IS GOD FINISHED WITH THE NATION OF ISRAEL? (Part 2)
God’s Invitation to Grace ❧ Part 50
Romans 11:7-36 ❧ Pastor, Dr. John Denney
Have you ever had someone break their promise? Maybe it was a broken wedding vow. He promised to be faithful no matter what. And then he walked out or had an affair. Maybe it was a financial promise on a loan. She promised to pay me back, but she never did. Maybe it was a promise your mom or your dad made to protect you or to be there when you really need them, but they let you down. Or maybe a promise your boss made to give you a raise or a promotion, but they never kept their word. Or maybe it was a promise you made to yourself, but you failed. Remember how it made you feel? At first you are hurt: “I feel so bad.” Then you’re angry: “That jerk! How could he do that to me!” Then self-pity creeps in: “I’ll never trust another person as long as I live!” And then, you’re bitter. You stereotype the people that hurt you: “All men are alike! All women are alike! – You can’t trust ‘em!” And it has never gone away.
The truth is we live in a world of broken promises. Our parents break their promises, our spouses, our friends, politicians, salesmen. We live in a world where it seems like trust is broken more than it is kept, violated more than it is protected. I think that’s a really big part of the reason we find it so hard to trust God. We can’t trust others, we can’t trust ourselves, so why should we trust God? We’ve never experienced anyone who fully keeps their promises.
This morning I want us to look at Romans 11. It’s a chapter that basically says: God keeps His promises. We’ve talking about Romans 9-11 for the last three weeks. They are all about God’s relationship with Israel. In Romans 9, we looked at why God chose the nation of Israel – because of His sovereign grace. In chapter 10 we learned that the reason God rejected Israel was because she rejected her Messiah – Jesus Christ. Now, in chapter 11, we are going to see that God is not finished with Israel. God has made a number of promises to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament and many of them haven’t been fulfilled. And the question is, Is God going to keep all the promises He’s made to Israel? He’s made some pretty big ones.
Romans 9- 11 is far more than just some interesting things that’s going to happen to Israel. These chapters help answer the underlying question that holds many of us back from really trusting God: Can God’s Promises Be Trusted? (We looked at two proofs: Personal (Paul) & Historical (Elijah). Now we’ll look at two more: Motivational & Scriptural.
- Motivational: Envy! Did God’s people stumble and fall beyond recovery? Of course not! They were disobedient, so God made salvation available to the Gentiles. But he wanted his own people to become jealous and claim it for themselves (Romans 11:11, NLT). The Apostle Paul asks in v. 11 did then nation of Israel stumble beyond recovery in their disbelief? Not at all, he says. They may have stumbled, but they haven’t fallen. They’re not out for the count. In fact, Paul says, God has used their temporary state of unbelief to get the Gospel to the Gentiles. But God has future plans for Israel.
It is here that Paul makes a very important point to the you and me. In v. 13 he’s speaking directly to Gentiles. The church in Rome was made up of both Jews and Gentiles, but mostly Gentiles. There was a growing sense of arrogance and pride among some of the Gentiles that God had chosen so many Gentiles and comparatively few Jews. Paul calls a spade a spade here. He says if you think there is something more special about you than there is the Jews, then you don’t understand God’s grace, you’ve got too high a view of yourself and too low a view of God!
So, Paul uses a couple of illustrations to make his point. One relates to baking and the second to gardening. The first one comes from the ceremonial history of the Jews. In Numbers 15:20, God told the people of Israel, when you enter the land of Canaan, use part of your grain harvest and make an offering in the form of a cake, it will become holy or consecrated to God. Paul makes his point here: When a part of the bread offered is consecrated to God, the whole belongs to Him too. If the beginning of the Jews was holy (Abraham and the patriarchs), then the rest of it will be holy too. God is not done with the Jews and there is no room for arrogant pride against the Jews.
Next, Paul expands his point by using a gardening illustration of a grafted olive tree. Olive trees are a symbol of the nation of Israel (Jer. 11:16). I’ve been to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed. There are olive trees there over 2,000 years old. They can be dormant for hundreds of years as well. One person said that when Israel became a state, olive trees that had been dormant for hundreds of years began to bud again. Paul uses the tree to make his point that God is not done with Israel. In the Jewish agriculture, when a cultivated olive tree stops producing, two things are done to the tree. One, non-producing branches are broken off. Two, branches from a wild olive tree are grafted in to restimulate the tree to produce olives.
