Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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What? If you're able to remain
standing, please do and let's give our
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attention to Romans, Chapter Eleven,
verses Thirteen through twenty four. Romans Eleven,
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verses thirteen through twenty four. This
is God's word. Now I am
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speaking to you, gentiles, inasmuch
then, as I am an apostle to
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the gentiles. I magnify my ministry
in order somehow to make my fellow Jews
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Jealous and thus to save some of
them. For if their rejection means the
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reconciliation of the world, what will
their acceptance mean but life from the dead?
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If the dough offered as first fruits
is holy, so is the whole
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lump, and if the root is
holy, so are the branches. But
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if some of the branches were broken
off and you, although a wild olive
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shoot, we're grafted in among the
others and now share in the nourishing root
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of the Olive Tree. Do not
be arrogant toward the branches. If you
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are, remember it is not you
who support the root, but the root
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that supports you. Then you will
say branches were broken off so that I
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might be grafted in. That is
true. They were broken off because of
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their unbelief, but you stand fast
through faith. So do not become proud,
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but fear, for if God did
not spare the natural branches, neither
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will he spare you. Note,
then, the kindness and the severity of
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God, severity toward those who have
fallen, but God's kindness to you,
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provided you continue in his kindness.
Otherwise you too will be cut off.
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And even they, if they do
not continue in their unbelief, will be
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grafted in, for God has the
power to graft them in again. For
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if you were cut from what is
by nature a Wild Olive Tree and grafted,
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contrary to nature, into a cultivated
olive tree, how much more will
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these, the natural branches, be
grafted back into their own Olive Tree?
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May God bless his word, you
may be seated. So the apostle here
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uses this analogy. He's uses a
few, but particularly the analogy of Olive
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Tree and branches being cut off and
branches being grafted in, as a way
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to explain to us the necessity of
faith, that faith is absolutely necessary in
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order to be saved. Now there
are, of course, other things that
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are necessary, and faith doesn't come
all by itself. Faith we know from
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Ephesians is a gift of God.
We know this from our own experience.
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To where does good faith come from
us, except as God's giving it to
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us? We know, as we
thought about in Romans nine and of many
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other places in Romans, that our
salvation is not something that is based on
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anything good in us. It's not
anything that we've conjured up or worked together
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so that God would say, yes, here is a good one, I
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will save them. It's all from
God's sovereign will and his powerful hand.
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And yet, nevertheless, God uses
faith as an instrument and by which he
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saves us. He puts it into
us. Faith is that instrument by which
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we receive and rest upon Jesus Christ
alone, as he is offered to us
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in the Gospel. And that is
necessary. It is something that we exercise,
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it is a thing that we do. To believe is a verb.
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It is required we are to believe, and Paul is very clear about that
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here. He says that we must
believe in terms of this Olive Tree.
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He says that those that did not
believe among the Jews were cut off.
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They were like dead branches on the
tree, not producing any fruit, not
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really being connected visually. Sure they're
there on the tree, but obviously not
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a part of it too. And
and to them God's wrath and severity is
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known, he says in Verse Twenty
Two. Note it, pay attention to
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it, note the severity and the
kindness of God, severity to those who
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have fallen. Jesus talks about this. When those that do those that do
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not believe and do not produce forth
the fruit of righteousness that comes from faith,
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what happens? The branches are broken
off and thrown into the fire.
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They're burned. But what happens to
those who do have faith? Remarkably,
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he says that even those that do
have faith, that are apart from the
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Olive Tree, are grafted in,
that are brought into the whole. There
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is this great necessity of being connected
to that route, not just in an
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external way, but vitally in one's
life. That is what it means to
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belong to God. It what it
means, what it means to belong to
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him and to live in him.
Well, this is the analogy he gives
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and this is the point he makes. But on the basis of this point
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he has this very specific application and
he directs it to a particular group of
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people gentiles, he says in verse
thirteen. Now I am speaking to you
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gentiles. Couldn't get much more clear. Right there he is preaching, so
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to speak, in his letters and
he says now I want to talk to
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some of you in the church,
gentiles, and he says something to them.
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He says it's several times, in
several ways. He says don't be
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arrogant, don't be arrogant, don't
be proud, don't be boastful, don't
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think of yourself more highly than you
want to. Arrogance, being prideful is
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a bad thing. It's a Anti
Gospel kind of thing. You know what
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arrogance is. You've experienced it,
you've demonstrated it and you've seen it.
