Introduction

How big is your view of God? And how accurate is your view of humanity? In our passage today we are going to consider something that might be hard for some of you to process. But if you have a biblical view of God and man they make perfect sense, and are easy to accept. But if you have a worldly understanding of God and humanity, you will likely struggle over what God’s Word teaches us today.

With that in mind I thought I’d open this morning with a quote from John Newton. You know Newton, the pastor and author of that great hymn we just sang, Amazing Grace. He said, “[God] has a sovereign right to do with us as He pleases; and if we consider what we are, surely we shall confess we have no reason to complain: and to those who seek Him, His sovereignty is exercised in a way of grace. All shall work together for good: everything is needful that He sends; nothing can be needful that He withholds.”

I wonder, do you believe that? Most Christians believe that God works everything together for good. But there are many who don’t believe that God has a right to do whatever He pleases with His creation, especially human beings… But the Bible clearly teaches us that He does. He is the potter. We are the clay. And the potter has every right over the clay to do whatever He wills.

In Deuteronomy 32:39 God says, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” As we know, that doesn’t mean that we don’t make choices, and that we aren’t responsible for our choices. But it does mean God is sovereign over all, even all our choices… And He ordains all that comes to pass, and in one way or another whatever He ordains is right.

And that last part is particularly hard to understand in view of suffering and death. But we have to come to grips with it. For instance, this week a glacier broke triggering a landslide that triggered a flash flood that swept through Nepal and surrounding areas for sure killing almost 700 people, impacting and displacing almost 100,000 people, and over 3,000 are still missing. When you hear that does it make you question God’s sovereignty or God’s goodness? Do you wonder how a good and sovereign God could let such a thing happen?

Many questions can arise when disaster strikes or suffering comes… And that’s okay. We can wonder how a good and sovereign God could ordain such a thing… But we can’t wonder about God’s goodness or sovereignty. For God’s Word is crystal clear—God is perfectly good and God is totally sovereign. And that tells us something. God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. So when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His character… And His character is good. And as John Newton implies, generally speaking, the character of humanity is not good. He said, “[God] has a sovereign right to do with us as He pleases; and if we consider what we are, surely we shall confess we have no reason to complain…” Why? Because outside of Christ, in and of ourselves every human being is a sinner that deserves death and hell… We deserve God’s wrath and fury. Therefore, He can do us no wrong.

Yet, as Newton says, for “those who seek Him, His sovereignty is exercised in a way of grace. All shall work together for good: everything is needful that He sends; nothing can be needful that He withholds.” And my hope this morning is that we will be assured of that, and be able to say with full assurance, that God is sovereign and good, and is truly working all things together for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose. So with that in mind, look with me at Romans 11:7-10.

Context

Remember the context of our passage. After laying out the gospel and the beauty of God’s gospel promises that He gives His covenant people, Paul anticipates pushback because of unbelieving Israel’s rejection of their Messiah. He assumes God’s New Covenant people will wonder if God’s promises can really be trusted, they will wonder if God is truly faithful since all but a remnant of God’s Old Covenant people have rejected Jesus. He said they had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. They were ignorant of the righteousness of God. Instead of submitting to and trusting in God’s righteousness in and through Jesus, they sought to establish their own.

They boasted in being children of Abraham, but Abraham knew that he was counted righteous by faith. So Paul says God is faithful and His promises can be trusted because His Word has not and cannot fail. Just because the Jews were descended from Abraham, just because they were descended from Israel—Israelites according to the flesh—doesn’t mean that they were truly of Abraham or of Israel… It doesn’t mean that they were a part of the true Israel of God who are united to Christ by faith. For they didn’t live up to or receive God’s promises by faith because they didn’t see their need of Christ and thought they could obtain righteousness on their own.

Romans 11:7-10

So in verse 7 Paul says, “What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened…” Israel according to flesh failed to obtain the righteousness they were seeking in and of themselves. But the elect, the remnant chosen by God, the true Israel of God obtained righteousness because they were united to the True Israelite, the Son of God, Christ Jesus. They were rightly united to Christ by faith, and therefore Jesus’ righteousness was counted to them. They received God’s promises by faith, and they lived up to their covenant privilege by faith, and through their covenantal union with Christ, all that He is and all that He has done, is doing, and will do belonged to them… Jesus belongs to the elect. He is ours and we are His.

God cannot be charged with unfaithfulness to His covenant or His covenant people, He cannot be charged with letting His Word fail because His mercy and grace, His covenant faithfulness has only ever been fully and finally promised to the elect remnant of Israel, and the elect from every nation and generation. Only those who are truly united to Christ by faith. Indeed, His saving mercy and grace are given in and through the true Israel, the faithful Israelite, the new, true, and better Adam and Noah, the true promised and better son of Abraham and David, the greater mediator than Moses, Jesus Christ.

