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Romans 9-16

Warning

Jayson Combs · Sunday, 12 October 2025 · Romans 11:1-36 · 39:51 · 5,797 words

Romans S25 · 11:1-36 Waterford

Listen to this message

Romans 11 is the focus as the pastor asks, Do you trust God’s warnings? He shows that God can be trusted and that Israel’s unbelief does not cancel His promises; instead, through their stumbling salvation has come to the Gentiles, who are grafted into the olive tree of faith. The sermon warns against smugness and calls the church to love hurting people, serving them in ways. It also urges each listener to heed God’s warning, repent, trust Christ, and become part of a caring community that reflects God’s kindness.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

warn 31 trust 25 kindness 16 branch 11 fruitful 7 gentile 17 kettering 5 tree 14 unbelief 8 harden 10 save 45 olive 7

Topics

Salvation 11 Israel 6 Prayer 3 Faith 3 The Gentiles 2 Election & Predestination 1 Sin 1 Assurance 1 The Holy Spirit 1 Righteousness 1 The Body of Christ 1 The Wrath of God 1

Scripture referenced 31

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Romans 11 0:46 Romans 9 2:09 Romans 11 5:03 Romans 8 5:34 Romans 9 6:57 Romans 9 7:06 Romans 10 7:13 Romans 11 7:49 Romans 11:1 7:49 Romans 11:1 7:57 Romans 10 8:03 Romans 10:21 8:03 Romans 11 8:28 Romans 11:2 8:59 Romans 11 9:24 1 Kings 19 9:44 Romans 11:7 11:25 Romans 11:7 11:38 Romans 11:20 12:01 Romans 9 12:28 Romans 11:11 13:29 Romans 11:13 17:10 Romans 11:13 17:20 Romans 11:17 18:49 Romans 11:22 26:37 Romans 2 27:24 Acts 6 31:16 Acts 6 31:17 Romans 6 31:43 Romans 6:7 31:43 Romans 11 35:16

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 8 lines, 0:39. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hey everyone, my name is Grant Grimes and thanks for checking out this message today.

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Thanks again for joining us and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

Welcome to the River Church. Glad you're here.

If you do have a Bible, it will be in Romans chapter number 11.

So whether it's on your phone or tablet or in your Bible, we'd love for you to open up there, Romans chapter 11.

As Roy said, our candy donation, I just thought it'd be a really good thing.

Who do you love more? Would you let my wife get a pie in the face?

No, ah.

But yeah.

But just looking forward to our Trunk or Treat.

We have hundreds and hundreds of kids who come.

We like to laugh about it and have games about it,

but it is an amazing ministry that we do Trunk or Treat well.

And so people come and we take care of kids and we give out a lot of candy,

but we get to share the gospel of Jesus, which is really, really important.

And so looking forward to that event.

And men, hope that you'll come out to the men's event tonight out in Holly.

Looking forward to that.

A few weeks ago,

I asked you a question.

I said,

what do you trust?

And we just threw out things like,

who do you trust?

And do you trust politicians?

Do you trust the Ford you got into this morning?

Did you trust it to get you here?

Do you trust coaches?

She left school in the game.

Do you trust,

what things do you trust?

And a little more serious,

do you trust your spouse?

Do you trust your parents?

What do you trust?

And really,

going back to the point is,

do you trust the Lord?

And in Romans chapter 9,

10,

11,

Paul is specifically dealing with trusting the Lord.

He is speaking into some pushback and people not understanding.

And he's really telling us that we can trust the Lord.

The pastor said that no message of scripture is clear or repeated more often

than the unqualified declaration that God can be trusted.

That he is the very source and measure of truth.

That he is the very source and measure of truth.

That he is the very source and measure of truth.

That he is the very source and measure of truth.

And whatever he says is true.

And whatever he promises comes to pass.

That we can trust the Lord.

And so I want to expand on that question a little bit.

What do you trust?

And ask you this.

Do you trust God's warning?

And so I brought a light up here.

