“Living Without Conceit”

A Sermon Based Upon Romans 11: 1-2a; 11-12; 17-25; 28-32

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday,   October 26, 2014

“Do not be conceited, but fear….”  (Rom 11:20 NAU)

“Does God hear the prayers of Jews?”  

This question was a very hot topic in Southern Baptist Churches back during the 80’s and 90’s.    During one particular Bible study I was leading, a deacon answered that God would definitely not hear the prayer of a Jew and he added, that if unless the large Jewish community living in our town did not confess faith in Jesus Christ, they were all going to hell.  

Hearing this, I turned and asked him whether or not someone should go and share the gospel with them?   He shook his head “Yes!”  Then I asked, “Will you go with me into that large Jewish community and witness to them?”   He declined.   He said that wasn’t his thing.

Then I thought to myself, “Can a person who believes that all Jewish people are going to hell and does nothing to save them, be saved?”     Interestingly, that fellow was the first deacon I ever had who had served time in prison.   His attitude toward the Jews was quite ironic.  He believed that God had mercy and spared him, but he did not believe God would spare the Jews.  

To paraphrase Paul, that man sounded very ‘conceited’ in his faith.   Isn’t that the opposite of what Paul recommended to the Gentile Christians of his own day: “Do not be conceited, but fear; for if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. (11.20-21). 

WHAT PEOPLE CAN’T KNOW

When Paul warned: “Do not be conceited”, he was talking to Christians; Christians who thought they knew the fate of the Jews and that they were better than them because they were Christians.   If Germany had only read this part of the Bible, there may not have been a Nazi Germany or World War II.   If they only realized what Hitler didn’t know.

I’m sometimes amazed at what people think they know, especially when it comes to religion.   A couple of years ago, a very strong message was being preached by a very popular and gifted young preacher, Rob Bell.  He even wrote a book to share his message with a great title, “Love Wins”.   I liked his title and I liked some of the things he said in the book.   But he also made a very risky claim about what he knows about, “Heaven and Hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived”.   The book does make some important points about God’s love for everyone.  He also revealed some very bad logic in a lot of evangelical thinking about God and salvation.   Rob Bell strongly believes it is wrong to say that God freely offers us his love and grace, and then sends us to Hell to burn forever if we don’t respond the right way.  What kind of God gets mad and sends you to Hell because you don’t like him?   This kind of attitude is certainly not like Jesus’ when he commanded us to “Love Your enemies” and Bell says, if God does also love his enemies, God looks hypocritical, unloving, uncaring, and angry.  It just doesn’t make sense. 

Bell’s book set off a fire-storm among evangelicals.  Even some mainline denominational magazines reacted negatively to some of the things he says in his book.   Rob Bell’s emphasis on the final victory of God’s love makes it look like Bell either believes in Purgatory (a place where people are given a second chance after death which not clearly taught in the Bible), or, it makes him sound like he is a Universalist (saying ‘Universalists are Christians, too’), making Jesus and the gospel seem less important, especially since, as the book claims, Rob Bell already knows “the fate of every person who ever lived”  (See “Love Wins” by Rob Bell, Harper One, 2011). 

What is most dangerous about Rob Bell’s message is that his book claims to take to places in Rob Bell’s own mind and heart, where the Bible does not go.   In other words, he claims to know some things that has not been revealed or made clear.  This is what makes any religion or religious claim risky or dangerous.   When people claim to have some kind of “special knowledge” that is so wrapped up in what they think, know, or want to believe, even when it sounds good and is well-meaning (which I believe Bell is), we can become conceited in our opinions.  Conceit is what puts us in very risky and dangerous territory. 

I’m starting out with the these two controversial topics, “Does God Hear Jewish Prayers” and  Rob Bell’s struggle with Heaven and Hell in “God Wins!, because the question of ‘who will be saved’ is  also part of Paul’s struggle when he thinks about his own people, Israel.  Our text today begins today with a very big question that must have been a hot topic in Paul’s day:  “Has God rejected his people?”  Christians accepted Jesus, but Israel rejected him.  Does this mean God will also reject his people, Israel?   That’s the question on Paul’s mind and heart.

We ask similar questions, don’t we?  What happens to those who don’t put their faith in Jesus Christ?   What happens to those who are unchurched and say they don’t believe in anything?  What happens to those, even as Christians, who refuse to go with God where God is going?  Once God moved from working through Israel to working through the church, and many refused to go where God went?   Using a Bus analogy, what happens to those who decide either to “get off the bus”, because they don’t like where God is going and what happens to people who decide not to “get on the bus” in the first place?  This is the same kind of question Paul is dealing with when he asks, “Has God rejected his people?” 

WHAT ONLY GOD KNOWS

This question about who God has rejected and who God will accept is important for Paul because Israel is not only his spiritual heritage, but they are his family.  “May it never be!”  he cries,  “For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin…”  (1.1). These are not just strangers Paul can easily forget.   Paul has become a believer and a follower of Jesus, but his family hasn’t.   Maybe some of us can identify with Paul’s hurt and pain.  It makes all the difference in the world, when you are talking about family, doesn’t it?

