The book of Romans chapter 11, we continue to reflect upon Paul's word given to the church in Rome that the rejection of Israel as a people, those who are Paul's own countrymen by flesh, by seed, are not utterly cast off and that that rejection is not total for God has in his electing grace chosen among that nation a remnant for himself, nor is it final, for God has plans in store for those who would call themselves Jews. Romans 11, beginning in verse 11. I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not, but through their fall to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now, if their fall is riches for the world and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness. For I speak to you Gentiles in as much as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry. If by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh, and save some of them, for if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? Thus far the reading of God's word, you may be seated. Let me pray now for the blessing of the preaching of God's holy word. Well, Lord, we come to you this morning and we must ask ourselves who is up to the task of beholding your majesty and wisdom in your word. For there is none with understanding. There is even none who seeks knowledge and righteousness. No, Lord, you have sought us. And having found us, and having blessed us and regenerated us by your Spirit, that same Spirit is our Teacher, our Helper. And so we ask, O Lord, that you would help us, that you would teach us, not merely to understand, but live in light of that which has been revealed to us, that perfect and holy Word given for our salvation. And so, Lord, even this day, May we not only be hearers of it, but doers of it. All for your glory, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We continue through not a challenging section. For us, Paul lays out simply in words that are plain spoken and very clear, an interpretation of redemptive history from the position, the disposition, of God himself. He begins this in Romans chapter 9, where he speaks of the electing purposes of God that have resulted in the salvation, not only of a remnant of Israel, but of the Jewish, I'm sorry, the Gentile nations as we see them being brought in biographically, historically in the book of Acts. And in fact, if you were to turn to the book of Acts, About halfway through that book, or a little into halfway through that book, we see the Apostle Paul and others going on their missionary journeys, and the first place that they would find themselves ministering, the preaching of the resurrection of Christ, the proclamation of the good news of Christ risen from the dead, are the Jewish synagogues. These are the places filled with the people to whom Christ came to bring them to salvation. And yet as Paul and others preached the gospel of Jesus Christ in those synagogues, they were cast out. Their lives were threatened. And that group of people most hostile to the preaching of Christ raised from the dead at the time of Paul and the apostles were the Jews. And even at that time, we see the Holy Spirit reminding us, teaching us, showing us that it was at that time that Paul and the others began to pivot to the Gentiles who heard that preaching and were saved. That is the working out of God's saving grace historically, and it is connected to the theological principles that Paul lays out in Romans 9, 10, and 11. That Israel failed to lay hold of the riches of God's grace at the time of the coming of Christ. And so God, by His Spirit, moved. to another group, those who had not even sought Christ, who were lost in their own trespasses and sins, their idolatry, their pagan religions, those of whom Paul describes in Romans 1, who had suppressed and exchanged the righteousness and truth of God for a lie. Israel had stumbled. And at that moment when it was most essential to receive the revelation of God, they rejected the full and final word of God, who is Jesus Christ. And through that fall, salvation went to the Gentiles. The question is, what of the Jews in the time of Paul and in the time between Paul and us and even into the future? Well, Paul makes it very clear in verses 1 through 10 that the rejection of Israel is not total or entire, Paul himself being testimony of this, the apostles and others, nor is that rejection final. That there was a judgment that was poured out upon Israel in AD 70 with the destruction of the temple and the city of God, Jerusalem, that was the exclamation point, the period on the end of the sentence in light of their rejection of Jesus. If you seek salvation through this institution, there will be no institution left on earth like this. But it was not only judgment, it was not only the end of one sentence, it was the opening of another, you might say, another era of redemptive history, such that when Christ said to the woman at the well, it is not on this hill in Jerusalem or that hill in Samaria that you shall gather and go to worship, but wherever there is word or truth and there is spirit. And so here we are in Gaston County in this church, gathered together in the presence of God, and there is even greater glory and majesty, though outwardly less so. There was no carpet, there's no polyester in the temple. Let's just admit it. There was no place for that. In fact, you couldn't even have mixed fibers in the old covenant. But the glory that is inward and the majesty that is inward is even greater today than it was in the days of Levi and the priests. And that is because Christ has come. and Christ is manifesting His presence. He is here with us by His Spirit. And so we must say that the glory of Christ that they miss, that is the Israelites missed in His incarnation, God will bring them one day into that glory by His grace. Two points that I want to make then this morning. The first, as it relates to the judgment of Israel, it is neither complete nor final. That's