It's a warning light.

All right.

So the whole time I'm going to preach,

I'm just going to leave that there.

No, I won't do that.

Do you trust God's warning?

We have many warnings in our life, right?

We have our smoke alarm that goes off.

We have our car.

We have our carbon monoxide detector.

Most, all the food that we buy has a warning on it.

The medicine that we take has warnings on it.

Outside in the parking lot, cars, they have warning.

I walk up to the tire on the side.

It'll say, do not fill to PSI above this.

Some of you like to follow warnings.

Some of you don't.

Some of you are like, how, no, I bet you can get more in there than that.

God has created us as humans.

And we have great warning systems in our body.

Like our body warns us of things.

It warns us like, hey, you need to stop eating like that.

It gives us really good warnings.

Or, hey, you need to stop sleeping like that.

But do we heed the warnings in our life?

I've said this often, but we are a people that when we hear a tornado siren,

we don't run to the basement.

We run to the window with our camera thinking, what am I going to see?

Do we heed the warning?

So this morning, I want you to think of this question.

Do you trust God's warnings?

And it's going to take us a little while to get there.

We're going to get to this specific question.

But I just want this to be in your mind.

The warnings of God, they're important.

Do we trust them?

So let's pray and we'll dive in.

Lord, thanks for this morning.

Thanks for your word.

Lord, I pray for your help this morning.

May you use this morning for your glory.

May, Lord, I be.

May I preach the word.

May I preach correct doctrine.

Give me the right words, the right heart.

Lord, may you stir in our hearts your truth and your love and who you are.

So we just ask for your help this morning.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So in Romans,

if you are new with us,

we are studying the book of Romans.

We're walking through the entire book.

If you're new this week,

you have landed in Romans chapter 11,

which is a difficult chapter.

But you'll find with the River Church

that we don't skip over the difficult chapters.

There's easier things to preach,

but we walk through the book of Romans.

We walk through the truth

because all of it is so important.

And so Paul,

in really chapters 9, 10, and 11,

he's dealing with some pushback.

In chapters 1 through 8,

Paul tells us specifically about salvation

and how to be saved.

And we get to chapter 8, which is amazing.

It says,

this is what salvation looks like,

to be saved, to be filled with the Spirit.

This is what it'll look like.

It's not always easy.

You live in a broken world,

but the Holy Spirit will help you.

You'll have strength in him.

And it says,

the Lord, he'll never leave you nor forsake you.

It says,

nothing can separate us from the love of God.

These are some amazing promises.

for us who are Christians.

Now, Paul then speaks into the pushback.

Because people are looking at this going,

wait a minute, Paul.

You're telling us that salvation

is through the cross of Jesus,

that through Jesus we may be saved,

and we have life, and we have his love.

Paul, what about the Jewish people?

You know, the Old Testament about the Israelites.

It's in Rome, and you look at the church,

you're looking at the church at that time.

So many Gentiles,

which means non-Jewish people,

were converted.

They were coming to know the Lord.

They were being saved.

Their lives were being changed.

But the Jews, for the most part,

were rejecting Christ.

And so the pushback is,

wait a minute, Paul,

didn't God have a promise with the Jews?

If God didn't follow through

with the promise with the Jews,

will he follow through with the promise with us?

And that's chapter 9, 10, 11,

where Paul is saying,

now listen, you can trust the Lord.

The Lord has not dropped any of his promises.

And so when we read and studied chapter 9,

we studied the sovereignty of God

and him choosing his people.

And when we got to chapter 10,

we see Israel's failure to respond.

We see that it is man's responsibility

to respond to the Lord.

We see that whosoever shall call upon

the name of the Lord will be saved.

You see the Jewish people are in unbelief.

They don't follow Jesus.

And so it leads to the question,

so is God now done with the Jews?

Is it over?

Is it done?

And so starting in verse 1, Romans chapter 11,

Paul gives some arguments through the Holy Spirit.

He's saying why, no, he's not.

So verse 1, he says,

I ask then, has God rejected his people?

