Chosen by Grace

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Don Filcek; Romans 11:1-10 Chosen by Grace

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches for his series in the
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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Well, good morning, everybody.
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Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here. And if you can go ahead and find your seats, that would be great.
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We're gonna go ahead and get started. So I hope that you're glad to gather together as God's people this morning.
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I personally find that it is, what we do on Sunday mornings is very, very important to me personally.
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I hope it is to you as well. And it's not important to me personally just because I get to preach, but it's important to me because I get to gather together with you guys, and I love this.
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We need to see that we're not alone in our faith. How many of you recognize that? It's valuable to see that there are other people who believe the things that we believe, and it becomes all the more important as we face a world that apparently and obviously doesn't believe the things that we believe.
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And I confess that I can at times feel very discouraged throughout my week. How many of you would say that at times during the week you're discouraged, whether it's reading a headline, really reading the headlines, dealing with my own heart, dealing with frustrating circumstances, or just generally going through the routines of another week that looks very similar to the week before.
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But then I come to Sunday. Then I come to Sunday and I'm reminded here in this place that God has brought me into the family of the people that belong to him.
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And I hope you find that refreshment here as well as you continue to figure it out. Some of you have figured out that Recast is the place for you.
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Some of you are just checking it out for the first time, and I hope you find family here. I hope you find community here. Not just another place to go on Sunday morning or a show to take in, and really not just for Sunday morning.
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Now this is just kind of the spark of what we do together as a church. But I hope that you are a people who pray for one another, care for one another, and even as we are growing together in faith, growing together in community, growing together in service.
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And so our text this morning is gonna continue on clarifying God's faithfulness to his people. He has always been working a long, a long historical plan to save people out from the people of this earth for his glory.
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That's been the long -term plan all along that he would carve out a people for the glory of his son and for his name.
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And so we're kind of looking at that here in chapter 11 of the book of Romans. And it's potentially really,
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Romans 9 through 11 is one of the most technical sections of scripture in terms of the argumentation of Paul and understanding the
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Old Testament and all of that. I spoke with one pastor this week, asked me, I ran into another pastor, and we were talking about what are you preaching, what am
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I preaching? And I told him I'm studying for Romans 11 this week, and he said, oh, brother, how are you doing?
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And he was like, he knew where we had come from and where we'd been going, and he was like, wow, that's some intense sections of scripture there, and I agree with him.
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But this text is gonna circle back around to the sovereignty of God that we talked about at the start of chapter nine, and the fact that God is sovereign in the giving out of his grace.
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But our text here, what we have here in the text starts with a question that is so important for us to address.
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Has God rejected his people? Has God rejected his people? And I wanna just ask really fundamentally a deeper question to that.
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Why does that even matter? Why does that question matter? I mean, in a just genuine sense,
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I would ask, why do the Old Testament people of God that Paul is talking about here in this text, why do the
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Israelites, why do the Jews even matter to us here in 2019 in Matawan, Michigan?
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I mean, the fact of the matter is, you can say, who cares about those Old Testament ancient peoples? Some of you have marriages that are on the rocks here today.
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Some of you have children going through some significant health issues. Some of you are under the constant threat of losing your job, or you've already lost your job and you're looking for a different one.
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Many of you are overworked. Many of you are severely disrespected by your children.
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Some of you feel like you're being ignored by your parents. And then up here is Pastor Don dutifully marching through Romans chapter 11.
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And the question could easily be on our minds, what does this matter again? Why are we talking about the Jews?
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Why are we talking about whether or not God was faithful to his Old Testament people? What's that got to do with me and my day?
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But Romans chapter 11 here, what we're looking at this morning is addressing the core of our joy.
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Because I don't know about you, but have you tried to find your joy and satisfaction in your children? Anybody here with children try to do that?
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Or try to find joy and satisfaction in relationships? Or joy and satisfaction in your job?
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Or joy and satisfaction in, and you realize very quickly that those things don't satisfy.
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How many of you know what I'm talking about? You've experienced enough of your life to know that the things of this world cannot satisfy the aching and longing of our hearts.
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We need something more. The kind of more that Romans 11 is addressing. The very faithfulness of God toward his people that means that it will all work out well in the end.
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That means that we have a destiny and a hope that goes beyond the trivial things of this life that let us down all the time.
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And I guess a way to ask this is to get a rhetorical question here, a hypothetical question. Some of you like hypothetical questions, some of you don't, but just think if I could offer you two things.
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What if I could offer that all of your relationships would be healed? What if I could promise you that all of your financial issues would be taken care of?
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What if I promised you that all of your life would snap in line and go without any more hurdles until the day of your death, but in exchange, you had to exchange the faithfulness of God?
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What if that was offered to you today? And those were the two choices. Those were the options before you. Have a cushy life, a fabulous life here for 80 some years on this planet in exchange for the faithfulness of God.
