worship and good worship results in good theology. Just being academically interested in God is flawed, thinking about God is meant to give way to worship. And on the other end just emotional worship is flawed, passionate worship is to spring out of a thinking deeply about God. Some of you don’t think enough. Others of you don’t feel enough. And they must go together.

So what does that mean for us corporately? It means that when Michael leads us in song it is always in response to God. We sing because of who God is and what he has done for us in Jesus. Always. Doxology follows theology. We sing and we sing because our God is so great! And because he has had so much mercy on us! We love him.

The last words of our text, “To him be the glory forever. Amen!” Glory driven. Passionate to make much of God in all things. Amen, means so be it, may it happen, it is true! Amen. Glory to our God and savior. God’s glory is the goal in all things.

As I have said at the end of each point today a personal engagement with our God is intended. On this last point I think of David in the Bible. He wrote Psalms. Sometimes they were journal entries and sometimes they were songs. Here is what he said in one of them, “Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.” Do you worship a God today that you look to and say, “Jesus, my praise is continually of you.” Do you live your life for your own praise and glory or for God’s? May it be of us all to be about the business of the glory of God.

Conclusion

Let’s conclude. God is deep, rich, wise and knows all. Our response is, “Lord, you know all things.” God is beyond critique, advice, and debt. Our response is, “Lord, you do all things well.” God is the source, sustainer and summary of all things. Our response is, “Lord, you deserve all the praise.”

Let’s continue to worship our God today and take communion. Respond to the grace God has given in Jesus. The table here, the body and blood of Jesus in the bread and wine is a vivid portrayal of the depth of the riches in the wisdom and knowledge of God given to us in Jesus. Wonder at it this morning. Be amazed.

Where we have attempted to critique and challenge God and foolishly try to pay him back…let’s be repentfull today and lay down those burdens and receive forgiveness and put our faith and trust in our God.

And lastly, let us leave the table today with a determination to live our lives for the glory of God and make him the goal and point of everything we do.

Let’s pray.

Listen to this sermon…       

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July 20th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36
Week 3 – Romans 11:11-32

Introduction

Good morning. We’ve got a full meal today, a lot of ground to cover. Were in the second to last sermon of our summer sermon series here at The Resolved Church and right now we’re dealing with The God of Future part of a section in the book of Romans which really focuses on the God(ness) of God. So let’s read the text, pray and get right into it. (read text and pray)

God, you are infinitely beautiful and sovereign in your glory. God, you are wonderfully generous and kind in your provision of the gospel. And God you are marvelously vast in your plan for the future and your ability to ensure that plan comes to pass. Help us today Holy Spirit to understand a part of the book you breathed out that can be very difficult. Through it may our love for people increase, would our tenacity in faith be invigorated, and would the mercy of God in Jesus Christ be rich among us all. I love you Lord and call upon you for these sacred moments. Amen.

So as you notice, this is a much longer portion of Scripture we are dealing with today in comparison to what we normally do. There are a couple reasons for that. One, is because verses 11-32 really all go together, they are all concerned with the exact same question and theme. The second reason is because these verses can easily be a trap, where you get super bogged down and then you lose sight of the whole and you end up sucked into a never-ending abyss. So if you’re surprised by how much text we’re dealing with today, that’s what is going on.

I’ll try and break it down and make it a little easier for us to follow by piecing it into three main sections, verses 11-15 on God’s Future Fullness, verses 16-24 on God’s Grafting Kindness, and verses 25-32 on God’s Merciful Ends.

Our verses for today start out first with a question, “So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall?” Before we can discuss anything today and before we can even understand what this question is even talking about we must understand who the “they” when it says “did they stumble”? Now the answer is easy and is right in front of us, so I want to point it out and then I need to say something about it.

Look at the text. “So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, as to make Israel jealous.” Okay, there is the “they.” The “they” is ethnic Israel, the Jews.

This is important today. Usually, in the past when Romans addresses some of the Jewish Israel implications of the gospel, usually I try and intentionally downplay the differences. That’s not wrong because at it’s core, the issue is often not so much Israel in and of itself but people groups and the Bible is clear that no matter what people group you are from, everyone becomes a Christian the same way, through believing in Jesus. And sometimes even in Romans, Israel simply means Christians, all who are the people of God who had their hearts changed by him (Rom 2:29).

The thing is with this week, ethnic Israel is the point and it does matter for this entire section. So who are we talking about? Well, first you can tell it is ethnic Israel because “Israel” here is set in contrast to Gentiles. Gentiles are anyone who is not Israel. Jews, Israel are a people group. So that’s sort of like saying, “I’m a surfer and everyone else is Gentiles.” Except surfer’s don’t have don’t all come from one family and they don’t have their own country, although that might be cool.

Who is Israel? I mean most of us know there is a little country over in the middle east where there is a lot of fighting going on all the time. Most of us probably really are not sure what about. Very few of you probably actually even know someone who is a Jew. Out of the 1.3 million people living in San Diego, only about 2.5% are Jews.

Other than the middle east what comes to mind when you hear the word Jew or Jewish or Israel? If you’re me you think of Adam Sandler’s “Happy Hanukkah” song, Seth Cohen’s “yamaclause”, and dudes that where black suits and have sweet beards with long curls hanging down from each side. Some of you might be into Matisyahu, the Jewish reggae artist. And most of us have seen the movie, Schindler’s List about the Jewish holocaust.

So that’s who were talking about today, Jews, and then Gentiles, everyone else and how God has a plan for both, some things he is doing now and some things he intends to do in the future for and through both groups.

God’s Future Fullness

So our first point for this morning, “God’s Future Fullness.” Verse 11 asks this question, “Did they (the Jews) stumble that they might fall?” Here’s the reason why he asks the question. Last week we talked mainly about grace, and how everyone who ever becomes a Christian is because of God’s grace toward them. I told this story about a city high up on a mountain, that is a city full of people who have only been brought there by grace…but that some other people, some orcs had heard of the city and were seeking out the mountain trying to scale it, but the king of the city came and cast a spell on them in order to blind them and make them deaf and sore so that they stumble and can’t find the city and force their way in.

Now Paul, the human author asks is this stumbling permanent? It sort of sounded permanent because verse 10 ends by saying backs get bent “forever.” Paul knows that word is going to illicit a reaction and a potential misunderstanding. His point has been that forever and ever, no one will ever get into the city of God except by grace. That stands, that is true. His question now is, does that then mean there is permanently no hope for the Jews?

What’s his answer? “By no means!” No way. And then he launches into an explanation and describes a plan that God has for the future. Let’s look at it. “Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!”

Three things: the trespass, jealousy, and the full inclusion. What is the trespass? Namely not believing in and embracing Jesus as the Messiah for their salvation. This is what set off this whole portion of Romans. Chapters 9-11 all go together and at the beginning of chapter 9, Paul is literally crying because the majority of his brothers, his fellow Jews, were not embracing Jesus as the savior. That pained him. Now granted, some Jews did, Paul himself was one and a few others…that’s what we talked about two weeks ago, they are called a “remnant.” But all of Israel, the whole country, the whole race, was supposed to, should have, all, embraced Jesus as their savior. That’s the trespass.

What has happened as a result? The story is told in Acts 10. Jesus spent three years with the disciples. He’s crucified and dies. He rises from the dead, appearing to the disciples another 500 people or so on several occasion. He ascends up into the heavens, saying he is going to go back to his throne but he’ll come back again and until then, he wants all his followers to go out into all the world telling everyone about him.

The disciples don’t really do that at first. At first, they mainly just focus on telling the Jews. So God gives Peter a dream and then after he wakes up Peter remembers how Jesus went even into the Gentile cities loving them and preaching to them. So he starts preaching that message, that Jesus is Lord of all and that there is forgiveness of sins for all who believe in Jesus’ name.

From that point on, consistently in Acts the apostles always when they get to a city, go first to the synagogue, the Jewish place of worship to share with them about Jesus, they meet opposition, then start sharing with the Gentiles and many of them believe. You see this pattern over and over again. For the most part the Jews as a whole rejected the gospel, but large amounts of Gentiles believed.

