The scripture reading for this week looks back at two verses in Romans 9, two verses in Romans 10, and then I will read Romans 11, one through two. Romans 9, verses four through five. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever, Amen. Moving to chapter 10, verses one through two. Brothers, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Then in chapters 11, verses one through two. I ask then, has God rejected His people? By no means, for I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew." Would you stay standing as I pray for us? Our Father, I'm thankful that You have gathered us here today. You've given us an opportunity to study Your Word together. I pray, Lord, that my words would be in absolute congruence with the Holy Spirit's words and instruction. Lord, help each one of us to take away from this passage what you would have for us and make a difference in our lives this week. Friend, we pray this for Jesus' sake and in his name, amen. Please be seated. There's times I marvel in 2024 of just how much we have tools available to us to help us see further, to see with greater clarity, to even see with greater detail what's before us. And I'm talking about physical sight. How many of you have sat on the window seat of an airplane in recent weeks, recent months, and looked down and said to yourself, I'm looking from six miles up in the air. In human history, before 100 years ago, really even less, nobody got to do this. And just imagine if you were wearing some glasses at the time or had your contacts in, and you're seeing that with a clarity, because your two eyes are a little different and someone helped dial in just what your prescription should be, you're able to see out that window with a clarity that people in the past and human history just didn't have. And what if you're a little further in the years and a year or two ago, you had a cloudy lens removed from one or both of your eyes, we call that a cataract, and a nice clear one replaced it. So the cloudiness of what you saw was now gone. It's amazing that we can see how far and with clarity and with detail in ways that people throughout human history couldn't see. But physical sight doesn't compare for a moment with the importance of spiritual sight. And if you had to have a tool for spiritual sight, it is this book illuminated by God's spirit. And that's what we need if we're going to approach a passage like this and begin to see truth that God has revealed and be able to see it as God would have us do that. And so in Romans 11 verses 1 to 10, that's our passage here, we need to have spiritual eyes to see and to understand what only God could reveal to us. Because only God can answer this rather pointed and rather abrupt question that begins and really colors these verses. The question is, has God rejected his people, referring to the Israelites? So I want to help us, with God's help, see with spiritual eyes Paul's answer to that question in Romans 11, verses one to 10. I put, if you have the outline there, and I would encourage you if you have a Bible or can grab one that's in the pew to just be following along. Though I'll grab different verses in other places along the way. We want to stay true to the text and emphasize that that's before us. And my first point in the outline is simply this, that spiritual eyes can trace through all the scriptures God's unwavering and saving plan for those who eternity past, He foreknew." Verse 2, we are going to find out what that means. So, the question begins, has God rejected His people? Referring to the Jews. And Paul emphatically will say to us in the very next sentence, no, He has not rejected His people. I think there is some time that we should take to just make sure we understand the question and then understand why the question might have been raised. Most of the words are pretty straightforward in that question, has God rejected his people? But I think it's important that we take a quick look at that action verb there, rejected his people. If you were to study that a little bit and went back to the Greek, apotheo, you would see that that word is one that means to shove away, to thrust away, to repel, to reject. it's important that we grab a hold of just what Paul is trying to describe in this question. Because it'd be inaccurate for us to say, does it just mean two friends that drifted apart over time? Does it mean a rough patch in the first year of marriage of two people committed each other but going through a little tough times? No, it doesn't mean either of those things. Does it mean just simply a person who says, I'm kind of done with this friendship and just kind of walks away? No, it doesn't mean any of those kinds of things. It means one party shoving the other away. New Testament there's three times that the same word is used. And I think it's worth a quick recap. I'll mention the verses. I'll move quick enough I don't think you'll have time to turn to them. But I want to emphasize just how it's used elsewhere. And I want to ask you the question, as I describe these three other New Testament instances of shoving away, who's doing the shoving? The first one comes in Acts 7 verses 38 to 40. Stephen is giving this phenomenal last speech of his life. He's giving a speech where he traces Israel's history. He's tracing the history of God's saving work. And he gets to a place in verses 39, 38 to 40, in which he says this, Moses received living oracles to give to us. He's talking to Jews. He's referring to the commandments, all the instructions back in those early books of the Bible. Moses received those