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And I think that kind of puts into perspective what it is that we're looking at. Why does this matter this morning? Because we know that there might be a temptation for some of us, some of you that are going through pain or hardship or difficulty, boy, it sounds really tempting, but I think all of us in this room know that that's not a good trade -off.
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An eternity with our faithful God is worth more than any goods and services, things that we can obtain, pleasures of this world and this life.
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I mean, the real question is what matters most, God's eternal faithfulness towards his people or the temporary pleasures of this world?
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And so this text matters here in Romans chapter 11 because it reminds us of the rock -solid hope in the
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God who has chosen us by grace. So if you haven't turned there yet, turn over to Romans chapter 11.
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We're gonna be reading verses one through 10. If you need to, I'm navigating a device over there so that you can follow along in the text of scripture.
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If you don't have a Bible or an app or something like that, then grab a Bible that's under the seat in front of you or in the row in front of you.
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But let's take in God's word, recast as a privilege that we have to actually read and hear from the
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Almighty God in the pages of scripture this morning. Romans chapter 11, verses one through 10.
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I ask then, has God rejected his people? By no means, for I myself am an
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Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
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Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel?
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Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.
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But what is God's reply to him? I have kept for myself 7 ,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
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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.
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Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking.
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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.
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And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.
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Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.
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Let's pray. Father, we come before you as a people who need your grace, need your mercy.
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Our lives are broken in many ways, and in some ways, there is joy, there is gladness.
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I know that there are some who have had great circumstances this week, and there are others who are just crushed and under a heavy load of burden.
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And Father, I pray that you would meet us on both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between here this morning by your word.
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A very severe word, a very harsh word, but a word that testifies of you, a word that clarifies who you are and the way that you work in the world and the way that you have expressed your grace to your chosen people, people who don't deserve it, people who cannot earn it, but it is by grace and grace alone.
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And so, Father, I pray that you would help our hearts to rejoice in the positive here today and the positive here at the start of this text, that we are your people by grace, that you have chosen us, you have selected us, and you have brought us to an understanding.
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You have given us light for our eyes and allowed us to hear the cry of your word calling out, and you have blazed through the stupor of our laziness and our sleepiness and our inability spiritually to discern and understand and to seek for you, and you have blown past all of that with your amazing and glorious grace found in Jesus Christ.
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I pray that you would allow this to be a humbling text. When we recognize what we deserve and who we are inside and how much grace you have given to us,
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I pray that our hearts would just be lifted up before you in worship as we have an opportunity to sing songs before you, that this would be true worship from hearts that love you and are being redeemed by you.
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And I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, you can go ahead and be seated, but remember, if at any time during the message you need to get back up and stretch out in the back or get coffee or juice or donuts while supplies last, if you need to use the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left -hand side.
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And then if you could do me a favor and reopen your Bibles or your app or whatever and go over to Romans chapter 11, verses one through 10.
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Again, we're gonna walk through that passage. And so having that open in front of you will help you to be able to track and keep your focus, hopefully, as we march through it.
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But to set a little bit of the stage here, we enter into a text that's talking about the Jews, it's talking about Israel, and it's kind of using them as an example for us.
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And so the end of chapter 10 ended with the statement that all day long, God holds out his hands to a disobedient and contrary people.
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The image that you have is God saying, come to me, and people will disobey him and be contrary to him all day long.
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And that's an image of the way that the Jews responded to him. And so God was so patient with the
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Jews who he had entered into a relationship with, he had foreknown them, he had chosen them and selected them beforehand.
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And it's helpful to understand what the relationship looked like from the very foundation. What was that relationship like between God and the
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Jews in order to understand this text a little bit better? And I think that most of us have some stories about the
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Old Testament. We know maybe David and Goliath, and we know Jonah and the whale. We know some of the stories, but do we really understand the flow of what
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God was doing in that Old Testament people? So let me just give you a quick synopsis of that. Back in Genesis chapter 12, remember that man broke it.
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Okay, so we sinned in the garden. You have that whole Garden of Eden thing. Then you have the slide into sin that just gets darker and darker and darker up till the flood narrative in the book of Genesis.
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And then you have the Tower of Babel and the spreading out and all of that stuff going on. And then in Genesis chapter 12,
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God does something very different. God broke into human history with a movement towards saving humanity from the effects of sin by entering into relationship with one particular individual.
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And he set forth a plan through Abraham that was relational, it was progressive, and it was messianic.
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Relational, progressive, and messianic. It was relational in that God chose to work in and through specific human relationships to him.
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And so he didn't have to do that. He could've done it, I mean, he's God, so he could've just said, here, here's where forgiveness comes from, boom, and just giving us a package.
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We opened it and there was forgiveness or something like that. But instead, he chose to enter into relationship with humans down through centuries, and that's where the progressive comes in.
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The plan was progressive in that it unfolded over centuries and was not all revealed at once.
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You have Abraham, and then you have the people, you go down to Jacob, and then you have the giving of the law under Moses, and then you have the exile to Babylon and the disobedience of the people, and then you have the birth of the
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Messiah, and then you have his return, and then you have an eternal kingdom under him.
