(Exodus 19:3-6; Romans 12:3-8, 1 Corinthians 12:4-26)

Humility gets something of a bad rap in our culture.  We confuse it with humiliation; we confuse it with false modesty, which is a very different thing; we use it as an opportunity for insults.  Winston Churchill’s famous putdown of Clement Attlee is a classic case in point:  “He is a humble man, but then, he has much to be humble about!”  There are those who berate the church for teaching that humility is a virtue, on the grounds that doing so is harmful to people’s self-esteem.  They seem to think the idea is that God doesn’t like you very much, and so you shouldn’t like yourself very much either.

(Psalm 51:10-17, Micah 6:6-8; Romans 12:1-2)

(Isaiah 40:12-14, Isaiah 59:15b-21; Romans 11:16-36)

If you’ve spent any great amount of time in the letters of Paul, you’ve probably realized that his letters to churches follow a consistent pattern: the first part of the letter is theology, and the second part is application of that theology to the life of the church and its members. Biblical scholars like to borrow terms from grammar and talk about this as the indicative and the imperative; for those who aren’t grammar geeks, the indicative mood in language is the basic form, telling you what is—this is a chair, that is a window, and so on—while the imperative is the command form: sit down! Shut that window! You get the idea. In these terms, Paul begins by laying out the indicatives of the gospel—what’s true about God and Jesus and us and our salvation—before moving on to the imperatives of the gospel—this being true, how should we then live?

This is important, for reasons we’ll talk about later in this series; for now, the important point is that this passage brings the theological arc of this letter to its close. The story Paul has been telling of the work of God in redeeming a people for himself comes to an end here, as the apostle turns to look forward to the grand conclusion of history; he turns from explaining what God has already done to proclaim what God is going to do. He’s been dealing with the problem of the Exile, with God’s rejection of Israel and his banishment of his people from the land of his presence; but as Paul has argued in the first part of chapter 11, the Exile was never going to be permanent, for God promised even before sending Israel away that he would bring them home.

Now, in hearing this, you need to understand that from the Jewish perspective, the Exile never really ended. Sure, they got back to Jerusalem, but that’s only part of what they expected—God made all sorts of other promises about what would happen when he brough his people back from exile, and most of those remained unfulfilled in Paul’s day, and still in ours. There was no great gathering of the nations to worship God, there was no return of the king of the line of David to the throne in Jerusalem, there was no return to glory for Israel—they weren’t even an independent nation, except for a brief period. Clearly, they had returned physically from exile, but the Exile wasn’t really over, and so many Jews came to believe that when Messiah came, that would be when all these promises would finally come true.

They were right in many ways, except for one major thing: when Messiah came, only a minority in Israel recognized him, and so the nation’s exile did not come to an end. Thus the question returned: was this the end for Israel? Was this the point when God finally gave up on them for good and turned them away forever? And as we saw last week, Paul says definitively: no. The Exile will be longer and worse than anyone expected, but there is still an end in sight. God has promised that in the end, he will come to Israel and take away their sins, he will banish their ungodliness and idolatry and redeem them, and that promise still holds.

As we saw last week, part of Paul’s purpose here is to warn the Gentiles in the church not to make the same mistake Israel had made before them. The Jews as a whole had fallen prey to spiritual pride, coming to believe that they were better than the rest of the world, and that because they were part of the nation of Israel, their salvation was guaranteed. They were wrong. Now Gentiles in the church were being drawn by that same temptation, coming to feel themselves superior to the Jews and to presume that because they were part of a Christian congregation, their salvation was guaranteed; to them Paul says, if God didn’t spare Israel for that, he certainly won’t spare you either. Just going to church won’t save you any more than just being a Jew will. Only Jesus.

Not all who look like Israel are part of the true Israel; not all who look like Christians are part of the true church. We can’t judge by external appearances who truly belongs to God; we can’t know in chapter 4 how anyone’s story will turn out, however great or lousy they may look at that point. Fortunately for us, we don’t need to, because that’s their story, not ours; it’s for us to look to our own story, and our own growth. What we do know is that it’s not about our merit, or anyone else’s: it’s about the grace of God, who freely chooses to save the undeserving—and everyone is undeserving.

