Today, we will finish answering the third question, “Why does God still find fault?” As a reminder, this question brings to the forefront the most common argument raised against the doctrine of election and predestination.  Since God is sovereign, how then is He right, how then is He just, to punish those who could never stand against His will?  Why would God judge them?  Why would God choose to operate in this way?

We began addressing this question by looking at the contention (v19),which manifests in the attitude, a critical spirit, brought forth by the created through the question being asked of the Creator.  We examined how God’s word confronts this attitude. Next, we examined the contrast (vv 20-21), what it is God is doing with the lump of clay that makes up humanity.  Some of the clay He fashions for honorable use, some for dishonorable use.  Finally, we concluded by examining the consultation (vv 22-23), where God reveals He has determined it is His sovereignty over the lump of clay that gives Him the most glory.  Here, God gives one of the answers to this third question in that everything He does is a manifestation of His character, the sum of who He is and this is the way He operates.

And in v23, we find that God truly operates this way, “in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory–”.  In this verse, God is leading us to the cross, face to face with Christ.  Not only is God through Paul leading us to the cross of Christ,  God still finds fault because He has decided that the riches of His glory are reserved for vessels of mercy He prepared beforehand, both Jews and Gentiles.  As we looked at v24-26, quoting from Hosea, Paul demonstrates that God is actively fashioning us, an “unlikely” people, into vessels of honor and the very essence of our testimony unfolding in four merciful acts by God: an “effectual” calling that cannot be resisted, a possession, a love and a position.

But, the problem Paul continues to address is the reality that not all of Israel is the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16).  Salvation has not been lost for the Jews; but, there will be rejection by the greater part of Israel, only a remnant (v.27) will be saved.  Paul reminds his audience this should be no surprise to them, if they understand Isaiah.  Today, as we look at salvation for the remnant of Israel, there is a temptation to wonder, “how does this relate to me, a Gentile believer”?  Let us be diligent to see principles we can extract from the text and apply to our own lives.

—-------------------------------------------

Salvation for Israel (v.27-29)

1.  A merciful cry

(v.27 - “And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved,) 

This “crying out”, coming from Isaiah, is a great, deep-seated, intense emotion.  We see this same “crying out” in Romans 8:15, “...you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” This cry is full of deep passion and emotion, tied to our conversion and how we look to God and cry out, somewhat unintelligibly, to the Father.  It is a response to what we have experienced through the washing and regeneration of the Spirit.  For the first time in our lives, we are experiencing the true love of God.  Salvation is an extremely emotional experience where God has led us to the very love for which our souls have been searching.  This experience is both subjective and supernatural.  

Martin Luther, as he was reading Romans 1:17, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’”, said, “...I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith’.  Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith.  Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”  For the first time, he realized the doors to his Father had been opened, he realized how much he had missed him and, just as a child runs to his father, so does the believer run to His.  Spurgeon also said, “He who can say, ‘Abba Father’ hath uttered better music than cherubim or seraphim can reach.”

This highly emotional, magnificent crying out to and love for God is not something a person can persuade himself to say, make himself do or make himself experience. It is supernaturally produced by the Spirit of God.  It is a deep, inner manifestation of the believer’s newfound understanding God truly loves them, that God has made him His.

This is the same “crying out” of Isaiah although the cry of Isaiah was tied to a deep-seated grief because the love he had for God he saw violated in the lives of the people of Israel and he was overwhelmed.  Israel  had the communication of God, they had the privilege of having close proximity to God, all of which we see in Romans 3:1-2 and Ephesians 2:12b.  To be an Israelite was indeed a great advantage.  They were in a unique position to possess the mind of God and to be in such close proximity to Him.  No other nation or people had this, which Moses called out in Deuteronomy 4:8. But with this great privilege comes great responsibility.  Israel was given the responsibility to share with the world the character and righteousness of God, the truth regarding His holiness, blessings for obedience, cursings for disobedience, the message of the coming Messiah. Isaiah cries out because Israel had completely abandoned this responsibility.  Similarly, Jesus challenged the Pharisees in what they believed regarding eternal life (John 5:39-40), telling them they study, they “know” the Scriptures where they should find Him; instead, they reject Him, blind to the message.  This is the same tragedy Paul is addressing.  The word of God has not failed; the problem is that Israel denies it.  Israel should not have been surprised, because their rejection was prophesied in the word; but, they did not know the message.

