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Romans 11:1-10Can God Be Trusted?WREFC 5/05/19The Prussian King, Fredrick the Great had been listening to Voltaire’s antichristian ideas. He asked his court chaplain, “If the Bible is true there ought to be a clear and succinct witness to that fact. When I ask if the Bible is true, I’m usually handed a long scholarly volume which I have neither the time nor the patience to read. If your Bible is true, give me the proof of it in one word. The chaplain answered, “Your Majesty, that word is Israel.” He was right.There are certainly other single words that prove that the Bible is trustworthy—words like sin, salvation, and Christ. But the history of Israel is enough to show that God’s Word is true, and that God Himself can be trusted. God made certain promises to the nation Israel. It began with His unconditional covenant with Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation. Here’s the covenant promise stated in Gen. 12: “I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed (Genesis 12:2-3).Did Israel reject Jesus as her Messiah? Yes! Does that mean that God has forsaken the Jewish people? No. Contrary to what many Christians think, God is not through with the Jew. The promises God made with Israel will be fulfilled by the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If I promise to buy my wife Jean a new car, and then I give it to someone else, I haven’t fulfilled my promise to Jean. When it comes to Israel, God’s character is at stake. He made certain promises to Israel. His trustworthiness depends on the preservation of His Chosen People, the Jews.Romans 9-11 is the Apostle Paul’s explanation as to why Israel is still part of God’s prophetic plan. Here’s what we’ve seen so far in chapters 9 & 10: In Romans 9 we looked at Israel’s past. The key word is election. We saw that Jewish unbelief was tied to God’s electing purposes. Not every individual Jew in Israel was elected by God for salvation. In Romans 10 we looked at Israel’s present situation. The key word is rejection. Though the gospel was preached to the Jews, they rejected it. God in turn rejected Israel and turned to the Gentiles in grace. That brings us to Romans 11. In Romans 11 we’re looking at Israel’s future. The key word is salvation. Paul is going to tell us that God is not finished with the nation Israel. Chapter 11 can be divided into three major sections: Vv.1-10 show us that Israel’s rejection is partial, not total. Even though God has set aside the Nation Israel as a whole, He has always preserved a remnant of Jewish believers within the nation.Then, in vv.11-32, the apostle Paul shows us that God’s rejection of Israel is temporary, not permanent. Their future looks bright. All Israel will be saved when the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. Then Paul ends the chapter in vv.33-36 with worship. He offers a hymn of praise to God for His wisdom in taking Israel’s rejection of Christ and turning it into an opportunity for a worldwide proclamation of the Gospel of Christ! With that overview of Romans 9-11, let’s get right into the text. Rd Rom. 11:1a“His people [God’s people] are the Jews. The Jews may have rejected God’s Messiah, but has God returned the favor and cast them aside forever? Are the Jewish people no longer relevant in the scheme of God’s purposes and plans? Paul answered with the strongest negative in the Gk. language—“Certainly not!” The KJV has “God forbid!” God abandon the chosen people? Impossible! God did not throw Israel under the bus! His rejection of Israel is partial, not total. Paul now gives three reasons why God has not given up on Israel. Reason #1 is Paul himself:Rd Rom. 11:1bIn other words, GOD IS NOT THROUGH WITH ISRAEL BECAUSE PAUL HIMSELF WAS JEWISH.Paul was not a proselyte to Judaism. He was a Jew by birth—100% Israelite. He was a physical descendant of Abraham and a member of the favored tribe of Judah—one of the two tribes that never seceded from the nation.Although Paul doesn’t mention it here in Romans, before Paul got saved, he persecuted the Church. The Book of Acts tells us that Paul was one of the most Christ-hating, Christian-bashing Jews in Israel. But he went from hating Christ and terrorizing Christians to becoming the greatest preachers of the gospel the world has ever seen. In essence, Paul is saying “Look at me and remember what I used to be and what I am now. I was opposed to Christ, now I’m an apostle of Christ. If God could save a Christ-rejecting Jew like me, He can save any Jew.” In 1 Tim. 1:16, Paul refers to himself as a pattern of how others get saved: “However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.” Notice the phrase, “as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him.” In what way is Paul’s conversion a pattern for other conversions? There is very little about Paul’s conversion that parallels our salvation experience today. None of us has seen the risen Christ or actually heard Him speak from heaven. We were neither blinded by the light of heaven nor thrown to the ground. Again, we have to ask, “In what way is Paul’s conversion “a pattern”? One commentator suggests that it’s a pattern or picture of how the nation Israel will be saved at the 2nc Coming of Jesus Christ at the end of the Tribulation. The details of Israel’s future salvation are given in Zechariah 12:10–13:1. The nation shall see Him as He returns (Zech. 14:4; Acts 1:11; Rev. 1:7), repent of their unbelief, and receive Him as their Savior. It will be a supernatural experience similar to that of Paul’s