Nov. 12, 2017 God Only Wise by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Romans 11 and the Mystery of Israel’s Stumbling

I want to turn also in your Bibles to Romans chapter 11. So continue going through this epistle of Paul to the Roman church and to this church in Sunnyvale some 2 ,000 years later. And this morning, with God's blessing, we will start at verse 11 of chapter 11 in Romans and go through the end of the chapter, which is to verse 36.

So Romans 11, we read this entire passage to you. It is the word of the Lord. So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means. Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.

Now, if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? Now, I'm speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.

For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump. And if the root is holy, so are the branches.

But if some of the branches are broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches.

If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, branches are broken off so that I might be grafted in. That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief.

But you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen, but kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness.

Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in. For God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree?

Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.

And this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins. As regards to the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards to election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers.

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

For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom of God and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.

For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has given him a gift that it might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever, amen.

The Depth of God’s Wisdom and the Limits of Human Understanding

That's quite a mouthful, is it not? There's a whole lot of scripture there and there's a whole lot of things that we need to go through. And as with so many densely packed areas of Romans, the caveat I need to give before we even dig into these verses is that we're going to leave a lot on the table.

And depending on your particular presupposition towards these verses, how you take them, I tell you that I nor I believe hardly any other preacher can satisfy everyone on these. My job, as with Romans 7, is to tell you what I believe the scripture takes after the work I do, rolling up my sleeves, working through the scripture, seeing what Paul has to say, what the scriptures say, and presenting that to you and not having to take apart every other argument that wouldn't be in agreement with my conclusions.

But that said, we have before us a wonderful passage of scripture, a passage that is fraught with peril with all the different interpretations and what does it mean with branches broken off and will God put you in and then take you off if you don't continue in kindness?

Will he then turn his smile upon you that he gave you by faith in Jesus Christ and it becomes a frown and so your security is gone. Well, the safest way to take these verses, as with any part so intricately woven together on argument as we have in Romans, is to be sure that we're consistent with the flow of thought.

And so the idea, I have to tell you right up front, that you could be taken off as a branch that has truly been placed in Christ and thrown away is not the conclusion we need to take from these verses.

If it is, then much of Romans 8, and neither depth nor height, and neither death nor life nor anything else can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. None of that would make much sense.

So this morning, I wanna begin this sermon at the end of the passage that I read. At the end of the passage, because those last four verses, that doxology that Paul kind of bursts out with, will set our minds in the right place.

It will keep us in the frame that Paul has. In other words, he's trying to correct something there in Rome 2 ,000 years ago. And it's a warning to us today, 2 ,000 years later, and to really be sure that we take right interpretations and make right conclusions, I think starting with the end, and this doxology that sort of is the end of the matter, if you will, will set our minds in the right place to go to the beginning of the matter.

Because what Paul says there in those last four verses about God, it puts everything before it in the proper context. These will keep us in the bounds of Paul's overarching purpose here. It's gonna help us apply these things the way the apostle would have us apply them.

So I wanna begin at the end. I wanna set our frame of mind with this doxology, where Paul basically bursts out with this praise of God. Now, before I start, one more just short note. Many times we look at this doxology, this verses 33 to 36, and we take it as Paul in a sense saying, you know, we just can't understand any of this, let's just praise God and see what happens sort of a thing.

And that's not at all what is happening. And so like in Ephesians 5, when Paul says the two shall become one flesh, speaking of a man and his wife, and how that relates to Christ and the church, and then he says this is a mystery.

He's not just shrugging his shoulders, saying I don't understand, it's just mysterious, let's move on. There's more to it than that. He's talking about the very nature of God and probing into his mind and wondering about salvation in terms of others.

Verse 33, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. What is he saying here? The operation of God's will and the revelation he gives of that will has really two outstanding characteristics.

First, it is wonderfully and clearly revealed to us where? In the scriptures. In the Bibles that are in your hands right now, we have the revelation of God's will. The prophets and the apostles, they gave us a word that was meant to be understood.

