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FAITHFUL, GRACIOUS, RIGHTEOUS

(Romans 11:1-10, 1 Kings 19:1-18)

SUBJECT:

F.C.F:

PROPOSITION:

INTRODUCTION:

A. In 1983, British Bible scholar F.F. Bruce published an intriguing book titled: The Hard Sayings of Jesus. Admittedly, many of the statements Jesus made can be puzzling and difficult to understand. Bruce collected 70 of these “hard sayings” and wrote a book devoting two or three pages to explaining each. The original hard saying, one that Jesus’s hearers specifically called a “hard saying” was from John 6:53, where Jesus declared, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Other hard sayings include “the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath,” “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners,” and “you must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

B. But a hard saying that is quite surprising, even strange, is one that Jesus made in Luke 16:16: “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.” What? Are we to rise up and storm the gates of heaven and demand our way in? Are we to try to overpower the angelic guards and break into heaven? No, salvation is a free gift of God. It is merely received with the empty hand, with nothing to commend us to God, and we contribute nothing ourselves so that we neither earn nor deserve our salvation. Reconciliation with God is not a matter of our working, but of our resting in the completed work of Christ for us, of trusting, leaning wholly on him.

And yet, this glorious good news, this unspeakable hope and joy is highly motivating. It prompts us, it moves us, and as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:14, “the love of Christ controls us” or constrains or compels us into obedience and glad service. We are so overpowered by the hope of the love of Christ that we press on energetically, we force our way into the kingdom.

C. Though salvation is resting in Christ, this is not the same as passivity or quietism, often popularly described as “let go and let God.” Rather, it is seeking. For example, wisdom promises in Proverbs 8:17: “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.” And God himself promises in Jeremiah 29:13: “You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart….”

It’s like the prospector in his tent trying to sleep, but there’s a rock right in the middle of his back. So he lights his lantern, moves the tent over and retrieves the “rock” only to find that it is a large, gold nugget. So does he toss it away and go back to his bedroll for more sleep? No, he trembles with joy! He tears up his tent, lights every lamp, and starts digging for more!

D. How do we as God’s people keep that flame of grateful joy and trembling anticipation burning brightly? Beloved, the answer is simple. It is to continue to meditate on what God has done for us and to anticipate what God has promised us. And we are helped along, spurred along, propelled by the truth in our text for this morning. First…

I. WE MUST TRUST GOD FOR HIS FAITHFULNESS.

A. In the beginning of chapter 11, Paul asks another of his thirty or so questions in this section. If the Jews en masse have rejected Jesus and the Gentiles in great number have embraced Jesus, then does that mean that God has rejected his covenant people of promise, the Jews? The Lord God solemnly entered into covenant with the Jewish people whom he had graciously chosen, not because they deserved it, but because he loved them and chose them. And he promised that he would be their God and they would be his people.

But the truth is that the whole history of Israel reads like an unbroken string of unfaithfulness on their part. A covenant requires two parties, in this case, God and his people. And while we could be very sure of God’s perfectly keeping his covenant, we learn from the Old Testament that the people of Israel were habitual covenant breakers. There is indication that they never fully implemented God’s covenant in their national life, and for long stretches of time completely ignored it. They did their own thing, and they followed their own gods.

B. So Paul’s question which he places in the mouth of the reader is this: “Has God then rejected his people?” No one would blame him if he did! But Paul’s answer is emphatic, “By no means!” For one thing, Paul himself is a Jew: “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.” And there are many more Jews who believed: all of the twelve apostles, for example. And do you recall that by the end of the second chapter of Acts there were three thousand believers and that by the end of the fourth chapter there were five thousand? And how many of these were Jews? All of them!

But even more, Paul says that there is historical precedent for this kind of thing. “2 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? 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” 4 But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”

C. The point is that when God makes a promise, he keeps his promise. And when God establishes a covenant, he keeps his covenant. And, Beloved, if you have put your faith in Jesus, the Son of God, and trusted him for salvation, God has established his covenant of grace and love with you, and he will keep it.

And that means that you must awaken from your spiritual slumber, and with great, glad gusto you must plunge into seeking and following Christ. You must take his kingdom, all of his kingdom, all of his reign over you by force, with all your Spirit-wrought powers and energies as a prospector after gold. For God is utterly faithful, and you cannot be disappointed.

II. WE MUST THANK GOD FOR HIS GRACIOUSNESS.

A. And here it all comes back to grace. Israel did not deserve God’s lavish favor, it was by grace. And those few of the Jews who did believe and faithfully respond to the Lord, they could not congratulate themselves either. It was all by grace. “5 So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” So now you see this dynamic clearly. Grace is the very opposite of our works. But grace enflames and empowers us for good works of every sort. And the key to this is gratitude.

