A Remnant of Grace Romans 11:1-6 8/21/2011 Copyright by Mark Vaughan 8/2011 Keywords sovereignty, Israel, grace, election, It would be easy these days in our country to succumb to despair. As we watch our nation fall morally in innumerable ways and fall economically and militarily in the world, it is indeed sad. Yet even as we see policies and practices that speed such decline, it is intriguing how God has brought about a revival of faith in biblical doctrine related to His sovereignty. Just in the time since I began here as pastor in 2001, it is amazing how the understanding and embrace of God s sovereignty has increased in the American church. Of course, there are always troubles that arise in any movement and the American church still largely has many failures, but God s sovereignty is not as foreign a subject as it was just a decade ago. That is God s kindness to His people to equip us against despair as we watch our nation decline into judgment. It is God s mercy to uncover the rock of His sovereign rule from the cobwebs of neglect so that we can find firm footing. It is God s wise and loving providence to lead His church to what we need lest we fall into utter hopelessness. And it is God s goodness to us in this local congregation to be soaking in the riches of God s sovereignty in these months in Romans 9-11. Few places in Scripture are as chock-full of relentless emphasis on God s sovereignty as Romans 9-11 is. It is a section of great hope in times of potential despair. It is a section of Scripture that can reorient our perspective when the future of our children & grandchildren seems fragile. Kids I want you to be prepared with truth for times when you feel lonely or like everyone is against you or like you just want to give up because nothing you try seems to be working. We as adults need hope in those times too. And we as parents and grandparents and Christians who care about future generations need reasons to pray and not lose heart and to know there is purpose in what we pursue for God s glory. I pray our look into Romans 11:1-6 will give us that kind of hope and purpose to prepare us to persevere whatever we face. We find that hope in the revelation of a Ruling Creator God who is both sovereign and good in His plans and dealings with His creatures. As we move through these verses, I m going to give 2 general reasons to have hope in troubled times. Those 2 reasons will be applied as we understand the argument Paul is making to defend God s faithfulness to His people Israel. Don t miss why God s faithfulness to Israel matters enough to write 3 chapters on just because you are familiar with the story. God had chosen Israel as His special nation that He blessed out of all the nations of the earth and He promised them a King and Savior. All through history, God was pointing ahead to Israel s Deliverer through the Exodus and conquest of the land, through the kings and the exile and the restoration to the land. And then finally that Deliverer came unto His own people, but as John 1:11 puts it, His own did not receive Him. 1
Imagine being a Jew in that time who did trust Jesus and looking around after Jesus ascended and wondering what happened to your country that was supposedly God s people. You would probably have family members and friends over whom your heart was broken because they rejected their own Messiah. And you could look at the direction of your country and see unrest and maybe signs of Jerusalem s destruction coming. Imagine the confusion and potential despair over your country and then imagine the questions about where God was in all of this. How do you view all that rightly and find hope? I trust you can see that Paul s heart probably had the heaviness that our hearts can feel for our country at times. Yet his deepest concern was that God not be viewed wrongly and he shared that with his concern for Israel in Romans 9:1-6. And why does that matter to you and me today? Because most of us who have been Christians very long know and love to quote Romans 8:28 to remember that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God & are called by Him. We love to be reminded that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus as we read in Romans 8:35-39. And if we love to trust those and similar promises, we need to be sure that they will not fail and that God will not decide to give up on us. And that s the point of Romans 9-11 if we want God to be faithful to those promises, we need to know He is still faithful to His promises to national Israel. That s the link from Romans 8 into Romans 9. And Romans 9 answered by pointing to God s sovereignty. In His sovereign rule, God never promised to save every individual descendant of Abraham based merely on their ethnic heritage. God only and always saves by His own initiative, by His choice of grace from before time and He is free and good to do so because He alone is God. But people are still responsible for their sinful rejection of God s truth and that gives another reason God s Word did not fail for Israel. God sent His prophets and His promises to Israel, but they willfully rebelled and finally did not receive their Messiah. That was the