And by the Holy Spirit's direct providence and superintendence, we have in our Bibles the very and complete word of God. This is first that God has revealed himself. God has given himself to us, if you will.

The second thing we need to understand is that while the scripture tells us everything that we can or we should or we must know about God, thousands upon thousands of lifetimes could never plumb their depths.

And just consider that for 2 ,000 years, good and godly and intelligent men have been writing commentaries on the scriptures. And think of how often it happens that a man working on the scripture and humbling himself before God and presenting to us his work, he finds a new crease.

He finds a fresh outlook on something that helps the saints in their day and is true to that word. Thousands upon thousands of lifetimes could never plumb the complete depth of this word that we have.

Yet in all this, they do not tell us, the scriptures do not tell us everything about God. What we must know or can know is a long way from all there is to know. And I think when we see Jesus as he is, when we stand before God without sin between us and him, we still won't know everything about God.

But everything that we can and should and must know, yes. And we have that now in the scriptures. So his ways are unsearchable. His judgments are inscrutable. And yet they are revealed to us to the extent that we can and should and must know them.

And verses 34 and 35 in that doxology meld together parts of Isaiah and parts of Job. For who has known the mind of the Lord and who has been his counselor? This alludes to Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 12.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance.

In other words, there is none like God. There's no one whose works are done for us to see the way God has given his works to be seen. And showing that he is eternal, that he is powerful and importantly, that what he purposes to do, he does.

And our comprehension of the how and the why of his working notwithstanding, he does what he says he will do. And if we don't understand how he did it, if we don't understand the extent of his power, his holiness or any other attribute of God, so be it, God is still God.

First Corinthians 2 .16 says that we have the mind of Christ. We have a full and sufficient revelation of who God is, of who Jesus his eternal son is, of what the salvation we have in Christ is and how we apprehend that.

That's all been revealed to us. That's the mind of Christ. But we do not have there the complete and full mind of God nor shall we ever. If we ever did, then think of it. If we had the complete mind of God, we'd be able to talk to God as an equal.

We'd be able to now and then counsel him, to correct him, to be his instructor and that of course is absurd. It's obviously ridiculous. No, we have the mind of Christ and that's the scripture he's given us.

What we can, what we should, what we must know about God. Verse 35 in the doxology addresses how Paul would have the church view her own salvation. How the individual, you or myself should view it. Who has given him God?

Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? And that's from Job 41 .11. Where God asks those who would inquire too deeply and you remember Job and his three friends probing around the edges, trying to figure out why God worked the way God worked against Job or in Job or to Job or how God worked.

Or however you want to put it. They spent all those days there working that out. And God's answer is who is first given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. He owes us nothing.

Who's given a gift that he might be repaid? No, God owes nobody, no thing, anything. And finally in verse 36, for from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. God is the source, God is the sustainer, God is the goal of everything.

Everything he does is for his own eternal glory. And this negates an attitude that is implicit in the previous verses. Verses 11 to 32 that I just read. We'll get to those in a moment, but the attitude is that salvation was in some way earned or deserved.

Our benefits in the salvation that God has given us, the wonders of knowing him by faith in his son are immeasurable. It is all from first to last, sourced by God, kept by God, intended by God for his own purposes, primarily his glory.

This doxology should set our attitudes, set our minds, set our spirits correctly to understand verses 11 to 32. Where we get to the meat of it. The first question that Paul asks now is in verses 11 to 15.

And the question is this, why has Israel stumbled? Did they stumble so as to fall by no means? What does he mean by stumble? Stumble means their rejection of the gospel. And what was their error? We went through this mostly in chapter nine, chapter nine and part of chapter 10.

Their error was to seek after God's righteousness by their own works, their own effort. Just a few verses up in chapter 11, verse six, Paul addresses this error by saying, but if it is by grace, meaning salvation, if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works.

Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. Prior to that, chapter nine, verse 32, as that the missing ingredient in all their effort, the one essential without which it is impossible to please God was faith.

