Alba 4-3-2022
THERE IS A REMNANT
Romans 11:1-10
Ajai Prakash, minister at The Well in North Liberty, Iowa, told how there was a lone tree in the farmer’s field near his home. He said it remained a mystery.
Acres of trees had been cut down so the farmer could grow corn. But one tree remained standing, its branches reaching up and spreading out. The mystery was solved when he learned the tree was spared for a purpose.
He said that the farmer had left one tree standing, just one, a remnant of all the trees that had been there, so that he and his animals would have a cool place to rest when the hot summer sun was beating down. That one tree alone survived.
At times we feel that we alone have survived something, and we don’t know why. Soldiers coming home from combat and patients who’ve survived a life-threatening illness struggle to know why they survived when others did not.
Our scripture for today tells us that God always has a remnant, a solid core of believers who trust and serve Him. And He has a purpose for each one to fulfill.
Turn to our text for today, Romans 11:1-10. Lets read.
1 I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.
Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, 3 “Lord, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life”?
4 But what does the divine response say to him? “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”
5 Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace. 6 And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work.
7 What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded. 8 Just as it is written:
“God has given them a spirit of stupor, Eyes that they should not see
And ears that they should not hear, To this very day.”
9 And David says: “Let their table become a snare and a trap,
A stumbling block and a recompense to them. 10 Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see, And bow down their back always.”
Last week we looked at some excuses that Israel used in rejecting God’s righteousness by faith, but we ended with the picture of the outstretched hands of our Merciful God, longing for His people, and all people to come to Him
As it says in Romans 10:21: "All day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people."
With that picture of our compassionate God in mind, Paul continues in Romans 11:1: has God cast away His people? Certainly not! No..
1. God has not cast His people away
God never left Israel. But Israel left Him. Not once, not twice… but repeatedly. Never throughout the long history of Israel did 100% of the nation worship God.
There has never been a time when all of those people were all in. Jesus described them as He quoted from Isaiah in Matthew 15:8, “These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.”
In this letter to the Christians in Rome, the apostle Paul wants the Israelites to know that in spite of their horrible track record of disobedience and obstinance as a nation, God is still willing and able to forgive.
God is able. And Paul is the living proof that God’s hands are still stretched out with love and grace to save anyone, including Israelites, who believes His promises and come to Him in obedient faith. i
In verse one, Paul answers the question, “has God cast away His people? Certainly not! he says, For I also am an Israelite,” arguing: “If Israelites were excluded, then I would have been excluded, too.”
The apostle Paul was a Jew, there was no question about that. He underscores it three ways: stating that he himself is an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
He uses himself as proof. He is saying “I am a full-blooded Jew.” He had even gone so far as to persecute Christians before he became a believer.
Surely if God was going to reject someone, Paul would have been a good choice. But God in His mercy and grace called Paul to Jesus and rearranged his life.
So Paul as an Israelite was receiving all of God’s salvation blessings. God had not failed to keep His Word, or cast Israel away. God was extending His salvation promises to Jews who responded in faith to His Son, and Paul was one of them.
In fact, right after the resurrection, almost all of the church was made up of Jews who believed in Jesus as the Savior, the promised Messiah.
But the majority of Jews felt that they could accomplish salvation on their own. They felt that their works would pay for their salvation. The fact is God never told them that. They missed God's grace. God told them to have faith and believe.
From the beginning of Judaism starting with Abraham, that was the way it was accomplished. But they kind of pushed that aside.
Verse seven says that Israel did not find what it was seeking, a few, the elect did, but the rest were blinded. Other translations say the rest were hardened.
Sadly many people in America have made the same mistake the Jews made. We have people in America who are blinded or “gospel-hardened.” There are those who have heard it on television. They’ve heard it on radio. They’ve seen it on billboards.
They have handled it so much that just like calluses on their hands form when they handle something over and over again, they’ve heard the gospel so many times that their hearts are hardened to it.
Still, God’s historical purpose for the Jewish nation is not over, because as it says in verse two, “God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.”
God always had a faithful remnant under His watchful eye. And His ultimate purpose was to save that remnant of physical Israel through Jesus.
That was what was prophesied by Isaiah (Isaiah 10:22) quoted in Romans 9:27. It says, “Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:'Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved.'”
God did not reject the Jews as a whole; in fact He did save some. He saved the true Israel, those of faith, who like the apostle Paul, have put their faith in Jesus.
Because the payment for our sins and for our salvation requires a sinless substitute, a spotless Lamb of God, to die in our place.
Is there is anybody in this room who is totally sinless? You may qualify, but I don’t. I had to have someone stand in and take my place for me to be saved. And His name is Jesus.
Verse nine quotes from Psalm 69 where David said, “Let their table become a snare and a trap.” The table figuratively speaks of prosperity, the abundance of all things. It represents peace and security.
