The People of God | Happy the People

Are you praying for someone who seems far from God?
 Have you wondered if God's promises still hold when people reject him?
 Do you ever question whether anyone is beyond the reach of grace?
 
 Jesus came to save people who could never rescue themselves, and the good news of the gospel is that God's mercy reaches farther than our failures. His grace gives us something solid to build on when we struggle to understand his plans or wait for hearts to change. In Romans 11, we see that God remains faithful to every promise he has made, and his love continues to call people to turn to Jesus and receive new life.
 
 Whether you are carrying hope for a loved one, wrestling with questions about God's faithfulness, or longing to trust him more deeply, this message points to the God who never abandons his saving purposes. His mercy welcomes outsiders, softens hard hearts, and reminds us that no one is beyond the reach of Christ. Happy are the people whose God is the Lord, because his grace continues to bring people home through Jesus.
 
 Scripture: Romans 11:1 to 12
 
 "Did God reject his people? By no means!" Romans 11:1
 
 "Salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious." Romans 11:11
 
 Belong at First Pres by taking the first step: join us for worship on Sundays in person. https://firstprescos.org/belong

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the First Predic Sermon podcast, where each week we dive into scripture, wrestle with truth, and discover how faith intersects our lives. God's word meets us where we are, challenging, shaping, and calling us into something greater. No matter where you are on your journey, you belong here. And we're praying that this sermon might help you take a next step in faith towards Jesus. Hey, let's dive into today's message together.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hey, what's up, everybody? Good morning, church. It's good to be together. Worshiping the Lord and uh giving glory to his name. And uh, Pastor Ellen, thank you, Chris, for leading along. Thank you, praise team, for leading us along. Um past Pastor Ellen was assisting in worship. She she went home feeling sick, so just pray for Pastor Ellen. And uh so Chris just caught the ball and ran with it, and we're giving worship and praise to our Lord and God. And last week we're in the series in Romans, where uh last week actually Pastor Ellen was the one teaching, and she was teaching in Romans 10, the end of Romans 10. She was talking about where it says, and blessed are the feet of the one who brings good news. And so she told this story. She asked us, if you were here, she asked us, uh, what does an evangelist look like to you? And if we had all these images in our mind. And she said, Well, you know what an evangelist looks like to me? It's this woman that that I met in Vietnam. And she uh she's 80 years old and she was praying for a motorcycle, a motorbike, because she wanted to be able to go out to the villages to share about Jesus. And shows she and so that was her prayer, Lord, please send me a motorbike. The leader of the trip that Pastor Ellen was on, he was struck by this. He pulled that woman aside and he got down on his knees and he put his hands on her feet and he blessed her. He said, Blessed are the feet of those who bring good news. And it's a really moving story, it's powerful. Ellen cried every time she told it. And but it begged the question: did she get the motorcycle? All right. Weren't you wondering? I mean, did she get the bike? Is there somewhere an 85-year-old Vietnamese woman burning down the streets of the jungle of Vietnam, telling people about Jesus? We need to know. And we don't know. But we do have this unverified photograph. We don't know. We don't know. Is that her? Or is that an image created by artificial intelligence? We don't know. Today we're in Romans 11. Let's pray. Uh, Lord Jesus, your word is true. Every word of scripture is inspired by your Holy Spirit, is transferred to us to be sitting here right in our hands so that we can hear from you. Every word is profitable, every word is meaningful. And so, Lord, help us to understand a scripture that's that's pretty hard to understand. Help us to hear from you because you speak through your word. Help us to leave this room more deeply confident in your love and your plan of salvation and your purposes in our lives than when we walked in. It's in Jesus' name we pray. So you heard the passage read, you know, Romans 11, 1 to 12, and you think, whoa, here's just a little light work for a holiday weekend. Okay? Studying for this message, studying to bring this passage. I figure to walk out of here as the people of God, confident in our times and what this word wants us to understand, we really, we really only have to cover, well, Christian nationalism, virtuous patriotism, uh, supersessionism, um, dispensationalism, Zionism, covenant theology, and just a touch of the anti-Semitism of the German Nazi Party. All right? So it's easy. It's a holiday weekend. It's easy stuff. Actually, um, we used to give out uh bingo cards for