In the spring of 1941, Hitler launched a plan to murder every Jew in Europe. It was called the "final solution".
Hitler believed that the Aryan race was superior to all others; and he believed the Jewish race to be inferior to all others. I think we all have a desire to believe we are superior to others - whether in the things we believe, the amount we earn, how we think, what we eat, and how we act - anything that will set our minds to believe we are better than someone else.
Hitler’s "Final Solution" was a systematic programme of "ethnic cleansing" where almost six million Jews left this world for the last time. That act is absolutely mind numbing. And yet the same type of thing has happened repeatedly since then, and is happening today on lesser scales:
- In the Sudan one and a half million have died in the last 20-or-so years due to a mistaken belief that oil fields are of greater value than human life.
- Or how about Rwanda in 1994 where the farming Hutu’s tried to annihilate their cattle-owning Tutsi neighbours where 500,000 were killed in a ten-week period.
- Maybe Palestine and Israel because land and national pride are seen as supreme over human rights and value.
- Afghanistan - where more civilians have been killed in the last six months than the number killed when the World Trade Centre collapsed. That suggests that an American life is worth more than an Afghan one.
- There’s also Somalia, Romania, Zaire, Burma, East Timor, Ambon, Bosnia, Northern Ireland.
You may think I’m over-simplifying things. Maybe so, but if I don’t, then I can’t understand it. But all of these huge tragedies boil down to the fact that one group of people think that their beliefs and wants are so much more important that someone else’s and they are prepared to kill for them. They are all based on conceit. And they highlight and perfectly demonstrate on a global scale Paul’s words in Romans 3:10-11 quoting from the Psalms and Proverbs - "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God."
In the timelessness of eternity, God launched a plan to rescue those who are righteous before him. It is the real "final solution".
GRAPPLING HOOKS
Today we’re continuing to look at the totality of God’s plan of salvation written about in Paul’s letter to the Romans. We’re looking at chapter 11, but as we grapple with parts of it, we need to establish the context in which the letter was written, why it was written and how it was written.
1. Demographics
The first grappling hook is to look at the church in Rome - its demographics and history. As you can imagine, most of the early converts to Christianity were Jews. This was the case until after Pentecost when the Apostles were dispersed from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth [Acts 1:8]. Rome would have been one of the later ports of call in that dispersion. Many of the Christians in Rome would initially have been Jewish, but that had changed over time. We can assume that by this time - around 55-57AD or 25 years after Pentecost, the majority of the Christians in Rome were gentiles, but with Jewish converts still making up a significant minority of believers (much like men in the church today - a minority, but with our presence still felt).
2. Reasons Paul wrote
Our second hook is to reiterate why Paul wrote to the Romans. The primary reason is because he wants to minister to them and to be ministered to by them [1:11-12]. As the God-appointed "Apostle to the Gentiles", he wants to glorify God by sharing fellowship and encouragement with converted Jews and Gentiles together. His plan is to take the collection from the Macedonian churches to Jerusalem and then visit Rome on his way to Spain. He is thus fostering prayer support for his continuing journeys. [15:23-32]
3. Structure of Romans
The third hook is to quickly review the structure of the letter to the Romans. The letter is broadly divided into three parts being chapters 1 through 8, which deal primarily with the righteousness from God and the saving work of Jesus. This key idea is summarised in verses 16 and 17 of chapter 1: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’" This righteousness is contrasted to the sin which we all display.
The next part - from chapters 9 through 11 deal with the issue of God’s faithfulness despite humanity’s unfaithfulness (with particular emphasis on Israel); and how this righteousness from God is manifest in Jew and Gentile alike. A pivotal verse in these three chapters is in Romans 9:6 - "It is not as though God’s word had failed." As Neil said a couple of weeks ago, the surface question is how Israel fits into God’s plans. We’ll come back to the real question shortly.
The final 5 chapters of Romans deal with how we respond to this righteousness from God and the mercy of God. It essentially draws out the practical implications from the preceding 11 chapters.
