God Has Not Rejected the Jews (Romans Sermon 81)
God has not rejected the Jews as evidenced by their continued conversion and his patterns of foreknowledge and grace towards his people.
So we come to Romans chapter 11 and we come to another great section in Paul’s unfolding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we’ve been seeing in Romans 9-11 how Paul is dealing with the problem of the Jews, specifically why it is that the Jews are almost universally rejecting Jesus Christ, their Christ, their king, their Messiah. Now, as we look at the Jews in history, it’s really quite an astonishing story, isn’t it? If you think about the Jews as a nation, they make up a vanishingly small percentage of the world population, but they have an overwhelming influence and on human history. If you look at an amazing percentage of Fortune 500 companies are started by and run by Jewish people. A remarkably high percentage of graduates from Harvard and Yale and other institutions of higher learning come from a Jewish background. A high percentage of PhDs awarded in this country every year are to Jewish people. Also, amazingly high and striking percentage of Nobel Prize winners come from a Jewish background. Most presidents, when they put their cabinets and their high level officials together, they want to have a representation of the population as a whole, it’s good politically to do that, but you look at the cabinets of the last four Presidents and those at the highest levels of government, an overwhelming percentage or a large percentage come from a Jewish background.
But as I look at the Jewish nation, one of the most amazing things about the Jews to me, just looking at it spiritually and looking at it scripturally, is that they still exist at all. It’s really quite remarkable that they’re even here at this time, the Jews as a nation were begun when a wandering Aramean named Abram was called by God. He had no children, his wife was barren. They tried for decades to have children and to no avail. And even after 20-plus years after a promise was made to him, still no children. And by this time, his name has changed from Abram to Abraham, and God had shown him the stars in the sky, and he made a promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless is a sand in the sea shore, but there’s no evidence of that yet because Isaac hadn’t been born. It’s really astonishing that the Jews even came to existence at all. And that’s one of the points that Paul makes earlier in Romans, is that God calls into existence things that are not. He has that power to do it.
But not only that, He has maintained and sustained the Jews as a recognizable people through centuries, even through millennia of hostile history, and that’s really quite remarkable. The fact of the matter is the Jews, through their sins, just like we Gentile sinners, through our sins, merited the wrath of God, and any of us could have been erased from history any time by the sovereignty of God, but God has not done that with the Jews, nor will He. Other tribes and other nations of peoples, Gentiles have become extinct. For example, if you look at Deuteronomy 7-1, there’s a listing there of the seven nations that the Jews expelled from the promised land: The Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Do you have any Jebusite friends? Have you ever met a Hittite? Have you ever spoken to a Hivite? Who are these peoples? They have become extinct. Any of their seed that were left were blended into other Gentile cultures and they are lost.
The same is true even in North American history. Some of you have read the book by James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans. What happened to The Mohican people? Well, they became extinct as a nation around the time of the French and Indian War. But the Jews, despite repeated crusades and inquisitions and pogroms and genocides and holocausts still maintain an identity. And not only that, wherever they are around the world, they maintain a distinct Jewish identity. The question is, why? And Romans 11 I think gives a stunning and deep and mysterious answer to that question, and that is that God is not through with Israel yet. He’s not through with the Jews as a nation yet. Now the context here of Romans 11 is Romans 9-11 where Paul is dealing with the question of the Jews. Why are they almost universally rejecting Christ? In Romans 9, he gives an answer from God’s sovereignty, that God is sovereign over human salvation. God elects people to be saved not on the basis of anything they have done. “Before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad…” God sovereignly elects and chooses people, that’s from that perspective, Romans 9 looking down, the sovereignty of God. And so God’s word hasn’t failed Israel because “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel,” and those that God has chosen, they are indeed saved.
Then Romans 10 gives more of a human explanation, that the gospel is essentially simple, that all you have to do is believe in Christ, it’s that simple. But the Jews desiring to retain their own righteousness, to be saved through their own obedience to the law, rejected God’s righteousness and stumbled over the stumbling stone, Jesus Christ. And God has been holding out His hands offering salvation. It says in 10:21, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” The Jews had heard, they had rejected. So that is more of a human point of view.
