Under no circumstances will God revoke the saving mercy He has granted to His people. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul explains that the security of our election is bound up with the unchanging character of God Himself.

Today, we are going to continue with our study of the epistle to the Romans. Last week, I focused on two verses (really a verse and a half). I think John Piper just finished his lecture series on Romans that took him either six or eight years—I forget exactly how long.

I also want to alert you that we are rapidly coming to the end of chapter 11. That is significant because, at the beginning of chapter 1, Paul introduces himself as an Apostle set apart for the gospel of God. He introduces the concept of the gospel in the first chapter and spends eleven chapters unfolding the depths and riches of the gospel of God, including justification by faith, sanctification by the Holy Ghost’s assistance, and adoption. Then, beginning in chapter 8 through chapter 11, Paul deals with the difficult doctrines of election and predestination.

At the end of chapter 11, we find a very significant transition. Chapter 12 shifts the focus from the theological content of the epistle to its practical application.

Today, I will begin at verse 27—really 26b, the quotation from the psalm in Isaiah—and read through verse 35. I will not read verse 36. I am saving verse 36 for next week, because that verse deserves a full treatment.

So, we will leave that verse for the next time, and we will begin reading in verse 26b, “The Deliverer will come out of Zion.” I ask the congregation to rise for the reading of the Word of God. Also, when I say we will deal with verse 36 next week, that presupposes that I get that far in the text. We know that is not a certainty by any means. Romans 11:26b–25 says:

As it is written:

“The Deliverer will come out of Zion,
And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
For this is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.”

Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has become His counselor?”
“Or who has first given to Him
And it shall be repaid to him?”

Dear friends, this is the Word of almighty God, breathed out by His Spirit, given to us for our instruction, edification, correction, reproof, and training in righteousness. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Again, our Father and our God, when we look into the magnificent depths of these things that You have been unfolding through your Apostle, we are immediately stricken by the heights of these things and how unqualified we are to grasp them in their fullness. But insofar as we are able, O God, stoop to our weakness and give to us an understanding of these marvelous things. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Deliverer from Zion

Last week, I focused on the brief statement: “That blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:25–26). Today, we pick it up with:

As it is written:

“The Deliverer will come out of Zion,

And he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;

For this is My covenant with them,

When I take away their sins.”

This is a compilation of more than one Old Testament text, but the summary provided by the Apostle gets to the heart of the matter that he has been teaching to the people at Rome.

Earlier in our study, I mentioned the question I hear all the time about Martin Luther. In his latter years, he wrote some very blistering criticisms against the Jews of his day in Germany. He was basically motivated by two considerations. First, the Jews of the day were hostile toward the gospel that Luther was laboring to proclaim in his homeland. Second, the bankers were imposing burdensome, oppressive, and usurious interest payments on the peasants of Germany. This provoked Luther’s wrath.

Some have seen the seeds of Hitler’s anti-Semitism in the background of Luther. So, people say to me: “You’re always saying nice things about Martin Luther. What about his miserable treatment of the Jews and his blistering critiques in his later years?” I answer, “It’s hard to defend Luther for those things.” I then send them to earlier writings of Luther, where he says that no Christian ever has the spiritual right to despise the Jews, because not only was Jesus a Jew, but salvation is of the Jews. We must never forget that.

As Paul has labored, we are the wild branch grafted onto the root of the tree. We have no intrinsic claim to the promises of God to His people in the Old Testament. This is because the Deliverer—that is, the Messiah, the One who will redeem—does not come from the gentile lands. He comes out of Zion.

Israel’s Redemption

One of the things that the Messiah will accomplish is this: “He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” That is part of the Old Testament prophecy. To turn away ungodliness from Jacob means to turn it away from Israel. Israel had fallen into apostasy. Israel had fallen into unspeakable sin against the Messiah Himself. Yet, part of the redemptive work of the Messiah will be to provide the framework for the final redemption of Israel that we discussed last time.

Notice the reason given in verse 27 for why the Deliverer will turn away ungodliness from Jacob: Jacob has rejected the covenant. Jacob has said “no” to God’s “yes” in His promises of redemption. They have turned away into consistent disobedience, and God is going to turn them back. Why? Because He owes them a second chance? Not at all. It is because of His covenant, because of His promise, because of His electing grace:

For this is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.

Paul now begins to explain this to them:

Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.

When Paul began his treatment of the plight of the Jews in chapters 8 and 9, he examined this question in light of the broader question of divine election. When he talks about the final restoration of Israel after the age of the gentiles at which we looked last week, he puts that in the context of both the covenant promises and the doctrine of election.

