Please turn in your Bibles this morning to Romans chapter 11 as we continue our in-depth study of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. This morning we will finish up Romans chapter 11 as we continue to look at ISRAEL’S FUTURE RESTORATION back to God. This is not something that might happen, the Jews will turn back to God as we have seen and this will take place at the end of the Tribulation Period. That is not to say that Jewish people today are not coming to Jesus as their Lord and Savior, they are and they become part of the Bride of Christ, which is made up of Jews and Gentiles. But the nation as a whole will not turn to Jesus until the end of the Tribulation Period.
Now some may wonder why this is important or if it is important at all! It truly is because in Romans chapters 9 through 11 Paul deals with the subject of election and he uses the Jewish people to make his point. You see, God’s promises to the Jewish people will come to pass as Paul said in Romans 11:25-27, “For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.’”
Thus, because God’s promises to Israel have not failed, we can be assured that His promises to us will not fail. If God has elected us, rest assured, that will not change, it will never change. Now you may not feel like the elect of God today, maybe Jesus is not your Lord and Savior. The way to change that is by receiving Jesus Christ into your life as Lord and Savior and you will be saved, you are then the elect of God! If you reject Jesus then God has not elected you for Hell, He has not predestined you to Hell, but that was your choice to go there. God has done everything possible to save you but YOU have rejected Him and He will not force you into Heaven!
This morning, as we finish up this chapter, Paul is going to focus on God and what He has done, is doing and will do. He is showing us that God is faithful and what God has promised us He is more than able to bring to pass. Before we get to our text this morning, listen to what James Montgomery Boice had to say in his commentary on the book of Romans. He wrote:
Do you remember the Greek philosopher Heraclitus? He lived about 2,600 years ago in Ephesus, and it was he who said, “It is impossible to step into the same river twice.” Heraclitus meant that life is in a state of constant change. So, although you can step into a river once, step out, and then step in a second time, by the time you have stepped back in the water has flowed on and the river is no longer the same. It is a different river. To Heraclitus and the Greeks who followed him, all of life seemed to be like that—as if everything is changing and it is changing all the time.
“But if that is so,” Heraclitus asked, “how is it that things are not in a state of constant chaos?” He answered that life is not chaos because the change we see is an ordered change, and the reason it is ordered and not random is that the mind, reason, or order of God stands behind it.
To the Greek philosophers, God (or reason) was the only fixed point in an otherwise chaotic universe.
Heraclitus was not a Christian, of course. He lived well before the time of Jesus Christ. But if Heraclitus had lived six or seven hundred years later and had been given an opportunity to read Paul’s letter to the Romans, he would have understood our text easily. For what Paul is saying in the closing lines of Romans 11 is that the character and, therefore, also the plans of God do not change, regardless of the way human beings alter or behave.
Anyone who has been studying Romans 11 carefully will be aware that verses 28–32 are a summary of what Paul has been at pains to prove earlier. He has been asking why Jewish people seem to have been rejected by God, why they have turned their backs on the Messiah, and he has answered that it has been for the sake of Gentile conversions. Using the image of a cultivated olive tree and branches from a wild tree, he argued that Jewish branches have been broken off so that wild branches, which represent Gentiles, might be grafted in. Jewish people have been set aside for a time so that salvation might be extended to all the many peoples of the world.
But this setting-aside is only temporary, for once “the full number of the Gentiles has come in . . . all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:25–26). That is, there will be a time of widespread Jewish conversions before the final judgment.
- James Montgomery Boice, Romans Volume 3, pp. 1391-1392
With that said, let’s begin reading in Romans chapter 11, starting in verse 28 and see what the Lord has for us as we study His Word.
As Paul concludes this chapter he is showing us that God’s gifts, God’s calling are certain. And he will use the Jewish people to make his point. So with the remainder of our time this morning, let’s break these verses down and see what the Lord has for us as we finish up this chapter here in Romans.
