“I ask, then, has God rejected his people? Absolutely not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Or don’t you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he pleads with God against Israel? ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I am the only one left, and they are trying to take my life!’ But what was God’s answer to him? ‘I have left seven thousand for myself who have not bowed down to Baal.’ In the same way, then, there is also at the present time a remnant chosen by grace.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Mike Tyson is famous for saying “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Having things all worked out in theory and being able to adapt quickly to obstacles that come along with the goal of completely disrupting if not outright derailing our plans are two very different things. God had a plan for what He wanted to accomplish in and through Israel. Yet even for us to hear that sentence calls to mind things that God may not have meant. This is important for us to understand because trying to make sense out of what we understand God’s plans to have been and how things actually went can be tricky. Let’s join Paul in thinking through some of that here.

This whole section of Romans going back to the beginning of chapter 9 has been driven by a single question: What about Israel? Paul is wrestling with the fact that the vast majority of Jews – his people – were then rejecting Jesus as Messiah and the Gospel of the kingdom of God. How could the people whom God had raised up to bring all of these things into reality not accept them now that they were finally here?

Along the way, he has worked through a number of different major questions related to that including how salvation works in the first place. The conclusion he seems to be drawing to at this point is that our understanding of who exactly Israel is needs to be adjusted, that it was never fully in line with God’s own understanding of who His people were.

His people were and have always been those who were willing to follow Him by faith. To those people God has made great and precious promises, and those promises being embraced and lived out through the lives of His people have brought collateral benefits to others who were associated with them in some way – most often by blood – but the promises were always aimed specifically at His people. Now, yes, those promises were to use His people to bless the rest of the world, but they started with that core.

Okay, but then why does the Old Testament always just address the whole nation of people rather than just this core group? Because God’s desire was to see the whole nation involved in His plans and being His people. His people formed the original core and then they started to expand by birthrate from there. He would have been most happy to see the core of His people expand with the nation as it grew, but that didn’t happen. There were a variety of reasons that didn’t happen, and indeed God in His perfect knowledge knew that it wouldn’t, but the point for now is that it didn’t. But the core was always there. The core of His people was always there and so God’s faithfulness to them resulted in blessing for the whole nation they were a part of.

Yesterday, then, at the tail end of chapter 10, we see Paul finally landing on the question of what to make of Israel’s rejection. He started by asking a simple question: Did they just not hear about God’s plans and so rejected them out of simple ignorance? No, Paul concluded, that wasn’t the case. They all had the chance to hear. God made sure of that. He makes sure the whole world has the ability and opportunity to at least know who He is and what He’s like at the most basic level. Those who finally reject Him will not have that as their excuse.

Well, did they then not understand the message? No, that doesn’t seem to have been the case either. Their rejection was an issue of will. They just didn’t want what God was trying to give them. And again, there were a variety of reasons for that, but at least part of the reason, Paul seems to suggest, is that early on they began to associate the promises of God to them with their genetic identity as a nation rather than with a faithfulness that could and would be shared by people who were not genetically related to them, and they weren’t willing to accept that. To put that another way, what God was promising them was ultimately going to be for everybody, they didn’t like that, and so they turned away from it and kept playing at their own version of what God said rather than receiving the actual thing on its own.

So what then? Did God just reject His people and move on to another? That’s where Paul lands here at the beginning of chapter 11. “I ask, then, has God rejected his people?” If the people rejected Him, has He reciprocally rejected them? “Absolutely not!” God is not petty. He doesn’t act and think and reason and respond like we might. He is good and gracious and faithful even when we aren’t.

Paul’s “absolutely not” there, though, goes beyond just stating the fact. He gets specific and personal. He points to himself. “For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.” How could someone say that God has rejected His people wholesale when here was Paul who was as much a part of Israel as someone could be and was also fully a part of God’s people. God didn’t reject His people as a whole at all. There was always that core of His people existing among the rest of Israel, the ones who were committed to Him by faith rather than merely claiming some genetic heritage they insisted made them more special than anyone else. God knew them and never once rejected them. “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.”

Wait, so does that mean God rejected the rest of His people who weren’t a part of this core? That question reflects a lack of understanding of Paul’s point. You’re still thinking about it in the wrong way. God’s people was always a distinction of faithfulness, not genetic heritage. God never once rejected His people. There were those in the nation around them – many of those in fact – who never became a part of His people in the first place. That is, there were those who settled themselves with claiming a misunderstood genetic heritage without ever actually placing their faith in Him. These were never part of “God’s people” the way we normally consider such a distinction. They received many collateral benefits because of their close (usually genetic) association with God’s people, but they were never part of His people to be rejected by Him in the first place.

But lest you think this is Paul just making stuff up again, he once again takes us right back to the Scriptures to make His point. “Or don’t you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah – how he pleads with God against Israel? ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I am the only one left, and they are trying to take my life!’ But what was God’s answer to him? ‘I have left seven thousand for myself who have not bowed down to Baal.'”

Paul’s reference here is to 1 Kings 19 when Elijah is on the run from Jezebel who has promised to kill him for his dramatic display on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18. He is exhausted and discouraged and depressed. He cries out to the Lord in loud complaint that Israel has rejected him even as they have rejected the Lord Himself. He’s all alone in his efforts to serve faithfully the will of the Lord. God’s response was that Elijah was not even remotely alone. He still has His people. That remnant was preserved and protected by God’s grace, and His presence and work among the people would continue. Even if the rest rejected Him and His plans, He still had a core that was His people.

Paul takes this line of thought and applies it to his current situation. “In the same way, then, there is also at the present time a remnant chosen by grace.” God still had His people in Paul’s day. Like in the days of Elijah, the existence of this people, chosen and protected by His grace in response to their enduring faithfulness, had not changed. In Paul’s context, this people consisted of all those who had continued following God forward in His plans to bless them in order to bless the world by recognizing and receiving Jesus as Messiah and Lord.

In other words, God’s plans were never derailed. They were never interrupted. They were never set aside. They have been smoothly advancing step-by-step, day-by-day, as they will continue doing until His final kingdom comes. Sometimes that’s hard for us to see because we are so limited in our perspective, but when we step back a bit from our own thinking and reasoning and let the Scriptures be our guide, we can see more clearly just what God is and has always been up to. God’s plans are secure and we can keep trusting in them.

Okay, so then what does all of this mean for us? Well, the short version for now is that if you are one who has received Jesus as Lord like Paul did, you are a part of God’s people. You are a part of His people He intends to bless to be a blessing. You are a part of His fulfilling the promise He made to Abraham so very long ago. That’s quite a distinction to bear, and one you should be proud of. As for how exactly that works, we’ll start to get into that more next week. Stay tuned.