conversion on the Damascus Road (Acts 9). (1)This is why Paul used himself as the first reason why God has not given up on the Jews. Not only does the fact that he was saved prove that there is a future for Israel, but the way he was saved proves that God has a plan for Israel. In the next verse, Paul gives a 2nd reason why God’s rejection of Israel is partial and not total: Rd Rom. 11:2aGod’s rejection of Israel is partial, not total because He foreknew them. Paul is talking about God’s Foreknowledge, not His Omniscience. There is a difference. Omniscience is an attribute of God. God is all knowing. He knows everything about everything in advance. He doesn’t have to take continuing education courses to stay on top of current trends. Nothing ever surprises God or catches Him off guard. Onmiscience deals with facts and events. (2) Now let’s define Foreknowledge. Foreknowledge is not an attribute of God; it’s an action of God. Omniscience describes who God is. But foreknowledge is what God does. Omniscience is cognitive knowledge of facts and events. But foreknowledge is God’s predetermined plan to choose people to be the recipients of His love and grace. Foreknowledge deals with people, not facts or events. You might call foreknowledge a relational knowledge.In the bible, the verb “to know” often refers to intimacy. In Gen.5:2, it says that when Adam “knew” his wife, she conceived. In this instance, Adam’s knowledge of his wife was more than academic. This relational aspect of knowing was expressed by God to Israel. In Amos 3:2 God says to His covenant people “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.” Does that mean that God had no awareness that the Babylonians and Egyptians existed? Of course not. God knows all things. He’s omniscient. But God did not know the Babylonians and Egyptians on relational terms. That’s foreknowledge and foreknowledge was reserved for Israel. God singled out the nation Israel. He selected them to be His covenant people in eternity past. He chose the descendants of Abraham to be the focus of His love before the foundations of the world. As one commentator put it “‘Foreknowledge then means ‘fore-loved’”. (3) Israel is the only nation that God foreknew to be the objects of His covenant love. Moses said to Israel, “The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers …” (Deut.7:6-8a)And here’s the point of going the extra mile to explain foreknowledge. Because God had a predetermined plan to choose Israel and to set His covenent love on them forever, He can never totally reject them. To do so would cancel His promises; it would compromise His faithfulness; and it would discredit His integrity. Reformed theologians say that the N.T. church replaced Israel as the chosen people. That’s why it’s called “replacement theology.” They reason, since Israel rejected Jesus as her Messiah, all the promises that God made to Israel are now transferred to the church. But there’s nothing in Romans 9-11 that says anything about the church inheriting Israel’s promises. If that were true, then Paul would have clearly stated it in these chapters, which he does not do. If you take the Scriptures at their common sense face value, the promises that God made with Israel will be fulfilled by Israel! Paul’s second point is that for God to totally reject the people whom He has foreknown would be unthinkable. That brings us to the third reason why God is not finished with the Jewish nation. GOD IS NOT THROUGH WITH ISRAEL BECAUSE GOD ALWAYS PRESERVED A REMNANT OF BELIEVING JEWS. Rd Rom. 11:2b-3The third example comes from the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. After his great victory over the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, Elijah got depressed. Yes, even God’s choice servants get discouraged. Anyway, Elijah had courageously stood up to 450 pagans prophet, but now he was afraid of one woman. Her name was Jezebel, wife of Ahab, king of Israel. She threatened to kill him for humiliating the prophets of Baal. So he runs away and hides in a cave. While he was hiding, the Lord asked him a simple question: “What are you doing here?” (v.9). Elijah says something like this: “Lord, you don’t understand. The whole nation of Israel has rejected you. I am the only faithful servant left, and now they’re trying to kill me too” (v. 10). God gives Elijah some good news. Back to Rom.11:4. It’s a quote from I Kings 19:10:Rd Rom. 11:4Elijah said “I am the only one left.” The Lord said, “Wrong. You’re not alone. I’ve got 7,000 faithful people just like you scattered all over the land who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” God always had a remnant of Jewish believers—a smaller group of faithful Jews within the Nation. While the Jews were captives in Babylon, most of them refused to turn to God. But there were members in the society of the faithful few. Believers like Daniel, Ezekiel, Shadrack, Meshach, Abednego were part of the remnant that remained faithful to the Lord. When Jesus declared Himself to be Israel’s Messiah, they rejected Him and crucified Him. But there was a godly remnant of Jews who anticipated His birth—Zacharias, Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph. There was a godly remnant who worshiped Jesus when He was an infant including Simeon, Anna, and the shepherds. At least 3,000, mostly Jews, came to Christ on the Day of Pentecost. By the time the apostle Paul penned Romans, there may have been 10’s of thousands of Jewish believers throughout the Roman Empire! God has always had a remnant of believing Jews.The