To elect means to choose. And as Paul says in Ephesians 1:4-6, “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” That is, in Jesus… As Paul said in Romans 11:5, the remnant is chosen by grace. And as I pointed out last week, grace is the personal kindness of God, the ill-deserved favor of God by which He doesn’t merely enable, but He truly and fully rescues and freely gives Himself. There is no such thing or substance that is grace, there is only Christ, who is the blessing of God given to the people of God. Or as Martin Lloyd-Jones said, “All the riches of God’s grace are really God Himself in His Son. It is all in Christ!”

So while there’s a sense in which all of Israel were covenantally elect… They were objectively a part of God’s covenant community, just as every baptized Christian is today. But they were not elect according to God’s sovereign decree because they were not fully and finally in Christ. Our election, our being chosen by God’s sovereign grace, is directly tied to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And this idea of election and being chosen by grace happened in Christ in eternity past before the foundation of the world. Revelation 13:8 says that the elect have their name written in the Book of Life, which is the Lamb’s Book of Life, who is the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world… Or as Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:9, “[God] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of His own purpose and grace, which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began…”

Remember what I pointed out last week from Ephesians 2:4, it is because of God and who He is in the richness of His mercy and love that He loved us… Not because of us. He didn’t love us and choose us because we are that lovable… He loved us and chose us because He is that loving. It all flows from who He is, not us.

Remember my illustration of the man proposing, who told his potential fiancé how hideous, ugly, annoying, and terrible she is, and then told her that he loved her and asked her if she would marry him. Assuming she’s not those things she’s going to say no. But if she really is that bad she might say yes because if he really loves her, though his love for her doesn’t say much about her, it does say a lot about him—that he truly is loving… sacrificially loving. And that’s more like God’s love for us.

And we should be happy about that. We all think we want someone to love us because of how great we are, but that’s a lot to live up to. What if your spouse, what if your parents, what if your friends told you that they only love you because of what you bring to the table and can contribute. You would likely feel used, not loved. And worse than that, you’d likely feel afraid that you were going to loose everyone you love once they figure out that you aren’t as good and useful as they thought you were.

It reminds me of a quote from Charles Spurgeon in his great work Lectures To My Students. He said, “I’m quite sure that if God had not chosen me I should never have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards; and he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.”

I mean, think about it… Why are you a Christian and so many others aren’t? Is it because you are smarter than all of them? Is it because you are more worthy? Why you and not your neighbor? Church, you will not find the right answer in you… God loved you and elected you because of the riches of His mercy and the greatness of His love. God loves His people because of how loving and glorious He is, not us. And the same is true of our election. This is why Reformed Theology calls it unconditional election. All the conditions for our election are met in God Himself, not in us.

This election language goes back to Romans 9 where in verse 8 Paul said, “it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” In other words, simply being descended from Abraham or Israel is not enough… And then in verse 11, Paul says all of this is the way it is “in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls…” And that’s who the elect are here, those who have been foreknown, which means chosen and loved before the foundation of the world, by God’s grace in Christ, through Christ, and for Christ. And these elect whom God loves obtained the righteousness of God by grace through faith in Christ because God called them and gave them the gift of faith. So not because of who they were or what they did or could do… not because of works, but all by God’s sovereign grace in Christ. By God’s grace they received their Messiah by faith, and all that He is, and all that He has done, is doing, or will do was accredited them. And therefore they were counted righteous by faith.

But for those who boasted in their flesh… for the rest of Israel according to the flesh, Paul says, God hardened them. And then in verse 8 he tells us what this means by quoting Isaiah 29:10, saying, “as it is written, ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.’” So hardening here means being given a spirit of stupor—being dazed and confused, having a spirit of numbness and insensitivity—and therefore having eyes that would not see the glory of Jesus, and ears that would not hear the truth of Jesus. But like election this language of hardening goes back to Romans 9 as well.

In Romans 9:14-18 Paul says, “What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”

In Romans 9 and in the Exodus Israel was receiving mercy and Pharaoh was hardened… But now in Romans 11 Israel has become like Pharaoh. But to really understand all that’s being said here I need to remind you what Paul was doing in Romans 9:14-18.

Paul is quoting Exodus 33:19, and in the original context Moses is interceding for Israel after all the great evil they entered into with the golden calf and their great idolatry… After growing impatient with Moses who was still up on the mountain meeting with the one true God, they decided to make and worship a false god—a golden calf—and give it the glory for delivering them from Egypt. Along with that they engaged in pagan rituals, and all forms of sexual immorality and the like, all in the name of worshipping this false god.