the first point, neither complete nor final. And then secondly, the grace that God shows to the Gentiles is meant to provoke them to jealousy and through that, the receiving of grace. So my second point is provoking to jealousy. First point, neither complete nor final. Second, provoking to jealousy. Let's look at this first point this morning. neither complete nor final. In fact, your Bibles may even say as headings in those sections, beginning in verse 1, Israel's rejection is not total. Not every Israelite was rejected. Paul, of course, and others are proof of this. Nor is Israel's rejection final. God continues to call out from the nations of earth, those who belong by blood in some fashion to Abraham. Those who are the seed, those who Paul calls my own flesh, God has in store great things. And so Paul's thesis, his main point, the theme of his writing is that the whole of redemptive history and throughout the whole of redemptive history, there has always been a covenant people of God that we call the visible church. the body, a nation, a family. But even within that nation, that body, that family, there are those who are destined, as it were, to receive God's grace according to his foreknowledge and electing purposes, and those who would not. Paul makes that very clear in Romans chapter 9. Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. And that electing choice, that sovereign superintendence over the salvation of men, God is the author of that. He's in charge of that. And it is not because Jacob had some sort of moral fiber that Esau did not or vice versa. It was not in anything in those men. It was solely the choice of God. And in this, Paul wants us to draw the conclusion that we are like Jacob and Esau in that same way. There is nothing that we can do that God responds to whereby either he shows us mercy or judgment. God's in charge of that. And that number that God is in charge of, that He has established, is a number that we do not know. We have nothing to say about it. We have no counsel or advice or power that can alter what God has set down. And God's sovereign choice, as it is expressed over time in the visible body of Christ, There are those who receive grace unto salvation, and there are those who do not. And in fact, throughout the history of Israel, we see many who were of the visible body, who were circumcised into the covenant of grace, yet they did not receive grace. We see the first generation of Israelites who died in the wilderness. They did not enter into the rest of God. There were those of the second and third generation, who though bearing the covenant sign of circumcision, did not lay hold of the promise of the Messiah. And so we see throughout the Old Testament, and we see even in our own day, that there are those who are members of the visible body, that is the church, who are not truly part of the, what we call, invisible church, but who are truly God's children. There will always be in these Well, the one larger group of people, a smaller people we call the remnant. Now that remnant principle in the Old Testament really was small. In the days of Elijah, which Paul mentions in verses one through 10, there were 7,000 of the nation of Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal. That was a small number compared to the entirety of the nation of Israel. In fact, every Sunday morning when I drive to church or am driven these days, chauffeured, as it were, by my son, one of the things that we often remark on is, where are all the cars? And the cynic in me wants to say, well, the restaurants aren't open yet, and neither are all the stores. In fact, if that says anything about who we are as a people in Gaston County, you can point to who our God is. It is our belly, if I can use that term, not just literally, but metaphorically. It is our belly. We are consumers at heart. And this is itself not necessarily a wrong thing. We fill our days with consumption. Last night I had homemade chicken salad and it's hard to stop consuming the wonderful gifts even that God has given to us. But we are in every respect going in the wrong direction on the Lord's day, which is a testimony of what? That our hearts are not found in the highway to Zion. There is a remnant that journeys and sojourns to the Lord's sanctuary every Sunday. And then there is a larger populace that doesn't. In fact, I would argue that we know that we are succeeding in our mission as a church when traffic is just as bad in Gaston County on Sunday around 8.30, nine o'clock as it is on, well, did you see it yesterday? And all the gifts that will be laid under the trees because of all the holiday shopping that is being done. Why are we not eager to be in the presence of God? There is always a remnant within the larger body. And so it is not a total rejection, nor is it final. And that is really where Paul turns his attention, not only in these five verses that I'm preaching on this morning, but really moving forward through the rest of this chapter, which is too much to cover for one day. Neither is it final. And so the question is, to what extent? Paul opens by saying in verse 11, I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? To what end? A complete and utter judgment, such that there does not remain for any who are of the seed of Abraham an open door to paradise. In fact, this was the language that Luther used when he spoke of his own conversion later as a monk when he began and was tasked to teach from the book of Romans in a seminary. Here is a seminary professor who had never read the book of Romans. And when he began to read the words of the gospel that Paul penned in his epistle to the Roman churches, he endeavored to go to Spain and take that gospel to a people who had never heard it. Luther, for the first time, heard, read the gospel. And he said, it was like a gateway that had been opened into paradise. And there I found for the first time the rest