to give to us, but our fathers refused to obey him and thrust him aside and said to Aaron, make for us gods who will go before us. Who did the shoving? People, human beings. They didn't just shove aside God's messenger. didn't just shove aside God's message, His oracles, they shoved aside by asking for other gods to be made, shoved aside God Himself. In Acts 13 we find Paul and Barnabas in Antioch, a city at that time, one of the Antiochs, it's in the middle of southwestern Turkey of today. And they have been preaching as they characteristically did the Gospel. themselves speaking to a rather large crowd, and they know there's quite a few Jews before them in Acts 13 verses 45 and 46. And as they're speaking there they say with an eye towards the Jews in the audience, because they're really focusing in on them, it was necessary that the Word of God be spoken first to you, but you thrust it aside. Who did the shoving? People. aside God's words to them." And finally 1 Timothy 1 verse 19, an elderly Apostle Paul is speaking to his friend and mentor and mentee in the faith, Timothy. And he says to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1 verse 19, "'Hold to faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have shipwrecked their faith.'" By shoving aside faith. By shoving aside the God that was once the the one that they were directing faith to. So the message is clear in the New Testament. The pattern is clear. And when there's a shoving aside between God and human beings, a pushing away, the New Testament pattern is always human beings rejecting God's messengers, God's message, and God himself. So what's this question asking? Has God pushed away His people? That's the question, but why the question? What would provoke Paul to abruptly, pointedly put a question like this? Has God rejected His people, the Israelites? Well, you can imagine in this church in Rome, there is both some converted Jews to Christianity, but a growing number of Gentiles. Can you imagine being a Gentile in one of these churches, whether it's Rome or Corinth or Ephesus, and you're now getting an opportunity to become familiar with the first part of this book, the Old Testament that has been there. And you're getting familiar with the wanderings, the disobedience, the repeated rejection that the Jewish people had for God. Maybe you're thinking back, this book, Romans, was probably written in the late 50s. It's been only a quarter of a century since the cross. 25 years ago is barely Y2K, and if you're over 40, you knew just where you were on that day. I guarantee it's not that long ago. So imagine you're a Gentile and you're looking back and you know that just 25 years ago, the Jewish leaders were the instigators of putting the Messiah on the cross. And then you're becoming more and more familiar with this fellow, the Apostle Paul, who's actually written you the letter. You know his pattern of going into churches, going into new cities, and his pattern was to go to the Jewish people first, to talk in their synagogues before he would broaden the message and speak to Gentiles. And so you've already heard, whether it was directly from him and his letters or from other people, how Paul over the last decade repeatedly was not just ignored, he was beaten up and violently shoved out of town on occasions by the Jews. Maybe you've even heard from Paul's letters to 2 Corinthians that was written just a year or two before Romans, maybe you've actually even heard from someone else as that letter circulated what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians when he said, five times, I received 39 lashes from the Jews. How can you not perhaps be thinking the question, if you were a Gentile in the first century, a convert to Christianity, Is God done with the Jews? Is God done with these chosen people? And Paul's answer is to say no, and to give two examples in the subsequent verses. Let's look at his support for why Paul would say no, he's not rejected Israel. First of all, he gives an example of himself. He says, and I'm gonna read verse one, but let me read it in the message, that paraphrase that sometimes just gives a color I find helpful to reinforce what we're reading in our ESV or our other translations. Verse one in the message says, does this mean that God is so fed up with Israel that He'll have nothing more to do with them? Hardly. Remember that I, the one writing these things, am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin. You can't get more Semitic than that. Well, Paul's basically saying, you can't get more Jewish than me. And God did the very opposite of pushing me away. God sought me out and pulled me to himself. Pastor and author Kent Hughes says it this way, he says, God sovereignly hunted Paul down. God smote him on the road to Damascus. God brought Paul kicking and screaming into the kingdom. Paul says in effect, I'm an example that God is still seeking out. chosen ones. He's still seeking out chosen ones within His chosen people, ethnic Israel. The ones He foreknew, verse 2. So God has not rejected, verse 2, His people whom He foreknew. Israel's history, its rejection of Christ, the Jews' role in putting Jesus to death, none of that changes a single name written before the foundation of the world in the book of life. Revelation 13.8 and 17.8 refer to a book that has the names of those that before, it says, before the foundation of the world, were written in that Lamb's Book of Life. Paul will say it in his own way in Ephesians chapter one, verse four. