Romans 11:11-24 - "We Stand Fast Through Faith"

1:26Well, friends, that's still a tough question today. Most of Abraham's descendants, the Israelites, continue to reject Jesus. But many Gentiles all over the world continue to receive him by faith. What do we do with that? Given all of God's promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, given all of the promises that God made through the prophets, it naturally led people to ask questions like, What's going on here? Has God's word failed? Has he rejected his people once and for all?

2:09So, in Romans 9 through 11, Paul is answering those questions. He's showing us that the word of God did not fail because it's not the children of the flesh, that is, Abraham's physical descendants, who are God's children. Rather, it's the children of the promise. As we saw last week in Steve's great sermon, God keeps his promises and keeps his people. God preserved a remnant for himself in Elijah's day and in Paul's day, and yes, even in our day, God has not rejected the Israelites.

2:52But if that's true, why does it seem like he has? Why do So many Jewish people continue to reject Jesus. And for that matter, why do so many people in our lives, our family members, our friends, our coworkers, our classmates, why do they continue to reject Jesus? Why does it seem like lots of people that we know are never going to come to faith? Well, in our passage today, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is going to help us understand what's going on with the Jews and through them, what's going on with all people who reject Christ.

3:44He then is going to turn to us, to those who have received Christ, and help us think about ourselves rightly and our standing before God. And so here's what we're going to learn today. We stand fast through faith. So we must embrace humility and the fear of the Lord. So here's how we'll get there. Here's Paul's argument in the passage. Israel's rejection means our reconciliation. We stand fast through faith. Therefore, we must embrace humility and the fear of the Lord.

4:30So let's start with that first point. Israel's rejection means our reconciliation. Join me in Romans 11, verse 11. So I ask, did they, that is the Israelites, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means. You see, since Romans 9, Paul has been showing us that the Jews stumbled over the stumbling stone, Jesus Christ. They sought to establish their own righteousness. That's a temptation that is common to every single one of us. And they didn't pursue a righteousness that was based on faith, but they pursued it as if it were based on works.

5:18The Jews stumbled. And so Paul asks the question that his readers, both Jew and Gentile, ancient and modern, are all asking, did they stumble in order that they might fall? In other words, is this stumbling permanent? Is God just done with the Jewish people? Here in verse 11, Paul answers, by no means. And then he explains God's purpose in the stumbling of the Jews. Let's pick up in the middle of verse 11. Take a look there.

5:56Rather, through their trespass, salvation. 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? Let's make a couple of observations here. First, we observe that Israel trespassed, that is, they rejected Jesus as their Messiah, and because of that, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Well, at least four times in the book of Acts, if you've ever read that book, you know about this. At least four times in the book of Acts, Luke gives examples of this happening.

6:47So I want you to think about what happens during Paul's first missionary journey to Pisidian Antioch. He goes and he shares the gospel at the synagogue as was his custom. And then look what happens the next week, Acts 13. The next Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him. And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you, since you thrust it aside. And judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life. Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.

7:37For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. That is just one example of the Jews trespassing, rejecting the good news of Jesus Christ. They were invited to the wedding feast, as it were, but they refused to come.

8:16And because the Jews rejected the invitation, the apostles turned to the Gentiles and preached the gospel to them instead. So, what did this mean? The Jews trespassed, their failure to believe in Jesus, their failure to believe meant riches for the world, riches for Gentiles who are outside of the kingdom of God. Look at what Paul writes to Gentiles in Ephesians chapter 2, to people like nearly everyone in this room. He says this: Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of Christ. Promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

9:06You see, friends, that's true of all Gentiles, of all non-Jewish people. Because we are not Abraham's descendants, we were at one time alienated from God's chosen people. We were strangers to the covenants. We were without hope and without God in the world. But because the Jews stumbled over Jesus and the good news of the gospel, their trespass and failure to believe meant riches for the rest of us, which, of course, was God's plan all along. Do you remember the promises that he made to Abraham in Genesis 12? Take a look.

9:49God tells Abraham, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. You see, from the beginning, God planned to save not just the Israelites, but the Gentiles as well, people like you and me. And the way he brought salvation to people like us, to the Gentiles, was through the Jews' rejection of Jesus Christ.

