By Paul Ice
Adapted from John Piper
Romans 11
Romans 11:1, "I ask, then, has God rejected his
people?" That question is utterly pressing because of the preceding
chapters and the preceding verse (Romans 10:21),
"But of Israel he says, 'All day long I have held out my hands to a
disobedient and contrary people.'" In other words, it looks like Israel
is resistant to God and therefore rejected.
So Paul asks in verse 1: "Has God rejected his
people?" And he answers: "By no means!" Then he gives his
argument, his reason: "For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of
Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin." Do you see how different this
argument is from anything else he has said so far in Romans 9-11? Here he is
arguing that God's faithfulness to his people is found precisely in the fact
that Paul is Jewish. God has not rejected his people! Look! I am a Jew. I am an
Israelite, a "member of the tribe of Benjamin." The fact that he
mentions what tribe he is from shows that he is not merely thinking of himself
as a spiritual descendant of Abraham, but also as a physical descendant. God
has not rejected his people, because I am not rejected and I am part of
physical Israel.
That is his argument so far and it is new in these three chapters. This is a
new level in the argument.
From here he will argue that there is a remnant including
himself-including Jews for Jesus-and a remnant points to a fullness the way
first fruits point to harvest. We will need to follow this argument carefully.
But I save that for next week. I want to ask the "so what" question
as we tackle Romans 11. Why should anyone care about this ancient letter? Why
should anyone who is here for the first time today bother to come back?
Really it's a question of whether we need to be assured that
the word of God to Israel
has not fallen. Paul must think this issue is enormously important to spend
three chapters defending God's faithfulness to his word to Israel.
Why? And why should we care?
Consider these two reasons.
1. If God's Word Fails to Israel,
God Is Not Glorious, and God Is Not God
If God's word fails to Israel,
God is not glorious. And if God is not glorious, God is not God. And if God is
not God, our greatest treasure is taken from us, and we are turned into beasts
with the monkeys and the porpoises, and all our love and all our affections are
nothing more than chemicals, and we must play "make believe" all our
life that anything is significant.
But Paul is passionate for the glory of God and the God-ness
of God and the unspeakable significance of your life. And so he writes these
chapters and ends them like this:
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 "For
who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?" 35
"Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" 36 For from
him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
(Romans 11:33-36)
That is what hangs on God's faithfulness to his word to Israel.
His glory. His being God. And your life mattering at all.
2. If God's Word Fails to Israel,
We Cannot Believe That the Promises of Romans 8 Will Be True for Us
The second reason you should care about God's faithfulness
to his word to Israel
is that if God does not keep his promises to Israel,
all our hope that he will keep his promises to us in Romans 8 falls to the
ground.
What about the promise of Romans 8:38, "I am sure that
neither death nor life . . . will be able to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord." Will death separate you from the love of God?
Not if you trust Jesus Christ as your only Savior and Lord and not if God is
trustworthy. But if he does not keep his promises to Israel,
he is not trustworthy, and the promise of Romans 8:38
is unreliable, and the experience of Frances Ridley Havergal is a sham and you
will never know it. She wrote "Like A River Glorious." She died when
she was 42. She wrote:
I do not fear death. Often I wake in the night and think of
it, look forward to it, with a thrill of joyful expectation and anticipation,
which would become impatience, were it not that Jesus is my Master, as well as
my Saviour, and I feel I have work to do for Him that I would not shirk, and
also that His time to call me home will be the best and right time; therefore I
am content to wait. (Like A River Glorious: Prose, Poetry, and Music by Fances
Ridley Havergal, Rio, Wisconsin: The Havergal Trust, 2003, p. 710)