See in chapter 10, the last verse, verse 21,

it says, but of Israel, he says,

so God says all day long,

I have held out my hands.

We see this picture.

Of a loving, gracious, merciful God

holding out his hands

to a disobedient and contrary people.

And that brings you to chapter 11.

I ask then, has God rejected his people?

The Bible says by no means.

And here's Paul's argument.

First he says, for I myself am an Israelite,

a descendant of Abraham.

Paul starts his argument to say,

hey, listen, God didn't give up on me.

And if you know the story of Paul

and the messengers,

that he was a crusader against the church,

against Christ, and God saved him.

And then verse 2, it says,

God has not rejected his people whom he foreknow.

Do you not know what the scripture says about Elijah?

How he appears to God against Israel.

So the next couple of verses,

and let me tell you, 11,

we're gonna work to get through this.

So we may move quickly.

And here's the deal.

I will not answer every question.

I'm gonna talk about chapter 11.

Because there's a lot of them.

That's why we have growth communities.

We'd love for you to join one this week.

It'd be really helpful.

Anyways, back in the sermon.

So Paul says, has God done with the Jews?

Paul says, no, I'm a Jew.

The Lord has saved me.

And then Paul uses an Old Testament illustration.

He goes to 1 Kings chapter 19.

So you don't have to turn there,

but if you'd like to read there this week.

He talks about a prophet named Elijah.

Now, Elijah was in a time where King Ahab was king.

And it was a mess.

They had turned against the Lord.

It was a total train wreck, a rejection of God.

And so the prophet of God, Elijah, says to the Lord,

Lord, am I the only one left?

There's no one who follows you.

Everyone has gone.

They're trying to kill me.

There's no one, Lord.

And the Lord answers by saying, Elijah, no.

There's some 7,000 priests who follow me.

So excuse me.

I'll read it to you.

It says this,

Lord, have they killed your prophets?

They have demolished your altars, and I alone am left,

and they seek my life.

But what is God's reply?

I have kept for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

And so the scripture says, so too, at the present time,

there is a remnant chosen by grace.

So Paul's making the argument, I know the Lord,

and then there are those.

There is a remnant.

There is a remnant of God's chosen people,

of the Jews who are coming to know the Lord.

And so we see this today as we are the church,

as we are the Gentiles.

We see mostly Gentiles are coming to know the Lord,

but we see a remnant of people.

So verse 7, it says this,

what then, or so one translation says,

says for this is the situation.

So verse 7 says,

but then Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking.

The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.

For as written, God gave them up to a spirit of deep sleep,

eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear,

down to this very day.

So here as we read, like you go to verse 20 in this chapter,

it says the Israelites, they were broken off.

They were hardened.

Why?

Because of their unbelief.

Because they didn't believe God comes and they don't believe.

And so here, this very difficult,

when you hear this, it says God, right?

They have been hardened.

And you may go, what does that mean?

Earlier in chapter 9,

when it talked about the hardening of Pharaoh,

sometimes we can go, well, yeah,

Pharaoh was one who believed himself to be God

and he wanted to eliminate a race of people.

So for his heart to be hardened, for him to turn, okay.

But God's people, their hearts are hardened.

They can't see the truth.

And as you read this, you understand what has happened is

their unbelief has hardened their heart.

One said, this is a darkening retribution

that this exactly fits the crime

that pride and self-centeredness lead to hardness and lovelessness.

That rejection of God leads to rejection from God.

So we see what Paul is walking through

is the Jewish people have hardened their heart.

God gives mercy.

Mercy shown mercy, but there is unbelief.

And so this takes us to verse 11.

Paul says, so I asked,

did they stumble in order that they might fall?

By no means.

Rather, through their trespass,

salvation has come to the Gentiles.

So as to make Israel jealous.

Now, if their trespass means riches for the world,

and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles,

how much more will their full inclusion mean?

So what happens in this chapter is

Paul begins to describe what has happened with the church.

He says, the Jewish people, it is not God who has failed.