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Arrogance is that quality that a person
has when they puff themselves up but have
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really no basis for doing that.
I'm perhaps you've seen a person who's a
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complete completely socially awkward in every way, and yet wants to lecture everyone else
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on etiquette, or maybe someone at
work who brags about all the things they've
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done but can't accomplish the most simple
tasks. A lot of times we overlook
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arrogance, or at least we deal
with it when a person is at least
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somewhat skilled or a good leader and
we say well, we don't like it,
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but the last they're getting the job
done. Right. But the worst
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cases are where that arrogance in the
most extreme way doesn't correspond at all to
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any kind of reality. Right.
Well, the worst kind of arrogance of
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all is Christian arrogance. The worst
arrogant of all is an arrogant Christian.
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I hope you'll really understand what I
mean by that and believe that by the
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time we get to the end,
it's a bad thing, a nonsensical thing,
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to be prideful as a Christian.
But we can, if we draw
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that circle of arrogant Christians, we
can take even make an even smaller and
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a sort of worse circle within that, and that's people, not only Christians
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that are arrogant, but you know
what the worst is, Christians who are
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arrogant about being a Christian. Then, in particular, just goes against everything
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that the Gospel says what it means
to belong to Christ so how does Paul
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Address this issue? He dresses it
in several ways, three ways in particular.
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But if you'll I think we'll understand
them best if we understand something of,
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just a little bit of the background
that's going on in this church.
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Use perhaps have assumed it already a
little bit. When Paul speaks to these
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gentiles, you notice that he's singling
someone out, and that's because the church
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is mixed. There are Jews who
have converted or who have come into the
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full, as you might think of
it, into Christianity, of put their
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faith in Jesus, but they're also
gentiles who have come out of paganism and
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if put their faith in Jesus,
you have this mixed body there in Rome.
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It might be helpful for you to
understand not only this passage and the
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arrogance that these gentiles were experiencing or
were doing, and really a lot of
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this section in Romans, if you
understand and remember this one thing, that
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one of the most difficult theological and
practical issues in the New Testament church was
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the mixture of Jews and gentiles.
Over and over and over again, throughout
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the letters of the New Testament,
throughout the book of acts, you see
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this issue coming up again and again
and again and again. How are gentiles
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who have never been a part of
the Jewish people who didn't have the glory
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and the covenants and the worship and
the law and all the rest. How
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are they to be a part of
the family of God? How are we
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to understand them as children of Abraham? Or, to put it more personally,
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how are we to understand people like
you and me, non Jewish people,
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in connection with the Church of God
as it is existed for thousands of
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years? How do you work that
out? And how do you work it
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out as a Jew? All of
this history and all of this culture and
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all of this revelation in light of
Jesus Christ? What is the church now?
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How does it work? How does
it function? What are we to
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believe? These were very serious issues, but sometimes issues in the church are
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complicated by issues in the culture,
and this is probably what happened in Rome.
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Interestingly, in Rome we don't really
know how the church there got started.
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Other churches in the New Testament,
we know that Paul went and planted
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them or other people went to these
particular cities and established them there. In
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Rome were not so sure. There
are some ancient sources that point to Peter
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or point to Peter and Paul,
but they are not all that ancient.
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Compared with the old, with the
New Testament. And on top of that,
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both Peter and Paul's lives, is
what we know about them, don't
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really fit with that account. The
Bible itself doesn't say anything about that.
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So one possible scenario, and maybe
the most likely scenario, is that the
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Roman church started at pentecost when Roman
Jews came to Jerusalem for the celebration,
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heard Peter's Preaching and then went back
home as Christians, as people believing in
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the Messiah and telling others about him. And you can see from that how
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the Church would have grown. First
among the Jews, among the synagogues,
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and there and then also is gentiles
are included more and more. But we
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know from history, both from the
Bible and from Roman sources, that this
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became somewhat of a public controversy in
Rome among the Jews. In a biography
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about claw Audius, we read that
the was a that the Jews there was
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so much public fighting at the instigation
of Chrestus, likely a corruption of the
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name Christ, that Claudius says to
the Jews in Rome you're all out of
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here. To me it sounds a
lot like when a parent here's two people,
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or are two of their children,
arguing back and forth, back and
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forth, and your kind of hearing
them from another room. Right, you
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don't really know what's going on,
you don't really know who's right or wrong,
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but you just sick of the whole
thing and you say all of you
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to your room. I don't care
who's right and who's wrong, I just
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want you all gone. Well,
this is what Claudius does. He doesn't
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say well, let's find out who
are the Christians and who are not at
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all this. He just kicks all
of Jews out of Rome. Now I
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want you to imagine that. I
want you to imagine being in a church,
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a Roman church, that's mixed with
Jews and gentiles, probably mostly Jews,
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and now all of a sudden,
let's think of ourselves here. Let's
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imagine a large portion all of a
sudden next Sunday doesn't show up. Why?