This is still true today. There are small pockets of Christian Jews, there is a group called Jews for Jesus. A group called Messianic Jews. Michael Brown is a Jewish Rabbi who is also a Christian doing some great apologetic. And there is Ariel Ministries, who is doing some awesome stuff. But for the most part, who are churches filled with? Gentiles. The majority of Christians today are not Jews but Gentiles. This is what this verse means when it says, “through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles.”

But then we get this next line, which adds something, it says there is a God appointed purpose for why things have and are working out this way. Look at it, this is happening, “so as to make Israel jealous.” Jealous. That’s interesting. Kind of weird. What’s even weirder is that jealousy is how Paul defines his entire ministry. Look at verse 13, “I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.” Paul says that the whole purpose of his ministry is to make Jews jealous! What the heck is going on here?!!!

Here’s the thing. I think most of us when we hear the word, “jealous” or “jealousy” we have a bad or negative connotation. We think of someone who wrongly wants or wishes for something someone else has whether it be a physical item, a position in life, a job, a personality, a man or woman. But there is a good kind of jealousy. There is a rightful jealousy that wants or wishes for what is yours.

For example, I am very jealous for my wife. I like her a lot. I love spending time with my wife. I love talking to her. I love eating and drinking with her. I love doing fun things with her. I love making love with her. I love my wife. And I am not okay with her doing that with any other man. I am very jealous for her. I don’t even really like her talking to any other dudes! J You girls are alright but you dudes better back off! I’ll fight you! J Me an my daughter Adina are actually having some problems lately because I’ve kind of been noticing that sometimes it seems she gets a little more attention than me from my wife…and I’m a little jealous. J

So jealousy. Here is what Paul is saying. Jesus was a Jew. He was born into a Jewish family. All his apostles were Jews. He spent most of his life ministering to Jews. He was the promised savior that the Jewish Bible prophesied would come. Yes, he is for everyone…but first he was for the Jews. That was the thesis of the entire book of Romans stated back in Romans 1:15-16, “…(the gospel) is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, first for the Jew and then for the Greek.” So Jews ought to be jealous for Jesus. So he says, I am going to attempt to win as many Gentiles to Jesus and when Jews see how much Gentiles really are falling in love with their God and their savior, then they will get jealous and be provoked to want Jesus back and to have him too.

This is our missional philosophy as a whole for all the cultural groups in San Diego. We want everyone to see how much we love our God and enjoy worshipping him and trusting in his Son. Our mission exists because of our worship. My goal is to make the people of San Diego jealous for Jesus.

Now here is where Paul opens the door to the future. He says, isn’t this a great and wonderful thing, that because Israel has first rejected Jesus that many many Gentiles have had the awesome privilege of coming to know God, verse 17 “their trespass means riches for the world.” Then he adds, if that is true “how much more will their full inclusion mean!” He says, if you think that is great, how great will it be when the fullness of Jewish Israel, maybe not every single Jews, but the majority…comes to believe in Jesus one day in the future.

It’s a future thing, “…will (future tense) their full inclusion mean!” And then he gives two analogies. One is simple, it’s the picture of resurrection. It’s verse 15, “If their rejection means the reconciliation of the world (and by the way “world” most of means people groups of the world, every tribe and tongue of the world), what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead.” The other one is simple too, but Paul takes 8 verses to explain it and it is the analogy of a tree and the picture of grafting. He introduces it in verse 16, “If the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump and if the root is holy, so are the branches.”

So, the future. Paul says in the future, there will be a “full inclusion” of Israel. It is going to be a great thing, greater than even when the gospel was opened up to the Gentiles and nobody dreamed of that happening and the great results! We’ll get into it in a minute, but just to help you hear and see what I’m saying, skip ahead for a second and look at verse 25, “I want you to understand this mystery brothers, 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.”

Paul predicts here that in the future, there will be a time when a great number of ethnic Jews will have a change of heart and believe in Jesus. If that seems impossible to you, I agree. But think of this…the year 70 AD, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed and Israel did not exist as a country any longer. It was not on any map. There were not at any world powers leader meetings or summits. No one ever thought there would ever be another portion of land on earth that was a country known as Israel. But in 1967 it happened…about 1900 years. That’s insane. 1900 years. Let me give you a little perspective. The United States has only been in existence for about 230 years.

1900 years and then a war and it ends with Jewish soldiers overtaking Jerusalem…they walked in with guns in hand and tears on their cheeks. No one thought it would ever happen and it did. History is not over my friends. The gospel has yet much work to do and there is a great revival coming. It can and it will happen. And the key is us winning as many people to Jesus as possible, so as to make our Jewish friends have a godly jealousy.

God’s Grafting Kindness

Now there is an analogy to try and explain what God has done and what he has planned and it is a warning for us and what I want to do is to simplify it. It’s verse 17-24. We read it earlier, so here’s the analogy. It’s an olive tree. In the Old Testament God’s people were compared to an olive tree. Jesus too compared his church to a tree. This is a popular Bible picture and it fit the land and the culture the Bible was written in. Olive trees were common.

The analogy goes like this. God started the tree with one family, Abraham. It’s God’s tree, it’s a holy tree. The tree is God’s people. And the tree grew big with a lot of branches. It’s a nice big Jewish olive tree. God sends his son into the world, Jesus. Jesus is the lifeblood and water of the tree, without him it dies. But most of the branches don’t believe in or accept Jesus. So God pulls out his chainsaw and starts whacking branches off. He only leaves a remnant, a remaining few branches. And he not only does that but he goes to another olive tree, that grows crazy and wild but doesn’t have any fruit and he cuts off some branches from that tree and then grafts them into his tree.

Some stuff about grafting…farmers do this. My wife’s uncle is a farmer and he does this. If you got a tree that isn’t bearing fruit but is growing fast and big and strong and you got another tree that has nice fruit but is growing slow and small, then he’ll cut off a branch of the crazy fast growing tree and graft it into to the small nice fruit tree in hopes that he’ll get a big full tree with a lot of good fruit. The way you graft is by cutting something called a “cleft” in the branch and in the tree which is like a wedge and then you put grafting compound around it and tie it up. After awhile the two pieces of tree start growing together and their common properties and nutrients get co-mingled.

Paul looks at this process and says, “Hey, that is like what has happened and what God is doing with the gospel.” Gentiles have been grafted into the Jewish tree, because a lot of the Jewish branches were cut off for not believing in Jesus as the Messiah.

Now after he makes this analogy, he sees it as an opportunity first for a warning to the Gentiles who were grafted in and then he also sees it as an opportunity for reaching out to the Jews. So to the Gentiles he says this, beginning in verse 20 “They (Jews) were broken off because of their unbelief but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.”

That’s his warning. He urges Christians not to get to confident and make the same mistake that the Jews made which was thinking they were fine just because of their family heritage, tradition, race or past belief. He urges all of us to keep pressing forward. Apathy is immense danger. I’ve seen so many fall into it’s pit and it’s trap.

It makes sense that he would say something like this after talking about election because divine election never means that human do not urgently need to continue to exercise faith. It doesn’t mean as John Stott says, “That those who truly belong to him will ever be rejected, but that continuance or perseverance is the hallmark of God’s authentic children.” True believers will persevere in their faith and we ought faith forward in fear and humility.

Pride can so easily creep in, especially among Christians. I’ll appeal to Jonathan Edwards here. He says this, “Spiritual pride (prefers) to speak of other person’s sins, their (separation) from God and his people, (and their) miserable delusion…and deadness…(with) an air of contempt. Where as Christian humility (prefers) to either be silent about them or to speak of them with grief and pity…The spiritually proud person is apt to find fault with other saints, (is) low in grace…and quick to take notice of (others) deficiencies. But the humble Christian has so much to do at home in his own heart…that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts, he complains most of himself…of his own coldness and lowness in grace. He is apt to esteem others better than himself. (The proud enjoy) to speak in the most harsh, severe, and terrible language…they say we must be plain hearted and bold for Christ, we must declare war on sin wherever we see it, we must not mince the matter in the cause of God and when speaking for Christ…(this) is to overthrow all Christian meekness and gentleness…and defile(s) the mouths of the children of God…under a cloak of sanctity and zeal and boldness for Christ [Thoughts on Revival, Part IV, Sec.1].”

