God’s Purposes and Gentile Humility

About this sermon

Introduction: How does the knowledge of God’s purposes regarding Israel affect Paul on a personal level? And how is he exhorting his readers to be affected by it? We saw this morning that the knowledge God’s plans for Israel and the world motivate Paul to ministry. He is motivated as he considers the largeness of what God is doing through his gospel preaching. God is not only saving Gentiles. He is at work, through the salvation of Gentiles, for the salvation of Israelites in the present, and an outpouring of salvation upon the Jews in the future. Paul is motivated by the knowledge of God’s purposes, and by the knowledge of God’s power — God’s ABILITY to fulfill those purposes. The nation is currently rejected, the nation is currently dead, but God is able to raise the dead. THIS KNOWLEDGE, HOWEVER, DOES NOT JUST MOTIVATE. God’s truth should not only affect our desires on a personal level, it should also affect our disposition. GOD’S TRUTH DOES NOT JUST MOTIVATE GOD’S PEOPLE IT ALSO HUMBLES GOD’S PEOPLE. Why? Because the truth is humbling. The truth puts God on display, and the truth reminds us of who we really are without God, and what we would be without God. And that is true, when it comes to God’s plans for Israel and the world. GOSPEL MINISTRY SHOULD BE HUMBLED BY THE PURPOSES OF GOD (vs.16-21) And when I say gospel ministry, what I mean is God’s people as they carry out gospel ministry. There is no room for pride in the ministry of the gospel. GOD’S PLANS ILLUSTRATED (vs.16) Paul chooses two illustrations that demonstrate why Gentile Christians should be humble when they consider what has happened with Israel, and what it means for them. THE ILLUSTRATION OF THE LUMP OF DOUGH The word “dough” is actually not found in the Greek text. The NASB translation reflects that. 16If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also; But the translators are right to give us the sense of the statement with the word dough, because the word lump refers to that which is kneaded. It was used to refer to a lump of dough. And, the concept of holiness, associated with something like dough, has to do with that which is devoted to God. It is holy in that it is not common. It is holy in that it is set apart for God. What this would refer to is some kind of worship offering that involved firstfruits. With all sorts of things in the Old Testament you would have firstfruits offered. The firstfruits acknowledged God as the giver of the whole, and acknowledged God’s rights over the whole. James Montgomery Boice – “The emphasis is on “firstfruit,” and when we check this concept out in the Old Testament we find it applied to a variety of substances. For example, in Exodus 23:19 it is applied to the first produce of the land, whatever it might be (cf. Deut. 26:1–11). In Exodus 34:22 it is applied to the wheat harvest specifically, and the people are told to present the “firstfruits” in a festival called the Feast of Weeks (cf. Num. 28:26–31) and later at the Feast of Ingathering. Leviticus 2:12, 14 calls the “firstfruits” a grain offering. Leviticus 23 elaborates on the way the offering is to be made. Numbers 15:20–21 describes the offering as a “cake” made from a portion of ground meal. In Numbers 18:12 the “firstfruits” are olive oil and new wine, as well as grain. Paul does not specify which of these “firstfruit” offerings he has in mind. But since he ends the sentence with the word lump, the New International Version translators are probably right to assume that Paul is thinking of Numbers 15 particularly and so offer the interpretive translation, “If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy.” What does the firstfruits of dough represent? THE ILLUSTRATION OF THE ROOT AND THE BRANCHES I think we get a better handle on that when we consider the second illustration. What Paul is talking about can be illustrated by an olive tree. You have a beginning that is holy, the root, and that makes the tree, as a whole (including the branches) holy. The whole olive tree (remembering the application) belongs to God. The root of the tree produces the rest of it, and the character of the root is what characterizes the whole. Why do I say that this second illustration helps us with the first? I say this because the apostle points us to the very root of what the tree represents, the very foundation of it, and then the apostle makes a statement about Israel in the 28th verse that sheds some light on that foundation.

Topics

• Humility