summary answer of Romans 10 to frame up a right perspective on God s faithfulness to Israel. And you can see to begin Romans 9 & 10 that Paul s burden and prayer through all this discussion is for Israel s salvation. So in the midst of theological complexities, always underneath is the reality that he s answering a question about God and Israel. And God s faithfulness to His promises to Israel will be shown further in future salvation for the nation at large and that s what Paul gets into in chapter 11 of Romans. But Paul was not done solidifying his readers grasp on God s dealings with Israel and God s sovereignty and God s way of salvation. The Holy Spirit led Paul to put before us again truths of His sovereignty and grace and predestination. We need regular refresher courses in these truths because they are central first to knowing God and preparing for heaven, and then to having hope in depressing days like we all face at times. 2
With all that in mind, let s read Romans 11:1-6. [READ] It matters what you think of God s relationship with Israel. At the end of chapter 10, Paul quoted Moses & Isaiah to prove God had predicted unbelief of Israel and salvation of Gentiles. It was no surprise that Israel was a disobedient & obstinate people and yet God was still holding out His hands pleading for them to repent. God was sovereign and what He had planned had happened, but He still pleaded with Israel just as He pleads today for people to repent and trust Him. But it is especially important that we know that God has not cast off Israel from being His chosen nation. So the question to begin Romans 11 expects a no answer and that negative answer is given in Paul s strongest terms. You recall the Greek mey genoito if you ve been here studying Romans because we ve seen that absolute negation that the NAS accurately translates may it never be. Others convey the seriousness of this answer with phrases like, By no means! or God forbid! or Certainly not! No way not ever should we say God has thrust away or repelled His people because Romans 10:21 right before this pictured God as standing with His arms open wide to them. God was not chucking His people far from Himself as a full and final rejection of them never to keep them anymore. And listen this clear statement of Israel s security of never being finally cast away was not only to the saved people within ethnic Israel. Clearly here Paul is talking about all ethnic, national Israel, people who were of what would be considered Jewish physical descent from Judah or any of the 12 tribes of Jacob. God s people in Romans 11:1 are the same people who had largely rejected God s Messiah and were disobedient and obstinate and had other unbelieving descriptions in Romans 9-10. We see that this is undoubtedly talking about the ethnic group Israel as God s people. And that s what Paul describes about himself as a first proof in answering the question he raised read verse 1. [READ] What s the first and most obvious proof that God has not totally cast off Israel as a whole from His promises? Well, Paul is the Apostle Paul himself, the former persecutor of the church whom Jesus had appeared to and radically saved. Paul was an Israelite and to be clear he was not merely a proselyte who had joined in but was not born in he highlighted his descent from Abraham and his Israelite tribe. He was from Benjamin, Jacob s last son, the son born in the Promised Land, the tribe that almost disappeared in the time of the Judges. He had the ethnic link not as a merit badge to earn God s favor but as proof that God was still graciously showing favor to an ethnic people who never deserved it. God was not finished with Israel yet and Paul was proof of that. And that gets us to our 1 st takeaway application point this morning if you want to follow an outline in that way. Here s the 1 st of 2 points applying this revelation of God today point #1 Have hope because God is not finished. 3
Point #1 Have hope because God is not finished. In defending God s trustworthiness, Paul offered himself as a first hope-filled proof that God was not finished with Israel yet. And we can have hope, not because we are a new Israel, but because we have promises as Christians & God is not finished with us. We can have hope that God is not finished working in our times because He still has Christians in our nation and in our world and He still has more of His plan yet to unveil. If you are a Christian, your life should be proof that God has not finally given up on your family or neighborhood or nation because He has you there to make a difference. It is not the end of the world yet and God has a purpose for our existence in our part of the world in our time. So we can have hope, 1 st, because God is not finished. And our assurance that God is not finished is anchored back before time just as it was for Israel. After Paul offered himself as a first proof of God not being finished with Israel, he pointed next to God s choice of them before time. Read Romans 11:2. [READ] In the same terms as the question of verse 1, verse 2 reiterates the point in a clear statement that God had not rejected His people. But note what 3 English words