But now here in Romans 11, I think we shift back to the high view, the big view from the sovereignty of God perspective. And whereas up to this point I think we have been primarily speaking of individual people, individual salvation, what happens to individual Jews, what happens to individual Gentiles, “Anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame,” “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” that’s speaking individually, here I believe, in Romans 11.
I. Paul’s Assertion: God Has Not Rejected the Jews
He’s now speaking corporately. He’s looking now at the whole nation, the Jewish nation, and saying, and seeing, does God have a future for the Jews? In Romans 11 the answer is overwhelmingly yes Look what he says in verse 1, “I asked then, did God reject His people? By no means.” So Paul there asked a profound question. He asked a question followed up on the last verse of Chapter 10 concerning Israel, he says, “All day long I’ve held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” You may think God’s been holding out His hands all this time now finally saying, “Enough is enough, I’m not doing it anymore. I have reached out to you for centuries and now I have turned away from you forever.” Paul says that’s precisely what God has not done. God has not rejected His people. The answer actually comes in the negative. No, “by no means.” “God has not rejected His people” has he?” And then he goes head and answers it, “By no means,” or “May it never be.”
Now, the grounds for rejection abound. All you have to do is look at the history of the Jews and see how many times they had provoked the Lord to anger. For example, at the beginning of their consciousness as a nation, as they were coming out of Egypt in the Exodus, they came to Mount Sinai and there they made the golden calf. And God was angry enough with the Jews to destroy them entirely at that point. It says in Exodus 32:9-10, “‘I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone, so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them, and then I’ll make you into a great nation.'” Well, that’s what God said right there at the time of the golden calf. Then more than 40 years later, Moses said this to the Jews. As they’re about to enter the promised land, the book of Deuteronomy 9:6 and following, “Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness,” speaking to the Jews, “It is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people. Remember this and never forget how you provoked the Lord your God to anger in the desert. From the day you left Egypt until the day you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the Lord. At Horeb you aroused the Lord’s wrath so that he was angry enough to destroy you.”
So this is the repeated characterization of the Jews right at the very beginning and then throughout the prophetic history in the Old Testament, we see it again and again. Isaiah said that they were as rebellious as Sodom and Gomorrah. Jeremiah was commanded not even to pray for them before the time of the Exodus… Or the exile Babylon. Daniel poured out his heart and soul in Daniel 9 in prayer for his own people and for their sins. Nehemiah, after the restoration back to the promised land, after the exile to Babylon, prayed this, in Nehemiah 9:29-30 it says, “You warned them to return to your law, but they became arrogant and disobeyed your commands. They sinned against your own ordinances, by which a man will live if he obeys them. Stubbornly, they turned their backs on you. They became stiff-necked and refused to listen. For many years, you were patient with them. By your spirit you admonished them through your prophets, yet they paid no attention.”
And around the exact same time as Nehemiah, Ezra the priest was so frustrated with the fact that the Jews had, even at that point, a tiny remnant had come back, a little over 40,000 of them compared to several million, maybe 5 or 6 million in the time of David in the census, 5 or 6 million down to 40,000 in the promised land, a tiny little remnant has come back and Jewish history in the promised land can continue, and even then they’re still violating the Old Covenant by intermarrying with pagan women. And Ezra was so frustrated that he pulled out his own hair in prayer. I’ve mentioned before, that’s nothing compared to Nehemiah, who pulled out their hair. Either way, hair was getting pulled out. Either Ezra’s pulling his hair out or Nehemiah pulled their hair out, but there was this intensity. How can it be, after all of this, still the sin is there?
Are we any different, brothers and sisters? Are we not also stiff-necked? Are we not also rebellious against the Lord’s commands? How many times has He been good to us? How many times has He commanded us, and we do not bend that neck into the yoke of Jesus Christ? We can’t point any fingers, but this is the clear testimony of the history of the Jews. Christ himself told the parable of the vineyard and the tenant farmers, in which the owner of the vineyard sends one messenger after another to these tenant farmers, and all they do is kill the messengers, and then they kill the son when he sends the son. Clearly a history of the Jews. And Jesus in his sevenfold woe in Matthew 23 culminated this way: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house has left you desolate, for I tell you that you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'” And then Jesus left the temple, Jesus leaving the temple symbolically a picture of the desolation of Israel and its temple. When Jesus left, he was the glory of Israel.
