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God’s Design for History: The Glory of His Mercy
The text for this morning's scripture reading comes from Romans chapter 11 verses 28 to 32 In the pew Bibles in front of you. That's on page 947 Romans chapter 11 28 to 32 As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake But as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable Just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now I've received mercy because of their disobedience So they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you They also may now receive mercy For God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all Let's pray together Amazing love how can it be that thou my God? Shoots die for me Lord would you stun your people Would you go down into the depths of our heart and Cut away the calluses that have grown over the capacities for being stunned By grace Would you let them bleed and make them livid with touchability? Help us to turn off the television And wake up to reality Would come you've met us Lion of Judah You've met us meet us now in the word Save the lost in this room Strengthened the weak in this room Give light and guidance to the confused who have to make decisions and are perplexed heal the sick physically and Emotionally mend the broken relationships Humble the proud lift up the devastated and downcast Get the wayward back on the straight path that leads to life But especially Lord today Give us the capacity to be staggered by Majesty I Asked this in Jesus name amen Today we are going to wrap up the body of Romans 11 which will leave us then two weeks on the Doxology in verses 33 to 36 and Then we'll be Palm Sunday and then we'll be Easter and then we will craft a vision for a couple of weeks about the north site and then Move on. I am so excited that we are just on the brink of looking at Romans 12 and I can hardly believe that after five six years We're actually going to be getting to the therefore Which all the first 11 chapters are about so many practical things I have thought what will it be like to spend years together in things like love one another and Don't return evil for evil and live at peace with all men and in as much as it lies within you make up I mean these practical things that are going to be honest for month after month in Romans 12 and 13 and 14 What will it be like together? We've been in such heavy deep Waity theology for so long. I'm just wondering what God might be pleased to do among us building on the last years of Romans 1 to 11, but that's out there a few more weeks and we have work yet to do in These last verses of chapter 11 the main point of the chapter is summarized in verses 30 to 32 And it goes like this. I'll put my own words. God has designed and guided history Both its disobedience and its obedience In order to most fully to display most fully display the Magnificence of his mercy and to shut the mouth of all human boasting I think that's the main point of the chapter verse 29 the gifts and the calling of God are Irrevocable gives us a flavor of the kind of God there is behind this Design and purpose namely a God who when he gives a promise or calls something to be It is not revocable. It won't be taken back. It's going to happen. We have a Lord behind this history Psalm 67 4 you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth God guides the nations The nations do not have a sovereignty over against God They do God's bidding he guides them Daniel 2 21 he changes times and seasons he removes kings and sets up kings Daniel 4 35 all the inhabitants you remember what this is don't you Nebuchadnezzar hair grew as long as eagles feathers Claws like a bird ate grass like an ox for seven days or seven weeks And then God gave him his reason back and this is what he said All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing He does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand or say to him What have you done? Isaiah 46 9 I Am God and there is no other I am God and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times Things not yet done saying my counsel will stand and none can resist my purpose so behind verses 30 to 32 Which describes a design of God in redemptive history over its disobedience and its obedience all leading to the display of his mercy And the shutting of human mouths is a sovereign Lord of history verses 30 to 32 give an astonishing shocking picture of the design of God in history to Maximize his mercy and to Shut the mouth of human pride and I I use the words shocking and Astonishing I could have used the words searchable and inscrutable Because in verse 33 those are Paul's words to respond to what he's just taught Oh the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God how Unsearchable are his judgments how inscrutable are his ways So if you come to the end of this message hearing me open verses 30 and 31 and 32 And you're scratching your head and you're saying I don't get it. How can this be? How can God be sovereign over and planned periods of disobedience? Then know that you're in good company Because the Apostle Paul himself responded to his own teaching Unsearchable inscrutable Those are his words not mine. I use the words Astonishing shocking, which is why I prayed for you at the beginning go down to the deeps of our hearts Lord and cut away the calluses on the capacities to be shocked It's very intentional that Paul is doing this Verse 33 proves it. He means to shock us He means to astonish us. He means to put our hands over our mouths and say I don't