Romans chapter 11. The title
of my message tonight is, Their Table Made a Snare. Their Table Made a Snare. Those
that were put in Christ before time, those that are set apart
by the Father, are purchased by the Son, they have a table
of joy and a table of peace before them. It's what David wrote us
in Psalm 23. Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of mine enemies, a table of goodness and mercy. It's a table that the believer
has set before them. But those outside of Christ,
it's a table that they have set for themselves. There's no good
in it. There's no mercy to be found
on that table. because they're not allowed to
look themselves. The Lord allowed them to look
to themselves and they do not have their eyes set upon Christ. It's a table of destruction. So our text there in Romans 11,
we'll be looking at verses 7 through 10 tonight. Paul writes there
in Romans 11, 7, What then? Israel hath not obtained that
which he seeketh for, but the election hath obtained it, And
the rest were blinded. According as it is written, God
hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should
not see and ears that they should not hear unto this day. As David saith, let their table
be made a snare and a trap. a stumbling block, and a recompense
unto them. Let their eyes be darkened, that
they may not see, and bow down their back always." That means
be weighted down, heavy burdens bent over. Now, Paul starts our
text this evening here with, what then? There in verse 7.
He's continuing what he just told us about in the first six
verses. It's the same thought. He starts in verse 1, is God
forsaken His people? Has He cast His people away?
And He says, God forbid. Absolutely not. That physical
nation of Israel, that political nation, they've been cast aside. They've been burnt down. How
then is God not forsaken His people? His spiritual Israel
are the ones that's not forsaken. His spiritual Israel are the
ones that He foreknew. They were loved before in Christ
from eternity. Anytime the Lord makes a spiritual
covenant, He makes a spiritual promise to Israel, it's always
to spiritual Israel. Not to that physical nation.
And then he uses the words of Elijah praying to the Lord, and
he says, Lord, they've killed your prophets. They threw down
the altars. I'm the only one left, and they're
out to get me. They're going to try to kill
me. Lord, take me now. What does our Lord say to him? I have reserved
to myself 7,000 men. And that physical nation, just
as in our physical nation today, The Lord has reserved to Himself
a remnant that does not bow to false gods, but honors and praises
the true and living God, Christ Jesus our Lord. He's reserved
Himself for that people. Now why did those 7,000 that
Paul mentioned, that remnant then, and that remnant in Paul's
day, and the remnant today, why does that remnant only bow to
the Lord our God? It's by His sovereign act of
grace and the saving of His people through Christ's person and His
work. That's the only reason that we don't bow. People say, I won't cave. You
won't cave until you cave. You won't bow in the name of
the Lord until He makes you. Now in verse 5, Romans 11, 5
says, Even though at this present time also there is a remnant
according to the election of grace. God electing a people
in Christ before the world was formed is an act of grace. Election is an act of grace.
It's an act of unmerited favor to an undeserving people. It
is the Lord reserving to Himself a people. That's what that is.
It's His work of grace and not a work of man. We ain't got a
part in it. Now to understand election, God
choosing, God reserving, Him making His people like Christ. If you understand those things,
what they mean, but why that had to happen. Why I had to be
made like Him, why I had to be chosen. The choosing wasn't left
up to me. If you understand that, why it's
necessary, you always see that it's for the Lord's people's
benefit and for the Lord's glory. That's a wonderful thing. It's
not something to frown at and squint and cover your ears. Well,
that's hope. The Lord chose a people. His
grace is gracious. That oversimplifies it. I tried
to dwell on that a good half hour today. His grace is gracious. Oh, what love, what mercy. In
verse 6, he said, and if by grace, then it's no more works. Otherwise,
grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it's
no more grace. Otherwise, work is no more work. It's one or
the other. God saved a people or He didn't.
He's sovereign or He's not. He rules all things or He rules
nothing. It's by grace or works. Now Paul, after declaring salvations
of the Lord, that's what he's telling us, by grace and through
faith, the apostle shows us the flip side of the coin. He gave
us that in the first six verses, now he's going to show us the
after effects, the downside. Verse 7, what then? Israel hath
not obtained that which he seeketh for, but the election hath obtained
it, and the rest were bonded. What was it that physical Israel
was seeking? What was they looking after?
