Or, Not All Are Lost
Scripture: Romans 11:1-10
Date: April 23, 2023
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Here’s an illustration to start. My wife’s favorite book among the Chronicles of Narnia is The Magician’s Nephew. It is the sixth of the seven in publication order, though it’s actually the creation account and so first of them all in terms of Narnian chronology. The reason she likes it the most is because of the treasure of finding out the origin of the tree from which the wood came that was used to make the wardrobe in the Professor’s house. You can read the series oldest to newest if you prefer grape juice narratives; but the author has poured this round of plot wine to gladden your heart.
Someone says, Who cares about where the wood for the wardrobe came from? The author did, and he thought it a thrill to reveal it at the right time. Don’t you want to at least see what he cares about before deciding it’s of no value to you? The same author who had an origin story for the wood in the wardrobe had an even deeper origin for the Narnian law that “if a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Stone Table would crack, and Death itself would start working backwards.” Aslan’s resurrection is quite the spoiler to the wicked.
Nothing beats the suffering and death and resurrection story in the gospel of Christ. That news is of first importance, the true myth at both the most woeful low and the highest peak, revealed at the right time. And what we’re reading in Romans 9-11 may be next best in terms of glory stories. We’re finding out things that could have been known but mostly weren’t noticed, things that look one way on the surface but work together toward a perfect last page.
It’s more than entertainment, it’s faith-food; read meat protein that builds hope-muscles. The righteous live from faith to faith. That means the righteous don’t live by works, but it also means the righteous don’t live by sight. We live by every word that proceeds from God. What about when we groan in a world of sin and suffering? What about when we’re led like sheep to the slaughter? Will His Word hold? What about when He said that He would give Israel a new heart? What about that covenant word?
His Word doesn’t fail. Read the story, follow the foreshadowing, and rejoice in your part.
At the beginning of chapter 9 Paul pointed out Israel’s privileges. At the beginning of chapter 10 Paul expressed his desire and prayer for Israel’s salvation. He’s talking like this because Israel, for the most part, were more like Pharaoh than Moses; they refused to obey the Lord though He gave them multiple chances. Yet “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people” (Romans 10:21). It’s time to ask the hard question: I ask, then, has God rejected his people?
The Jews, as a nation, those who shared biological descent and ethnic particulars and often specific geographical boundaries, were God’s people. Yahweh chose them (Deuteronomy 7:6), He led them, He redeemed them, He gave them His law, He made covenants with them, He established them (2 Samuel 7:23-24). All of them were His elect people and yet not all of them were elect persons. It was (and is) possible for Israelites to be one of God’s people in two ways, though many have only been in one way.
Jesus came to His own and His own received Him not. It was not priests of pagan deities that put Him to death, but the high priest of Israel in the Lord’s name. What a turn of events. Did God turn away from His Word to Israel? Is He done with His covenant to them, finally had too much of their apostasy, their refusal to come to Him with His hands held out? By no means!
Paul’s conversion was at least one proof. For I myself am an Israelite, a descendent of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Jewish trifecta. To the Philippians he added that he was “a Hebrew of Hebrews” (Philippians 3:5). That at least one Jew confessed Jesus as Lord meant that God hadn’t rejected His people entirely, and Paul had been one of the worst offenders (1 Timothy 1:15-16).
God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Samuel told the people as much in 1 Samuel 12:22. “The LORD will not forsake His people, for His great name’s sake, because it has pleased the LORD to make you a people for Himself.” So also in Psalm 94:14, “The LORD will not forsake His people; He will not abandon His heritage.” In context that’s Israel (even if we Gentile believers can sing it, confident in its application to us). He chose them with full-knowledge, with full-intentions for them. “The ‘foreknowing’ is the guarantee” (Murray).
Paul gives an example.
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.” (Romans 11:2b–4 ESV)
Speaking of great stories (that the Jews at least should have known), this conversation between Elijah and the Lord happened after Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal and had to have his altar drenched and a trench filled before “the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench” (1 Kings 18:38). But when Jezebel heard that the priests were killed she sent word that she was going to make Elijah’s life like theirs within 24 hours (1 Kings 19:2). So he ran. And in the wilderness he prays, in an exhausted if not somewhat exaggerated self-pity, that he’s alone; he says he’s the “only” one left twice (1 Kings 19:10, 14). But the Lord said, ”I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (1 Kings 19:18).