They are in their unbelief.

The Jewish people have rejected the Lord.

If you read the gospels in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

you'll find as Jesus was here, as he comes,

he is rejected by his people.

And so Paul explains what has happened.

And Paul uses an illustration here.

He uses an illustration of an olive tree.

And he says, the olive tree,

and it's this picture of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,

the foundation of the tree, the base of the tree.

But that there are those Jews

who have not put their faith in God.

They have not put their faith in Jesus.

And so the Bible says those branches,

as a picture's illustration, are broken off.

And the Gentiles, because of this,

have been engrafted into the tree.

Now, I will tell you, I'm not a tree expert.

grafting branches into the tree

is not something I do every week.

I just don't spend a lot of time doing that.

Actually, just a few years ago,

I just started to understand what this meant.

That they would, during this time,

and even now, that olive trees, old olive trees,

their branches would get old and they become less fruitful.

And so what they would go is they would go

to these fruitful branches and they would cut them off

and they'd graft them into the tree.

And then they would start growing.

From the base, from the strength of that tree,

they would begin to grow and they would be fruitful.

So Paul uses this illustration talking about the Gentiles,

what has happened, that there's been the rejection of Christ,

but Christ in his mercy has come to the Gentiles.

We who have rejected the Lord, we who don't want the Lord,

and that God has offered and shown us grace.

And so when Gentiles have faith and believe,

they are engrafted into the base,

of this tree.

Now, usually what would happen in this,

the natural sense of this is they would find branches

that were fruitful and they'd take those new branches

and graft them into the base of the tree.

And because of those fruitful branches,

they would start to grow.

But the illustration here is unnatural

because we as Gentiles, we aren't fruitful,

but God grafts us into him that we may bear fruit.

So this picture here is that because of the grace of God,

Jews in unbelief have rejected Jesus and the door because of this,

the door to the Gentiles, like God's plan,

knowing this, that this didn't shock God.

God wasn't like, what am I going to do now?

Like God knows it all.

And so the Gentiles, we have been saved.

We are offered salvation.

So that takes us to verse 13.

And this is really where I wanted to get you to.

I know we had to walk through some of that and some of that may be confusing.

Let's talk about it some more.

But verse 13 says this.

So I give you the base of this passage to get you to this verse.

Paul then turns to the people of the church.

Who is he speaking to?

The Christian Gentiles in the church in Rome.

He is specifically speaking to those non-Jews

who have been saved by Jesus in the church.

So I read that and go, wait, that's me.

I'm non-Jew, been saved.

I am now in the church.

There's this specifically talking to the church

and Paul gives us this massive warning.

So I go back to this thought.

Do you trust the warnings of God?

So he says this.

What does acceptance mean but life from the dead?

So as you read this, right,

and we're not going to get into all this topic,

but it seems here it points to in the future at some time

the Jewish people are going to come back to Christ.

Let's walk back to the Gentile warning.

But if some of the branches were broken off

and you, although at a wild olive shoot,

that's the description of the church,

a wild olive shoot,

were grafted in among,

the others,

and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree.

Here's warning.

Do not be arrogant toward the branches,

toward the Jewish people who haven't accepted Christ.

If you are, remember,

it is not you who support the root,

but the root that supports you.

It is not because of your good works,

you're fruitful.

It's because Christ has saved you.

Then you will say branches were broken off

that I might be grafted in.

The Bible says that is true.

They were broken off because of their unbelief,

but you stand fast through faith.

So do not become proud, but fear.

For if God did not spare the natural branches,

neither will he spare you.

There is a great warning in this passage.

What Paul is doing is saying,

hey, to those of you who know Christ,

who have accepted Christ,

I want you to see the Jewish people.

And I want you to be warned.

I want you to see that the Jewish people,

they have the word of God.

They have the truth of God.

God showed up in miraculous ways.

They have, God came and just did amazing things.

Yet they didn't follow the Lord.

They had all the rituals.