In the movie I mentioned a few weeks ago, “Heaven Is For Real”, a book and movie based upon the true story of a little 4 year old boy who had visions of Heaven, there was also a very interesting sub-plot going on.  In the church, where the little boy’s Father was pastor, there was a woman on the church board, who did not like the pastor talking about Heaven all the time.   When he was listening to his little boy tell incredible things, he just couldn’t help it.  But still, the woman didn’t like it and she wanted the pastor to stop, maybe even to leave.   It turns out, that the reason she didn’t like the pastor talking about Heaven, was because she had lost her son, who was killed as a solider, fighting in Afghanistan.   Heaven had become painful for her, because she did not know whether or not her son was a Christian when he was killed.  She struggled with the eternal fate of her own son.  She didn’t have the knowledge of Heaven that the Pastor’s child claimed to have.   Out of her own pain, she was attacking the preacher for preaching about Heaven because she didn’t want to have to think about it.

Sometime or other, the question of Heaven and Hell comes home to each of us?  When we have a loved-one who dies and we wonder whether or not we will ever see them again, or when we worry about the fact that they or someone we know, has never made a decision to accept Jesus as their savior, or when we know someone really didn’t live as if Jesus was their Lord, then we wonder?   It’s one thing to talk generically about the fate of the people who’ve never heard the gospel, or to discuss whether or not God hears the prayer of a Jew or whether or God will save good people who are of another religious faith, but when it comes to thinking about the lost or saved among our own family members, then the whole question comes alive, or as we say, comes home to us.

In this text, as well as the surrounding passage of Romans 9-11, the question of the fate of Paul’s own spiritual and physical family, Israel, has finally come home to him.   After he has spoken to the Romans about God’s wrath from Heaven and God’s grace in Jesus Christ, he is reminded again that his own people have rejected Jesus.  It is a truth he just can’t stop thinking about, neither can he stop searching the Bible and his own heart for answers.   He desperately wants to know, what only God knows!   He wonders, “God has not rejected His people, has He?” (1.1),  Now, in this text, Paul claims he has been given an answer, “God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew!” (11.2).   But how can Paul know?  How can Paul know what only God knows?  How can any of us know what God only knows?

One of the most important words Paul gives us in this whole discussion is the word “mystery”.  In verse 25, Paul says, “I do not want you, brothers (and sisters), to be uninformed of this mystery---so you will not be wise in your own estimation” (11.25 NAU).   In other words, the only way you can know what only God knows, is to let go of what you think you know.   Only when you do this--only when you let go of your own arrogance, you own conceitedness, and only when you let go of your own very limited, and shortsighted understanding of God, can and will ever learn how to fully trust in what “only God knows”.     This can be the most wonderful knowledge of all, if we will trust it and believe it.  It is the knowledge that is never conceited, never arrogant, and never snobbish, but always shows reverence for God, trusting that there are some things that only God knows and that we all have to see through that same ‘glass darkly” ( 1 Cor. 13.12) and live within those great mysteries (11.25) we call God, love, life, death and hope. 

WHAT WE ALL MUST KNOW

But what can we know?  What does Paul learn about God’s way of salvation and what can we know?   Well, if you look closely at this passage, you’ll find that the answer Paul finds is not simply a truth we need to know, but it is the truth we ‘must’ all know, or we put ourselves in danger of separating ourselves from God’s love.  I want to make this very complicated passage as simple as possible, so I’ve compacted Paul’s answer into two clear conclusions about the ‘mystery’ of God’s saving love.

YOU CAN’T GET CONCEITED    One of the most important things to know about a mystery, especially the mystery of God’s  love and grace, is that a mystery remains  a mystery even when it is made known to us.    The mystery of God’s love and grace is exactly that kind of mystery, Paul says.  It is a mystery that we must never get big-headed about it.   This warning keeps coming up in Paul’s discussion about salvation.   It’s not that Paul is unsure about God’s power to save through Jesus Christ, but Paul is sure that we can’t always see the big picture of what God is doing.   He reminds even the Christians at Rome, “Do not be arrogant….” (vs. 18) and he warns them, “Do not become conceited…” (vs. 20) and then he gives them this big warning:  “If God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either” (vs. 21). Right after this, we come to one of the most important revelations of truth and mystery in the whole Bible, which starts with “BEHOLD!”:  “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….” (11:22)

When the controversy about Rob Bell came out a few years ago, it reminded me of something another great evangelical French theologian (Jacques Ellul) once said in regard to the question, who will be saved?    Ellul said he believed in God’s universal salvation, which goes out to the whole world, but he also added, that to become a Universalist, that is, to believe that everyone will eventually be saved, is something that the Bible nor God has never revealed.  Ellul goes on to say that of course, he would like to believe it is so, and hopes that God can somehow do it, and he even thinks there is something very sick about a person who would not want it to be so.   Then Ellul concludes with this warning about both the amazing kindness but fearful severity of God:  God is love and God is indeed merciful and kind to all,  but the thing that God, Jesus or the truth of the Bible will not bear forever, is a person who has been given the revelation of God’s truth of love, mercy and grace in Jesus and would then, reject it, mock it, or refuse to be moved by his love when it has been revealed.   When you reject God’s love, grace and truth, there is no hope.   (http://jesusradicals.com/wp-content/uploads/ellul/what.pdf).  

