You’ve Been Grafted
(Romans 11:13-32)
1. One frustration we sometimes experience in dealing with people is when they blame others for things that are really their own fault.
2. A woman met with a counselor and stated, "I want to divorce my husband."
?On what grounds?” asked the counselor.
?Grounds? We have two acres at the edge of town with a big lawn and some fruit trees.”
?No, that's not what I meant. Do you have a grudge?”
?Yes, we've a two car garage but only one car so we use the rest for storage.”
“Okay,” said the counselor with growing impatience, ?Does he beat you up?”
?No, I'm up by 6:30 and sometimes he does not get up until after I've left for work.”
?WHY DO YOU WANT A DIVORCE?”
?We just can't seem to communicate.”
2. To the Jews who rejected Jesus, He was the problem. Nonetheless, some Jews did believe while gentiles had come to faith as well. But how would and should the two groups of believers interact? Is the church completely independent of Israel? And should the church forget that Her Messiah, apostles, and founders were all Jewish?
MAIN IDEA: Biblical Christianity and Biblical Judaism are joined at the hip, because they are founded upon God’s gifts and calling, which are irrevocable.
I. Jewish Believers Are the FIRST FRUITS of What is to Come (13-15).
A. Jewish unbelief may he longstanding, but it is TEMPORARY.
B. Like a resurrection, it will be an AMAZING blessing when the Jewish people turn to Jesus.
• An illusion to Ezekiel’s Dry Bones Prophecy (Ezekiel 37)
C. The few Jewish believers are but the FIRST FRUITS.
D. These few Jewish believers, in a sense, SANCTIFY the gentile believers.
• As a child, did you ever play a game called electricity?
II. In A Sense, The Church Draws Her Life from ISRAEL (17-24).
A. Gentile Believers Are GRAFTED into Israel’s Tree
1. A cultivated branch is typically grafted into a wild olive tree; the only time they did this is when that tree stops producing fruit.
2. We graft to hybridize. Or, take the case of the seedless naval orange.
The “fruit salad tree”—a single shrub that can grow up to seven different kinds of fruit from the same family on its branches—actually exists.
While the concept is totally mind blowing, these trees are developed through an age-old horticultural process called grafting that joins together tissues from two or more plants. Since grafting creates specialized hybrids, the variety of multi-fruit trees are as vast as the fruits they can yield: from one that can produce various apples (red! green! yellow!) for the cider and pie-obsessed, to another that can grow up to seven kinds of citrus, including oranges, lemons, and even pomelos at once. Since each type of fruit has its own harvest time, these trees produce a steady flow of produce once it’s been carefully pruned. You’ll never run out of ingredients for a killer smoothie ever again. [source: www.brit.co/fruit-salad-tree/]
3. Israel was not producing the fruit of faith in Messiah, so unbelieving branches were cut off and believing gentiles were spliced in.
4. The issue here is not individual salvation, but types of people saved.
B. We are being hosted and sustained by Israel’s ROOTS.
C. WHO or what are the “roots?”
1. Jesus, the King? A king and his kingdom are often interchanged in Scritpture.
2. The Apostles were all Jews.
3. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
4. Moses, David, Elijah and Elisha?
5. All the above.
D. Jesus clearly stated that “salvation is from the JEWS” (John 4:22).
E. One day, the natural branches will be GRAFTED back in (24).
1. “…the restoration of Israel is an easier process then the call of the Gentiles…”
2. The church does not replace Israel as far as God’s promises for Israel; it does dwell in the place of God’s blessing until Israel is re-grafted in.
3. Both the church and end time Israel share in the same New Covenant and both are part of the Kingdom of God. But Israel refers to a nation, and the church is not a “new Israel,” but people called out from every tribe, kindred and nation. Each will glorify God, but each in her own way.
III. In the Last Days, God Will REGENERATE Israel (25-27)
A. This partial hardening will one day END (25)
B. When the QUOTA of gentiles is met, God will turn his attention to the Jews.
1. This re-direction occurs during Tribulation when God saves 12,000 Jews from each of Israel’s tribes; then the surviving nation of Israel believes during Armageddon (26-27)
2. This does not mean all Jews are automatically saved or that they can be saved apart from Christ….this is talking about a point in time when all Israel present on earth will be saved…
Zechariah 12:9-10, “And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”
Zechariah 13:8-9, “In the whole land, declares the Lord, two thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left alive. And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’” "
C. God will MAKE IT SO, He Whose gifts and call are irrevocable.
IV. Thus There is No Room for ANTI-SEMITISM Among Christians (28-32)
A. From one angle, it would be tempting to LASH OUT at Jewish opposition (28a).
• I don’t know about you, but when people do not like me, I usually choose not to like them. Are you that way?
B. We honor the reality that Israel is God’s beloved and CHOSEN nation (28b).
Through ancestry.com, I had my genetics traced. I found out some surprises... found out I am really mostly Czech, then Polish, then Slovak and then Lithuanian. No Jewish!
So when I say these things about Israel, I have not stake, personally, in them. It comes from a straightforward interpretation of Scripture.
Jeremiah 31:35-36, “Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name: “If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.”
Zechariah 8:23, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’”
CONCLUSION
1. God’s gifts and calling are irrevocable.
2. This is why Israel, despite her sins, has a future.
3. This is why the church, despite her sins, has a future.
4. This is why the called believer has a future as well.
5. Because our God does as He pleases, and because it is His nature to be faithful, we are in good hands. He will deliver on what He has promised, for He is truly Sovereign.
