Romans 11:1-24 – Romans

So Romans chapter eleven, verse one to twenty-four, and today's question is: What kind of branches can be grafted in?

I ask then, has God rejected his people?

By no means.

For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew.

Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel?

Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.

But what is God's reply to him?

I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works.

Otherwise, grace would not would no longer be grace.

What then?

Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking.

The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written.

God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see, and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.

And David says, Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.

Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.

So I ask, Did they stumble in order that they might fall?

By no means.

Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.

Now, if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?

Now I am speaking to you Gentiles.

Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.

For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?

If the dough offered as first fruit is holy, so is the whole lump.

And if the root is holy, so are the branches.

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 towards 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 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 towards 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 are 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?

So reads God's word.

Amen.

My name is Mark.

I'm uh one of the leaders of the church.

Do uh pull up that passage in Romans chapter 11 that Lena read uh for us.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

Uh Romans chapter 11 is a complicated passage, and we're going to kind of skate across the surface of it a little bit, uh, and maybe kind of draw these three uh chapters to a bit of a close uh next week.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

I was reading a story during the week about a uh a pastor, his name is uh Tim Jones, and uh he was telling this story about when they adopted uh their little girl, uh, and a story about when she was she was eight years old, she had been adopted previously by another family, and that family, after a couple of years, actually dissolved the adoption uh and put her back into the to the care system.

And by ways and stages, she ended up with this pastor and and his family.

One of the things that her previous family did was they would go on holiday to to Disneyland and take their biological children and leave her with a family friend.

And they would say that it was because of her bad behavior, because she was unruly and undisciplined.

And so she grew up for years in this family hearing about the magic kingdom, seeing pictures of uh of Disney princesses and hearing stories about how thrilling the rides were and how beautiful the the hotels were, and never got to go.

And so Tim and uh and his family booked a trip.

They said, We're going to to Disneyland, all of us.

And as the as the trip approached, as time got nearer, this little girl's behavior got worse.

She started to act up more and more and more.

She started to become more disobedient, more unruly.

And one day, Tim sat her down in their in their living room.

And before he said anything, she looked at him and she said, Um, I know what you're going to say.

I'm not going to Disneyland, am I?

Tim felt this shameful part of him, wanting to kind of use it as disciplinary manipulation.

Parents are getting into the uh getting ready for disciplinary manipulation over the next little while.

How will we do that?

Santa's watching.

Right?

That's what we do.

We like we want to leverage the uh uh the the the reward, but he didn't say that.

He looked at his daughter and he said, Is the whole family going to Disneyland?

Yes, she said.

Are you part of this family?

Yes, she said, then you're going with us.

I'm quoting him now.

Sure, there may be consequences to help you remember what's right and wrong, but you're part of our family, and we're not leaving you behind.

So off they went and they had their first day in the magic kingdom.

And they got back to their hotel room, and that tired little girl, overwhelmed by all of the emotions, overwhelmed by the beauty of Disney princesses, snuggled into her daddy and and he asked, How was your first day at Disneyland?

And as she drifted off to sleep, she said, I love it.

I finally got to go.

And it wasn't because I was good.

It was because I was yours.

That little girl used to think the way the world trains us to think that people get what they deserve or ought to get what they deserve, or that at some point someone's patience with us will run out and will say enough is enough.

Or will say, I'm I'm I'm done with you, I'm walking away.

Through all of the complexities of Romans chapter 11, Paul is teaching us this one simple idea that God is not like our world.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

That God is a God of grace, and its limits extend far beyond we could ever hope to conceive or imagine.

Do you know what grace is?

Grace is unmerited, that is unearned, undeserved kindness.

That is God's grace.

It is his commitment to this grace, this undeserved kindness, that moves him to show mercy to his people, to keep his promises, to be patient.

And the question that Paul is wrestling with this morning is does God's grace run out?

What are the limits of it?

Does it have limits?

And his concern with all of this chat about Israel is to show us that God's grace continues to flow.

And it flows in unlikely and surprising ways, and indeed it overflows to others.

