Book of Romans
Lesson #26
Romans 11:1 - 11:14
By Rev. James May
Israel had rejected God so many times. They had been an unfaithful people, always running off in search of another love besides that which God offered to them.
Israel was God’s chosen nation and his spiritual wife of the Old Testament. God had chosen her, caused her to grow from the seed of Abraham, and provided for her throughout all of her history. Though Israel was unfaithful; God was faithful!
In a natural sense, it was as though God, being the husband, would walk in the front door of the house while his wife, Israel, was sneaking out the back door or a window to go and meet another lover. She was ever seeking after and serving idols, and always provoking God to bring a loving hand of chastisement and correction upon her. It was not God’s choice from the beginning to bring so many enemies against Israel, but the Jews kept being unfaithful and that was God’s way of trying to make them return and be faithful.
If you read the Book of Hosea, you will find that God commissioned Hosea to find a harlot and to love her and marry her, making her his wife. Yet the wife that Hosea would choose would not be faithful to him. Hosea was to live out in a natural sense, what God felt in a spiritual sense.
God loved Israel with all his heart; but Israel didn’t love God in return. In time God had enough of Israel’s unfaithfulness and finally had to allow them to the scattered to the winds and the nation of Israel ceased to exist for nearly 2000 years.
But even though God allowed them to run and be unfaithful; he wasn’t through Israel yet! God’s love never fails! He would make a way for Israel to return to him and be faithful as they should have been all along!
When it seemed that all hope for Israel was lost and that God had given up on them, Paul says that God had only just begun. God’s love would cause him to raise Israel once again from the ash heap of history!
Romans 11:1 I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
Paul himself was living proof that God had not forgotten Israel! He was a man of God, filled with the Spirit of God; called and anointed in the high office of the kingdom of God as an Apostle! Yet he was also a Jew, born under the covenant of Abraham, and was a member of the Tribe of Benjamin!
Romans 11:2 God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying,
Romans 11:3 Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.
Though God allowed the Jews to be dispersed, conquered and carried away into slavery as a form of correction, he never gave up on them as his chosen people. That should give us so much to shout about! If God wouldn’t give up on Israel; then he won’t give up on us either when we fail!
In the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah had given up on Israel. His prayer to the Lord was that he alone was left to serve God and that every other member of the nation of Israel had turned their back on God and now refused to serve him. The Jews were killing the prophets because they didn’t want to hear the truth. Elijah was on the run for his very life and it seemed that he alone was left to stand for God and his righteousness.
Israel, much as we are today, attempted to rid their national consciousness of the knowledge of God. They wanted to erase the Law, do away with the covenant of Abraham and declare themselves as their own gods. They didn’t want to be accountable to a God! They wanted to believe as it pleased them and act upon their own beliefs no matter what the consequences.
Sometimes I feel like Elijah and I begin to think, “Lord, what’s the use in continuing to fight this battle? Why should we work so hard to preach the gospel when the world just won’t listen and our nation turns a deaf ear? Why continue to fight the spiritual warfare against the devil only to see our efforts fail? Is there a point when we should just throw in the towel and forget the whole thing, then hunker down, hold on and just wait for the Rapture while we hide in a cave somewhere?”
Lord, the church has failed you, and, Yes, I have failed you too. We just can’t seem to make a dent in the sin of those around us. Is our ministry really accomplishing anything? Why don’t you just end this and take us on to Heaven?
Elijah gave up! He was ready to throw in the towel and just let God kill him where he stood and get it over with. But God had other plans!
Romans 11:4 But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.
It’s never as bad as the devil tries to make us believe! In fact, it’s often just the opposite of what our natural eyes can behold! Our God never fails, and he always makes a way!
In Elijah’s day, God had reserved to himself 7000 faithful and praying Israelites to carry on the name of the Lord. These Jews were as faithful to God as they could be and God knew every one of them by name!
In an unfaithful wife, God saw a lot of good that was worth saving, so he made a way for Israel to remain as a people. God always has a remnant; a faithful few, who will not bend to the wishes of the world around them; will not bow the pressure of idolatry and deceitfulness, and as a result they will not burn with desire to forsake God and go after the desires of the flesh.
Romans 11:5 Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.
Paul now reminds the Saints in Rome that though Israel may be under the heel of the Roman army, and Israel would face truly hard times, God was still with them. Even in that day a remnant of faithful Jews, who worshipped the God of Heaven, was still there. Paul was a part of that remnant, and so were all of the other converted Jews who had accepted Jesus as their Messiah.
It’s all by God’s grace! It’s nothing that any of those who are a part of the remnant have done; but it’s by God’s election and through his design to preserve a name for himself among men. By the grace of God we are here right now because not one of us deserved to be here. We are all in the family of God, adopted by the grace of God alone and not through our own self-righteousness.
Romans 11:6 And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.
Grace alone! God’s grace is given through God’s love and his own desire to have a people who will worship him. All men have sinned! All are rebellious! All are on the run from God, until by his grace alone, God reaches down and turns us around! We didn’t work to find him; he worked to find us! Thank the Lord for his grace toward us!
