Sermon Transcript
Romans 11:17-24, but if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, branches were broken off so so that I might be grafted in. That is true, they were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith, so do not become proud, but fear, for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God, severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness, Otherwise you too will be cut off.
And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.
Well, thank you to Mandy. Thank you to our awesome worship team. You know, the hardest thing I would say for me standing up here right now this morning is the fact that I didn’t get to spend all morning hanging out with these awesome people like I usually get to do. Can we thank our worship team for leading us in worship today?
You know, back in college, I worked as a waiter at a local family-owned Mexican restaurant, and our plates always came out of the kitchen really hot. I mean, like, really hot. And we’d deliver the food to the customers, and we’d almost always use a towel so our hands didn’t have to touch the scalding hot plates, and we’d set the food in front of the customers and say, be careful, this plate is really hot. Sometimes we’d even be in motion to set the plate down and they’d reach out and try to grab the plate out of our hands and we’d quickly pull it away with a, no, believe me, this plate is hot. Be careful.
You know, it seemed like almost every single time I set a plate down, before I could even walk away from the table, they would touch the plate. You know, sometimes you could tell they were just kind of tapping the edge of it, trying to see, okay, how hot is this plate? Or often it seemed like no matter where I set the plate, the customer would insist on shifting it about 3 millimeters, like I had just barely missed the perfect landing zone. I can’t even count the number of times someone would immediately grab the plate, whip their hands back, and exclaim with a yelp, that’s hot! It took about every ounce of self-control we as waiters had not to say, no, you don’t say.
You know, as I think about this experience, you know what one of the most annoying parts about it is? Now, when I’m in a restaurant and the waiter delivers a hot plate, what’s the first thing I do? I touch the plate. I can’t help it, and I respond with an internal dialogue just completely making fun of myself. It was hot, wasn’t it?
He warned you, but you just couldn’t stop yourself. But it’s not with just with hot plates that we ignore warnings, is it? In our overly legalistic society where everything is a lawsuit waiting to happen, we have warnings around us all the time that we just ignore. Like that coffee cup that says, Caution, contents may be hot. And you think to yourself, I certainly hope so.
I ordered a hot coffee after all. Or how long do we let the check engine light stay on in our car before we take it in to get scanned? Speaking of cars, it seems like every car these days has some type of screen in it. One of our cars, every time I get in it, some warning pops up on that little screen. I’ve never actually read it.
Ironically, I think it probably says something like, don’t be distracted and look over at this screen.
How many warnings do we just overlook in our everyday lives? Road signs that say, caution, roads may be slippery when wet, and then you see cars speeding right past you, and how many cars will you see spun out into the snowbanks on a weekend jaunt to Tahoe? Or how about this one at the theme park? Caution, please keep all arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. And what’s the first thing we do?
We can become numb to warnings around us at all times or think, that doesn’t apply to me, I’ll be fine. Warnings become a nuisance, annoying background noise as we go about our day. But there are other warnings that aren’t just noise, warnings that are directly applied to our lives, warnings that are a way for us to tell one another we love them. Like when you have to yell at your child not to run into the street, or what about a doctor warning their patients about the effects smoking is having on their body, or the friend who nags us to put on sunscreen at the beach? How about this one?
Drive safe. When have we ever said those words to someone and thought, they were gonna drive like a maniac, but now that I said that, they’ll have a nice, easy, safe drive home? No. When someone leaves the gathering and you say, drive safe, with 2 simple words, you are saying, I care about you. I hope you make it home safely.
I love you. Warnings are not always a sign of rejection or a buzzkill. Even the stern ones. Instead, they often can be a sign of love. And in our passage today, we will see that Paul gives us 2 very serious warnings.
As we look at this passage in Romans 11, we’ll see that Paul— we will see Paul’s 2 warnings to believers, and we’ll see how warnings contribute to our salvation. That’s 2 warnings, and how warnings contribute to our salvation. Now, throughout Scripture, there are many, many warnings, warnings about the dangers of sin, warnings about the need to turn from sin and turn to God. But these warnings we’re looking at today are not those warnings. They’re a little bit different.
Paul here is giving these warnings to people who are already in the family of God. He uses the phrase, grafted in. And he is telling us how to maintain our faith, how we will endure in our faith. It’s a warning about belief. Okay, warning number 1, don’t be arrogant or prideful for being included in God’s promises.