There are two things I want us to catch at this point. There is one reason we can be absolutely certain that God is not finished with the Jews. As Paul mentioned, God, after the fullness of the gentiles is completed, will turn His attention once more to Paul’s “kinsmen according to the flesh,” Israel. We know that is true and that it will happen because God has predicted that it will happen. Whatever God says will happen in the future must necessarily come to pass.

God’s Ordination of the Future

The next question is this: How does God know what will happen eventually with the Jews? How does God know what will happen tomorrow to you, me, or anyone else? How can God, through His prophets or through His Son, predict future events?

The open theist movement, which is spreading through the Christian world in all its ungodliness, says that God cannot know the future choices of human beings. They say that God’s future knowledge is limited by human free will, such that even God’s knowledge has a finite limit. In other words, God is not really omniscient in this view, as He lacks the foreknowledge of human choices in the future.

Open theism denies the orthodox and biblical doctrine of God. We understand that. But the question from our perspective is: How does God know what is going to happen?

How does God know what people will choose tomorrow?

The common idea is that God has a kind of mysterious psychic sense about the future, by which He can peer down the corridors of time and see what no one can see from our vantage point. That is not how it works.

The reason God knows what is going to happen before it happens is because He has ordained it. His knowledge of future things is based upon His ordination of future things. When God ordains that the people of Israel be restored in the last hour, He knows that it will happen because it is His sovereign will and in accordance with His sovereign election.

That is why the doctrine of election is so vitally important to Paul in his struggle over the future of his people. He knows that the future of his people is in the hands of God, not in the hands of the Pharisees. Paul is essentially saying, “God has the power, the authority, and the will to turn these people away from their disobedience, just as He has turned you away from your disobedience.”

Had God waited in heaven for you to turn from your sins and come to the cross, He would still be waiting. But God, in His sovereign mercy and grace, does not wait for the sinner to turn or incline himself. God brings us away from our disobedience to respond to Him.

For the Sake of the Fathers

“Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.” One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament is the story of the lame son of Jonathan, Mephibosheth. When Saul and Jonathan, Saul’s son, were killed and the messenger came to David with the news, David rent his garments because of his great love for Jonathan. Then he asked a question: “Is there still anyone who is left of the house of Saul?” (2 Sam. 9:1).

Everyone who had any kinship with Saul fled for their lives because people assumed that David wanted to get rid of all of Saul’s relatives so there could never be another uprising against his monarchy. Saul’s son Jonathan had a son of his own who had been dropped by his nursemaid as a baby and became lame in both feet. His name was Mephibosheth. He was whisked away into hiding.

Almost like a story akin to Cinderella, David sent all his soldiers on a search mission to see if there were any survivors of Saul’s household. They discovered Mephibosheth and brought him back to David. Mephibosheth was terrified, sure that he would be executed.

What did David do? He brought Mephibosheth into his house, to his table, and treated him as a son. He honored Mephibosheth, not because of any particular affection that David had for him but for the sake of the love David had for Jonathan, Mephibosheth’s father.

That story illustrates the history of redemption. The only reason that you and I are included in the kingdom of God is because of God’s love for His Son. Our election and our adoption are always in Christ Jesus.

From God’s perspective, it is because of the election of the fathers—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and because of the promises God made to them and their seed out of His affection for them that He was going to show mercy to the seed of Abraham. That theme runs through this epistle.

Irrevocable Gifts

Paul says: “Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Dear friends, verse 29 is one of the most comforting verses in all of Scripture for us as we struggle with our sins.

It is politically incorrect today to use any terminology that might reflect negatively on the Native Americans. We have seen what has happened with football and baseball teams that have any reference to Redskins, Braves, or the American Indian as their mascots or team names. There have been efforts to get those teams to change their names, so that no one of Native American heritage may be slighted. But I am going to risk that here.

When I was a kid, we had an expression you may have heard of: “Indian giver.” An Indian giver was someone who would give a gift and then at the first opportunity take it back. Do not ask me about its origins in American history—I do not have any idea. But, growing up, we certainly got the connotation that it was not a good thing to be an Indian giver, to give something away and then take it back.

The point Paul is plainly making here is that God is not an Indian giver. When the Lord God gives a gift, that gift is irrevocable. When the Lord God exercises His redeeming calling on a person, it is final. He never takes it back.

The supreme gift you have been given is the gift of grace. It is the gift of the mercy by which you have been called, brought into the kingdom and fellowship of Christ, and adopted into His household. God will never, under any circumstances, revoke that gift. Even your disobedience, which may displease Him and provoke Him to corrective wrath, will not cause Him to take that gift away.

In like manner, Paul says, God made promises to His people, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He gave gifts to them. He gave a calling to them, and those gifts and calling were irrevocable. The sovereign election of God is always final, no matter what.

Mercy Through Disobedience

Paul reminds us again, “For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy.” Paul has labored this point.