get it. I can't explain it It's inscrutable. It's unsurgable. He means to leave us there And so if you feel that way don't resent it Learn as much as you can from as much as he gives Now before I go on I want to pause and say These high things about God that we're about to look at God's governing history from beginning to end Disobedience and obedience all leading to the magnification of his mercy These high things are really relevant for your daily life Take sex for example On September 24 to 26 of this year Desiring God Ministries is going to hold another fall conference like last year down at the Minneapolis Convention Center And the name of the conference is going to be sex and the supremacy of Christ There's an assumption behind that title And the assumption behind that title is this One of the main reasons that we are drowning Today in America and in the church in an ocean of lust and pornography men and women Fornication adultery masturbation exhibitionism homosexuality bestiality the news this week from Holland rape Sexual innuendo on every screen virtually One of the reasons that the church included is a wash and drowning in the sea is because we are intellectually and emotionally disconnected from infinite soul staggering divine grandeur And instead drowning in a sea of triviality preparedness banality and silliness We have lost by and large our capacity For being staggered by divine grandeur and we live at a low dog-in-heat level TV is trivial Radio is trivial Sensation is trivial education is trivial Christian books are pressed by publishers to be trivial Worship styles become increasingly trivial We trifle with our little jokey ways so that everybody will feel kind of comfortable because that's what they feel when they watch TV And if they can feel comfortable and home in our jokey churches, they might come back We have lost our capacity to be staggered by the terrifyingly joyous dread and peace of an infinitely untouchable embracing God Life is just boring humdrum and when a creature created by God To live in the presence of God and to be staggered by the glory of his infinite power and justice and wisdom and truth and grace when that creature Swims in an ocean of triviality It must be that he will embrace the best buzz available, and it is sex So many of you Have become fish and therefore do not even miss air anymore You just can't imagine what I'm talking about If there's another air to breathe There's another level of joy There's another experience of magnificent and grander and staggering mouth-shotting Unsearchable unspeakable divine truth that if you lived there you wouldn't want to be a dog in heat in front of your monitor anymore You get victory Over your life of loneness, but you've become a fish. It's all you drink is Triviality the best buzz you can imagine is a low buzz Which is why I prayed at the beginning of the service that God would do what I can't do I Can't awaken the taste buds for the divine God can The deepest cure for our pitiful addictions is Not any mental strategies. I have them. I use them. I teach them. I got my own lust strategies That's not the deepest cure The deepest cure is to be intellectually And I underline that word. I'm not I'm not gonna apologize for theology and doctrine and head But I'm gonna now say the second one the deepest cure is to be intellectually and emotionally staggered By God And there's this tremendous American pragmatic pressure not to form churches like that Not to write books like that not to have music like that, but to keep everything low and chatty and comfortable and silly and trivial and small This is so sad Sex is one of the hundred issues that will overwhelm you and debase you if Your life is out of touch with the magnificence of God Well, I will do my best to stagger you in the next three weeks Because I feel bound by scripture to help you get to verse 33 emotionally Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God I don't get it. It is unscrewdable. His ways are unsearchable. His thoughts are beyond me I bow I put my hand over my mouth and humble myself. I love this God I will not just sit in front of my monitor and look I will stand up. I will walk outside in the cold and look up and say the heavens are Declaring the glory of God make me pure Come on America Wake up to reality Don't live in the ocean of triviality swimming around fearing air Be a man be a woman not a dog in heat All right, my job is simply to let him shine through as best I can. Let's go Verses 30 and 31 sum it up and 32 Crystallizes it. I'll tell you the four stages of redemptive history that are here I'll summarize them then we'll go walking slowly through the text unpacking each of the four stages of redemptive history that Reveal God in a most staggering breathtaking way at the end of this chapter Here are the four stages. I'll just sum them up number one The period of Gentile disobedience This is the period when God let the nations go their own way while he was dealing with Israel for 2000 years plus of course stage two Israel's period of disobedience the coming of the Messiah. They reject him. There's a hardness given and for 2000 years so far There's been by and larger resistance to evangelism and a period of Jewish disobedience third a Time of mercy shown to millions of Gentiles. That's the period in which we live as well The spread of the gospel going to the nations gathering a fullness of the Gentiles in mercy God is treating everyone in Minneapolis so mercifully today fourth The time of mercy on Israel is coming and we've talked about that