Let’s— don’t be arrogant or prideful for being included in God’s promises. Now, a couple weeks ago, Dan talked about the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Do you remember that one? It’s found in Luke 18, where the Pharisee, the respected Jewish leader and scholar who trusted in his own works and in his own righteousness for his salvation, he looks to God and says, God, I thank you that I’m not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven. He beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And Jesus tells his audience, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.
Now, imagine with me for a moment if this story continued. Just to be clear, I’m making this up. We’re telling our own parable now, but imagine if we continue that story like this and it says, the tax collector who was too ashamed of his own sin to even lift up his eyes to heaven, who beat his chest saying, God be merciful to me, merciful to me, a sinner, imagine him hearing Jesus say, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified. And on hearing that, he stood up and said, Me? I’m justified?
I am righteous in your sight and not the Pharisee? Ha! Take that, Mr. Pharisee man. Did you hear that? I’m the one who’s justified.
I’m the one who’s righteous. I’m welcomed into the kingdom of God. I’m a coheir to the kingdom. And you’re not. Picture him walking through the temple.
Stand aside, everyone, I take large steps. Then entering the courtyard with a swagger and a stride akin to Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Excuse me, justified man coming through. Look at all you unbelieving Jews. Bet you wish you could be like me.
Absolutely ridiculous, right? He’s been welcomed in because of his humility, his acknowledgment of sin, and then he flips it all upside down demonstrating the exact opposite of humility. That is exactly what Paul is warning us against here. Unbelieving Israel was cut off from the root. The Gentiles were grafted in.
He’s saying, don’t forget, You’re not better than them, so quit acting like you are. Israel was relying on their works, on their merit, their status as God’s chosen people instead of trusting in the gospel, instead of the free grace offered by God. And because they were relying on their own works righteousness instead of grace, they were now cut off. In come the Gentiles like schoolyard bullies and look down on the Israelites, say, this is our playground now. And Paul responds, with, Knock it off.
You don’t deserve to be here either. You didn’t earn it. And the irony here is Israel had often done the exact same thing throughout their history. God had graciously chosen them. God had revealed himself to them.
God had given them the covenants, the promises, the law, and temple worship. But instead of responding with humility and gratitude, many responded with superiority. They looked down on the Gentiles. They viewed outsiders with contempt. They trusted in their status instead of God’s mercy.
And Paul says to the church, don’t repeat their mistake. Verse 18 says, do not be arrogant toward the branches. Arrogant. Now, there’s another similar word Paul uses throughout his letters, boast. He uses that word over 50 times.
He repeatedly tells us not to boast in our works, in ourselves, or in our earthly accomplishments. Instead, he says in 2 Corinthians 10:17, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord, because the full understanding of the gospel rules out the possibility of boasting. And he said earlier in Romans, in Romans 3:27, then what becomes of our boasting? It’s excluded. Why?
Because Christianity is not the story of good people earning God’s acceptance. I’m going to say that one again. Christianity is not the story of good people earning God’s acceptance. It is the story of spiritually bankrupt people being rescued by grace. If you are in Christ today, you are not there because you were wiser than everyone else.
You are not there because you were morally superior. You are not there because you figured out the secrets of life better than others. You are there because God had mercy on you. And that’s it. And the moment we begin to feel superior to others, we are forgetting how we got in.
Paul says in verse 20, you stand fast through faith, not through performance, not through intelligence, not through worthiness, through faith. And even that faith is really just a gift of grace. Arrogance in our inclusion reveals to us that somewhere underneath, we actually believe that there was something about us that made us worthy of inclusion. But that is simply another form of works righteousness. It is the belief that salvation ultimately rests on something in me.
And Paul says, absolutely not. You were grafted in. By grace and don’t forget it. So, how should we respond? What is our proper attitude toward unbelievers?
The right response is for our hearts to be broken for anyone who isn’t in Christ. In Romans 10, Paul says, brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. Before that, in Romans 9, Paul says, my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers. Do our hearts break like that? Do our hearts break like that for our unbelieving brothers and sisters?
Do we have great sorrow and unceasing anguish for the lost? Are we willing to be accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of others like Paul is? Paul is willing to face the wrath of hell, to be cut off from the other branches in order to save others, and here are the Gentiles boasting about their salvation. And here we are today, thinking we are better than the Pharisees, thinking we are better than the Israelites and the atheists and the agnostics and the Muslims. But I’ll repeat it again, Paul says, I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers.
As if he’s saying, could you please, at least, at the minimum, quit being so arrogant?