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And so there's a progress that you have in the way that God had related to humanity in terms of salvation.
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But it also was messianic, and that's important to understand. That's something that we can miss. We go, Old Testament, how many of you have read through the
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Old Testament some? How many of you have read through the Old Testament and don't often know that there's a lot of laws in there? If you ever try to read through the
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Bible in a year, my guess is that if you got stopped, it was somewhere in the book of Leviticus, right?
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Leviticus is that book where it's like, okay, can I do this again? Can I just skip to the book of John or something, or can
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I just go to the New Testament, right? So you get into Leviticus, and there's a lot of laws and rules there, and we have a mindset that that's the way that God, so we think it's relational, progressive, and legalistic.
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But it's not, it's messianic. And it's very vital to understand that even that Old Covenant with Abraham was always pointing to one who would come to fix it.
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Not that we would fix it, not that we would be good enough, not that we would be law -abiding enough, that we would follow the rules enough to be able to fix it ourselves, no, no, no.
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It was always about a Messiah from the beginning. One who God would send forth as his anointed one, who would heal all.
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And that plan, by the way, even predates Abraham, predates God's movement into relational healing between humanity and himself.
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It goes all the way back to when Adam and Eve sinned, and he was speaking to Eve and issuing the punishments.
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He said, by the way, one born of your line is going to crush the head of the serpent, and he will have his heel wounded.
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In other words, it will not be a mortal wound, but he will be wounded in the process of destroying the serpent.
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Who was that, who would that be? Anybody have any ideas? Jesus, right, the good
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Sunday school answer. But it's the right answer, okay, it's the right answer. Jesus is the one who was born of the woman, not born of a man, born of a woman.
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I mean, that whole virgin birth thing matters in that account. And one that was born of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, and that's indeed what happened.
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And then that promise to Abraham even included this idea of a blessing to all the nations, that it would be comprehensive and messianic, that one would be born of the line of Abraham that would be a blessing to all the nations.
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So a true student, if you were to just take the Old Testament, if that's all that you had, and you studied it and authentically looked at it in depth without pride of nationality, say you're a
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Jew and you study it, without that pride that seeps in, without all that notion of I'm better than everybody else because God chose us and gave us the law, if you were to just look at it with a pure eye, you would come out with a hope for the globe based on the promises to Abraham.
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That would be where you would land. If pride wasn't an issue, if religiosity wasn't an issue, if we didn't always default to I've got this one,
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God, I can handle it myself, and that's where the law comes in and clouds things and we get legalistic and the
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Jews got sidetracked into their self -righteousness, not looking for a Messiah any longer, but looking to heal their own relationship with God through laws and rules and regulations.
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And so a student of that promise of God to Abraham would walk away from their study with a hope for a global blessing to come out of the line of the
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Jews, a Messiah who would be born to heal. And I say all of that because I'm pretty convinced that we're not likely good students of the
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Old Testament. So Paul's arguments for the faithfulness of God are fuzzy to us. Why is he talking about the
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Jews? Why is he talking about Israel? Why does that matter? And it matters because God started something with them that he's carried forward into our day and age even here.
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But our text this morning is gonna divide into two points that represent two subsets of people. Paul's gonna start off in the first half talking about one group of people, and then by the end he's gonna talk about a second group.
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So that's kind of our outline. And he's gonna be using Israel as an example. We get a framework for understanding all people through his use of the
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Jews here as an illustration. There are truly two types of people in this world, and it's more than just those who let the toilet paper fall off the front and those who are wrong.
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There's more types of people than that. There's all kinds of ways to categorize people, but I just wanted to clarify, yes, there is a right and a wrong to this, okay?
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My opinion, but I mean, I'm the one with the microphone, so I'm right.
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But honestly, all joking aside, it's a serious division we're talking about this morning. I throw in a little bit of levity because it is so serious.
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It's a very serious division. And one that Paul has kept up talking about in this section of Romans, stretching from Romans chapter nine all the way through chapter 11, that there are indeed those who are in with God and there are those who are not in with God.
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There are those who are chosen and there are those who are not. And so the text breaks down like this.
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The chosen remnant of grace, or the chosen remnant by grace, verses one through six, and then the hardened and unchosen, verses seven through 10.
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The chosen remnant by grace, verses one through six, and the hardened and unchosen, verses seven through 10.
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And so in verse one, we see the fundamental question that Paul is getting at here in this text. How can the
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Old Testament say that God has held his arms out to a disobedient and contrary people, but they haven't responded?
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Then how is he faithful? How can God be shown to be faithful if the people haven't responded, his
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Old Testament chosen people, haven't responded to the Messiah? If they haven't fully embraced him, if all the
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Jews are not saved, then how is it possible that God is a faithful God? How can some of his chosen people from the
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Old Testament nation of Israel remain outside of his grace? And here at the outset of this very clear text on the sovereignty of God, we need to keep in mind that Scripture has clearly identified those who are rejected by God, those who are hardened by God, and those who are unchosen by God are equally disobedient and contrary in verse 21 of the previous chapter.