And that's our first point, if you're taking notes, is this that God's grace has not run out?

Verse one.

I asked then, has God rejected his people?

By no means.

Has God finally said, I'm done with Israel, I'm done with the Jews?

They have done nothing but turn from me and harden themselves to me.

Paul says, So has God rejected them?

And then he answers his question, by no means.

God has not rejected Israel wholesale.

He has not rejected the Jews.

How do we know?

Well, he says in in verse 6 that there is a remnant.

Actually, that starts in verse 5.

So, too, at the present time, there's a remnant that is a uh a residual uh number of people left that are saved by grace.

Grace continues to flow and it it flows to this remnant.

And Paul before that gives two examples.

So, how do you know that God's grace has not run out?

How do you know, Paul, that God's grace has not run out?

Well, the first thing that Paul says is, well, look at me.

Look at me.

I am a member of ethnic Israel.

He says, I'm a Jew, descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

End of verse one.

And that he has become a beneficiary of that grace.

Has God's grace to Israel stopped?

No, Paul says, look at me.

And then you think back to what Paul was like, and you realize, gosh, yes, he really is a recipient of this grace.

Because a more hardened opponent of the grace of God, you were never likely to find.

He hated Christians.

He hated the message of Jesus.

He was on his way to arrest and imprison more Christians when Jesus appeared to him and saved his life, transformed him.

He stood watching, holding the coats as other men stoned the first Christian martyr, a man called Stephen.

Paul is saying, if God can transform, if God's grace can extend to somebody like me, then God's grace has not run out.

And then he quotes the story of Elijah.

So, do you not know what scripture says of Elijah?

This is verse 2.

How he appeals to God against Israel.

This is picking up a story in the Old Testament where Elijah is exhausted.

He has just had a big showdown with these false prophets.

You may remember it from your Sunday school lessons on a uh on Mount Carmel, not Mount Caramel, that'd be sticky.

Uh Mount Carmel.

Uh, although if you're American, that's how you say it, I suppose.

Um, and and he has won.

He has shown the fire from heaven has has fallen.

He's shown that Yahweh is the Lord.

And after this showdown, he he runs away because he thinks that they're going to be after his life.

And and while he's in this cave, he throws himself a uh a pity party.

He says, Oh, yeah, um I'm the only one, I'm the only one who's who's faithful.

Nobody else loves you like I love you, Lord.

Uh, and God corrects him.

He says, Elijah, you're wrong.

There are 7,000 people, God says, who he has kept for himself.

Paul, I think, in quoting this, is saying, guys, the limits of God's grace are bigger than you think.

Have you ever been in a church community that thinks that they're the only real Christians.

And that everybody else is just playing at it.

Everyone else actually are just gonna they're just gonna be kindling for the fires of judgment, right?

Actually, we're the real Christians.

We're the ones who who Jesus really loves.

Paul would say, no, no, no, hold on.

The limits of God's grace are bigger than you think.

Or maybe actually you look at someone and you look at you look at the choices that they're making, you look at their life, and your heart breaks to them, and you kind of think, gosh, it feels like God would never save them.

They're so hard, they're so hostile, they'll they'll never believe.

Friends, the the limits of God's grace are bigger than you think.

God has preserved for himself a remnant in Israel, and he's done so not by works, that's what verses five and six are saying, but by his grace, that is his unmerited kindness.

And Paul addresses the rest and he gives us a warning.

He says, Well, the rest were hardened.

Verse 7, what then?

Israel failed, Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking, but the elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.

And this is my second point.

Rejecting grace always leads to a hardening of your heart.

Who hardens the heart of the unbeliever?

And again, all the way through these three chapters, we've been we've been seeing this both and it's both God is sovereign in his choosing, his election of people to salvation, and people are responsible to respond to God as as they ought in repentance and faith.

They are responsible for when they willfully reject and turn aside from that.

Which one is it?

It's Bovin.

Who hardens a person's heart?

Well, last week we saw Paul was saying that the Jews sought to establish a righteousness of their own, a righteousness by their own works.