Pastor and author Tony Merida says it like this, therefore, there should be no smugness among Gentile believers. But instead, a healthy fear before God. There should be no smugness toward unbelieving Jews. There should be brokenhearted evangelism that says, my friend, we have found your Messiah. Will you trust him?
Not arrogance, not smug superiority, not condemnation, brokenhearted compassion. If we truly understand grace, we would never think that that person over there just needs to repent and act like me. They need to think more like me. Because the truth is, if that person over there acted like me and thought like me and had what I have in my heart, they would deserve precisely nothing.
Apart from grace, we’d be in the exact same position. A proud Christian is a contradiction and the gospel leaves no room for superiority. There is only one category of person in the kingdom of God and that is undeserving people rescued by mercy. You know, Dan has referenced this Tim Keller quote before and I’m going to say it again. To be welcomed into the kingdom of God, to be a Christian, All you need is nothing, but most people don’t have it.
You know, that’s why we sing in the hymn, Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.
Naked, come to thee for dress.
Helpless, look to thee for grace.
Foul, I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die. You know, we don’t ever sing it like this. We don’t ever say, foul, I to the fountain fly. Savior, wait just a moment while I finish washing up.
Hang on, I’ve washed my hands, but I think I need to scrub my elbows a little bit better. Hang on a second, Mr. Savior, I was on my way to the fountain, but I just stepped in some chicken poop and I need to clean it off my boots before I continue.
Foul I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die. Don’t be arrogant because you’re not the one doing the washing.
And now we come to our second warning, unbelief.
Paul says in verse 20 that Israel was broken off because of their unbelief. Unbelief. And this should make us stop and think carefully. What is unbelief? Because if you had asked many Israelites whether they believed in God, they would have said, absolutely, yes.
They believed in God’s existence. They believed in the Scriptures. They believed in the promises. They believed God would one day restore all of Israel. So, what does Paul mean when he says they had unbelief?
Clearly, he means something deeper, something more than merely just believing God exists. Scripture is clear that there’s more than just belief that God exists. James 2:19 tells us, even the demons believe. And the demons aren’t saved, we know that for sure. In Mark 9, a man brings his son to Jesus to be healed and he says to Jesus, I believe.
Help my unbelief.
So, for the Israelites to be cut off, the issue was not whether or not they believed in God generally. The issue was what they believed about how they could be in right relationship with God. Romans 10:3 explains, for being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, They did not submit to God’s righteousness. That is the issue. They sought to establish their own righteousness.
They believed in God, but they trusted in themselves. Their confidence rested in rule-keeping, religious performance, moral achievement, ethnic identity, and personal worthiness. In other words, they did not truly believe in grace. And friends, hear this loud and clear because many people today make this same mistake. There are people who believe in God intellectually, who acknowledge Jesus academically, while still fundamentally trusting in themselves spiritually.
They believe God exists. They believe Jesus existed. They may even attend church regularly, but underneath it all, Their hope before God rests in their own goodness, in their own actions. And Paul says that is unbelief because saving faith means abandoning confidence in yourself and placing your confidence entirely on Christ. It means saying, I cannot save myself.
I cannot make myself righteous. My only hope is Jesus. That is saving faith. And Paul is shouting this warning straight at us because our natural instinct is to run towards doing it ourselves. Our default position is to rely on our own efforts and our own abilities.
Even after coming to the realization that we must put our faith in Christ, we so often run the risk of placing our true hope in our celestial performance evaluation, as if God is like the supreme HR director keeping our deepest, darkest secrets in our heavenly personnel file. Our natural response when we hear warnings about falling away is to be better, try harder, pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but that is the very trap that destroyed Israel. And Paul’s accusation against Israel and subsequent warning to us cuts deeper than we often realize. He says they had unbelief.
Unbelief. Not weak faith; unbelief, as in zero, as in fundamentally misplaced. It’s as if their confidence in their own spiritual standing was so great they thought they were like Benny the Jet Rodriguez playing for the Dodgers with a monstrous leadoff from 3rd base, just one perfectly timed sprint away from stealing home and securing the final victory, when in reality, they were Scotty Smalls still in the sandlot. Thinking they’re in the major leagues, instead they’re stuck in the sandlot battling the beast because despite all their efforts, turns out all they had to do was knock on the door and ask. You’re killing me, Smalls!
Do you remember that movie? Yeah, The Sandlot, one of my favorite movies. Neighborhood kids playing baseball in a rundown field when one of the boys hits a home run into a neighbor’s backyard with a very special baseball he wasn’t supposed to be playing with. You know, the one he stole from his stepdad’s trophy closet that happened to be signed by Babe Ruth? They spend the entire movie scheming ways to outsmart the huge dog they call the Beast.
