God's Rich Mercy for Obstinate People

Hear the Word of God. about Elijah, how he pleased with God against Israel. Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have torn down your altars, and I alone am left and they are seeking my life. But what is the divine response to him?

I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. In the same way, then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God's gracious choice. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace.

What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained. But those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened. Just as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear not, down to this very day. And David says that their table become a snare and a trap and a stumbling block and a retribution to them, that their eyes be darkened to see not and bend their backs forever. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your grace. We pray you'd help us to grasp more deeply and more clearly the fact that you are rich in mercy to us who are very obstinate. We're very resistant. Even at a time, we'll listen, but others, we are bucking up on our backs and pushing back. O God, by your Holy Spirit and by your word, speak to us this evening.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, the title of the sermon is God's Rich Mercy for Obstinate People.

That's me. And so, but Paul is really struggling here with the fact that the Jewish people that he knows and he was a Jew were obstinate as he had been obstinate. And it's a real problem. And as we think about this tonight, as we go through this, I think we can find some parallel. Probably everybody in here has had some Christian background before he became a believer, and you have family and friends who have a Christian background, and they have some knowledge of Scripture, but yet they may be resistant to the Gospel, to the really following Christ. And so there's a sense of parallel between all that the Jewish people knew in their heads but wasn't true in their life.

And so maybe you can see parallels to other friends that you have who have had a Christian heritage. As I approach this text, I'm going to do it a different way. First we'll go through chapter 11, just skipping down to the major points that Paul is making.

And then we'll go back and look at another section. We'll look at several quotes that Paul gives from the Old Testament. Then we'll jump back again and start looking at the illustrations and metaphors that Paul uses, and then we'll clue with a great doxology, which starts in verse 33 to the end of the chapter. So it's kind of a different breakup of the Scriptures. But Paul is, in this passage of Scripture, he's continuing to deal with the problem and the personal struggle that he has with the fact that people are not listening to the Gospel.

And so he's trying to figure out what in the world is happening. Here is the Jewish nation. They have those Hebrew Scriptures. They have been blessed with the promises of God's grace and his plan of salvation through a Messiah that has become, and they have rejected it. They've rejected Christ. So is all of Israel lost forever? That's his question. And is the church just going to be only Gentiles in the future?

Is that what's going on here? And his answer is no. And he says God has not totally rejected his people, and the word is totally.

You need to remember that. There is a remnant that is going to be saved and that God does save. Yes, there are people who will continue to resist the Gospel, but as a group, God is going to be saving people out of Israel all along.

So the short answer, I guess you could find this is in verse 1 and verse 5. Is God going to reject his people? Verse 1 says, I say then, has God not rejected his people? Has he?

May it never be. Verse 5 says, In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God's gracious choice. Paul illustrates all of this with historical examples and with quotes from the Old Testament to verify that that's what God's going to do. And the main point Paul is making is God has not totally rejected his people.

Now there are some people that we know were rejected. You remember in the Exodus there was the family of Korah who rebelled against Moses and against God, and they were defiant and the earth opened up and they fell in and the earth closed back up and they were destroyed. But that was only a part of Israel. Others were truly believers in Christ, the Christ to come, and they were saved.

So how are the people, those remnants saved from Israel, out of Israel? They're saved only by grace, by grace alone. So verse 6 explains it. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise grace is no longer grace.

Now that's a rifle shot to the heart. That tells us the truth of the Gospel right there. Paul is pointing out this truth. A descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all that are called Israel, are all saved by grace alone.

Totally. And so the false teaching in Judaism was, as it grew and the traditions grew, was that if you keep these laws, you keep these rules, you keep these regulations, you'll be a good Jew and you'll be fine. But that was not true. And people today think the same thing. We think mentally the same thing, that God is going to save us if we are good or we're pretty good. Or God is obligated, because he's gracious, to save everyone.

And to say it's particularly you or me. That's what people think. By nature, God isn't gracious, so we are entitled to be excused.

That's what some people think. So our attitude can be really one of pride if that's what we're thinking. That we've done no wrong.