And so what happened was, Paul says they stumbled over the stumbling stone.

They couldn't get their heads around the fact that they couldn't achieve it themselves, that they had to cast themselves upon the mercy of God, that they needed to accept his grace.

And so they rejected it.

They looked at that stone that was laid, which is Jesus, and they despised it.

They thought, no, we can do this ourselves.

As a result of that pride rejection, Paul says, God hardened their hearts.

If they rejected grace and hardened themselves, God confirmed that hardening, hardened them in response, dulled their perception, made them slow to respond.

And this is true for all of us as we as we turn aside from the grace of God.

When you turn aside from the grace of God, our hearts become hard.

How do we know that?

Well, because it's grace that gives us soft hearts.

We cannot work our hearts soft, we become proud or we become despairing and bitter.

It is only grace that will soften our hearts.

And when we turn aside from that grace, our hearts become hard.

Why is that?

Because in order to allow grace into your life, there needs to be some sort of acknowledgement of need.

A humble desire that actually you need the help of another, that you need the rescue of another.

That's a heart that's becoming soft, a heart that has been softened by grace.

To turn aside from that is to become hard.

We see this, don't we?

In the lives of people who perhaps have been around church for years and decades, they've even been around gospel preaching for a long time.

They know it.

And yet they have continued to reject it.

And after a while, it becomes as though they are unable to really conceive of it anymore.

It just doesn't make any sense to them.

And so when a preacher or a pastor stands up and preaches the grace of God, it becomes like background noise.

There's a dullness that happens because of their proud rejection of grace.

David or Paul then quotes David to help us think through more about how it is that that hardening happens in order to warn us.

So verse 9, he quotes Psalm 69, he says, Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.

What does that mean?

Well, let's chat about tables.

How does how does a table make your heart hard?

Well, in the context, what happened with the with the Jews of Paul's day, and still down to this day, is that they became obsessed with food and cleanliness and ritual purity, so obsessed with it that they rejected the grace of God.

They felt like they could achieve it as long as they they went through and performed the right actions, the right rituals.

And so, what should have been a way of understanding God's holiness and God's gracious provision became a trap for them, became a way of rejecting the grace of God, of seeking to establish their own righteousness.

So it snared them in pride.

In the same way, we will always, we will harden ourselves to the grace of God when we look at the things that God has given us and we fall in love with them.

When we make them more important, more ultimate.

Than the God who gave them to us.

When those things become more precious, more central to who we are, we're in danger of finding ourselves hardening towards the grace of God.

But from this warning, Paul then asks, Well, is that it then?

Is this the end of the if is this the end of the story?

And again, he answers the question.

Not if grace has anything to say about it.

And this is our third point.

By the way, there's four, so we're we're making good progress, right?

This is the third point.

Grace means that the story isn't over.

Grace means the story isn't over.

Have a look at verse 11.

So I ask, did they stumble?

Did they trip over Jesus and the grace of God laid for them in the Old Testament?

Did they stumble in order that they might fall?

By no means.

Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.

Paul asks, well, did God lay that stone there that they would trip over it and then he'd be able to dispose of them?

He'd use that as the basis of saying, right, you're done.

They would fall.

Paul says, no.

By no means.

The wonderful truth about God's grace here in Romans chapter 11 is that it means that the story isn't over.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

Israel's story isn't over.

I'm not quite sure what that means going forward.

I deliberately, if you're looking at it, um, we stopped the reading at verse 24, um, and we're going to to pick it up uh next week in verse 25.

And one of the things that verse 25 says is that all Israel will be saved.

Sorry, verse 26.

All Israel will be saved.

I don't know.

Give me another week.

But Paul's saying that the story isn't over for Israel.

And it also means that the story isn't over for us.

That none of us is too far gone.

Again, think of that loved one who seems so hostile, so shut down.

What's Paul saying?

Paul's saying that as long as grace is flowing, their story isn't over.

Just take heart.

Their story isn't over.

The story isn't over for Israel, but rather what their hardening has resulted in is that grace has overflowed.