We must be humble and always remember that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus. We are always ever dependent upon Jesus for everything. If we ever think it is because we are smart enough, strong enough, passionate enough, morally upright enough…we have opened the door to pride and run the risk of being cut off and facing the severity of God. Instead we must seize his kindness and continue in it.

That’s the warning and then there’s the appeal to the Jews. Verse 23-24 “If they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches be grafted back into their own tree.”

This is the future. In the future, there is a plan for many Jews to be included. How will that happen? Just as it was for the Gentiles, through grafting. And how do you get grafted? Simple by believing in Jesus. Salvation, whether for Jew or Gentile, is now always through a grafting. Everyone must undergo the medical procedure of a farmer and get bonded to the tree of life that is Christ. It can be painful, but the kindness of God in it is greater than all else.

God’s Merciful Ends

Well, that brings us to our last point for the day. Verse 25-32 summarize what has already been said and make the equal needs of Jews and Gentiles abundantly clear, both groups are in need the mercy of the gospel. So let’s look at “God’s Merciful Ends” described in these verses and then we’ll close.

Beginning at verse 25, “Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery brothers: 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 written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob; and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

A couple things. First, the mystery. Mystery here doesn’t mean mystery in the sense like, something that is beyond human comprehension. It means something that what was once secret, known only to God, has now been revealed or made known by him. So what’s the mystery, the mystery is that God has planned the hardening and rejecting of Jesus by the Jews, so that the full number of people in history that he has destined to become Christians will. The mystery is that God has planned and ordered history and the future in this way.

Second, the phrase “in this way all Israel will be saved” does not necessarily mean every single Jew will become a Christian. It may mean the majority of Jews at some point in the future. It may even be as Paul says in Galatians 6:16 that Israel is all those from both Jews and Gentiles whom God has mercy on in Jesus.

I’m not fully confident as to which one of those it is…you have to remember he concerned about the collective identity of God’s people and not so much specific individuals…but either way, what is clear, what I am confident about is that the way all Israel becomes such, and that is exactly what the next verses reiterate, it is through faith and belief in the deliverer to take away sin. Jesus is the deliverer and Jesus chief work is to take care of our sin, by dying on the cross in our place to satisfy justice for sin and then he makes a covenant with us…his death for our life, through our belief in him. Believing in Jesus is absolutely necessary.

He is it, for everyone. And that is what the last few verses for today illustrate so poetically. (Are you guys getting full? I am. That’s why I told you at the beginning of this message this sermon is a full meal. You will feel stuffed afterward. It’s like thanksgiving.) These verses equalize everyone.

Verse 28, concerning the gospel…yeah Jews are right now enemies of it, that’s for your sake, for Gentile benefit. They are enemies. Even right now, it is a current practice of many Jewish families to disown any of their family members if they become Christians. They are treated as if they no longer exist. Sometimes in the past they have even had funeral ceremonies for them. Enemies of the gospel for sure, but we must remember it is only a temporary hardening and so we must keep offering the gospel, keep loving, keep reaching out as Paul has here in these words.

Verse 29, reminds us why…Jews are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. God made a promise to Abraham years and years ago, way back in Genesis 12. He said to Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That was God’s promise to the first forefather and it was a promise God repeated to Abraham’s sons. God has beloved Israel, the ethnic Jews, he promised to do so and that does not change.

Verse 30 affirms it, “…the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” God does not promise one thing and later change his mind. His gift of salvation and effectual calling is sure and immovable.

Verses 31-32 do this. They say, yes, Gentiles were disobedient, godless heathen pagans and they have been shown mercy in the gospel. And now you Jews, you too, have like them become disobedient, so that you too may now know what my mercy is like. Look at verse 32, “God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.”

That is a beautiful and wonderful phrase. God is determined to have mercy, to show his merciful side. There is hope and confidence in those words. It equals the playing field, everyone is laid low and flat. All are disobedient, and now there is mercy for all.

It doesn’t mean everyone in the whole world is eventually going to get saved and become a Christian. Some have wrongly thought this verse teaches universalism. It doesn’t. Romans and the rest of the Bible are clear, God is a just God, there is a hell and judgment, hell is hot and forever is a long time, which all who go there will endure.

You have to read this verse in context. What have we been concerned with all day? People groups. The Jewish people and the Gentile people. All Gentiles have been disobedient and all Jews have been disobedient. God has consigned, or held them all in it, in order that he might have mercy on all the people groups of the world. I’ve said it before, it’s not race that counts but grace. God eliminates the race factor and says here that instead, all people groups need and receive mercy from God.

This means for our theologians out there, that we must avoid both full replacement theologies and full restoration theologies. And for everyone else who that means nothing to, don’t worry about it. But we have some brilliant dudes among us and I love them too and that will help them.

The point for all of us is that God is merciful and plans to be merciful in the future. Mercy is the love and compassion of God toward humans for their crime and would be unjust if not for Christ satisfying justice.

I tried to steal something once in my life. I was 16. I tried to steal the Nirvana “Unplugged” album from Wal-Mart. Back then they used to have these big plastic cases that every CD was kept in. When you’d by the CD the cashier had a special tool to take it off. So what I did was took the CD and walked around the store like I was looking for something else to buy. I went to the hardware section. I found some snips and I cut that big plastic thing off the CD. I started walked toward the exit through the store. I walked through the clothing section and stashed the plastic case. As I started walking toward the exit, I though I saw a worker following me out of the corner of my eye. So I thought I’d play it safe and go and buy a candy bar. Sure enough he followed me. So I left the CD in the candy and bought a Snickers and headed for the door. The man who was following me stopped me at the door. He had the CD and the now broken plastic case in his hand. He told me he saw me, knew what I was doing and told me never to come back.

Now that wasn’t mercy. If I had in fact stolen the CD and he met me at the door with the security guard. Told me he could arrest me right then but then instead turned and arrested the security guard and said I could go free…that would be mercy!

And that is what God has done for us in Jesus. Through Jesus God extends a massive undeserved leniency and no matter what your race or background is, it is no barrier. God and his gospel is enough and is sufficient. So often we think that we are just too different. That our personality. Our race. Our background. Our interests. Whatever it is. We think we are different than everyone else. This verse says no. We are all disobedient and we all need mercy and God has provided for it in Jesus.

Conclusion

Well, let’s conclude. It’s been a full morning. A lot of words from Scripture. Here’s the main points… The story is not over with the Jews. God has a plan. He is working right now, through us as we learned in Romans chapter 10…he is working to bring the full number of Gentiles to Jesus. After that has happened there will be a big change and many ethnic blood line heritage Jews will turn and believe in Jesus.

The picture of this is a tree. God’s tree is his people and it started with Jews, but most their branches were broken off for not believing in Jesus. So God grafted in a whole bunch of Gentiles. When Jews truly see and realize that they will be provoked out of jealousy and want in the tree and God will gladly graft them in out of his kindness and all Israel will be saved.

This salvation is through the deliverer who is Jesus, who died and rose again to provide forgiveness for sins. This is a new covenant, a promise from God that is for all peoples. All have been disobedient and now there is mercy for all.

Now just in case that sounds just like information. Here are the heart points you ought to take home. One, our God is the God of the Future. He is a big God and he determines and has a plan. We ought to trust in it and be confident in him. Two, this plan is missional in its character. God’s plan is to save many many people. So we ought to be fervent and passionate and determined like Paul here to try and save as many as possible. Three, our position is never guaranteed because of past faith, we must continue in our belief and resist spiritual pride and apathy like the plague. And lastly, we are ever and always a people of mercy with a message of mercy for all. Mercy is from God and it is irrevocable. Let us cherish and spread the message of mercy in Jesus.

Let’s pray.

Listen to this sermon…       

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July 13th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36
Week 2 – Romans 11:6-10

Introduction

Good morning everyone. I want to get right into it today, so let’s read the text, pray and go to work. This is the second week of the last movement, the God of Future, in our “The God(ness) of God” sermon series. (read text and pray)

Father God, you are the God of all grace, comfort, peace, hope, and joy. You have opened up all of that to us through your Son Jesus. Your Spirit has given us your word, this book, the Bible so that we might know and believe in him and have life and life abundantly through him. Would you condescend to us today and open our eyes, open our ears, and unbend our stiff backs so that we might revel in your grace and be saved by it. Overcome our obstinance so that we might let grace be grace for your sake and for the glory of Jesus. Amen.