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. So one of our challenges in looking at a passage like this, thinking of Paul's example, is we need spiritual eyes to trace through scripture A plan that God determined before the foundation of the world. God's unwavering and saving plan for every person that he foreknew. God long ago wrote the names of his chosen within the chosen people. and God has not thrust them their way. If a person, if a Jew is one that God has not pushed away, then we can have a confidence he is still drawing his Jewish brothers and sisters into his heavenly family. He goes on from, after pointing to his own example of what God's done in his life, the very opposite of pushing away a Jew, He goes on to the example of Elijah. It's really not the example of Elijah, it's really an example, a teaching from God's words to Elijah. I'm gonna spend a little time here because I think it's important to make sure that we move beyond some of the familiar and rather dramatic stories of Elijah. familiar with those, but I think the instruction that God gives to Elijah is a key part of what I want you to take away today. So, let me read for you from our passage, Romans 11, verses 2 to 4, where we read, God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah? How he appeals to God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets. They have demolished your altars. I alone am left and they seek my life. But what is God's reply to him? I have kept for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to the false prophet Baal. So too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. It leads to my second takeaway in your outline, spiritual eyes remain confident that God is keeping for himself a remnant in every age of human history. So I want to have you consider these two chapters in the Old Testament. I'm gonna move quickly enough that you may not be able to follow along, but I will be referring to some verses in 1 Kings 18 and 19. Now, if you've been and grew up in Sunday school or you've been around church for a while, some of these stories are some of the highlights of the Old Testament, at least if you're a kid in Sunday school. I mean, they are dramatic interruptions into the normal course of life that God has in some of these phenomenal miracles that he accomplishes through Elijah's life. Great example of faith in this man, Elijah. Because 1 Kings 18 and 19 is about him confronting a very evil king, King Ahab, and a very evil queen, Queen Jezebel. It's a story about Elijah dueling with 450 false prophets and coming out the victor. It's a story where Elijah outruns, about 15 to 18 miles, a chariot in which King Ahab is in. It's a story about Elijah then fleeing 250 or more miles down to the Sinai Peninsula in the very south of Israel into what was part of Egypt. It's a story that concludes with God having a conversation with Elijah, one on one. And he begins by asking the question, Elijah, what are you doing here? The Sunday school lessons tend to give attention to the miraculous, to Elijah's powerful faith. But today, I want to respectfully, but nonetheless, I think, faithful to scripture, give attention to Elijah's lack of belief, his lack of spiritual insight, his lack of spiritual sight. Because Elijah, for all his bold faith, lacked faith to see what was there to see around him. And he seems to have lacked belief in God's saving work that he couldn't see. Let me explain. At the beginning of 1 Kings 18, before all of this gets started, all of the things I just talked with you about that are in chapters 18 and 19, there is a guy who is head of King Ahab's household. His name is Obadiah. It's not the one who wrote the minor prophet letter that's in the latter part of the Old Testament. Nonetheless, his name is Obadiah and he is head of the household of this wicked king and this wicked queen. And the scriptures tell us in verses 3 and 4 of verse Kings 18, Obadiah was over the household of Ahab and Jezebel. Obadiah feared the Lord greatly. And when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred of those prophets, hid them in a cave, and fed them with bread and water." Okay, so right at the beginning of this chapter in which Elijah is going to say, I'm the only one left. then he's going to repeat that a few weeks later, face-to-face with God at least two times, I'm the only one left, there's no more prophets. At the beginning of these two chapters we have proof that Obadiah had hidden a hundred prophets in a cave. And you say, well, come on, wasn't the internet, how could he figure that out? He may not have known that. Well, let's look at what happens just in the scriptures record in verses, in verse seven, 1 Kings 18, seven. As Obadiah was on the way, behold, Elijah met him. Before all this happens, Elijah and Obadiah meet. Well, maybe they didn't talk about the 100 prophets. You know, there's other stuff to talk about when you got a wicked king, wicked queen, doing all kinds of bad stuff. But then we see in verse 13, to Elijah Obadiah says, has it not been told you how I hid a hundred of the Lord's prophets? Yet Elijah, again, in a matter of days will be on Mount Carmel dueling with the 450 prophets and he will say the words, I, even I, am left a prophet of the Lord. I'm the only one, he'll say. Fire will fall from heaven, Elijah's requests. And then it'll actually say at the end, towards the end of 1 Kings 18, after this amazing fire comes down, this demonstration of God's power, it will say, when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, the Lord, He is God. They repeated, the Lord, He is God. You know, Elijah must have just gotten to a place where