Well, we haven't done that much wrong, so God should let me in. I was talking to a truck driver who was here a while back, and Lance helped me help him out because he had some financial problems. He was really in trouble. He had a medical issue here.

It was a loan. And I talked to him. He's a nice fellow, but boy, he told me. I talked to him about the Lord, and he said, well, you know, I've done pretty good, and so I think my good outweighs my bad.

He told me that. And that's the same philosophy that Paul was facing here among Jewish people, and it is man's philosophy. It's the philosophy of the world. It is not the gospel. So how is the remnant saved? It is saved only by grace. And verse 5 makes it very plain. If you look at that verse, that verse ends, it says, according to God's gracious choice. It is God's initiative. Otherwise, there would be no movement in our hearts, no change in our character, no change in our nature. So we cannot just go back, oh, I had this Christian heritage, or my grandfather was so-and-so. No, we cannot win God's favor on some kind of credits that we think. It's only by grace, and that grace originates not inside of us. It originates with God himself.

Now, I know sometimes when I read Scripture, it's kind of shocking. It uses the word choice. Now, the word choice is actually, in the Greek words, is eklogoi, eklogai, eklogai.

So what does eklogoi mean? Choice. Choice means choice.

That's its exact translation. And so others said it's the act of picking out, the act of choosing. It's the act of God's free will by which he ordained before the world to give blessings to certain people. He chooses you out of your sin and pulls you out of that by his grace. So these verses, all through this chapter, teach us that we are completely dependent upon the grace of God. Totally. So by God's grace, a remnant is saved.

Now let's look at, we're going to read 11 through 24. So Paul goes on to say this. I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they?

May it never be. He's speaking of the Jewish people. But by their transgressions, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make them jealous. Now, if their transgression is riches for the world and their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be? But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles in as much as I am an apostle of Gentiles. I magnify my ministry.

If somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also. And if the root is holy, the branches are too. But if some of the branches were broken off and you being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. But if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, branches were broken off so I might be grafted in.

Quite right. They were broken off for their unbelief. But you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Behold then the kindness and severity of God to those who fell severity.

But to you, God's kindness. If you continue in his kindness, otherwise you also will be cut off. And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in for God is able to graft them in again.

For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree? This passage of scripture basically is trying to go through this with the Gentiles about the Jewish people who have rejected Christ thus far by and large. Yet he said that that rejection is not total in the first part, nor is it final.

It's not going to be a final rejection. More Israelis will come to faith in Christ. And so he uses this illustration of the olive tree here representing the kingdom of God, the body of Christ, down through time. And more descendants will come into the kingdom from Israel before the end of time. So verse 11 says, I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they, may it never be. Their fall and the collapse of Israel, the lack of faith there is not a final collapse.

It's not total and it's not final. But God is able to graft them back in again. That is the power of the living God and the grace of the living God. He will bring descendants of Israel into his kingdom yet again. So the process of Jewish people being cut off because of unbelief is nothing for the Gentiles to be proud of.

He kind of checks them here, these Gentiles in Rome. So he sends a warning in verse 19, and it's a warning to us. He says, you will say then, branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in, quite right.

They were broken off for their unbelief. But you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear.

Why fear? Well, he said, well, I'm elect. I've been elect all my life, so I'm going to heaven. Wait a minute, that's a bit of pride, isn't it? Pride, arrogance, deceit do not mark the character and the heart of a Christian.

They do not. And they do not mark a person who is a believer in Jesus Christ. Anyone who has unbelief, even if they're Gentiles or Jews, you're cut off if your faith is not in the living God. And that's what he's saying here. He's warning them, don't be proud.

Don't get proud about things. So the major point here is that God, the Jews, are not finally cut off. God could graft them in again by his grace and his power. So verse 23 says, and they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.

Who is able? Who has such grace? God alone has that grace.

So until the final day of world history, people from Jews and Gentiles will be grafted in to that olive tree. Now verse 32 gives us insight into how this is possible. This verse addresses the fact of both God's judgment and God's severity, and they're both together.