those are the four stages disobedience of the Gentiles disobedience of Israel mercy on the Gentiles mercy on Israel and now we need to see them as They come in the text verse 30 Just as you Gentiles that you there is Gentiles Just as you Gentiles were at one time disobedient to God That's stage one. Let's finish reading but now have received mercy that stage three Because the next phrase begins with because and so preseeds and brings about the third stage Because of their disobedience so stage one Gentile disobedience stage two Jewish Disobedience stage three mercy coming to the Gentiles, but let's just talk about stage one for a moment Verse 30 you Gentiles were at that time At one time disobedient Now, well, let's ponder that for a minute. What's that referring to? It's referring to Acts chapter 14 verse 16 goes like this Paul says in past generations God allowed the nations to walk in their own ways As though that's coming to an end He allowed the nations to go their own way and he focused mainly on Abraham and his descendants and for 2,000 years from Abraham to Christ God was engaging over and over again with his people Israel letting the nations go their own way and so there is a period of time destined for the disobedience of the nations and Here's something even more remarkable Not only a period of time appointed for the disobedience, but a certain appointment of quantity of equity I'll give you an example of this Before Israel went down into Egypt in captivity God came to Abram and Told him it was going to happen and then gave him a little glimpse into why God was planning this 400-year detour Let me read it to you. This is Genesis 15 13 Then the Lord said to Abram know for certain that your offspring will be so journers in a land that is not theirs and will be servants There and they will be afflicted for 400 years now verse 16 Then they will come back here The promised land which is not theirs yet. They will come back here in the fourth generation because The iniquity of the amorites is not yet complete I Will judge them by you when you arrive under Joshua Only when their iniquity is complete. I need another 400 years To pile up the sins that need to be piled up to justify what I'm about to do through Joshua Here and be amazed at such a god So we have this There was a time when the Gentiles were given up Romans 1 verse 28 He gave them over to the lusts of their flesh and to a depraved mind God let them go their own way to fill up the measure of their sins Now notice another thing here on this stage one God is not thinking individualistically here He is not saying there was a period of time when every single individual Gentile was disobedient unbelieving and lost He's saying Generally as a whole Incorporately, that was the way God related to the nations he let them go while he focused on Israel But the reason we know he's not thinking individualistically is because of how many Gentiles were saved during that period Melchizedek the inhabitants of Nineveh under Jonah's preaching Ruth Rahab and the list goes on God was at work in the nations here and there rescuing So the point here is to speak Holistically or corporately or address the Gentiles as a whole when he says stage one You Gentiles were at that time disobedient stage two Verse 30 again just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now Have received mercy at stage three here come stage two because of their disobedience So if you start here if you draw it in the air you got this long period of Gentile disobedience a Day is coming for Gentile mercy and here stage two bringing that about is disobedience of Israel Because of their disobedience mercy is going to come to you now. What is that? What is stage two? stage two is the arrival of Jesus on scene and Having the people as a whole again. He's thinking whole corporate not every individual of course Matthew mark Jesus Paul 120 saints in the early church 5,000 Jewish believers in Jerusalem. He's thinking whole here not everyone as a whole that you said no to Jesus And they deny him to this very day as a whole With some wonderful exceptions You remember the parable I mentioned it last week the parable of the wicked tenants God owns a vineyard it's called Israel He sends prophets They beat him up cast him out sends another one another one and another one they beat him all up Cast him out and then he says I'll send my son for the harvest of worship that I deserve and The sun comes in the flesh Jesus Christ And they kill him Remember what Jesus says in Matthew 2143 first he says the stone which the builders rejected is the head of the corner This is the Lord's doing This is all the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes And then he says looking right into the Jewish leaders The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people bearing the fruits of it and the hardening descended That we've been talking about and stage two came into being Because of their disobedience Mercy will flow to the Gentiles now stir in something here on stage two that's coming clearly Namely that stage one disobedience of the nations stage two disobedience of Israel are planned by God and purposeful Look at verse 32 to see this in several ways For God consigned mark that word shut up consigned put in jail God consigned All and notice now we're not talking every individual here Don't take the all there as every individual we've shown that both with regard to Gentiles and with regard to Jews The all there does not include every individual. It's just a corporate Hole the whole of the