They had all the religious things all set up,

but they did not follow God.

Paul turns to the church and says,

guess what?

You need to be careful

because the exact same thing can happen to you.

River Church, the exact same thing can happen to us.

What?

That we can believe religious rituals

are what give us a relationship with God.

We can fall into these,

I do this thing and this thing,

and I'm good with the Lord.

One pastor says they were the chosen people.

They began to think they were the choice people.

They became confident that they were in

no matter how they lived.

And Paul here warns them against that false teaching.

One said,

these very religious practices and observances

became substitutes for the real experience of salvation.

Sad to say is that the same mistake is made today

when people depend on religious rituals

and practices instead of trusting in Christ.

So what does that look like in the church today?

Well, if you grew up in the Baptist world,

let me tell you what that looks like.

That looks like people hold on to religious action of,

you know, one day I came forward and I said a prayer.

I said a set of words.

Now my life has nothing to do with Jesus,

but I always heard if I was saved,

I'm always saved,

can never not be saved.

And so I heard if I just did this religious act,

I would be saved.

And now I don't need to worry about following the Lord.

What has happened?

They have heard a religious lie

that some religious activity makes them in and they're good.

It's a lie.

It's not true.

Because truly coming to know the Lord

will change things in our life.

Now, this doesn't mean that you don't say,

we don't go, man,

we want you to come forward and to confess and be saved.

No, we want you to come forward to confess and save,

and we'll help you with that wording

and help you understand.

salvation isn't a religious act.

It is when we humbly bow before Jesus,

repent of our sin and say,

Jesus saved me and he saves us

and he gives us a new life

and the Holy Spirit enters in

and things are different and life has changed.

It's not a ritual.

It's a life changing thing of being saved.

And so here Paul says,

listen, you have to hear the warning.

There are people who are hard hearted to the word of God.

This is what happens to the Jews

and the Jews, church.

There are people that can come every week for 20 years,

sit in here and be hard hearted to the word of God.

No repentance, no confession, no humility,

no bowing down to the Lord.

And people sit and is a great worry of the pastor

that if you are hard hearted to God's word,

you will miss salvation in the Lord.

Okay, maybe it's baptism that you're holding onto.

Maybe you're confirmed.

But if you're not,

your life doesn't show that.

It's not a ritual that saves you.

I like what one commentary said.

It talked about hardness.

Usually when we hear that word hardness,

we right away think of,

well, hardness means bitterness and wrath

and it means hostility toward Christians.

But this commentary said,

it doesn't necessarily mean harshness.

A hardened person who is someone

who is completely obtuse to the gospel of salvation.

So we think somebody who's hard,

hardened is somebody who will be easy to find.

It's the person who's sitting in the auditorium

giving me a scowl.

Like that's the person who's hard hearted.

That's not what it's saying here.

Can I tell you, I'm less worried about that person.

You may be, what do you mean, pastor?

I'm less worried about the guy who is sitting here

who looks at me and says,

I don't believe what you say.

I'm less worried because that guy knows where he stands.

He knows I'm not a Christian.

I'm not a follower of God.

And he knows I don't follow Jesus.

Who I'm more worried about is,

the man or woman who's been sitting here for years

and is hard hearted to the word of God

that every week they hear,

but there's nothing penetrating their life.

There's nothing changed.

There's nothing bringing them to a repentance.

Nothing bringing them to a new life in Christ.

That is what is scary as a pastor.

And here the warning,

Paul says, you see the hard hardness.

They don't hear the truth about God.

And my prayer for you,

that maybe you have been in that state for a long time.

And this morning, the Lord will soften your heart,

that you will hear the truth and the love.

You'll hear the salvation of the Lord.

And this morning, be saved.

Paul goes on to say in verse 22,

note then, or behold, listen.

It says, the kindness and severity of God,

severity toward those who have fallen,

but God's kindness to you,

provided you continue in your faith,

and you continue in his kindness.

Otherwise, you too will be cut off.

If you read this, you should be alarmed.

It should warn you.