God gave gifts to the nation of Israel, they became disobedient, and through their disobedience, , God will work again to bring His mercy to those who were once disobedient. Going back up to verse 26, “He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” He will say no to their sin and overcome it for the sake of His redemptive plan.

“Even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.”

Go back to Romans 2 and 3 in your mind. There, Paul brings both the Jew and the gentile together before the judgment seat of God, saying that both the Jew and the Greek are guilty of sin: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). All express the same disobedience. Now, Paul says, “God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all”—to the Jew first and then to the Greek.

Paul’s Doxology

How does Paul respond to these things? Throughout this epistle, as we have seen on countless occasions, Paul asks the reader rhetorical questions: “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? What shall we say about this? What shall we say about that?” Then he gives his answer.

Paul does not follow the extraordinary affirmation of verse 32 with a new rhetorical question. Instead, he responds with a sigh, with a holy groan, with the word “Oh.” When you read this carefully, the text is almost palpable. Reading between the lines the Apostle wrote, you can see his bare emotions as he pens these words out of his profound concern for his kinsmen according to the flesh, Israel.

When Paul sets forth the promises of God for a final restoration of His people, his soul groans in passion.

What follows from the “oh” is doxology. As I said earlier, my professor in Holland once said in class, “Gentlemen, all sound theology begins and ends with doxology.” It is the fear of the Lord, the reverence for God, the heartfelt sense of worship that is the beginning of wisdom.

I have told you that lesson one in systematic theology deals with the incomprehensibility of God. God, in the fullness of the essence of His glory, so far transcends the human ability to sound its depths that we are left in awe before Him.

Christianity is not a mystery religion where the things of God are unintelligible. We can grasp what God reveals to us to a certain degree. But the axiom that was so central to the teaching of John Calvin is this: *finitum non capax infinitum—*the finite cannot contain or grasp the fullness of the infinite. Even in heaven, when we are no longer looking through the glass darkly, when we are there, basking in the refulgent glory of God and the unveiled majesty of His presence, even then, dear friends, we will not have an exhaustive knowledge of the Creator.

Eternity is not long enough for the creature to come to a comprehensive knowledge of God, because even in eternity we will be creatures. As creatures, we are finite and still subject to Calvin’s axiom, finitum non capax infinitum. Never in this world or the next will the finite be able to fully contain or grasp the infinite. As we stand in wonder and awe before what God has revealed of Himself to us in His Word, we are moved to doxology.

The Depth of the Riches

The Apostle writes: “Oh, the depth . . .” The depth is so deep that we cannot plumb it. In shallow water, you can use a glass-bottomed boat, skim across the surface, and look down to see all the marvelous, colored fish. But if you are in deeper parts of water, in the center of the ocean, the water becomes murky. There are fish that survive at the bottom of the ocean where the sunlight never penetrates. We cannot see them. Our vision into the murky depths is limited to the shallows.

Paul is contemplating not the shallow water of God but the infinite depths of His being. That is why he groans, “Oh, the depth of the riches . . .” We could speak, at a human level, of the depths of the degradation, corruption, and poverty that no one can grasp. In contrast, the Apostle is speaking of the riches of the glory of God.

I was reading a devotion from Charles Spurgeon recently in which he was talking about the imagery often used in the Bible comparing our faith to fine jewels and silver and gold. The gold, in order to reach its purity, has to be refined by the fire. God puts us through the crucible, through the flames and the fire of persecution, in order that the gold may be purified. In our souls there is garbage, but in God only riches.

Who can reach the depths of the riches of His wisdom and knowledge? How wise is God? How much knowledge He has. We are impressed by people who have advanced degrees, and yet the most brilliant mind of any creature is filled with enormous gaps in knowledge. The mind of even the brightest human being has more ignorance than knowledge. But in the mind of God there is no ignorance. In the mind of God there is no folly. There is nothing but wisdom, nothing but knowledge.

I am often taken aback, sometimes almost offended, and maybe even amused when people ask me a question that I have been asked a thousand times: Does prayer change God’s mind? I try to be patient with that question because I know the person who asked the question has not really thought about it. This is one of those questions that to ask it is to answer it. It should not take five minutes of musing on that question to know that nothing could be more absurd than thinking that our prayers could change the mind of God.

Beloved, our prayers change things. Our prayers change us. But if God’s mind is determined to do something, what would ever possibly move Him to change His mind as a result of communion with us? Could I give Him knowledge that He did not have? We could pray, “God, I know You intend to do this thing, but I don’t think You’ve fully considered the consequences, so let me try to show You what will happen if You do that,” as if God would say: “Thank you very much for your instruction. I didn’t know that those consequences were there.”

