A CROWD IS NOT A CHURCH Romans 11:1-10 Dr. Jon McNeff, Senior Pastor April 13, 2014 Note: The following are the pastor s notes used in preaching this message. This is not a complete, word-for-word transcription of what was preached. These notes serve as a companion to the complete message, which is available by listening to the audio version. Bible quotes are primarily from NASB and ESV, respectively. What percentage of people who attend church do you think are truly Christians? 30, 40, 50, 90, 100%? can t be 100% because so many who begin attending church leave one of the greatest griefs of ministry Matthew 25:32 when Jesus returns He will separate the sheep from the goats true believing remnant from false believers who only thought they were saved sobering This is the modern application of Romans 11 Paul uses the remnant of believing Jews to prove that God isn t finished with the Jews I. PAUL S REMNANT Romans 11:1b Paul answers his own question 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. rejected to push away, to repel Paul frames the question for Romans 11 here Has God rejected the Jews? all of those who hold otherwise make a monumental leap over this chapter His first answer is almost indignant May it never be! lit. May it never come into being! in Romans 3:4 Paul follows those words with Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar the thought is taken from 1 Samuel 12:22 For the Lord will not abandon His people on account of His great name, because the Lord has been pleased to make you a people for Himself. this is an emphatic NO! Paul s first line of defense is himself in Romans 11:5 he uses the word remnant to describe a portion of the whole nation that is left as God s people Paul is here a remnant of one his argument is first of all that his credentials and identity as a Jew are evidence that God hasn t forsaken His people He emphasizes his credentials Israelite he was so much a Jew that before his conversion Paul had been a Christian hating zealot Acts 9:1 describes him as one who was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples if God was finished with the Jews why did He bother to convert this fire-breathing zealot? he also stresses he is a descendant of Abraham he was not a proselyte had a pure pedigree also of the tribe of Benjamin specially favored in Judaism when ten northern tribes slipped into idolatry they rebelled against Jerusalem and formed the northern Kingdom they rebelliously called Israel Benjamin was the only tribe to remain faithful to Jerusalem It is incredibly ironic that He chose a Jew as the foremost apostle of the early church and the one to basically formulate New Testament theology if God was finished with the Jews why didn t God tap a Gentile? We sometimes feel like a one man remnant school, work, family II. ELIJAH S REMNANT Second line of defense notes the remnant of Elijah s time Romans 11:2-4 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? Lord, they have killed Your prophets, they have torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life. But what is the divine response to him? I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Paul repeats the verbiage of Romans 11:1 God has not rejected His people but adds the phrase whom He foreknew. rejected to push away whom He foreknew does not carry the meaning of the English we think it means to know in advance but this is different in the Greek word ginosko In Scripture knowing 1
is often used of an intimate relationship as with a husband and wife in Genesis 4:1 Now the man had relations with his wife Eve and she conceived and gave birth to Cain Vine s Dictionary of New Testament words In the New Testament ginosko frequently indicates a relation between the person knowing and the object known; in this respect, what is known is of value or importance to the one who knows, and hence the establishment of the relationship, e.g., especially of God s knowledge, 1 Corinthians 8:3, if any man love God, the same is known of Him 1 1 Peter 1:1, 2 we are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father Romans 8:29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son This is true for individuals who are saved but it is also true for the nation of Israel only nation ever made this promise to Deuteronomy 7:7-8 The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers Deuteronomy 7:9 says He made this promise to a thousandth generation Hebrews euphemism meaning forever God cannot go back on this promise to the nation of Israel Paul uses Elijah as an example in 1 Kings 18 Jezebel (daughter of the king of Sidon) had married Israel s King Ahab sought to kill all the prophets of Israel and organized and provided for 450 prophets of Baal (god of fertility) and 400 prophets of Asherah (his consort) worship included orgiastic rituals that involved ritual prostitutes, sexual rites, and human sacrifice and 400 prophets of Asherah God sent Elijah to confront them challenged them to dueling bulls each put a bull on the altar the god who destroyed the bull won they prayed but no answer Elijah had water poured on his altar God sent fire to devour the bull Elijah then told the people to kill all the 850 prophets Jezebel was furious! 1 Kings 19:3 he was afraid and arose and ran for his life to Beersheba (about 18 miles!) here he had a pity party 1 Kings 19:10 I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away 1 Kings 19:18 Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him. Paul s point there was a remnant of believing Jews in Elijah s time that he wasn t aware of there has always been a remnant of Jews scattered around the world only group that has maintained identity without a nation for 2000 years after edict by Hadrian in 135 A.D. Jews scattered to Africa, Arab countries, Asia Minor, and Europe by start of WW2 there were 20 million Jews living in Germany! 