Here’s what’s going on in the book of Romans where we are now. Paul, the human author is concerned that you and I might be able to have confidence in Jesus. That we might truly be able to trust him with out fear that he will one day reject us as his people, we are truly adopted into the family.

Here in chapter 11, he started a new thought which we began last week. The thought was that out of all the people who become interested in God at one point or another God always saves a remnant of people for himself and makes sure that they come to know the blessings of that love. We ended last week by saying that was something called “grace.” Both past, present, and future…God’s grace is what matters. And we will see increasingly in this chapter that God’s grace is also his plan for the future and includes the protecting of that plan to ensure it comes about.

My main goal today is to dig deep into this word grace. So my sermon today is a little bit intentionally lop-sided. I want to spend the bulk of our time on verse 6 talking about the nature of grace. We’ll move on after a little while and spend some time on verses 7-10 and how God protects the treasure of grace and then I’ll give you my promised pastoral words on election.

I want to spend so much time on grace today because I have a hunch that grace is a slippery word…one of those words that gets used often but that rarely have been thought much about. My prayer is that all of us would walk away with a deep understanding of grace today and not just an intellectual definition so that we could say what grace is but more than that. I want so bad for each of us to have a sense that God’s grace to us is so superb, so amazing, so generous, so undeserved, so kind, so needed, so overwhelming and at the heart of everything. I want us to be effected by grace today. So God, do it Lord I pray.

The Nature of Grace

So alright, verse 6 and the nature of grace. “But if it is by grace it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would not be grace.” What is grace? Really. Have you ever thought much more than a few seconds about it? When you hear the word, right now…what comes to mind?

Grace is such a common word in our world. Mariah Carey and Brittney Spears are both apparently pretty into grace. Mariah’s latest album has a song on it called “My Saving Grace” and Brittney used to sing a song called “State of Grace.” I’m guessing she doesn’t really sing that song much anymore since she went nuts but maybe. J

Jeff Buckley, long live the Buckley! His best album is called “Grace” and has a song on it called “Grace,” although we all know “Hallelujah” is the best song on that album. The Foo Fighters most recent album is titled, “Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace.” Sarah McLaughlin sings that she is “Full of Grace.”

And we all know and love U2′s famous song “Grace” …”Grace, She carries a world on her hips. No champagne flute for her lips. No twirls or skips, between her fingertips…What once was hurt. What once was friction. What left a mark. No longer stings. Because grace makes beauty, Out of ugly things.”

A lot of famous people have been named “Grace.” Michael, our worship leader’s mom. Grace Coolridge, the wife of Calvin Coolridge, who used to be a US President. Grace Jones, the Jamaican Jazz singer and model. Grace Kelly, the famous actress and princess of Monaco. And most recently, Madonna adopted a little girl named, “Grace.”

There tons of movies with the word “grace” in them. Maybe you’ve seen “Maria Full of Grace”? Where a girl smuggles drugs across the border. “Grace is Gone” with John Cusak. “Grace of My Heart” about the music of the 50′s and 60′s. And most recently, “Savage Grace” about a dysfunctional mom. Then there’s a TV show called “Will and Grace” but who knows what that’s about???

With all this talk about grace in pop culture, you’d think we should know something about what it means. What do people mean when they use the word grace? Do they mean this…”if it is by grace it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace”? Or do they mean something else?

Grace. What does the Bible mean here when it talks about grace. I’ve given you this definition before in past sermons…I’ve said, “Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what getting what you don’t deserve.” Now that is good, but maybe that sounds tricky. I want to go deeper today to really dig out the difference of grace versus works that the Bible points out here.

Jerry Bridges, an author, theologian and pastor I like, tells a story of his mother. Where he grew up in Texas they would often have homeless people come up to the door begging and his mom would always cook up a plate of the food. She would always do it without ever asking the homeless person to do anything. No yard work, no cleaning, no chore to do in exchange for the food. She gave it to him freely. What that grace? Jerry Bridges says no.

Why? Well, suppose his mom recognized the homeless man because a few weeks earlier someone had broken into their house and robbed them and she had caught a good look at the guy and it was in fact this homeless man. But when he came to the door begging. Instead of calling the police, she gives him the plate of food asking for nothing in exchange and she doesn’t even say anything about the robbery. Is that grace? Jerry Bridges still say no, not quite yet.

Why? Well, if you have ever been robbed…you know that’s a pretty violating experience. I’ve been held up at gun point before, that’ll jar you. But when that happens it’s not just you that gets violated but the law gets broken, right? But his mom is not the law and isn’t the judge, with the power and authority to execute full justice right? She could call the police if she wanted and have them deal with it.

But suppose she not only recognized the homeless person as the person who robbed her, but there had been a streak of robberies in the neighborhood and he was the exact same person who she had seen rob her next door neighbors. Now she has a duty to her neighbors to call the police because if she doesn’t then she is subverting justice.

So what is grace here in this story? Here is the full measure of biblical grace… You and the homeless person. We are in need of food. Spiritual food, we are dying a slow internal death being separated from God. We come to him even though we’ve wronged him and we’ve stolen his blessings that are all around us. We don’t ask him and love and thank God for them….And not only that but we’ve hurt and stolen joy from other people. We come to God and the difference is we have not only personally wronged him but he too is also the judge and does have the power and just responsibility to execute justice and not subvert it.

So God sends his son to die for his justice in our place, so mercy is not just given at the expense of subverting justice. And then on top of it all, we’re not really even the homeless person in the story because we are not even seeking. We are not even coming to the door and knocking and asking for help. We’re still off robbing his creation and hurting ourselves and other people and God comes out and seeks us in order to give us the salvation we need. That is grace. All of mercy. All of Jesus. All of God’s action toward those he has determined to love and save.

That’s where I want to go next. What makes grace grace and what makes work work? If grace is not works then we must be very clear about what a work is. When the Bible talks about a work here what does it mean? Does it just mean some outward action that we perform?

I don’t think so. Here’s why. Besides all the stuff that’s in the Bible about the heart being what contaminates and motivates our efforts to try and earn favor with God…consider this, how we most often define grace has to do with obligation. Here is what I mean. When was the last time you said, or maybe just thought or wished a person would have some “grace” toward you? Why do you want them to have grace toward you? It is because you know that you in some way are guilty and really need and want them to overlook it or give you a second chance. So the way that we most often define grace and want to consider God’s grace is on the basis of our need.

But consider God. He has no need of grace. He is perfectly holy and right and just and true, he has never needed you or I or anyone to be gracious to him. So his grace is never defined by his need. His grace is always the extending of his power. So what grace and works really comes down to is what the decisive factor is between you and God. Who’s effort is it that counts. Yours? Or God’s? If you say, yours…like well God should or ought to be gracious to me because I’m trying. Or, because I meant to, I had good intentions. Or, because, we’ll I did all this stuff at least… Haven’t you moved to a place where then grace becomes an obligation you expect or demand from God? I mean think about this…

Have you ever got mad at a cop? You get pulled over and he is about to write you a ticket and you are like “Man, I’m sorry. Can you just have grace on me just this once and let me off with a warning?” And he doesn’t and what happens in you when you drive away. If you’re me, you’re like, “What a freak’n jerk!” I then am mad because he didn’t give me grace. I turned grace into an obligation.

If he didn’t give me the ticket, I would drive away feeling satisfied. Like good cop. That’s what he should have done. But then, it would not have been grace would it. If what he is always supposed to do is let me go, that would make grace no longer grace. What makes grace grace is that it is not obliged, earned, or deserved. It is purely God’s free effort despite any human deserving. And the reality is that we’re not just not deserving but actually are much worse. We’ve got warrants out for our arrest because we have been playing Grand Theft Auto with our own lives, it just looks a little prettier on the outside.

What makes grace grace is that it is purely, entirely, completely God’s effort and active power having nothing to do with us…our condition, our effort, our work, anything. What makes a work a work is our thinking that we have anything to do with it.