While we Presbyterians prefer the Westminster Standards, the Confession and Catechisms, our continental Reformed cousins, the German and Dutch Reformed, prefer the Heidelberg Catechism. Now the Dutch tend to claim it for their own, but as a German I like to remind them that this wonderful catechism was actually drafted in the heart of Germany, and they only received and adopted it from us Germans, my ancestors.

But one of the strong points of the Heidelberg Catechism is its structure, its three sections, which reveal this important dynamic. Its three sections are spelled out in the second question:

Q. 2. How many things must you know that you may live and die in the blessedness of this comfort (of salvation in Christ alone)?

A. Three. First, the greatness of my sin and wretchedness. Second, how I am freed from all my sins and their wretched consequences. Third, what gratitude I owe to God for such redemption.

B. Traditionally, these three movements in the Christian life are known as sin, salvation, and service, or conviction, conversion, and consecration. But the most common trio of themes is guilt, grace, and gratitude. Do you see the proper place for good works in that very biblical construction? Good works have no place in the first part: guilt or “the greatness of my sin and wretchedness.” Good works have no place in the second part, either: grace, or “How I am freed (note the passive voice, not “how I free myself,” but “how I am freed” by Another) from all my sins and their wretched consequences.” But rather, good works are essential in the third part: gratitude, “what gratitude I owe to God for (or in response to) such redemption.”

C. When I see someone who professes Christ yet is apathetic (literally, “without passion”) toward the things of God or who loves to dally with sin or trifle with trivialities, I know something has gone terribly wrong. I am seeing someone who has either forgotten or has never truly known the horror of their guilt and misery in sin and who has forgotten or has never truly known the stunning wonder of God’s grace in Christ, and so are sorely lacking in gratitude.

It is the dreadful specter of our sin and of the dire consequences we deserve, and the remarkable, beyond-all-hope grace of God in salvation that ignites the believer to press on with zeal and to embrace the kingdom of Christ and every fruit and benefit it affords. Thirdly…

III. WE MUST WORSHIP GOD FOR HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS.

A. God is right. What he does is right. What he ordains is right. We speak of this in terms of his righteousness. God’s own character is to do what is right, in fact, he is the only measure of righteousness. He is the true and everlasting and objective standard of righteousness. Many rail against God and his ways, mostly because they think they are right and want to be a standard unto themselves. But if you will patiently wait and honestly seek for the truth, you will discover the wonderful righteousness of God.

Paul’s initial question in this chapter contains a hint of accusation: “Has God rejected his people?” Would God be so unrighteous as to forget his covenant and abandon the people he chose to save?

And, as we’ve seen, God did not reject his people, not all of them. Paul and many thousands of his fellow Jews witness to the contrary. They have continued in covenant faithfulness with God through the New Covenant ratified by the blood of Christ.

B. But God’s covenant with Israel in the Old Testament was a conditional covenant. Let me illustrate the difference. A father says to his son, “I will give you twenty dollars this evening.” That’s an unconditional covenant or promise. No matter what the son does, he will have twenty dollars in his pocket when evening falls. But if the father says, “If you mow the lawn today I will give you twenty dollars this evening,” that’s a conditional covenant or promise. If the son mows the lawn, twenty dollars. If he does not mow the lawn, no twenty dollars.

And God’s covenant promise to Israel was conditional. If they kept covenant with God, then he would bless them. If they broke covenant with God, he would curse them, and if they persisted, he would utterly break his covenant with them and make them like the nations.

C. Now here’s the joyful truth: God’s covenant with his elect, the remnant, all whom he has chosen for salvation in Christ—that is an unconditional covenant or promise. Remarkably, God says to the elect, those he has chosen from before the foundation of the world, “I will save you no matter what! You cannot mess it up! And the reason is because my Son will come and in your place fulfill all my requirements for you. I will even give you the faith you will need to put your trust in him.” And that’s right! God is perfectly righteous to do so because the elect receive mercy and the rest receive perfect justice. God rescues the elect by his grace and leaves the rest in the sin and misery they prefer, and nobody gets worse than they deserve. And that’s what Paul explains fully in verses 7-10: “7 What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, 8 as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” 9 And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; 10 let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.”

And, again, it is the righteousness of God that propels us to wonder and to worship. Even those who ultimately perish will confess the wonder of God’s righteousness. And even though they hate their condemnation, they will know and confess with perfect clarity that they deserve it. Every knee will “bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11)

CONCLUSION

In Luke 16:16 Jesus declared: “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.” The good news is so good that we go for it with passion, with zeal, with all our Holy Spirit-wrought energies, with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Or, to put it another way, God’s truth engages the mind, which enflames the affections, which empowers the will for love and service. It is the distressing truth of our shameful guilt, but even more, the soaring truth of God’s stunning grace in Christ, that launches us into an expanding life of gratitude, of gladness and joy, of service and consecration, of holiness and purity that will never quit, because God will never quit, because God will never reject his people, because God is faithful, gracious, and righteous.

J

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