Israel is the olive tree. The non-producing branches are those who refused to believe in Christ. They have been removed and Gentiles who have accepted Jesus into their lives are the wild olive branches grafted in. We have been grafted into Israel the root. You are a part of Israel. Israel did not become a part of you. That’s what v.18 means, You do not support the root, the root supports you. A branch has no life in itself but derives its life from the root. So, Gentiles need to be thankful for the Jews and not prideful of them. Pride says I’m good! Faith says, God’s good! There is no room in the church for anti-Semitism, for White Supremists, for Jew-haters.
Paul’s warning is that if you think God chose you because you’re so good then you’re not operating by faith, but pride. A man brought his boss home for dinner for the first time. The was very arrogant and boastful all through the dinner. The little boy in the family sat silently watching the man. Finally, the boss asked the boy why he kept staring at him. The boy replied, “My father says you’re a self-made man.” The man beamed with pride and admitted that he was. “Well, if you’re a self-made man, why did you make yourself like that?” If God rejected Israel for their unbelieving pride due to thinking too highly of themselves and too low of God, God will not hesitate to do the same with us.
May we never forget God chose us by His grace. Paul says in verse 24 gentiles were cut from a wild olive tree and grafted into God’s cultivated tree and this was, Paul says, contrary to nature. Normally farmers grafted cultivated olive trees into wild olive trees, not the other way around. This is an illustration of the wonders of God’s grace. We can walk in newness of life, forgiven, joyful, confident and yet humble. Just as God cut off the nonproducing branches from the cultivated olive tree – referring to His judgement of Israel’s unbelief, so He will cut off nonproducing branches in the Church. What’s he talking about? Is he saying the security of our salvation is question. No! Paul is saying those who profess to be believers in the Church but are not will be cut off the same way those unbelieving Israel was cut off. Elsewhere, Paul warns us of a coming time of great apostasy in the Church – many who say they are Christians will deny the very Christ who purchased their salvation. They will refuse to listen to sound doctrine and instead follow the doctrines of demons (1 Tim. 4; 2 Tim. 3; 2 Thess. 2).
It is also an important illustration reminding us that the Church and Israel are not the same. While it is true that in the Church there is neither Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female; we’re all one in Christ (Gal. 3:28), God still maintains a distinction between the nation of Israel and the Gentiles. Though we are wild olive branches grafted into the cultivated olive tree, we are still wild olive branches. The graft does not change our nature nor does it change the nature of Israel. Paul’s use of the olive tree reminds us God makes a distinction between the Church and Israel. God still has very specific plans for the nation of Israel that He doesn’t for the Church (Rom. 11:1,11, 26).
Part of God’s plan in taking the Gospel to the gentiles is to make Israel jealous. Years ago I read about a very wealthy Jew named Stan Telchin (a member of the million-dollar roundtable) whose twenty-one-year-old daughter Judy came home from college and announced that she’d became a follower of Jesus. With a tearful plea she asked her father to read the Bible and find out for himself. He did. At first, he read the Bible to form a rebuttal against Jesus. But has he kept reading, he found just the opposite was true. The Scriptures all pointed to Jesus as the Messiah. Stan along with his wife and youngest daughter Ann all put their trust in Christ. It all began because Judy, though raised in a Jewish home, found herself wanting what Christians had that she didn’t – a genuine relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ. Does your relationship with God make others envious of what you have?
- Scriptural: Prophecy! I want you to understand this mystery, dear brothers and sisters, so that you will not feel proud about yourselves. Some of the people of Israel have hard hearts, but this will last only until the full number of Gentiles comes to Christ. And so all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:25-26, NLT). What is that mystery? God’s plans are to graft in all the branches of the Gentiles until their number is complete – only He knows how many. Some of the people of Israel have hard hearts, but this will last only until the full number of Gentiles comes to Christ. When that time comes, He will save Israel. Israel will be reinstated as God’s people. God was faithful to His plans in the past, He will certainly be faithful to them in the future!
What’s the future hold? V. 20 We are living in a day when we are beginning to see some very fascinating things take place in Israel. Noted theologian R.C. Sproul says: …we have seen the greatest concentration of eschatology (fulfillment of last days prophecy) that the church has ever known. God is literally gathering the Jewish nation together from the four corners of the world. In addition to this, the very nations God said would form an alliance against Israel have risen to world superpower status and are actively planning and working toward Israel’s destruction. Not that many years ago, Israel was not a nation, Russia was a “Chrisitan” nation (prior to 1917), Turkey, modern day Iran, was Israel’s strong ally. Many scoffed at the notion Israel would be a nation again. Yet, Isaac Newton, after reading Daniel and Revelation predicted more than 220 years in advance Israel would become a nation once again. They did! In 1917 Russia radically turned Marxist. Turkey did an about face in their relationship with Israel becoming their foe instead of their friend. Prophecy is taking place before our very eyes!
