8/17/25 Romans 11:11-24 “Grafted Into the Real Deal!”

14 Aug 8/17/25 Romans 11:11-24 “Grafted Into the Real Deal!”

8/17/25                  Romans 11:11-24         “Grafted Into the Real Deal!”

I would like to begin today with a question.  Have you ever been intimidated by someone or something?  I remember way back when I was in high school sports.  I was intimidated by the upper classmen who were bigger and stronger than I was.  Plus, they usually didn’t show any mercy on the younger players.  I remember when I first started my schooling to be a pastor 19 years ago.  I was intimidated by the massive amount of reading we had to do.  I was intimidated by having to write papers as if we were trying to get a master’s degree.  I was intimidated by the long road in front of me.   What I’m trying to say is that I have been intimidated many times in my life.  Here is where I’m going with this.  I have also been intimidated by the book of Romans.  For me, this book has always been very hard to understand.  If it is hard to understand then it is even harder to try to preach.  But for some reason, Romans is suddenly making a lot of sense to me.  You might think that it is because I have had enough schooling so I understand better but I think differently.  I think that God has opened the Roman door for me because the time is right.  It is time to dig into this book so that we can find the love that is obvious.  Let’s see if we can find out who is eligible for the love of Jesus.

According to Jeff Strite, a few years ago there was a contest to find the most absurd warning labels.  Here are some of the dumbest.  “Do not use this snow blower on the roof.”  “Do not allow children to play in the dishwasher.”  A clothes iron had this, “Warning!  Never iron clothes while they are being worn.”  A Superman costume had this, “Warning: Cape does not enable the user to fly.”  A bottle of hair coloring said, “Do not use as ice cream topping.”  A cardboard sunshield for a car said, “Do not drive with sun-shield in place.”  A toner cartridge warning was, “Do not eat the toner.”  A sign on a portable stroller said, “Caution: Remove infant before folding for storage.”  And of course, the all-time favorite on a microwave oven, “Do not use for drying pets.”  As stupid as all these sounds, we should realize that someone had to do each of these things or they wouldn’t have put out a warning.  Now we may chuckle about these but we sometimes do the same types of things when it comes to the Bible.  There is a warning in today’s message.

But first let’s take a quick look at what has been happening.  Apparently, there was trouble in the church in Rome.  The church at that time consisted of Jews and Gentiles.  These people didn’t necessarily mix and the only thing they had in common was Jesus Christ.  The Gentiles didn’t know the customs of the Jews and the Jews knew little about the Gentiles.  I really couldn’t think of an example of this today but it might be in those Christian churches that are exclusive in their membership.

The Jews in this case are looking down on the Gentiles.  These people know their religion.  They know that they are God’s chosen people.  They are that special in the eyes of God.  Therefore, why should they share any of the limelight with a bunch of unclean people who know nothing about Judaism, nothing compared to them, that is!  So, we have haughty bunch of people on this side of the church.

But we have to have someone on the other side of the church or we will be too lopsided.  So, we have the Gentiles on the other side that have come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior.  Even though the Gentiles don’t know all there is to know about Judaism, they do know right from wrong as Jesus teaches.  And they know that the Jews on the other side of the church are not right but wrong.  There is a huge gap here and this is what Paul is trying to bridge.

We have the same thing happening in today’s world.  We do have churches that think their way is the only right way and won’t allow anyone in if they are different.  If you look closely at many churches, you will see that they aren’t really being very Christ like at all.  Today, we have so-called liberal Christians looking down their noses at so-called conservative Christians and vice versa.  We have gotten to the point where everybody thinks they are better than everybody else.  To me it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

And I don’t think it did to Paul either.  Paul is using the illustration of grafting olive branches.  Most of the people in the region of Israel knew about olive trees.  Olives were an integral part of their lives as they used the oil for many things and I would imagine they could also eat the fruit.  They knew how to care for them and they knew how to graft branches onto the main tree to get better fruit or olives in this case.

Paul tells them that if a branch breaks off the main plant, they can go and get a wild olive branch and graft it as a replacement.  The main plant is the Jews because they are God’s chosen people and the wild branches are the Gentiles who are now a part of the main plant.  Now both the original and the grafted branches share in the nourishment that comes from the root.  None of this is possible without the root system which is God.  In other words, they are now equal so there can be no actual way that one branch can brag over any other.  They are the same.

No one is better than anyone else in the ancient world or today.  That is a fact Jack and it tells us so right here in today’s reading.  A word of caution and that is we are comparing Christians to Christians.  We are exactly the same as African Christians, Korean Christians or any Christians in the world.  We have this happening right now in the United Methodist Church as we have some people in this country who think that are smart enough and good enough to change the Bible to reflect a very broken society.  These people think they are much better than the African Christians and Asian Christians.  Keep in mind that at one point all these different factions, all these different branches were all part of the same plant.  Are you following this so far?

I think the second thing to look to here is that we don’t be complacent in our faith.  Paul is directing these comments to both the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians.  Especially the Jews figured that they were the chosen people so they could do anything they wanted and they would still be saved.  This might be where the old motto, “Once saved, always saved,” comes from.  Because of this type of attitude, there will be some big changes.

