Sermon Transcript
According to my vast knowledge of criminal trial court, which comes from at least dozens of minutes of watching crime dramas, one of the strategies that defense attorneys or prosecutors use in order to win a case is to discredit the key witness from the other side. So, say if the case rests on this witness identifying the defendant as the one who committed the crime, the witness says, I was there. I clearly saw it happen. This is the guy right there who did it. That would be strong evidence against the accused.
But if the defense attorney can then demonstrate that this witness isn’t very trustworthy, in general. Perhaps he has a history of lying. Perhaps he’s been involved in some scams. Maybe he’s kind of a sleazy salesman who, uh, who closes a lot of deals just because he tells the customers anything the customers want to hear, but it’s all smoke and mirrors. None of it’s true.
The customers never get what was promised. So if the defense attorney can bring those customers on the stand and have them say this guy who’s a witness of this crime, he’s a total hack, it can cast doubt on the witness’s credibility. The idea being, if nobody trusts this guy, why should the jury trust him? I’ve seen that happen at least once in a court drama. Maybe it happens in real life, I’m not sure.
But that same principle applies in our relationships, in our workplaces. If people have a history of not coming through, then we have less confidence that they will come through for us in the future. Whereas if we have always been able to count on them, then it gives us greater confidence that they will be there for us going forward. Which brings us to God. Can we count on him?
Is he trustworthy? What kind of track record does he have? This is the question that Paul, the author of Romans, sets out to answer in chapters 9 through 11. 11. If you haven’t been with us the past several months, we’ve been studying the book of Romans, and we’ve said really Romans is about the gospel.
It’s about what Jesus has done for us, what Jesus has earned for us, what he has provided for us, that he’s removed our shame and guilt before God. There is now no condemnation for us. We’re released from any penalty that we owe for our sin. We don’t work our way back into God’s graces. We don’t earn God’s favor.
Because Christ earned it for us. God credits to us the same status that Jesus has. Whatever blessings that Jesus deserves, those become ours. We’re given the future that Jesus deserves. His eternal reward is ours.
We talked about last week one of— it’s kind of a high watermark of God’s promises in the Bible. It’s that all the problems of the world, all the evil, all the injustices, all the corruption, And also not just evil, injustice, corruption, but also all the physical decay, the death, the rot, the entropy that plagues our earth. All of that, the injustices and the death, all of it will not only be reversed, which it will, it will be reversed. The dead will be given new life like Jesus’ resurrection. And all the wrongs will be set right.
Everything broken or lost will be rebuilt or returned. So, it’s reversed, But not only is it reversed, all this pain and suffering will actually be transformed and used in such a way that it benefits us. In the end, God turns every malicious intent against us into something that lifts us even higher. The evil that we encounter won’t bring us down, it will be used to bring us up. Just as Jesus’ crucifixion actually served to exalt him even more.
Okay, that was last week, High Watermark of God’s Promises. And throughout this series each week there have been just incredible claims of what is provided through the gospel. It is much more than simply, oh, we go to heaven when we die. The promises of Christianity are staggering. It is worth checking out, I would say, even if you are a skeptic.
There is a richness to Christianity, which I, I admit I’m biased, okay, but, but I don’t think anything else even claims to provide what Christianity claims. The question is, can we trust God to come through on those promises? Does God have a clean track record in the past? Has he always delivered on what he said he would do? Or has he broken some promises?
Has he failed to deliver? And before you say, well, of course God is dependable, he’s God, obviously he’s dependable, before you say that, there’s actually a giant elephant in the room. It’s a looming question that hangs over everything that Paul has described so far in Romans, which is What about Israel? What about God’s chosen people? Did he fulfill his promises to them?
Because if God promised Israel the moon and didn’t deliver, then why would we trust him to come through for us? Paul anticipates that his readers will have that question because it certainly seems to be the case. Israel was promised the moon, but they don’t have the moon.
God really made all the same promises to Israel that Paul now says applies to us. I mean, God told Israel he would remove their shame and guilt. God spoke of them as if they were adopted into his family. He refers to Israel as sons, Exodus 4:22, for example. They will always have a seat at the table with God.