800,000 Jews fled Arab countries in the 1940s when Israel became a state III. THE PRESENT REMNANT Romans 11:5 In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God s gracious choice. Paul makes several observations that connect Elijah to his day: 1) Something is happening at the present time time kairos season denotes right measure, correct proportion, that which is convenient, appropriate or decisive. 2 points to opportunity during a particular season of time in the New Testament this takes on new meaning with the coming of Christ Mark 1:15 The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand in Luke 21:24 the times of the Gentiles 1 Peter 1:5 there is a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time. Question How far did this present time for the Jews continue? there s no indication it has ceased for one to say that they must overlook all the passages that talk about God making His covenant with Israel forever 1 W. E. Vine, Vine s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996), 2:346. 2 H. C. Hahn, kairos in Colin Brown, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1986), 3:833. 2
2) a remnant part of a whole, but not the whole thing Paul may have felt like Elijah at times, but he also realized that there continued to be a remnant of believing Jews Paul wrote Romans around 56 A.D. over 25 years for the spread of Christianity conservative estimates say there were hundreds of thousands of Jewish Christians by that time throughout the Roman Empire and beyond Paul s argument for God not rejecting the Jews is that there continued to be a remnant of Jews who were followers of Christ just like the remnant of Elijah s time 3) And how had they come? Romans 11:5 according to God s gracious choice just like every Gentile believer lit. eklogen charitos ekloge = choose, elect charis = grace, gift Jews of Paul s time were graciously chosen or elected into God s family in the same way we are by His grace they didn t get in because of their ethnic background or keeping the law or their good works 2 Timothy 1:9 He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity these physical descendants of Abraham became spiritual descendants of Abraham the same way we do by God s grace Same today for Christians Tim Keller in The Reason For God Virtually all major religions are growing in number of adherents. Christianity's growth, especially in the developing world, has been explosive. There are now six times more Anglicans in Nigeria alone than there are in all of the United States. There are more Presbyterians in Ghana than in the United States and Scotland combined. Korea has gone from 1 percent to 40 percent Christian in a hundred years, and experts believe the same thing is going to happen in China. If there are half a billion Chinese Christians fifty years from now, that will change the course of human history. In most cases, the Christianity that is growing is not the more secularized, belief-thin versions predicted by the sociologists. Rather, it is a robust supernaturalist kind of faith, with belief in miracles, Scriptural authority, and personal conversion. 3 IV. THE HARDENED REMNANT Romans 11:6-7 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened Just as there are faithful Jews, there will also be a remnant who is hardened neither remnant makes up the whole nation we ve seen this before in Romans 9:18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and he hardens whom He desires. we saw in Exodus 4-10 that ten times it says that God hardened Pharaoh s heart and ten times it says Pharaoh hardened his own heart by his sinful actions and open rebellion against God This does not mean that God hardens some so that they never have a chance to be saved God only hardens those who repeatedly reject God poroo = to harden, to form a callus (when broken bones heal), and thus to petrify, to become hard. 4 How does this happen? goes back to Psalm 95:8-9 Do not harden your hearts, As at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness, When your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, though they had seen My work. what happened at Meribah? Exodus 17:3 Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst? remember this was after they had seen the ten plagues saw their oldest children saved while the oldest of all the households of the Egyptians were killed saw the Red Sea part so they could cross on dry ground saw the armies of Pharaoh drown saw God s miraculous provision of food now they got a little thirsty and they complained it got so bad that Moses said they were about ready to stone him God told Moses to strike a rock and water would come out it did Exodus 17:7 He named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us, or not? Massah means testing and Meribah means contending or rebellion 3 Tim Keller, The Reason For God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York, New York: Dutton, 2008), 6. 4 U. Becker, skleros in Colin Brown, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 2:153. 3
