Romans 11:16-24 Ours To Do: Be in God's Mercies

The Text

Romans 11:16-24 (CSB)
¹⁶ Now if the firstfruits are holy, so is the whole batch. And if the root is holy, so are the branches.

¹⁷ Now if some of the branches were broken off, and you, though a wild olive branch, were grafted in among them and have come to share in the rich root of the cultivated olive tree,

¹⁸ do not boast that you are better than those branches. But if you do boast—you do not sustain the root, but the root sustains you.

¹⁹ Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.”

²⁰ True enough; they were broken off because of unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but beware,

²¹ because if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

²² Therefore, consider God’s kindness and severity: severity toward those who have fallen but God’s kindness toward you—if you remain in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.

²³ And even they, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in, because God has the power to graft them in again.

²⁴ For if you were cut off from your native wild olive tree and against nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these—the natural branches—be grafted into their own olive tree?

The Introduction

¹⁶ Now if the firstfruits are holy, so is the whole batch. And if the root is holy, so are the branches.

Be In God's Mercy! He Is Holy

Right out the gate, starting off with this passage, in verse 16, we get to see where God is coming from. I use this verse to set the stage a verse coming up--where, out of context, if you did not have verse 16 or the rest of Romans 11 or the rest of the Bible, you swore that you could lose your salvation if you messed up.

One, if you and I could lose our salvation, you and I would have already done so. We sin continuously. And that might trigger one of two responses. One, "I didn't do anything bad all week." Two, "I remember what Christ said--it is a matter of the heart--and that I know my heart is not always pure." This is why we as a people gather together in church to confess our sins together and then hear, sit under, receive the assurance of pardon and the gospel of the Almighty God that has done everything perfectly in his Son to save you from yours sins and adopted into his family.

We start off this passage with essentially Paul expositing Peter or Peter expositing Paul and both are expositing Leviticus:

1 Peter 1:15-16 (CSB) But as the one who called you is holy, you also are to be holy in all your conduct; for it is written, Be holy, because I am holy.

Right off the bat, let us remind ourselves that no one is auto-saved from birth. We must be born again. To lest we are confused because of certain end-times theologies, entire nations are not saved by God. For:

Romans 11:4–8 (CSB)
⁴ But what was God’s answer to him? I have left seven thousand for myself who have not bowed down to Baal.

⁵ In the same way, then, there is also at the present time a remnant chosen by grace.

⁶ Now if by grace, then it is not by works; otherwise grace ceases to be grace.

⁷ What then? Israel did not find what it was looking for, but the elect did find it. The rest were hardened,

⁸ as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that cannot see and ears that cannot hear, to this day.

There is no alternative plan of salvation. For:

Acts 4:12 (CSB) There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”

Case in point, 7000 is not the entire nation of Israel but a very small percentages. God does not work in fairness: it is not "all nations must have x percentage in order to be fair." No! The only percentage that God deals with is 100%. 100% of his people--the elect, a chosen race, a royal priesthood before the foundation of the earth was laid--are saved by him. And that has been perfectly done. How do we know? He sent his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to live and die for us so we would be saved. It is a done deal. That's the gospel. End of sermon. Everybody go home.

¹⁷ Now if some of the branches were broken off, and you, though a wild olive branch, were grafted in among them and have come to share in the rich root of the cultivated olive tree,

Now from that remnant, let us examine what God was working with when it came to saving his people. God is letting in just how the Revelation of Jesus Christ works out:

Revelation 5:9–10 (CSB) And they sang a new song: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slaughtered, and you purchased people for God by your blood from every tribe and language and people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign on the earth.

With what does he start working with?

Be In God's Mercy! We Are A Wild Bunch

We can trace the lineage of Christ in Matthew 1 and Luke 3. From Matthew 1 starting in Genesis 12, we see how the lineage of the Jewish people--this accounts starts with Abraham, whom Paul in Galatians 3 calls, our father in the faith. ¹

But what about the Gentiles as a whole?

Like the lineage of Christ, we all start with Adam. But then trace all the way down to Abraham. Yes, remember Abraham was not Jewish but a Chaldeans. Remember in Genesis 11-12, God calls this Chaldean out of his town of Ur in Chaldea.

We see from Abraham, he begets Ishmael. The modern day Arabians can and do trace their lineage back to Abraham via Ishmael. That is one nation.

From there, you see, through the lineage from Abraham, you see Reuel and his daughter Zipporah who becomes Moses wife. Grafted in. You see Rahab a Gentile prostitute, who by faith, protected Joshua and Caleb. Grafted in. She marries Salmon and bore a son name Boaz. Boaz' kin, Naomi, after losing her husbands and sons, comes back to Israel with a Moabite daughter-in-law named Ruth. Boaz meets her, falls in love, and marries her. Ruth the Gentile, grafted in.

Are you seeing a pattern?