10:31And so that's the first observation. Because Israel trespassed, salvation has come to the Gentiles, to people like us. Now, here's the second observation. I want you to look at the end of verse 11. Why did God do this? He did this so as to make Israel jealous. Now, you might read that and think, well, that doesn't sound good. Jealousy is sinful, right? Well, not always. Jealousy is not always sinful. It depends on what you want and why you want it.

11:09If you're jealous because you want to be saved, salvation is a good thing. That's a good thing to want. So God promised to send a Messiah for his people, Israel, to save them from their sins, but Israel rejected that Messiah, opening the door for the Gentiles to be saved. That, in God's infinite wisdom, is going to make Israel jealous so that they will turn to Christ and be saved. So much so that Paul can refer to one day a full inclusion of Israel.

11:44The sense that you get from this passage and from the passage that we're going to cover next week at the end of Romans 11 is that a day is coming when many, perhaps even most of the Jews alive on earth at the time are going to turn to Jesus. Jesus in saving faith. Look at verses 13 through 16. Paul says, Now I am 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.

12:45God is speaking to the Gentiles here through Paul, letting them in on God's plan. God set Paul apart for a special ministry. He was to be the apostle to the Gentiles, and Paul magnifies his ministry to the Gentiles in hopes that, through his ministry, some of the Jews will become jealous and desire salvation. In other words, Paul wants to see the Gentiles at the wedding feast. He wants them to see themselves as outside of the party, like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son, looking in on the party, seeing the Gentiles enjoying all of the great blessings. Blessings of salvation. Freedom and forgiveness and love and joy and peace and community, and think, I want to go to that party.

13:44Paul is hoping that in his day, through his ministry, he can at least save some of them. But he's confident that one day the Jews are going to receive Jesus. After all, as he says in verse 15, look there. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean? But life from the dead. I take this to mean that a day is coming once the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, once all of God's chosen people among non-Israelites has come in to his kingdom through faith, then a great number of Jewish people, maybe even most Jewish people alive on earth at the time, are going to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. And what that is going to mean is life from the dead.

14:42Now, that could refer to what happens to all believers in Christ, that we pass out of death into life, out of darkness into light. Maybe that's what that means. But I think it refers to something more. That when all All of God's people, all of God's elect, Gentiles and Jews, come into God's kingdom through faith. Christ is going to return, the dead are going to rise, and then will be the final judgment. But I don't want you to lose track of the main point here.

15:23And the main point here is that Israel's rejection means our reconciliation. The door of salvation was open to us because the Jews refused to walk through it. And God's plan is that when Israel sees generations of Gentiles flooding through that open door, they will be provoked to jealousy and want to walk through that door themselves. So here is the challenge for us, church. We need to ask ourselves, does our life together provoke anyone to jealousy? Do our individual lives as Christians provoke anyone to jealousy?

16:22Does the world look at us and think, I want what these people have? I want that kind of community where I am fully known and fully loved. I want their hope, their peace, their joy. I want to feel that my life has purpose and meaning like their lives have purpose and meaning. I want to experience God in all of his fullness like they do. Do people look at us and think those kinds of things? Are they jealous of what we have?

17:13I hope so. But I think we all know that that's not always the case. And I'll tell you what, I'm a big part of the problem. Coming out of the college retreat, where we focused on organizing our lives around experiencing God to be changed by Him, going into this sermon today, reflecting on my words and my actions toward people in my life, particularly my family, I am really convicted about this. There are plenty of days when I don't think people would look at me and say, whatever Pastor Allen has, Whatever dad has, that's what I want.

18:08Maybe that's true for you. So I want us to reflect on that question, church. Does our life together, do our individual lives provoke others to jealousy? Do people look at us and say, I want what they have? If not, we need to ask what's going on here. What's going on in our life together? What's going on in our individual lives? Because whether people believe the message about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection or not, at minimum, they should look at us and say, oh, I wish I had what they have.