describe His people there. God s people are those Whom He foreknew. What does foreknew mean and why does it matter? Let s think about it to foreknow means to know beforehand and this word is used of God knowing before the world began. But this knowing is a knowing of choice and commitment to a person or people group, not merely knowing facts about them. This knowing is used of God s relationship with Israel in Amos 3:2 when God said to Israel, You only have I known among all the families of the earth. Listen again to God s foreknowledge of Israel in Amos 3:2 God said to Israel, You only have I known among all the families of the earth. The NAS translates known there as chosen with God saying, Israel, you only have I chosen among all the families of the earth. And that s a correct idea in translation to know Israel out of all the families of the earth was to choose Israel. So to foreknow Israel was to make a relationship commitment to Israel that would later in time be shown by entering a covenant with Israel Of course, God knew about all the other families of the earth, but God did not choose them as He had chosen Israel. So to foreknow is to choose to love beforehand, not to choose them because of some knowledge about them that made them choose-able. It s the loving choice of Deuteronomy 7:7 and the same theme of God s choice in Deuteronomy 9 and other passages. Deuteronomy 7:7 says to Israel, 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. 4
Like we saw in Romans 8:29, to foreknow is to fore-love, to choose to love before time. And if God had made that loving choice of Israel before, He certainly had not gone back on His promise and rejected them. That s what Paul was emphasizing about God s people Israel in verse 2 as he explained that God has not finally rejected them. But we need to clarify that this was a choice of the nation of Israel generally and not of every individual within that nation at any time. This was a choice-foreknowing of a group, not individuals. Since God s people here are ethnic Israelites that included unbelieving and disobedient and obstinate people in Paul s time and in other times, this foreknowledge cannot mean God saved every Israelite. God does have a foreknowledge of loving choice in relationship with Himself that leads to salvation individually as we saw in Romans 8:29. Romans 8:29-30 says that individual foreknowledge connects with predestination & leads definitely to being called, justified, & glorified. But this corporate, group foreknowledge of Israel is different. God foreknowing Israel distinguished them from other nations, but it did not guarantee salvation of every individual Israelite. People are never saved based on their ethnic background. But God s choice of Israel means He will never finally cast them off because He has made promises to them and has a plan for their future. And just as there is no place in a Christian for any form of ethnic prejudice, so this warns against anti-semitism. We can have hope for Israel s future turning to Jesus as their Messiah. Paul had hope for Israelites because God was not finished with them as His people who He foreknew. And it may be helpful to know a couple of places where God promised this that Paul was possibly referencing in his wording here. Though our English translations do not mark the phrase God will not reject as a quote, the language is clear OT language from promises like Psalm 94:14 and 1 st Samuel 12:22. Psalm 94:14 says, the LORD will not abandon His people, Nor will He forsake His inheritance. But 1 st Samuel 12:22 may more likely be where Paul took this phrase of God not rejecting His people. 1 st Samuel 12 is an intriguing place to see this promise of God not to reject His people because that is where Samuel confronted Israel for their sin of wanting a king. They wanted an earthly king just like all the pagan nations around them had, which was ultimately a rejection of God. That was one of many times in Israel s history when they were disobedient and obstinate and God could have had enough of them, destroyed them and washed His hands of them forever. But that is not what God did. In 1 st Samuel 12:22-23, Samuel told Israel that 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. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you; but I will instruct you in the good and right way. 5
Samuel said that the Lord Yahweh God would not abandon His people Israel and please note his reason. He said He would not abandon them on account of His great name because the Lord has been pleased to make you a people for Himself. Or, as Romans 11:2 described God s people, because they were foreknown by God for His own glory and purpose. Again, that s what this is about with Paul just as with Samuel God has not rejected His people because He chose them to be His people. And as we ll see in Romans 11:29, the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. God did not revoke His promises because He is faithful to Himself. This is not about how worthy Israel is to be kept, but how trustworthy God is to what He has promised. And that should give us great comfort when we want another king too. We may not say it that way, but