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So it's not just that they're unchosen, but they're also disobedient and contrary. That's, by the way, the default of the human heart.
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Disobedience and contrariness toward God comes in, it's part of the warp and woof of who we are as humans.
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It's part of our composition, and so you don't have, that's why you don't have to train your kids to take somebody else's toy.
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You don't have to teach them that. You have to teach them not to do that. You don't have, I mean, you have to train and teach obedience to parents.
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You don't have to tell them when to say no, right? They learn that. Some of your kids, those of you that are raising kids, you recognize that maybe some of the first words you heard from your child was no, right?
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It was a disobedience to you. And so that's the very nature of the human heart is that we are a contrary people.
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We are disobedient from birth. And so these are not good people that we're talking about at the latter half of this text.
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I have to clarify that up front. These are not innocent people. These are people opposed to the rule and reign of the almighty.
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These are enemies to his kingdom. These are disobedient glory thieves who seek to push him down and elevate themselves.
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Now, they may look religious on the outside, just like we can look religious on the outside if we would choose.
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But the people that he's talking about here who are unchosen, well, they are not glad to meet the
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Messiah who was supposed to be the one they were seeking all along. And they, in that sense, are just like all of us.
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Just like all of us who would take all the glory for ourselves given the opportunity. But against the accusation that God has rejected his people,
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Paul says his habitual, throughout the book of Romans, he says this all the time, by no means, no way. God has not rejected his people.
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And then in explaining the chosen remnant of grace, he uses two examples of the way that God is continuing his work, even among the old covenant people of God.
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He is still working among the Jews, he says. And at the end of verse one,
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Paul uses himself to demonstrate God's continued faithfulness to Israel. He says, I'm an
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Israelite who has found and is following the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
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And it's interesting that Paul uses himself as an example here, because it shows that he thought of the church and his own
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Christian faith as a continuation of the Old Testament. What you are a part of here today is a continuation of something that God started centuries and centuries, millennia ago, and we are carrying forth a tradition that goes, that's consistent with the
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Old Testament promises that God made to Israel. You see, in that sense, the church is not some radical new thing that was completely out of left field in God's plan.
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It's not like God set forth a bunch of different options, a bunch of different choices, they all failed, and so I guess I'm gonna have to send
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Jesus. I guess none of the other things worked. I guess none of the Old Testament stuff, they wouldn't follow me, and golly,
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I'm kind of jilted a little bit about that, but now I'm gonna have to send my son down there to fix it. That was his plan all along.
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That was from the foundations of the earth. That was from the beginning of the fall, I will send one to fix it.
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That should have been the anticipation of everybody who read their Old Testament back in the day, the hope that God was gonna send forward someone who was gonna fix this, and unite peoples from around the world in the worship of God.
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A healing of hearts, a healing of what is broken, and that is what we represent here today, church.
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That's a glorious reality of who we are in Christ, a manifestation of the very promises given to Abraham back in the
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Old Testament, an amazing, amazing reality. So all throughout the
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Old Testament, there were promises that God would fold the nations into his plan for Israel, and the very first promise to Abraham was that one person born of his lineage was gonna accomplish that, was going to do that, and so Paul sees himself as a fulfillment of that.
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So Paul is saying if God had completely rejected the Jews, then
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Paul, who was born a Jew, wouldn't be an apostle, and there's no way that he would be following the
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Messiah, but the very fact that a Jew, here, Paul, is following the Messiah shows that God still has a plan, still is working among the
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Jews, and the way that he works among the Jews today, by the way, is the same way he works among us, it's through the gospel.
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It's through the gospel, the hope for anyone on this planet, regardless of what religious affiliation they have, the hope for everyone is that they would come connected to the
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Messiah who loves them and died for them, but that isn't his only evidence that God remains faithful to his
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Old Testament people, that God is, in essence, faithful, we need to grasp that, but in verses two through three,
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Paul references one of my favorite Old Testament accounts. The prophet Elijah was brought on the scene during some of the darkest days of Israel.
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The king in the north, in the northern, at that point, Israel was divided in two. The northern kingdom was under a wicked king named
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Ahab, and even a more wicked wife, Jezebel, and she established the formal worship of the pagan god,
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Baal, the fertility god, the one who brought the produce and the harvest and all of that, and so that was their mindset, so she established the formal worship of the pagan god,
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Baal, all throughout Israel, set up temples, set up idols, and then they entered into these acts of unspeakable worship to the god,
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Baal, and that's found in 1 Kings chapter 18, but in 1 Kings 18,
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God calls Elijah to confront the priests of Baal at a place called Mount Carmel, which sounds delicious, but bad things happen there.