God preserved, for Himself (not in the Hebrew of 1 Kings but supplemented by Paul for emphasis), some as no-compromisers. They would not give knee-service to false gods.
There’s application to the current situation. So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. Paul was included in that remnant (see also Romans 9:27). The Jews were—and are—God’s people, His chosen nation (in a way that no other nation has or will be. That doesn’t mean a nation can’t be a Christian nation, in self-confessed allegiance to Christ as Lord. But even a nation such as that isn’t foreknown like Israel.) This remnant has been around now through 20 centuries post-Paul; all are not lost. They will be around in every generation until the fulness of Israel is saved, more about as chapter 11 continues.
But it is not by Israel’s doing, or the remnant’s special wisdom, that they are saved. If it is by grace, it is no longer on the bases of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. The gospel of grace includes justification by faith alone, for the elect alone.
So what then? (Quid ergo?) There’s a remnant, at least, but what about the rest? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. This goes back to Romans 9. God’s purpose according to election stands, for nations (e.g., Israel not Egypt) and persons (e.g., Israel/Jacob not Esau), for temporal and eternal issues. Israel kept seeking, with zeal, a righteousness of their own that caused them to stumble (Romans 9:31-32). That the elect obtained it isn’t meaning that they found it by their superior wisdom, but that they obtained the gift, by grace, as verses 5-6 make clear.
Hardened here is a form (aorist passive) of the word πωρόω, with the nuance of “to petrify” or in medical terms “to cause a stone to form (as in the bladder) or a callus which unites fractured bones.” Its figurative usage means “to make without feeling, to deaden.” The text does not indicate that they were hardened because of unbelief but instead that the hardening produced unbelief.
Paul quotes Isaiah and Moses yet again, then a psalm of David to corroborate.
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.” (Romans 11:8 ESV)
Romans 11:8 is a mashup of Isaiah 29:10 and Deuteronomy 29:4. It’s one thing for God to harden Pharaoh’s heart; Pharaoh was a pagan after all. This is God giving a spirit of stupor to God’s chosen nation; they were numbed, dazed, drawing a blank. Jesus talked about this a surprising amount (see just one example in Matthew 13:14-15).
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.” (Romans 11:9–10 ESV)
This comes from Psalm 69:22-23, originally a curse directed against David’s enemies. Their daily bread become a trap; they wanted the feasting without the fear of the Lord. Their unbelief turned them out of freedom into being servants with their backs bent under heavy burdens.
The story is about to explode; a seed was planted, a tree grew, the tree was blown down, but more wonderful fruit is coming from it. God could have chosen full acceptance by Israel from the start, and from there a simple sequential spreading of faith to the Gentiles. Instead God chose that a majority in Israel would reject the promised Christ, then to send the good news beyond Israel so that many would confess Christ as Lord among many nations, so that Israel would be provoked to turn back to the promised Christ (see Romans 11:11-12). It’s Israel’s story, and it’s not finished.
What are you supposed to do with this? Don’t pout like Elijah, don’t doubt God’s purpose of election, and recognize the riches of God’s grace you’ve received.
Have you noticed that I’ve not once, not ever, charged you to go be a pastor, or a vocational missionary? That might be the calling for a few of you, but never the majority of the body. That means that whatever your gifts and whatever your spiritual maturity, you have good to do. Is it sharpening your intellectual acumen for the education of the saints and defense of the faith? Do it. Is it building up your hosting courage and getting outside your food prep comfort zone? Do it. Is it surviving another round of chemo, or another week of being pregnant, or seeking the Lord’s help with a sadness that won’t lift? Beloved, do that. Get grace for that. Give thanks for those who do what you can’t do. Be jealousable where you’re supposed to be, not where someone else is supposed to be.
[M]ay our God may make you worthy of his calling and fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12, ESV)