God was going to unleash His wrath upon them, but Moses pleaded with God for mercy for his people. After the golden calf Moses said to the people, “‘You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.’ So Moses returned to the LORD and said, ‘Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will, forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written’” (Exodus 32:30-32). In other words, Moses says keep your people in the Lamb’s book of life, or take me out of it as well. But basically God responds to Moses by telling him that who He has mercy and compassion on is up to Him, not Moses… And He will only blot out those who give themselves over to sin.

God then disciplines Israel and commands Moses to continue leading them and ministering to them. And while Moses was doing this God would meet with him in the tent of meeting, but He showed Himself to Moses in the pillar of fire… And while that was a great blessing, Moses wanted more.

From a pastor’s perspective, it seemed that Moses was getting burned out from shepherding the people… And so he felt a great need to be closer to God and to have a bigger view of God. So Moses asks to see God’s glory, and God says, “‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live’” (Exodus 33:19-20).

Notice what God did there… Moses asks to see God’s glory, and God draws attention to His name. And this is interesting because earlier in Exodus 3:14-15, after Moses asked God what he should tell the people of Israel God’s name is, “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.’”

Yesterday I heard an old teaching of R. C. Sproul where he broke down the French philosopher, Descartes’ statement, “I think, therefore I am.” Sproul took that statement to its fuller logical conclusion—that if I am there must be something or someone that always was. And that’s who God is saying that He is here. God is the great I AM… That’s His Name, and that’s who He is. He is the One who always was… the all-sufficient, ever-existing One who is the very source of all existence. He is the Being that is the fount of all being. And this seems to be the very thing God is reminding Moses of—who He is.

As we read earlier in Exodus 34:6-7, in response to Moses’ request to see God’s glory, “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’”

Now I give you all that context to help you understand what Paul was saying in Romans 9. Paul was saying that it is not unjust for God to elect unconditionally because God is God. To be sure, God said this is how He operates, and therefore that is defense enough. Whatever God ordains is right. But that’s only part of Paul’s argument here. He’s also saying that it is because of who God is that this is right as well.

God is the great I AM, the ever existing One, the One from whom all goodness and glory flow. As James 1:17 says, God is the Father from whom every good and perfect thing comes from. He is perfectly good and He does not change. Therefore, what is good and right is God. All is weighed against Him.

Earlier in Romans 3:23 Paul said, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” And there we see that God and His glory is the ultimate standard. God is righteousness. God is justice. Therefore He cannot be unjust. He is the standard of what is right. Even His Law is a reflection of His nature and character. It flows from who He is. As Jesus said in Mark 10:18, “No one is good but God alone.” Indeed, He is the standard of what good is. Justice and goodness is what is in line with God and for His glory. Evil and injustice is what is against God and rebellious to His purposes. As C. S. Lewis put it, “God cannot be measured by a standard. That standard is Himself.”

So Paul’s point in Romans 9:15 is that it is not unjust for God to elect unconditionally because God is the just One and whatever He does is right. By what standard can we call God unjust? He is the standard and always acts in accordance with who He is. And this is stressed and made all the more beautiful in Romans 9:16. Paul says, “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.”

You see, election is not merely unconditional, though it is as far as we are concerned… But it is conditioned as far as God is concerned. What I mean is, the condition for our election, indeed the condition for salvation is all found in God Himself (He is the standard even for our election.). It does not depend upon any foreseen faith, works, or merit in us… it does not depend upon our will or resolve, or our exertion or effort… It all depends upon God who has mercy.

But God doesn’t finally have mercy upon Pharaoh, but He hardens him. And back in our passage in Romans 11:7-8 we’re told that God has now hardened Israel in the same way. “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” And because He is who He is, because He is the standard of what is right and good, it is right and good for Him to do so. God has every right to elect or harden whomever He wills. As Paul taught in Romans 9:21-23, the Potter has every right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use. If God desires to magnify His glory by contrasting His mercy with His wrath and the power of His fury towards vessels of wrath, for the good of His vessels of mercy that He prepared before hand, He has every right to do so. And so He does.

But, notice what Paul says in Romans 11:9-10. We won’t go through this in depth, but I do want to point out a couple of things. There Paul quotes David from Psalm 69, saying, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.” Like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, their backs were bent under the burden of their sin… And their great sin was that they had taken God’s good gifts like food, as well as the food of the Word and sacraments, of God’s Law and passover and the like—the Covenant and its privileges… the table, a place and the things of joy and gratitude—and they focused on those things instead of the God who gave them those things. They worshipped and served the creation instead of the Creator. They loved the glory that came from men more than the glory of God… Their god was their bellies and their own glory instead of the God of glory. And this burden of sin remained on their back because they did not go to God in repentance and faith for forgiveness and righteousness.

