Romans 11:25-32; Nothing but Mercy

Well, good morning.

My name's Jason, and I'm one of the pastors here at our church.

And I want to add my welcome to Braxton's welcome at the beginning of the service.

Really glad that you're here, especially if you're visiting with us.

Thank you for being here this morning.

Lots of places you could be on a Sunday morning, and we consider it an honor that you would be here with us on this Sunday morning.

If you're on the inside aisle, you'll see in front of you, in the pew in front of you, a black registration pad.

Please take that and pass it down.

We'd love everyone to fill that out, especially if you're a guest with us.

We'd love the opportunity to thank you for being with us this morning.

You'll also see in that registration pad a little card that has some important dates and things going on in the life of our church.

And so please make a note of that if you would like.

Also, in your bulletin, let me highlight uh one thing.

You'll see some three important announcements there.

I want to highlight the first announcement, our foundations of faith.

That's our membership class.

We'll start back up on October the 18th.

That is for anyone who's interested in learning more about what it means to be a Christian, but also more about our church.

And it is something that's required to be a member here at faith.

So please, if you're interested in that, you can sign up through the website, or you can also uh call the church office and we'll get you signed up uh for that membership class.

If you have a copy of God's word, turn with me this morning.

Romans chapter 11.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 11.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

If you need a pew Bible, you'll see one in front of you.

The passage can be found on page 963.

963 in the Pew Bible.

If you're visiting with us this morning, we as a church, we just go through books of the Bible, and we have been in a study uh through the book of Romans, and this morning we find ourselves in Romans 11.

And we're at the end of an argument that Paul has been building since Romans chapter 9.

Romans 9 · chapter mention

And so, Romans 9 through 11, they're a section and a unit in the book of Romans, and we're at the end of this argument that uh Paul is making, uh, and basically it's around whether or not God keeps his word to his own people.

And Paul's answer to that is that belonging to God was never about being born into it or earning it, that it's about the mercy of God.

And so in Romans 9 through 11, he's really just making one argument all the way through from three different angles.

And so that's why, if you've been coming to the series, you've heard a lot of repetition throughout these few chapters.

Romans chapter 9, your standing does not save you, mercy saves you.

Romans 9 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 10, you don't build righteousness, you receive righteousness.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

And then here this morning in chapter 11, you're gonna hear Paul beating the same drum, the same note from a different angle.

It's not an accident, it's very intentional, and just maybe Paul knows something about us that it takes us hearing the gospel of grace over and over and over until it finally starts to land with us.

And so, with that in mind, follow along with me as I read God's Word, Romans 11, 25 through 32.

This is the word of God.

Lest ye be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers.

A partial a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

And in this way all of Israel will be saved.

As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion, and he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.

And this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.

As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers.

For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

For just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient, in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy.

For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

This is God's word.

Let's pray and let's ask the Lord to help us as we study this passage this morning.

Please bow with me.

Father, we pray every week before the sermon, and it's not just something we do, and it's not just something we're supposed to do.

We're desperate.

I'm desperate.

I need your help as I preach this passage.

Would you give me clarity?

And I pray that those listening that you would help them to be attentive and help them to take this passage in.

Lord, we want to encounter Jesus and so show us your goodness and show us your grace through this passage in Romans chapter 11.

Romans 11 · chapter mention

Speak, O Lord, speak.

We are listening.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Have you ever thought about how much of your life that you never actually chose?

Have you ever thought about how much of your life that you never actually chose?

You didn't choose the year you were born.

You didn't choose the country where you were born.

You didn't choose the family that you were born into, and the language that you were thinking before you could even talk or speak.

You did not choose that.

Every person in this room was born into a set of circumstances that they had absolutely nothing to do with.

Not one decision, not one qualification, not one thing did you do to deserve being born here instead of somewhere else?

Somewhere else, some other century, some other year, some other country, born into a different set of circumstances entirely.

And yet, how many of us actually walk around feeling the weight of that?

You see, most of us, me included, we quietly assume, don't we, that we've earned this.

That we got here on our own, that we've built this, that we've earned this life that we have.

You see, give it long enough, and the sheer grace of it disappears from how we view ourselves entirely.

You see, that's the exact trap that's sitting underneath this passage this morning.

Remember what Paul has been doing several chapters.

He's been speaking with the Gentile believers in Rome, and he wants them to understand that they were let in as outsiders by grace and mercy alone.

And now the Gentile outsiders, you see, they're starting to act like insiders.

Israel once assumed their history had made them better than everyone else, so they look down on everyone else, mainly the Gentiles.

And now the Gentiles, what do you think they're doing?

Well, they're doing the exact same thing.

Except now they're looking down at the Jews and the Israelites.

John Stott says, he's a commentator, it's when we have false or fantasy images of ourselves that we grow proud.

