ROMANS: What's So Special About Israel? "At this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace!"

I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. (Romans 11:1-2) 

Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, “Lord, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life”? [I Kings 19:10, 14] But what does the divine response say to him? “I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” [I Kings 19:18] Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work. (Romans 11:2-6)

From the beginning of Israel's history, they have been a disobedient people towards God, starting with the original ten sons of Israel hating their younger brother Joseph, but not the youngest Benjamin, of whose tribe Paul is a descendant.  However, their hatred towards Joseph ended up leading to their families being saved during the famine in Canaan, because they sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt, and God blessed him to overcome many trials and become second in command to Pharaoh. Finally, when he and his brothers were reconciled, Joseph explained what they did in this way; But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. (Genesis 50:20)

Many years later when the children of Israel were no longer welcomed in Egypt, Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. (Exodus 1:8) They were treated as slaves, but God allowed one of their own to be raised in the house of Pharaoh, Moses, and after many years of their suffering, God spoke to him, “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey,... Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:7-10)

We all know the story of the plagues that God sent to Egypt, until finally Pharaoh let them go.  But once in the wilderness, traveling to the promised land, and witnessing all the miracles God had performed to take care of them and provide for them, the children of Israel still became disobedient and began to worship a false god, a molded calf. Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:4) They angered God to the point that He told Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’” And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.” (Exodus 32:7-10)

Then Moses pleaded with the Lord his God, and said: “Lord, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” [Geneis 13:15, 22:7] So the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people. (Exodus 32:11-14)

God did not destroy the children of Israel.  Why?  Moses explained it to the children of Israel, “Thus I prostrated myself before the Lord; forty days and forty nights I kept prostrating myself, because the Lord had said He would destroy you. Therefore I prayed to the Lord, and said: ‘O Lord God, do not destroy Your people and Your inheritance whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look on the stubbornness of this people, or on their wickedness or their sin, lest the land from which You brought us should say, “Because the Lord was not able to bring them to the land which He promised them, and because He hated them, He has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.” Yet they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out by Your mighty power and by Your outstretched arm.’ (Deuteronomy 9:25-29)

From then to the present, God has kept a remnant of the children of Israel according to the election of grace, even when prophets who followed Moses, such as Elijah, pleaded with God against Israel.  God has kept a remnant, not because of the works they've done, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; (Romans 9:4) But He has kept them because He made a promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (aka Israel), of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen. (Romans 9:5)

What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded. Just as it is written: “God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, to this very day.” [Deuteronomy 29:4; Isaiah 29:10] And David says: “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a recompense to them. Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see, and bow down their back always.” [Psalm 69:22-23] (Romans 11:7-10) 

I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness! (Romans 11:11-12) God has used history to teach the children of Israel that they are preserved because they are His chosen people, but they are not His only elect people.  One day, they will come to understand why God "...blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.” [Isaiah 6:10] (John 12:40)

We will continue this study with more about the importance of the children of Israel...