God told them, I’ll never leave you or forsake you. You’ve heard that. It’s Deuteronomy 31 repeated in Hebrews, right? We’re told the same thing as they are. God promised Israel a future, a future with a king who would reign forever, a land that would never fail to produce, new heavens, new earth, a redeemed world.
And of course, God promised them a Messiah who would make all of this possible. Jesus would be the fulfillment of these promises. He, their King, Lord, and Savior, them, his people, in a never-ending happy reign. These were God’s commitments to Israel. But, and this is the elephant in the room, at the time of Paul’s writing and even still today, for the most part Israel is on the outside looking in.
They don’t have what was promised. God had assured them for millennia All this is going to happen for you. Sin’s gone, future guaranteed, I’m with you, you’re with me. But when God shows up as Jesus to deliver on these promises, the far majority of Israelites don’t receive him. They are excluded from the redemption that God always said that he would provide for them.
So what does that mean? Aren’t they God’s chosen people? His chosen nation? Wait, not anymore? Is that what it means?
Did God break his promise? And if he broke his promise to them, will he break his promise to us? That’s the primary topic of Romans 9, 10, and 11, is God’s credibility. And Paul takes significant time to address the elephant in the room. So today we’re looking at how Paul answers that question in 9, 10, and 11.
We will spend more time on 9, 10, and 11 in the next 2 weeks, so we aren’t covering everything from those chapters today. So much more to dig into in the weeks ahead. Today we’re just looking at, at Paul’s answer for how Israel could be out for the most part, and yet God still be faithful, credible, trustworthy. And in our verses, Paul gives really 2 reasons why Israel is excluded from the promises. But then he comes back around and says there is still hope for them.
It’s not over. The 2 reasons they are out are election and failure, which we’ll look at individually, election and failure, and then we will be encouraged by their hope because it’s our same hope. All right, so first, Israel’s election. Only some people were chosen to be part of God’s promises.
You’re going to have questions about this. We won’t get to all of it today, but Israel’s assumption was when God told Israel that they are the chosen nation, the chosen people, when God made commitments to them to forgive and restore, their assumption was that God was speaking to all of them, that everyone who ever descended from Abraham biologically was therefore elected, chosen by God before the foundation of the world to be included in the promises. That was their assumption. But Paul makes a very strong case that it was not the entire nation of Israel who was chosen. Only some of them were.
A subset of the whole. And he proves it in a variety of ways. So first he gives 3 specific examples of people who were part of biological Israel but who were not included in the promises. In chapter 9, he contrasts Isaac from Ishmael and then Jacob from Esau, all 4 of whom were biological descendants of Abraham. Isaac and Ishmael were children of Abraham, Jacob and Esau grandchildren.
They were all part of Abraham’s family, and God had made promises to Abraham’s family. You’ll have the land, you’ll have a future, from you will come a Messiah who will restore the whole world. So we might then assume that all 4 of them Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Esau, all of them would be included because they’re all part of the biological family. We might assume that, but that was not the case. It was Isaac, not Ishmael.
It was Jacob, not Esau. So while they were all Abraham’s biological children, they were not all children of the promise. And Paul states very clearly Though it is a big challenge for us. His words are clear, so may God give us ears to hear it. The difference between who was in and who was out was nothing about the people themselves.
It’s not like Isaac and Jacob somehow merited inclusion, you know, like they earned it somehow, while Ishmael and Esau didn’t. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t about the people themselves. In fact, all of them merited exclusion. Paul said throughout Romans, no one is righteous, not even one.
So none of them had a moral record that would have gained them access to the promises. Everyone deserved to be out. But God chose to have mercy on some. Paul explains this in Romans 9:16, inclusion does not therefore depend on the human desire or effort. But on God’s mercy.
It can’t depend on their effort because their effort, like ours, they fall short. So it must depend on God’s mercy. That’s how access is granted— God’s mercy. And God doesn’t have mercy on everyone.