18:53I may not believe what they believe, but I wish I had what they have. Okay, so that's Paul's first point. Israel's rejection means our reconciliation. Let's move on to that second point. We stand fast through faith. Take a look at verse 17. But if some of the branches were broken off and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishment. 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 were 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.

20:01Now, I read those four verses just so you can hear verse 20, that first part in context, because that's what I want to focus on right now, that first half of verse 20. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. That statement comes in the middle of this analogy that Paul is making with the olive tree. This is classic Paul. He starts off with an analogy about a lump of dough, and then in two seconds, he ditches that for this analogy about an olive tree.

20:36Now, thankfully, 25 years ago, my freshman year at Texas AM, I took horticulture. And so you are in good hands this morning. I got at least an 81 in that class. As God's chosen people, Israel is like this. Olive tree that is inside of God's garden. It's supposed to be bearing fruit, but it's not, even though God has tended it very carefully. And so, as a result, God breaks off these branches that are not bearing fruit. He goes outside of the garden and he finds this wild olive tree, and he clips off some of the branches that are bearing fruit. He brings those wild branches back and he grafts them onto the olive tree in his garden. We actually did this in a horticulture lab. It's crazy. It works.

21:33The tree and the grafted branch bond together and it starts growing and producing more fruit. But here's the thing that you have to understand about that analogy: both the tree and the branch have to be alive for this to work. You cannot graft a dead branch onto a living tree. And you cannot graft a living branch onto a dead tree. Both the tree and the branch have to be alive for this to work. So here's what we need to see. Why were the branches broken off the olive tree in God's garden? Because they were dead.

22:25Why were they dead? Verse 20. They were broken off because of unbelief. Israel's problem was unbelief. Now, of course, as we've seen through Romans, not all Israelites were unbelievers. Paul is a believer. All of the original disciples were Jewish. So not all of them, but most of them were unbelievers. And because they rejected Christ, because they didn't have faith, they were broken off. Now, flip the question the other way. Why were the wild olive branches grafted in?

23:05Verse 20 again, but you stand fast through faith. The Gentiles were grafted in only through faith, not because of any other reason. So what you have is a tree whose roots and stock is made up of believing Jews. And you have branches right now that are almost entirely made up of believing Gentiles. But there is only one reason that any of them are a part of God's olive tree, and that is faith. Friends, we stand fast through faith and faith alone. Look at Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, these famous verses. Paul says, For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your Own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

24:09The believing Jews were not saved simply because they were children of Abraham. Paul has taught that principle all through this letter. Back in Romans 9, he reminded us of this fact. Look at Romans 9:8 again. This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. That is so important. John the Baptist, when he was preaching, he told his fellow Jews, do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father.

24:47He said, You cannot put your hope in your heritage. And friends, in the same way, you cannot put your hope in the fact that your parents are Christians or that your children are Christians. You can't put your hope in the fact that your dad is a pastor or your aunt is a missionary. You can't put your hope in the fact that you are married to a Christian or that at some point in your life you got baptized.

25:17In Isaiah 7, verse 9, God says this: If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. It's not like there's one road to heaven that is labeled faith and another road to heaven that's labeled try your hardest to do your best. There is one road to heaven and it is faith. Faith in Jesus Christ alone. My friend, are you firm in faith? Are you standing fast through faith in Christ? Because if you are not standing fast through faith in Christ, you will not stand at all.

26:07You can only stand before God on the last day, on that day of judgment, if you have placed all of your faith in Jesus Christ. Not Jesus plus your heritage, not Jesus plus your good works, not Jesus plus your religion, not Jesus plus your New Year's resolutions. You stand firm in faith in Christ alone, or you do not stand at all. Remember, you are not saved either by the amount of faith that you have. You are saved by the object of your faith.

26:48If you have great faith in your works, you will perish. But if you have small faith, faith as small as a mustard seed, and you put all of that faith in Jesus Christ, you will perish. Be saved. God promises that. So Israel's rejection means our reconciliation. We stand fast through faith. Faith is the only reason we're grafted into the olive tree of God's people. Now, here is the conclusion. Here's what Paul is driving toward in this section.