Whatever God was going to do--namely fulfill his own promises starting with his covenant to mankind that he will crush the head of the serpent--was indeed going to be through the Israelites. But it is only by faith that you are a people of God.

Galatians 3:6-7 (CSB) just like Abraham who believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness? You know, then, that those who have faith, these are Abraham’s sons.

When we say "people of God", the Bible talks about two things.

1. People of God - the nation of Israel; Israelites descended from Abraham through Isaac then Jacob. Jewish people.
2. People of God - the elect, the chosen priesthood, saved by God through Christ alone

In other words, he will use the nation of Israel to set the foundation and foreshadow and prophesy to the world on how he will have those who were not his people, his people and he shall be their God.

Not all the nation of Israel is elect. Some are. Not all the nation of the United States is elect. Some are.

Since we have fully established the salvation of God in his people, let us talk about our God.

Our God

¹⁸ do not boast that you are better than those branches. But if you do boast—you do not sustain the root, but the root sustains you.

Be In God's Mercy! We Need Something Outside of Ourselves

It does not matter if you are Jew or Gentile when it comes to the salvation. Your faith is not born within you. For:

Romans 10:17 (CSB) So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.

If you think you can boast in the fact you heard the gospel, think again.

Ephesians 2:8-9 (CSB) For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast.

What is God's gift? Salvation? Grace? Faith? The answer is yes. The answer is D. All of the above. How do you know that gift actually refers to Faith along with Grace and Salvation. Look at the middle of the passage:

this is not from yourselves

And

not from works, so that no one can boast

Case closed.

That faith came about the moment the Father, by the power of the Spirit, through the perfect of Christ, gave you a new heart, his Spirit, renewed mind, complete transformation from the inside out. You were born again, truly alive by God. That is the moment you had faith.

Faith is not a power within yourself but rather, a wholly gracious gift from God.

Moreso, it is not your faith that sustains you. Your faith might ebb and wane with the storms and calm seas. It is the author and finisher of that faith that sustains you. He is the root of this tree of life that both Jews and Gentiles are grafted in. His name is Jesus Christ.

Break the branches off? Christ is still our All-in-all.

¹⁷ Now if some of the branches were broken off, and you, though a wild olive branch, were grafted in among them and have come to share in the rich root of the cultivated olive tree,

Be In God's Mercy! We Are Not Born Into It

John 1:12–13 (CSB) But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

1 John 5:1 (CSB) Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of him.

John 3:3 (CSB) Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Matthew 6:33 (CSB) But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.

Here are some colossal big facts:

• Your time, place, race, natural origin does not save you (although we are placed in certain places and times by God so that we might seek him--Acts 17:26-27)
• Your parents don't make you saved
• Your home does not make you saved
• Your church nor your pastor does not make your saved

It would be presumptuous, foolhardy, and prideful to think such things. That is exactly why Paul is writing this letter to us: we can only boast in nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. For:

1 Corinthians 1:30–2:5 (CSB)
³⁰ It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption

³¹ —in order that, as it is written: Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.

¹ When I came to you, brothers and sisters, announcing the mystery of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom.

² I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

³ I came to you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.

⁴ My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,

⁵ so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.

Nothing in us could have chosen God. What we usually see is that the most depraved, most wicked, brought up in the most sin-filled home and everything about that person's life would suggest they are far, far away from the salvation God.

To which God would aptly and rightly respond:

Isaiah 50:2a (CSB) Why was no one there when I came? Why was there no one to answer when I called? Is my arm too weak to redeem? Or do I have no power to rescue?

This answer is rhetoric. Only my God is mighty to save! He rejoices in rescuing the wicked. He delights in healing the ones who are sick in heart. He sings when the most depraved turn to him. He is the source of all good. He is the source of love. He alone is holy holy holy. There is no other way we are going to be saved other than the Lord Jesus. God will not reject you if you come to him and ask for him.

I have the only guarantee in life: Ask the Father, and he will give you his Spirit. Fall into the arms of the Almighty Savior--take all of your sins, yes, even you most heinous and wicked and depraved sins, the ones who cannot share nor will ever share with a living soul forever and placed those sins upon his Son and you will get instant relief, instant righteousness, the fullness of joy and pleasures ever more.

You say, "what if I sin?" But our Great God is infinite! The earth is filled with his glory. His love is steadfast, his daily renewed mercies never come to an end and his grace is so thick they can only be described as grace upon grace.

Does God run out of those things? For his people, never! For the ones whom he sent his Son, Jesus, to live and die? Never!

Have you sinned? Yes. Did you sin today? Yes. Will you sin again? Absolutely yes. Our sins run deep but Christ is deeper still. ²

For:

Romans 5:20b (CSB) The law came along to multiply the trespass. But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more

You need to praise our God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

The Gospel

^18-19 do not boast that you are better than those branches. But if you do boast—you do not sustain the root, but the root sustains you. Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.”