VERSES
28-29
Now this does not seem right. First of all Paul says that the Jews are enemies of the Gospel, they fought against it and they fought against those who believed in it. We can’t argue that point, for many did and still do today! But then it says that they are beloved by God for the sake of the fathers. How can that be? On one hand they are fighting against God and on the other hand God loves them and He bases this love on what He has promised to the fathers or Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Let me take you back to Genesis chapter
15 and this promise, this Covenant that God made with Abraham
and you will see what I mean. Let’s begin reading in Genesis
chapter 15 and to get the picture, we will read through this chapter,
so let’s start out with verse 1, which tells us, “After
these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying,
‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly
great reward.’ But Abram said, ‘Lord God, what will
You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is
Eliezer of Damascus?’ Then Abram said, ‘Look, You have
given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!’
And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘This
one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own
body shall be your heir.’ Then He brought him outside and
said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you
are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall
your descendants be.’ And he believed in the Lord, and He
accounted it to him for righteousness.
Then He said to him, ‘I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.’ And he said, ‘Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?’ So He said to him, ‘Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.’ Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. Then He said to Abram: ‘Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.’ And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates — the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’” Genesis 15:1-21.
This may seem strange to us but this is equivalent to our modern day contracts that are signed. They would cut these animals in two and then each party that was involved would walk through the middle of them, sealing the deal. And back then this covenant was serious, not like today. And as Abram obeyed the Lord he waited for God to appear and walk with him between these animals. And as he waited the vultures came and in the Scriptures birds are often symbolic of evil. Thus, as he waited for the Lord Satan and his demonic forces tried to discourage him with doubt and unbelief.
As Abram waits for the Lord, he falls asleep. Did the Lord put him to sleep or did he just fall asleep? We don’t know, I kind of lean towards Abram falling asleep, as we often do as we engage the enemy, we get tired of waiting for the Lord to do something and we drift off. Now, why did horror and great darkness come upon him? Maybe he felt the Lord was not coming, His promises to Abram would not come to pass and even in this sleep state, he is thinking about this, a nightmare you might say. And as this fear comes upon Abram, the Lord speaks to him. The Lord is there and even in the darkest times and especially in those times, may we not forget that!
The Lord does not start out with very comforting words. His descendents would be slaves in Egypt for 400 years; they were going to face this affliction! Not very encouraging words and thus, the Lord tells Abram that He will bring them back to this land of Canaan; the land of promise after the iniquity of the Amorites has been completed. God is gracious, He is merciful, and one day He would deal with the sin of these people and under the leadership of Joshua, as they entered the Promise Land, the Amorites will be defeated.
Not only will they come out of Egypt but also they will come out with great possessions, more than what they entered the land with! In Exodus 12:35-36 that is what we see take place as we are told, “Now the children of Israel had done according to the word of Moses, and they had asked from the Egyptians articles of silver, articles of gold, and clothing. And the LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they granted them what they requested. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.” Keep in mind that they were slaves in Egypt and they were being let go and yet, they plundered the Egyptians just as God said, not by might, the Egyptians gave it to them!
Now what is this smoking oven and burning torch all about? I believe this is speaking of the Shekinah glory or the presence of God as represented by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. We see that spoken of in Exodus 13:21-22. Thus, who walked through the midst of these animals? It was the LORD, YAHWEH! Where was Abram? He was still sleeping or at best groggy at this time. That tells me that this covenant that God gave to Abram and his descendents is a unilateral covenant or a one party covenant that is not based upon the faithfulness of Abram or his descendents but upon the faithfulness of God. Thus, I don’t care what this group or that group says regarding the Jews forfeiting their land. I don’t care what the Pope says or the Lutheran Church or whoever, God gave it to them not because they deserved it, but God made a covenant with them and He will keep it and He has and He will do so even in the Millennial Kingdom!
David Baron explains it like this, “According to the ancient Eastern manner of making a covenant, both the contracting parties passed through the divided pieces of the slain animals, thus symbolically attesting that they pledged their very lives to the fulfillment of the engagement they made (see Jer. 34:18, 19). Now in Genesis 15, God alone, whose presence was symbolized by the smoking furnace and lamp of fire, passed through the midst of the pieces of the slain animals, while Abram was simply a spectator of this wonderful exhibition of God’s free grace.” This signified that it was an unconditional covenant, dependent for fulfillment on God alone!