Notice he doesn't say pride comes from having a lot, it comes from a story.

A story that we tell ourselves, a picture of ourselves that really isn't accurate.

That's what's going on in this church.

The Gentiles didn't earn their way in any more than Israel did, but that's what pride does, doesn't it?

It pride takes grace and it rewrites it into merit.

And the apostle Paul refuses to let that happen.

Because mercy is the only way for everyone.

That's what we're gonna see in this passage this morning.

Paul shows us this in three ways.

First of all, he makes a claim about what God is actually doing with Israel.

That's the first thing he does.

And then secondly, he lays the ground for that claim, the reason for that claim.

And then lastly, he shows us the mercy itself.

So if you're a note taker this morning, the claim, the ground, and the mercy.

That's where we're headed this morning.

Let's look at our first heading, the claim.

Look at verse 25.

Paul tells us the mystery itself, and he tells us why, right from the get-go, he says, Lest you be wise in your own sight.

I've already hinted at it, but remember the whole passage exists to guard the Gentiles from pride because they're looking at, remember last week, branches being broken off from Israel, and they're deciding now it's uh there is an us versus them.

And the Gentiles are looking at the Israelites and saying, story is over, now we're the ones on top, we're the ones that are in.

And the mystery, well, it isn't a puzzle to be solved, it's something God clearly states here.

A partial hardening has come upon Israel, not the whole nation.

Paul himself is proof of that, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, a full number of God's people, every nation being gathered in.

Look at verse 26.

And in this way all Israel will be saved.

All right, let me slow down here.

Because for a few thousand years, Christians have read this differently, and I'm gonna tell you the way I read it and why.

Notice that he does not say and then, like something new is starting.

He begins by saying, in this way, describing how it happens, which tells us that Paul isn't pointing to some future finish line.

He is describing what is happening right now in real time.

Well, and then the question, well, who's the all-Israel?

Well, remember, there's no verse divisions and chapter divisions in the original manuscripts.

This is all one argument starting in chapter 9.

And in chapter 9, he's already told us who all Israel is.

Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

In other words, Israel was never just about bloodline, it's about a people.

It's about God's people that belong to him by faith.

One people of God, Jew and Gentile together, reaching their full number.

The same promise that we've seen all the way through the Bible, starting back with Abraham now complete.

Paul even names this people in Galatians, the Israel of God.

That's the church.

And then he grounds it in Scripture.

Look at verse 27.

That's the new covenant promise there.

Sins will be forgiven, sins forgiven through Christ for anyone in it, in the covenant, which is why all Israel will be saved, was never about a land or a political future.

It's about sin being dealt with through the person of Jesus Christ.

And many of us have grown up hearing this passage tied to the modern nation of Israel.

And I understand why.

Many faithful Christians have read it that way, but whatever you think about international politics, that's not what Paul is doing here.

That's not what he's describing in this text.

He's describing one people, the Jews and the Gentiles, now complete.

And so to put it in context of the Roman church, he's looking at the Gentiles and he's saying, hey, listen, there's never been an us versus them to begin with.

There's never an us versus them to rank.

It is one people the whole time being let in by grace alone.

I recently got my daughter's car fixed.

She'd been having some trouble, and we finally figured out that it was the fuel pump.

So we took it to a garage.

It was downtown and got the fuel pump fixed, drove it home, and the tank was on empty, close to empty, had in the digital display, it said 25 miles or something really low.

And so I'm thinking I'm gonna pull over and get some gas.

And I'm gonna deliver this car that's fixed to my daughter with a full tank of gas.

So I filled up the tank and I get in the car, I start it, well, the gauge didn't move.

The digital display still said 25 miles.

And so I get out and I'm thinking, did I put gas in this car?

I thought I did.

So I get out, well, and I get it right up to the edge, even overflowing a little bit.

I know that the tank is full.

Get in the car, still not reading.

The gauge is not reading, the display is not reading.

Call the shop.

When you fix the fuel pump, you must have done something to the gas gauge.

Bring it in, we'll fix it.

So I'm driving downtown, I'm on 280, and I'm looking at my dashboard, and I've got nothing.

It is reading empty.

And it's unsettling.

But I knew that I just filled it up, and I caught myself watching the gauge and half believing it, wondering if I am about to be stranded on the side of 280.

The gauge was wasn't telling the truth, but it was persuasive.

It's a strange thing being uh being hard to believe what you already know is true.

That's a picture of what's happening with this church in Rome.

They're reading the gauge on Israel, and they're looking at them, and they're saying, hard-hearted, uh, cold, resistant towards the gospel.

They're on empty.

And they're looking at that gauge and calling it final.

And Paul here is saying, not so fast.

The gauge is broken.

It's not lying.

There is a real problem.

There's real hardness of heart.

Just as there was a real issue with my car, but it's wrong about what the problem means for the whole story.

We do that, don't we?