They did not pursue it by faith, but by works. This was their stumbling point. This was their error. This is why they didn't make it, if you will. But it's not that they didn't make it as if you could make it on your own.

They didn't take faith as the only way. Faith in Christ, he is the stumbling stone placed there by God. So the question is, why did they stumble? The answer's pretty simple. Their rejection of Christ was all part of God's wise and eternal plan.

They tripped over the need for faith, need for faith in Christ, which is itself a repudiation of self-effort. We've been through this before. We need to remind ourselves constantly of this. The fact that nothing that you do can gain you the benefits of what Christ on the cross did because the cross is the cross.

The cross is everything where Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins. And by faith in that and knowing that because of his suffering, your sins were answered. That's salvation. All by faith because all accomplished by Christ and none of it available or attainable by our works, our effort, our own righteousness, anything of us.

And that's the stumbling point. That's that stone that was placed there. That's Christ and the need for faith in him and faith itself repudiates all else. That's where they tripped, the need for faith in Christ.

And this opens up a question which men ponder. The scriptures take no pains to resolve for us. Who has known the mind of the Lord? The question is the intersection of man's responsibility, your responsibility to repent and believe the gospel.

Along statements, alongside of statements like Jesus' and others we could easily find such as no one can come to the Father, come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. You can't come to Christ unless God the Father brings you to Christ.

We can go back even a little further and say you cannot come to Christ unless God the Father before the foundation of the world chose you to be in Christ and yet God commands all people everywhere to repent.

And Jesus' first words in public ministry in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark are both repent and believe the gospel. So Israel's responsible for having rejected Christ. They don't get to answer back that the stone on which they stumbled was put there by God himself.

The Gentiles, Israel’s Jealousy, and the Parable of the Prodigal Son

And if Paul's inquirers need more, verse 11 says that the Gentiles, Gentile conversion is intended for a purpose because God does everything with purpose. And that purpose is to make Israel jealous. And by that jealousy they might join the Gentiles in Christ.

And you recall previously we talked about that. I will make you jealous, I will make you angry by a nation you have not known is how Paul previously in this overall section was explaining how God is working through Israel or through history to bring Israel to repentance.

And Paul sees himself now in that flow of redemptive history as one of the bringers, if you will, of that jealousy to Israel by bringing Gentiles to faith, by establishing churches like this one in Rome that he's writing to here in the book of Romans.

And thus making Israel jealous and wanting that gospel that the Gentiles are coming to. He sees himself right in that flow of history as part of that prophetic ministry of making Israel jealous. Now Israel is themselves as is any other person, any other soul, any other human being personally responsible, individually responsible for their response to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

They died for your sins, that he was crucified, that he was dead and buried, and on the third day God raised him up for our justification. That at the cross Christ suffered, the $64 word is vicariously, on behalf of another, you.

That's this gospel apprehended by faith. Faith itself being a gift from God that Israel rejected. That's what they stumbled over. And so Paul goes to the Gentiles and puts himself in this position in redemptive history of being the one who helps make Israel jealous.

Israel will see the Gentiles obtain what they had sought after. They will see that they had gone about things the wrong way. They will understand as all who come to Christ must that it's by faith in what he has done that we are cleansed of our sins and thus declared by God righteous.

Think about the parable that William read to you about the prodigal son. The older brother there, he represents Israel of course, he's angry at his father's joy over the younger brother's return. And in the parable, who's the younger brother?

Well, it's some of the wayward sheep of Israel, if you will, it's the tax collectors maybe who are really Jews. They are really by physical descent children or sons of Abraham. And yet traitors, if you will, to Israel.

The father kills the fattened calf. He calls for this enormous celebration. And just imagine what joy there would have been. Just think what the joy would have been had the older brother looking in, was unable to resist the festival and he repented of his anger and he comes in and joins with his brother in the father's loving arms.