Folks, there is another covenant made by God alone for us. It is a unilateral covenant or a one party covenant that is based upon His faithfulness and not ours and that is our salvation! You see, our salvation is not based upon our good works, our efforts, but upon the finished work of Christ on the cross of Calvary! Just as Abram and his descendents didn’t deserve this land, neither do we deserve salvation, but God freely gives it to us in Christ! It is as Peter tells us in I Peter 1:3-5, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
You see, the nation of Israel was not chosen because of its goodness and thus, can it be rejected because of its sin? Absolutely not because God calls them, “the election” or that they are the elected of God and election does not mean merit, it speaks of grace, that it is based upon God and His faithfulness and not theirs! Remember what we are told in Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” So what God has said will come to pass and this should comfort our hearts because just as God will not give up on Israel, He will not give up on us! You see, God will not take back His gifts given to them or to us. Once God has made an unconditional promise to us, He will never go back on it! And again, what a comfort that should be to us!
God showed the Gentiles mercy when they were disobedient to Him and through the disobedience of Israel they were saved. Now, as God has used the disobedience for good for the Gentiles, He can also use the mercy He has shown the Gentiles and bestow it upon Israel. The thing is, if you truly admit it, we all have come from disobedience, both Jew and Gentile, and have received the mercy of God, we did not get what we deserved – DEATH!
Now what is this aspect we call “mercy”? Mercy speaks of not getting something we deserve, which, as I have said, is death. Arthur W. Pink says, “Mercy . . . denotes the ready inclination of God to relieve the misery of fallen creatures.” A. W. Tozer says, “Mercy is . . . an infinite and inexhaustible energy within the divine nature which disposes God to be actively compassionate.”
Now to truly understand what mercy is all about we have to look at it with the background of sin in mind with all its blackness and ugliness! We don’t like to look at ourselves like that, as sinners but that is what Paul is saying here and not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. You see, in these three verses, verses 30-32 Paul speaks of mercy four times, which we like. But he also speaks of disobedience four times! So what is my point? Very simply, apart from disobedience mercy has no relevance or meaning. But, since we are all sinners separated from God, as we look at our lives with the background of sin, the blackness of sin, we see God’s wonderful mercy that He extends to us, not because we deserve it! Look at this bright light that bursts forth in the midst of sin, God’s great mercy. It is as Jeremiah tells us, “This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I hope in Him!’” Lamentations 3:21-24. Every day I wake up I start a new day with the Lord and His mercies that He extends to me are brand new, and I will need them and so will you!
And thus, Paul is saying that the mercy of God has been extended to all men, to both Jews and Gentiles and the Jews, who are living in rebellion against God right now, need that mercy of God so that they may be saved just as Gentiles do!
As we move into the concluding verses of Romans chapter 11 we see Paul make this concluding doxology or an expression of praise to God. Sometimes it can be a short hymn sung as part of a Christian worship service or as we see here in Paul’s letter, Paul has built up to this point where he just breaks forth in praise unto God for all He has done and is doing and will do. Paul is just standing in awe of God and all that He is. How many Christians do that today. How many Christians meditate on all God is, His character and-so-on? We have God’s Word, we see all that He is, yes, maybe in a mirror dimly, but we do see Him and yet, do we really stand in awe of Him? Once again, listen to what James Montgomery Boice had to say regarding this issue and then we will finish up with the doxology here in Romans chapter 11. We are told:
Earlier in this [last] century there was a wonderful Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor in Chicago whose name was A. W. Tozer. He wrote a number of outstanding books that I heartily commend to you, one of which is entitled The Knowledge of the Holy. Here is how Tozer saw the situation thirty years ago:
The church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.
This low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.
With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, “Be still, and know that I am God,” mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in this middle period of the twentieth century.
This loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the forces of religion are making dramatic gains and the churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several hundred years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are but losses spread over a wider field.
That is how Tozer saw the situation in his day. But who can suppose that the situation has improved over the last three decades? On the contrary, our addiction to television, entertainment, and the me-centered outlooks of our time has made the situation worse. And the really sad thing is that we are largely unaware of what has happened.