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Good things, bad things, depends on how you look at it, but yeah, this is not a dessert that you can find at Ritter's, but it sounds good, but in dramatic divine context here, in 1
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Kings 18, Yahweh sends fire from heaven at the prayer and request of Elijah to prove that God is indeed
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God. He sends fire to consume the sacrifice that Elijah sets up, and the nation of Israel turns away from Baal and back to the one true and living
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God. By the end of that day of confrontation, all the priests of Baal are slaughtered in Israel, and Jezebel is super salty about it.
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She gets beside herself, she sends a messenger to Elijah and says, just basically commits to, 24 hours from now,
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Elijah, you will be like those prophets of Baal. You will be dead and slaughtered just like them.
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So she threatens to kill Elijah. He flees out into the wilderness, takes off heading south, and just doesn't stop running, like straight line south, and ends up at a cave at Mount Horeb, and after this great victory, think about chapter 18, a great victory against the prophets of Baal, then chapter 19,
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Elijah fleeing for his life, feeling more alone than ever. Can any of you relate to having a high point experience, and then, boom, it just crashes down around you?
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So Elijah literally says to God, could you just take my life? My life is worthless,
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I wanna die. Now you could psychoanalyze this, but I don't think it takes any mental illness to get there.
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Do you know what I'm saying? People have literally, some of the commentaries in 1 Kings are diagnosing him as bipolar and different things.
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I'm like, you don't even have to go there. That's just human nature. We can go from the highest point of our lives to the lowest point of our lives like that, right?
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Just feeling great about ourselves and then terrible about ourselves. And he says, I wanna die, and in 1 Kings 19 .10,
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he also expresses what is the key point that Paul is trying to grab ahold of. He's not grabbing ahold of the whole story of Elijah, he's not trying to make comment on everything to do with this account or everything to do with Elijah's life as if it all ties in.
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He is interested in the word remnant, that God would preserve a people out from among the
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Baal worshipers at that time, that he would preserve a people out for himself in our era and in Paul's era.
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And so he expresses that he alone is left among the faithful, says Elijah. This is part of his pity party.
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I'm the only one left, God. I'm the only one who's faithful to you. All of Israel has turned to the
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Baals. I am the only one left. And I don't think he was thinking he could get away with a lie to God.
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I think he really believed it. It wasn't like he thought, well, God won't fact check me on this, so I'm just gonna spout here for a second.
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Like he's actually talking to the Almighty in prayer and he basically says, I'm the only one left worshiping you, just me, me alone.
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And God offers him some dramatic encouragement to hang in there and concludes by indeed fact checking
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Elijah. You, Elijah, say that there's only one faithful in Israel, but let me fact check that for a second, get with my people, check
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Google. I have 7 ,000 people in Israel who have not worshiped
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Baal. You are far from alone, says God. Now get your head back into the game and then
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God gives him some responsibilities and some assignments that Elijah never finishes. Elijah ends his life salty toward God for not winning all the nation of Israel.
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That's what he wants and he doesn't get it. So this is a story that Paul is referencing to defend the faithfulness of God toward his people.
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How? You see, Israel had never been purely faithful as a nation. Never, never pure before God.
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It has never been enough to be born a Jew to be okay with God. That's not how a person becomes okay with God, is being born a
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Jew. It wasn't in the Old Testament, that was not enough. It's trusting the Messiah, trusting God to provide a way for us to be made righteous.
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And so this story about the life of Elijah is an excellent illustration of the way that at various times there have been a majority of the nation of Israel that was faithless, that was contrary, that was disobedient to God, even while there has always been a remnant that God was preserving by his good and merciful and gracious choice.
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And I wanna point out a couple of opposite type of applications from this text. The first is to notice that Elijah sitting there thinks that he's alone, that he's the only one.
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And I just wanna point out that God is doing more than you give him credit for. He's doing more than you think he is.
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He is never at work in your life alone. You're never the sole bastion of the faith.
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Although you can feel like that. How many of you feel alone at times? Really?
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You guys are doing, you guys are so healthy. You guys are really healthy. Or you're really sleepy. Raise your hand if you ever feel alone.
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I think that's most of us, honestly. I think we all go through these times where we feel alone. But Elijah thought he had a solo when his life was joining in a chorus of 7 ,000 people that he apparently didn't even know were still remaining faithful.
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And I would suggest to you that a lot of our loneliness in our faith is self -induced because we don't lift our eyes up to see what
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God is doing around us. And we become insular and we become isolated and we think that all that God has going on is what we're doing here.
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We become myopic and focused only on what is right immediately in front of us. And part of that is that, in all honesty, in our culture, we're too busy to connect with others.
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We're too jaded and cynical to share our hearts with others. Or quite honestly, we're too selfish to share our time with others.
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I mean, this Netflix isn't gonna watch itself. Is that a nervous laughter?
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Maybe strike a chord with someone here? But some of the greatest seasons in life for me have been times where I've been connecting with others.
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I've been lifting my eyes up outside beyond my little provincial kingdom of myself.