27:22Therefore, we must embrace humility and the fear of the Lord. Let's pick up now on the second half of verse 20. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God. Severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off. And even they, that is the Israelites, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. Or 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? Natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.

28:39So, friends, we've seen that because the Israelites rejected the good news of Jesus Christ, the door of salvation has been opened to the Gentiles. Gentiles are walking through that door by faith and only by faith. But God's promises were not made to the Gentiles, God's promises were made to the Jews. The Gentiles didn't deserve anything from God, and they weren't saved because of anything that they did. So, what is the only appropriate response if you are a Gentile? Look again, second half of verse 20.

29:15So, do not become proud, but fear. The only appropriate response to being saved by grace through faith is to embrace humility and the fear of the Lord. So, let's start with humility. Paul writes, so do not become proud. Listen to that sentence: so do not become proud. Here's what tends to happen when we first encounter God's word. We start hearing it, we start reading it, you think to yourself, there is no way that God could save me.

29:59I am too. Evil. I've done too many bad things. There's no way God could ever accept me. But you continue to hear God's word. You hear the truth about your sinful condition along with God's promises to save sinners. If you come to Jesus, you will never be put to shame. If you call on Him, you will receive all of His riches. If you call on Him, you will be saved. You hear God's Word over and over, and something changes inside of you. You become like that tax collector in Jesus' parable, where you realize your sinful state and the fact that God alone can save you from your sin and its consequences, and you cry out to Him, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

30:44And you realize that He promises to save you. And you go from, God could never forgive me, to I cannot believe that God has promised to forgive me through faith. You are amazed by grace. Stunned by the fact that a holy and righteous God would place all of your sin onto his sinless Son and have him crucified in your place, die and rise again that you might have eternal life. Everything is changed. The way you experience life is completely different.

31:28But over time, so do not. Become proud. Over time, God's grace can start to seem less and less and less amazing to us. We can start to presume upon God's grace, thinking, you know, I'm a pretty good person. I deserve God's grace. You start to develop some spiritual pride. Maybe you start to compare yourself favorably to others. You look down on the people who do the very things that you used to do, and in some cases, still do.

32:12You treat them with contempt. Look what C.S. Lewis wrote. He said, whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good, above all, that we are better than someone else, I think we may be sure that we are being acted on not by God, but by the devil. Pride is spiritual cancer. It eats up the very possibility of love or contentment or even common sense. Friends, when we get to that place, when we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are better than other people, People, we are falling victim to Satan and his schemes. We are falling victim to the sin of pride.

33:10When we look at a sinful person, whoever it might be, a family member, a friend, a co-worker, when we look at a sinful person, we are simply looking at who we used to be and in some cases, who we still are. We are every single Christian, a sinner saved by grace. And the wages of sin is death. That's what we've earned through our works, death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. That means that we must be humble, the most humble people on the face of the earth, because we understand that God did it all. All we have, especially our salvation, is a result of the grace of God.

34:01So we start with humility, and then we add to that the fear of the Lord. Look at the end of verse 20 again. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God, severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you can. Continue in his kindness, otherwise, you too will be cut off. You know, sometimes we don't know as Christians what to make of the fear of the Lord. What do we make of that in the new covenant? Well, friends, the fear of the Lord is not dread or terror. It's certainly not thinking that if you make a mistake, if you sin, you are going to lose your salvation. Hopefully, the truth of God's word has been driven into the center of our hearts through our study of the book of Romans, and we realize that because we did not earn our salvation, there is no way for us to lose it.

35:13Every believer was chosen by God before the foundation of the world. Every believer was called by God to faith in Christ. And every believer is kept by God by his sovereign grace and the power of the Holy Spirit. So the fear of the Lord is not living afraid that you're going to lose something that you never earned to begin with. The fear of the Lord is acknowledging that we only deserve God's wrath. But because of his mercy and grace, we have not been treated as our sins deserve. God saves us by grace through faith, so we need to continue to walk in humble. Humble faith.

36:02So understand, this is not a warning to genuine believers. This is a warning to those who have merely made a profession of faith, who are not walking by faith. Paul is telling these people who have merely professed faith in Christ, continue in God's kindness or you will be cut off. And that's because words do not save us. Nobody is saved by simply saying, I am a Christian. I believe in God. I'm going to go to heaven when I die.