No people ever rise higher than their idea of God. Conversely, a loss of the sense of God’s high and awesome character always involves a loss of a people’s moral values and even what we commonly call “humanity.” We are startled by the utter disregard for human life that has overtaken large segments of the United States. But what do we expect to see when a country like ours openly turns its back on God? We deplore the breakdown of moral standards in the church, even among its most visible leaders. But what do we think should happen when we have focused our worship services on ourselves and our own, often trivial, needs rather than on God?
Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” ÿ But if the full truth be told, many of us hardly think about God at all.
- James Montgomery Boice, Romans Volume 3, pp. 1411-1412
Let’s just read through this doxology first and then we will break these verses down. Paul tells us, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?’ ‘Or who has first given to Him And it shall be repaid to him?’ For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.” You can just feel the climax that Paul reaches here as he speaks of the Lord. He is so excited, so thankful, so in awe he ends with a great big, not a little, AMEN! It is a word that means, “so be it” or “let it be.”
I believe that Paul is not just looking back over this chapter, but over the entire epistle or letter that he wrote the church in Rome so far. He wrote on the subject of CONDEMNATION and he showed us that the whole world is guilty before God. He showed how the unrighteous heathen was condemned by creation for creation testifies that there is a God! He showed how the self-righteous moralist is condemned by his conscience, for God has built into every person the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. He showed how the super religious person is condemned by the commandments of God because he can’t keep them perfectly. Thus, all are guilty before God; all have sinned and fallen short of His glory!
Once Paul has the whole world guilty before God, he then moves into a section called JUSTIFICATION and the focus here is that the righteousness of God has been revealed to us from Heaven apart from the works of the Law. That we do not work our way into Heaven but we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone!
Once we have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior Paul then speaks of the SANCTIFICATION process. That sin no longer controls our lives, that the Spirit of God that speaks to our spirit, which has been made alive again in Christ, controls us! The Law of sin and death has been superceded by the Law of the Spirit of life that is found in Jesus Christ! The Law of sin and death is still around for those that reject Jesus, but for those that have received Him as their Lord and Savior, the new law supercedes the old law and we have life in Christ as God’s Spirit is molding and shaping our lives into His image!
And as Paul finished up on the issue of SANCTIFICATION he moved on to where we are now at, ELECTION as he shows us that God chooses us and yet, we have a free will to accept the Lord or reject Him and He has used the Jews as examples of this idea of election. It is out of all this that God has done for us, that he breaks forth in this doxology or praise unto God. So let’s look at what Paul is saying here to help us so that we might stand in awe of God as Paul did!
I often think that I am pretty smart, that I am wise and then I watch Jeopardy and I see how wrong I was. I don’t even bother to watch teen Jeopardy because it is too disheartening to lose to someone who is in high school. Now, if I am having a hard time competing with the contestants on Jeopardy, what makes me think that I can fully understand God, to know all that He knows, to have His wisdom? You see, that is just foolish!
A. W. Tozer says this regarding God, “God has never learned from anyone.” You see, when I speak to God I am not letting Him in on something that He did not know. It is not that God finds things out, but He knows before we ever do them what we will do. He knows the beginning from the end! Indeed, says Tozer:
“God cannot learn. Could God at any time or in any manner receive into his mind knowledge that he did not possess and had not possessed from eternity, he would be imperfect and less than himself. To think of a God who must sit at the feet of a teacher, even though that teacher be an archangel or a seraph, is to think of someone other than the Most High God, maker of heaven and earth. . . .
God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell. …
Because God knows all things perfectly, he knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything, he is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their own good) does he seek information or ask questions.”
It is as Isaiah said, “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ says the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.’” Isaiah 55:8-9. Also, in Psalm 139:6 we are told, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot attain it.” God has a plan, and we might not fully understand it now, but because we know the character, the nature of God, that He is good and there is no darkness in Him at all, we can trust that He is doing what is best!
Truly think about this. Does it seem fair at what happens in this world? I can honestly say that it does not seem fair. The pain, the suffering that I not only see in this world, but in my own life! And I can waste a lot of time trying to figure out the how’s and why’s of God, like Job tried to do, or I can learn to trust in Him. You see, if God is good, and He is; if there is no darkness in Him at all, and there isn’t, then I can just learn to rest in that and walk accordingly!