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Well, we all know the reason. They had to pack up their
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belongings and leave. Their houses are
empty, they're gone. There are another
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parts of the world and here we
are sitting, a few gentiles left in
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the church with all of these others
gone. You See why? I see
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I could say I'm why I'm saying
this is a very complicat hated situation.
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But by the time Paul's writing this
letter, these people have come back in.
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But the gentiles have been in charge
for a while now. In a
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lot of ways, the gentiles had
had a lot of privilege, and this
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I hope. I'm trying to bring
us around full circle, and you can
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see why arrogance might have become a
particular problem. The gentiles are the newly
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privileged in the church. God has
reached out into the world and brought them
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in. You can see why the
gentiles might have unfairly characterized. The Jews
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is squabbling all the time about things. Why don't they just believe in Jesus
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like we do? Not only had
they been privileged by God and being brought
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into the church, but now they're
privileged by their own government as well.
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And now, by the time the
Jews returned, there likely the people who
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are leading the church, who have
been running things for a while. And
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as the Jews come back and return
and as that the gentiles who have been
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in charge, you can see why
there might have been some arrogance on their
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part. But we're in all this. Did the gentiles really have anything to
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Brag about? was their privilege a
result of their working to the top through
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their righteousness? This surely wasn't the
perspective of Claudius. He didn't expel the
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Jews because it's the gentiles were so
great. They were just Romans, so
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we let him stay. It wasn't
because of their devotion to Christ that they
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were spared. And from God's perspective, the gentiles weren't being rewarded because of
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their great obedience. Paul tells us
about them back in the early parts of
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Romans. What does he say?
He says that they exchange the glory of
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God for images of creeping things,
animals. It's nothing to be proud about.
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They if the gentiles were some were
people who had given themselves over to
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some of the basest and most immoral
acts. The gentiles did have anything to
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be proud of in their new positions
in the church. So Paul speaks to
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them. He speaks to them and
of course to the Jews who are overhearing
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him, and he says gentiles don't
be air against, and he gives three
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reasons for this. The first reason
is a point about their status in God's
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eyes. If I might put it
this way. God's not a hyper egalitarian.
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God privileges some people and not others. You know this. There are
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superiors and inferiors, there are people
who are rich and there are people who
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are not. They're people who have
nice things and people who don't, and
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God is sovereign over all of these
things. God's goal in his eternal life
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is not to make us all exactly
the same as everyone else. That's not
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his goal. God does what he
does according to his most perfect wisdom and
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his absolute sovereignty, and this doesn't
make him unjust because we're all sinners and
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worthy of his condemnation in his wrath, but in His grace and in His
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mercy, he has looked on some
people and some families in the world and
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blessed them, in particular Abraham and
his children. Out of the world.
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He set his eye on this family
and he made promises to them and he
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gave them gifts and he treated this
people, this family and eventually this nation,
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as his own son. He didn't
do this with others. What's the
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analogy? Paul gives in Romans Eleven, a cultivated olive tree. That's what
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Israel was like when I grew up, we had an olive tree in our
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front yard, a cultivated olive tree. It was cultivated by me and my
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dad. I would go out and
cut the little suckers off the bottom.
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That was my job, as they
would spring up every soul often I'd go
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out and my dad would give me
a pair of clippers and cut them off,
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cut them off the roots as they'd
Spring Up, and my dad would,
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of course, take care of the
big branches and it was beautiful and
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over the years it's become more and
more beautiful. It keeps growing and growing
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and growing and it gets stronger and
bigger. The roots of that cool gnarly
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thing that all of trees do,
and it's really a wonderful thing. It's
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kind of the at my parents home. It's a centerpiece of the yard.
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It's surrounded by gardens and other trees, but it's the thing that you see
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when you drive up to the house. It is a cultivated thing. The
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gentiles were not that tree. That
was Israel. Israel, with those the
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one that God was pruning and caring
for in this merciful and gracious and tender
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way. What were the gentiles?