This is why Paul can say that when God’s work among the Gentiles is completed, Jesus will come to Israel and they will turn in faith to him whom their ancestors rejected, and they will at last find his salvation. Given Paul’s quotation here from Isaiah 59, it seems clear that this will be when Christ returns—they missed him the first time, but when he comes again they will recognize him as Messiah and Lord. As Zechariah 12-13 says, they will look on him whom they have pierced, and they will grieve in deep repentance; and they will find his grace and forgiveness. At the end, God will bring Israel back to himself, and they will be saved—not every Jew throughout all time, and not by following the Law, but through Christ alone.

The key here is beautifully put by New Testament scholar Thomas R. Schreiner, who writes, “God has designed salvation history in such a way that the extension of his saving grace surprises those who are its recipients. Gentiles were elected to salvation when the Jews were expecting to be the special objects of his favor, and the Jews will be grafted in again at a time in which Gentiles will be tempted to believe that they are superior to ethnic Israel. By constructing history in such a way God makes it evident that he deserves the praise for the inclusion of any into his saving promises. Indeed, this theme matches beautifully with chapter 9, for there Paul argues similarly that God’s election inverts human expectations. He chose Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau; the Gentiles, not the Jews. Similarly, at the end of salvation history, when the Gentiles are in danger of becoming self-assured, confident that they are the special objects of God’s love, he will surprise them again by reinstating the people of his covenant promises.”

That’s the key: God has designed his plan so that his salvation takes us by surprise, so that we clearly see that the praise is to him alone. He doesn’t do what we expect, and he doesn’t call those whom we think worthy; instead—well, let me turn this over for a minute to a bunch of Cornish fishermen:

It’s not exactly the same, but that’s the gospel invitation: “Come all you no-hopers, jokers, and rogues.” Set aside your faith in the world and its ways; give up the idea that you can earn your way to heaven; realize just how much greater God is than you, how unfathomably vast and deep are his wisdom and knowledge and plans, stop trying to bargain with him or put him in your debt, and just worship him. In the end, all we can say is what Paul says here at the end:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.

(Isaiah 6, Isaiah 29:9-16; Romans 11:1-15)

I’ve argued over the course of this sermon series that much of the book of Romans is a theological retelling of the history of Israel, and that in that theological story, chapters 9-11 retell the Exile—God’s judgment of Israel for their unfaithfulness to him. Paul’s insistence that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, even for Jews—and that Jews who reject Christ have no place in the people of God and no share in his salvation—raises the question of whether God’s promises have failed, but the Exile raised that question first, and the prophets grappled with it at some length.

Paul begins his own answer to this question by making the case that God’s choice of Israel as a nation had never guaranteed the salvation of every individual Israelite—and maybe not even close. His salvation was nothing they had earned, and it was nothing they could compel; God had freely chosen Israel, and if he wanted, he had every right to freely choose others. And even if they could have obeyed his law well enough to deserve salvation, they clearly hadn’t; rather, their disobedience and unfaithfulness were more than sufficient to justify God’s rejection of them.

And yet, Paul roundly declares that God has not rejected Israel; Paul himself is living proof of that, since he is an Israelite. God chose Israel as his people, and he chose them with full knowledge of everything that would happen—including their unfaithfulness and their rejection of their Messiah. God has not changed his mind, and there’s no reason he should, since nothing that happened was in any way a surprise to him. He hasn’t saved everyone in the nation, but by his grace, he has preserved a remnant for himself. It might look like nothing more than a twice-burned stump, but out of that stump, new life will come. No matter how great God’s judgment on his people, it will not be the end of them; he will always preserve some through it for himself.

Nor is this all there is to say. Israel rejected Jesus when they should have recognized him as their foundation stone, and so the promised Rock of their salvation was instead a stumbling block for them; but their stumble not only wasn’t the end of them as a people, it wasn’t the end of their place in God’s plan, or of God’s plan for them. Though God hardened most of Israel, saving only a remnant, he didn’t do so permanently; though they stumbled, it wasn’t his purpose for them to fall.