Romans 11:7 What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded
Romans 11:8 (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day.
So has God forsaken his people? NO, of course not! Though Israel and the Jews had tried to find their own path and worship false gods, trying to make themselves worthy of salvation, they could not find that path. They could never reach that place where they deserved anything from the Lord!
But through the grace of God, some were now being blessed with having that relationship with God that everyone was seeking for but could not find. Sin had blinded them to the right path to God’s presence. Sin had hung a dark curtain between the hearts of those who chose to go on the run from the Lord.
God had allowed those who refused to hear to fall asleep spiritually. They were so in love with themselves and this present world that they were blinded to the things of the spirit world around them. They had eyes that could see the natural, but no eyes to see the spiritual. They had ears to hear the voices of friends, neighbors and even the devil; but they could not see God moving, neither could they hear the voice of the Lord speaking anymore.
Lord help us to be ever so careful that we never fall into this trap.
Romans 11:9 And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them:
Romans 11:10 Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway.
King David had seen Israel turn its back on God as well. In David’s point of view, Israel had lost it all and deserved nothing but destruction.
Their tables, that area of their lives where all the good things of life would be on display, became a source of sin. The love that the Jews had for the things of the world acted as a trap that caught them in its grip.
When they became entangled in the trap, then the trap was used by the Lord to allow justice to prevail. Sin trapped them, God’s grace held them, and then his love chastised them. The Jews would be blind to what was happening for a time, and they were forced to bend their backs in hard labor under the hand of their conquerors, and it would often seem that they would never be free again.
But they were getting only what they had asked for – bondage to sin! They were receiving the just payment for their unfaithfulness to the Lord! BUT GOD WASN’T FINISHED WITH THEM YET!
Romans 11:11 I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.
Here we see a little glimpse of how God uses our truly terrible circumstances to accomplish something good! God’s intention in allowing Israel to fall into sin was never to destroy them. God used those adverse conditions to cause the gospel to be preached the gentile nations. When the Jews saw that the gentiles were being blessed, chosen, saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, it caused the Jews to become green with envy.
How could this bunch of uncircumcised gentiles suddenly become the people that God chooses to work through? It’s just not fair! They have no laws to fulfill. They have no right to be called the Children of God, yet God has made a way for that to happen! God wanted to create within the Jews a heart of jealousy that would drive them back to him.
Romans 11:12 Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fullness?
Now Paul looks at what God’s ultimate plan is for this nation of Israel. God isn’t finished with them yet! They still have God’s heart! God still loves the Jews just as he always has. His thoughts toward them and his compassion and mercy toward them has not changed!
God still loves his unfaithful wife and he is going to make them faithful once again. He has always preserved, and is now continuing to preserve a remnant, a faithful few, who will carry on his name in the face of great opposition. God will have a people who are called by his name!
The Jews lost their position in God because of the vision that they developed and the love they created in their own hearts for the world and the prosperity of the idol nations around them.
There’s an old saying that goes like this: “Wherever your eyes are focused, is where your heart will follow and take its pleasure!”
That’s why we must guard our eyes and be careful of that which we allow to be our center of attention. Wherever you are looking, you’ll see something that you will desire, and when that desire grows and becomes big enough, it will own your heart!
As the gentiles were converted and accepted Jesus, then the spiritual riches of God’s kingdom that should have belonged to the Jews all along became more revealed.
How could the gentiles be filled with the Spirit of God while the Jews sat in spiritual blindness? How could God’s presence be so real among the gentiles while his own chosen nation sat in gross darkness and could no longer hear the voice of God speaking in their midst? How could the gentiles be set free from the bondages of sin while the Jews, who should have been free, still sat in terrible bondage, not only to sin, but a conquering nation in their midst!
This was like a thorn in the flesh to the Jews, reminding them of how much they had lost, and causing them to feel an even deeper anguish of loss of the things of God, and God’s presence. How much more could they have been blessed if only they had been the faithful wife that God wanted them to be?
Romans 11:13 For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office:
Romans 11:14 If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them.
Paul expresses the idea that he is not saying all of this to put down on the gentiles; after all, he was called and anointed to be an Apostle to the gentiles. His job in the kingdom of God was to preach to and convert gentiles to Christ and then build and teach them to become true disciples. His desire was to see that calling grow and increase and be magnified in the sight of God. He wanted the gentiles to know that his calling of God among them was of great significance, not just to the Lord, but also in Paul’s own eyes. It was a high calling of God that he did not take lightly.
What Paul had said was spoken and written only to try and stir up his own Jewish countrymen. He wanted the Jews, and the nation of Israel to experience that same move of God in their midst that the gentiles were experiencing. He wanted the Jews to see what was happening, and the great out-pouring of the Holy Ghost and fire in the gentile, and then to desire to be a part of that great revival! He wanted the Jews to get saved and become Born Again Christians just like the gentiles.
That was Paul’s great dream and the desire of his heart, and it became the focus of a great part of the letter to the saints at Rome! He wanted Israel to be saved!