Stephen, one of the original seven deacons, recounted all this history in what I think maybe one of the most brilliant sermons in history. And he very subtly and cleverly crafts a message that draws the hostile audience in to listen to a recounting of Jewish history, but every time he’s subtly making a point that whenever God raises up a deliverer, like Joseph referenced to his brothers, or Moses in reference to the time of the Exodus, or Moses again when the time came to enter the promised land, the Jews rejected, wouldn’t listen and turned away, even in some cases sought to kill the messenger or the deliverer, like Joseph. And he culminates his message, Stephen does, in Acts 7:51-52: “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears, you are just like your fathers, you always resist the Holy Spirit. Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the righteous one. And now you have betrayed and murdered him. You who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.”
That’s what Stephen said. And it is true, it’s a summary of Israel’s history. Israel’s constant pattern of rejection of the messengers now culminated in the murder of the Messiah, killing their king and their Messiah. Now, God saw to it that Gentiles were also involved through Pilate and the Romans. All of us stand guilty, there’s no difference between Jew and Gentile in that matter. But Stephen culminates it, as does Paul before the Sanhedrin, and Peter as well, saying, “You killed the author of life,” you killed your Messiah. This is a constant pattern.
Now, friends, all of this was ample ground for God to have rejected the Jews as a nation forever. God had the power to do it, there was certainly provocation to do it, but God has not done it, nor will He. And that’s what Romans 11 is about. The Jews will continue as a nation until the end of time. And why is that? Because God wants to display His glory in turning them to Christ. Isn’t that marvelous? I can’t keep the secret. Of course you’ve read it, it’s no secret. The Jews as a nation are going to be turning back in a marvelous way and embracing Christ at the very end, we will see that.
III. First Proof: God Is Still Saving Jews
Now, Paul’s clear assertion here is that God has not rejected His people. He says, “May it never be.” I like the King James Version, gives us, “God forbid that He should turn away and reject His own people.” But then he needs to substantiate it and he gives three levels of proof. The first level of proof is that God is still saving Jews. God is still saving Jews. Look what he says. “May it never be. I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin.” That’s what he says. Paul’s life and his calling as a Jewish Christian is evidence and proof that God has not rejected His people. Now, for the third time in Romans 9-11, Paul identifies himself with the Jews. He does at the beginning of Chapter 9, he does it at the beginning of Chapter 10, and now here again at Chapter 11, he identifies himself with the Jewish people. Paul was still Jewish when he wrote this, he was a Jewish Christian, a Jewish Christian. Now I came across a group called Jews for Judaism. You perhaps heard of Jews for Jesus, this is a response to Jews for Jesus. They are Jews for Judaism, and basically they say that Jews for Jesus makes as much sense as Buddhists for Jesus. You can’t be both Jewish and Christian, so they say.
But Paul would vigorously deny that, and again and again, he gave his Jewish credentials. It was important for him to maintain that and to say that he was still Jewish. In Philippians 3:5, he says he was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law of Pharisee.” Or in Galatians 1:14 he says, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age, and I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” No one could refute the genuineness of Paul’s Jewish credentials. He establishes them again and again.
Fact of the matter is all of the early Christians were Jewish, all of them were. If you look at the upper room after Jesus was raised from the dead, he had 120 believers there after Jesus ascended into heaven. They were all Jews. The original church in Jerusalem, they’re all Jews. On the day of Pentecost, all of those people who had come for that feast were Jews. The first church were all Jews, so those 3,000 converts, they were Jews. After Peter and John heal the beggar in the temple, the number of men grew to about 5,000, they were Jews. After the selection of the early deacons in Acts chapter 6, it says a large number of the priests became obedient to the faith. They were Jews as well.