the kids. I'm not even sure if Kids Men still does this, where they would listen to the sermon, and when I said a certain word, they got that on their bingo card. Honestly, what you need today is a bingo card. You need a bingo card. And I'm gonna help you get bingo as we go through some of these terms. Happy the people. That's our message. Happy the people whose God is the Lord. It's better to be with God than against God. Amen? Happy the people who know the Lord, who love the Lord, who feel his presence in their life, who will seek to revere the Lord. Happy the people, happy the nation whose God is the Lord. How good it is to be a people walking with God, gratefully aware of his kindness, mercy, and love. It's fun to be uh on a 4th of July weekend, which is a 250th birthday of the nation in which we live. It's fun to celebrate. I hope your weekend was full of some celebrations and time with family and time with friends and a lot of good things to celebrate. There's so much to celebrate. At the same time, as followers of Christ, as children of God, as discerning followers of Jesus, we need to be aware of some things, don't we? We need to be vigilant about some things. And so, what is this Christian nationalism? What does that mean? Christian nationalism is patriotism that has gone too far and has pivoted into the realm of idolatry. Any good gift that we get, we can make an ultimate thing and start to worship it as if it is our God. And that's true even of a good nation. We have a tendency to take good things and make really bad gods. Christian nationalism sort of replaces uh the United States with Israel. It sort of looks at uh our country, our nation, as if we are now Israel, God's covenant people. It sort of makes a pivot from God bless America to only Americans are blessed. Those are two totally different things. And so we've got to have our eyes open. C.S. Lewis wrote, It's good to love your country, but he said this, in his writing right after World War II. We all know now that this love, love of country, becomes a demon when it becomes a god. We can take a really good thing, a really good gift, and make it into a really bad God. What do we make idols out of? Just shout out some things. What's soapbox? Oh, cell phones. I was like, oh, soapbox, I was gonna have a hard time figuring that out. But cell phones, yeah. Your cell phone is like, oh my gosh, I'm worshiping this. I can't live without this thing, right? I'm so dependent on it. What else do we make? And it's a good thing, but then we make it an everything. Uh what's another thing? We make Isles over. Huh? Bacon? What? iPads, yes. What else? What else? Huh? Money, wealth. Yeah. What? Lust. Man, who's in the house over there? Yeah. We're gonna go deep, justice. We're going deep right away, right? Okay. Yeah, lust, sex, like it's a good gift. We can make it an idol. Taylor Swift. Oh, look where I'm looking. Yeah. Yep. We can take a good thing and try to make it into a God. And even a good gift like a country, it becomes a terrible God to try to worship. And so we've got to be discerning about that. Creating America is not the reason Christ came. The nations, even the best of nations, the nations are dust on the scales compared with the glory of the kingdom of God. So can we then give thanks for our nation and the country in which we live? Yes. How do we do that? As Christians, how do we do this well? Well, everything we do as a Christian, you want to do governed by an ethic of love. Every bit of Christian ethics is love. Love for God and love for neighbor. And so we ask, okay, if I'm going to love my country, is that gonna be in the category of love for God? Or is that gonna be in the category of love for neighbor? C.S. Lewis said, the way that we keep our love of country in check and keep a virtuous patriotism from becoming a false idolatry is we keep it in the category of love of neighbor. Neighbor love. You see, love is not something you do in the abstract. You don't just love, you love something. It always has an object, a target. And if we're the key people of God in our times, in our place, in our context, then we are called to love these neighbors, these people. And what is a nation but a people living together? And so our object of our love is this nation in which we live. So uh how do we how do we navigate things like you know, uh these moments of patriotism, and how do we keep our hearts steady? Here's what I want you to do. Every time you see the American flag, every time you see a symbol of our nation, every time you see a big gazillion fireworks go off, right? Not in Colorado Springs. Don't do it. Every time you see a symbol of our nation, well, you need to do three things. You need to give thanks and humble gratitude for God's good blessings. You need to remember those who've fallen, who've sacrificed their lives to keep us free. But you know what I want you to do? Every time you see the flag, I want you to hear the voice of Jesus coming into your heart and saying, Love your neighbor. Love your neighbor. Love your neighbor. This neighbor. Yes, this neighbor. Because we have been called to be