The principle to draw out, to ponder, is do you both know and believe the message of salvation?  You can have knowledge without belief; but, true faith requires both.  If you have true faith, a true love for God, then you will obey it, as this is what God requires.  You will not sit on your knowledge and fail to share it with the world.  The believer has the same responsibility as did Israel and Paul shares similar warnings (Romans 11:11,17,19).  Do not take your salvation for granted, your position before God, do not take for granted the entire counsel of the word of God and do not look down on the nation of Israel for their rejection.  We must persevere in obedience (to God), lest we become like the Jews who became near to the word but fell into judgment.

How can this happen? You can cling to your calling, your election but, never repent.  Do you identify with the people around you, or do you identify with Christ?  Do you rely on the things you do, your religious activities, to be your testimony or is your testimony believing in the God who has chosen you, set you apart, called you out of your spiritual death and imparted His righteousness to you through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?  Your life should exemplify the character of God in everything you do!  Otherwise, you are proclaiming a false gospel.  This is Paul’s point, this is the message of Isaiah for the people of Israel.  God demands righteousness, not religion; seek the glory of God, not the glory of man.  See your blindness and repent!

 It is no small matter that Paul is making reference to the words of God, spoken in Isaiah 10:22, which emphasizes only a remnant of Israel would return to God, not every grain of sand from the sea (Genesis 22:17), not every Jew.  The people of Israel wanted to believe it would be the entire nation, that it would be enough to be a Jew.  They ignored the truth of what God was communicating.  In his confrontation, using Isaiah, Paul was encouraging Israel to see the truth that not all of Israel would be saved; only a remnant.  Wake up, repent and believe!

God, who disdains the wisdom and the intellect of man, often flips man’s wisdom.  We find in I Corinthians 1:27, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;” in Matthew 20:16, “the last will be first, and the first last.”, in Matthew 11:25, God has hidden, “things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.”  Similarly, Jesus and His disciples operated in dependence on hospitality for survival (Matthew 8:20).  Jesus washed His disciple’s feet, demonstrating He came to serve and not be served, that His disciples were to be ministers of reconciliation.  The wisdom of God flies in the face of American pride and rugged individualism.  Likewise, the concept of church, as designed by God, is very hard because it goes against all that society would tell us.  God, for His church, promotes dependence, humility and sacrifice, which is what the word “remnant” is talking about.  The Pharisees hated God’s concept of the remnant and His pathway to salvation because it flew in the face of their established religion, their understanding of salvation for simply being a Jew; yet, the true remnant of Israel grabs hold of God’s message.  It is a people who understand from whom their righteousness has been granted, that it is salvation through faith, that too from God and that all their works and efforts mean nothing.  It is a relationship established by God through His mercy and by His grace (Romans 11:5), not religion based on man’s achievements.  Through Isaiah, Paul is showing Israel that God has sent out a merciful cry, warning them that a judgment is coming because of their sin and the time to repent is now.  Then, Paul moves to talk to them about…

2.  A sobering judgment

(v.28 - for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.”) 

God’s judgment is coming and it will be done quickly and will be complete, to the fullest extent, as He has said.  God’s word pronounces judgment and wrath and God’s word mercifully calls to repentance the remnant.  Paul is telling the Jews to look at your faithlessness, judgment is coming.

The principle to draw out, to ponder, is are we guilty of ignoring the ultimate fulfillment of God’s word?  If we are honest with ourselves, we should answer, “Yes”, as we have this tendency primarily due to the timeframe in which things happen, sin in our lives being an example. We sin and we know we have sinned, there is shame and guilt but there is no immediate judgment.  Possibly, we become comfortable in that sin because we do not see judgment.  The next time the same sin tempts us, we more easily repeat it.  Before long, you have cultivated a habit of sin and herein lies the crucial mistake: we begin to lose our sensitivity to what God thinks and we stop thinking God takes our sin very seriously.  Otherwise, you would repent, stop your sin, make dramatic efforts to move away from it; however, in our treatment of sin, we are just like Israel.  Does this not sound similar to God’s message through Noah, who proclaimed God’s judgment and over time the people stopped believing it because it was delayed?  God’s judgment did come and the world was utterly destroyed.