And even after the gospel kind of officially came to the Gentiles in Acts 10 with the conversion of Cornelius the Centurion, Paul went out and ministered, and the first place he went every time was to the Jewish synagogue. Again and again he carried out this approach, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. And when he did that, God blessed with the conversion of some Jews. Acts 14:1, for example, at Iconium, Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue, and there they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed. Isn’t that marvelous? What a harvest of Jews, a great number of Jews believed. And then again, in Acts 17:10 and following, “As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now, the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness, and they diligently searched the scriptures to see if these things were so. Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.” Did you hear that? Acts 17:12, “many of the Jews believed.”
The fact of the matter is, the church has grown up from a Jewish olive tree. That’s the image. It’s a Jewish tree, and we have been grafted into it. And it continued, never stopped being a Jewish olive tree. The early converts to Christianity were all Jews. What is the point? Well, Paul’s point is this: no one, and I mean no one, comes to faith in Jesus Christ apart from the will and the working of God Almighty. Salvation is a supernatural act of the power of God. Only God can make Christians. Paul’s logic here is, “God hasn’t rejected the Jews, I’m a Jew.” What he’s saying is, “If God had rejected us, I would not be a Christian, I would not be saved.” Nobody comes to faith in Christ apart from the working of God.”
A secondary point that Paul makes here is his own astonishing conversion and his ministry is evidence of God’s sovereign grace working through the Jews to reach out to Gentiles. Paul wasn’t just any Jew, you know. He was a ladder-climbing Jew. He was the kind of Jewish man who wanted some day to be as high as you could get in the Jewish hierarchy. Obviously, he couldn’t be a high priest from the tribe of Benjamin, but he could get up very high in the Sanhedrin, and he was ambitious. But God called him not only to be a Christian, but he also called him to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Now, you might think, “This doesn’t make any sense. We got to have Peter as the apostle to the Jews and a noteworthy Gentile convert to be apostle to the Gentiles. That would make sense.” But it didn’t make sense to God, it’s not God’s way. God chose a Hebrew of Hebrews, a truly Jewish man who was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples the day he was converted.
So we come to Romans chapter 11 and we come to another great section in Paul’s unfolding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we’ve been seeing in Romans 9-11 how Paul is dealing with the problem of the Jews, specifically why it is that the Jews are almost universally rejecting Jesus Christ, their Christ, their king, their Messiah. Now, as we look at the Jews in history, it’s really quite an astonishing story, isn’t it? If you think about the Jews as a nation, they make up a vanishingly small percentage of the world population, but they have an overwhelming influence and on human history. If you look at an amazing percentage of Fortune 500 companies are started by and run by Jewish people. A remarkably high percentage of graduates from Harvard and Yale and other institutions of higher learning come from a Jewish background. A high percentage of PhDs awarded in this country every year are to Jewish people. Also, amazingly high and striking percentage of Nobel Prize winners come from a Jewish background. Most presidents, when they put their cabinets and their high level officials together, they want to have a representation of the population as a whole, it’s good politically to do that, but you look at the cabinets of the last four Presidents and those at the highest levels of government, an overwhelming percentage or a large percentage come from a Jewish background.
But as I look at the Jewish nation, one of the most amazing things about the Jews to me, just looking at it spiritually and looking at it scripturally, is that they still exist at all. It’s really quite remarkable that they’re even here at this time, the Jews as a nation were begun when a wandering Aramean named Abram was called by God. He had no children, his wife was barren. They tried for decades to have children and to no avail. And even after 20-plus years after a promise was made to him, still no children. And by this time, his name has changed from Abram to Abraham, and God had shown him the stars in the sky, and he made a promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless is a sand in the sea shore, but there’s no evidence of that yet because Isaac hadn’t been born. It’s really astonishing that the Jews even came to existence at all. And that’s one of the points that Paul makes earlier in Romans, is that God calls into existence things that are not. He has that power to do it.