What is it saying?

It's saying there is the kindness of God

that he comes and he loves us.

He sends his son.

Paul spoke on this earlier in Romans chapter two.

Maybe my favorite passage in Romans.

He said this.

He says, Romans two,

do you presume on the riches of his kindness

and forbearance?

And patience, not knowing that God's kindness

is meant to lead you to repentance.

Here, the Bible says,

don't you see that God has been kind to you,

that he is restrained from what we deserve.

He has held back.

He has been patient with you,

but you've missed his kindness.

He says, because of your hard and impotent

or unrepentant heart,

you are storing up wrath for yourself

on the day of wrath when God's righteous,

righteous judgment will be revealed.

But here, what is scripture saying?

Every time I'm not kind,

I need to worry that I'm not saved.

That's not what it's saying.

It is bringing us to a place to say,

those of us who know the kindness of God,

who know we have been forgiven,

who have been saved,

those of us who have received that kindness,

we then, because God is kind,

we should be soaked in his kindness

and that kindness should flow out of us.

That people,

people should see us and go,

man, there's something different.

And so one commentary says,

if that continuing disappears,

if we start to live for ourself or live in sin

or start to rely on our own performance

for our relationship with God,

then we will and should begin to wonder

if his kindness is upon us, right?

This doesn't mean every time you're a jerk face,

you go, I don't know if I'm saved.

That's not what it's saying.

You were a jerk face.

You drove this week.

I followed you.

It doesn't mean every time you're unkind.

It does mean that if our life is not sitting

in the kindness of the Lord,

if there's no difference, no change,

then we do need to ask ourself,

has the Lord saved me?

Do I know his kindness?

To hear all throughout this chapter,

what happens in verse 11

and what happens in verse 14

is Paul says, hey, church Gentiles,

I want you to know what is happening in the church.

What should happen is that

because of what you're doing,

Jews should be jealous of what you have.

Verse 11, salvation has come to the Gentiles

so as to make Israel jealous.

Verse 14, Paul says, I preach in order somehow

to make my fellow Jews jealous

and thus save some of them.

Verse 23, even they, if they do not continue in unbelief,

will be grafted in the offer of salvation

if you will believe.

And so this isn't a sinful jealousy.

This is looking.

And being thirsty for who God is

because the church is living it out.

It's people seeing and look inside in there

and go, wait a minute,

that relationship, that marriage with Jesus is different.

That parenting with Jesus is different.

The church gathering together,

the gossip, the slander,

it's different in here.

They don't allow that stuff.

They're kind to one another.

In the book of Acts,

it's the beginning of the church.

We see this happening in Acts,

In Acts, chapter six,

that you have the disciples

and they're pastoring and they're preaching

and they see they don't have the time

to care for all the people in the church.

So they gather some men together

and they say, you guys are deacons,

which just means servants.

And those deacons begin to serve

and they begin to take care of the widows.

They begin to take care.

They begin to love each other

and to care for one another.

And in Acts, chapter six, verse seven,

relax, middle school kids,

says in the word of God continued to increase.

And the number of disciples

multiplied greatly in Jerusalem

and a great many of the priests

became obedient to the faith.

The priest who were supposed to be

taking care of the widows,

they looked and go, wait,

the church is doing that.

The church is loving people.

The church is caring.

And what happened if he drew a thirst in them

to go, what is happening there?

I've told you that the Lord has opened a door for us

at the Waterford School District.

Justin, our student director

and Mitchell, our children's director,

there's been, we've been able to go into elementaries.

We've been able to go into high schools.

We've had a great connection

with the Waterford Mott football team

to be able to care for these kids.

And so the last couple of weeks,

they've had concessions

and we've been the people

that have staffed all the concessions.

The River Church got to share the word of God

with these kids and give them Bibles.

It's been great.

And so early this week,

Justin got a call from Waterford Kettering

because they heard about what we do.

And Waterford Kettering called,

and said, hey, we don't have people

to staff our concessions.

We heard you're able to, can you help?