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Like Elijah, sitting there thinking, I'm it. I'm the only thing that God's got going. But instead, those good times are when
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I lift my eyes up and I engage and I involve in other things that God is doing and actually acknowledge, boy,
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God's got a plan that's bigger than me. God's got a plan bigger than Recast. God's got a plan bigger than Matawan, Michigan.
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It's a privilege to be a part of it, but he's got more going on than this. How many are glad? How many are glad that this gathering in this room is not all that God's got going on today?
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Whew, that's good news. And to be honest, I mean, if you're willing to take a step to stretch out,
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I recognize that some of you are very introverted in this room and even what I'm gonna say is a little bit of a stretch for you, but we're gonna try to create a pretty low -key entry point.
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The announcement's kinda said that there's some new groups that are forming. We've got a new one that we're gonna be calling the Breakfast Club. I love naming things because it's the
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Breakfast Club and we're gonna eat dinner together. So, and it's not breakfast for dinner, just dinner, but we're calling it the
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Breakfast Club and it's gonna be dinner here at the church on Wednesday nights starting October 2nd, six o 'clock.
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We're just gonna set up some tables back here. Not a lot of programming, not something that you gotta bring a study to or anything like that.
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At the end of the day, we're gonna do something really radical. We're gonna eat together. That's what we're gonna do and we're gonna talk to each other and we're gonna get to know one another.
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And so, my hope is that if you're not able to connect with one of the other community groups, that you would connect with that and come out and just eat dinner.
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We're gonna just grab some subs or something like that each night and figure it out, but come along, connect with each other, eat a meal together, and I'm hoping that that's, like I said, a low -key entry point to just identifying that there's other people out there.
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There's other things that are going on. God is working in each other's lives and I love hearing people's testimonies. I love hearing how
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God is working in your life and I hope that we could return the favor and just share some of the things that are going on there over a meal and it might just end up turning into talking about Michigan football, which would be really sad, too.
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But at this point, sorry, that was a diversion.
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I gotta get my head back in the game now. That was a rough day yesterday. But the second application in this, thinking about the way that Paul is using
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Elijah here is the flip side of this is equally true. We can at times think that we're the only thing that God's going, but the second application is regarding expectations.
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Because part of Elijah's problem was the notion that everybody in Israel should be saved. Everybody should bow the knee to God and everybody would if God was being faithful.
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If God was doing what God is supposed to do, then everyone will be in, right?
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And that mindset can settle in with us, too, that God, how dare you not save, fell in the blank.
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And so that's the mindset that Elijah entered into this discussion with God. How dare you allow your people to slide into bail worship?
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You're not faithful anymore. And that's exactly what this text is dealing with. The expectations seem to be that if God remains faithful, then all of Israel would be saved.
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But God has always pledged to save and to maintain a remnant of people who are faithful to him and who he shows grace to, but he has not promised to save all of Israel.
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And so I'd like to say to Elijah that 7 ,000, 7 ,000 is a lot more than one.
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Anybody like that? I mean, 7 ,000, he thinks he's alone, and God says, 7 ,000, great number.
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That's better than one. If I offer you a dollar or $7 ,000, which one are you gonna take? 7 ,000's better.
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But he may equally retort, 7 ,000 is a lot fewer than the assumed population of Israel during this time.
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If over 600 ,000, the book of Numbers tells us 600 ,000 military men came out of Egypt during the
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Exodus, military -aged men, the estimates go up to two million Israelites in the
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Exodus. Some people try to disagree with the numbers and try to figure out what's going on there, but a lot of people came out of Egypt.
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During the Exodus. So how many of you, like if you had 600 ,000 or 7 ,000, you're kind of like, this is a lower number.
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Like this is a little more discouraging. 7 ,000, better than one. 600 ,000, 7 ,000 people is a drop in the bucket out of that kind of percentage.
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So how many people were worshiping Baal in Israel during this time? You can only come up with 7 ,000 people,
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God? Who are you? How in the world can you be just and only have 7 ,000 people?
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What is going on here? I believe that Elijah was justified in being disappointed in the lack of honor given to God among his people.
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And I say all of this in this second application to temper our expectations of the response to the gospel in our era.
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Jesus said it this way. Jesus, God calling
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Elijah to task, Jesus calling us to task. In our thoughts about who should and shouldn't be saved, he said it this way.
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This is the words of Christ. Jesus said that the road that leads to life is narrow and very few take that road.
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But the road to destruction is broad and there are many who walk that way. This is not meant to discourage.
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But it is meant to make sense of the rejection of Jesus that we see as pretty par for the course in our culture around us.
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It makes sense of it. But God has been faithful to maintain a remnant of those chosen by his grace all along.
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And so Paul brings us up to the present time in verse five. Even in his time and even in our time, there is a remnant chosen by grace.
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Not all Israelites are truly recipients of the promise to Israel, but God has always chosen some by grace.
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And we only need to go back to chapter nine, verse 15, where it was well established that God will show compassion on whom he desires to show compassion.
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He will show mercy on whom he wants to show mercy. It is his freedom to choose.