To try to get that baseball back. And then at the end, when they finally confessed to the homeowner, Mr. Myrtle, that while they were trying to get their ball back, they knocked down the fence and let the dog out, he says to them, why didn’t you just knock on the door? I’d have gotten it for you. Friends, don’t get caught in unbelief, the trap of believing that your schemes, your works, your merit, will lead you to the throne room only to hear God say, why didn’t you just knock? Now, if I’m honest, in my imagination, when I hear that voice, it may or may not sound an awful lot like James Earl Jones.
That’s— why didn’t you just knock? Because saving faith is not about the size of your faith. It’s about the object of your faith. Jesus said, faith the size of a mustard seed is enough But it has to be in Christ and in Christ alone. That means weak Christians can still be real Christians.
Fearful Christians can still be real Christians. Struggling Christians can still be real Christians because salvation does not depend on the strength of your grip on Christ. Ultimately, it depends on the strength of his grip on you. That’s why earlier, you know, we sang the song I Am. It says, I am holding on to you.
When I’m singing that song, punctuation matters, even if that punctuation isn’t on the screen and it’s just in my head, because when we sing that song, I’m not thinking, I am holding on to you. Rather, in the middle of the storm, I am, the great I am, the God who was and is and is to come is holding onto you. Amen. The I am is holding onto you. And thanks be to God because the grip of the Almighty, the grip of the one who says, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand, is far more reliable than these 2 hands will ever be.
Which brings me to our final point: how these warnings of pride and unbelief contribute to our salvation. They are one of the means God uses to keep us with him. Paul reminds us again not to be arrogant or proud. He says instead to fear, and there is a relationship between saving fear and Sorry, saving faith and fear. There’s a relationship between saving faith and fear.
Verse 20 says, but you stand fast through faith, so do not become proud, but fear. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking, that sounds like a contradiction. How can we stand fast through faith but also be afraid and fear? And the answer is fear is one of the tools God uses to keep us safe, to keep us in line, to keep us on the right path, to keep us close to him. Do you remember this one?
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That’s right, Proverbs 9:10. In fact, fear is one of the most common words used throughout Scripture relating to worshiping and understanding God. Scripture talks about fear more than 500 times. Over and over, we are instructed to fear God.
Deuteronomy 6:13 says, you shall fear the Lord your God. Ecclesiastes 12:13, fear God and keep his commandments. 1 Peter 2:17, honor everyone, love the brotherhood, Fear God. And whenever Scripture uses the inverse terms, like fear not, do not fear, don’t be afraid, it’s talking about earthly troubles, earthly concerns, earthly problems. For example, Isaiah 41:10 says, fear not, for I am with you.
Joel 2:21, fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things. And Jesus says in Matthew 10:31, fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
Fear is, simply put, one of the many tools God uses to protect us and keep us close to him. We can think of it like this: God established the law to keep us safe, and we continually disobeyed the law. So he reminded us through fear what would happen. And we do the same thing today in our own lives. Now, my daughter Dinah recently started driving.
Don’t worry, Dinah, this is not one of those times when a pastor tells an embarrassing story about their kid. I will wait till you move out before that happens, so. I’m just kidding. Dinah recently started driving so I just had cars. On my mind.
I already referenced them in my intro and just driving and learning to drive and the rules of road are just on my mind. And I’m not even talking right now about the fear that I have as a parent every time my child pulls out of the driveway for the very first time. We’ll save that analogy for another sermon. I was thinking about the tools we use to keep each other and our children safe without forcing them into a protective bubble or locking them in their rooms. When driving a car, we follow the rules of the road.
Okay, some of us do. We know there are speed limits and they are meant to keep us safe and those around us safe. We are required to wear seatbelts. There are laws about that designed to keep us safe. Drivers now are, thankfully, prohibited from texting while driving.
And here’s a big one. We all know it is against the law to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. But all you have to do is open your eyes and look around and realize that people don’t always follow these laws. And the Israelites were no different. God gave Israel the law, but without the fear of God in their hearts, the book of Judges tells us, they did what was right in their own eyes.
If it were as simple as following laws that are designed for our good and designed to keep us safe, people wouldn’t drink and drive. Yet, in 2024, in the U.S., there were over 12,000 fatal traffic accidents linked to impaired driving. There were over 800,000 arrests made for DUI, and that’s just the people who got caught. Clearly, the law alone is not enough to keep people safe, for the ancient Israelites or for us today. You know, back when I took driver’s ed, we learned the laws of the road.