But not only that, He has maintained and sustained the Jews as a recognizable people through centuries, even through millennia of hostile history, and that’s really quite remarkable. The fact of the matter is the Jews, through their sins, just like we Gentile sinners, through our sins, merited the wrath of God, and any of us could have been erased from history any time by the sovereignty of God, but God has not done that with the Jews, nor will He. Other tribes and other nations of peoples, Gentiles have become extinct. For example, if you look at Deuteronomy 7-1, there’s a listing there of the seven nations that the Jews expelled from the promised land: The Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Do you have any Jebusite friends? Have you ever met a Hittite? Have you ever spoken to a Hivite? Who are these peoples? They have become extinct. Any of their seed that were left were blended into other Gentile cultures and they are lost.
The same is true even in North American history. Some of you have read the book by James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans. What happened to The Mohican people? Well, they became extinct as a nation around the time of the French and Indian War. But the Jews, despite repeated crusades and inquisitions and pogroms and genocides and holocausts still maintain an identity. And not only that, wherever they are around the world, they maintain a distinct Jewish identity. The question is, why? And Romans 11 I think gives a stunning and deep and mysterious answer to that question, and that is that God is not through with Israel yet. He’s not through with the Jews as a nation yet. Now the context here of Romans 11 is Romans 9-11 where Paul is dealing with the question of the Jews. Why are they almost universally rejecting Christ? In Romans 9, he gives an answer from God’s sovereignty, that God is sovereign over human salvation. God elects people to be saved not on the basis of anything they have done. “Before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad…” God sovereignly elects and chooses people, that’s from that perspective, Romans 9 looking down, the sovereignty of God. And so God’s word hasn’t failed Israel because “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel,” and those that God has chosen, they are indeed saved.
Then Romans 10 gives more of a human explanation, that the gospel is essentially simple, that all you have to do is believe in Christ, it’s that simple. But the Jews desiring to retain their own righteousness, to be saved through their own obedience to the law, rejected God’s righteousness and stumbled over the stumbling stone, Jesus Christ. And God has been holding out His hands offering salvation. It says in 10:21, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” The Jews had heard, they had rejected. So that is more of a human point of view.
But now here in Romans 11, I think we shift back to the high view, the big view from the sovereignty of God perspective. And whereas up to this point I think we have been primarily speaking of individual people, individual salvation, what happens to individual Jews, what happens to individual Gentiles, “Anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame,” “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” that’s speaking individually, here I believe, in Romans 11.
I. Paul’s Assertion: God Has Not Rejected the Jews
He’s now speaking corporately. He’s looking now at the whole nation, the Jewish nation, and saying, and seeing, does God have a future for the Jews? In Romans 11 the answer is overwhelmingly yes Look what he says in verse 1, “I asked then, did God reject His people? By no means.” So Paul there asked a profound question. He asked a question followed up on the last verse of Chapter 10 concerning Israel, he says, “All day long I’ve held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” You may think God’s been holding out His hands all this time now finally saying, “Enough is enough, I’m not doing it anymore. I have reached out to you for centuries and now I have turned away from you forever.” Paul says that’s precisely what God has not done. God has not rejected His people. The answer actually comes in the negative. No, “by no means.” “God has not rejected His people” has he?” And then he goes head and answers it, “By no means,” or “May it never be.”
Now, the grounds for rejection abound. All you have to do is look at the history of the Jews and see how many times they had provoked the Lord to anger. For example, at the beginning of their consciousness as a nation, as they were coming out of Egypt in the Exodus, they came to Mount Sinai and there they made the golden calf. And God was angry enough with the Jews to destroy them entirely at that point. It says in Exodus 32:9-10, “‘I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone, so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them, and then I’ll make you into a great nation.'” Well, that’s what God said right there at the time of the golden calf. Then more than 40 years later, Moses said this to the Jews. As they’re about to enter the promised land, the book of Deuteronomy 9:6 and following, “Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness,” speaking to the Jews, “It is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people. Remember this and never forget how you provoked the Lord your God to anger in the desert. From the day you left Egypt until the day you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the Lord. At Horeb you aroused the Lord’s wrath so that he was angry enough to destroy you.”