Well, the parable of course doesn't really end that way. And we're not gonna change it because it's spoken by Jesus, so of course it is perfect. But this seems to be what Paul is driving at. If the Gentiles have experienced the riches of God in Christ and that came to them by means of Israel's stubborn determination to remain outside, if that failure on their part brought riches to them, to the Gentiles, just imagine what it would be like when Israel by and large repents and believes the gospel.

Just imagine for a moment what the father's joy would have been had the older brother seen this and said, father has forgiven the younger brother. Why shouldn't I? And he comes in. Imagine the joy. Imagine how much exponentially more celebration there would have been had it come that way.

All Israel Will Be Saved and the Meaning of the Olive Tree

One of the controversial parts of our passage in Romans has to do with Israel's ultimate salvation. Paul says, in this way, all Israel will be saved. Well, does he mean all of them without exception? Some think so, but that smacks a bit of universalism, doesn't it?

It goes against experience in scripture. Does Paul mean Jew and Gentile, all the elect finally gathered into the church? That has many advocates, but Paul's language beginning in chapter nine is about the nation known since the Exodus and God's chosen people.

It's about that particular ethnic group, Israel. And I think here in Romans 11, spiritualizing Paul to mean something like, as he says in Galatians, the Israel of God is really unnecessary. Because when he writes that they will all in the end be saved, this is in the context of the whole remnant doctrine and theology that he began back in chapter nine.

He means from that particular people and nation. By all Israel, what does he mean? In context, he means the elect remnant within that nation, those chosen by God before the foundation of the world to be in his son, Jesus Christ.

Just as with anybody else, Jew or Gentile, Greek or Roman, male or female, makes no difference. All the elect, each one whom God has chosen before the foundation of the world, by his will, by his sovereign power and the working of his Holy Spirit, will be in Christ.

That's what he means by all Israel will be saved, not every one. As if the whole nation could, without individually coming to Christ in faith, have salvation. That would go against almost everything we have in scripture.

But we come to this other idea of branching out and branches broken off. New ones grafted in, old ones grafted back. There's the holy lump and the holy root and then there's that terrifying if. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.

The end of verse 32, if you don't continue in his kindness, you too will be cut off. How do we sort this out? We need to be careful, especially keeping in mind that grand chapter eight that led into all this and the security that we have in the salvation that God has wrought in his son Jesus Christ.

And all of a sudden here in chapter 11, watch out. Because if God did this to his chosen people, imagine what he's gonna do to you if you don't behave. Is that what Paul's saying? Is that even possible?

Well, the best way to sort this out is to keep Paul's immediate purpose in mind. He's correcting a problem there in Rome. The Gentile believers question implied in what Paul says in verses 16 to 24 seems to imply that they somehow deserve salvation in a way that the Jews did not.

Paul's answer is a kind of a smack down. It gets them back in place. He humbles them or anyone else who thinks they somehow merited God's special favor. Now, no one would say this, would they? No one would actually stand up in church at a prayer meeting or even today on a Sunday and say, hey, do you know why I got saved?

Because God thinks I'm really grand and he couldn't have heaven without me. Nobody would say anything like that. But it is more subtle than that. There's this idea that, well, they were broken off for me.

Emphasis on me. And this is what Paul's correcting here. Gentiles believers question is, why were they broken off? They're broken off for my sake. But the emphasis is too much on me. Paul's purpose here is to end their speculations about how and why God works.

That's why the doxology is there at the end of the chapter. We have in verse 19 a characterization of this attitude, this thing he's correcting here in these verses. You will say, branches, that's of course Israel, were broken off so that I might be grafted in.

Well said, Paul agrees with that sentiment. But did God do this because they were more deserving than Israel, more deserving than anyone? Are they the ones who designed and actuated and effected and then applied this gospel to themselves, to anyone?

Well, of course not. As Peter puts it, we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Or Paul in Galatians 1 .11, for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

This salvation, in which the Gentiles were boasting and boasting over their Jewish brethren there in the church, this salvation is, pardon me, from beginning to end, all of God. For from him and through him and because of him, and the goal of everything he does is for the sake of his own glory as shown in his son Jesus Christ.