And so Justin called me like,

hey, I have to be at Mott Friday.

What are you doing Friday?

I'm like, I'm great, I'm in.

And I just reached out to a few people

and within just a few minutes,

we had 20 people ready to serve.

And it was really cool.

Yeah, it's awesome.

I had some moms walk up to me and said,

hey, we're so thank you

that we could watch our kids game.

It was homecoming.

The word is that the River Church is here

and they're here to help.

I said, that's great.

But I'll tell you,

giving you a little insight into my heart.

Before I was the location pastor here,

I was the youth pastor for some 15 years.

And for me, the Lord opened an amazing door at Kettering.

I coached sports for 10 years there.

I had a key to every building and every door.

They let me come into the lunchroom.

We had a great relationship.

They trust, I went into the lunchroom.

I actually had a guy walk up to me

and he looked at me and he goes,

are you still at the church?

And I said, yes.

He goes, I graduated in 05.

You were here when I was in 05.

You were in the lunchroom.

Which was really cool.

So I was, I'd walk there.

I know most of the teachers, most of the students.

And so Friday I walk in and I know some people,

but I don't know most of the kids.

I don't know most of the students.

I don't know most of the parents, the teachers.

And it's a weird feeling in my heart

because I don't like it.

And we go there and I love that,

you know, we're at Mott and Kettering

and you look at these kids.

And can I tell you the church, what they have done?

What do we need to be careful with

is they look at something

and they look at some of those kids

and they go, man, that kid doesn't have a right size shirt on.

That boy who walked by me,

did you hear his mouth and what he was saying?

And you look at that and you look at them with smugness.

What's happening here in Romans chapter 11,

Paul is saying, hey, you who know the Lord,

why are you looking at the people who don't know the Lord

like you're better than them or higher than them?

Why are you looking at the Jews who are lost

and you have this smugness?

You don't have this care.

You have this like you're better than you.

What are we doing?

And then we come to today

and we get to walk into Waterford Kettering

and Waterford Mountain.

We look at kids who are broken and hurting.

What do they need?

They need Jesus.

They need the kindness of the Lord.

And it is a call for the church.

It's a warning to go, hey,

we're not here about being a holy huddle.

We're not here just about being,

hey, we're going to get together where I'm comfortable.

We are here to be the church,

to hear the word of God,

to be convicted by the word of God,

to be changed and that then,

the kindness of God poured over our life.

It changes us to love people

who don't respond right to us,

love people who don't see things how you see them,

love people who are hurting and struggling.

But this is what Paul says the church is.

And so I come back to the question,

do we heed to the warning of God's word?

He warns us it is easiest, easy for us

to fall back into being smug,

to fall back into not being kind,

to look at any kind of people,

whether Jewish, whatever race.

And we have to guard our heart

that we will love people how Christ has loved us.

We, may you pray about it.

May we pray about being the kind of church

that is kind and caring.

So maybe you're here this morning

and the truth is you've been hard-hearted

to the word of God for years.

You have come for years.

And if you were honest,

you would say the word of God is,

it's not impacting your life.

It's not changed your life.

You have not given your life to Jesus.

And I pray this morning then

that right where you're at,

the Holy Spirit may be softening your heart.

And for the first time in your life,

you'll see and hear the word of God

and hear God's love

that it is through Jesus Christ who loves you.

And this is why he came to this world

to die on the cross for our sins.

And if we'll repent of our sins

and believe in him,

that God, that Jesus died and rose again,

we will be saved to a new life,

to a new creation,

to a new eternity.

Pray this morning,

no matter how many years you've been here,

may you, right where you're at,

ask Jesus to save your life

that you may know him.

To the church, we're the church

because not what we've done,

but because Christ has saved us

and given us new life.

Let's stand together.

Lord God, I pray this morning

please continue to mold and shape our church.

May we clearly preach the gospel.

Morning, Lord, may there be souls saved.

Praise you, Lord.

Pray this all in the name of Jesus Christ.

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