Paul quotes Exodus where God says, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
We have questions about that. Of course we do. We’re going to talk more about it next week. But for now, it’s clear what Paul’s saying. Whether we like it or not, it is at least clear.
Now, if you’ve been around Bridges for a while, you’ve hopefully noticed that we labor to say things as graciously as we can possibly say them. But this is hard.
Paul is saying God did not break his promise to include Ishmael and Esau because he never promised to include them in the promises we typically associate with Israel. Paul says, Romans 9:6, not all Israel is Israel. Not all those descended from Abraham are children of the promise. Not all of them were promised, so God didn’t break his promise. He gives another example in chapter 11.
Paul fast-forwards about 1,000 years in the biblical timeline to make the same point. He refers to an event in the life of the prophet Elijah from 1 Kings 19 is what he is quoting. The setting was in Elijah’s day most of the nation of Israel had rejected God. They were worshiping and offering sacrifices to one of the other gods of a different nation, Baal, or as we typically say it in the U.S., Baal. But even though everyone around Elijah is worshiping Baal, Elijah stands his ground.
He sticks with the God of the Bible in the face of fierce opposition. And then God dramatically shows up. I mean, fire falls from heaven. It proves Elijah is correct. Baal was revealed as a fraud and false god in front of everyone.
Which we, we would probably think at that point, well then, everybody got on board with the God of the Bible, right? If Baal was proved as a fraud and God showed up with fire, everybody’s following God now, right? Well, that’s not what happened. The leadership was furious that their belief in Baal was humiliated, and then the leadership wanted to kill Elijah. So Elijah fears for his life and he flees.
He goes into hiding. He bemoans to God. He’s like, I’m all alone. I’m the only Israelite follows you, no one else believes in you besides me. And God says, no, Elijah, you’re not the only one.
I have kept for myself 7,000 men, don’t know how many women, who have not bowed the knee to Baal. There are 7,000 of them. They’re referred to as the remnant. They are the subset of Israel that God has, quote, kept for himself, meaning that he is chosen. Again, the point is that God has not kept all of Israel for himself, only some of them, 7,000 to be specific, which is a very small percentage of the total.
You know, not long before this there had actually been a census, and at that time there were 800,000 fighting men. Again, don’t know how many women. And then there were wars and some divisions in time past, 800,000, still a fair ballpark number of the total. And God says He has only reserved for Himself 7,000 of that 800,000. That’s less than 1%.
So, again, Paul’s point is not all of biological Israel was included in the promise. And if that weren’t proof enough, Paul then quotes some of their prophets. One example, he quotes Isaiah, says Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, there’s biological Israel is as vast as the sand on the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved. It’s Romans 9:27, same point. So Paul has gone through the entire biblical timeline starting with Abraham through the time of Elijah up to Isaiah, and he says It’s always been this way.
It’s never been everyone. It’s always been a subset. So what’s the big surprise that in Paul’s day and even still today that only some Israelites are connected to God’s promises through Jesus? The fact that it is only some of them doesn’t mean God is unfaithful. It doesn’t discredit him.
It is consistent with the way that it has always been. God didn’t elect the whole nation. God didn’t keep all of them for himself. Only some were chosen. That’s one reason that most of Israel was out, but that God is still faithful.
But there is another reason, which is Israel’s failure. They are responsible for their own exclusion. One of the reasons that we struggle with God having mercy on whom he chooses is that we think it’s unfair. We ask, shouldn’t everyone have a chance to get in? Well, everyone does.
Everyone does have a chance, and Israel failed. Israel’s failure was specifically pride instead of humility. We’ll try to say this a bunch of different ways, and we say it often at Bridges, but in Christianity, it’s not the good people who are saved, redeemed, included in the promises. It’s not the good people, it’s the humble people. In fact, the more we try to prove our worth to God, the farther from him we are.
On the other hand, if we just admit our weakness, if we admit we haven’t measured up, that we won’t measure up, confess our sins, the closer to him we are. Jesus tells us a famous parable in Luke 18. Jesus says— he makes up a story— he says 2 men went up the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee is a religious leader, right? And the Pharisee prayed, God, I thank you that I’m not like other men, like the sinners, or even this tax collector that I’m standing— that’s over there, I guess.