Instead, their stumble served a purpose in God’s plan for the world, and then ultimately for them as well. Their rebellion and rejection of God created the opportunity for the good news of salvation to come to the Gentiles; this in turn is designed to inspire jealousy among the Jews, and thus to provoke them to return to God and be saved. As the New Testament scholar Leon Morris put it, “the salvation of the Gentiles was intended . . . to arouse in Israel a passionate desire for the same good gift.” Out of Israel’s turning away from the Messiah, which was sin and failure and defeat, God brought great blessing for the world—but he isn’t going to stop there. His final purpose is the end of death, the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of the world, and that will involve the salvation of Israel. Their part isn’t over; God isn’t finished with them yet.

So what do we do with this passage? In the first place, obviously, we must recognize that Paul is turning here to address the Gentiles in the church to warn them—and us—against any feeling of superiority to their Jewish brothers and sisters, and indeed against the idea that they can be the people of God, that they can be the church, without the Jews. Christianity has too often down the centuries been used to justify anti-Semitism, and that’s absolutely forbidden here, because it’s absolutely contrary to the gospel, and to the will and character of God. It is, in fact, the same sin Israel committed in refusing to realize that God hadn’t chosen them so they could be better than the rest of the world, but so they could bless the rest of the world. It’s the refusal to understand that what God is doing isn’t all about us, and it isn’t all for us.

When we frame it this way, we see that there’s a deeper concern here—I don’t say a bigger concern than how we are to treat Jews, but a deeper one that underlies the temptation to anti-Jewish arrogance. It’s the temptation to spiritual pride. It may show itself in a conscious attitude of superiority to others, as it evidently was among the Gentile Christians in Rome; but it may not. That’s a symptom, not the disease itself. It’s the desire to make my faith all about me—indeed, to make it my faith; it’s the failure to admit and acknowledge our absolute and utter dependence on grace, both from God and from other people. It’s the belief that God chose me because I deserve it, because I’m good enough to earn my salvation. As Paul will go on to say later in this chapter, this attitude isn’t only sinful, it’s delusional and dangerous.

The bottom line here is the grace of God, and this is our hope. He has preserved a remnant of Israel for himself and his name’s sake, not because anyone or anything required it, but by his gracious choice—it’s all a part of his choice of Abraham, and the promises he made to Abraham beginning in Genesis 12. He has reached out beyond Israel to make us a part of his people, and that too is purely an act of grace, pure gift. And if in our day the church seems to be captured by the surrounding culture, as Israel was, and to demand that God conform to the supposed wisdom of the world, that won’t be the end of us, either, because it isn’t about our deserving, it’s about his choice, his will, his love—and they are all free of us, completely free.

Whatever may come, God’s plan has already included it, and though his people may stumble, we will never entirely fall; he will use it to his purpose, and there will always be a remnant. His choice never fails, for there is nothing that happens that he didn’t already know; his plan never fails, for everything that happens is already a part of it; his promises never fail, for there is nothing in all creation that could make him change his mind; and his love and grace never fail, for they are infinite beyond our ability to comprehend. Whatever may come, he is faithful. Let’s pray.

(Deuteronomy 32:18-21, Isaiah 65:1-3; Romans 10:12-21)

“There is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” That’s the bottom line for Paul when it comes to defining and understanding the church; that’s the thesis statement for everything he’s going to say later about how Jewish and Gentile Christians should relate to each other. “All” means all, and “everyone” means everyone, and that’s all there is to it; no one gets a special deal, no one gets a free ride, and no one is excluded from consideration.

This being so, then, how do we understand the failure of the Jews to call on the name of the Lord? Paul considers this question methodically, laying out the steps that lead, from a human perspective, to salvation. Verses 14-15 are often taken out of context and used to preach on the importance of evangelism and missions, and that’s entirely appropriate, because Paul is working here on the level of general principles which apply much more broadly than just his argument; but we also need to understand them in this context. This is the chain of human activity through which people come to salvation; where has it broken for Israel? The implied question here is, is it really Israel’s fault?

In verse 16 Paul answers that question—he actually interrupts himself, jumping ahead of his argument to say, “Yes.” Israel has heard the message of Christ, as Paul affirms in verse 18 with a little hyperbole, drawing on Psalm 19; they heard, because they were sent plenty of preachers, beginning with Jesus himself. They didn’t miss the good news: they refused it. The NIV blurs that a little; the Greek word they translate “accept” actually means “obey.” I don’t know why they didn’t use the standard translation, because Paul uses this word deliberately. He’s been linking obedience with faith since the very beginning of the book, so this is nothing new, but it is central to his argument here.