But for those who rejected David, a man after God's own heart, it could become a snare and a trap. The Apostle Paul quotes David's words as appropriate for those among his own people who rejected Jesus.
Even though many of the Jews had not come to faith in Jesus, God has always had a remnant. In fact...
2. God has a remnant today of those who are truly His
Verse five says, “at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” ...At this present time!
When we think of a remnant, we think of a small piece of cloth left over at the end of the bolt. When Paul talks about a remnant, he is thinking of a small number of people.
The word “remnant” is only used 3 times in the New Testament. But it was used 16 times in the Old Testament where it often referred to the group of survivors which were still standing and remained after the fury of battle was over.
It was the group of people, that not only remained, but whom God reserved and preserved after everyone else was destroyed.
God always preserved a remnant. It was a remnant of those who came out of Egypt that entered the promised land. Practically the entire generation that came out of Egypt died in the wilderness. It was their children who entered the land.
Verse four uses the story of Elijah in the Old Testament to show we can be mistaken about the events around us. We miss the remnant.
In Elijah’s day God had a faithful remnant. But Elijah couldn't see it. You remember the story of Elijah. In 1 Kings 19 it tells how he had won a huge victory over 400 prophets of Ba’al on Mt. Carmel.
Then he ran from one angry woman, Jezebel, because Queen Jezebel issued a bounty on Elijah’s head. So Elijah ran for his life to the desert, and hid inside a cave. He hid away in that cave until God coaxed him out and asked him what in the world he was doing there.
Verses two and three remind us that, Elijah, “pleads with God against Israel, saying, 'Lord, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life!'”
When Elijah got so discouraged that he thought he was the only faithful one, God said, “Wrong, Elijah. I have a whole bunch of people.
“In fact, I have seven thousand who haven’t bowed their knees to Baal. That’s fourteen thousand knees that have not bowed before a fertility god. So, Elijah, you are not all alone.”
The devil loves it when God’s people think they’re the only ones left, that everybody else has defected to the enemy. We can't let discouragement defeat us.
Elijah was not the last of God’s people left on the earth. There were 7,000 who had never bowed a knee to Baal. That wasn’t a large number but it was a faithful minority.
What about today? In 2014, Marv Rosenthal, who is a Jewish Christian in America, estimated there are fifty thousand Jewish believers in America. He estimated there are at least 250 million Jewish believers around the world.
Elijah needed to open His eyes to the work God was really doing – just as the Jews needed to open their eyes to see the work God did through Jesus. And we, the church, need to do that as well.
There are times we can become just as discouraged as Elijah. This world, for that matter this country, seems to have succumbed to everything evil. And it often looks as if there is no hope for God's people.
Many years ago, a correspondent of the London Times was reporting on many of the same problems that we now have. He ended every article with the question, “What’s wrong with the world?”
But remember, all God needs is a remnant. While people are impressed with large numbers, God does His best work many times through a small group or remnant.
In our culture we often view bigger as better. In fact, large numbers in the mind of many is a sign of success. But the Lord throughout history has defied man’s logic by literally turning the world upside down with a handful of faithful followers.
In God’s economy, size does not determine effectiveness. What determines our effectiveness is how big our God is. We are a small church, and we may never become a big church, but that does not mean that God cannot use us.
God simply calls His people to be His witnesses to the truth, to be people who obediently serve as His messengers to a lost world.
God doesn’t call the biggest or the best; He doesn’t call the richest or those with the most finesse. He calls those who are willing to listen and answer His call for faithful service.
He has called His faithful few to be His lights in a dark and sinful world, to overcome and shine in the darkness of this world. And He will use a remnant to do it. And always light overcomes darkness.
What are the characteristics of the remnant? It is those who remain faithful and trust God. It is those who stand fast in spite of opposition. It is those who believe and follow God's Word.
May we be counted among that number!
CONCLUSION:
Kent Hughes in his book “Romans: Righteousness from Heaven” shares this story. When training for ministry, he said: My dean during seminary days was a brilliant Jew, Dr. Charles Feinberg.
He was so intelligent that he could continue lecturing to his class without missing a syllable while writing a note to his secretary! How did this brilliant Jew come to Christ?
Just after Dr. Feinberg graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pittsburgh he lived in an Orthodox Jewish household. That household had a “Sabbath Gentile,” a Gentile woman who was hired to serve them on the Sabbath.
Though Feinberg was not aware of it, this woman had taken the rites of purification simply so she could bear witness in that home.
Feinberg was attracted by the quality of this believer’s life and began to ask questions.
Although the woman could not give him all the answers, she took him to Dr. John Solomon, then resident head of the American Board of the Mission to the Jews, and Dr. Feinberg was led to Christ.
He had been made thirsty for something more by one person living as a witness for Jesus, this cleaning woman.
The Church is to be a place where there is such love for Christ and such love for each other that Jews and Gentiles become thirsty for Christ. What a challenge!