You ever do that?

Same thing with people's stories.

We look at the family who has the father that never seems engaged or comes to church or is interested in spiritual things, or we look at the friend who mocks us for what we believe, or we look at the marriage that looks past saving, and we look at those things and we say, empty.

Over, finished, done, call it.

And we do the exact same thing with our own story, don't we?

We look at our story and our sin patterns, our failures, and it seems like year after year after year we cannot get a grip on the thing that we want to change so desperately about our lives, and we look at the dashboard on our own life, and it says empty, done, finished.

That's what we tell ourselves.

Says who.

God doesn't say that.

You see, he's still writing the story.

He's the author of the story, not us.

And God is the one who gets to declare when it's over.

And he hasn't declared that it's over.

You see, Paul is not asking you to pretend that the needle doesn't say what it says.

No, there is a real reading there.

What he is asking us is to believe and trust that he's still at work in ways that we don't understand, to trust that rather than trusting what the dashboard says and the gauge says and what it's telling us now in the present moment.

Secondly, the ground or the reason.

So then the qu natural question is why should anyone believe that Israel's story really isn't over?

I mean, how can Paul say this with such confidence?

Well, look at verse 28.

They there, he's talking about unbelieving Israel right now, in Paul's own day, they opposed Christ.

Paul does not soften that at all.

As far as the gospel goes, they are enemies.

But then look at what it says in the same breath, the same verse, but they're beloved for the sake of the patriarchs because of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob centuries before any of them were ever born.

Now let me be clear, that doesn't mean every single one of them is saved.

That's not what it's saying.

He's making a claim that God's promises still stand.

And then the question is, okay, well, how can both of those things be true?

Verse 29.

Here's the reason.

For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

Not because Israel's behavior earned it, but because the promises was never conditioned on their behavior to begin with.

Faith has always been the only way in for the Jew and the Gentile alike.

And so what Paul is getting at here is the invitation itself hasn't been revoked.

The door is still standing open.

There's this great scene in Genesis chapter 15, where God is interacting with Abram and he makes a promise to Abram, and Abram asks a really honest question okay, God, how can I know that this is actually going to happen and that this is true?

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

And that you really are committed to me.

And so God tells him to cut animals in half and to line them up opposite of each other, because you see, in that culture, the way that you would seal a covenant or cut a covenant is that both parties would walk through these animal pieces together, declaring, in a sense, if I break my word, if I break this covenant, let what happened to these animals happen to me.

But in this scene in Genesis 15, that's not what happens.

Abraham falls into a deep sleep.

And in the darkness, you see the smoking firepot and a flaming, blazing torch representing God Himself.

And you know what that torch and firepot, you know what God does?

He walks through the pieces alone.

Abraham never walks through.

Only God does.

And in a normal covenant, both sides would put themselves on the line.

And here, God is saying, only he will be on the line.

As if to say, if this fails, it will cost me, not you.

That's what Paul means by irrevocable in verse 29.

It's such good news.

He's saying the promise didn't depend on Abram holding up his end of the bargain, and the invitation doesn't depend on Israel holding up their end either.

It's about God and his commitment to us.

And you know how these promises were finally kept?

We see them, it all come together centuries later when Jesus faced the weight of that same covenant, the covenant that we broke, that we could never keep, and instead of it falling on us, it fell on Jesus, who was torn and cut off for a covenant we could never keep on our own.

That is what irrevocable cost God.

It is not a casual word.

It is a promise sealed in blood, his own blood.

So what?

Have you ever wondered whether it's too late for you?

Maybe you look at your life and you're thinking, too much time is gone.

I've ignored God for far too long, and sin has just piled up and piled up and piled up over and over, and I've ignored God.

Notice what you're doing when we do that.

Again, it turns this thinking, it just turns it right back in on ourselves.

What we are doing is you're actually deciding when the invitation expires.

And God is saying, that's not yours to decide.

I have set the date, and there's no expiration on it.

You are basing that on your own assumptions, not on my word.

But if you look at verse 29, verse 29 says, It's not your door.

And it's not your door, and I have not shut the door, and the invitation has never been closed.

It stands open this morning for you.

And so that's an invitation.

If you do not know Jesus this morning, the door is open.

And God is calling you to walk through it by placing your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you're already a believer, maybe you're sitting there wondering, you're thinking, I have been so inconsistent, I have failed so much, surely God's patience with me has run out.

Well, verse 29 answers that too.

Friends, if our standing before God was based on our consistency, let's just pack it up and go home because we're done.

That is not the gospel.

No, we're standing on God's consistency.

It's not about our grip on him.

Thank goodness.

The gospel is about how tightly he is holding us.

And his grip has not worn out.

His patience is not wearing thin.

Rest in the security of verse 29, the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

Number three, the last point, the mercy.