Let me press us all a little bit here and then we’ll move on with the rest of the text. If you say, God has loved me and given me grace because I chose him…Jesus will say to you, “You did not choose me but I chose you (John 15:16).” If you say, God has loved me and given me grace because out of my own free will I have decided to accept him…Jesus will say to you, “Your will is dead in it’s trespasses and it is only by grace that you can be saved (Eph 2:5).” If you say, God has loved me and given me grace because I am a good person…Jesus will say to you, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick, I have not come to call the righteous but sinners (Mark 2:17).”

For God’s sake, I say with all the sincerity and love I can muster…for God’s sake my friends, my family…LET GRACE BE GRACE! LET GRACE BE GRACE! Do not attempt to rob God of his glory and trample on his amazing extension toward you, by thinking that you yourself have anything to do with his love for you. You don’t…it is purely his grace! Why he loves us and gives us grace I don’t know. That is a mystery of the Bible for sure. What is not a mystery is that God is a God of grace. So in light of that, I beg you, lay down all your pride and claims to God, give up all your works, and seize grace in all it’s fullness and revel in it.

Protecting the Treasure of Heaven

Okay, that’s a healthy dose of grace. Now let’s look at verses 7-10, which I’m calling “Protecting the Treasure of Heaven.” Let’s re-read ‘em. “What then, Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.’ And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.’”

The first thing I want to do is paint a picture for you and then I’ll say a few things about some of these words which are pretty heavy. Here’s the picture. Think Lord of the Rings, or Narnia, or something like that…but call to mind a kingdom. You have to have or use a little imagination to be Christian. I know it’s easier for those of us who like fantasy books and movies…everyone else, just try with me for a minute. So follow me as I call to mind some of the pictures of God’s kingdom in the Bible.

God has this huge beautiful throne. There’s rays of light that come out from it everywhere. It’s covered in jewels. It’s in the middle of the city. The city is set on a plain on top of a mountain. Before it is a sea of glass. Out from underneath the throne flows water that turns into a river and goes out into the land. There are trees of life beside the river with every kind of fruit all around it. There are six-winged angels flying before the throne. There are people singing. People talking to the king. People bowing down in worship.

There is life and love and joy in the city all around. No pain, no tears, no trouble or hardship. It is life the way it should be and the way we long for it to be. And one of the biggest joys of living in this kingdom is that everyone who lives there knows that they don’t deserve to be there. Everyone has got there by a special invitation that was brought to them. God’s messengers came and the walked for a long ways through many secret passage ways and chambers and after days and days they finally got to God’s kingdom.

Once a person gets there, they can’t believe it. Everyone really belonged in jail, but the king went and served everyone’s sentence for them so that they could escape and come and live here instead. Everyone in the whole land constantly is reminded of and rejoices in grace. Everyone is there because of the pure grace of the king. Grace is one of the chief things that makes the place so great!

But suppose one day you are standing on wall on the edge of the city and you are looking down the mountain and you see a bunch of dark mean orcs scouring the mountain. The orcs heard of the great pleasures of this city and it’s righteousness and they have come and determined they are going to get in and enjoy all of it’s riches. They have been working hard and searching far and wide for the city and have come close to the base of the mountain and are scratching and clawing up it’s cliffs, all the way along complementing themselves on how smart they have been to find it and how well they have trained so that they have the strength to get up the mountain.

In a moment of panic, you and you’re friends wonder what will be if the orcs get in by their own efforts…what would be if the very nature of grace which flowed through the kingdom we’re disrupted by a new band of people who got there by their own efforts? In the that quiet panic, all of the sudden you see the king rise up from his throne. He’s taller than you ever thought. He has a bright white robe except for the ends which have been dipped in bright red blood. He’s got golden sash around his chest. His hair flies in the face of the wind as he walks forward. As he take a stride you see his naked thigh just for a brief second, and you see in bright black letters a tattoo which says “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”

He gets to the edge of the cliff and looks down at the excited orcs who are getting closer and closer. Then out of his mouth comes a bright shining sword and with one swoosh he casts a spell and immediately the orcs become blind, pitch black covers their eyes. He casts another spell and immediately there is now a loud ringing in the orc’s ears so that they can hear nothing else. And then in one final blow, he casts a spell on all their backs so that they can no longer even stand upright but are in swore pain every time they work to take a step.

After the last spell, all God’s people let out a great cry, rejoicing! “The city of grace has been protected! All hail the King!” He has not only saved us by his grace but he has protected his grace, that it might never be stolen.

Now I made up that story to try and help us all place these words. I don’t mean to soften them, but to give them a context for your hearing because if you’re like me, when I read these verses, the language sounds pretty tough. There is the elect, there is a hardening which involves God giving a spirit of stupor, blinding people, making people deaf, and breaking their backs. That’s pretty gnarly. And maybe I could understand that these people were just totally God-haters, but their not…in some way they are in fact, as verse 7 says, seeking?

Well, let me just hit a few exegetical points from the words and then I’ll give you what I think is important pastorally concerning election. First, don’t get hung up on the use of “Israel” here. I’ll keep saying it so we get it, but the whole point with Israel is to teach us that God’s grace given to us in Jesus will not change because how he works with Israel is the picture of how he works with everyone. So don’t think this is just talking about the ethnic group “Israel” it is talking about us and besides just chucking all of this hard stuff to “Israel” doesn’t get you away from the fact that this is hard stuff…God still did electing, hardening, stuporing, blinding, deafing, and back breaking.

Second, this “seeking” is not the heartfelt seeking of truth and love. This seeking is the seeking Paul mentioned earlier in Romans 9:31 when he said, “Israel pursued a law that would lead to righteousness.” That is a seeking to establish righteousness by works, not grace. That is trying to force yourself into the city and steal God’s righteous holy goodness which has ever only come by grace.

Third, the “stupor.” I think everything that is mentioned about the eyes, ears, and backs is all characteristic of the stupor. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them.” That is stupor. Without God’s grace we get stupor. I heard a good example of stupor on the news the other day.

How are you all doing with the new hands free cell phone law while driving? Now, the city of San Diego Police are supposedly granting a “grace (interesting) period” for the month of July, so that if you get pulled over for using your cell phone while driving you can get off with a warning. The Highway Patrol isn’t doing that but the city of San Diego police are. So a guy gets pulled over the other day for using his cell phone while driving. The officer is talking to him about it and tell is about to tell him that he’ll let him go with a warning but then this happens…The guy’s phone buzzes, and while the cop is in mid-sentence the man says to him, “Hold on, I need to take this.” Stupor.

Spiritual stupor is to become so hard that you are blind and deaf to the spiritual things of the gospel. You don’t want that. So my encouragement to you, is not to throw away all of your questions and your doubts. Those can be good and can help you grow…if you do not make them barriers between you and God. You must be able to be soft and willing to lay them aside and allow yourself to worship God in all his wonder and glory and grace.

Pastoral Concerns with the Doctrine of Election

Grace is so huge. To be God’s people is to be a people touched by his grace. And because of that we must be gracious people. As recipients of grace, that means we should be the most grace filled people. But sadly, those who most often believe in and accept these parts of the Bible which talk about God choosing, electing, and hardening…are the least gracious people. And I think that is wrong. So here are my pastoral concerns about the doctrine of election, which we as The Resolved Church and as part of the Acts 29 Network believe in.

1. We ought to talk about election because the Bible does. Deuteronomy 29:29 says the secret things are unto the Lord, the revealed things are unto us. The Bible is the revealed things. That means that there are some things that are not for us, at least right now, on this side of heaven. There are secret things there is mystery, but we must let the line of mystery be drawn where the Bible does and the Bible does not draw the line of mystery before election but after it. God revealed it for a reason and we must trust him that it is good for us to know and think about.

2. Election is good for us because it really makes penetrate into the depths of who we are and what our faith is. It forces the question of what we are truly trusting in at the heart of everything…ourselves or God gracious power. It has the unique ability to draw out of us our idolatry and our attempts to reverse roles with God. I believe one of the chief experiences of a Christian is the realization that occurs when you say out of your soul, “You are God, I am not, you are the potter, I am the clay…do with me and with everyone else as you will and you bow your knee.”