So this is the repeated characterization of the Jews right at the very beginning and then throughout the prophetic history in the Old Testament, we see it again and again. Isaiah said that they were as rebellious as Sodom and Gomorrah. Jeremiah was commanded not even to pray for them before the time of the Exodus… Or the exile Babylon. Daniel poured out his heart and soul in Daniel 9 in prayer for his own people and for their sins. Nehemiah, after the restoration back to the promised land, after the exile to Babylon, prayed this, in Nehemiah 9:29-30 it says, “You warned them to return to your law, but they became arrogant and disobeyed your commands. They sinned against your own ordinances, by which a man will live if he obeys them. Stubbornly, they turned their backs on you. They became stiff-necked and refused to listen. For many years, you were patient with them. By your spirit you admonished them through your prophets, yet they paid no attention.”
And around the exact same time as Nehemiah, Ezra the priest was so frustrated with the fact that the Jews had, even at that point, a tiny remnant had come back, a little over 40,000 of them compared to several million, maybe 5 or 6 million in the time of David in the census, 5 or 6 million down to 40,000 in the promised land, a tiny little remnant has come back and Jewish history in the promised land can continue, and even then they’re still violating the Old Covenant by intermarrying with pagan women. And Ezra was so frustrated that he pulled out his own hair in prayer. I’ve mentioned before, that’s nothing compared to Nehemiah, who pulled out their hair. Either way, hair was getting pulled out. Either Ezra’s pulling his hair out or Nehemiah pulled their hair out, but there was this intensity. How can it be, after all of this, still the sin is there?
Are we any different, brothers and sisters? Are we not also stiff-necked? Are we not also rebellious against the Lord’s commands? How many times has He been good to us? How many times has He commanded us, and we do not bend that neck into the yoke of Jesus Christ? We can’t point any fingers, but this is the clear testimony of the history of the Jews. Christ himself told the parable of the vineyard and the tenant farmers, in which the owner of the vineyard sends one messenger after another to these tenant farmers, and all they do is kill the messengers, and then they kill the son when he sends the son. Clearly a history of the Jews. And Jesus in his sevenfold woe in Matthew 23 culminated this way: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house has left you desolate, for I tell you that you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'” And then Jesus left the temple, Jesus leaving the temple symbolically a picture of the desolation of Israel and its temple. When Jesus left, he was the glory of Israel.
Stephen, one of the original seven deacons, recounted all this history in what I think maybe one of the most brilliant sermons in history. And he very subtly and cleverly crafts a message that draws the hostile audience in to listen to a recounting of Jewish history, but every time he’s subtly making a point that whenever God raises up a deliverer, like Joseph referenced to his brothers, or Moses in reference to the time of the Exodus, or Moses again when the time came to enter the promised land, the Jews rejected, wouldn’t listen and turned away, even in some cases sought to kill the messenger or the deliverer, like Joseph. And he culminates his message, Stephen does, in Acts 7:51-52: “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears, you are just like your fathers, you always resist the Holy Spirit. Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the righteous one. And now you have betrayed and murdered him. You who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.”
That’s what Stephen said. And it is true, it’s a summary of Israel’s history. Israel’s constant pattern of rejection of the messengers now culminated in the murder of the Messiah, killing their king and their Messiah. Now, God saw to it that Gentiles were also involved through Pilate and the Romans. All of us stand guilty, there’s no difference between Jew and Gentile in that matter. But Stephen culminates it, as does Paul before the Sanhedrin, and Peter as well, saying, “You killed the author of life,” you killed your Messiah. This is a constant pattern.
Now, friends, all of this was ample ground for God to have rejected the Jews as a nation forever. God had the power to do it, there was certainly provocation to do it, but God has not done it, nor will He. And that’s what Romans 11 is about. The Jews will continue as a nation until the end of time. And why is that? Because God wants to display His glory in turning them to Christ. Isn’t that marvelous? I can’t keep the secret. Of course you’ve read it, it’s no secret. The Jews as a nation are going to be turning back in a marvelous way and embracing Christ at the very end, we will see that.
