God's Faithfulness

I should perhaps first of all introduce myself. Those of you who’ve arrived during the last three months won’t know who I am. Those of you who’ve been around a bit longer might need reminding. I’m Jonathan Pryke. I’m one of the ministers here at JPC. I’ve been on sabbatical. It’s been a challenging and inspiring time for me as I’ve thought about world mission, so thank you for allowing me to be away, and thank you to those who’ve been covering for me while I’ve been away. It’s good to be back.

I’m diving straight into this series on Paul’s Letter to the Romans and these wonderful, mind-reshaping chapters 9 to 11. Romans is a life-changing, history-making letter. Let me give you one example of that.

One of the people I’ve been reading is Lesslie Newbigin, who was one of the key leaders of world mission in the last half century (and from Tyneside). As a young man, he says, his mind was filled with questions to which he did not see the answers. I quote:

I wanted to find out what I could believe. I decided that the Letter to the Romans was probably the most complete and condensed statement of the Gospel and I therefore spent several months wrestling with the Greek text of Romans, surrounded by half a dozen of the major commentaries. That was a turning point for me in my theological journey. I began as a typical liberal. I ended it with a strong conviction about ‘the finished work of Christ’, about the centrality and objectivity of the atonement accomplished on Calvary.

Well, you don’t have to do it the way Newbigin did, but, like him, you will never be the same again once you’ve got seriously to grips with Romans and what Newbigin calls its ‘strong meat’.

There is no stronger meat than these chapters 9 to 11. Over the last couple of weeks you’ve looked at 9 and 10 in my absence. Now we begin chapter 11. So please have Romans 11:1-10 open in front of you – it starts on page 1137 in the church Bibles. And it starts with this question in verse 1:

I ask then: Did God reject his people?

By ‘rejection’ there, the apostle Paul is meaning being eternally lost – missing out on salvation. And by ‘his people’ – God’s people – Paul means the people of Israel, the Jews. So for instance, back in 9:3 he is speaking about …

… those of my own race, the people of Israel.

And it’s clear that he’s talking about the same people at the start of chapter 11. So when he speaks of God’s people in this context he doesn’t mean believers or Christians. He means the people of Israel, the Jews. ‘Did God reject his people?’, then, means ‘Has God abandoned the Jews for all eternity?’

Now, I wonder how we react to that question. It’s very important but maybe we don’t see why immediately. So what I’d like to do is ask a series of questions about that question, to help us understand what Paul is driving at. There are four of them. Here they are. First, What is that to me? Secondly, But why does this question arise? Thirdly, So what’s wrong with the argument? (The argument, that is, that leads to the conclusion that God has rejected his people.) And fourthly, What then are the implications of all this for us?


First, “DID GOD REJECT HIS PEOPLE?” WHAT IS THAT TO ME?

Now I’m not suggesting that we don’t think it matters at all to us whether God has abandoned the Jews for ever and transferred his attention, as it were, to the Christian church. But I just have a suspicion that, for many of us, when that question is asked there is at least a part of us that begins to switch off a bit, because it doesn’t seem like a particularly relevant issue for us. That could be for a number of reasons. But the truth is it matters a very great deal. Let me put it to you like this.

If it seems a largely irrelevant issue, what is it that means little or nothing to you? Is it the possibility of being eternally lost? Maybe you’re not a believer yourself. If that’s the case then you’re very welcome here, and I imagine a lot of what’s been said and sung this morning will have left you feeling rather bemused – including this talk of being eternally lost. Maybe you think there could be some kind of God out there. Maybe you’ve hardly thought about death, and to the extent that you’ve allowed yourself to do so, you imagine floating off into some kind of nothingness. Well it’s part of the strong meat of the Bible in general and this Letter to the Romans in particular that that is not in fact the way it is. There is heaven and hell, and there is a Day of Judgement up ahead for us all. Listen to what Paul says elsewhere in Romans. In 14:10-12 he says:

For we will all stand before God’s judgement seat. It is written [that is, in the Bible]: “’As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘Every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’” So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

The issue of eternal lostness is in fact a very immediate one for all of us.