when we speak and act like we want to rule our own lives rather than submitting to God s rule, then we can have hope that God is faithful to His promises. So if we are in Christ claiming the promises of Romans 8:28-39, then we can rest in those promises as depending on God s character and not on my performance. And we can respond like Samuel did when others break our hearts by not ceasing to pray for them. God s sovereign goodness can give us hope for our own struggling souls and hope to persevere with those around us who struggle. Since God is not finished, have hope and don t lose heart. Of course, I need to admit that the phrase, God is not finished with me yet can wrongly be used as a bumper sticker for bad driving. It can also be used as an excuse for immaturity or laziness or disobedience or other sin claiming others need to be patient. And though we do need patience with each other, we should not flaunt our folly under the banner that God s not finished with us yet. That s wrong and that s not what I mean in making this point. I mean this as a reminder that we can have hope for ourselves and for others even as Paul had hope for Israel. We don t know the future, but we do know God will be faithful to His promises for the future and He is not finished with those. That can give us hope when we have not seen the end of the trial we are facing and we don t know the good plans God has for His glory. You have not seen what God plans to bring through your suffering or your prayers or your faithful parenting or witnessing though you wonder if it is ever going to bear fruit. God is not finished so don t lose heart and don t turn inward and don t give up and don t quit praying and don t think it s not working or not worth it or whatever other lies assault you with despair. We don t know if God is finished with other people yet, so we d better not stop praying for them. We can have hope because God is not finished. Don t believe such lies. Fight them with the truth of God s sovereign goodness ruling with wise and loving and glorious plans that He is not finished with yet. 6
Have hope because God is not finished that s point #1. Now point #2 have hope because God is not absent. Have hope, 2 nd ly, because God is not absent. Read Romans 11:2-3 to start seeing this. [READ] Paul introduces the passage about Elijah by calling it to remembrance like all his readers should have known the story. And he did not reference chapter and verse because that s not how they did it back then. He literally referenced in Elijah meaning the story of Elijah. Do you know that story? If we believe the Bible is the Word of God, then we will read it more than we read other things and we will know its stories better than we know the news or sports, won t we? And Dads and Moms, the only way our kids will learn and know God s revelation of Himself in history is if we read the Bible with them and train them to read the Bible on their own. That s one reason our Sunday Schools for younger kids go through the Bible s story line 3 times over 9 years so that kids and parents can be going through the Bible together. Anyway, Paul called the story of Elijah to mind the time after Elijah had slain the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel what a great story. God showed He was the only true God by sending fire down from heaven on Elijah s water-soaked sacrifice after Elijah had mocked the prophets of Baal for never being answered. You can read that in detail in 1 st Kings 18. But after that, 1 st Kings 19 reports that Elijah fled from the evil Queen Jezebel who was trying to kill him and after being hungry and exhausted from a near-marathon sprint, he got depressed. Watch out for making big decisions or having weighty conversations when you are worn out like Elijah was. His physical condition was not an excuse for his sinful lack of faith, but temptations are certainly stronger when we are weaker. After Elijah first just wanted to die and God sent an angel to strengthen and provide for him, Elijah then was in the wilderness 40 days and 40 nights. It was then the Lord appeared to Elijah when Elijah said what Paul referenced here in Romans 11:3. Paul gives a summary not a direct quote of everything in order. But he rightly gives the sense of Elijah s words to God that were actually a plea against Israel. This was such a bad time in Israel that Elijah was hopeless about Israel and complaining to God against them. Elijah felt it was so bad that he was alone as a worshipper of God because Israel had killed the prophets and demolished the altars. After Elijah s complaint, God answered & what Paul quotes in Romans 11:4 is part of God s answer read verse 4. [READ] What s the emphasis? God was not absent as if Israel had all gone apostate & no one else in the entire world followed Yahweh except poor Elijah. 7
