Divine Rejects… NOT!
Romans 11
Twice in this chapter Paul says: “I ask then…” Both of these set the stage for a discussion about God’s patience and plans for his people. Here are the questions: “I ask then, has God rejected his people?” (That’s verse one). And, “So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall?” (That’s verse eleven).
Who is Paul calling “his people?” Who are “they” that have stumbled?
A good exercise to help us understand this chapter is to circle every time the word “Israel” occurs here. Then go back and look at what he is saying about them. After that, circle every other reference to Israel in pronouns or other obvious references. Then go back and look at what he says about them in that light. Finally, go back a third time and underline any and all references to anyone other than Israel and do the same thing.
Now I realize that expecting everyone here to do this is beyond probability, so I’ve provided a handout to help. (On your handout I have references to Israel underlined and references to Gentiles in italics).
What I discovered is that there are three groups here. Two of them are from Israel. One is from the Gentiles. Take a minute to look at your handout.
1. There are some who are faithful among Israel, i.e. Paul, Elijah, the prophets, the 7000... the remnant.
2. Then there is the majority of Israel who are unfaithful, these bring trouble on the faithful.
3. Then there are those who have been brought in who are Gentiles.
He is specifically talking to Gentiles in this chapter (vs 13) about their relationship with Israel, both the faithful and unfaithful members of Israel. He distinguishes God’s plan for Israel and God’s plan for the Gentiles. He makes it clear that God wants everyone to be saved. He also makes it clear that God is using the saved to influence the unsaved to be saved. He says that God works to bring lost Israel back by making them jealous because he is showing mercy on the Gentiles. The goal of God is not to reject anyone, but to restore anyone who does not continue in unbelief.
What is weird here is that when the Gentiles are unfaithful, they pretty well leave you alone when you come to Christ and claim God’s salvation. On the other hand, when you make these claims among Jews, they get jealous and angry about it! Paul says, “That’s good!” Maybe they will be stirred to wake up and repent!
Paul’s personal experiences and his theology are fundamentally related.
When we go back to the book of Acts and look at his life, Romans 9-11 is his story. Paul was Saul of Tarsus, the zealous Pharisee of Israel who single handedly took on the job of destroying the Church after the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7. He couldn’t stand the name of Jesus. To Saul, the Church was made up of blaspheming Jews who had forsaken Judaism and become followers of this false messiah. They must be stopped! He ravaged the Church. He was breathing out murderous threats against the Church right up to when he met Jesus. But amazingly, Saul’s hard hearted persecution against the Christians was actually the very fuel that fed the evangelistic machinery of the Church. It was when the leaders of Israel in Jerusalem rejected Jesus and began to persecute the Church that the boarders of the Church spread to Samaria and then even to the Gentile world. The hardening of Israel worked to save others! Those scattered Christians took the gospel with them! They shared it wherever they went. Some even began to share it with Gentiles! Gentiles! And guess what? The Gentiles believed and were baptized into Christ! God affirmed their actions by the Holy Spirit empowering them to perform signs and wonders among them. It all started by an act of God that got Peter to go to Cornelius’s house and tell this Gentile the gospel. Acts 10 records that story. An angel appears to Cornelius and the Holy Spirit through visions and direct inspiration, has to work to convince a reluctant Peter that this is from God. Read it. Peter did NOT want to go. He takes a few Jews with him as witnesses. As he enters the home of Cornelius he openly says to the group gathered at Cornelius house that it is illegal for him to step into their house, but God has told him not to call them unclean! Peter! That’s not the best way to win them to Christ. Peter asks why they sent for him and Cornelius tells Peter about the angel who told him to go get Peter who would tell them words by which they could be saved. Hint, hint! Peter starts preaching and while he is telling them about Jesus, lo and behold, God does an amazing thing! He sends the Holy Spirit on these Gentiles! Peter and the Jews with him are shocked! This wasn’t part of the plan! Wait a minute! God, these people are GENTILES!!!! God had to nudge them to do it or Peter never would have gone and Cornelius never would have become a Christian. When Peter went back to the Church in Jerusalem, he got in trouble over it! Read Acts 11! In Galatians 2:11-16 we find Peter is still having problems accepting Gentiles. Peter was not the man to send to win the Gentiles.
But who is? If we lived then we’d never believe who God selected! In Acts 9 God made the most amazing move of all. He called the one man who was of all men least likely to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. He called Saul. To Saul of Tarsus, God’s act of calling him was sheer grace. (As it is with all of us, by the way!) It wasn’t that Saul had heard the message of the gospel and had come to faith and repented of his sins so that he was ready to obey the gospel and so God, in mercy, decided to let him in. No way! Saul was hell bent on the destruction of the Church and was busy whole heartedly performing this with no intentions of letting up! It was then, right in the midst of his jealous zeal against the Church, that Jesus appeared to him. On the road to hell, Saul met Jesus. When and while Saul was the enemy of Christ, chief of sinners and totally against the Church Jesus died for… it was at that very point that Jesus appeared to him.
What would you call that, if not grace!