So if that's true, if the promise was never resting on our record, look at what this does then for how we treat one another.

And in this context, Jew and Gentile.

Look at verse 30 through 31.

Let me try to explain that briefly.

The Gentiles were disobedient outsiders, no claim on the promise.

Mercy reached them because of Israel's rejection.

Now, Israel's the one who's refusing to believe.

And Paul says that very mercy shown to the Gentiles will be the means for which the mercy will come back to Israel, too.

And so it's very interesting.

You've got this mercy just going back and forth, and each group receiving it through the other's failure.

Look at verse 32.

A very significant verse in this passage.

For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

That word consigned is an old word for shut up or enclosed.

So the picture is like the way a wall would enclose a besieged city, enclosed with only one way out, and God's the one who provides it.

And so here's what it means: God has shut up Jew and Gentile alike in the same disobedience for the same reason, so that mercy, not pedigree, not performance, not our own goodness, is the only way either group gets out.

Or to say it another way, the only way either group comes in.

And it's worth saying here because this can be misheard in both directions.

God doesn't cause the disobedience, He encloses the people who are already in it.

So that mercy would be the only way out.

If he caused it, then it would be a debt that we owed.

It's not.

It is a gift.

And all there doesn't mean every single person without exception.

Paul has already told us that some will face judgment way back in Romans chapter 2.

Romans 2 · chapter mention

It means both groups.

That's what he means by all, without distinction.

Not every single individual without exception.

A gift nobody earned, offered without distinction.

If you want the whole sermon in one sentence, that's it.

Mercy's offered to everyone on the same terms, freely, not earned, and it is received whenever we take hold of it by faith alone.

Lewis Zamborini was drafted into the Second World War.

Perhaps you're familiar with his story.

He survived a plane crash over the Pacific Ocean.

He spent 47 years, not 47 years.

That'd be a long time.

47 days adrift in the ocean.

He was rescued, but he was rescued by the Japanese, and he spent two and a half years in a POW camp being tortured.

And he came home unbroken.

People looked at him and said, Man, this dude, you want to see grit, you've got grit.

You want to see toughness, you've got toughness.

The kind of man we would all point to and say, if there's anybody that doesn't need anything and doesn't need help, it's that guy.

And then his life completely fell apart.

His marriage was ruined, became an alcoholic.

He got consumed with these fantasies of taking revenge on those that had captured and tortured him.

He was rock bottom, but not during the war.

After the war.

And then he was invited to a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles at the lowest point in his life.

And he met Jesus there.

A plane crash couldn't break him.

Forty-seven days adrift in the ocean couldn't break him.

Two and a half years of being tortured in a prison camp couldn't break him.

You know what broke him?

Ordinary human sin.

Ruin.

Brokenness.

Got him to the place where he realized his only hope was the Lord Jesus Christ.

It was there that he saw his need.

And it was there that he took hold of the gospel.

Zamborini was the last man you would expect to need that in a stadium that night.

He was strong, he was heroic, and none of that exempted him.

Because God has enclosed everyone.

This is the point.

Jew and Gentile.

The visibly broken and visibly strong in the same condition of sin and disobedience.

And mercy, the mercy of God is the only way out for all of us.

Consigned all, mercy on all, no exceptions.

And you see, that gets us back to where we started, doesn't it?

Remember the context?

Pride.

Gentiles looking down on Jews in Rome, and Paul undoes that pride with one fact, and it's the fact of the cross.

That everyone's sin has been paid for on the same cross.

And Christ paid the same price for you as he paid for others.

Nobody earned their way in.

You might have heard it said the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

Friends, we're all the same.

Every single one of us is saved by mercy alone.

And once we start to see that, and that starts to get inside of us and in our hearts, it changes us and especially changes the way we relate to one another.

Because that truth kills pride, it kills comparison, it kills self-righteousness and smugness.

And in its place, it puts vulnerability and confession.

Being able to look at someone and say it's all true.

I'm a mess.

And I can say that because I know you're a mess.

And we both need the exact same thing.

And we were both rescued the exact same way.

Makes you quick to forgive.

Because you realize how much you have already been forgiven.

It makes us welcoming.

We can be welcoming to those who walk into this place because Christ has so graciously welcomed us.

You see, that's the kind of church we want to be.

We are not a church where some people need Jesus, and then there's this group over here.

Well, no, they're good.

They've got it all together.

No, all of us, all of us need the same thing.

Starting with me, we all need mercy.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your mercy that never has depended on us.

Thank you for graciously rescuing us.

Father, forgive us for the pride that forgets that, that looks down on others.

Lord, I pray that through your spirit that you would make us patient.

Make this a place of welcome and forgiveness and grace and patience with others, because we know how much you have been gracious and patient and forgiving with us.

Lord, we can't do that on our own.

Only your spirit can do that.

And so would you do that in Jesus' name?

Amen.