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The main word for today is this: God’s plans for us are not thwarted.- even by our disobedience.

God’s overall plan

Paul is addressing a very important question – how is that we became Christians?

He’s been telling us that we (non-Jews) heard the gospel, in part, because the people of Israel (the people God had chosen) had rejected him – so God looked elsewhere – and found gentiles like us

25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited:

After all, knowing that we have been chosen ahead of God’s own people could make us proud and boastful “we’ve got God’s approval – they haven’t!”

I got picked for the first 11 – they didn’t!

Our hearts were receptive to God’s voice – theirs weren’t – more fool them! But we can’t think like that – and here’s why:

25 … Israel has experienced a hardening (in part) until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved.

We saw last time how envy of what God is doing in the people outside of Israel was intended to draw the people of Israel back to God.

<ppt> So in God’s megaplan Israel’s resistance to the gospel meant that God extended his gospel reach to the non-Israelites (the Gentiles) and received them in as fully valued members of his kingdom and family. At that point the Israelite people will say “hey we’re missing out here”, be envious and come to the messiah, Jesus Christ, themselves.

So what appeared to be a disaster (Israel’s rejection) was actually turned around by God to extend the reach of the gospel to millions more people!

Even rejection doesn’t phase Him or even scupper his plan of salvation

That’s no excuse for rejecting him, but it shows us that He is bigger – even that our rejection – and can redeem it, or turn it round.

This is a great reassurance to those of us who have people we love – say in our family, who have rejected church or turned away from God. With him, even rejection can be turned round. No prodigal is beyond finding – Although it may take a long time.

Hardening for a purpose?

So Paul takes it a step further with his readers in Rome. Now remember they are mostly Gentiles

28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they (people of Israel) are enemies (of God because of hardness) for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs,

God allowed their hardening to take place so that his gospel would spread to you gentiles! (and through the ages to us here today!)

Their gospel resistance enabled them (and us) to come to Christ.

but as far as election is concerned, they (Israel) are loved on account of the patriarchs,

God’s election of people to be in his kingdom is much bigger than the short term resistance of Israel. And here is a great truth

29 for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.

Don’t miss the context!

• God’s gift – the gift of salvation by grace – the gift of his spirit in our lives and our church
• and God’s call – the call of being lovingly identified as one of the elect

these two things are are irrevocable – they cannot be undone!

Please be careful about how you apply this verse.

I had a man come to my last church who had been a pastor.

• I say had been because the church he’d served had been perfectly beastly to him. They had created expectations he couldn’t satisfy. And while there were probably factors in him that meant life was always going to be tough in Christian leadership, he suffered a breakdown, walked away from his church and came to live near us. When he turned up in our church he was a broken man.
• Rosi and I tried to bring him some kind of recovery from this trauma. And while we were counselling him he used this verse
• “But surely” he said to me “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable”
• He felt guilty that he had walked away from what he felt was God’s call on his life – to be a pastor of a rural church.

He had been fed with a misunderstanding of the verse, taken right out of context, that says “If you feel called and you commit to a ministry you should never, ever, quit even if you’re bullied by some of the deacons, humiliated by some of the church and land up in psychiatric hospital – you’ve still got to go back!

So this dear man was racked with guilt and pain because he’d walked out on God’s calling which is “Irrevocable”

So then we looked at this verse in its context –

• What gifts is Paul talking about in these chapters? It’s the gifts of grace, of being one of God’s elect,
• it’s the gift of being grafted into Christ as a fully paid-up, fully loved, completely accepted child of God! That’s the gift!
• That’s the thing that can’t be taken away – that’s the irrevocable factor here!
• What’s the call Paul is talking about here?
• It’s the call to be a child of God! To be elected by God’s grace and be his child, to be grafted into God’s family
• That’s what’s irrevocable!

But there are some things that are lose-able

Things that are lose-able <ppt>

Just reflect for a moment on the things that are lose-able

my money can be lost <ppt: image>, my health can be lost, my family can be lost, my career can be lost, my hoe can be lost

but my calling as a child of God and his gift of grace are irrevocable. He will never revoke or deny them

what security we have in Christ!

30 Just as you (gentiles, like us) who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of Israel’s disobedience (we understand that now) , 31 so they (Israel) too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.

Instead of using their disobedience as a reason to punish – he does the exact opposite and used it as a motive to get himself to forgive and draw them back!

So both the disobedience of the Gentiles and the Jews is used by God to stimulate his mercy on everyone – as v32 explains

32 For God has bound everyone (Jews and Gentiles) over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

At this point we might expect Paul to say “Oh this doctrine of election is a tough and tortuous concept to understand

But he doesn’t.

Instead he goes into what we call (technically) a doxology – a passage of wonder-driven praise of the Lord.

SO his logic runs like this – Here’s the doctrine of Election, here’s how God lets some people’s hearts get hardened and others slip into disobedience – so that eventually we all come back to him – how great is that! – how great is our God!

Even hardening and disobedience are not a barrier to God’s grace. He can even redeem things which we would regard as impossible barriers to propel his purpose of winning hearts and minds – winning people to himself. People he dearly loves and sacrificed for.

How great is our God

33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

Wisdom – his ability to choose the best and most effective means of obtaining his highest goal!

• Who would have thought that even our disobedience could be used to eventually draw people to himself!

God’s knowledge – doesn’t just mean his possession of all the facts, it’s his ability to use all he knows to the highest ends for us! His insight into all that we are and do.

• Our ideas, our judgements, our motives, our loves – they’re all known to him – and understood by him.

So when you come to the Lord, you’re coming to someone who understands you intimately, loves you completely and has your highest and best at his heart.

33 How unsearchable his judgements, and his paths beyond tracing out!

His decisions and his assessments are so deep and so profound that we can’t ‘search them out’

So Paul states the indisputable facts about the wisdom and greatness of God

Then he asks some penetrating rhetorical questions

34 ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor?’

If God gets in a fix, who is clever enough or wise enough to give him advice to help him get out of it? To whom does he turn to counsel?

Answer – no-one. No person, however clever or sagacious could possible advise the Lord to increase his capacity of wise decision-making.

• The idea that we could ever help out God is ludicrous

35 ‘Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?’

Is it ever possible that we can give a gift to God to put him in out debt so he owes us one?

• No! the idea is preposterous.
• But that is the idea that lies behind religion and religious observance. It is though of as a bargaining chip to get God to be nice to me – to allow me into heaven of give me favours here in this life
• We do our religious duties and God owes us one!

So Paul gives the reason why

36 For from him and through him and for him are all things.

In the original text there are three prepositions here ek (= from or out of), dia (=through) & eis (=for or unto)

So our God is seen and felt comprehensively in and through and out of absolutely everything!

36 To him be the glory for ever! Amen.