Paul would agree with Mr. Ellul, and he would add one more thing:  Even if a Christian, who has known God’s love becomes conceited or arrogant in that love,  they will not be spared either.   “You must continue in that kindness or also will be cut off….” (11.22).  That is the warning, that we must know.   This is, says theologian N.T. Wright, the real thrust of this passage, to warn  Gentiles Christians (today that’s us) not to think for one moment that they know everything about God’s plan or think they are the only part of it.   This is no better than those Jews who once thought they were the only ones God loves (See N.T. Wright’s, Paul for Everyone, Pt. 2, p. 55).

GOD ALWAYS CARES.  I’m sure that to hear such a warning about being fully and finally ‘cut off’ from God’s eternal love, sounds harsh to any who have made the very dangerous mistake of believing that God is some big ‘push-over’ that will forgive anything and everything, no matter what.   What we all need to see is that there are two great truths that are revealed in this text:  One is that Paul warns anyone who would oppose God’s love that even love will prove to be severe against those who resist love.   We must never underestimate just how much a loving God hates evil and ‘must’ oppose those who refuse to receive love, for the sake of love itself.  Love is what matters to God, because God is love, and we must receive his love and continue in his loving kindness without getting all arrogant and conceited.   We can’t become conceited because, while God is love, this means love carries with it a big warning to those who don’t love.   How can God receive those who refuse to receive his love and remain love himself?  That's the warning we must all hear.

The warning needs to be clear, but also, we must never mistake of thinking that God ever stops loving, ever stops caring, ever stops hoping and ever stops working for us, or for anyone else, for that matter.  The bottom line from Paul’s message, when he says, in verse 32, that “God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all” means that God always cares.   God always cares because God is love.  Love can’t do anything but care, and keep working for changing the ways of the world, the ways of nations, and the ways of people, even our own ways.  God cares for us all uses not only the failure of the Jews for the salvation of the Gentiles, but God can also use our own failures, sins and mistakes for showing mercy on us too, if we would allow it.  "If" is always the big question?   "Don't be conceited, but fear..."  Paul says.   What he means is that God will not violate our decision to refuse his love.  Even love cannot change a heart hardened with hate, pride, and conceit.  

Paul's final word is that God allows our disobedience, so that he can show us his mercy.  But even God's mercy depends a heart open to receive love.  Will we allow God to care this much for us, and to teach us to care and ‘to continue in God’s kindness’?    I told you recently about a childhood neighbor of mine, who recently developed a brain tumor.  When I told you about him, he had not yet passed away.   Not long ago, I went to his funeral at a Baptist church in New Hope community.   This was quite interesting, because I always knew him as a Methodists, not a Baptist.  He had married a Baptist girl when he was 35, but it was only in the last few years that he became a Baptist.  

I don’t know all the details about what happened, but at his funeral they spoke of the hurt, angry and feelings he had in recent years, which must have been, now in hindsight, part of his illness, for it was surely not part of his character.  He was always an easy going, caring, family person, who loved his church and community.  But in recent years, he got very upset about things and left his life-long church and moved to join another church.  

When they finally discovered that Ray had a brain tumor, his condition worsened quickly.  I went to see him and you could see his discomfort.   His pastor told at the funeral, that when he visited Ray his normal response to “How are you doing” was strange and new to him.  Ray would answer in his normal, calm but uncomplaining way, “Doin.”   

Then, right before Ray died, the Pastor visited him again, but this time when he asked, “How are you doing” and the pastor expected the same answer, he didn’t get it.  When the Pastor finished asking him, he turned and looked up into his Pastor’s eyes and said with a great big smile, “EVERYTING IS JUST FINE!”  Even with all his pain, and even with his wife trying to hold back tears, God’s love and care came through in the moment when it was needed most, all the struggle, anger and emotion was gone, and everything was just ‘fine’.

I don’t know of a better way of interpreting what Paul is saying about salvation.   When Paul thought about it, prayed about, worried about, and studied about, the answer that God finally gave him was simply this:  Don’t be conceited, because God cares for everyone, and as long as you continue in His loving kindness yourself and keep showing and sharing his love, you can trust that because God is kind and God is love, that one day, everything will be just fine.   “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.  To Him be the glory forever.  Amen (vs. 36).”