But maybe you already know that, so if the rejection of his people by God seems a largely irrelevant issue to us, what is it that means little or nothing to us? Is it that the character of God means little or nothing to you? Because that’s what’s at stake here. Why? Because whether God is a faithful God is at stake. That’s why my title is ‘God’s Faithfulness’. Back in 3:3, speaking about the Jews, Paul says:
Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?
Because, of course, God has promised that he will never abandon his people. To take one of many examples, in Genesis 17:7 God says to Abraham, the father of the people of Israel:

I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

If God does not keep his promises, then God is not a faithful God. And that really would rock our world. It would blacken God’s glory. It would mean that we couldn’t rely on God’s promises and God’s word for ourselves, let alone for the Jews. If God rejects the Jews, what’s to stop him rejecting us? The bottom would drop out of our faith. It matters all right.

But maybe that’s not so much the issue for us. If the rejection of his people by God seems largely an irrelevant issue to us, is it that God’s people mean little or nothing to us? I’m sure we wouldn’t put it in those rather stark terms, but is that true of us? Do we think, ‘The Jews aren’t really any concern of mine’? Perhaps they just haven’t really registered on your radar. But compare that with the attitude of the apostle Paul. 9:2-3:

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.

Why don’t we care about them like that? Have we lapsed into self-centred individualism? Is it only me and my space that’s of concern to me?

“Did God reject his people?” What is that to us? It matters. It could hardly matter more.


Secondly, BUT WHY DOES THIS QUESTION ARISE?

The question “Did God reject his people?” arises because there’s a line of argument that could be in the minds of Paul’s readers as a result of what he has said so far. The argument has four steps, and it goes like this.

Point 1. The basis of salvation for Jew and Gentile alike is grace through faith in Christ. So there’s no distinction between Jew and Gentile. That is indeed what Paul’s been arguing with great force. For instance, 3:22:

… righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference.

Point 2. God’s people are rejecting the gospel. This, too, Paul is clear about. That’s why he is full of anguish for them. And Paul’s experience as he preaches the good news is of violent opposition and persecution from Jews.

Point 3. Faith in Christ is a gift of God’s sovereign electing grace to the disobedient. 3:23:

… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Point 4. So God must have rejected his people, the Jews. They are not putting their faith in Christ, which is the only way of salvation, so God is not giving them faith, and is instead rejecting them.

That’s the argument that could be leading people to think that God has rejected his people. Whether you’re a Jew or a Gentile, salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus. That faith is God’s gift, but the Jews are rejecting Jesus, so God is not giving them faith but has rejected them.

Is that right? Paul’s answer is short and sharp in 11:1:

I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means!

Thirdly, SO WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE ARGUMENT?

If that question, “Did God reject his people?” is really the key question of the whole of Romans 9-11, then what Paul is doing throughout these chapters is spelling out why the answer is so emphatically “No!”. So what’s wrong with the argument? Paul gives seven reasons through chapters 9-11. Three of them are here in 11:1-10. By way of review and preview, I’ll give you all seven.

What’s wrong with the argument that God has rejected his people? The first reason is that the promise of salvation was never given by God to the Jews purely on the basis of ethnicity, or family descent. Instead it was given to those who were chosen and called, who put their trust in God.

That’s the point in chapter 9. So, 9:6:

It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.

The truth is, right from the start God made it clear that the issue wasn’t biological descent from Abraham. When the covenant with Abraham is being established, God says it’s to apply to all in his household, including those (I quote) “who are not your offspring”. That’s in Genesis 17:12.

The question is not “Are you a biological relation of Abraham?” It is “Are you chosen and called by God to be saved?” Those who are saved are those who God chooses. Now that raises all kinds of questions. Paul is well aware of that. He tackles them head on in chapter 9. You can follow that up by listening to or reading Ian’s sermon on chapter 9. David’s Coloured Supplement in this month’s Newsletter is also very much to the point.