God, I— the Pharisee says— I fast twice a week, I give of all my income. You know, I’m good. I’m religious. That’s how one guy prays. The other guy, the tax collector, which in their society tax collectors, it was— that’s as bad as you could get.
They were the bottom rung of the morality ladder. Often when the Bible refers to the unsavory crowd that kind of hangs around Jesus, it categorizes them as sinners and tax collectors, which shows tax collectors were considered so bad even the sinners didn’t want to be lumped into the same group as them. All the sinners could say, well, at least I’m not a tax collector. But Jesus says the worst guy imaginable, the tax collector, he’s standing far off from the temple. He wouldn’t even lift his eyes to heaven.
He beat his chest, and he just said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. That’s the tax collector’s prayer. And Jesus tells you— and Jesus says, I tell you, the tax collector is the one who went home justified. Rather than the Pharisee. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
The way into the promises of God is by knowing that you need mercy. If we try to justify ourselves, we will be excluded. If we try to prove that we’ve measured up, we’re out. It’s a little like though not identical to the Disney movie Aladdin. If you’re not familiar, Aladdin was this boy who lived on the streets.
He was called a street rat by some, but Aladdin was in love with the princess Jasmine. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a chance with her, so he thinks, because he’s not a prince. But Aladdin happens upon a magic genie And the genie makes him a prince. He gets a fortune, an entourage, whole deal. So now Prince Ali— I mean, now Aladdin, now called Prince Ali, he rolls into Jasmine’s town with all kind of pomp and circumstance.
And, you know, his entourage sings, Prince Ali, fabulous, hee Ali Baba. I won’t sing the rest of it. For you.
Wow. You do not need to have pity on me. It’s okay. Strong as 10 regular men, he faced galloping hordes, 100 bad guys with swords. He’s got 75 golden camels.
When it comes to exotic type of mammals, he’s got a zoo. Handsome is he, that physique, how can I speak? Weak at the knee, he’s got 95 white Persian monkeys. To view them, he charges no fee. He’s generous, so generous.
On and on his entourage sings. The whole point of the entourage is for Aladdin to try to prove that he’s worthy of Jasmine, but it’s all lies. That’s not really who he is, and Jasmine will have none of it. She is not interested in Prince Ali. Who’s trying to— he was trying to prove himself, but that excluded him from her.
Things start to turn only when he’s real with her, and they only really get together, you know, for real after he has admitted who he is, which is unworthy of her according to their law. His humility gained him access. Pride led to his exclusion. This was Israel’s failure. From our verses from 9 and 10, Israel who pursued the law as a way of righteousness, they have not attained their goal.
Why not? Because they pursued it not from faith but as if, if it was by works, as if they could measure up through rule keeping. That’s what that means. Or 10:3, they tried to establish their own righteousness. These verses are saying they tried to work their way to God.
They tried to earn it. They’re the Pharisee. Look at all I’ve done, Lord. I fast, I give, I pray, I’m good, I’m enough. They’re Aladdin when he’s Prince Ali, lots of effort to try to prop themselves up to present themselves as acceptable to God and God will have none of it.
He’s like Jasmine. The way into the promises of God is only by asking for mercy. As I quote often, Tim Keller said it like this, all you need to be a Christian is nothing.
To be included with God, to receive the promises, all you need is nothing. But then Keller wisely adds, most people don’t have it. Most people don’t have nothing. Most people try to come to God with something. Most people try to prove themselves.
Most people try to measure up. They come with King Ali’s band. God, you know, I’ve been good, I’ve done all you said, now give me what I want, give me what I prayed for. That’s coming with something. Or similarly, if you ask, you know, the average person on the street why they think they’ll go to heaven if they believe there is a heaven, most people will say, I think I’ll probably go to heaven because I’m a pretty good person.
I do the best I can. I haven’t done anything really wrong. That’s trying to measure up. You’re not coming with nothing. You’re not standing far off beating your chest asking for mercy.