4. Structure of chapters 9-11
But now we zoom in a little on chapters 9 through 11. I’ve already mentioned Romans 9:6 - "It is not as though God’s word had failed." But again as Neil said two weeks ago, the real question - the ones the Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome (and many people from many places since then) were wondering is "Is God trustworthy or is God fickle?" "Can I have complete confidence in God that His plans will prevail and that He is in control?" "Is he a God who keeps his word?
5. Six objections
Further to that question, Paul raises and then answers six questions that ask if God’s word has failed.
The first four of those questions found in chapters 9 and 10 are:
1. Is God unjust? [9:14-18]
2. Why does God still blame us? [9:19-29]
3. Didn’t Israel pursue righteousness? [9:30-10:13]
4. Did they really have a chance? [10:14-21]
To each objection, Paul’s answer is to argue from the Old Testament, from history and from experience that God’s word has not failed; that God is trustworthy; and that his readers can have absolute confidence that God is in control.
THE 5TH OBJECTION - HAS GOD REJECTED HIS PEOPLE?
And so we’re two thirds of the way through Paul’s argument when we come to chapter 11. Paul asks the fifth objection in that first verse, "Did God reject his people?" The flow of thinking is that if God has rejected his people then his word has failed and he is not trustworthy because in the Old Testament there are several specific references to the fact that God will "not cast his people away". Psalm 94:14 says, "For the LORD will not reject his people; he will never forsake his inheritance."
Did God reject his people? Paul’s answer is an emphatic "No! God has not rejected his people." He holds himself up as an example - "I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin." - Words foreshadowing his subsequent letter to the Philippians describing his immaculate Jewish qualifications. If God had rejected his people then Paul would not have been called by God to faith in Christ.
It’s like asking if God has rejected Western Sydney. No - because we are here. We are evidence of God’s grace.
Paul then refers to the time when Elijah thought he was the only one left in a time of widespread rebellion recorded in 1 Kings 19. Elijah cries to God, "Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me". But Paul’s answer is God’s answer: "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." Even though Elijah felt he was the only one left, God had preserved a remnant - seven thousand people who were faithful and thus righteous. Paul continues that in his day there’s still a remnant of Jewish people who are "chosen by grace.
We then read "What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did." Israel sought God’s favour through the law. And Paul has spent many words describing that the role of the law was to confirm people in their sin - and so Israel did not obtain what it sought. But the elect did receive God’s favour - not by seeking to keep the law, but by being the elect - by grace - unmerited - through God’s favour.
But if we reflect that there is an elect, a remnant chosen by God wholly through grace, then there must be what we would call "the un-elect" - those on whom God’s favour does not rest. What about them? Paul writes (quoting from Isaiah 29:10 and Deuteronomy 29:4) that they were hardened when "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day."
THE 6TH OBJECTION - HAVE THEY FALLEN IRREVOCABLY?
Having determined that God had not rejected Israel - that from God’s perspective there is hope, Paul then addresses the sixth and last objection about whether God’s word has failed. The question posed in 11:11 is "Did they (Israel) stumble so as to fall beyond recovery". Paul has ascertained that they hadn’t been tripped, but had they fallen or merely stumbled. Is the Israelite’s situation irrevocable?
And again Paul answers in the negative. Not at all! Then Paul lets us into God’s plan of salvation that was conceived in eternity - "because of (Israel’s) transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious."
The Jews were God’s chosen people. They believed that to remain as God’s people, they needed to keep the Law. They had no understanding that they were righteous before God by faith as was the case with Abraham who "believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness" [Romans 4:3]. But we know from Romans 3 and 4 that: "no one will be declared righteous in [God’s] sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." And that "It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith." Seeking salvation by works is to reject God’s free offer of salvation through faith.
And so Israel stumbled, and because they’ve stumbled, salvation has come to the gentiles - to us. But it’s no accident. The salvation that is available to us is no divine afterthought. It’s not as if God thought, "Humph, those Jews aren’t very faithful or Law-abiding. I’ll have a crack at the rest of the world and see who we get." Verse 25 is the key here - "I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in." And that hardening is from God - it’s that same stupor, that same closing of their eyes and ears that I mentioned earlier. As Paul says, "their rejection is the reconciliation of the world."