Remember now that the olive tree is God’s olive tree.  When branches don’t produce, then old branches are cut away and new branches are grafted in their place.  This is what has happened to the Jewish people of Rome.  They figure they have it made.  They are part of the chosen people plus they are now a part of Jesus Christ.  They have a double win situation so there is no real reason that they should have to do anything.  The Gentiles on the other hand are feeling so much better after coming to know Jesus.  They must be far better than the Christian Jews who don’t do anything because of their heritage.  Can you begin to see the conflict developing?

I think there is a modern parallel to this.  I think we all know people who go out and party on Saturday night.  Then they come to church on Sunday morning so that they can confess their sins of Saturday night so that they can go out again on the next Saturday night.  I question if these people are Christian because they are using Jesus Christ as an excuse so that they can party.  To me, this is blasphemous.

So, we have these Saturday night revelers who may have been Christian at one time but now they mock Jesus and have walked away without their even knowing it.  Now on the other side of the church we have the people like me who point out this behavior in disdain but we don’t do a thing about it.  We too have walked away from Jesus because we don’t do what He commands.  This might be an oversimplification but it happens all the time in different situations.

In our world of Christian religion today we have many people who are going against what the Bible tells us.  We have people who are trying to change God’s word so that it more closely corresponds with the wickedness of this world.  If you are in doubt about any of this then I suggest that you read your Bible.  When you doubt anything, you are to read your Bible.  Most people who are against Christians have never read the Bible.  The world hasn’t been right about many things in its history.  If you doubt this, then, once again, read your Old Testament.  They had it wrong every time they strayed from the word of God.  They paid high prices for their disobedience.

One other important thing I want us to remember from this passage.  According to Paul, once we are saved, we aren’t necessarily saved forever.  You have the freedom to walk away from God at any time and this doesn’t mean that you never knew Him in the first place.  That kind of attitude is just too glib.  It means you have rejected God and if you die after doing this, you will not get into heaven.  So, you can reject God but I wouldn’t recommend it because the life we have in Jesus is so much more excellent than any other life that can be had anywhere!

The other part of this is a little rougher.  According to this reading, if you turn your back on God and the ways of God, then God will reject you.  Let me say that again.  If you aren’t careful about what you do and how you do it, God will reject you.  I think this is another side of the same coin.  I think God rejects you after you have rejected Him.  This can be very dangerous because you may not know that you have rejected Jesus.  This is tough love!

You may also think that this goes against what I usually preach.  When I preach, I always try to end on the Good News.  I always say that if you confess, repent and make Jesus Lord and Savior of your life, then things will change for the better and I mean that with all my heart.  This is what you have to remember when you find out that you have inadvertently rejected Jesus and started to follow the false gods of this world.  You can reject God and He will reject you but this doesn’t have to be permanent.  You can come back, return to Jesus at any time and He will accept you.  That is what the story of the prodigal son is all about.  The son rejects the father and still the father welcomed him home with open arms.  That is what He will do for you also.  Jesus will always welcome you home with arms wide open.  If you truly return, He will give you all the love that you surely don’t deserve.  We will see this in Revelation also.  Jesus will always give people the opportunity to spend eternity with Him.

The last few verses of this reading concern the love that Jesus has for His people.  The Jews and Gentiles have to know that they are worthy of being branches on the olive tree of Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ will prune us to make us better or He may cut us right out of the tree if we become a detriment to His kingdom.  He is a stern taskmaster.  However, if we remain in Him, He will remain in us giving us all He has to offer which in this case is the world that we don’t even know about yet, a world that is good beyond our imagination.  If we leave then we are on our own, but He also will give us another chance to come back and another and another.

Jeff Strite was listening to a Christian radio station one time and the announcer was talking about an observation that he had seen.  He noticed that there were 2 kinds of boys at school.  One type of boy had a car that his dad had given him and the other was the type who worked and paid for his own car.  You could really tell which was which by the way they treated their cars.  The boys who had been given a car often mistreated the vehicle.  They would peel out of the parking lot.  They drove fast and recklessly.  They rarely bothered to wash or wax their car.  If you looked in the back seat it would look like they lived in their car.  They were the kind who never checked the oil on their car and if anything went wrong with it, they took it to dad and it was usually his fault.  The boys who bought their own cars were just the opposite.  They drove more carefully, washed and maintained their ride and when it broke down, they took care of it.  They took care of their cars because it had cost them something personally.

We are much the same way.  Jesus did all the work.  He died on the cross and arose again.  It was terribly painful but He did the work so that we could live in Him.  You don’t want to take advantage of Jesus by taking everything He gives you for granted.  You need to be more like the boy who paid for his own car.  You are to obey Jesus in all you do and not just in the things you agree.

Paul writes tough and hard messages in Romans.  Our God is not some pansy that sways in the wind whichever way it blows.  He is a God who loves us so much that He will do whatever is necessary to make His kingdom better for us.  This is what the hard parts are all about.  But He is also a God of love whose depth we cannot even begin to imagine.  He loves you so much that He has taken you from whatever obscene plant you used to be a part of and grafted you into Himself.  He does this so that you can be with Him for eternity.  He wants you to be with Him forever.  He wants to give you so much love that you can’t take it anymore and then He wants to give you some more.  To me, this sounds like the Real Deal.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.