he's so skeptical. there is faith in Israel that he must have thought that no one in the crowd, possibly thousands in the crowd, there's 850 total prophets, 450 of Baal, 400 of the false prophet Asherah, there's 850 prophets there and an audience of Out of several thousand people likely saying, the Lord, he is God, the Lord, he is God, Elijah did not even, he was so skeptical, he didn't have the faith that even a single one of them was real, authentic in saying that. I look at that and I think, Elijah, I believe, made the mistake of being overconfident in his despair. I think he was overconfident in his despair. Elijah will travel 250 miles over the next few weeks, find himself next to Mount Sinai, maybe even on the mountain itself, depending on where Mount Horeb is. Some say it was another name for Mount Sinai, some say it's the back face of Mount Sinai. He has now traveled 250 miles over weeks. And when God says to him in 1 Kings 19 verse 9, Elijah, what are you doing here? Elijah will say, twice, I have zealously served the Lord God Almighty, but the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, killed every one of your prophets, and I am the only one left. Elijah looks around and in his despair concludes God must not be working to preserve his spiritual family. So I say again, Elijah, for all his bold faith, lacked the faith to see what was actually in front of him to see, what he had been told face to face, words that he had heard on Mount Carmel by several thousand saying, the Lord, he is God. He lacked faith to see what was there to see, and he certainly seemed to fail to believe God's saving work that maybe he couldn't see. And there were consequences. At the end of this conversation that God has with Elijah, he assigns a replacement. It says in 1 Kings 19.16, anoint Elisha to replace you as prophet. And then he says right after that, a gentle rebuke that ends the conversation. I have left 7,000 in Israel that have not bowed the knee to bow. So when we look at Romans 11, 4, we need to have that context of Elijah's life. This man of bold faith in many ways, but one who was overconfident in his despair. What is God's reply? Verse four from Romans 11. What is God's reply to him? I have kept for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to bow. So too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. To me, I take away that a godly person needs to be honest about surveying the spiritual landscape in their own sphere of this world, their own point in time. I can see a godly person looking around our world today and our circumstances where we live on the days that we walk this earth and saying things like this, Lord, I am discouraged. I see a society in spiritual decline. Lord, I see a lack of godly values in government and schools. Lord, I see and I am burdened I'm even in despair of the hemorrhaging of young people from the churches today across this land. But a godly person, in addition to an honest appraisal of what he or she sees, holds fast in faith that God is still at work. That God is still preserving and bringing to himself Those whose names since the beginning of time were written in the book of life. I see in Elijah a real caution. He found himself in a place where his heavenly father says, why are you here? He finds himself with a despair that triggered, it seems to me, God saying, I guess someone else needs to take over your spiritual work. One of the reformers and theologians of 500 years ago during the Reformation put it this way, let this truth remain tied to our hearts, that the church, which may not appear as anything in our sight, is nourished by the secret providence of God. God has a way by which he wonderfully preserves his elect, even when all seems lost. Spiritual eyes, the third point in this bulletin I wrote. Spiritual eyes see God's abundant grace alive despite the hard teaching that God allows hardened hearts to become harder. Verses six to 10. Let me read those verses for you. Starting in verse six of our passage. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking, but the elect obtained it, while the rest were hardened. As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see, ears that would not hear, down to this very day. And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see and bend their backs forever. That's a hard tension. That verse six is next to verses seven to 10. Verse six emphasizing God's persistent and amazing grace is next to verses that speak of God allowing, having some part in eyes being darkened spiritually, of ears growing deaf spiritually, of hearts growing harder spiritually. What do we say to teaching like that, this difficult tension? Well, I think we make sure we survey the full teaching of Scripture. When we see God's grace and this tension of hearts being hardened, eyes being more blind, of ears being more deaf spiritually, we need to remind ourselves of a verse like James 4.8 that says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. We need to remind ourselves of a verse like that. We need to remind ourselves that as we survey the scriptures, we can confidently report that no one ever seeking God, seeking God with humility and a repentant heart has ever been shoved away by a great and gracious God. No one ever seeking with repentance and humility has ever been shoved away by God. Pastor Barnhouse, almost 60 years ago, wrote it this way, anyone who is away from God is there because of their own desires. Hardness of heart, eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, are not God's pushing away, but the result of God giving