The same thing that every religious person is seeking and the same
thing that every heathen is seeking. Whether they know it or not,
whether they admit it or not, they're looking for righteousness. They're
looking for righteousness. In all organized religion, they're
all seeking to be righteous before their gods, lowercase g. Something they've whittled out
of wood, something they've made out of their heart. And every person
that denies God exists. I started to spend some time
looking that up. There's agnostics and atheists and 15 different
things that mean about the same thing. And I didn't want to take
time out of my day to look that up. People say, no God or whatever
nonsense they have. They are seeking glory and honor
and praise and the feeling of being right. They're seeking
righteousness before men. Not a lower case god they've
made up in their minds, but they're seeking to be right before men.
They'll sit down and argue with you. They want to be right. Someone
said before, you can't be mad at someone you don't believe
exists. That's false. They still believe in a God.
Those people that deny God exists, they believe in a God, but it's
a God of their imagination. It's man. The same as those that
assemble in a building every Sunday morning throughout this
nation, throughout this world. They get together, they go through
the form and fashion of religion, and it's something that they've
created in their heads. The Lord's let them go and let
them to their own imaginations. It's a God that gives honor to
man. Whether that's underneath a steeple,
or if that's out in a duck blind, it gives honor to man. By our
natural birth in Adam, we desire, we seek being right. I like being
right. You like being right? I always
want to be right, don't I? But it's not just being correct,
it's a desire we have burned inside of us. It gets power,
isn't it? To be right. Being just, being
honored, look at me, I picked right, I knew right, I knew best.
But we seek those things amiss. We look at doing. And in our
darkness, we do not see that the righteousness that the Lord
accepts, the only righteousness He accepts, is Christ's righteousness. That's all the God will have.
He said, and my son in whom I'm well pleased. He's the only one
in whom he's pleased. Look over in Romans 9, just a
page there in verse 31. Now Paul says in our text, Israel
hath not obtained that which he seeketh for. What was he looking
for? Romans 9, 31. But Israel, which followed after
the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. They haven't risen up to righteousness.
They sought and they tried to be right. be just before God. They tried to be honored, but
it says they hath not attained it. Hitting the miss. He didn't
get there. But Paul said back in our text
that the election hath obtained it. Who's that? Look in verse
30, Romans 9 30. What shall we say then that the
Gentiles which followed not after righteousness have obtained to
righteousness even the righteousness which is of faith? Now why did
the Gentiles have righteousness counted to them? Why was it imputed
to them? They didn't follow that law.
And the Jews, they followed the law. And they didn't get righteousness
through it. The Gentiles that are made righteous
were saved the same way as every believer has been throughout
time. From the first man to the last one, he saves. Every saint
saved the same way by the faith of Christ. They were given saving
faith, that gift of God, the only place we can get it. The
Jews, the religionists of that day, and the religionists of
this day, they seek after righteousness by doing, by doing, and not by
what Christ has already accomplished. It says done. That's our gospel. Not do, done. You celebrate when
the work's over. You say, you want your cold drink?
I'll drink whatever I get through work. I've got to cut the rest
of this grass and I'll get me a big old glass of ice water to set in the shade.
Work ain't over yet. Can't rest. Gospel of Christ
is done. It's finished. Rest. Look there
in verse 32. Why didn't they get it? Wherefore,
because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the
works of the law, for they stumbled at that stumbling stone." They
stumbled at Christ. I've got to get my own righteousness.
I've got to get holier. I've got to get sanctified. Christ
is the Lord our righteousness. What am I supposed to do? It
looks like he's stumbling at Him. And they did it unto death. They did it forever. Why did
they stumble on that rock of offense? They didn't see Him.
They were not given sight. They were blind. They had no
light given to them. You ever walk through a room
at night with the lights turned off? If somebody moves something,
you're going to stub your toe, ain't you? You don't have any
light. You can't see. Back in our text of Romans 11,
verse 7, What then? Israel hath not obtained
that which he seeketh for, but the election hath obtained it.
That word obtained doesn't mean we detained it. That doesn't
mean we went and captured it. It doesn't mean we retained it.
Somebody gave it to us and now it's our job to hold on to it.
But obtained, that means they had it revealed to them in an
obvious way. It was given to them. Now we'll
see there in verse 8 that parentheses from according down to here.
We can take that out and read it. We'll look at it here in
a minute. You can remove that without doing harm to the text.
So it says, "...Israel hath not obtained that which ye seek it
for, but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded
unto this day." Nothing has changed until this
day. And as long as the Lord sustains
this world, nothing will change until that day. It'll be the
same. That's the only two types of
people on earth. Those that have Christ revealed
to them. It's been made obvious to them.
They've obtained it. They cling to it desperately.