3. The doctrine of election has at various times throughout the history of the church been a controversial doctrine. That does not mean it is not true. Just because something is controversial does not mean one position isn’t correct. If we only believed things there was no controversy over, there would be nothing left to believe in. I believe God designed and sovereignly intended the controversy over this issue because it has the effect of producing thoughtful, rigorous, Christian who really care about truth and really care about what the Bible says. Wrestling with Scripture is always, always, a good thing.

4. Understanding and believing in election has unique power to make us extremely humble because it cuts out any human contribution to salvation whatsoever. No one can ever lay claim to election because of themselves thus it ought to make us so humble. The problem is that many who have come to believe in election come to be proud about believing in it and looking down upon those that don’t as if they are just stupid. They may be, but that attitude is wrong. God has been extremely patient with us and our stupidity and so we ought to be toward others. If you believe you are elect you ought to have grace and mercy for those who have trouble with the doctrine and pray that God opens their eyes and that your humility and kindness toward them will be one of his key tools in helping them come to believe in it.

5. The doctrine of election is not for argumentation but exaltation, or to say it another way, it is not for debate but for doxology. Some of you guys get off on arguing. That is wrong. 1 Timothy 3:3 commands that God’s men not be “quarrelsome.” It doesn’t mean that you will never get into an argument or a debate about it, but if you do it, you must “speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15)” caring more the person and their soul than about whether you win the discussion. Because of this, I think it is a wise person to ask yourself if the person who wants to talk to you about election is truly seeking or whether there are just in a hard state trying to cause a fight. I won’t talk to people about election and predestination anymore who are just looking for a fight.

6. In our humility, we ought to be careful in our claims to election. What I mean is this. 2 Peter 1:10 says, “be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure.” If you believe in grace, don’t stop, continue to believe in grace and attempt to evidence Jesus in your life as much as possible. Don’t assume you’ve somehow arrived because you believe in election now and how you got it all together. Doubt it sometimes and “work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12).” Do not lapse into thinking, we’ll I guess God is going to save whoever he wants and it doesn’t matter what any of us do…so I guess I’ll just live however I want, nothing matters. That’s antinomianism, which means lawlessness. Paul, said this way earlier in Romans “shall we go on sinning that grace may abound? By no means! (Rom 6:1).”

7. I do not believe God reveals election and predestination to us so that you would be in constant fear of whether or not you are elect but rather the opposite, so that you can believe that God’s love and commitment to save you never began with you so it cannot end with you. If you are pursing Jesus, and trusting Jesus, and loving Jesus, and counting Jesus blood for your salvation…that is a really really good sign you are elect. Election gives us great confidence and security in our faith that God “who began a good work in us will continue to perform it (Phil 1:6).

8. Lastly, election gives us great assurance and confidence to take great risks for the gospel. They are human risks because they are scary and we don’t know the outcome. But God does and we know we are safe in his grace…so we can do and say things we wouldn’t normally. Because of that security we have a confidence that God has chosen many many people so when we do openly and honestly share about Jesus with people, not everyone will be hard and think we are stupid. Some will hear and be glad and become Christians because God has foreordained before the foundation of the world that they would! We have no idea who is elect and who is not on this side of heaven, that means it could be any person. Don’t ever assume a person is not elect no matter how bad their life looks. You should never call a person a reprobate because you don’t know that! We must look at every individual as someone whom God may have grace for and we must love them.

Those are my concerns as pastor. I want us to believe wholeheartedly in the doctrine of election because it truly is what enables the gospel to be a gospel of grace and not just another religion where you earn your way to heaven but I want us to be extraordinarily humble about it and also the most missional evangelistic people in the city.

Conclusion

Well let’s conclude for today by returning the beginning where we started. Election has as its foundation grace. What is grace? Grace undeserved commitment to love us and pursue us and save us, despite ourselves. Grace includes mercy but is greater than mercy because it goes above and beyond it. Grace if God’s undying favor toward his people.

1 John 4:10 “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he first loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins.” That activity of love is God’s grace which saves us.

Ephesians 2:5 “…when we were dead in our trespasses, (God) made us alive together with Christ.” That making us alive is God’s grace which saves us.

I could say it over and over again in several ways… Grace is God working in us and for us and not in response to us. Grace is greater than all our sin. Grace is what separates the gospel from religion. Religion says, “I obey, therefore I am accepted.” The gospel of grace says, “I am accepted therefore I obey.” People who have been effected by grace live a life of love and thanks and appreciation toward God. People who are religious have a life where they work for God and his goodness toward them is always dependent upon how hard they work. Grace says everything is from God to God and for God. Religion says, everything depends on man and what he does. Grace is what Christians become dependent on for their every need to make it in this life. Religion is what the hardened people become dependent on in hopes that it will be just enough.

I’ll end this way, this is the last thing I’ll say. If anything you can take away from this sermon that grace is good and everything else is bad. So how to get grace and instead of stupor. Is there any protection to not getting hardened and blind and deaf and having your back broken?

The answer is no, for if there were you would turn grace on it’s head and it would not be grace anymore. So what is man’s response? It is simple. It is a prayer and a cry and plead, saying God have grace on me please. There is no reason you should but I plead the blood of Jesus.

You call God on his word. The Bible said just in the last chapter, “Whoever believes in (Jesus) will not be put to shame (Rom 10:11).” So you say, “God I have nothing in and of myself to lay claim to you…but you said in your word if I trust in Jesus I will be safe and his blood will cover all my sin…I plead Jesus!” I have nothing. Give me Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, save me.

I promise you…if you belt that out from your soul to God he will NEVER not respond to that cry. He does not go back on his word. Grace will pour out of heaven into you with a fierceness that you have never known. He will give you all the treasures of heaven and more. There is nothing he will not withhold from those who cling to his son.

Let’s pray.

Listen to this sermon…       

The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

July 6th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36
Week 1 – Romans 11:1-5

Introduction

Good morning. It is the weekend of fourth of July, Independence Day here in the U.S. which means for most people in San Diego, California, an excuse to get completely obliterated and not feel bad about it. So I’m glad to see that several of you have got over your hangovers and made it worship Jesus with his church today.

The beginning of the second paragraph of “The Declaration of Independence” says this, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Now I quote that not because I’m going to get all political and try and tear apart what that means. I’m a Christian and a “Kingdom of God-anist” so I don’t get too hyped about worldly governments. I live for and in another world where Jesus is King over all and will one day return to earth and bring his throne from heaven with him and set it up here and all nations will bow before his good and divine supremacy.

I read that part of the Declaration of Independence because I believe the last three words, “the pursuit of happiness” has a lot to do with what this text is about today. For most today that usually means being free to work whatever job you want where you will hopefully make a lot of money and that if you do then you will be happy.

I don’t think this text teaches that but teaches something entirely and radically different. Namely that submission rather than freedom and grace rather than works is what makes one truly happy. Grace, being a people of grace, specially privileged and chosen by God to be recipients of his eternal love and kindness…that is what is joyful and satisfying. It’s my hope today that we will all leave today with an overwhelming sense that our God is an extremely gracious God and that the only happy life is living in his favored grace. Well, before we dive into it let’s read our text and pray.

The Question: Has God Rejected His People?

Well today we begin our last and final movement in our God(ness) of God sermon series. It’s been the longest series we have ever done here at The Resolved Church. It’s been long because these three chapters of Romans, 9, 10, and 11 all really go together as one unit and really have God, and his God-ness distinctly as their focus. So I’ve been doing my best to try and help us move through it but at the same time keep in mind the whole picture of the three chapters together in one theme.

If you’re a little bit tired of this series don’t feel bad about it. I feel a little bit like that too. But it is good for us as a people to learn to press on and press through and dig in and really grow even when we are tired.

So I won’t repeat all of what I’ve said before about how these three chapters go together, if you want to hear and see how and why that’s true you can go online and check out the first sermon of this series. The simple main thing to remember is that all of Romans 9-11 are written to support and undergird the conclusion of Romans 8 which said that nothing, not difficulty and disease, not danger or death, not even demons or time dimensions can separate Christians from the love of God extended to them in Jesus Christ. There may be times where you might feel like you are going to collapse and lose it or there may be times when it may seem like God has given up on you…but Romans 9-11 is written to say he hasn’t and you will make it.