You Gentiles, who are you? Your
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Secondary. Paul is saying you are
not the cultivated all of tree. You
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are a wild olive branch growing off
in the alley somewhere, not producing fruit,
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not being cared for, not in
this way anyway. That's what he
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says to the gentiles. It's kind
of humbling. He doesn't say you're all
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wonderful and equal in God's eyes.
Of course that's true in some ways,
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but that's not what he's saying here. He's humbling us. He's saying there's
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a cultivated tree that I've been working
on for a long time, and you're
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not it. You're not it.
You are a wild alive shoot going off
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doing your own thing. Paul compares
the gentiles to branches from some other tree,
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a wild tree, a tree of
secondary importance, a tree that did
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what it's pleat what it pleased and
likely provided very little fruit. God could,
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of course, just let it alone
and do what it was going to
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do. But instead, what did
he do with that? He took off
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those wild branches and he grafted them
on to his tree, his special tree,
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his front yard tree. He went
and took something out of the alley
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and brought it in before his eyes. That's who we are as gentiles.
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If anyone has room for pride,
it's Israel, not gentiles like us.
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We don't have a right to be
arrogant, even if there is a current
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prominence and number in the church.
So that's his first point. He points
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to our origin. In the second
point, Paul humbles us by saying consider
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the source of your life. The
reason they belong to the church, the
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reason gentiles like us belong to the
church, along with the other branches of
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this great family tree, is because
we all share a connection with the root.
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As he says, we share in
the nourishing root. Ultimately, this
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root is Christ we belong together with
the Jews. We live together with them
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as one family of God, because
we share the same nourishing sap, the
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same life, as all the minerals
and nutrients are pulled up into the tree.
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We live because of our connection with
the root. This point should humble
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even the most prideful Christians. Life
in God, which brings forth godly fruit,
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only happens when one is living in
God, and the Bible tells us
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that that that that's only possible through
faith. What is faith? What does
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faith actually look like? Apart from
the analogy of the Olive Tree. What
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does it look like in our lives? Well, faith is receiving and resting
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in the salvation of God that is
offered to us in Jesus. Faith is
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believing, it's praying, it's trusting. Think about pride. Pride does the
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opposite. Pride stands alone. Pride
doesn't trust God. Pride does it pray
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to God. Pride doesn't repent of
its sins, because, while I haven't
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done anything wrong, pride doesn't seek
after God in his word. Pride stands
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on its own. And what happens
to a branch that stands on its own?
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It dies. A branch that says
I no longer want to be connected
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to the root, it dies.
That's what happens when we shut off the
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veins of faith. But what does
faith do? Faith takes the ligaments of
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the branch and it wraps it into
the tree. It grabs the tree,
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it pulls that sap up from the
root. Faith is knowing and acting in
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connection with the tree, knowing that, apart from that connection, I'm dead.
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Faith lives its entire life knowing that, apart from Jesus, we're gone,
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we shrivel up, we die,
we become prosperone to disease and attack
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and parasites and all the rest.
We don't produce the fruit of godliness,
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we don't live at all. Well, if our life is lived only in
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connection to the root, then you
see the point. How can you be
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arrogant about your life and yourself?
How can you say what a great Wal
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Ailed Olive Shoot Tom I? You
can't. You have to believe not in
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yourself but in Jesus, because that's
where our life is from, and that's
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what Paul is reminding us of.
This is why he says don't be arrogant.
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Your life is not in yourself,
it's in the root. Well,
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these first two points are very humbling
and perhaps encouraging to you as well.
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The last one is especially encouraging because
it's so hopeful. The last Paul Reason
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Paul gives to strike a some blows
against our arrogance is he talks about the
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great advantages of US coming in and
being grafted into this tree. He puts
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it in this way. Rather than
despise the Jews or Lord it over them
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or mock them for their Jewishness or
their lack of faith, he calls us
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to seek unitity with them, to
pray for them, to long for their
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salvation, even as Paul has.
Why? Here's the reason. Because it's
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to your own benefit. How's that? For a reason? Don't be arrogant,
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because in humbling yourself and desiring to
be with them, in a part
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of them, it's to your her
own benefit. Where does Paul say this?
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Well, it's an implicit it's implicit
from what he says in the beginning
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of the passage I read. He
says in verse thirteen, he says,
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I am an apostle to the gentiles. I magnify my ministry in order somehow
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to make my fellow Jews Jealous and
thus save some of them. You See,
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that's Paul's goal. He magnifies his
ministry in going out to the gentiles
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in order to bring the Jews in. That's his goal. He wants he
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wants everything. He wants everything.