nations given over to disobedience the whole of Israel given over to disobedience For God consigned all to disobedience That purpose in order that He may have mercy on all again not every individual Because the first all is not every individual But notice two things there notice the word consigned and notice the word in order that God is acting designing planning governing Even over the disobedient periods of history, and he's doing it purposefully for a reason for a name in Order that mercy might be magnified in the world and don't tell God how to magnify his mercy Learn from God how mercy is magnified. Oh how prone we are to say I'd write history differently Well, yes, you would indeed which is why you are not God We must humble ourselves and learn from God how things are And why they are the way they are Look at verse 31 to see the purposefulness even more clearly So they to the Jews have now been disobedient in order that There's that crucial phrase to show purpose the Jews have been disobedient in Order that in order that well whose purpose is it? Did the Jews say We choose now to reject the Messiah So that mercy would come to the Gentiles did any Jewish person say that no not a one This is not a Jewish purpose. This is a divine purpose The in order that is all important here to see God is Designing periods of history and what they are like and what happens in them in order that Something would happen in verse 31 It is in order that by the mercy that will be shown to the Gentiles It will then be shown to Israel as well, but we're getting ahead of ourselves So two things must be said about stage one two One they are designed and Planned and govern not accidental God doesn't get trapped by any big decisions of Jews or Gentiles into doing something He didn't plan to do the in order that proves that in verse 31 and verse 32 two And the second thing to observe is that God is not treating them individually in these all's But these are corporate and the reason that's so important is because I spent months in 1983 arguing with a philosophy professor in the Reformed journal That verse 32 does not teach universalism It does not teach universalism But you yanked it out of context without any of the things that I've just said for the last 20 minutes and say He consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all Then you got everybody saved in the universe Well, the first all is not individual neither is the second all individual and it's plain as day If you read chapter 11 in the flow of its thought, but that is a second thing. You should be aware of let's go to stage three back to verse 30 Just as you Gentiles were at one time disobedient that's stage one But now here stage three But have now received mercy Because of stage two the Jewish disobedience so stage three is a period in which God is pouring Mercy on the nations on the Gentiles This is the great commission Jesus comes he offers himself as the son that kill the son He says the kingdom will be taken away from you and given to a people Declaring the fruits of it throughout the book of Matthew you hear him say go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel as soon as he Has been rejected decisively by the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He looks out over all of his disciples and says now All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me go make disciples of all those Ham eating uncircumcised unclean nations and make them mine This is a season of mercy go to the nations go to Guinea go to Uganda go to Iraq Go to Argentina go to Korea go to Indonesia go to Laos go to America and find the nations and make Them mine or the other parable of the banquet beat the bushes if those who are invited won't come I will have a full house compel them to come in good and bad That's the season we live in now It's a period of mercy You live in this room right now some Jews mostly Gentiles in this room Absolutely lavished with mercy because you're breathing and hearing an invitation to receive Christ as Savior and Lord and escape from the wrath to come it's mercy that you're here. It's mercy The sun is shining behind those clouds out there on this city It's mercy that an earthquake hasn't opened up and swallowed up at Minneapolis down into Hades It's mercy mercy every day that the gospel rings forth on radio and that a few missionaries at least have heard this tremendous call to go to the nations Was reminded again this week by a great missionary leader Hudson Taylor sat on the beach just And then gone over to China and saw the little teeny outpost submissions on the coast and looking at the untold Millions at the inlands and said I can never again worship in a church of a thousand people while China's never heard the Lord Not easy to stay here If you hear this if you understand what history is about This is a moment of missionary mercy on the world. That's the meaning of this church If you stay here easy sums rolling your head I Don't mean everybody should go. I don't mean to stay as a second-class citizen. I just mean it should be a little hard for you to stay When you think of how many people's how many millions how many cities how many villages have? Nothing about the mercy that this time is designed to bring them That's stage three Stage four verse 31 So they two the Jews have now been disobedient That's the period in which we live as well Stage two and three overlap Disobedience of Israel now mercy shown to Gentiles now now. Let's read what's coming verse 31. I'll start again So they Jews to have now been disobedient In