fact that God worked through a remnant in Elijah’s time and in Paul’s time shows that He doesn’t need great numbers to get His will done on earth. Did you ever feel like Elijah? Some call it the Elijah complex: “I’m the only one living for God. I’m the only believer not bowing down to the idols of materialism and worldliness. I’m the only Christian sharing his faith and making disciple makers.” That’s faulty thinking that needs correcting. Should we say that’s prideful thinking that needs repenting? Realize that you’re not alone. God always has a small remnant to accomplish His sovereign purposes. The fact that all Jews shared in the covenant promises as a nation did not guarantee their salvation. Like their patriarch Abraham, each individual Jew must have faith in God’s provision of salvation. In the next verse, Paul tells us how that Jewish remnant gets saved:Rd Rom. 11:5-6There is only one basis for the remnant’s salvation—God’s grace. There is only one way that anybody secures a right relationship with God whether Jew or Gentile—it’s a gift to be received by faith. Inspired by Satan, sinful man attempts to establish a second way of salvation—salvation through self effort and good works. Salvation by works is not biblical, and it never works. It cannot work because the Bible says you are saved by grace through faith, and not by works. (Eph.2:8-9) When it comes to going to heaven, you can’t mix grace and works. You can go by the grace of God or you can try to get there by your own good works. But I’ve got bad news. Self effort has no merit. Works won’t work. Heaven is a free gift. You get to heaven either by grace though faith, apart from works, or you don’t go at all. And some people make faith a work by thinking that it’s their faith that saves them. No, it’s not faith that saves you, but it’s your faith alone in Christ alone that saves you. When some people fall into a pit of despair, they think it’s up to them to find a way out. They try to scratch and crawl out on their own initiative by grabbing onto drugs and alcohol or secular counseling and positive thinking. Have you ever tried to crawl out of the pit with those methods? How did that work for you? Were any of them long term solutions? Do you know what works better than crawling out? How about calling out? Call out to God in prayer. Cry out to God for His mercy and grace. Let God deliver you from the pit. This is precisely what Paul wants us to understand about Israel. The failure of Israel could not nullify God’s plan to bless His people. While Israel’s hope is a future hope, it’s a certain hope. It’s a certain hope because it’s based upon the principle of grace. It’s a confident hope because of the character of God. As the words of one song say, “More secure is no one ever, than the loved ones of the Savior …” Doxologically speaking, Praise God from whom salvation blessings flow! The ongoing preservation of a Jewish remnant proves that God is not through with Israel. In the end times, God will seal for Himself a remnant of 144,000 Jewish evangelists. He will protect them from Antichrist as they witness during the terrible days of the Tribulation. Paul assures us in v.26 that in the end, “all Israel will be saved.”But what happened to the rest of the nation Israel? What happened to the Jews who didn’t believe God? Paul explains in v.7:Rd Rom. 11:7There will always be a small remnant of Jewish believers. But the vast majority of Jews within the nation Israel “were hardened.” Hardened by whom? Hardened by God! Did the nation Israel fail to believe in Christ because they were hardened by God? No, they were hardened by God, because they failed to believe in Christ. Theologians call this “judicial hardening.” Do you remember our discussion of Pharaoh in chapter 9? God judicially hardened Pharaoh’s heart because Pharaoh first hardened his heart towards God. God told Pharaoh “Let My People go!” and Pharaoh repeatedly said “No!” You would expect a pagan king like Pharaoh to harden his heart toward God, but you don’t expect it from God’s chosen people! But that’s exactly what happened. Paul makes that clear in the next verse. Combining two quotes from the O.T. Books of Isaiah and Deuteronomy, Paul says this in v.8:Rd Rom. 11:8 "A spirit of stupor" conveys the idea of mental numbness. It’s the feeling of being half asleep or being stunned so that you can’t think properly. The hardening of Israel’s heart by God is here further explained as a spiritual numbness or drowsiness to the things of God.Because Israel repeatedly rejected the goodness of God, God numbed their sensitivity to spiritual things. The verse goes on to say that God blinded them to the blessings in front of them. He deafened their ears to what the prophets were telling them. God had to send the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions to wake them out of their spiritual stupor so they could repent of their rebellion, idolatry, and disobedience and turn back to God. God will do something similar in the future. He will use the judgments of the Great Tribulation to awaken Israel out of her spiritual slumber. God will open their eyes and ears to the truth at the 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ. That’s when the Jews repent of their rebellious ways and call upon the Lord to save them. The prediction of v.26 will thus be fulfilled—“… all Israel will be saved …”. God keeps His promises, but it’s on His timetable, not ours. Be patient. Wait on the Lord. He’s faithful. He’s trustworthy. Yes, God can be trusted! Before we move on to the next section, there’s