You’re trying to come with something. That’s Prince Ali. And just like with Jasmine, that is the very thing that will ruin your chances with God. And that is what Israel was doing in Paul’s day, the far majority of them anyway. Not all of them, of course.
Paul himself was Jewish. Peter, James, John, all the disciples, 3,000 people on Pentecost who accepted Christ, all of them Jewish. All of them were Jewish. Many were included. There’s certainly a remnant within the wider community who received God on the basis of His mercy instead of trying to measure up for Him.
But the majority didn’t. The majority was excluded from God’s promises. Paul gives a metaphor of Israel’s situation in Romans 11. He depicts the nation of Israel as a branch that was broken off. Paul says God’s promises are like an olive tree, and Israel is this branch that has been removed from the tree, whereas many Gentiles, non-Jewish people, they have been grafted onto the tree.
Even though the Gentiles had no previous history or knowledge of the God of the Bible, now they’ve been included. But Israel, for the most part, broken off because they weren’t chosen. And because of their personal failure, broken off. So we wonder, is that it for them? Is that how their story ends?
After all their history going all the way back to Abraham, God said, I’ll make you into a great nation. I will speak with you. I’ll be with you in a way that I’m not with other nations. I’ll forgive you. I’ll give you a new heart.
I’ll put my spirit in you. I’ll give you a forever future. I mean, God is with them for millennia, and now is it over, basically broken off except for a few of them? That would be pretty anticlimactic.
But Paul says, no, that’s not the end. God isn’t going to give up on them, which brings us to Israel’s hope. Israel’s hope is one day salvation will come to Israel. There will be a day when Israel is no longer hardened. There will come a day when the majority of them see Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life.
They will seek God on the basis of what Jesus has done, not on the basis of what they have done or on the basis of some kind of national pride. They will come to God empty with nothing, and they will be grafted back in. Paul explains starting in verse 25, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers, A partial hardening has come upon Israel until— until, which means there is an end date to their hardening— until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, the Deliverer will come from Zion, He will banish ungodliness from Jacob. And this will be My covenant with them when I take away their sins.
One day Israel will be in, Paul says all Israel will be saved. All is a strong word. Does all mean all Israel who are presently living at the time when the fullness of the Gentiles has finally come in? Or does all mean all Israel for all time? Probably doesn’t mean all Israel for all time because he’s just given these specific examples who were part of biological Israel and were not and included.
But there will come a day when Israel embraces her Savior, and they will be grafted back in. They will not be grafted back in because they are Israel. They will be grafted back in in the same way that we get in, through Jesus. Notice when Israel is saved, verse 25, how does it happen? Verse 26 and verse 27, the Deliverer comes to get them.
God takes their sin away. It’s not what they do, it’s what He has done. Access is granted through trusting in Jesus to measure up for them instead of trusting in themselves. Instead of hiding or justifying their failure, they hand it over to Him. They won’t stand on their own effort, but they’ll rest on His.
They won’t try to climb their way up, but they will rejoice that God climbed His way down. That’s how Israel will be saved. That’s how we will be saved. That’s how anyone is saved, through Jesus’ work on our behalf. Listen, if all this, you know, like these verses that we studied today, the concepts of election, God’s choice, if that concerns you, God’s sovereignty in salvation, if you worry, why am I elect?
Did God choose me? Am I included? Can if that concerns you, just throw yourselves into the arm of Jesus. If you do, it means you were chosen. There is not one example in Scripture of anyone who cried out to Jesus for mercy and didn’t get it.
If you ask him for mercy, you will receive it. His arms are open. Rest in his grace. Rather than on your performance, and you will have it. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you that you are the source of salvation. Thank you that you will never leave or forsake us. Thank you that you will receive us not on the basis of what we’ve done, but on the basis of what you have done. Lord, increase our faith in Jesus. As hard as some verses are, Lord, we pray that our confidence in him would grow even stronger.
May we throw ourselves into his arms and find his mercy is never failing. We pray those things in his name. Amen.