Be In God's Mercy! Your Works Did Not Save You But God

The sick and diseased of sin? God delights in saving them.

What about the prideful? The self-righteous? The ones that just assume they are in Christ but they are on their way to hell?

Whatever you think you have done to get you in good standing with God? Trash it. Because that is what God does:

Isaiah 64:6 (CSB) All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment; all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.

Whatever you have done to be saved by God doesn't work anyways. Why don't you put away your foolishness? Your disobedience? For:

Titus 3:3 (CSB) For we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another.

Romans 8 aptly states that without the Spirit, we have the spirit of slavery that imprisons us into our own passions, lusts, hate, and envy.

But what does God do?

Titus 3:4-5 But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us—not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy—through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

The Triune God must save you. Father, Son, and Spirit works together in love to bring you into their family of love.

No one earns their way into a family that you were born in. If you do, you are in a wicked family.

God's family is good. He born you again. You are a brand new creature. You are now born again. You are a baby in the family of God. What? Does a baby earn their keep? Earns their food? Earns their clothes? Their security, warmth, goodness, and love? That is preposterous! So too is the family of God! If babies cannot earn their way into their family, so too is it with born again sons and daughters of the Most High!

^20-21 True enough; they were broken off because of unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but beware, because if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

Be In God's Mercy! God Will Not Lose His Children

For:

John 10:27–30 (CSB) My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

So what is Paul saying here? Does he dare contradict the Apostle John?

The world wants you to think that. But what have we established at the beginning of this chapter? It is here, in verses 20-21, that God is speaking about the nation of Israel as a people group--the natural branch.

Remember:

Romans 11:7 (CSB) What then? Israel did not find what it was looking for, but the elect did find it. The rest were hardened,

The elect of God can never be broken off. They are in the family of God by the decree of God by faith in God.

Unbelief keeps you under the wrath of Jesus Christ:

John 3:36 (CSB) The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who rejects the Son will not see life; instead, the wrath of God remains on him.

The rest were hardened.

And.

^20-21 True enough; they were broken off because of unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but beware, because if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

Brother and sisters, we have seen the nation of Israel, the tiniest nation whom God choose to fulfill his promises through, seen their hearts harden and likewise, God did not spare the natural branch.

Our faith is not through the branch of Israel. Our faith is in Christ, who is the root of the tree of life!

If you are Jewish and reading this, you can get grafted into Christ. How? Repent and believe! Ask God for God you will get God!

If you are not Jewish and reading this, you can get grafted into Christ. How? Repent and believe! Ask God for God you will get God!

All who have called upon the name of the Lord shall be saved!

Our Response

²² Therefore, consider God’s kindness and severity: severity toward those who have fallen but God’s kindness toward you—if you remain in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.

Be In God's Mercy! Nations Are Not Above Getting Cut

We are here to not to transform culture. We are here to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

We are in this world but not of this world because our God is not of this world.

John 17:16 (CSB) They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

We are always between two worlds. We are aliens just like our fathers were.

1 Chronicles 29:15 (CSB) For we are aliens and temporary residents in your presence as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.

Leviticus 25:23 (CSB) “The land is not to be permanently sold because it is mine, and you are only aliens and temporary residents on my land.

Hebrews 11:13 (CSB) These all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth.

1 Peter 2:11-12 (CSB) Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they slander you as evildoers, they will observe your good works and will glorify God on the day he visits.

Nations are not here to be saved and glorified. It is that every people group from every nation and tribe and tongue, not nations wholesale.

Our active witness will change the world around us--if God deems it so. What is primary is that your neighbor or co-worker or your child or your parent or your ex-spouse knows the living God. Perhaps the culture be changed in that.

But perhaps the nation will keep descending just like the nation of Israel. They ended up in complete captivity ruled by the greatest empire that the world has ever seen: the Roman Empire. Christ was born in the midst of that empire--that he setup--and 300 years later, he folded it because he alone is King of kings.

Nations wage war. People groups are birth and then go extinct. But God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And the people of God is the only constant on this earth. We will be preserved because we are precious in his sight.

^23-24 And even they, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in, because God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut off from your native wild olive tree and against nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these—the natural branches—be grafted into their own olive tree?

Be In God's Mercy! You Are In God!

Remember, we are not vessels of destruction! He has not harden our hearts. Our judgment is not final because why? We still breath his air.

Romans 9:23 (CSB) And what if he did this to make known the riches of his glory on objects of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory—on us, the ones he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?

The same grace that was extended to Jacob was extended to Esau. The same mercy that was given to Moses was available everyday for Pharaoh. The same steadfast love for the sons of the living God are widely available to the Gentile and Jew alike.

We saw in the Bible and in our history that God has cut the natural branch and because "he has compassion on whom he has compassion" has grafted in the wild branch.

The great pruner, the gardener of our souls, would love nothing more to graft in the Jews. There way in is the only way in: Jesus Christ our Lord.