But I remember one particular day in driver’s ed class where the teacher popped in an old VHS tape. Kids, VHS tapes were like the YouTube of our day. This particular worn-out VHS tape was called Red Asphalt. Anyone else remember Red Asphalt? Anyone else have to— yeah, okay, a few people.
It wasn’t just me, all right. It was produced by the California Highway Patrol with graphic images of the aftermath of car accidents, very graphic videos of the aftermath caused by impaired driving and what happens when you don’t wear a seatbelt and what happens in accidents involving excessive It was terrifying. We knew the traffic laws, but the fear caused by those videos was designed to keep us safe and take it to the next level. And if that weren’t enough, in the early 2000s, the California Highway Patrol took it to a new level. They started a new program in high schools they called Every 15 Minutes.
Usually around prom or grad night, they would go into local high schools and stage a fake traffic accident. But realistic and gruesome fatal car crash, complete with emergency personnel and a coroner. I’ve heard of a few variations of the program, but they would often include a mock arrest and trial of the drunk driver. They might stage a mock funeral for one of the students in the school as if they had died in the car crash. And sometimes they even had a Grim Reaper character who would remove one student from the group every 15 minutes.
To demonstrate that at the time in the U.S., one person was killed in an alcohol-related accident every 15 minutes.
These programs are warnings for us today that we use. And they’re not warnings meant to simply be cruel, while it seems like it at times. They are warnings designed to protect us, to keep us safe. And that’s what God is doing here. He has given us a way to be safe with him.
The way is Jesus, not work, not merit, not personal righteousness, Jesus. And Paul builds on this warning when he tells us in verse 22, note then the kindness and the severity of God. The kindness and the severity of God, the severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. The severity towards those who have fallen, this should terrify us. That is the warning.
Alert! Alert! God’s justice is severe, and those who remain in unbelief will face severe judgment. You will be cut off with those who have fallen away into unbelief.
But God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness, And what is his kindness? His kindness is that he has given us the answer to his severity. He alone has reached down to us and extended the greatest, most perfect love imaginable. It’s severity towards those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. This should be terrifying.
And yet a sense of comfort. But if you do hear this warning and feel a sense of panic, if you hear this and think, what if I fall away? What if my faith isn’t strong enough? What if I fail?
Remember this, the very fact that you are worried is evidence of God working in your heart. Because these warnings are meant to drive you toward Christ, not away from him. The answer is not to hear a warning and then stare endlessly at yourself analyzing whether your faith is perfect, because it’s not and it never will be. The answer is to look at Christ, because to quote Tim Keller once again, weak faith in a strong Savior still saves. The issue is not whether your faith feels impressive.
The issue is whether your hope rests in him. So, be afraid. Be very afraid. And in your fear, don’t ask, am I doing enough? Ask, am I trusting Christ?
Am I clinging to his mercy? Am I depending on his grace? And then keep coming to him again and again and again.
And I know there may be some people hearing this message who have spent a lifetime trying to bolster their own righteousness, trying to add to their spiritual accomplishments, and deep down you never feel secure because you know you never fully measure up. And it’s exhausting. And the gospel calls you to stop. Christ has already done everything necessary. His life was perfect.
His death paid for sin completely. Scripture says, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Your hope is not in your performance. Your hope is in him.
So come admitting you cannot rescue yourself. Come to him empty-handed.
Would you pray with me?
Lord, I’m reminded once again of the father who described in Mark chapter 9 who brings his son to Jesus. And he cries out to Jesus saying, I believe. Help my unbelief.
God, that is my prayer for us today. For those who don’t believe, God, I pray that you would lead us to a saving knowledge of Jesus, that you would help us to come to believe and come to believe in the right thing. But for those of us who have maybe believed for a long time but have really been worried more about our own works, our own works righteousness, God, I pray that you help lead us to a true belief in Jesus, not unbelief. God, lead us to you. And God, I pray that everyone here, thinks about how they’ve been living their life, that we all think about whether we have been trying to be better and better and better in order to get close to you.
God, I pray that anyone who is carrying burdens in their hands right now, pray that we lay them down. God, I pray that anyone who is clinging on to works righteousness, That we lay it down and that we come to you in full belief, empty-handed, to you, the one and only Savior. Lord God, we thank you, we love you, and it’s in your Son’s name I pray, amen.