an application I want to make from vv.7-8. A 2013 report by globalchristianity listed the top 20 countries where Christianity has the highest percentage growth rate. I wasn’t surprised to find out that 19 of the top 20 countries are in Asia and Africa. Not a single country in Europe, North America or Latin America made the top 20 list. (4)Why is that? I can’t speak for Europe or Latin America, but perhaps judicial hardening come into play for the USA. Let me explain. Our nation has been saturated with the good news of Jesus Christ for decades. We’ve had an abundance of gospel preaching through local churches, evangelistic crusades, and religious programming on radio, TV, and other media venues. People from Los Angeles to Boston have been exposed to the gospel repeatedly, rejected it consistently, and hardened their hearts to it completely. So I ask the question: Has God hardened their hearts? Has He given them “a spirit of stupor; eyes that they should not see; and ears that they should not hear …”? It’s His sovereign right to do so. And what about you? Have you hardening your heart to the things of God? Have you repeatedly ignored the clear commands of Scripture? If so, remember what happened to Pharaoh; think about Christ rejecting Israel. If God hardened their hearts because they hardened their hearts towards Him, why do you think you’d be in any less danger of God hardening your heart because you first hardened your heart towards Him? Do hard-hearted Christians lose their salvation? No, but they are in danger of losing the joy of their salvation. We Christians cannot enjoy the abundant Christian life unless we believe that God can be trusted to do what He promised even though we can’t see how He’s going to fulfill that promise. That’s why Hebrews 3:12-13 gives this warning to Christians: “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; 13?but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” This verse tells us to exhort or to encourage one another when our hearts become dull and insensitive to the will of God. Hardheartedness is a far more dangerous spiritual malady than we may realize. The cure is repentance, confession, and trust in the faithfulness of God. Paul ends this section in Romans with a strange sounding quote from Psalm 69: Rd Romans 11:9-10 The concept of “table” in the O.T. usually refers to provision, protection, and blessing. David used it that way in the 23rd Psalm when he said “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” But the table here in v.9 is not a blessing; it’s a snare, a trap, a stumbling block. Israel considered the Law of Moses as the source of God’s blessing. But that Law became a source of judgment to them. Why? Because they worshiped the Law instead of God the Law-Giver.Their “Chosen People” status should have led them to saving faith in Christ, but instead, their privileged status became their ruin. Why? Because they replaced faith righteousness with law righteousness. Doing something to attain salvation became a substitute for believing what God did to secure their salvation. Consequently, Israel became so blind to the truth that they didn’t even recognize their Messiah when He came the first time. Because Israel refused to see things from God’s perspective, God judicially confirmed their spiritual blindness. As v.10 says “Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see, and bow down their back always.”What about this bent back statement? Some say the bent back imagery refers to the weight of guilt for rejecting God’s Messiah. Others say it portrays a blind man bent over, groping to find his way in the darkness. (5) Whatever the interpretation, it’s another expression of judgment for rejecting God’s way of salvation.Going to church is a good thing, but church attendance won’t save you. Having daily devotions is good, but the routine of bible study and prayer, in and of itself won’t save you. The only way to be saved is by trusting in Jesus Christ who said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” When you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose again, you will escape God’s judgment and gain God’s heaven.If you think the ladder of good works will extend to heaven, you are in for a big surprise. One second after you die, the ladder you thought would get you to heaven was actually a shoot that will send you sliding into hell. There is only one way into heaven—repent of your self-righteous efforts to get in and trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to get you there.Israel’s future blessings are certain, because they’re based upon God’s sovereign grace and not on human works. God has not given up on Israel! Israel’s hope is secure, because it rests in the promises of God. Is there a promise you need to claim? Israel’s past, present, and future reminds us that God is faithful. He’s trustworthy. He keeps His Word. Trust Him for your spiritual needs; trust Him for your physical needs; trust Him for your social, emotional, and relational needs. You will never regret it. You will still be glad 25 years from now, a 1000 years from now, a million years from now.Don’t delay! Trust Him today! If you keep rejecting the light of God’s goodness and grace, you may find yourself in the darkness of His judicial hardening. Turn to God in faith before He sends you a spirit of stupor. ________________________________________ (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Freeman, Richard E.? 2007, The Heart of the Gospel. , p.71 ................
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