So David says, and Paul is saying the same, that this hardening that God brought upon Israel was a retribution for them, that is a punishment for their sin. A retribution is a just punishment. Instead of mercy God was giving them justice—He was giving them what they deserve. No one deserves mercy. R. C. Sproul said it well when he said, “The saved get mercy and the unsaved get justice. Nobody gets injustice…. There are times when we suffer innocently at other people’s hands. When that occurs, we are victims of injustice. But that injustice happens on a horizontal plane. No one ever suffers injustice on the vertical plane. That is, no one ever suffers unjustly in terms of his or her relationship with God. As long as we bear the guilt of sin, we cannot protest that God is unjust in allowing us to suffer.” It was not unjust for God to harden Israel. And you see, the way Israel was in their sin is how we all are in our sin. And if we don’t look to Christ, if we turn our backs on Him our backs will be bent forever under the burden of our sin as well. And we justly deserve death and hell, and whatever suffering comes our way.

Conclusion

And Church, this should humble us to the dust. Because if you see the glory of Jesus today, if you hear His voice in His Word, if you know that you are a great sinner and that Christ is a greater Savior, if you have turned from yourself and are trusting in Him—why? Why are your eyes open when so many are blind? Why do your ears hear when so many are deaf? Why is your heart tender toward Christ when it could be hard?

It isn’t because you are smarter. It isn’t because you are better. It isn’t because you were more spiritually perceptive than your neighbor. Paul has taken every ground of boasting away from us. “The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.” All by grace.

If you see, it is because God opened your eyes. If you hear, it is because God unstopped your ears. If you believe, it is because God has been merciful to you. And if you are righteous before God, it is because Jesus Christ is your righteousness.

So don’t hear the doctrine of election and look proudly at the unbelieving world. Look at Christ and marvel that He would have mercy upon you.

And don’t hear the doctrine of hardening and play games with sin. Israel had the Covenant. They had the promises. They had the Law. They had the worship. They had all the privileges of the people of God, and yet they became so enamored with God’s gifts and so hardened in their sin that when God Himself stood before them in the flesh, they could not see His glory.

So do not presume upon the grace of God. Do not harden your heart. Do not make an idol out of even the good gifts God has given you. Don’t trust in your baptism, your theology, your family, your church membership, your morality, or your covenant privileges instead of Christ. All of those things are meant to lead you to Christ.

So look to Christ!

If the weight of your sin is bending your back today, look to Christ. If you are weary from trying to establish your own righteousness, look to Christ. If you are afraid that you aren’t good enough for God, then finally you are beginning to understand: you aren’t. And you never will be. But Jesus is.

He is the faithful Israelite you could never be. He is the righteous Man you could never be. He obeyed where you have disobeyed. And then He took the justice that sinners deserve upon Himself. The perfectly righteous One was bent beneath the weight of our sin. He bore the curse. He suffered the wrath. He died our death. And then He rose victorious so that everyone who is united to Him by faith receives not the justice his sins deserve, but mercy upon mercy and grace upon grace.

That’s the hope in this passage. Our hope isn’t ultimately that we are wise enough to choose God. Our hope is that God has had mercy upon us in Christ. And that means, Christian, your salvation rests upon something infinitely stronger than you.

When your faith is weak, Christ is strong. When your heart condemns you, Christ is greater than your heart. When providence is dark and you cannot understand what God is doing, your Father has not ceased to be good. The God who chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world has not changed His mind about you. The God who opened your blind eyes has not abandoned His work. The Shepherd who sought you will not lose His sheep. The Savior who died for you will not fail to bring you home.

So when suffering comes, when your plans fall apart, when the world seems upside down, when you cannot trace God’s hand and cannot understand His purposes, remember who your God is. He is the great I AM.

He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. He is perfectly righteous. He is perfectly wise. He is perfectly good. And in Jesus Christ, He is yours and you are His. Therefore we can trust Him.

We can trust Him with our salvation. We can trust Him with our marriages and our children. We can trust Him with our work and our health. We can trust Him when He gives and when He takes away. We can trust Him when His providence makes sense to us and when it doesn’t.

Because the deepest proof that whatever God ordains for His people is ultimately for their good stands at the center of history: the cross of Jesus Christ. There wicked men committed the greatest evil this world has ever known—and our sovereign God ordained it for the greatest good this world has ever known. So if God can turn a cross into resurrection, death into life, wrath into salvation, and the darkest day in history into the fountain of eternal joy, then, Christian, you can trust Him with whatever He has ordained for you.

You may not always understand His hand. But you know His heart. You have seen it in Jesus. And therefore, by faith, whatever comes, we can say: Whatever my God ordains is right. Amen.