You just imagine you got a uh a cup or a pint glass there, and uh, and what the what Israel have done is no no, don't want any more, don't want any of that grace.

They've kind of they put their hand over the lid of it.

But grace has continued to pour and it's spilled over the sides, Paul says.

And and where's it overflowed to?

Well, it's it's overflowed to the Gentiles, to non-Jews, aka I would say 99% of us here, right?

The God's grace has overflowed as a result of their hardening.

This is what we saw.

If you read the book of Acts, this is this is what you see is that Paul goes and the apostles go to the Jews first.

He goes and he reasons in the synagogue first, and inevitably there's a riot, and they try to stone him.

And so what does he do?

Well, he goes to the Gentiles.

Peter goes to Cornelius, the Roman centurion.

Paul goes to uh to the to the Greeks in in Athens, and they respond.

Paul says that the purpose of this overflowing to the Gentiles is that God might make Israel jealous of the grace that has been shown to them, and that they might then in turn embrace it.

This, of course, asks us or forces us to ask a very serious question that requires some reflection.

This will be in your uh your community group study guide this week, which is essentially this is does our life together, does your life individually make people jealous for the grace of God?

What would it mean for us to look at, for others to look at city church, to look at your community group, to look at your family life and go, I want what they've got?

How is it that they can love one another so recklessly?

How is it that they can forgive one another so lavishly?

How is it that they are so generous to one another?

That's the grace of God.

I'd like some of that.

How is it that in their community, in their life, it is safe to be seen?

How is it that they've been able to have guilt and and shame dealt with that that allows them to be open and vulnerable with others?

Oh, it's it's the grace of God.

Could I be a beneficiary of that grace?

Does our community as a church make people think, wow, look how they love for one another, care for one another, serve, bless, and encourage one another.

I'd like some of that grace in my life.

Paul's hoping and praying that the Jews would look at the church filled with Gentiles, forgiven and flourishing, and think, hold on a second.

I would like some of that.

And Paul is unashamed about saying that this is what he's trying to do.

This is why he says that this is what I'm magnifying my ministry.

Verse 13.

I'm speaking to you Gentiles, inasmuch as that I'm apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry.

Why?

Because we Gentiles are so great.

Paul's like, no.

Verse 14, in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus to save some of them.

He begs up his ministry amongst the Gentiles, and he says to them, I'm not doing that for you, actually.

I'm doing this for my brothers and sisters according to the flesh, whom I love.

Remember Paul's heart from a couple of weeks ago, how he would rather be cut off himself from the grace of God?

He'd rather spend an eternity under God's judgment if it meant that his brothers and sisters, according to the flesh, could be saved.

He says to the Gentiles, you imagine the Gentile Christians in Rome.

Rome of all places.

They're the leaders of the known world.

It's like writing a letter to London or New York and saying, you guys are great, actually, but I'm actually using you a little bit.

I'm using you because I'd like to save these guys over here.

Over in a less significant part of the world.

Belfast or somewhere.

Can you imagine the Gentile Christians reading it and saying, right?

So it's not about us then, Paul.

And Paul says, Yeah.

It's not.

You're right.

Final point.

It's not about them.

And so Paul warns them by saying that grace ought to kill presumption and grow humility.

There's our four.

God's grace is not run out.

Rejecting grace always leads to hardening.

God's grace means that the story is not over.

And finally, grace kills pride, presumption, and grows humility.

Look at verses 17 and 18.

He's beginning this uh this illustration of the of the olive tree, um, which is a common illustration uh in the Old Testament to describe Israel, so this kind of cultivated, beautiful olive tree.

And then Paul's essentially saying that there's a bunch of there's a bunch of wild olives, little more than weeds.

Um, and and God has has plucked some of these some of these weedy, fruitless branches, and he's taken them over to this beautiful olive tree and he's grafted them in.

I'm not a horticulturist, I have no idea what that means, but I apparently it's possible, right?

So he's taken these weeds, these fruitless weeds, and he's grafted them onto this flourishing tree.

So verse 17.