Do you ever feel like that? Oh, poor me, and on goes the pity party about how no one understands and my situation is so unique and difficult. We all do it let s just admit our sins of whining. But we can have hope when we realize that God is not absent. God was not absent in Elijah s time even though Elijah felt all alone and did not see any evidence of other faithful people and did not feel the support of other faithful people. God was still on His throne and He still had His people. He actually had 7000 men who had not bowed the knee in worship to the false local pagan god Baal. And you can probably add 7000 women and more children. So God had a faithful remnant that He had saved. God had a spiritually saved Israel within ethnic, national Israel. Within the broader, bigger circle of the people who were corporately God s as a group was more refined, smaller circle of the people who were spiritually God s as individuals. And that is the doctrine of the remnant. A remnant is a piece or part of some larger whole. And the spiritual remnant of Israel is the part of Israel that is truly faithful to God that is within the larger whole of Israel that was generally not faithful to God throughout their history. We ll see later in Romans 11 that God will bring a day when all Israel will be saved and so the remnant will equal the whole. But God s point to Elijah was that God had a remnant who were faithful to Yahweh though the rest of Israel was not. And that presence of a remnant in Elijah s time was similar to the presence of a remnant in Paul s time too. Read Romans 11:5. [READ] God had not abandoned His people because God had a remnant of His chosen ethnic people who were also chosen spiritually by God s grace. God had a believing remnant of Israelites in Paul s time & that proved God had not totally and finally abandoned His people. God was still working with Israel because He still had a remnant in Paul s time just like He did in the apostate, depressing time of Elijah. And the point here is that this small remnant number is evidence of God s grace that gives hope for Israel s future. So Paul had hope because God was not absent. God had not checked off the scene of Israel and given up. He was still being faithful to His promises and plan. And He was doing it all by His grace, not because anyone deserved it by their upbringing or ethnicity or efforts. Note how this remnant was in existence by God s gracious choice. This remnant was chosen by grace, or as other translations more literally put it, according to the election of grace. God chose whom He was going to save before time began all by His own free initiative of grace that s how certain it was that He would keep a remnant and never finally cast of Israel. 8
His promise was sure because He had planned already to keep it it was a selection He made by His grace in eternity past. A remnant did not exist because of anything any Israelites did or would do or could do that would force God to stay faithful to Israel. The remnant existed and still does exist because God has His elect that He plans to save and He will do it. And He will do it by grace, because of His grace, because He chose to show grace as God and He can do so. And since it is by grace, there is no place for anything of human origin like human works to base it on. To be based in grace is to be rooted in God s free character to love and give as He wishes, not because of anything outside of Himself that would move Him to show love or give. That s the nature of grace that Paul highlights again in verse 6. Read Romans 11:6 to be sure you get what grace is. [READ] Grace is what God gives to the undeserving, to those who have nothing to offer or merit His favor. Grace is God giving with actually no reason in the recipient of His gift. God did not look down the tunnels of time and see some good work or right choice or even faith in a person and therefore decide to choose them for salvation. No. That would be based on human work and not on grace and verse 6 makes a clear distinction between those two ways of salvation. When we enter the realm of grace, there is no longer any place for trusting in human works. Any basis in human works makes grace no longer grace. But since God chooses and saves only by His grace for Israelites and for any individual of any time then He can show grace whenever and wherever and with whomever He wants. It s not dependent on how good or bad a person is or how well we have prayed for them or ministered to them. It is dependent on God and God alone. And that should give us ultimate hope because hanging our hopes on God is better than relying on anyone or anything else. Please get that hoping in God because He sovereignly chooses those whom He will save all by His grace is far better than hoping in a god who is dependent on the freedom of humans to choose Him. We ll have to talk more about this next week. It will serve us well to talk more about God s sovereignty in showing grace as we also see God s sovereignty in hardening in verses 7-10 This is heavy stuff, but it should be hopeful stuff. We should have hope (1) because God is not finished and we should have hope (2) because God is not absent. But that hope starts by responding to the way God shows His grace and that is through the Person and work of Jesus. If you don t have hope anchored forever in Him, then trust Him today. The root cause of grace is only in God, not in anything human. And if you do trust Him, live with hope and don t give up. Pray with me as we close. 9