The second reason why the argument that God must have rejected his people is wrong is that the Jews have been making a false claim on God, on the basis of works not grace. Here is 9:30-32:

What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, how did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith, but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.

The claim of the Jews to be God’s people was being built on false grounds. The anger of those who were persecuting Paul was misplaced. They were the ones who were misunderstanding the basis on which anyone can claim to belong to God. It can only be by grace, never by works. That’s the point in chapter 10.

The third reason why it’s wrong to argue that God must have rejected his people is that Paul himself is a Jew – and he has faith in Christ. Look at 11:1 again:

I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.

Paul himself is, if I can put it this way, a thoroughly kosher Jew. He ticks all the boxes. There can be no doubt about this Jewish ethnicity. And despite the fact that Paul started out as a ferocious opponent of the Christ and a ruthless persecutor of those who believed in him, God chose him. By the grace of God through faith in Christ Paul had been saved. God had accepted him. So Paul himself in his own person is a living disproof of any argument that God has rejected the Jews wholesale.

The grace of God can break down even the most formidable defences. We must be very careful not to judge anyone’s eternal destiny by the fact that they are at present rejecting Christ. God accepted Paul.

The fourth reason that it’s wrong to say that God has rejected his people is that, whatever it might look like to us, God knows what he’s doing – he has a plan for his people. That is surely the implication of what Paul says at the beginning of verse 2:

God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew.

What does he mean when he says that he ‘foreknew’ them? What kind of ‘foreknowledge’ is he talking about? He clearly means us to understand that this foreknowledge rules out any possibility that God would reject his people. So it’s not a matter of God simply knowing who they would be even before they had come into existence. It’s more than that. He didn’t just know them. He was committed to them. He had a plan for them. It was a plan to save them and to use them to save the world. This was certainly not a plan that included rejection. It was a plan of salvation.

The fifth reason why Paul is confident that God has not rejected his people is that some Jews do believe in Jesus – even though they are a minority. So he says down in verse 5:

… at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.

Even now, he says, a remnant of Jews are trusting in Jesus. And he says, as it were, that there’s nothing new about the fact that the believers are in a small minority. That’s the way God’s plan has always worked. There have often been times in the history of God’s people when there’s been a wholesale turning away from God. God’s people have been chronically unfaithful through the ages – but God has never abandoned them. Take the example, Paul says, of the time of the prophet Elijah. You all know what happened to him, he says – but just in case they (and we) don’t, he reminds them. 11:2-5:

Don’t you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah [he’s referring to the passage we heard earlier from 1 Kings 19] – how [Elijah] appealed to God against Israel: “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me”? And what was God’s answer to him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.

And this didn’t just have to be taken on trust. It was and is simply a fact that at least some of the Jews do believe in Jesus as their Messiah and Saviour and Lord. Every one of the apostles was Jewish. When three thousand repented and believed in Jesus on the Day of Pentecost, they were all Jews. Shortly after that, Acts 6:7 reports:

… the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

Obviously all the priests and inevitably almost all the other disciples in Jerusalem were Jewish. And outside Judea too, when Paul was on his missionary travels, although he faced some murderous Jewish opposition, he also saw conversions amongst the Jews. So for instance, here’s Acts 14:1-2:

At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that great numbers of Jews and Gentiles believed. But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against their brothers.

So right from the start of the spread of the gospel the response of the Jews was never uniform. To be sure, the majority refused to believe. But many did. There has always been among the Jews what Paul calls ‘a remnant chosen by grace’.

So we must always be realistic but never pessimistic. God is always in control. He is always working out his saving purposes – as much for the Jews as for the rest of the peoples of the world. And of course that is just as true today. Many Jews believe in Jesus. You may be one of them yourself. The existence of an organisation like Jews for Jesus bears testimony to it. I recently read a challenging book called ‘Get a Grip on Mission’ by Martin Goldsmith, who is himself a Christian Jew with a deep concern for the spread of the gospel and the growth of the church amongst both Jews and Gentiles. God has not rejected his people – even now there is ‘a remnant chosen by grace’.