that my soul desired. for the righteousness of God is revealed against the wickedness of men. Is God done with the seed of Abraham? Now, there is in every sense an understanding that the true seed of Abraham are those who are sons, as we sing, perhaps in Sunday school or vacation Bible school, Father Abraham, have many sons. Now, we're never gonna sing that in worship, but it's true enough. It's true enough that you and I are sons of Abraham, the true sons by faith, but what of those? whom Paul calls seeds, verse 1 of chapter 11. I say then, as God cast away his people, certainly not, for I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. And so, any Israelite in the Old Testament could recite the words, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And that was sort of the boundary marker of who was in visible covenant with God, those who were the sons of Abraham, the sons of Isaac, and the sons of Jacob. But what of them today? What of them in the days of Paul? Well, Paul is convinced that God has a plan. And that plan is to bring about, through the one gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, a reversal of the judgment that he would pour out upon them because of their denial. In fact, ask yourself this question, as we move through the whole of the Old Testament, how many times did God in his mercy forgive them for their rebellion and rejection of him? Just go to the book of Judges. We were just there not long ago. And time and time and time again, Israel rejects the lordship of God, the lordship of the Messiah, and they go after the false gods, the foreign gods of the tribes and nations who live in the promised land. And every time they cried out, God heard them and He forgave them. And so there is a principle that is not only true for the Israelite, it is true for any. Whether you are in some sense, I don't know how that works exactly. How do you trace the lineage of the seed of Abraham? But I know this, God knows. And God has great things planned for the seed of Abraham. He has great things planned for those who are in the flesh countrymen of Paul. And what is that plan? It is to once again show His mercy and grace to those who do not deserve it. Now let's look a little more in detail. I'm going to go back and read verse 11 again. I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not. but through their fault who provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now, if their fall is riches for the world and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness. As I said earlier, when Paul and the apostles and others would go into the synagogues to preach, what we find happening is that the same groups of people who heard the same gospel, the Jews denied it and sought to put the apostles to death or to imprison them, for their blasphemy while the Gentiles, these pagan religious knuckle-draggers like the Romans and others, believed. Why? Are pagans principally more geared to hear the gospel? And the answer to that question is no. There is not something in the Gentiles that God says, you know what? Those baby-killing pagans, I think they're better people. And so I'm gonna go to them. No, all of this, as we see in Romans 9, we can never say that God regards the man over another man based upon intrinsic righteousness, for we have none. It is solely God. in his sovereign for ordination that is moving and he is guiding and sending the Spirit out. But what we see happening according to the sovereign choice of God is that Israel is being judged because of their rejection of Christ and the Gentiles are being saved. Why does God do it this way? What does Paul say here? Because he wants this group of people who did not belong, these group of people who historically were not shown the same level of revelatory goodness and grace to be the people who would bring the Jews back, as it were, or to Christ by making them jealous. By making them jealous. This is a concept we understand. And we're not talking about a sinful jealousy. What we're talking about is, I don't wish to miss out on what Christ alone can supply. Parents, as your children get older, especially if you have that oldest child who goes and gets that first job, it can be difficult to persuade them. Friday nights are not yours anymore. Saturdays, Those are days for working, because the car insurance payment's coming. And if you wanna drive, you gotta pay. And that first child, oh, man, I don't know if I can do this. Then you have the second, third, and fourth, and they see, even the first child, once you begin to work and you get that first paycheck after you complain about taxes a little bit, you see, oh, this is good. This is a good work. The second one says, oh man, I like that my older brother or sister, they can buy their own tennis shoes once they've saved enough for insurance. Put a little bit away, tithe, put away, and then you got a little bit of mad money. Where'd you get those nice shoes? Well, I got them, I paid for them myself. There was a kind of provocation to the kind of behavior that you, don't even need to teach the younger children. They see it at work. The grace and glory of Christ and the benefit and blessing that is poured out upon the local congregation is meant to be the testimony that provokes those who missed the boat, who did not invest at the ground level, as it were, to get in. to buy in, as it were, to become those who are also participants of the covenant of grace manifested through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And so this act of judgment is by definition, as all God's acts of judgment are, temporary. Now there are acts of judgment that are eternal or everlasting, and those things are reserved by God to be poured out upon those who are not united to Him through Christ. But that is not what we're talking about here. We're talking about something that we already know is not final. We know that there is an intention that God