Paul then uses some horticultural analogies to further his argument that some of the branches of the cultivated olive tree of Israel have been broken off and some branches of wild olive, us, have been grafted in in their place.
But God hasn’t given up on Israel - and neither had Paul because we read in verse 13, "I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them." Paul understands that Israel’s stumbling is temporary.
The Jews have stumbled to allow gentiles to receive mercy, but Paul says in verses 23 and 24, "And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again." If a Jew believes in Jesus and puts their faith in him then they, too, will be saved.
ALL ISRAEL WILL BE SAVED
Yet we come to an interesting choice of words by Paul in verse 26, "And so all Israel will be saved." There are a range of interpretations in the commentaries about what "all Israel" means. The interpretation that sits most comfortably says that "all Israel" is the spiritual Israel - those whom God calls to himself including the elect Jews from before Christ and all those who have had faith in Christ since then.
TRAVELING HOPEFULLY
But this isn’t all just theory - with Paul painting a picture of the remnant of Israel and of how we have been included in God’s act of mercy and grace. Whilst Paul does paint that broad picture of God’s righteousness, grace and mercy, we still see a lot of detail in the brushstrokes.
As Albert Colton once wrote, "It is poor traveling that is only to arrive, and it is poor reading that is only to find out how the book ends." And so what do we learn along the way?
Verse 18: "Do not boast over those branches (of Israel broken off). If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you." The church of today is, to some extent, built on the faith of those who have gone or are going before us. For that we can be thankful (not that they’re going, but for their faith).
Verses 20-21: "But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either." We stand by God’s grace. There is no room for arrogance.
Verse 22: "Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off." Mark Thomson once said, "We need to remember that God’s mercy is out of his free, sovereign love, not from any sort of obligation."
Verse 25: "I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in." In Scripture a mystery is not something difficult to understand, but is instead something that was previously hidden. Again there is no room for conceit.
All of these verses indicate the same thing - we are saved by God’s grace and nothing more or less. It’s not as if we are implicitly better than someone who has not put their faith in Christ. It’s not as if we are any better than someone converted to Christianity from another faith. Because of that, there is nothing that we can take any sort of pride in, or any sort of consolation that we are intrinsically OK with God. As Matthew Henry puts it, "Grace is given, not to make us proud, but to make us thankful."
It is only through the work of Jesus, and God’s call, and God’s mercy, and God’s grace that we can kneel before God. Ephesians 2:9 sums it up so well: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast."
One way that we can better understand these things that Paul talks about - this kindness and sternness of God, is to spend time in this coming week reading over Romans 11, praying over it, and reflecting on how God’s mercy has come to each of us and how we can share that with others around us.
IS GOD TRUSTWORTHY?
Chapters 9 through 11 of Romans pose the question as to whether God can be trusted. Has he turned his back on his word to Abraham and the Israelites, and, if so, how can we trust him? The primary thrust of chapter 11 is to present two objections to God’s goodness - that God has rejected his people, Israel; and that they have stumbled and fallen irrevocably such that God’s plans and promises can’t succeed.
But Paul replies in both cases "no". God hasn’t rejected his people for has preserved a remnant; and that Israel hasn’t fallen irrevocably because Jews will be saved - and are being saved in each generation - by coming to faith in Christ. The basis of salvation is always the same - faith in Christ.
Given that God is trustworthy - that he was, always is, and always will be true to his nature and true to his word, we are presented with three questions:
1. How do we respond to that trust?
2. How can we remain in that trust?
3. How do we continue to grow in our understanding of that trust?
The answers to those vital questions are in Romans 12-16, but particularly chapter 12:1-2. But that’s for another sermon in a few week’s time.
As we leave today, let me leave you with the thought of God’s immense plan of salvation commencing with Abraham and extending through the Jews which, through their disobedience, has resulted in God’s mercy being available to us. We who have faith in Jesus belong to this God whose plans extend across thousands of years. Our response must echo that of Paul’s written in verses 33 through 36 of this chapter:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
"Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"
"Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?"
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
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© Gary Bennett, June 2002
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version.
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission.