They're always there together. He says, behold then the kindness and severity of God to those who fail severity, but to you, God's kindness. If you continue in his kindness, otherwise, you also will be cut off. These verses teach our complete dependence upon the grace of God. God's ultimate purpose is to bring Jew and Gentile into his kingdom and a remnant of those people, and he's calling us out. He called them out to be a holy people. He said that long ago to the nation of Israel.

And Peter repeats that again. You are called out to be a holy people. That's God's purpose.

He's bringing in that remnant. Okay, so the Jews are not finally cut off. They're not totally cut off, but let's look at verse 25 through 32. He says, for I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery so that you will not be wise in your own estimation that a partial hardening has happened in Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, just as it is written. The deliverer will come from Zion.

He will remove ungodliness from Jacob. This is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. From the standpoint of the gospel, they, Jews, unbelieving Jews, are enemies for your sake. But from the standpoint of God's choice, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you, they also may now be shown mercy.

For God has shut up all in disobedience so that he may show mercy to all. So God's ultimate purpose is to bring people into his kingdom, a remnant. And this teaches that God is not finished with his people yet, the Jewish people yet. So in the time of Christ, even Paul's day, the religious leaders, an establishment, they were enemies of their own Messiah. They were not spiritual children of God. They were not true spiritual children of Abraham because they did not have the same faith that Abraham had. They were not trusting in the God of Scripture. So from the Gentile point of view, however, those people who were not believing Jews were rejected and the Gentiles were added into the kingdom and God was still calling those who are in Israel, those who would have believed to himself. God never evoked his promise to the Jewish people as a called out people, as a holy people. So he is going to save that remnant from them all through time.

Now let's look at some of the circumstances. He says, for just as you Gentiles once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient that because of the mercy shown to you, they also may now be shown mercy. Paul's making a point here. It is that we are all ultimately disqualified from being in God's kingdom because of our unbelief and our sin. But verse 32 puts it another way. It says, in another part of Scripture, it talks about how for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That's what he's documenting here in verse 32, which says, for God has showed up all in disobedience so that he may show mercy to all. We are all condemned because of our sinful human nature.

We all need the grace of God. So all kinds of people, Jew and Gentile, which is the context of this chapter, are offered the good news of Jesus Christ. The all here at the end of this verse means all kinds of people, people from every tribe and tongue and nation. God is going to bring in this remnant to himself, all by his grace. So these verses teach us of our complete dependence upon the grace of God.

There are three quotes. We're going to go to three quotes that show that God is rich in mercy for us as an obstinate people and the Jews as an obstinate people. Romans 10.21 says, but as for Israel, he says, all the day long, I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people. That's quoting Isaiah 65, verse 2. At that time when Isaiah wrote that, the people in Israel were thinking their own thoughts.

Oh, we can do what we want to do. They were not thinking God's thoughts after him. They were not following the Scriptures. So they were not doing what God taught. So you'll notice here, it is God who is approaching them. It says, I have reached out my hand to an obstinate and disobedient people. They were not reaching out to God.

They were going on their own thoughts. And it is the people who are resisting God's revelation of himself. So in Isaiah's day, God warns them that judgment is coming because they're resisting him. They're turning away from him. They're not seeking to serve God at all. They have their own interests.

They're off doing their own thing. And so even before the judgment fell on the nation of Israel and on Judah, Isaiah warns and predicts that God's grace is going to bring them back to the promised land as a very big picture of the grace of God. So Paul quotes this text declaring the need for repentance and turning to the living God as Isaiah called the people to turn. The next quote is found in Romans 8, 9, and 10. And this quote is from a combination of Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and a couple from the Psalms. And it says, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear not, down to this very day. And David says, Let their table become a snare and a trap and a stumbling block and a retribution to them.

Let their eyes be darkened to see not and bend their backs forever. So this is a judgment passage. And it is that God, when you reject the grace of God, you are truly in trouble. When you reject the offer of grace of Messiah from Christ, who is the only one who offers you grace, the only one who offers you salvation, then you are in trouble. You are cursed because you rejected the grace of God. So the judgment is spiritual blindness in this life and spiritual dullness.