God knows what is best and Arthur W. Pink reminds us, “He knows everything: everything possible, everything actual; all events, all creatures, of the past, the present, and the future.” You see, understanding that helps us to walk in His ways and not let Satan rip us off as he challenges the fairness of God and we listen to him instead of the Lord! Paul makes it very clear, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” Romans 11:33. May we not forget that!
Paul is quoting out of Isaiah 40:13 and Jeremiah 23:18 and he is again telling us, how can we as humans understand an infinite God? How can we as mere mortals give counsel to an all-knowing God? You see, it is just plain foolishness. Yes, God speaks to His children, those who have received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. That is what Paul tells us in I Corinthians 2:9-16, “But as it is written: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.’ But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”
Now in saying that, please understand that Paul is not saying that since we are Christians we know everything about God. What he is saying is that God has revealed to us what we need to know and there is no way we can know everything there is because God is all-knowing and I can’t remember where I put my car keys. Again, we see in a mirror, we see dimly now, but one day we will see Him fact-to-face as Paul reminds us in I Corinthians 13:12.
Also, God does not need a counselor; He does not need our help in situations giving Him advice in what to do. May we learn to sit back and wait upon the Lord and see the salvation that He will bring to a situation! And please understand that I am not saying just sit around and do nothing, but just walk in faith and He will lead you where to go and what to do. But please do not give God advice or try to be His counselor, we need Him and He doesn’t need us! You see, God is working out His perfect plan in our lives and He wants us to walk by faith and trust in Him!
What is Paul’s point here? Paul is saying that we have never done anything in this life to put God in a position that He owes us something. God does not have to pay us back for anything that we have done! Paul quotes out of Job 41:11 where Job has just spent some 30 chapters trying to figure out the how’s and why’s of God and finally God steps in and tells Job, “Were you there when I created all this?” and much more. And here in Job 41:11 the Lord tells Job that He owns everything, it is all His and thus, He is a debtor to no man! Thus, when we give to God we are just giving back to Him what was already His and He does not owe us anything back, but He freely gives back to us much more!
Mike Horton has written a book entitled Made in America: The Shaping of Modern American Evangelicalism. He says:
The older theology tended to produce character. … By the end of the twentieth century, we have become God’s demanding little brats. In church, we must be entertained. Our emotions must be charged. . . . We must be offered amusing programs—we gave up a lot to become Christians and what little teaching we do get must cater to our pragmatic, self-centered interests. The preaching must be filled with clever anecdotes and colorful illustrations, with nothing more than passing references to doctrine: “I want to know what this means for me and my daily experience!”
We have forgotten that God is a monarch. He is the King by whom and for whom all things were made, and by whose sovereign power they are sustained. We exist for his pleasure, not he for ours; we are on this earth to entertain him, please him, to adore him, to bring him satisfaction, excitement and joy. Any gospel which seeks to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” has it all backwards. The question is, “What’s in it for God?”
- Michael Horton, Made In America: The Shaping of Modern American Evangelicalism, pp. 87-88
You see, God is in debt to no one and we need to get back to seeing God for who He is and not some kind of genie in a bottle ready to give us our every wish! He is holy; He is God! And now, look at verse 36 and how Paul concludes this doxology.
Notice, “me” is nowhere to be found in this verse, why? Because it is all about Him and what He has done and all we must do is walk by faith, trust in Him! It is as Paul said in Ephesians 1:3-14, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth — in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.” As we understand the greatness of God we learn to worship Him more and we wait for that day, we pray for Israel, to return to the Lord for in that day, the Kingdom will be established!
As we close this section of Romans this morning on election, we see how God’s character remains strong, for He is faithful and what He has promised, He will bring to pass, Israel will be saved and thus, so too will all the promises to the believing Gentiles be fulfilled! This is an important section for us to learn for before Paul moves onto dealing with application, he wants us to understand that God is faithful to His Word and thus, since He is, then Paul is able to say, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Romans 12:1-2. And we will see this next time in Romans chapter 12.
But let me close this morning with this doxology of Paul because if you leave here this morning with more praise in your heart for God and what He has done, is doing and will do in your life, if you love Him more for who He is, then that is all I can ask. It is as Paul said, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?’ ‘Or who has first given to Him And it shall be repaid to him?’ For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.” Romans 11:33-36.