the people of God in this time and place. Amen? Why do I go into all that? Well, obviously, because of the day that we're in, but because this passage is talking about how God deals with nations, that God is dealing with peoples in big order. God is dealing with nations, and he executes his purposes with nations in such a way as to prod our thirst for him. God, it seems, deals with nations as much as he deals with individuals. And sometimes he will bless and sustain a nation, and sometimes he will turn against a nation, and all of it is according to his sovereign purposes of salvation, to the glory of his own name. Nations. What do we do with the lost of Israel? That's the big question. Bottom line up front, I know it's a hard passage to understand. Here's what it's saying. It is saying that God brought in the Gentile nations to prod the Israelites to jealousy and envy to turn their hearts back to the Lord. That's what it's saying. That's what this passage is arguing. Why didn't Israel turn to Jesus? Time and time again, if you pick up the book of Acts, you read along and you see what? You see Paul and you see Peter, and they're sharing the gospel. They come into city after city and they go to the synagogue and they share the good news of Jesus, and the message falls flat. And so then they turn and they start to tell the same message to the God fears, the Gentiles who were outside of the doors. And what happens? They come to Christ in droves. Why has God abandoned his people? Verse 1. I asked then, did God reject his people? By no means. I am an Israelite myself, Paul says, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. God claimed a people to be a special possession, and he drew them to himself through his covenant with Abraham. Go back to Genesis 12. God said, I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth. Say with me, all peoples on earth, all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. You didn't have to say the last part, but you get bonus points for doing that with me. How many peoples? Who peoples? All peoples. This is the covenant with Abraham. What did God do? He he brought this people close to him and cared for them and nurtured them so that others, other nations would turn and they would be interested. They'd be thirsty. Can I have the kind of relationship with God that you have? And what happened? Well, some did, some turned. Some longed to be with the Lord. Others rejected the people of God. And in resentment, anti-Semitism was born. Then Jesus came, the Messiah. I mean, you know, skipping a few chapters, right? I'm skipping a few chapters. And then Jesus came. And when Jesus came, here's the Messiah, the promised one. Did all turn and believe? Some did. Others rejected. They had him arrested, beaten, spit upon, crucified, buried dead. Paul himself, the author of this letter. Paul ran and found believers in Jesus Christ, and he had them dragged from their homes, dragged from their businesses, stoned to death in the streets. They rejected the Lord. And so what is God going to do now? Will God reject his people who have rejected his son? Some say yes. Get out your bingo card. Supersessionism. Supersessionism says yes. Christianity has superseded Judaism. The covenant with Abraham, the covenant with Abraham's children, all that God said and promised in that covenant is now void. And it's fulfilled in Christ, and it is only available to those who are Christians. The promises of God in Abraham are over. What then of Israel? Others say, whoa, no, no, no. Actually, to understand God's plan of salvation, you need to see God working in certain ways in certain chapters of history, certain dispensations. Have you heard this word? And so the dispensation of Abraham, how God dealt with people through Abraham, is still there, even while the dispensation of Jesus and his promises are now also valid. And there's just two different chapters. Out of that school of thought dispensationalism comes a certain brand of Zionism. What is Zionism? Zionism is the belief that the actual children, the descendants of Abraham, the descendants of that covenant, must be granted all the land that was promised to Abraham before prophecy can be fulfilled and the end of times can come. What do we do? What is happening with the people of God in Israel? How are we to understand it? We've thrown a lot of terms up on the board. You've got a lot of bingo spots. Say, what do I do with this? How do I understand it? What is done? And I know that you're already thinking, well, this these aren't just empty terms. This is what feeds into the geopolitics of our day right now, doesn't it? How do we understand it as believers? What about the Jewish people who do not accept Christ? Paul says, Well, one thing, you can't say that God rejects them. Why? Because I'm one. Here I am. And I believe in Jesus. And I was running hard away from him when he grabbed a hold of me and pulled me in. God always keeps a remnant. Let's study it. Romans 11, verse 1. I ask then, did God reject his people? By no means. I'm an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people whom he