No human prayer has ever added a subatomic particle of knowledge to the mind of an infinite God. But consider something even worse: We think that we will change God’s mind because God’s intentions are somehow foolish—or, even worse, evil—until we give Him the benefit of our counsel.

There is no folly in the mind of God. God does not need my prayer to gain more knowledge. He does not need my prayer to gain more wisdom. What happens is that God gains more affection and reverence from me as I bow before Him in prayer.

The first law of prayer is this: Remember to whom you are speaking. Secondly, remember who you are, so that when you come with your prayers to God, you come saying, “Oh, the depths and the riches of His wisdom, of His knowledge.”

Unsearchable Judgments

“How unsearchable are His judgments.” They are unsearchable by us. One of the things I love in the Apostle’s teaching to the Corinthians is that he tells us of the Spirit who “searches . . . the deep things of God” (2 Cor. 2:10). That is easily misunderstood. Some people think, “Even the Spirit is searching, groping in the darkness, trying to figure out what the Father is up to.”

No, when Paul speaks of the Spirit searching the things of God, the Spirit is not searching for information. He is putting the searchlight on the things of God to illumine them for our understanding. To us, the things of God are unsearchable. But thanks be to God that the Spirit searches them for us. That is why we pray, whenever we come to the text, that God will condescend to our weakness. We pray that He will give us the assistance of the Holy Ghost to make these things intelligible to us.

“How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” Then Paul quotes the Old Testament, from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joel: “For who has known the mind of the Lord?”

Has anyone ever questioned your motives for particular things? Of course they have. They’ll say: “I know why you did that. You did that for X, Y, or Z.” When people say to me, “I know why you did such and such,” I say: “You can’t possibly know why I did what I did or why I do what I do, unless I tell you. Even then, you may not know it, because I might not be telling you the truth. I might not be telling myself the truth, because I don’t always know why I do what I do. Are you always in perfect touch with your motives?”

The one thing I can never do is get inside the secret chambers of your heart or the privacy of your mental thoughts. How can I know your motive? I might say that you have three or four possible motives, but I do not know why you do what you do.

In our sinfulness, when people injure us, we impute to them the worst possible motives. When we hurt them, we impute to ourselves the best possible motives. We tend to save charitable judgments for ourselves.

We cannot plumb the depths of another human being’s mind. That is beyond our ability. But that is not worthy to be compared to our inability to know the mind of the Lord: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deut. 29:29).

The only way we can know the mind of the Lord is when the Lord is pleased to reveal it. When He does, we can know for sure that what He reveals is not deceitful or inaccurate. That is why I love Scripture. The Bible reveals the mind of God to us.

No Counselors Needed

“Who has become His counselor?” Do you know why God does not have any counselors? He does not need any counselors. What would we counsel Him about? That is what I said a few moments ago about our prayers. We do not go to God to give Him our advice; we go to God to hear His advice for us.

I am always mystified by the spirit of skeptical biblical scholars and higher critics within the church. They are constantly lashing out against the Scriptures. In my own formal education, my field and discipline of study was initially philosophy. At the heart of the story of philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysics is an emphasis on learning the tools of critical analysis. You learn not to jump to conclusions. You learn the difference between a legitimate inference that can be drawn from a proposition and those illogical leaps that cannot.

To study this, we would read passages from Kant, Plato, Aristotle, and Mill in which they made logical errors. In our classes, we were forced to parse these statements and find the logical errors to critique them. We were taught how to read literature with a comb, not just accepting anything that we find in print. That is a habit in my life.

When I read the newspaper, a book, a manuscript, an essay, that critical apparatus is always there. I am not talking about a negative spirit, but a spirit of analysis. It is always there, except when I come to the text of Scripture.

When I come to the Scriptures, I realize that Scripture is criticizing me. I am not criticizing it. My only analysis is to examine what it says and to examine my own heart for my nonconformity to it. We cannot improve God. We are not qualified to be His counselor.

God’s Perfect Gift

Paul continues:

“Or who has first given to Him

And it shall be repaid to him?”

We need to understand that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17). When God gives you a gift, He is not paying you back for what you gave to Him. What can you give to Him that He does not already have?

We struggle, in this world, to find gifts for the man or the woman who has everything. What can you give to God that He does not already own? That is the marvel of His grace. That is the marvel of election. He is not repaying a debt, but the gift of His grace is given freely from the abundance of His mercy and love.

This is doxology, where Paul is praising the glory of God. By God’s grace, this brings us to the last verse of this chapter—which, by His further grace, we will look at next week. Let us pray.

Our souls also cry, God: oh, the depths, oh, the riches, oh, how Your way is past finding out—how marvelous, how high, how holy—and yet, how sweet when You give us even a glimpse of that thesaurus of sweetness of who You are. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.