The sixth reason that the argument that God has rejected his people is wrong is that in due course ‘all Israel will be saved’. This is by way of preview, and that’s what Paul says in 11.26. At the end of our passage, in 11.7-10, Paul moves on to discuss the way that the hearts of the unbelieving majority of Jews have been hardened. They are deaf to the gospel, and blind to who Jesus is. So verse 7:

What then? What Israel sought so earnestly [that is, by works] it did not obtain, but the elect did [that is, by grace]. The others were hardened…

But even this hardening, Paul says, is part of God’s great saving plan for the world. The sequence is this. The Jews are hardened. As a result, the gospel is taken to the Gentiles, who believe in large numbers. As a result, eventually the Jews will become envious of the relationship with God through Christ that they will see the Gentiles have. So then in the end the Jews will themselves turn to Christ and be saved.

That teaching of Paul’s runs right through to 11:32. To hear more on that be here in two weeks time. Just to say now that towards the end of his exposition Paul gives one final but key reason why it must be wrong to say that God has rejected his people.

So the seventh reason is simply this: God is faithful. 11:29:

God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.

When you know God, you know this: that God is faithful. When he makes a promise, he keeps it. When he calls people to himself, he never lets them go. He has called his people Israel. He will never let them go. That’s the bottom line. Did God reject his people. No. No. And no again. Emphatically no.

So to our final question.


Fourthly, WHAT THEN ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF ALL THIS FOR US?

Well, there are all kinds of big questions for us that go to the root of our attitudes and of our decisions about how we’re going to spend our lives.

There are questions concerning what really matters to us. Is God’s honour and reputation (if I can put it like that) and vindication and glory our supreme concern? Is our prayer above all: ‘Hallowed be your name’? Are our minds fixed on the eternal destiny of the world and all its peoples – including the Jews? Or are we more concerned about our own salvation than that of others?

There are questions for you if you’re Jewish.

If you are an unbelieving Jew – whether in the sense that you are in practice atheist or in the sense that you don’t believe in Jesus Christ – then it may be hard for you to listen to an appeal from a Gentile such as me, but will you not open your heart and mind to the appeal of your fellow Jew, the apostle Paul? Will you chew on and digest the strong meat of this Letter to the Romans?

If you are a believing Jew – Do you rejoice that you’re not alone, that there are believing Jews by God’s grace, and will be many more? Are you clear that trusting in Jesus Christ is not the rejection of your Jewish heritage but the fulfilment of it? Will you help us Gentiles to know how best to tell your fellow Jews about Jesus?

And there are questions for us if we are Gentile – not Jewish.

Do we share Paul’s concern for the Jews? I was challenged afresh about this the other day when I arrived back in Newcastle Central Station and saw a large contingent of black-suited orthodox Jewish men disembarking at the same time, no doubt returning to Gateshead where many of them live. The fact is that far from seeking to share the knowledge and love of Jesus with Jews, historically Gentile nations have often persecuted them severely. Today it’s easy for us to lose concern for evangelism among Jews. We can excuse ourselves using the pretext of either a sense of collective guilt, or awareness of great cultural distance, or a lack of clarity that the same gospel is for all nations and peoples including the Jews. We need to be praying for the Jews. We need to seek and take opportunities (with right humility) to witness to Jesus.

But also, do we have a concern for our own people or nation as Paul did for his? It didn’t mean Paul didn’t love other people – after all he literally gave his life for us Gentiles. But he was passionate for the salvation of his own people as well. God has given us our national, ethnic, racial, tribal identity as part of his plan to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. We need to pray for Paul’s passionate concern.

And do you get discouraged by being in a minority as a believer? Don’t be! God knows what he’s doing. We’re not alone. Pray, witness, and work for Christ. Rejoice always that God is faithful and trust him, with nothing held back.