foreknew. Don't you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah? And he's referring now to Elijah the prophet, when Elijah was feeling really alone and pressed upon, how he appealed to God against Israel. Lord, they've killed your prophets, torn down your altars. I'm the only one left, and they're trying to kill me. And what was God's answer to him? I have reserved for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So too at the present time there's a remnant chosen by grace. God has some Jewish people and some Gentile people in the fold. And why has he brought them in, this remnant? Why has he brought them in? Is it in order to abandon his prior commitments? To execute a divorce and a remarriage? No. It's to prod the people of God, to turn from their stubborn resistance to his grace, made known in Jesus Christ. If you have a Bible with footnotes, I want you to look down at the footnotes under your Bible right now, under this passage right now. What books is Paul wrestling with? What's he citing from? What do you see? Somebody's gonna get serious extra credits. You got the Deuteronomy. You get serious extra Bible credits right there. What else? Quote it again and again through this passage. First Kings is quoted, looking for something else. Looking for one more. Isaiah. Deuteronomy and Isaiah just keep popping up. He's dealing with these key passages to understand what is God doing in salvation? What's happening in salvation? Last week, Pastor Ellen read Romans 10, and we came to Romans 10, 19, where Deuteronomy 32 was quoted. Again, this question did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, I will make you envious by those who are not a nation. I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding. And what is this about? What is God doing here? Well, this is a quote from Deuteronomy 32. And listen, when you're trying to understand something in the scriptures, it's a good idea to say, let me go back and look at the whole context of this verse that's been quoted, and let me see if I can understand better. So this is from Deuteronomy 32. And you say, what's going on in Deuteronomy 32? Well, it's this beautiful passage of how God has chosen and cared for and drawn near his people with love. He sustained them. He's given everything to them. And what have they done to him in return? They've rejected him. They've turned on him. They've started worshiping things that aren't even gods. They've started worshiping idols. Look at this. This is Deuteronomy 32. They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God. Gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your ancestors did not fear. You deserted the rock. You forgot who fathered you. You forgot the God who gave you birth. And then it turns and it's God Himself speaking. He says, They made me jealous by what is no God and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people. I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding. Do you see what's happening here? Their turning on God led to God turning on them and turning towards other peoples who were no people, strangers to God's people. And he says, Watch as I care for them, as I draw them close, as my grace expands, watch. And God intends to penetrate their hearts by bringing other nations into his care so that they turn and are envious and they rethink where they are. But what else does it say? It says that to their resistance God added a hardening of their hearts. Not a spiteful or hateful hardening, but the same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay. If you want to turn from me, if you want to turn your back from me, the Lord says. I might just let you. And I might just push until you get to a place where your heart turns again to my love. Look at the passage, we're verse 7. What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly, they did not obtain. The elect among them did, but the others were hardened, as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see, ears that could not hear, to this very day hardened. But, church, understand, this is not a permanent state. This is not a done deal. This is a temporary correction. And Paul hopes and believes that the acceptance of the Gentiles will soften the hearts of his Jewish people to turn again to the Lord in Jesus Christ. Look at verse 11. Again I ask, did they stumble as to fall beyond recovery? No. Is this permanent now? Are we done? Not at all. Rather, because of their transgressions, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. And finally, church, the final state will be even more glorious than the prior state. We come to verse 12. It's our verse for the week. Something to try to commit to memory, to try to understand. But if their transgression means riches for the world, because of this temporary state, because of what's going on, is this going to mean an opening of grace to the world? And their loss means riches for the Gentiles, oh, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring? God chose Abraham, the people of Abraham, in order to make the nations envious to come to him. And then God chose the nations, the