has as it relates, not only to the Gentile nations, because what have we seen? You and I are here in worship because God continues to extend his mercy to the Gentile nations. And in fact, the glory and mercy and saving power and grace of God is testified by what we see in the book of Revelation, that every tribe, tongue and nation is represented before the throne to the glory of the Father. This we know. And so what we can say as it relates to God's electing purposes is that wherever the church will go into the last day of human history, God has reserved those who will be brought in by the work of the spirit. There is a harvest that remains open. And so it is not time to stop gathering in and sit on the back porch and enjoy the sun as it goes down because of a hard day's labor. No, the labor is not yet finished. but the white fields of harvest are going to be found not only among the Gentiles, but Paul would say here, even among the Jews. And he says it in these ways, or in this way, look at verse 12. Now, if there fall, we've seen this already, the fall is the rejection of Christ and the subsequent judgment. Now, Paul is writing prior to the judgment of Jerusalem and of the temple, but he knows already that Israel as a people in the main have rejected the Messiah and their fall results in the riches of the saving mercy of God poured out upon the world. And so if their failure or fall is riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness? Now, what does he mean by that? Well, this word fullness, is in reference to God's election, that decree of election, that fixed number that God has allotted to receive salvation that has not yet been filled up. And it seems from what Paul is writing, there's a lot of filling left to be done. That as a people, they rejected Christ, but there will come a day when they, as a people, Well, as a mass, as a group so that we can say, look at what God is doing among those who once rejected Him. When that group comes, how much more the grace and power of God poured out. What we can say then is that God still has a plan For those who were the Old Testament people of God in the New Testament age of the church, that is what I mean by a temporary act of judgment. And that judgment and that act of grace is always in relationship to the dividing line of who do you say Jesus Christ is? Or do you say Jesus is the Christ? God has great things in store. Because the judgment of Israel is neither complete nor final. Now here is how we reconcile as a church that is largely comprised of Gentiles, what we think about those who have not yet received mercy. First, we think about the mercy that we did not deserve. Because oftentimes when it comes to our dealings with the world, there are those, and we must admit this, who were pretty happy about the fact that they actually don't have grace, because we hate them. And that hatred and despisal that is a respecter of persons is wicked, and we need to repent of it. Because such were some of you, as we have already sung. None of us, every person in this room, deserves anything but condemnation. And though there are those in history who have sinned in ways that are more heinous than others, for instance, the rejection of God, despite all of the warnings and revelation contrary to that, deserve a certain kind of wrath. The question is, does that wrath, is that wrath continually being poured out? Well, as a group, no. God did that judgment and the consummation of that judgment in 70 AD. There does not remain for that people, the ethnoi, or the nation of Israel, further judgment. But there also is no remaining grace for Israel through any other than Jesus Christ. That is what it means to be Israel. In fact, Paul makes that very clear, that a true Jew is a Jew who is one inwardly, not outwardly through circumcision of the flesh, that the true Jew is the one who embraces Christ. And so God has a plan. And let's move into that second point. That plan involves provoking to jealousy. I've already covered that to some extent, but if it is through the judgment of the Jews of Israel, that life went to the Gentiles, then through the grace that God will pour out upon the Jews, even more life. Perhaps you've witnessed, even in your own life, you've prayed for those who in your mind are practically very far from the kingdom of God. I died in the wolf center. Someone who not only inwardly but publicly defies and scorns and blasphemes the name of Jesus as the Christ. Now most days those people occupy, you know, the liberal arts departments of our universities. People who get paid to be blasphemous and to invent all manner of ways to live life and philosophically sort of work their way out of accountability to the God of heaven and earth. They're everywhere. And in many respects, as a culture, we have endorsed this way of rebellion. We are a secular culture in many respects until pain comes and then we start praying a lot. We were watching recently Planet Earth, but this one's called Our Earth. So every episode you get this little twinge of, oh, by the way, you're the one killing the animals because of global warming. And in this, Richard Attenborough, the famous British narrator, speaks of the miracle, of the repopulation of these sharks in this particular Holopennesian island. And I'm wondering, get my theology out of your mouth, unless you wanna give up all this other garbage that you're shoving on me. unless you can say that there is a God who continues, by His grace, to directly involve Himself in the lives of men through the miracle of regeneration. And unless you do that, I want you to come up with a better word, like, obviously this would happen if we stopped overfishing, so on and so on. There remains for this world, however, even among those who philosophically are committed to a worldview, a perspective of life in which they endeavor to eliminate God, but even more so, Christ his son. And what Paul has in