This is where the unsaved go, too.  The message of the gospel and the coming judgment has been preached; but, where is its fulfillment?  It is not believed.  As we examine 2 Peter 3:1-7, we see that Peter is writing a word of encouragement to believers under persecution, and a reminder, that the scoffers in their lives have overlooked the evidence of the true God, His past creation and judgment against the world and that there is a second judgment coming; but, they have also overlooked the evidence, the fact, that God’s judgment will be against the individual who rejects God and His gospel.  If they understood, would they not act?

Do we as Christians not often act (believe?) in the same way with sin, as if we have time?  We try to hold on to it, along with the good things from God; but, we have forgotten the wrath of God is coming without delay!  God will be rewarding those for obedience and those for disobedience.  Ask yourself, what would you change today if you knew Jesus was coming tomorrow?  Church family, stop your disobedience…Jesus “is” coming back!  We have no idea how much time we have. Stop your religion and conform your life to God’s righteousness.  If your heart is submerged in the world, in sin, stop!  This is the underlying message that Paul is preaching to Israel and to Christians. “Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning.  For some have no knowledge of God.  I say this to your shame.” (I Corinthians 15:34). Get your life right, now, be aggressive in addressing your disobedience! “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.” (Revelation 22:12).  Having reviewed the merciful cry and the sobering judgment, we now have… 

3.  A seed is saved

(v.29 - And as Isaiah predicted, “If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.”)

Here reflects the reality of God’s mercy and God’s people.  The entire nation deserves utter destruction; however, God will preserve a remnant, the true line of Abraham, of Jacob. He will have mercy on whom He (chooses) to have mercy.  The principle to keep in mind is that whether we look at God’s choosing from the Gentiles or from the nation of Israel, this preservation of a remnant is strictly about the glory of God and has nothing to do with those He chooses.  As we study Scripture, we must see that the entirety of it is about God…His holiness, righteousness, character…and we should be coming before Him and understanding who He is.  We should be standing before Him in awe and wonder, in true adoration and worship.  Scripture is not about us; but, that is the tendency in our thinking.  No matter where we go in God’s word, we arrogantly, pridefully attempt to find something to apply to ourselves, our lives.

Being a Jew or a good person does not save you.  Attending church, buying Christian products and having Christian friends does not save you.  Is Christ your identity? Have you experienced this magnificent act of God’s mercy?  It is the Gospel alone that saves, “...it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Romans 1:16). It is God’s message calling God’s people to Himself.  It is not about us.

There are vast implications to the person who is not sharing the Gospel.  Do you really believe it or are you ashamed of it?  Do you deny it has power?  Has it really had any effect on you?  If the Gospel has changed you, there is nothing else you can do but share it because you want everyone else around you to experience that same love, you desire that for them.  If you are not sharing the Gospel, you must examine your salvation, because every true Christian is an evangelist!  He who hides the Gospel under a bushel basket will find a Father who will deny him before His throne in heaven (Matthew 10:33).  The Gospel naturally flows from God’s children.

Why does God still find fault?  Because He is glorified in the way that He is acting with His creation.  He has mercy on an unsuspecting people (Gentiles) and He has mercy on an unsuspecting nation He should obliterate.

“Nothing explains the existence of even one Christian but the love and the grace, the mercy and the power of the Lord Almighty.  Let us bow before Him.” (D.M. Lloyd Jones). 

SELAH:

• With an honest heart, is it your first priority that in everything you do to exemplify the character of God?  Is it demonstrated by the sharing of your faith with those in whom you come in contact?

• Have you lost genuine sensitivity to God’s word, evidenced by sin in your life you will not let go?

• What would you change in your life if you knew Jesus was returning tomorrow?

• When you search through and study the Scriptures, are you seeking to know God?

• Is God near to you in your heart?  If not, ask Him to make it so.