Gentiles, in order to make his own people of Abraham envious of him. God is at work in nations, in history, in his sovereign purposes to make our hearts thirsty to come home to him. And when all is finished and all of his promises are kept, when we understand all things, the glory of the riches, of the purposes, and the fullness of God. Amen. Oh, it's a lot to understand. The bingo card is getting heavy. Right? All these terms. Supersessionism says the Jewish people missed the bus. This theology fed into an anti-Semitism that started to cast the Jews as um as as subhuman, as foolish, selfish, corrosive to modern society. The German Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler grabbed a hold of that, aggravated that sentiment, and started to uh gather and isolate and scapegoat Jewish people and dehumanize them until he systematically had them exterminated, six million, in the death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka. We don't forget that. There's nothing in here. Paul doesn't see them as sub-human. He sees a people of God whose hearts are hardened, whose eyes are not open, whose ears can't hear. And he says, Is the grace of God too short to reach? Is the arm of God too short to save? One day, he prays, one day, one day. There's hope for them. Dispensationalism and Zionism say the promises of Abraham are just the same before the coming of Christ as after the coming of Christ. Romans doesn't see it that way. I want to give you a third option as we close. It's what we teach here. It's the doctrine of the Reformed faith, our church, kind of who we are. One more, it's your last block on the bingo card. It's called covenant theology. Covenant theology. What is that? God's plan of salvation is best understood as a series of covenants between God and mankind. And each of these covenants, they they stack upon one another, and each one clarifies the last. And so God has moved towards us in these promises, these covenants that only He can keep. The covenant with Adam, the covenant with Noah, and then Abraham, and then Moses to David, and they stack upon one another, culminating in the new covenant that is found in Jesus Christ our Messiah. And in God's mysterious purposes, his promises will never fall flat, and he will keep his covenants. And we can't see how it all works out. Well, each one clarifies the last, but we know that at the end of time, at the end of days, when all is done, we will all stand up and say, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came and who lived and who died and who rose again, the Lord Jesus Christ, who took on humanity, who drew humanity to himself and emptied himself and humbled himself even to death, even to death on a cross. The name of the Lord Jesus will be the name above all names, and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father, and we will all turn and say, Ah, God is good and trustworthy. His promises are true, and his covenants are never failing. And we'll wait and we'll watch and we'll trust and we'll see God moving. And in the place where we are set, we will love God and we will love neighbor. And as we step out into a place like the nation, the United States of America, wondering, Lord, where does this sit in all of your plans? Every symbol of this nation will be a reminder to us. We are here to love our neighbors as ourselves to the glory of Jesus. Amen. Would you pray with me? Lord, your purposes in salvation, your sovereignty, your covenants of grace, your promises, Lord, it's all so much for us to try to sift through. It actually points, Lord, to the reality of your presence as a God who is beyond our understanding, but who moves to us in love and in grace and who can be trusted. And as we bend our minds around passages like this, Jesus, all we can really do is bend the knee and hold you up in awe and majesty and wonder and trust. So we worship you. We ask that you help us to hold on to hope, that we are never beyond the reach of your grace, that it is never too late. Lord, to hold on and hope that your promises will all come true, to trust that one day all nations will gather, all nations will gather around from every tribe, from every people, and will glorify the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, lifting you up and praising your goodness. Until then, keep us your faithful people, loving God and loving neighbor. In Jesus' name we pray.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Amen. Hearing God's word is just the beginning. What connected with you? What challenged you today? Maybe it's surrendering something, stepping into community, or simply trusting Him more deeply. Whatever it is, don't leave it for later. Act on it today. We're praying that this message moves you closer to Jesus. And we'd love to walk with you in that journey and answer any questions you've got. Connect with us by visiting firstprints.org. If today's message encouraged you, take a moment and subscribe so you never miss an episode and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Check in next week and we'll continue to grow in our faith together. See you next time.