III. First Proof: God Is Still Saving Jews
Now, Paul’s clear assertion here is that God has not rejected His people. He says, “May it never be.” I like the King James Version, gives us, “God forbid that He should turn away and reject His own people.” But then he needs to substantiate it and he gives three levels of proof. The first level of proof is that God is still saving Jews. God is still saving Jews. Look what he says. “May it never be. I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin.” That’s what he says. Paul’s life and his calling as a Jewish Christian is evidence and proof that God has not rejected His people. Now, for the third time in Romans 9-11, Paul identifies himself with the Jews. He does at the beginning of Chapter 9, he does it at the beginning of Chapter 10, and now here again at Chapter 11, he identifies himself with the Jewish people. Paul was still Jewish when he wrote this, he was a Jewish Christian, a Jewish Christian. Now I came across a group called Jews for Judaism. You perhaps heard of Jews for Jesus, this is a response to Jews for Jesus. They are Jews for Judaism, and basically they say that Jews for Jesus makes as much sense as Buddhists for Jesus. You can’t be both Jewish and Christian, so they say.
But Paul would vigorously deny that, and again and again, he gave his Jewish credentials. It was important for him to maintain that and to say that he was still Jewish. In Philippians 3:5, he says he was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law of Pharisee.” Or in Galatians 1:14 he says, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age, and I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” No one could refute the genuineness of Paul’s Jewish credentials. He establishes them again and again.
Fact of the matter is all of the early Christians were Jewish, all of them were. If you look at the upper room after Jesus was raised from the dead, he had 120 believers there after Jesus ascended into heaven. They were all Jews. The original church in Jerusalem, they’re all Jews. On the day of Pentecost, all of those people who had come for that feast were Jews. The first church were all Jews, so those 3,000 converts, they were Jews. After Peter and John heal the beggar in the temple, the number of men grew to about 5,000, they were Jews. After the selection of the early deacons in Acts chapter 6, it says a large number of the priests became obedient to the faith. They were Jews as well.
And even after the gospel kind of officially came to the Gentiles in Acts 10 with the conversion of Cornelius the Centurion, Paul went out and ministered, and the first place he went every time was to the Jewish synagogue. Again and again he carried out this approach, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. And when he did that, God blessed with the conversion of some Jews. Acts 14:1, for example, at Iconium, Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue, and there they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed. Isn’t that marvelous? What a harvest of Jews, a great number of Jews believed. And then again, in Acts 17:10 and following, “As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now, the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness, and they diligently searched the scriptures to see if these things were so. Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.” Did you hear that? Acts 17:12, “many of the Jews believed.”
The fact of the matter is, the church has grown up from a Jewish olive tree. That’s the image. It’s a Jewish tree, and we have been grafted into it. And it continued, never stopped being a Jewish olive tree. The early converts to Christianity were all Jews. What is the point? Well, Paul’s point is this: no one, and I mean no one, comes to faith in Jesus Christ apart from the will and the working of God Almighty. Salvation is a supernatural act of the power of God. Only God can make Christians. Paul’s logic here is, “God hasn’t rejected the Jews, I’m a Jew.” What he’s saying is, “If God had rejected us, I would not be a Christian, I would not be saved.” Nobody comes to faith in Christ apart from the working of God.”
A secondary point that Paul makes here is his own astonishing conversion and his ministry is evidence of God’s sovereign grace working through the Jews to reach out to Gentiles. Paul wasn’t just any Jew, you know. He was a ladder-climbing Jew. He was the kind of Jewish man who wanted some day to be as high as you could get in the Jewish hierarchy. Obviously, he couldn’t be a high priest from the tribe of Benjamin, but he could get up very high in the Sanhedrin, and he was ambitious. But God called him not only to be a Christian, but he also called him to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Now, you might think, “This doesn’t make any sense. We got to have Peter as the apostle to the Jews and a noteworthy Gentile convert to be apostle to the Gentiles. That would make sense.” But it didn’t make sense to God, it’s not God’s way. God chose a Hebrew of Hebrews, a truly Jewish man who was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples the day he was converted.
31-35, F