It never had anything to do with man. It's not a myth, it's not a cleverly devised fable. It wasn't given to Paul through men who made it up and figured it out and put it into a process and a seven step thing you can do and a prayer that you can say.

No, it came through revelation to him by Jesus Christ. Israel's that nation that brought forth, according to the flesh, the promises of God. And this is the root on which they stand. This is the holy root he's speaking of.

The gospel is embedded in Israel's nationhood in their heritage of adoption and law and glory and covenants and worship and all the rest of that. This is the holy first fruits of the dough that Paul's speaking of.

The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, most especially God's friend Abraham, are the holy root into which the speculating Gentiles were grafted. The whole of Romans four makes Abraham the father of all who share his faith, whether they're Jew or Gentile, Roman or Greek, male or female, slave or free.

If you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and this gospel, then you are truly Abraham's descendant. Paul uses the word holy here in the sense of something set aside for God's purposes. Much the way we as saints are often called that in scripture, we're called holy, we're called saints.

The patriarchs themselves were as men no different than us. God used them in a special way. God's promises revealed and perpetuated through them are the root from which all the other branches extend. The Gentiles' musings about Israel was so distressing to Paul that he gives these terribly severe warnings, the ones that cause so many people to lose sleep at night, the ones where if we read them about being broken off and God's kindness towards you ending because you didn't show kindness over here, God suddenly turned, smiled, or frowned.

Well, it's kept more than a few saints up at night, perhaps more than a few saints with their knees bent, and prayer is always a good thing, and yet not the prayer of terror over being taken out of Christ and tossed aside.

The Gentiles' musing was a big problem. This is why the doxology, who has known the mind of the Lord? Do you see where they're probing? When they're saying, well, they're broken off from me, why did he do this this way for them?

And Paul is saying, you go too far. Deuteronomy 29, 29, what has been revealed to us is for us and our children for all generations forever, but the secret things belong to the Lord, and the Lord God keeps that counsel to himself.

Who has known the mind of the Lord? In verse 34 of chapter 11 in Romans, that's a warning sign. It's telling us that around the next bend is a washed out and a fast trip down the cliff that awaits everyone who doesn't heed the sign and turn around.

It really is a warning sign. It's a danger signal. It's you're going too far. You're speculating too much. You're probing where you ought not to probe. As I said before about the scriptures, this is the mind of Christ.

Everything we can and must know about him, about what God has done is given to us. Going further is inappropriate searching and probing into God's mind, is wanting to know the totality of his purposes, the totality of his person, his mind, his thoughts.

That's why verse 18 is so strong. It's a caution. Do not be arrogant toward the branches. It's like, well, I was just asking. No, you're not just asking. You're showing arrogance. I just want to know why me and not them.

No. Don't ask. You're probing into the mind of God Almighty beyond what he's revealed of himself in his word. To say they were broken off for me is to say I deserved it. It's also to say they deserved it.

Perhaps being broken off is in fact deserved. God did this because of their unbelief, but that doesn't then imply that the opposite, salvation, is your due. Their whole line of reasoning was arrogance.

In verse 25 he says that they're being conceited about this. And these are demeanors and attitudes that are actually antithetical to the gospel. It's easy for us to slip into this. We think God is impressed by the volume of verses I've memorized or the number of Bible studies I attend.

He must really appreciate my service at the church, even in my preaching. And that's why I've been blessed in ways that Mr. or Mrs. Not-So-Faithful-As-Me will never see. It's very subtle. It's almost insidious how easily this can slip into our thinking.

We need to all tamp down our boasting. We need to swallow it like a piece of rotten meat and eliminate it completely because it's totally inappropriate. The warning in verse 21, for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.

Why did he not spare them? Because of their unbelief. That's verse 20. And that's not peculiar to the Jews, either nationally or individually. If you're not a Jew, then you are not a branch in that sense.

Yet the same truth holds firm that unbelief will bring condemnation every time. Whether you're plucked from the ground or sawn off the tree, it doesn't matter. The end is the same. It's unbelief that brings this condemnation.