Won't let go of Him. And those that have not. Christ
and Adam. That's the only two men that
the Lord's going to judge everybody under. You're going to be in
the seat of Adam, the first Adam, or you'll be the seat of the
second Adam. Christ our Lord. Our Lord said in Matthew 11,
27, He said, How can I get this knowledge? God's got to reveal
it to you. It's got to be a work in my heart. He has to give you
eyes to see. He has to give you His light. Those that obtain,
those that receive this faith, Those who are given eyes to see
Christ, they're given the light of His grace. The light of the
Lord's grace. Turn over to Genesis chapter
1. Genesis 1. This work of electing a people
in Christ, setting them apart, keeping them forever, that good
news of Christ saving sinners. It's from the beginning of the
Scriptures to the end of the Scriptures. throughout this book. Whether we see it or not, whether
the Lord reveals it to us or not, that's to Him. But that's the message of this
book, from start to finish. Look here in Genesis 1-1. In
the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the
earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face
of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters. God moved. And then He said,
in verse 3, And God said, Let there be light. And there was
light. He said, Let there be knowledge.
Let there be wisdom. Let there be understanding. Let
there be Christ dwelling in you. And there He was. He spoke it. Verse 4, And God saw the light. that it was good, and God divided
the light from darkness, and God called the light day and
the darkness He called night, and the evening and the morning
were the first day. On the very first day of creation,
the very first day this world existed, God declared that salvation
is a work of His hand and Christ the light. It's all in Him. That's what happens in a sinner's
heart. We are darkness. That's on our
face. That's on our hearts. We're without
the Lord. We reflect darkness because that's
all that's around us. We cannot illuminate ourselves.
And then the Lord moves on us. His Word commands life in the
heart of His child. That life is Christ in us. That's
the light He speaks into us. And it separates His chosen people
for Himself. He takes the light to one side
and the darkness to the other. He divides it. He declares what
they are. He imputes light to them. He
sees the light He gave us. He sees Christ in us. And when
He sees the work of His hand and who it is, our righteousness
is, He said, it is good. That's how people are saved. The Lord has to do a work in
them. I want you to see that first. We're going to look over
in Isaiah chapter 6. This is what Paul is quoting
in our text tonight. Isaiah 6. Chapter 6 is where Isaiah had
Christ revealed in his heart. He begins writing saying, in
the year of King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord exalted. And he said, I saw these angels
worshiping Him. And he saw the power of the Lord.
And then in verse 5, Isaiah 6, 5, Then said I, Woe is me, for
I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips. And I dwell
in the midst of the people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have
seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Isaiah was given light to see
the Lord. A work was done in him. The Lord
moved on him. The Lord spoke to him. Light reveals what's
hidden in darkness. What does the light reveal to
us? The Lord sends a spirit to us. He reveals sin in us, don't
He? Convicts us of sin. He reveals righteousness to us.
It ain't mine. I can't obtain it by that law.
It's got to be Christ. Christ is our righteousness.
And He reveals judgment to us. That light reveals judgment.
All that death and condemnation I deserved for eternity has been
satisfied. Judgment's been settled. Everything's
accomplished. That's what Isaiah experienced.
The Lord taught him that. And then he speaks to him in
verse 8, Isaiah 6, 8. And I heard the voice of the
Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then
said I, Here am I, send me. The Lord said, Who's going to
preach this, what I just showed you? He goes, I'll tell them.
He said, Good. Verse 9, He said, Go, and tell
this people Hear ye indeed, but understand not. And see ye indeed,
but perceive not. Make the heart of this people
fat. That word is greasy and gross. It means there's no life in it.
Make their heart have no love in it, no longing to serve God
that loves them. And make their ears heavy and
shut their eyes. How can I make y'all's ears heavy
and shut your eyes? I've preached to some people
that's closed their eyes, but I've preached to a couple people
that's squinted. Oh, that's rough, isn't it? I don't want to hear
it. Close your eyes and close your
ears. Put your hands over their ears. Lest they see with their
eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart
and convert and be healed. That's what happens when the
gospel is preached and the Lord does not give a new heart that
has life. He doesn't give new eyes to see
His light and ears that love the sound of grace. They reject
it. Mankind is dead in sin. Come
to Christ that you may live. No! Close your eyes. Think of something else. Salvation's
of the Lord. Christ is the Lord of our righteousness.
No! I don't want to hear it! Give
me something to do. When Christ the light's preached,
darkness can't stand it, and it covers its ears, and it shuts
its eyes. Our Lord told us that in John
3, 19. He said, this is the condemnation, that light come into the world.