The way the three chapters are structured are in three main movements. First, that God is a God who pursues his own glory and he does not change or give up on that. Everything first begins with him and not namely us. So if it begins with him and his pursuit of glorifying himself because he is God, then that is the most sure thing in the world we can count on. God will get his glory because God is a God of glory.

The second movement, was that God is a God of Gospel. He has not only determined and committed to bringing glory for himself bringing certain people unto himself, but he has also committed and determined the way that people will come to know and love the good news of Jesus Christ, and that is through us, his people. God pursues people and thus is a God of Gospel.

Now we round to the third movement, the God of Future. Paul, the human author of Romans is going to spend the bulk of chapter 11 talking about what God has planned in the future. But before he does that he’s going to first talk about the present, God’s promise, and the past.

So let’s get into it now and check out the first line, “I ask then (that’s in light of ch. 9 & 10…he’s starting a new train of thought, a new movement), has God rejected his people? By no means!”

He’s starting a new line of thinking, you can tell that because of this rhetorical way of questioning. Paul has done this before where he asks a question and then says, “No, that’s ridiculous.” The big picture is God, if God is a God who chooses people at one point and then rejects them later, then there can be no confidence or real hope in any of us putting our faith in Jesus Christ. So is God a God who chooses and then changes his mind and later rejects his people?

He’s going to say no three times and give three different supports or proofs to back up his “no’s.” We’ll start the first one in a second. But before we do let me ask you, “who is he talking about?” “Who are God’s people?”

He’s been using the word “Israel” or “Israelites” throughout these chapters. That word comes from God himself who renamed a guy named Jacob in the Bible God into a physical fight with Jesus, they wrestled MMA UFC style, Jesus kicked his butt and then Jesus changed his name to Israel and said that from him God would make a people for himself. So the name Israel has a particular connection to being specially chosen or favored by God as his people.

Now, today’s nation state “Israel” attributes it’s history to that. But something happened along the way. What started out being a people that God creates and chooses became a race or an ethnicity. It’s like if Christians somewhere, somehow down the line someday became their own ethnic race. When that happened Israelites, chosen people by God, started going by other names, like Jew and Hebrew. So I suspect that Paul is making a specific point even by just using the term Israel and Israelites throughout these chapters because he is trying to drive home the point that it is God who makes a people.

Okay, with that said maybe all of this will make a little more sense of why the question of whether or not God has rejected his people even matters. In chapter 11, Paul is mainly trying to deal with what’s going on with what has become this ethnic race called Israel, since now there are new people of God, namely Christians…what happened to the old people of God because the majority of them are not believing in Jesus and now only through believing in Jesus can anyone get connected with God and know him and be a recipient of his love and favor.

Do you get it now? Does that mean that God has rejected his old people? Which is a relevant question to us Christians because if God is a God who changes his mind and might later us for loving Jesus then maybe he is that great of a God and maybe I shouldn’t really live my life for him. So these verses are talking about you and I. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this only relevant or only applies to Jews. Everything God has done with the Jews is analogous to how his works with us. I’ll say more about that later but for now let’s move on with the question at hand… Has God has rejected his old people?

No. Support #1: The Present – Paul Himself was Accepted by God

Answer number one: No. Presently, at the time this was written Paul points to himself as an example of a Jew, an old Israel, people of God dude, as one who has not been rejected but accepted by God.

Look at it. Verse 1, “I ask then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.” For I myself. That’s Paul. He is an old Israelite. You can tell he is talking about old Israel which became ethnic race Israel because he says he’s a descendant of Abraham. Abraham was the very first Israelite. He started out a pagan Mesopotamian. Then God came to him, changed his name too, and he became a people of God dude. And not just Abraham…because a lot of people point to Abraham as the father of their race…so do Muslims.

So just to be clear Paul adds one on top of it, he says I’m of the tribe of Benjamin. That shows how Jewish Paul was. He wasn’t just a Jew by birth and history. He was entrenched in the Jewish system. He belong to the 12th of the 12 tribes of Israel and Benjamin the head of the tribe was the only one actually born in the land of Israel. The tribe of Benjamin had the territory of Jerusalem, the holy city. And the very first King of Israel came from the tribe of Benjamin. So if you are Jew, that’s one thing. If you’re of the tribe of Benjamin that almost makes you super Jewish.

Okay, so let’s pull it together. Paul says look I myself am super Jewish, in the old Israel, ethnic race Israel way…but God has not rejected me! He sent Jesus to me when I was on my way to Damascus one year to kill Christians and Jesus appeared to me and had mercy and grace on me and now I love him and am telling you about him. I haven’t been rejected and so maybe there are others out from old Israel who will be a part of the new Israel people of God too.

No. Support #2: The Promise – God Foreknew His People

That’s answer number one. Answer number two, is God’s promise that he foreknows his people. Look at it, verse 2 “God has not rejected his people who he foreknew.” It’s the same thing he said back in chapter 8 of Romans when he said, “those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the images of his Son (Rom 8:29).”
We learned back then that when the Bible says God foreknows something, it does not mean God is looking in the future and trying to see or figure out what is going to happen. For you smart ones out there, it does not mean God is considering all the potential counterfactuals and knows every possible world. That is philosophy, that is not Scripture, that is not what the word “foreknow” means.

For God to foreknow is for him to forelove. It means God knows his people before they are born, he has in mind a destiny and a purpose to bring them into a loving knowledge and relationship with him. Of Jeremiah he said, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you (Jer. 1:5).” Of all God’s people, he says in Amos, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth (Amos 3:2).” To foreknow is to know someone, with a relationship focus, ahead of time. So what foreknow is getting at is God’s promise and determination to love a group of people.

So hear the text on this. “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” If he had, that would be a contradiction. It would be like God making a square circle or walking forward and backward at the same time…which makes no sense. God has promised and said he knows his people even before they actually become his people in our time world…so God can’t know eternally and then all the sudden not know his people anymore. That’s dumb. And God isn’t dumb.

No. Support #3: The Past – The 7,000 of Elijah’s Time

Okay, so far Paul has said God has not rejected his people because he has accepted Paul and because God has revealed in Scripture that he knows and has determined to love his people long before they ever actually become his people…he foreloves them. Now his third and answer or proof comes directly from a Scriptural example and story. It’s a great story. So let me re-read the text in Romans and then I’ll go back and fill in the story for us all.

From verse 3 and 4. “Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.’ But what is God’s reply to him? ‘I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’”

Okay so here is the story in full. It’s a story from 1 Kings 18-19 in the Old Testament. God’s people were living in Samaria where a dude named Ahab was king over Israel along with his wife Jezebel. Under their leadership, they taught and allowed for all kinds of different religion. There was a mixing of the God of the Bible along with other ancient gods and beliefs. Sort of like San Diego…it’s a melting pot of different ideas and different forms of worship and different beliefs. You got karma and reincarnation and nirvana meditation alongside worship of God and reading the Bible and living a holy life…it’s a big mixed mess and the administrative pastor King Ahab doesn’t care and more than that his wife Jezebel actually kind of really like and believes in this one god called Baal more than Yahweh, the God of the Bible.

Now God starts moving in one of his men, Elijah. The first thing Elijah does is to do what the Bible including Jesus himself says to do when you got a problem with someone and see that they are doing something wrong…you go to them and confront them in love alone one on one, man to man. Elijah does that. Ahab doesn’t respond very well and the result is a contest. This is great stuff…

All the prophets of Baal and another god Asherah, there’s 850 of them together are called to Mount Carmel for a spiritual contest between their gods Baal and Asherah, and God, Yahweh, the God of the Bible. It’s 850 pastors and scholars against 1, Elijah, the Bible guy. So Elijah says okay. I’ll prepare a bull to sacrifice and you prepare a bull. You put your bull on your altar and I’ll put my bull on the altar and we’ll both call upon our god and whoever’s god answers with fire down out of heaven to burn up the bull on the altar that will be a sign of whose God is real.

So the Baal pastors are stoked on this. They prepare their altar and pray and start asking Baal to send down fire. Elijah taunts them and says maybe he is off having sex either with someone else or by himself or maybe he’s on a trip or maybe he’s asleep. That makes the Baal pastors mad, so in addition to their prayers they start self-mutilating. They cut themselves with swords so that they bleed thinking that will please Baal and invoke him to answer. But nothing.