On the one hand, Paul’s understanding of faith is never purely intellectual; it’s never just a matter of agreeing that something is true. Faith is a commitment which produces action. I have faith that this chair will support me, and so I commit my weight to it—I don’t keep my muscles tensed just in case it falls apart. I have faith that this projector will work, and so I keep sending Dan the materials to produce the slides. I have faith that my daughter can run the slides, and as long as I’m smart enough to let her do it, everything goes well. When we have faith, it determines how we act.

On the other hand, Paul knows—and we know—that there are different kinds of unbelief. Unbelief can be a form of apathy: I just don’t care enough to bother thinking about it. It can be a response to a lack of evidence, as for instance my lack of faith in the Tooth Fairy. It can be accompanied by the willingness or even desire to believe, as when we go looking for evidence to prove a theory. But it can also be predetermined, the product of the refusal to believe. We see this, for instance, in the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who declared, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

In declaring that not all Israelites have obeyed the gospel, Paul is saying that they don’t believe because they don’t want to. Their unbelief doesn’t arise out of skepticism, or confusion, or lack of knowledge; nor indeed are they apathetic—they are zealous for God, as long as he conforms to what they want to believe. The message of Christ does not fit what they want to believe, and it calls them to an obedience they do not want to give; they refuse to obey, and thus they refuse to believe.

And yet, God doesn’t stop loving them, and he doesn’t stop reaching out to them. His love and his grace are relentless, even in the midst of his judgment. The way Paul uses Isaiah 65 here is interesting, because in the prophet, verse 1 also refers to Israel; they are the first ones of whom God says, “I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me.” This is the pattern of God’s dealings with his people from the very beginning: he reveals himself to us, not because we chase him down and find him out, but purely on his own initiative, as an act of his grace. Nor is that merely how our relationship with him begins—it’s all the way along. Our growth in holiness and spiritual maturity isn’t about our effort half so much as it’s about God continuing to reveal himself to us and to call us to himself even when we aren’t seeking him.

When Israel remained obstinate and refused the Messiah God sent them, he reached out beyond them and once again revealed himself to a people who did not seek him, and indeed in many cases didn’t know they should be looking for him. But in doing this, did he turn away from Israel? No, he continues to hold out his hands to them; and indeed, Paul says, when God called a people for himself from among the Gentiles, this was not only for the Gentiles, it was also for the Jews. Part of his purpose in calling the Gentiles was to provoke Israel to jealousy and thus, ultimately, to bring at least some of them back to himself; and as Paul shows, they were told this was going to happen all the way back to the time of Moses.

We see in this the relentless love and faithfulness of God. Paul asks in 9:23, “What if God has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?”—but in truth he hasn’t merely endured Israel in their rejection, he has continued to love them and call them back to himself. We see as well that our actions and decisions matter, that they have consequence—and hear me carefully here. It isn’t just that they have consequences, like my dad always told me just before he spanked me; our actions could have consequences and still be, at a deeper level, inconsequential. Our actions and decisions have consequence—they have weight, meaning, significance. What we choose and what we do matters because we matter.

And note this: they don’t just matter in the way we think, or expect, and they don’t just matter for us. What God is doing in us as individuals and as a congregation is in part about us (though even there, not subject to our expectations), but it isn’t only about us; he’s also doing things through us in the lives of others that are beyond us to know or predict. He adopted Gentiles into his people because his salvation is for the Gentiles—but also for the sake of the Jews.

God works through our choices and our deeds, but never just in one way or on one level; he’s always doing many things through everything we do and everything that happens, and often with very long-term goals in mind. To pull a story from the Catholic blogger Jennifer Fulwiler, if your car breaks down on the way to an important meeting, maybe it’s not about you at all—maybe it’s about the tow-truck driver. Or from my own experience, I ended up in counseling (and on ulcer medication) in seventh grade. I don’t know all the reasons God allowed that, but one of them was so that I would marry Sara.

Remember, this is God’s story—we’re just characters in it; much-loved characters, yes, but it isn’t our story, and it isn’t limited to what we can see. We see in part, but he sees the whole; and the theme of the story, and the power that drives it, is his “Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.”