By the way, all the hostility Saul held against the Church up to this point, now began to be held against him by his fellow Israelites who continued in unbelief. Read Acts. Saul tells us that he wanted to preach Jesus in Jerusalem, but Jesus told him no. Jesus said, “They will not listen to you. Go! I am sending you to the Gentiles!” Where ever Paul went he would begin preaching in the synagogues, but always ended up being rejected by the majority. He would then turn to the Gentiles and many of them would hear and believe. It was a mystery. Why? Why were God’s people so opposed to the gospel when Jesus came through them! What was God up to? Why are the Gentiles accepting of a Savior that came to Israel?
God had used the rejection of Israel to open the door for the Gentiles to come in! He did it! This was not an accidental event. This was God! Suddenly the passages of prophecy in the Old Testament about the Gentiles became alive to Paul. God knew this would happen! He planned for it to happen! By the way, Paul says that God’s prophets in the Old Testament reveal that God still has a plan for Israel! It is clear that something is up with the nation of Israel here. God seems to have an irrevocable relationship with them that has eternal impact on all of us who are not Jewish. He can still graft them in again! He still wants to show them mercy! What an amazing gracious and redeeming God we serve!
So, Saul’s theology is shaped by his history. He reasons, “If Jesus can do what he did to me, and turn a Pharisee who is a legalistically righteous, hardened hater of Jesus to the faith and call him to be an apostle to Gentiles, he can save hardened Israel too. If they will not continue in unbelief, God can and will graft them in again.” God may just choose to do a marvelous thing for Israel that is totally unexpected. He did for Saul.
Since the ink has dried from the writings of Paul and the years have passed many have concluded that “Israel” here must actually mean the Church. That conclusion is called replacement theology: in other words, God has replaced national Israel with spiritual Israel, or the Church. That view holds sway in many churches today.
There is another view called the Zionist view. Those who hold to this view tend to support national Israel often against Palestinian locals in modern Israel. God’s chosen people in their minds command certain respect that excuses their takeover of lands that belonged to non-Jewish natives. Zionists look for Jesus to return to earth some day and rule 1000 years in Jerusalem on the throne of David, rebuild the temple, and reestablish the sacrificial system of Moses and issue in the golden age of the restoration of Israel literally and physically.
It appears that both of these are extremes. God has not forsaken Israel, and God is not going to resurrect Mosaic Judaism, and when Jesus comes back he will judge the world and bring the Church to heaven and cast the condemned to hell.
We are living under the mercy of God today and we have a hand in calling Jews and Gentiles into this glorious hope of eternal life in Christ. God is not in the rejecting business. He is in the saving business. He may well do things for Israel to bring them back that will astound us, just as the Jewish Christians were astounded when God called us. That is God’s business. I hope and pray that the grace he has granted us will be spread as far and wide to as many as possible.
Meanwhile our attitude toward Israel or anyone else for that matter must not be arrogant or conceited. We serve a great God who does marvelous things for us and who doesn’t want any to perish, but all to come to repentance. If he intervenes to make it so, may we only praise him all the more!
There is nothing here that indicates in any way that anyone can be saved without faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to his call. No Gentile or Jew will be saved who is unbelieving. Let us pray for faith and faithfulness for all and let us rejoice in the glorious gift of his grace to us here and now.
(This format does not allow underlines or italics, sorry)
11:1 I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
2 God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?
3 "Lord, THEY HAVE KILLED THY PROPHETS, THEY HAVE TORN DOWN THINE ALTARS, AND I ALONE AM LEFT, AND THEY ARE SEEKING MY LIFE."
4 But what is the divine response to him? "I HAVE KEPT for Myself SEVEN THOUSAND MEN WHO HAVE NOT BOWED THE KNEE TO BAAL."
5 In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice.
6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.
7 What then? That which Israel is seeking for, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened;
8 just as it is written, "GOD GAVE THEM A SPIRIT OF STUPOR, EYES TO SEE NOT AND EARS TO HEAR NOT, DOWN TO THIS VERY DAY."
9 And David says, "LET THEIR TABLE BECOME A SNARE AND A TRAP, AND A STUMBLING BLOCK AND A RETRIBUTION TO THEM.
10 "LET THEIR EYES BE DARKENED TO SEE NOT, AND BEND THEIR BACKS FOREVER."
11 I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous.
12 Now if their transgression be riches for the world and their failure be riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be!
13 But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry,
14 if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them.
15 For if their rejection be the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?
16 And if the first piece of dough be holy, the lump is also; and if the root be holy, the branches are too.
17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree,
18 do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you.
19 You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in."
20 Quite right, they were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear;
21 for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you.
22 Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.
23 And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again.
24 For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more shall these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?
25 For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own estimation, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in;
26 and thus all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, "THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB."
27 "AND THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS."
28 From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers;
29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
30 For just as you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience,
31 so these also now have been disobedient, in order that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy.
**32 For God has shut up all in disobedience that He might show mercy to all.
33 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
34 For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR?
35 Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN?
36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