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And in verse six, Paul double emphasizes this reality by saying explicitly that being included in his remnant has always been on the basis of grace.
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That is God's undeserved kindness. It is no longer on the basis of works, he says.
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And the phrase no longer exists to show the difference between the faithful remnant in the story of Elijah that he's just referenced and the remnant that exists today.
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The remnant in Elijah's time, it says, were a remnant because they had not bowed the knee to Baal, some action on their part, something that they had done.
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But the New Testament remnant comes in by grace and grace alone, he says. And to make it abundantly clear that our salvation is not based on anything we have done, he states at the end of verse six that grace would no longer even be grace if we work for it or we earn it.
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It then becomes a wage, something we deserve. So here in the first point of this text,
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Paul wants to clearly communicate that God, by his faithful grace, has always chosen to express that grace toward a remnant of people.
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Paul was an example of God's continued work among the Jews. And the way that God preserved a remnant in the days of Elijah also demonstrates that God is always doing more than what meets the eye.
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But equally, that remnant during the life of Elijah also demonstrates that our expectations placed on God's grace and forgiveness toward all would be misguided and dangerous.
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Not everyone who claims some kind of religious connection to God is indeed his. And that leads into the second part of the text, the harder part.
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Buckle up. In verses seven through 10, Paul explains that there are many who are hardened and remain unchosen.
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Verse seven is direct in what it has to say, and it is unapologetic in what it asserts.
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So what's the deal, then, with those who are not recipients of his grace? The rhetorical question that starts verse seven functions this way.
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So what's up with Israel? So what's up with them? Why aren't the majority of them embracing their
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Messiah? What is their deal? Paul says they failed to receive the very thing they were seeking.
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Well, what were they seeking? They were seeking righteousness, but they were seeking self -righteousness, a different brand of righteousness than what God offers.
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They were seeking it in the wrong way. They were working for it, trying to earn it, trying to grab God's attention so that he would go, wow, you're really impressive.
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I'm gonna let you into heaven. So instead of trusting in God, they were trusting in themselves, and therefore they failed to attain it because God's not impressed with our attempts to make up for our sin.
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Now, that isn't exactly the way that verse seven states it, but it is in context. You can go back to chapter 10, verse three, and it is explicitly stated there that the
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Jews sought their own righteousness while refusing the righteousness that God offered.
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And so their hearts, the text says, were hardened. And the word hardened in verse seven is explained more in depth in verse eight.
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So in verse eight, we find three things that equate to the hardening of a heart.
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And by the way, verse eight is a quote from Deuteronomy 29, verse four. You don't need to turn there, but that's what's being quoted there.
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Paul, a student of the Old Testament, bringing Deuteronomy. How many of you have several verses of Deuteronomy at your disposal to just bring into a conversation?
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Paul did, it's impressive. I mean, and Jesus quoting Deuteronomy to Satan in the wilderness.
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Deuteronomy is like, that's the book. But it means that God gave them a spirit of stupor.
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These are the three things. He gave them, God gave them a spirit of stupor, a hazy sleepiness.
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He gave them spiritually blind eyes, hardened. He gave them ears that would not hear, hardened.
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And now I have to confess that if I were to take up a position against sovereign grace and say that the salvation of an individual is only ever their decision, it's only ever up to their faith, and if they have faith, then
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God is pleased with them, and if they don't have faith, then God is displeased with them. If that's the only thing that is going on in salvation, the only thing that's going on behind the scenes is whether or not we express faith.
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And I don't know what to do with verse eight. I think verse eight would be the stickiest point to me in all of Scripture in understanding what is
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God doing here again? What is God doing in verse eight? He's giving them a spirit of stupor.
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He's giving them blind eyes. He's giving them ears that don't hear. I hope that everybody raises their hand on this next question.
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How many of you, does that make you feel uncomfortable? It ought to.
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It's supposed to. This text is showing that God has an active role in clouding things for those who reject him.
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Verse eight is so, so, so clearly active on God's part, and it is written in such plain language that it must rattle us out of simplistic views of God and his role in salvation.
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Last week, it was clear that salvation is as simple as confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead.
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Last week, Don, you were talking about the simplicity of salvation. Now you're saying it's complex? Well, when you understand it from God's perspective, everything is complex for our minds.
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Everything is mind -melting when you actually seek to truly understand what God is doing in this world.
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Talk about coming to the end of your capacity. Think about these things of God, and you'll come to the end of yourself very quickly, the ability to understand.
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But it is indeed true that salvation is as close as confessing with your mouth and believing in your heart.
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That is true, as for our part. A belief in confession is all that's needed, but God wants to be clear that all of that comes from him.
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If you believe and confess, you have no room for arrogance. If you're, those of us that are sitting here that are all in with Christ and we love him and we recognize his love for us, we have no room for arrogance as if we could boast of our faith and say, we did it.
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Not at all, that's why this text exists, because this text is also true.
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Yes, it's as simple as confession. Yes, it's as close as your heart believing and you will be saved, but this text is also true.