He wants Jewish Salvation, he wants gentile
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salvation, and that's why he's proud
to be an apostle to the gentiles.
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That's why he magnifies it, so
that the Jews would be jealous and he
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would be saved. And here's where
he gets to the particular benefit to the
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gentiles. In Verse Fifteen, he
makes this argument from the lesser to the
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greater. If their rejection means the
reconciliation of the world, in other words,
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if the stumbling of the Jews and
God's passing over them to go out
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to the gentiles means that the gentiles
are brought in, in other words,
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if the rejection of the Jews means
that all these other people are reconciled to
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God. You gentiles, what will
their it acceptance mean? But life from
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the dead? If their rejection meant
this really great thing, can you even
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imagine what their acceptance will mean?
He says life from the dead. You
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know what he's talking about there.
He's talking about the resurrection. In other
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words, Paul is putting the in
gathering of the Jews in connection with these
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at last, with with this,
with the resurrection of the dead itself.
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I can't explain to you all the
details of this, but this is what
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he says. He says that we, as the Jews, are gathered in
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in this way, you can begin
to expect the coming of Jesus, the
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resurrection of the dead. This is
an amazing thing, and you see why
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he's saying, don't be arrogant,
gentiles, it's to your benefit. If
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their rejection meant this, how much
more their acceptance? It means the Lord
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is coming, it means people will
rise from the dead, it means the
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Kingdom of God is really, really
at hand. He says a similar thing
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in verse twelve, which I didn't
read this morning. I'll read it to
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you now. He says, now, if their trespass means riches for the
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world and if their failure means riches
for the gentiles, how much more will
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their full in inclusion be? You
see, Paul's anticipating a time when the
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gentiles, or I'm sorry, the
Jews, will be grafted back in,
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when they will be brought these formerly
dead branches that didn't believe will be brought
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back in, connected to the tree, and we will live as this great
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family of God, and he sang
to us as gentiles, pray for that,
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look forward to that, instead of
standing over the Jews and saying maybe
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you guys are fools and stupid and
I can't believe you've done all these things,
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embrace them. Look forward to this, because it's to your benefit.
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If their failure means riches for us. How much more will their full inclusion
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be? You see what he's saying. Saying, can you even imagine?
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So what does arrogance to? Arrogance
goes against that. Arrogance in a way
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seeks to cut off blessing, cut
off riches, keep branches that are meant
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to be grafted in away. What? It doesn't make any sense. It's
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all contrary to everything God has given
to us, the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
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the good news that by His grace
we can be saved from our sins,
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that through faith in Jesus, who
is freely offered to us, we
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can be included in the family of
God and all the blessings that have been
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promised to Abraham and his children.
We say that's me because I'm adopted,
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I belong to that family. So
do we have any room for arrogance and
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all of that? Of course not, of course not. And, brothers
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and sisters, I think that if
we spend a little time thinking about this,
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we can expand the applications of this
arrogance well beyond Jewish and gentile relations
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in the church. We think about
other ways in which we show partiality.
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Money, doctrine, privilege, upbringing
all kinds of things. There's so many
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ways in which we have these arrogant
attitudes that go so contrary to the gospel
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of God. So what do we
do with that? What do we do
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with the conviction in our hearts that, yes, we are prideful and we
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have been prideful? We repent.
It's as simple and wonderful and beautiful as
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that. We go before the God
of grace who brought us into this family,
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and we go to him again and
we pull up that sad up.
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We feel ourselves yet even more in
connection with the root, with Jesus Christ.
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He promises us that in him we
live and that when our faith is
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truly in him, we will never
be broken off. Never that in Jesus
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Christ, when God unites us to
that truly and by faith, we're connected
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forever. If you believe that,
which I call you to believe that,
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because, as I said at the
beginning, faith is necessary, then repent
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in that way, go to Jesus, your God and your savior, and
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trust him and hope in him and
ask him to forgive your sins and produce
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and you not arrogance but humility and
love. And when that kind of fruit
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begins to appear on your branches,
you'll sing glory to God because you'll know
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the life that is in him is
being produced in you, and all the
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world will see and know what God
has done. So let's pray for that.
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Let's repent of our pride and as
that God would bring us to life
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in him. Let's pray