36:38What did Paul say last chapter? We must confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, and we must believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead. Words alone do not save anyone. So we live lives marked by the fear of the Lord. We know we deserve God's wrath, but we have received God's mercy. We've been grafted into the olive tree by faith and faith alone. And here's the good news for the Jews. Even those natural branches, even those branches that were broken off, those Israelites who rejected Jesus, Paul says, if they believe, God will graft them in again.

37:28And that's where we're going to pick up. Next week. So, what have we seen today? Israel's rejection means our reconciliation. We stand fast through faith. Therefore, we must embrace humility and the fear of the Lord. You know, if you're already a believer in Jesus Christ, some of this Jew-Gentile stuff can feel far off. Do you know in New York and New Jersey, 10% of the population is Jewish? I looked up our stats here, not quite as high.003.

38:14Almost all of them are students at Texas AM. Hard for us to be arrogant towards Jewish people when most of us don't know a Jewish person. But we can be arrogant toward outsiders, towards all unchurched people, to people who have yet to put their faith in Christ. We can fall victim to pride, to looking down on them, and instead of making it our life mission to reach these people who don't know Christ, we make it our life mission to isolate ourselves from those people, concerned that they are going to contaminate us or our children, our families.

38:58Brothers and sisters, we Are called to be salt and light to the world. We are called to be a city on a hill, a people who draw others in to the person and work of Jesus, who draw others into the Christian community because they look at us, they hear the message, they see our lives, and they say, I want that too. I want that too. And so, I want to leave you with that question again: Do our lives provoke outsiders to jealousy? Do they want what we have?

39:38Because that is the goal. Let's repent of any pride, any arrogance that exists within us that would lead us to repel outsiders instead of drawing them in to faith in Christ. Because, as Paul says, even they, whoever they is in your life, even they, if they do not continue in unbelief, they will be grafted into. And if you're not yet a believer in Jesus, I hope that you came this morning because of the message of Jesus that you've heard some way, somehow, or because of the lives of Christians that you know.

40:23But the reality is, if you are not yet a believer in Jesus, you are probably here in spite of the world. Of the lives of Christians you know. And so I want to thank you for not rejecting Jesus and his gospel because we Christians are imperfect representations of our Savior. I want to remind you this morning that we are not here because we are good people who have gathered together to celebrate our goodness. We are wicked people, sinful people, who are here because we know we need a Savior. That Savior came for us. And my friend, that Savior came for you.

41:14We, every one of us, are proud people. But Jesus, who was and is the eternal Son of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but he made himself nothing. He took the very form of a servant. He laid down all of his rights. He lived a perfect, sinless, obedient life in your place, and then he obediently went to the cross and died for you where you should have died. He rose again from the dead, defeating sin and its consequence death for you and me.

42:00There is a day coming when every knee is going to bow, when every tongue is going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. But friends, don't wait till that day because on that day it's too late. Hebrews says it is appointed for man to die once and then the judgment. So you need to turn from your sin today. You need to receive Christ by faith today. You need to turn to the one who humbled himself for a prideful person like you so that you could be forgiven and receive eternal life. Do that this morning. Don't put it off another moment.

42:46Let's pray. Father, we thank you that from eternity past, it was your plan to save not just those who would come to be called Jews, but those who would come to be called Gentiles as well. We thank you that, though we deserve nothing but your wrath, you have poured out your mercy on us. O Lord, we should be humble people, but we confess that we are proud. We should be grateful. Joyful, hopeful, peaceful people. But we confess that we are thankless and joyless and hopeless and anxious too much of the time.

43:48I pray for every Christian here that we would embrace humility and the fear of the Lord, remembering that we stand fast through faith and faith alone. And I pray for every person here who has not received Jesus by faith, every man, every woman, every college student, every child that has not received Jesus by faith, we pray that this morning they would turn to Christ in faith, that they would confess their sin and receive Jesus by faith.

44:26Oh God, pour out your spirit among us. Thank you for your mercy. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.