Rejected His People？ - Part 2 — John Piper

God's Sovereignty Over Heaven and Earth

Say when he got his reason back again. He said all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. God does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand or say to him what have you done.

History as a Revelation of God's Glory

All of history secular and redemptive is a revelation of the glory of God. It's a revelation of who God is and the way he acts in the world. All of history is a canvas being painted by a very mysterious artist including the revelation of his pain and horror and injustice as a backdrop for his wrath and justice and grace.

The Bible Interprets History Through Jesus

What is God like? That's what history is about and we usually see it, we almost only see it, as a work in progress. The only way you can catch a glimpse of the world any other way than a work in progress is in the Bible where reasons are given for why things are happening the way they're happening and where they're going to end up.

The Bible gives the decisive events. Jesus is the center of the decisive events and so the Bible is the record of the events and their interpretation by which we interpret all other events. Romans 11 is a spectacular display of what I've been saying.

Romans 11 and the Inscrutable Wisdom of God

Romans 11 is a spectacular display of the strange artistry of God on the canvas of the world. It simply blows your mind away, which is why as soon as he's done telling the story, he says in verse 33, Oh the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his ways and how inscrutable are his judgments.

And my prayer for tonight and tomorrow, my prayer is that we would get inside the inscrutability and not stand outside of it and say, I don't think I like that. You have to take him on his own terms. You have to get into the history.

You have to listen to the Lord's interpretation of what he's doing. If you stand outside and criticize God, you'll never see the glory. That will take a work of grace today. Let me give you a flavor of what I mean.

Preparing to Receive Romans 11

I feel the need to preface Romans 11 this way because we're going to hit things almost immediately that for some of you are just going to be staggering. You will have never thought you would think this way about God.

So let's just get a glimpse of the end of the story and the summary of the chapter so that you can catch your breath, smell the aroma, taste the flavor of what we're about to see, and ask the Lord to give you grace to reverence it rather than criticize it.

Gentile and Jewish Disobedience in God's Mercy

Verses 30, 31 and 32 of chapter 11, I want to read as a summary statement that Paul gives of what he's been talking about for 30 verses. Just as you, and he's referring now to the Gentiles, just as you were at one time disobedient to God, God had let the Gentiles and the nations go their own way while he worked with Israel, just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their, that is Israel's, disobedience.

So now line this up in your head. They were disobedient. Israel, with whom he had been working, is now decisively disobedient in rejecting her Messiah, and because of that disobedience, you now are receiving mercy.

That's history. That's awesome. That's breathtaking. Verse 31, so also they too have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy. Now let's put the whole thing out here.

There was a Gentile season of disobedience while God worked with Israel for 2 ,000 years. The Messiah comes into the world and there's a decisive disobedience on the part of Israel as they reject their Messiah.

Because of that disobedience, mercy comes to the Gentiles, and because of that mercy to the Gentiles, eventually mercy comes now to Israel for, verse 32, God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all, which is followed by how unsearchable are his ways and how inscrutable are his judgments, to which you might say, let's just skip it.

Trusting God's Wisdom Beyond Immediate Simplicity

Let's just go to John 3 .16. Let's just go someplace simple. I am tempted. I really am tempted because people will leave the church over this chapter. I happen to trust God in the wisdom of what he puts in the Bible.

This is good for us. This is good for our marriages. This is good for our parenting. It's good for our children. It's good for our bodies. It's good for our being businessmen and businesswomen. And you may not be able to grasp that now, and I'm just asking you, trust God.

It's in his word. And to know him as he reveals himself in history, I think the American church is by and large way too big on immediate application. Way too big. We demand immediate relevance and immediate application, and if it doesn't fix something in my family now, I want another church.

That kind of church and preaching in 50 years is a sitting duck for the devil and every heresy that comes along. I got a letter in the mail today that's about to break my heart if I understand it the way I understand it about a major Christian ministry in this country everybody knows that has taken a turn that looks to me absolutely crazy doctrinally.

And I thought, if this is true, it's because for 50 years they've been so thin.