Their lifestyles are cursed. And verse 7 gives some reasons for this. And it's because they sought to earn their own righteousness.

They declare their own, Oh, I'm good enough. I'm good enough to get into heaven. I'm okay, like I am without repentance and faith. And so they left the dependence on the grace of God. They left it. They pushed it aside.

I can stand on my own. So in verse 9, judgment is called upon the rebellious, is called for a stumbling and to the disobedient. And those who despise, there are people who despise faithful people.

There are people in this world who despise believing people. But they were going to face an earthly judgment. And that judgment is similar to what you see in Romans 1 where God says He turns them over to their own devices, to their own foolishness, to their own immoral desires. That is a form of temporal judgment in this time. So God allows them to falter in their own deceit if we're in rebellion against God. So if we harden our heart toward God, God will come in and harden our heart even more as a temporal judgment on us. So Paul is reviewing that. However, there's another quote, a great quote. He moves on along and comes back to the same topic. If you look at verses 26 and 27, he says, So all Israel will be saved just as it is written.

Listen to this. The deliverer will come from Zion. He will remove ungodliness from Jacob. This is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. He's laid the foundation and now he's declaring what God's going to do. He will cleanse the people in the times of Isaiah through the judgment in Babylon and he will cause them to want to come back to the living God as they are purged and cleansed. That covenant promise, of course, as we know, is ultimately filled in the coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. So Paul is pulling out the fact that Jews in Jerusalem, many in the Sanhedrin, even in his own day, in the day of Christ, yet they are resistant to the Messiah, yet God is keeping his promise. Christ gave his life as a sacrifice on the cross to show us that he has given himself through us, through his body and his blood, that if we trust in him, we will be redeemed.

We will be pulled out of that darkness and out of that foolish blindness that is someone. He is that substitute to take away our sins and that is the only way that anyone ever offers salvation by grace, only through Christ. He says, when I take away their sins, there in verse 27, this was partly accomplished.

One, he purged the people, literally, when they took him into captivity in the Babylon, but God in his mercy arranged for the pagan Cyrus, Persian Cyrus, to send them back and they went back rejoicing, knowing that they had sinned as a people group against God and God restored them and many have come to faith in Christ. So that's a pattern of Israel, but it's also an individual, also a pattern for us. God is going to bring his chosen remnant to faith in him. There will be a turning of Jews and people to him as time goes by.

There are Messianic Jews and the number is only going to grow and Gentiles also are going to be brought into the kingdom, on and on. It is not a political Israel. It is not a socialism. It is not a parliament.

No, no, that's not it. It is a believing group of people, a holy people, that God is building for himself. The third major point that Paul makes, he uses historical examples and he uses metaphors to teach that God has chosen many Israelites and Gentiles to be part of his kingdom. Remember, Paul was deeply concerned about the Jewish people who had rejected Messiah and had all these promises in the Old Testament and they were being fulfilled right before their eyes in the life of Jesus Christ and yet they were rejecting them. So he gives an example of someone who is a Jew coming to faith in Jesus Christ. And the example is Paul himself, the first example.

And it's his own testimony. Saul of Tarsus, a devout Pharisee, a persecutor of the church, and a persecutor of Jesus Christ. He knows that he was a persecutor of Christ. So three times in the book of Acts it recalls the story of Paul. Luke records that in Acts chapter 9. In Acts chapter 22, Paul is speaking to Jewish people in the city of Jerusalem and there's a riot and he stands up and he's able to address them in the Hebrew tongue and he tells the same story of his Damascus conversion as God spoke to him and struck him down with light there on the Damascus road and he said, yes Lord. And he went into the city of Damascus and met with Ananias and he became a believer, not a persecutor. And then again he goes over again.

He's standing before King Agrippa in chapter 26 of Acts. He does that again. He goes through that whole story testifying that here is a man who is adamantly opposed to the Messiah and he came to faith in Christ because of the grace of God reaching down and touching him.