God hardens the hearts of those who ignore Him and rebel against Him in Mark 3 there is a man with a withered hand in the synagogue Mark 3:4 Jesus asks the Pharisees, Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill? But they kept silent. Mark 3:5 After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, Stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. God does not arbitrarily harden hearts so that one has no chance of salvation He hardens the hearts of those who ignore Him and rebel against Him when they do that they see no need of coming to Him for forgiveness and to seek salvation so He gives them what they want and hardens their heart even more Paul continues in Romans 11:8-10 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. And David says, Let their table become a snare and a trap, and a stumbling block and a retribution to them. Let their eyes be darkened to see not, and bend their backs forever. the first line of Romans 11:8 is from Isaiah 29:10 the last three lines are adapted from Deuteronomy 29:4 represents the collective teaching of the law and the prophets Romans 11:9 comes from Psalm 69:22, 23 a person s table is a picture of eating and sustenance your kitchen table is a place of comfort and security but David prays that the table i.e. the source of security and comfort for those who fought against him would become a trap for them he prayed their false gods would become a stumbling block and a retribution to them. Romans 11:9 most people trust in the very things that damn them This is a terrible judgment, but one brought on by the Jews own actions. Everett Harrison From an observation of the setting of the quotations, it is clear that God did not give his people deaf ears to mock them any more than he gave them blind eyes to taunt them. What was involved was a judicial punishment for failure to use God-given faculties to perceive His manifested power and to glorify Him. 5 What kind of remnant is left in the U.S.? Weak preachers, shallow people momentary Christians they made a decision for Christ at one moment in time result? they are momentary Christians no Lordship no fruit no change of life no devotion to the Bride of Christ no hungering and thirsting after righteousness no discipleship nothing but moral theistic deism coined by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, two sociologists who argue that a new religion has supplanted Christianity in America "God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process...and makes sure that all good people go to heaven when they die." 6 Is there a Christian remnant in the church today? John 6 Jesus fed the 5000 then walked on water to the disciples John 6:22 The next day the crowd followed Jesus to the other side of the lake John 6:66 shows the end of the discussion As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore. many false disciples what caused this? False disciples are attracted by a crowd John 6:24 So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they themselves got into the small boats, and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. the emphasis today is draw a crowd do anything you can to draw a crowd - BUT A CROWD IS NOT A CHURCH! They are there for what they can get John 6:26 Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. they got a free lunch and wanted more people love getting Krispy Kreme doughnuts, teach young moms how to potty train their kids give them rock concerts that masquerade as worship in fact, don t even ask them to sing just perform for them tell them you re not going to say anything controversial give them relaxed, casual atmosphere where they can put in a bowling alley ride motorcycles on stage weightlifting team 5 Frank Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor s Bible Commentary, Romans through Galatians, vol. 10, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1976), 118. 6 Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 4
They look for supernatural signs John 6:30-31 they wanted Jesus to exceed the manna that Moses provided many today don t question the signs and wonders they want to hear the testimonies of the rich and famous They grumble about doctrine John 6:41 Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because he said, I am the bread that came down out of heaven. they didn t get it they didn t care after Jesus gave/taught them some deep theology John 6:60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it? Jesus had taught about His deity the atonement election and free will incarnation, justification, and glorification it s all there! most people yawn when they hear the word doctrine false disciples don t care about doctrine true disciples do! They really don t believe John 6:64 For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him. They walk away John 6:66 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore. Jesus lost disciples too! Ultimately, they wanted everything but Jesus John 6:67, 68 So Jesus said to the twelve, You do not want to go away also, do you? Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. even then Jesus also said, and yet one of you is a devil. John 6:70 reference to Judas Yes there is a remnant of true believers inside the body of people called the church : 2 Corinthians 13:5 Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail the test? Matthew 13 four soils Matthew 13:19 one person hears the word but he doesn t understand because the evil one snatches it away Matthew 13:20 one hears it with joy but persecution or hard times cause him to fall away Matthew 13:22 one hears the word but the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it out 1 John 2:18-19 even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. A CROWD IS NOT A CHURCH - are you part of the true remnant or part of the crowd? QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Do you think everyone who goes to church is a Christian? Why or why not? 2. What question and answer does Paul give in Romans 11:1? 3. What is Paul trying to prove through the life of Elijah in Romans 11:2-4? 4. What evidence of Romans 11:5 do we see in the 21 st century? 5. What does Matthew 13:12-17 say about someone who has been exposed to the gospel many times without responding? 6. Are you a part of the true church? How do you know? 5