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You expressed faith, you confessed with your mouth, because the sovereign and almighty
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God chose you by his grace. He removed the, he removed your spiritual laziness.
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He gave you eyes to see, he gave you ears to hear, and you paid attention, and you saw, you heard, and you believed, and you confessed, because God removed every hurdle from your way, because he chose you.
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It would be good to think about, by the way, when did God take this action that makes us uncomfortable?
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When did he give them a stupor, make them sleepy and hazy towards spiritual things?
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When did he give them blind eyes that couldn't see the truth? When did he give them deaf ears that can't hear?
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And I believe firmly that he did this at the fall. I don't believe that you woke up one day and wanted to believe, and then he's like, today's the day,
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I'm gonna blind you, I'm gonna give you deaf ears, I'm not gonna let you hear. I think that's the status of humanity.
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All of humanity exists in this God -given state of unresponsiveness to him. Pulling on and on about that for an entire chapter.
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Chapter three is focused on that one truth that we don't see, we don't understand, we don't comprehend, we are all sinners, and we can't fix ourselves.
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No one seeks after God. No one is righteous, no, not one. We were all blind, we were all deaf, we were all spiritually despondent.
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And then Paul ends this paragraph with a very direct quote. Psalm chapter 69 is where he gets it, quoting
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David. And we're speaking of his enemies, David calls for his enemies to have no reprieve.
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And the table is mentioned there. And it sounds like a kind of strange quote, like what's the table got to do with anything here?
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What's going on? The table is a place of rest from troubles. How many of you find some of your greatest solace sitting at your own table?
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Or maybe it's sitting out on your deck, like having barbecued ribs or something, and maybe that's the place where you have the greatest reprieve, like that's the place of relaxing, right?
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Do you guys know what I'm talking about? I'm getting some blank stares here. How many of you enjoy your own table? Okay. Some of the wives are like, really?
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That's all I'm getting here? I mean, yeah, I don't know what you're cooking. But it's a place of reprieve, but he calls down judgment, asking that even at their tables his enemies would find trouble and retribution.
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May the hot sauce be extra hot, and that they be locked in darkness with backs bending grief forever.
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It's written in here, and I'm gonna change it. It says in my notes here, the text seems harsh. The text is harsh.
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It doesn't just seem harsh. It's harsh like hell, like that kind of harsh.
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But please do not lose the context here. Three times from chapter nine through chapter 11, as Paul has been trying to weave this understanding of how
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God works in salvation and how we work and how his work is bigger than our work, his work is better than our work,
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Paul has expressed deep concern for those that he's talking about here, the lost. He is not flippantly speaking condemnation on the majority of his people that he loved.
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How are we to consider those around us who are walking in a stupor, who are blinded and deaf to the calls of the gospel?
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We are to respond with compassionate pleading. God will use us as agents of his grace.
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Some who are currently darkened will receive a great light and you will be there at the switch shining it for them.
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Many who are currently deaf will hear the call of the king and it will sound like your voice declaring the words of life.
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What a privilege. Many who are currently stumbling in a stupor will receive understanding and it will be at your patient explanation, your loving and compassionate explanation of what
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Jesus Christ has done for them. It just might be you this week that God uses to bring about this glorious transformation in someone close to you.
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Let me be honest with you here for a moment as we're kind of wrapping things up. If I wasn't tethered to scripture, if I as your pastor felt the freedom to go aside from scripture,
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I would skip some parts. I would never preach these things and I would never come to these conclusions without the word of God.
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Nobody ever gets to God's role in condemning sinful humanity without scripture. In this sense, the default of the sin -cursed heart, sin -cursed human heart is toward autonomy.
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We can do it. We can fix ourselves, a radical independence, but verses eight through 10 are a sandpaper to our generalized view of God, a
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God who we think exists to serve humanity. His role is to be, you know, we think of him as this grandfather in the sky and his role is to be this grandfatherly figure and dole out like good things and pull us up on his lap and just hug us when we bruise our knee.
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And then we study scripture. And once I meet him in scripture, I understand how radical his mercy was toward me.
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He is indeed severe and stern toward those who remain in their sin. So let's come to communion this morning with this shocking view of God that we're presented here.
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Take a pause this morning and consider how you have come to the meaning of this table when you stand there at the table and you take the cracker that remembers his body broken for you and you take the cup of juice to remember his blood shed for you.
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How did you get there? How do you get to that point? And I would say that the song that Dave is gonna play for us speaks to it.
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He's carried us there. He has brought sinners and rebels into his feast.
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You see, the second half of this text is there to remind us all of what we deserve so that the first half of the text shines all the more glory to our king.
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He rescued us by sending his only son to die for our sins. So if you profess
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Christ as your king and you've asked him to save you, then come to one of the tables and take the cup of juice to remember his blood shed for us.
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And take the cracker to remember his body broken for us. And then let's go out as a rejoicing remnant and remember that we are not alone and remember that there are many still in darkness waiting for us to bring them light.