After a long time of that, Elijah finally says okay come here. He repairs the Yahweh’s altar. Which has been broken down and not used for years because everyone has been worshipping Baal. So he repairs it, puts the 12 stones back in place digs a moat around it and then ask them to start filling up huge jars with water and pouring it all over the wood and the bull. He has them do it three times so that everything is just soaked and the trench around the altar is filled with water. Then Elijah prays. He prays this, “O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O LORD, answer me that this people may know that you O LORD are God and that you have turned their hearts back (1 Ki 19:36-37).”

After he prays that, fire comes down out of heaven burns up the bull, the wood, and even the water. All the people then cry out, “The LORD (Yahweh) he is God; the LORD, he is God.” And Elijah says okay, if so, if you believe that then put these false prophets of Baal to the sword and they do killing all 850 of these lying deceiving pastors. The Bible says pastors will be judged more sharply (Js 3:1), that’s why it matters to me a lot that I take great care in what I teach you from the Bible. I don’t want God to have to have you to put me to the sword.

It is a shocking and powerful story. But here’s what happens afterward. Word gets back to Jezebel and she is mad as hell and wants Elijah dead. Elijah has just had a great day of ministry, seeing the power and work of the LORD. But quickly his faith diminishes and he gets scared and he runs for his life and goes and hides out in a cave for 40 days and nights for fear that he is going to be killed. He starts contemplating death, becomes depressed and suicidal, and then he starts getting mad at God.

You guys ever had that happen? Things are going well in your walk with Jesus, God really seems to be working in your life or working through you in a big way and then BAM! Something happens afterward and you get really down and out and you start to doubt everything. Ever had that happen? I have. It seems that the most challenging points in our growth and maturity are right afterward we have taken a significant step forward. Then the testing and temptation come.

So Elijah is down and this is what he says to God…”I have been very jealous for (you) LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed all your prophets with the sword and I, even I only, am left and they seek my life to take it away (1 Ki 19:14).” God answers Elijah and this is what he says, “(I have) seven thousand in Israel, all (whose) knees have not bowed to Baal and (whose) mouth(s) have not kissed him (1 Ki 19:18).”

That’s what Paul picks up and takes to Romans. God, back then, in past history, had 7,000 whom he kept for himself who were loved, foreknown, and accepted by God, even when it seemed like everyone had turned away.

So get the parallel and why it is an answer and a support for whether or not God is a God who rejects his people…This story teaches two things. One, it is not physical, ethnic, race Israel who are the people of God, it is the ones whom God has determined are his people for himself. Two, it teaches that even when most the whole or majority has rejected God, there is always a group within the group, a people within the people…whom God reserves and protects and loves and accepts.

So in Paul’s day, when the majority of ethnic, race, old Israel Jews had rejected Jesus, God’s Son, that does not mean that God had rejected his people for they never really were his people just on the basis of their bloodline. Those who are his people, are those whom he foreloves, and those whom he foreloves God keeps for himself and the way he does that on this side of Jesus’ coming into history is by enabling them to see and know and love his son Jesus.

The Answer: God’s People are a Remnant Chosen by God’s Grace

So there’s been three supports given to show that God is not a God who rejects his people. What Paul does in verses 5-10 is he takes all of those support and then draws some theological conclusions about what makes any of God’s people God’s people…whether or not they are historical Israel or not.

But we’re not going to take the time to get into all of that today. I’m going to leave the bulk of it for next week and give you some pastoral thoughts on election. So for today I’m just going to read verse 5. Make a few remarks and then we’ll conclude.

Verse 5 says, “So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.” God’s people are a remnant chosen by grace. A remnant. A remnant is something that is left or last. The Greek word could be used as a last musical notes in a composure, the left over goods that don’t sell at the marketplace, the final skirmishes in battle after the war is already won, the last embers of a fire, the remaining symptoms or scars at the end of a sickness, or the fragments of cloth or wood after a sewing or carpentry project. A remnant.

God says here in his book that his people are a remnant and that this remnant is chosen by his grace. What’s that mean? For Israel, ethnic, race, national Israel…at that time I think it meant that out of that whole of that Israel only a portion would be spared and proven to be truly God’s people. The remnant. What does that mean for us? I think it means this, out of all the people who show an interest in religion, who express a slight inkling towards Jesus, only a remnant of those will ever actually fall in love with him.

That is what Jesus himself taught. He said, “The gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few (Matt 7:13-14).” Many, many people get interested in Jesus. He is an interesting dude. But few will stick with him because they truly love and believe in him.

In each of the gospels in the New Testament you see this progressive turning away from Jesus as he moves closer and closer towards the cross. At first everyone is all hyped up on him, Jesus is awesome. He is smart, funny, wise, can perform miraculous feats, is a spiritual sage guru, and a social revolutionary.

In John 6 Jesus says this, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father (Jn 6:64-65).” And then one of the saddest verses in the Bible… “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him (Jn 6:66).”

I think Jesus is saying the same thing there that Paul is saying in Romans. God’s people are a remnant and that remnant is chosen by grace. What is grace? We’ll dig deep into it next week. But for now, let’s use Jesus’ words, grace is “no one come(s)…unless it is granted to him by the Father.”

Conclusion

So let’s conclude. What the heck does that do for us?! If you’ve been listening carefully all the way along, that should be your response. All I’ve said all morning is God hasn’t rejected his people… One, because he grace on Paul. Two, because in determinate grace he foreloves. And three, because he had grace on 7,000 people who didn’t reject God because God kept from doing so. What the heck does that do for us?! There is no hope for us unless, God draws us as Jesus said, God must have grace for us like he did on Paul, like he does for his foreloved, and like he did for the 7,000.

Do you get what I am saying? Every sermon I try to end with application to tell you…okay here’s what we learned and here is how to respond in order to put this into practice in your life. But this whole sermon has been about God and his activity, his grace, his determined love as the only thing that can help us.

If we think there is anything we can do we are lost. We can’t draw ourselves. We can’t have grace on ourselves. We can’t preserve ourselves. So what do I tell you as your pastor?

Is the conclusion of this sermon, well I guess I just hope God has grace on me? No, it’s not. The conclusion to this sermon is you knowing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is found only in the grace of God extended to you. If I have convinced you of that, though I have not even addressed things like life and joy…but merely convinced you that unless God has grace on you you’re life is hopeless then I have done my job.

My goal has been this…to implant a desire and taste in you for the grace of God. By telling you it is your only hope my intent is that you would then want it and crave it and long for it and be jealous for it and pursue it and pray for it and love it and admire it and depend on it. What I am calling for is something beyond which words can describe. I am saying “hunger for God.” I am saying, “Call out to Jesus and say have grace on me.” I am saying, say to Jesus, “Jesus, I need you more than I have ever known.” I am saying, “Let your soul be caught up and entranced and asphyxiated with greater God-centeredness then you have ever known.” I am saying “Let yourself be weak and needy and poor and humble and lowly and let God pour out his love upon you.

Why I say all that is this…because if somehow in my saying that something is stirred in your being then I know that is my God working in you imparting his grace. I can’t make God give you grace and you can’t make him give it to you either. But I can expound on the glories of his grace and God delights in granting grace when we talk about how great it is.

I want to close with an old old hymn called “Sovereign Grace O’er Sin Abounding.” I encourage you just to close your eyes and allow it’s words to melt your soul.

Sovereign grace o’er sin abounding!
Ransomed souls, the tidings swell;
’Tis a deep that knows no sounding;
Who its breadth or length can tell?
On its glories, Let my soul for ever dwell.

What from Christ that soul can sever,
Bound by everlasting bands?
Once in Him, in Him for ever;
Thus the eternal covenant stands.
None shall take Thee From the Strength of Israel’s hands.

Heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus,
Long ere time its race begun;
To His name eternal praises;
O what wonders love has done!
One with Jesus, By eternal union one.

On such love, my soul, still ponder,
Love so great, so rich, so free;
Say, while lost in holy wonder,
Why, O Lord, such love to me?
Hallelujah! Grace shall reign

Hallelujah! Grace shall reign
Hallelujah! Grace shall reign eternally.