This June Israel celebrates their 57th year anniversary of the “Six Day War.” From 70 AD until 1967, the city had been under Gentile control and domination. Jesus said the city of Jerusalem will be ….trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (Lk. 21:24). When will they be fulfilled? When the last Gentile to be saved turns to Christ. What happens then? Christ will come for His Church in the Rapture (1 Thess. 4:13-18). We don’t know the day or the hour (Matt. 24:36), but we are clearly seeing the world stage being rapidly set.
In the meantime, God is gathering the Jews to Israel just like He said He would. Ezekeil 37: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back to their own land. God is pulling the heartstrings of hundreds of thousands of Jews from around the world to return to the land of Israel.
Let me give you a picture of what Paul is talking about will happen with Israel. We looked at this last week as well. But I think revisiting this is important. At one point toward the middle of the seven-year tribulation, a time when the world will be run by one world leader – the Anti-Christ, he will try to destroy Israel. He will succeed in destroying two-thirds of them. Zechariah 13:8 In the whole land, declares the Lord, two thirds will be struck down and perish, yet one third will be left in it. And this third I will bring into the fire, I will refine them like silver, test them like gold. They will call on My name and I will answer them and I will say, `They are My people’ and they will say `The Lord is our God’ When he does, Israel will think that the end has finally come.
That’s when Jesus will step in. Zachariah 12:10 is a picture of this. And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on Me the One who they pierced and mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child and grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a first-born son. He describes what Christ’s coming looks like in chapter 14. This is the Day of the Lord in which Jesus will fight against the nations (14:2-3). Then Zechariah 14:4 says Jesus’ will stand on the Mount of Olives It will be cataclysmic. Rev. 19:14 says there will be an army behind Him dressed in white – that’s us. Many interpreters believe that during the final days on Earth, during the terrible time of Tribulation, that one third of the nation of Israel will be saved. There is coming a time in the future that there will be a major turning around in the nation of Israel. They will look to Him whom they have pierced.
This is what Paul means when he says God has future plans for Israel. This part of the mystery Paul is talking about in verse 25. God is not finished with Israel. Paul says many of the Jews hearts are hardened against the Gospel, a partial hardening, but not all. Why? So the Gospel would go to the Gentiles. That’s the other part of the mystery – the Church (Eph. 3). It wasn’t revealed as such in the OT. God does say He is going to bring many gentiles to salvation, but it is not until the NT we understand He would do this through the Church. That’s what v.v. 33-36 are all about (Read 33-36). Paul gets caught up in the rhapsody of the awe-inspiring depth and breadth of God’s unsearchable wisdom!
How incredible and wonderful God’s wisdom is! Elizabeth Elliot, in her book Let Me Be a Woman, records the story of Gladys Aylward, a young girl who was unable to accept the looks God had given her. Gladys told how when she was a child she had two great sorrows. One, that while all her friends had beautiful golden hair, hers was black. The other, that while her friends were still growing, she had stopped. She was about four feet ten inches tall. But when at last she reached the country to which God had called her to be a missionary, she stood on the wharf in Shanghai and looked around at the people to whom He had called her. “Every single one of them” she said, “had black hair. And every one of them had stopped growing when I did.” She was able to look to God and exclaim, “Lord God, You know what You’re doing!” We may not always understand how God works, but He always keeps His promises.
The late esteemed pastor J. Sidlow Baxter (1903-1999) penned He Never Fails
He never fails the soul that trusts in Him;
Tho’ disappointments come and hope burns dim, He never fails.
Tho’ trials surge like stormy seas around,
Tho’ testings fierce like ambushed foes abound, Yet this my soul, with millions more has found, He never fails; He never fails.
He never fails the soul that trusts in Him;
Tho’ angry skies with thunder-clouds grow grim, He never fails.
Tho’ icy blasts life’s fairest flow’rs lay low,
Tho’ earthly springs of joy all cease to flow,
Yet still ‘tis true, with millions more I know,
He never fails; He never fails.
He never fails the soul that trusts in Him;
Tho’ sorrow’s cup should overflow the brim,
He never fails.
Tho’ oft the pilgrim way seems rough and long,
I yet shall stand amid yon white-robed throng,
And there I’ll sing, with millions more, this song— He never fails; He never fails.
J. S. Baxter, in Explore The Book