And he says this, he goes over this. He talks about, I'm a Hebrew of the Hebrews. I'm one who is an apostle who does not deserve to be an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. And he says this in 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians and Philippians. Paul the Israelite is converted. That's the first example of a Jewish man coming to Christ. The second example of God not being finally finished or totally finished with his people is the account of Elijah. And you know Elijah the prophet was sent there and he confronted the prophets of Baal and there were 400 of them and they tried to burn a sacrifice by calling on their God and then Elijah just pours water on his sacrifice and God comes down with fire and consumes it and then the prophets of Baal are destroyed, 400 of them. And then what happens, you know what happens, he starts thinking, oh my, Jezebel is still after me. And King, you know King, Ahab's wife Jezebel, she was from Sidon and she was a committed prophet of Baal and she was a very wicked woman I guess if you say someone's a Jezebel.

They're about as bad as you can ever get. So anyway she was and she, the prophets of Baal, who were they? They were Israelites who had accommodated themselves to the wickedness and the culture of the Canaanites and become followers of Baal. They were not Sidonians who transferred down, they were Jewish people and that's why God's judgment comes down heavily upon this accommodation that they had made.

And so they had given in to the pagan culture and the ways of Jezebel. So an increasing awareness of the nature and culture that we are living in and the times that we live in and we see paganism here and paganism there, we should not think that we're alone like Elijah thought he was alone although we may feel that way. He was felt alone, he was isolated, he ran into the wilderness and I guess some of us if I had been there I might have been ahead of him heading into the wilderness because he had, his faith became weak in faith and he wasn't keeping his eyes on the Lord. But what did God say to him? He says, I have kept for myself, down in the wilderness he said, Elijah I've kept for myself 7,000 men who have never bowed to need a Baal and God keeps us, God calls us, God sustains us, God keeps his promise of salvation, he keeps his protection. Now it may not always work out that way, the way he may take it, protect us, he may take us home to be with Jesus.

I have a friend I met, taught, I don't know where, whereabouts now, over in an Asian country and you know which country that is. He was in his town, he had his family and then they got attacked, he left, eventually made it to another town, we had some friends and that town was attacked and then he went back to his old town because things had settled down, but then military attacks came again and I don't know where he is now. Yeah, he was worse than Elijah in some ways, people are like that.

There's another lady that in the Western culture, someone I thought of a little bit and kept track of, she's a whistleblower on a major company and she's in trouble, she fears for her life. People are under pressure people are facing things like Elijah face, the fear of death with the Jezebel security teams are still out there and God's people need to look to the Lord. But the whole point is in all of that distress, God is saving a people to himself. He had 7,000 men and had not bowed in need of bail and Elijah couldn't see it and we can't see what God's doing in this world. God is bringing in his people. The point is God has not, no, he has not totally forsaken Israel. God does not forsake his chosen believers.

He does not. Israel is a nation. It is an example and parallels what the church of Christ is supposed to be like.

It's part of that church but it's an illustration also of the church. The nation of Israel failed. Do you want to look at Saul?

Do you want to look at David? Do you want to look at Samuel in the latter years of his life, his apostasy with all these foreign, unbelieving wives? Yeah, they began to follow the immoral customs of the Canaanites which they were supposed to destroy. Yet God's promises have never failed. The Messiah came and he's coming again. Even the fact that God's grace is shown to Gentiles is an amazing thing. It's there because God was also using that to make the Jewish people jealous, as Paul says.

God's ways are mysterious, the things that he does. Paul's day, our day, the miraculous in Christ's day, the miraculous works were clear. But those who were descendants of Abraham turned away from their Messiah. And so they sit there and they say, how are these Gentiles worshipping the God of Abraham? How are they following Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah? How can they trust in the one who said he is the son of David? And how are they reading these Old Testament scriptures that are ours?

It was to provoke jealousy. And God used that to incite some to research again and look for the Messiah and find Christ. So verse 16 of our text gives two more metaphors, real short ones.

One talks about the dough and the lump of dough. So it is talking about the firstfruits of the grains of the meal offerings that were offered in Israel. And the firstfruits of all Israel were offered to worship God, saying that all the land of promise, all the food that we have comes from God. Every blessing comes from him.

