ROMANS Study Guide

Chapter Eleven :

The Promise of the Restoration of Israel

After chapters nine and ten, Paul felt the Roman Church would arrive at the idea that maybe God had cast away the Jewish People. Paul emphatically rejects this. Paul in this chapter returns to the idea of the “remnant” of Israel th at will finally turn back to God and be saved. Paul goes on to expand this hope of Israel’s salvation to include the whole nation. This salvation would begin with Israel being provoked to Jealousy in seeing what God will be doing so powerfully in the Gentile Church at the end of the age when the time of the Gentile domination of the gospel mission draws to a close. Rom 11:1 I say then, Did not God put away His people? Let it not be said! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. Rom 11:2 God did not thrust out His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture said in Elijah, how he pleaded with God against Israel, saying, Rom 11:3 “ Lord, they killed Your prophets and dug down Your altars, and I am left alone, and they seek my life." Rom 11:4 But what does the Divine answer say to him? "I have reserved to Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal." Rom 11:5 Even so then, also in this present time a remnant according to the election of grace has come into being.

1. Paul begins this chapter by affirming that God has not rejected the

Jewish People: vss.1-5

a. Paul points out that he is a Jew…and he is not being rejected.

Vs.1

b. God has not cast away those he “foreknew : ” This is not so

much reference to God knowing the future but is referring to the

design or plan God had for Israel that he had been guiding the

nation toward down through history.

c. Paul brings up the remnant idea again in referring to the Prayer

of the Prophet Elijah when he complained that all of Israel

(Essentially the Northern Kingdom) had walked away from God.

Paul points out how God rebuked Elijah with the fact that a