mind for the church in the future is not just more of the same, though the same is glorious. Paul has envisioned an explosion of grace that will have in connection to it the restoration of those who were judged by their rejection of Jesus. This is what he means. If their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much their fullness Can you imagine if judgment results in salvation, as we're sort of balancing that equation, one over four, imagine if it's one million over X, what is that? Do y'all understand? Maybe it's a little too hard, free algebra here. What will result in the world if by God's grace we see an entire people suddenly, according to the Spirit, go, we missed it. What the church has, we want clearly the one who came 2,000 years ago. Maybe it'll be 2,000 years in the future, 4,000 years ago. Maybe, maybe, just maybe, Jesus is the Christ. And they, by God's grace, come in mass into the kingdom. What a day that will be. And it will indicate something that in many respects, despite the glory of God being poured out on all flesh, we'll see an even more glorious future as it relates to the mission and work of the church. Paul is, in every speck, in Romans chapter 11, showing himself to be an optimillennialist. That is, he's optimistic about where we're headed as a church in relationship to the future. And if we can read what he is saying about Israel, then take that and expand it out into the nations. If God is going to restore in great numbers those who rejected the Messiah and he will cause them to embrace the Messiah, how much more the Gentile nations in response to or in relationship to their once rejection or the Jewish rejection. Good things are coming. Because the apostasy of Israel is not final. Now, what Paul is not doing is he is not linking the repentance of Israel to the repentance of the Gentiles, that one is dependent upon another. No, what he is saying is, no eye has seen, no ear has heard what God has planned for the church. You haven't seen anything yet as it relates to the church growth movement. because God is moving throughout the world and he is seeking worshipers to worship by spirit and truth. In fact, what Paul says in verse 14 gets to that principle of an ever-expanding, unfolding plan and power of the mercy of God. If by any means, he says, I may provoke. He uses that word twice in this section. He uses it in regards to the sort of the global, the general Catholic mission of the church is to provoke them to jealousy. by living in light of Christ's resurrected glory. And then he here in 14 applies it to himself. If by any means I, Paul, may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh and save some of them. Paul sees in his life a little seed form. Remember the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It's like a little bit of leaven. If Paul may through his ministry see the salvation of some, how much more in the later days of the kingdom, that which is true even of the early days of the kingdom. What must we then do? We must lay hold of this stuff by faith and not walk merely by sight but by what God has told us in his word. And so we are to labor and to pray, we are to bring the means of grace to bear on the lives of those who are this day not yet cut off. And I don't mean just the Jews, I mean the Gentiles as well. You, the church, do not have a dim or dwindling future. but one that includes not only an extraordinary outpouring of grace upon Israel, but upon every tribe, tongue, and nation. And inasmuch as they do not deserve it, neither do we. But we have been included by grace. The future of the ministry of word and spirit is one of manifold mercy and triumph. And it's not just a plan that you get to watch. It's a plan that you get to be a part of. Like Paul, in your day, you can say God will, through his word preached, bring some, but think of all the sums, even in just these 2000 years of church history since the time of Christ. And if Christ tarries, who can say what will happen in the next two, four, six, however long God will tarry, what will he do? he will by his spirit grow the church. We do not have a dim or dwindling future, like some sort of law of thermodynamics applied to the kingdom of God on earth, no. God is even now expanding that which he has begun. Because resurrection, as we see in verse 15, for if they're being cast away as the reconciling of the world, What will their acceptance be but life from the dead? Do you believe in the salvation that is life from death? Every Christian, all who have been made alive have been made alive not by something in them, but by a work of God's extraordinary kindness and grace. And so resurrection is woven into every element and aspect of the Christian's hope. And so not only do you not have a dim and dwindling future, but you ought not have a dwindling hope or even a faint expectation that God will not do as he has promised, but he will do it. Because there remains for us a fullness of redemption and riches that the world has not yet seen. Now you may not see it. Our children may not see it in the way that Paul is describing here. But someone's children will. Your children's children and their children unto the thousand generations that God has given us. And one day, my dear friends in the faith, we shall gather in the house of God and it will be filled with only one kind of person. Those who should not have been there but we're invited because God is a God who delights in showing mercy to sinners. And you shall look to the right and you shall look to the left and every person that is there may be divided by nationality, by language, by creed, not a religious creed, of course, but by some other tangible border are one in Christ Jesus. That's the only kind of person you will meet. because Christ is the one that brings us into the house of God. Dear saints, this is our hope that God will bring about salvation even to those who are most undeserving.