All our gifts come from God himself. And so the grains of Canaan, the prosperity there replaced the manna that they had in the wilderness. They're pointing to the true bread of life. But Israel was the benefactor of God's grace in many ways. And so they were called out to be holy as that lump swelled and it was prepared.

You know, it's growing. And so part of that is going to represent you take 10% of that or whatever, a lump of that, and you take it in your offering. Well, that's telling you God has part of that remnant, part of the people of Israel, they do belong to the Lord, just like part of that grain belongs to the Lord. Also, he goes on to the second metaphor, which is where he uses trees and branches and the olive tree in particular. Israel is not totally and it is not finally rejected because they're connected to the root. And the root, of course, is our Lord Jesus Christ. And God is finally calling out a holy people to set to himself to bear fruit.

And so the wild olive trees or branches are grafted in. That's the Gentiles. But then again, God turns around and causes repentance and will cause other Jewish people to come back to him and he will graft in again that Jewish remnant and trust in him. So throughout these verses, it is clear that it is God's grace that chooses a man and man's mind that rejects.

You get that? God's grace chooses, but men reject. That's what's going on here. Every verse of these scriptures should point us to the fact that we are dependent upon the grace of God. Then we come to that doxology. These last few verses is a great section of scripture. Oh, the depth of the riches of both the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his ways and his judgments and unfathomable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has become his counselor or who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever and ever.

Amen. Unsearchable, unfathomable are the ways of God. How can you appropriately describe what you can't even understand, what you can't take in, what you cannot fully know in this life? God's revealed will in scripture declares, more than you and I can understand and comprehend.

It is so rich. God uses jealousy, as Paul says, to provoke a humble attitude, to cause a dull attitude to wake up among the Jewish people, to draw them to Christ and see the Gentiles profess faith in Christ and trust in the prophecies of the Messiah. It is in a mysterious way that God can use that to bring other Jewish people to himself. Look at verse 22.

Another way of these things that God does, these unfathomable ways that God works. He says, Or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? Now, Paul said that again. He said that when he was preaching in Athens. And he says this in Acts 17, 26, 27.

I'll quote this for you. He says, God, and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each of us. When you realize you're limited and God controls the boundaries and the functions of human history, it can be a tool that God can use to say, you know, I need to know the Creator.

I need to know the one who really controls human history. And God uses that as a tool, as a thing in some people's lives to help them realize Christ. God used also the Babylonian captivity, the Babylonian judgment on Israel to bring them back to himself.

He did. How unsearchable are his ways? Will God bring judgment to us, to other people, to bring them back to himself?

It's possible. We cannot fully know the ways of God or the ways of God's judgment and his grace, but we are to praise God as we meditate on his word. Verse 34 and 35 come from Isaiah 40. It says this, for who, ask this question, rhetorical question, we know the answer, for who has known the mind of the Lord or who has become his counselor or who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again?

Not me, not us. We cannot know God's mind. God is the eternal and ultimate being. Everything exists because of his holy will. He is the source of all things and all things proceed from him. He is the creator. He is the person through whom all things exist and subsist.

He is the final goal of history and the final recipient of glory. Salvation is not through self-dependency. Eternal life is not through earned credit.

Life is only obtained as a gift from God. Coming to faith in Christ is only by his calling. The gospel calls. You can only come to faith in Christ by trusting. You can only come to Christ by trusting in him. You have to turn and trust in him alone in his grace because there is no other way. Only God's rich mercy can redeem us as an obstinate people.

Only his mercy. So let all the nations praise you. Let all the peoples praise you. Let us who believe in Lord Jesus Christ praise him. For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your glory. We don't understand all your ways, but we know that you are the almighty God. We know that your plan of salvation has been there before the foundation of the world to draw out a holy people to create that remnant to bring you glory and honor through all eternity for the Jew and Gentile alike of every tribe and tongue and nation. Oh, Father, if there's anyone here who has not known Jesus tonight, I pray, Father, that your Holy Spirit and your word would touch their lives. We cannot change people. We cannot change ourselves. But you, Lord Jesus, by your power, by the conviction you bring, can alter us. Come, Lord Jesus. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.