order that this is all by design. This is all purposeful. There's a reason for this. There's a purpose It's coming in order that by the mercy shown to you They also May now receive Mercy and that all is that great whole that's been hardened for all these years They who've been hardened all these years all Israel not every individual just the corporate whole Will receive mercy and I've spent months trying to explain that and I won't go into it again here Except to say there it is in summary form all Israel will be saved Notice the extraordinary wording here Don't miss it so they too the Jews have been disobedient in Order that and then look how he puts the purpose. There's a reason for this By the mercies shown to you they may now receive mercy He intends for the salvation of Israel to come through the salvation of the Gentiles Why Why this kind of history why this convoluted approach To getting the job done Namely the magnifying of the magnificence of the mercy of God and the shutting of the mouth of human pride Why this approach? Well, here's one answer Jews were prone to boast over the Gentiles Therefore God humbled them by making their disobedience a means to save Gentiles That's pretty effective Don't fault God here get your life in sync with God here Pride and Jewishness over Gentiles is removed by making Jewish disobedience a means of the salvation of the very ones they were boasting over Boasting is stripped from the mouth of Israel He humbled them By making their own salvation a fruit of Gentile salvation Now what about us Gentiles? We're prone to boast I've been working on this a long time, right? We're prone to boast over the broken-off branches They were broken off they entered a a Christ rejecting season of hardness not us We believed in Christ God knows that kind of boasting is possible in a depraved heart like mine And therefore he designs a history just strip it out of my life What's that? He stops our mouths by making our reception of mercy a means of their receiving mercy Just when we thought we could boast over the broken-off branches He says shut up and listen to the next phase your mercy is Design for their mercy if you don't get that you're not in Remember that you too can be broken off Just when we think in Redemptive history we finally been treated by God in a way that justifies our boasting in our will or in our ethnicity or in our Distinctives he says here's another phase to put you down The whole of history is designed for two things the shutting of the mouth of human pride and The opening of our eyes to the magnificence of absolutely free and sovereign Mercy that's the point of history Mercy on all By consigning all to disobedience Romans 916 remember these words so then it depends not on human will or Human exertion, but on God who has Mercy so Bethlehem Be shocked Be astonished be utterly amazed Say this is unspeakable. These thoughts are inscrutable. These ways are Unsearchable. I don't see how he can govern a disobedient period for a purpose and be holy And if you say I Can explain this to a man on the street you're trying to witness to My response is Whoever said anything by explaining this to a man on the street that you're trying to witness to I'm not even trying to explain it to you Beyond what's here Who said you have to explain everything you're gonna not believe in the Trinity? You're gonna not believe in the two natures of Jesus as the God man You're gonna not believe the cross and the weight of the sins of the world on one man Justifiably removing their sin by his suffering you're gonna not believe in any of that because you can't explain it to a human brain Well then Farewell But if you're not gonna make your little brain the criterion of what you will embrace in the Bible But just when you don't get it bow down and say Just help me not to make a mess of it Lord in my perplexity I just bow and if there's more light to be shed give me light But I just want to end up where Paul ends up Oh the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God How in searchable are his ways and how unscrewed will are his judgments? Who's known the mind of the Lord? Who has ever been his counselor? Who has ever given a gift to him that he should be repaid for from him through him to him are all things Therefore to him be glory forever and ever that will get you away from your monographic monitor If God comes and cuts the calluses away from your capacities to be staggered by divine reality And labels you to breathe again and not just swim in a sea of triviality It's right Lord I ask for a miracle in this room for me first and Then for these friends that you would do a heart work here I've done as much head work and mouth work and emotion work as I can do and I can't change anybody So come and do a heart work. I pray To cut away the calluses of years of trifling tetanus banality silliness lowness yielding bondage to lust Greed food Well, just cut it away and let us rise on the wings of the word and the spirit into the magnificent places of your mind Oh further up and further in not to become arrogant. Oh God shut us down with every quiver of pride But to be staggered That we would be shown such grace and such mercy as to be included in the family of God Make missionaries out of us Lord. Oh Send from Bethlehem hundreds of life laying down missionaries Life is very short Very soon we're gonna lay our troubles down And fly away to Jesus We will not be happy Having spent our lives in pornography We will having lost our lives in missions In Jesus name I pray amen
John Piper | Watch Now