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, the old wild olive shoot, were grafted in amongst the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree.

Do not become arrogant towards the branches.

If you are, remember it is not you who supports the root, but the root that supports you.

Or verse 20.

They were broken off.

This is the other branches, the branches of Israel.

Some are broken off because of their unbelief.

But you stand fast through faith.

So do not become proud.

But fear.

Fear, I think, there is analogous, not with kind of terror, but with a humble trembling.

Paul's saying to us, we have no room to boast.

Grace leaves no room to boast.

We've been graciously brought into the family of God, grafted in to that nourishing olive tree.

Not because we were terribly fruitful or terribly good looking, but because of God's grace.

And by his grace we have been grafted into this story that stretches back millennia.

That we are descendants of Abraham.

Did you know that?

Do you know you are a descendant of Abraham?

Not by birth, not by ethnicity, but by grace.

The children of Abraham are not those who share Abraham's genetics, but who share in Abraham's faith.

It is by grace that we are heirs of his promise, or the promises made to him, that through him all the nations of the world will be blessed.

And so, friends, Israel's history has become our history.

Because we have been grafted into Israel's story.

I'm not necessarily here talking about the geopolitical entity.

Do not think in those sorts of terms.

I am talking about the Israel recounted and told about in the first three-quarters, two-thirds to three-quarters of your Bible.

That history is now our history.

That story is our story, that God's preserving and patience and kindness and promises and covenant and pledge to them is also to us.

Because of grace.

That even though we were a wild olive tree, nothing more than a weed, nothing terribly impressive or fruitful, God has brought us in.

He's shown us grace.

Not because I'm good, but because I'm yours.

Do you see?

We're joined to the nourishing root.

That is the nourishing root of the Jewish scriptures, what we call our Old Testament.

Salvation comes from a Jewish Messiah, not because of works, but by grace.

So we must heed the warning here against any pride, against any superiority, moral or ethnic.

It is a warning against a presumptuousness of thinking, well, we, the majority of Christians in the world are Gentiles, are non-Jews.

The majority of the Christians in the world are Westerners or white.

They're not actually.

The majority of the Christians in the world all have black and brown skin, if you're going to talk in ethnic terms.

And so there's no room for a feeling of superiority.

Or thinking that we are somehow better than others.

Paul says, be very careful of a presumptuousness like that.

Because if God removed the good branches, the branches of the original olive tree, how much more easy would it be for him to remove the branches of the wild olive tree that was grafted in?

We must be careful of a of a Christian traditionalism that just presumes upon the grace of God.

I know we don't we don't meet in a in an old fancy church building, though Lord knows we tried to buy one.

And so, but I don't want to be so presumptuous to think that we wouldn't get sucked into a traditionalist mindset.

It is good to have traditions that inform our faith and show the rootedness of our faith, but to to grow into that, well, as you know, I this is this is my chair.

I sit on row F, seat three, uh, and we forget.

We think that we own the gospel.

We think that it is ours by right when actually we have been grafted in by grace.

You see, the Christian life is one of constant reliance upon the grace of God.

The moment that I begin to think that I no longer need his mercy, that I can do better without him on my own, that I am entitled to mercy.

At that point, I am moving beyond the limits of grace into pride, which will only ever harden my heart.

But Paul's thrust here in Romans 11 is one of hope.

That the God who grafted in wild olive shoots will again extend his grace to his people.

This is the wonder of grace.

Grace always leaves the door open for restoration.

It always leaves the door open for forgiveness and for renewal.

So I know that you have people in your mind as I say those words.

I know that you have people who you love in your heart right now, who seem, who seemed in the past to be so full of the joy of the Lord, and who at one point were so zealous for him and yet seemed to be nowhere now.

God's grace is not done.

God's grace continues to flow.

God's grace always gives the hope of restoration and renewal.

And in the meantime, we continue to live as humble beneficiaries of that grace.

Relying upon Him, praying that those who have hardened themselves would be softened again by that grace.

They would envy something in us and come to know that overwhelming grace too.

Thank you for listening to this week's sermon.

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