Christ, God, come into the world. And men love darkness rather
than light because their deeds are evil. Have no desire for
it. Take it or leave it. There ain't
no in between. There ain't no fence straddlers.
You're either for Christ or against him. Well, that's just... I don't
want to get into it. You just did. You're against
him. You're for him or against him.
You either shut your eyes, plug your ears up, love that stony,
cold, dead heart you had by nature from Adam, and walk away or he
breaks it. He opens your eyes and he opens
your ears. Makes you look to him. Our old
man loves darkness. I've had a lot of people tell
me, they say, well, if I believed what you believe, I'd do whatever
I wanted. Exactly. Isn't that revealing? You're
just, people stood there and I said, what you're telling me
is, let me get this right. I repeat it back to them, right?
Ask Paul's call. Teach that. Repeat it back to
them. Let me hear what you just said. You're telling me your
true desire is to sin, to break the law, and to seek yon glory.
Everything be okay because you've got to break the law and you've
got to sin. Well, no, I didn't say that. That's exactly what
you said. I'd live any way I wanted. A born again child of God. Someone
that the Lord has done a work in their heart. They don't want
to sin. They don't want to bring reproach on the gospel. They
want the Lord to have all the glory. I don't want somebody
patting me on the back for that. The Lord did it. He saved me. But that candle in us, that light,
is given and it's directed by God Almighty. Not me and you.
He gives it. He directs it. If the Lord sent
me to preach, and everyone that I preached to, they loved to
cover their ears. And every person I ever spoke
to, they closed their eyes. And they just trusted in that
stony heart they had. They liked that. How long should
I keep preaching to them? Look here in verse 11. It's what
Isaiah asked. Isaiah 6, 11. Then said I, Lord,
how long? How long do I got to preach these
people? And he answered, until the cities be wasted without
inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly
desolate. And the Lord hath removed men
far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the
land. If I do not see the Lord working, but he sent me to preach,
thankfully he's been gracious. I've seen the Lord's hand moving
here. And I'm thankful for it. He knows
I need encouragement. But if He were to send me, if
He sent me, He empowered me, and I never saw Him accomplish
what I think I ought to be seeing Him accomplish, I'm to preach
man's ruin, Christ's redemption, and the Holy Spirit's regeneration
until everybody I talk to dies or I die. That's what He sent
us to do. If as a preacher I don't see
the Lord working, it doesn't matter. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that lovely? The will of
man, the experience of man, the thoughts of man, the seeking
of man, the security of man, it does not affect the will,
the thoughts, the salvation, nor the perseverance of God's
people. He does. The Lord told Isaiah,
He said, you preach even if everyone you talk to is turned from you,
every house is empty, and there's a great forsaking in the land.
You just go preach. Then in verse 13, but yet in
it shall be a tenth. Now that's not, well, everybody
I preach to, 10% Lord's will save. No, it's a remnant. there's
gonna be a portion, a small portion. But yet in it shall be a tenth,
and it shall return and shall be eaten as a teal tree and as
an oak whose substance is in them, not outside of them, whose
substance is in them when they cast their leaves. So the holy
seed shall be the substance thereof. God has reserved to Himself a
remnant. And in that remnant, they're
His because Christ the incorruptible seed is put in them. The substance
is in them. And back to our text, Romans
11. Look at verse 7 again. What then? Israel hath not obtained that
which he seeketh for, but the election hath obtained it, and
the rest were blinded. According as it is written, God
hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should
not see and ears that they should not hear unto this day." Many
people read that and they say, that's not fair. I'm not darkness. I thought that horrible song
said, this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. And
your light, it's more than little, it's gone. There ain't one there. The Lord has to give that light.
Do you know why in the scriptures the Lord say that man's wicked?
Do you know why the scriptures say that our thoughts are only
evil continually? Do you know why the Lord says
that we drink sin and iniquity like water? It's because by nature
we do. That's why I said it. That's
what we are, regardless if we think so or not. I don't think
I'm that bad. The Lord said you were. Every
one of us are. And thank Him we're not sin.
For a man or woman to say, well, I'm not that bad, in and of itself,
that's proof we're nothing but sin. Let's define the Lord's
Word. Paul wrote us in Romans 9, 18,
said, Therefore, he who hath mercy on him will have mercy,
and whom he will, he hardeneth. Thou wilt say unto me, He declared
that. He said, here's what you're going
to say. Why do you yet find fault for who hath resisted his will?