What has this to do with the Gentile believers in Rome 2 ,000 years ago? To all us believers here in Sunnyville 2 ,000 years later? Their arrogant, conceited, boasting against unbelieving Israel spoke against the validity of their own conversion.

A true branch, grafted in or natural, if it be truly in Christ, has the firm promise, I will never leave you or forsake you. But even a smattering of self-merit brings the legitimacy of one's conversion into question.

You see, either Jesus did it all, which by faith you believe, or he didn't. And if he didn't, well, he did do it all. But I mean, if you think he left something of human endeavor to be done to complete the equation, if you believe that, no matter how slightly, I would say salvation is impossible.

It's either all of Christ, or you don't believe it at all. Paul raises the possibility that those who hold such views might not be saved. That's how serious this is. They were taken on the attitude of privilege that was in large measure the downfall of much of Israel.

Israel felt privileged, and so they went on this course of deserving and abandoned faith. And stopped reaching out to God the way God would have himself reached to. And what Paul's saying is, you are repeating this error.

You're actually doing what they did. Those ones that were broken off, those unbelievers that you're so curious about, why did God do that to them? Beware. Because you're behaving the way they did, which is why they were broken off.

All Israel will be saved. Some think that this means that sometime around Christ's return, Israel as a nation will turn to God, which is pretty much the dispensationalist view. Others take it to mean the church, as when Paul writes in Galatians 6 .16, and as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God.

Beginning in chapter nine, Paul's been defending God's grace and the reliability of his word of salvation by the gospel and faith in his son. This is what Paul's been at for three chapters. This defense was necessary because the people of God's promise, his chosen people, the ones who had possession of all the ceremonies of the temple that pointed towards Christ and his cross, the ones who had the oracles and the law and all the rest of it, we're talking about Abraham's descendants, they largely, we could say almost as a nation, rejected Christ as it is today.

So if God's promises to them proved faulty, what about the rest of us? So Israel, when Paul says all Israel will be saved, he's speaking about the remnant within the nation. And he's speaking in all these chapters about Israel, not in the spiritualized or allegorical sense, but Israel as you'd normally think of it.

And what does this tell us? This tells us that God will have for himself each and every soul that was born in that nation, Israel as a nation, that he has as he has anyone else determined to have for himself.

He will have from them all the remnant, all those who back in Elijah's day had not bowed to Baal, all the ones that he himself through his providence in history had preserved. By Jesus' time, the humility that came for a short time by recognizing divine grace had morphed into an entitled deserving.

Like the man in the temple who said, I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all I get. I deserve your favor, O Lord. You owe it to me for all that I do for you. And this is the way Israel had grown over the many centuries, going up even into Jesus' time.

Thinking that if I just do these things, if I just perform the deeds, then God will be pleased with me and will save me. Well, what does Romans 3 .9 answer? Romans 3 .9, what then? Are we Jews any better off?

No, not at all. Jews are saved the same way as anyone else by faith in Christ Jesus. Not all Israel was broken off. I mean, Paul himself was proof of that. Those who perished in their unbelief were, as will be anyone else who follows that obstinate pattern, broken off and condemned, but because of unbelief.

The Gentiles in Rome felt that same sort of deserved and privileged status as the people they were wondering about had done. They don't say it explicitly, nobody ever really would, but their whole line of thinking implied it.

The warning about being broken off is something like this. If God will not tolerate unbelief even in his chosen people Israel, then nor will he in you. Your arrogance, that's verse 11 .18, and your conceit, that's verse 11 .25, are so opposed to gospel humility as to indicate there may be no gospel faith.

You see how serious that is? Paul is not saying, may it never be that Paul said a true branch, a believer, can go from believer one day to unbeliever the next day, where God's pleasure and acceptance because of their faith in Christ Jesus causes his smile one day, and your bad behavior causes his anger and his wrath to come upon you the next day, as if Christ Jesus hadn't already paid for your sins, including that one.