us over to our willful choices. And yet we can hold on to a verse like Ezekiel 11, verse 19. It reminds us that God and his grace continues to soften hearts of stone. The verse says, I will remove their heart of stone and I will give it, give them a heart of flesh. Pastor John Piper adds to that, there is no hardness in the human heart against God, which is so hard that God himself cannot overcome it and save the hardest sinner. I had a chance just recently to read the book by Rabbi Harold Kushner. He wrote it in 1981. Some of you have read it, some of you are just familiar with the title, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I was struck by a number of things as I listened to someone committed to their Jewish faith, really writing in a way about matters that he was dealing with in a spiritual sense. He had a son who, I think it was age two or three, who was diagnosed with a rare but significant aging disorder called progeria, where you literally age years at a time. For every year that a child your age lives, you age for years, and rarely live beyond your early teen years, if you live that long. And indeed, he writes in the introduction, as my child continued to age in this way, and I knew death was approaching, there would come a time when I would need to write a book. I just wasn't sure when. And so, some years later, having processed it, he writes this book, and there are many commendable things about his honesty, and I'm thinking about some insights that are there. But I have to say at the same time, I found myself struck by reading an entire book written by someone who doesn't look to the last 25% of this book, the New Testament, who doesn't have the lens of Jesus, doesn't have the lens of the cross. and doesn't have the letters that we have that instruct us, these letters of Paul and others that instruct us in the New Testament about some very difficult issues and give us insight into the mind and plans of God that aren't fully revealed in the Old Testament. I found myself thinking spiritually, this man with much learning, frankly much honesty and much thought, cannot see. As he is sorting out bad things happening to good people, how much I just yearn to be able to put on spectacles of the New Testament and the instruction like the verses we have today to see clearly life and to make sense of the world as God would have us do that. So what is our fallback as we wrestle with just hard and difficult teachings? We wrestle with tensions like this passage brings up. I think some of our fallback is that we never lose sight of the love of God that Jesus on the cross has proved to us. That that remains always a fallback for us. We never lose sight that God is still saving and preserving ethnic Jews, however bleak the spiritual landscape of Jews today might seem to us as Christians in the gospel. We believe that God's remnant continues in every era, just as the scriptures tell us, that God is still doing his saving work among all kinds of people. in spiritually dead neighborhoods of the West, whether it's in America or Europe, as well as even the remotest village with little gospel light. I think faced with these tough teachings in Romans, we need to make sure to not let what is hard to understand about God's ways keep us from thanking and praising Him for what we can understand and what is here before us. Because God has been and still is about the business of building his spiritual family. God has given me a particular insight into that just by my life experience of building a family of the six of us, four kids, and Sandy and I through adoption. A means that we know God has put us together. Heavenly Father in a sense has taken the same approach as the Scriptures teach us about adoption. He is searching not just through the centuries but around this world. In every corner of this world He is searching and seeking to build His spiritual family. searched and brought in Jews from millennia past, chosen within the chosen people. Names written in the Nahum's book of life. He has brought them into His family. He is bringing Jews who are scattered among nations, the diaspora, even today. He is bringing Jews, He is bringing His elect Jews into His spiritual kingdom who live in the land of Israel today. And he is certainly bringing in Gentiles, like most of us, from diverse languages, diverse people groups, diverse socioeconomic strata, as the world looks at. So when I think of what my Heavenly Father is doing, I think I might want to borrow some words in response to that thinking. Borrow some words that I read in a Father's Day card. It happened to be a Father's Day card that I read last week. It was addressed to me. My oldest daughter had put the words at the very beginning of what she had to say to me. It simply said, Dear Dad, thanks for finding us. May we praise God that among the mysteries of Jew and Gentile, the tensions of grace and hardened hearts, May we thank God for finding us. Let's pray. Father, we do praise you for that. Lord, you reveal really challenging teachings to understand. Help us to see the love that we celebrate at the cross as we wrestle with these tensions. and help us to not get lost to a place where we are in such despair looking around our world that we lose sight of you. The scriptures teaching that you continue to work, that not a name that has been written in the Lamb's book of life will not find their way into eternity with you. Lord, we give you thanks this day for each one here who has come to the cross, Lord, we thank you for finding us. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.