Well, if the Lord's sovereign over all things, who can resist
his will? Nay, but old man, who art thou
that replies against God? And then he tells us about the
potter and the clay. Our only objection to that is if the Lord
hasn't given us a lot to see, we ain't nothing but clay. We're
red dirt. We're Adam. That's what we are
by birth. Now, verse 9, Romans 11, 9. And
David saith, Let their table be made a snare and a trap and
a stumbling block and a recompense unto them. Let their eyes be
darkened that they may not see and bow down their back always.
Now, it'll help us if we see what Paul's quoting here. Let's
turn over to Psalm 69. Psalm 69. It'll be in verse 22. "...Let their table become a
snare before them, and that which should have been for their welfare..."
What's that? The law? The point is to Christ
to be our schoolmaster. "...and that which should have
been for their welfare, let it become a trap." You'll get tangled
up in it. Let their eyes be darkened. He's
saying that's what they want. Let them have it. They want darkness.
They love darkness more than life. Let them go. That they
see not and make their loins continually to shake. Now, King
David is being pretty strong here, wouldn't you say? Most
people say, that's not nice. But these words, they were penned
by David. But they're the words of our
King, the Lord Jesus. our true King David. Look here
in verse 21, just before it. Psalm 69, 21. They gave unto
me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar
to drink. Remember what gall is? It's a
bitter herb. It's poison. It's poisonous. It was in that water that Israel
said, the Lord's poisoned this water, let us go into cities
and drink. Everybody had to cast the wood into the water to soak
it up. It's a picture of Christ soaking
up our gall. That bitter herb, that poisonous
herb, the poison's sin. It's what we are. And he said, they gave me gall
for my meat, for my consumption. Because for his people, Christ
consumed our sin. He bore it in his body on the
cross. And it says, in my thirst they give me vinegar to drink.
Now that's not white vinegar, apple cider vinegar. That's cheap,
really old wine. They say it turns to vinegar.
It tastes like vinegar, but that was what the servants drunk.
That's what prisoners drunk. He came and was made like we
are. The greatest in the kingdom became the least. He became a
servant of His Father, serving Him perfectly. To what? To accept
that gall for His meat. To take our sin upon us. He had
to be the servant that was made sin for us, who knew no sin,
that we might be made His righteousness. What a thought. That's our Lord
speaking. That's how people were saved. That's the function of
it. The people that stumble at that. Christ did it all as a
perfect servant of His Father, upholding His holiness and His
perfect law the whole time He was on this earth and in turn
saving His people. People stumble at that. That's
righteousness. He says to them in verse 22,
let their table, what they feast on, let their table become a
snare before them, and that which should have been for their welfare,
let it become a trap. You want to feast on your works
underneath the law? It's a trap. You ain't going
to get out of it. And let their eyes be darkened,
that they may see not and make their loins continually to shake. That's what I deserved. I deserve that table I set for
myself. And everything I've learned in
my life, the stuff I learned, technically, books I've read,
it all grows dim the older I get. You learn how to play a musical
instrument really well, it ain't as appealing as it used to be.
You get to know it, don't you? And you learn how to do anything. It grows dim. But the longer
I live, The Lord's grace, the more I learn of it, it grows. It's magnified more the older
I get. That's the only thing I've ever
experienced. Charity faileth not. His love for his people. Love grows, doesn't it? We once
slept, we had our eyes closed, we had our ears covered, and
God, the Holy Spirit, quickened us. He gave us a new heart to
see our sin, to see Christ as our righteousness, and to know
that all of our deserved judgment's been removed, been consumed as
meat by our Savior. We know that our dark nature
was real, that sin was real, and I owe an eternity's worth
of debt for it. But God elected a people in Christ. We had no hope under that law.
It's a trap. A snare we can't get out from
underneath. But God elected a people. What a blessing. He's not forsaken
his people by leaving us to ourselves, to our own table. A pilgrim was I in a wandering. I've got to look it up. I had
it open just in case. I knew I'd get tired. A pilgrim was
I in a wandering in the cold night of sin I did roam when
Jesus the kind shepherd found me. It was in darkness. Roaming
in darkness. Jesus the kind shepherd found
me and now I'm on my way home. Surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the
house of the Lord forever and I shall feast at the table spread
for me. We declare His grace. His grace
is gracious. Now if the message of salvation
that is of Christ and in Christ and of Christ alone, He is our
salvation. If that hurts your ears, makes
you close your eyes, and it doesn't break your heart, do not feast
at your own table. Don't continue to look to yourself.
Ask the Lord to give you a new heart, to give you a new understanding,
new eyes, and to give you light. And you will not be found wanting.
You won't be in darkness anymore. Come to Him. Amen.