What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The
elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, 8 as it is written,
"God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears
that would not hear, down to this very day." 9 And David says, "Let
their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a
retribution for them; 10 let their eyes be darkened so that they
cannot see, and bend their backs forever."

What is revealed to us about God and his ways in these verses is
serious and weighty. It is light-years removed from the trivial
early-morning banter you hear on radio. It is never mentioned or
considered on television. It is in another world from
entertainment. It is never heard or seen in the manuals of church
growth or popular assessments of modern culture. But if it's true,
all of these are affected. Please listen carefully and consider the
weightiness and seriousness of what God has chosen to reveal here
in his word.

Verse 7: "What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was
seeking." Let's make sure that we see this in connection with the
preceding two verses. Verse 5, "So too at the present time there is
a remnant, chosen by grace." In other words, God has seen to it
that out of the people of Israel as a whole, some have believed on
Jesus as the Messiah and have been justified. They are now saved
from sin and hell.

And Paul stresses that God brought about this believing remnant
"according to the election of grace." The remnant was
chosen to be the remnant. And that choosing was by grace
alone, not owing to anything the remnant had done. That's what
verse 6 clarifies and underlines: "But if [this election] is by
grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would
no longer be grace."

Which leaves the reader with this picture in his head: Back in
the days of Abraham, God chose the people of Israel for his own
special possession. Over time he made covenants with them and gave
them promises of a great future with him. But now Paul is saying
that in his generation (as in Elijah's) God has only saved a
remnant. It feels breathtaking to many of Paul's listeners. What
are you saying, Paul? What are you saying about Israel as a
whole?

That is where we are in verse 7: "What then? [What are you
saying? Paul answers:] Israel failed to obtain what it was
seeking." In other words, Israel as a whole has failed to live up
to the law that they pursued (Romans 9:31). They have failed to be
righteous in God's eyes. And they have stumbled over the stumbling
stone (Romans 9:32), Jesus Christ, who is the end of the law for
righteousness for all who believe on him (Romans 10:4). They are
therefore lost and cut off from Christ (Romans 9:3).

Then Paul says in Romans 11:7b: "The elect obtained it, but the
rest were hardened." This is a tremendously important statement for
understanding how salvation happens. "The elect obtained it."
Obtained what? Obtained right standing with God. Obtained faith and
justification and salvation. This is what Paul had said in verse 5:
"At the present time there is a [saved] remnant, chosen by
grace." So he says in verse 7, The "chosen" obtain it - obtain a
standing in the remnant, the redeemed, the justified, the
saved.

What then of the rest, Paul? If the remnant exists because of
election and sovereign grace, then what are you saying about the
rest? Paul answers (verse 7b): "The rest were hardened."

Just think of this in relation to popular American Christianity.
Do we ever talk like this? How would we have written it? We would
have written, "What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was
seeking. The believers obtained it, but the rest refused to
believe." And that would have been true. Absolutely true. And how
easily Paul could have written that! How easily he could have
avoided the issue of God's election and hardening, just like most
people avoid it today.

Why speak this way? I think I know why. God loves you. That's
why. And it is good for you to see this and know this and build
this into your mental framework—as one of the pillars in your
mind that holds up the house of reality. If you don't see this
yet—that it's is good for you to know this—you are not
alone. It doesn't come immediately. What we should do is ask God to
help us see the benefits of knowing this truth. We may see it
brightly. Or we may see it dimly. But we should believe it, because
God revealed it to us in his word, and he loves us.

"What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The
elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened." Three questions: 1)
What is this hardening? 2) When did it happen? 3) What is the basis
for it?

What Is This Hardening?

In verses 8-10 Paul uses three Old Testament texts to explain
and support what he means (Isaiah 29:10; Deuteronomy 29:4; Psalm
69:22-23).

As it is written, "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that
would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day."
9 And David says, "Let their table become a snare and a trap, a
stumbling block and a retribution for them; 10 let their eyes be
darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs
forever."

We can see from this what the hardening means. Verse 8: God gave
them a spirit of stupor, that is, a spirit of numbness and
insensitivity. The result was that they were spiritually blind and
deaf. "Eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear." They
were physically able to see and hear, but they saw spiritual truth
as foolish and unattractive.

Now in verse 9 Paul quotes Psalm 69:22-23. Paul sees Psalm 69 as
fulfilled in the life and situation of Jesus. David writes it and
the final Son of David fulfills it. So in Psalm 69:9 David says,
"Zeal for your house has consumed me," and John 2:12 applies that
to Jesus as he cleansed the temple. The psalm says, "The reproaches
of those who reproach you have fallen on me" (69:9) and Paul quotes
this in Romans 15:3 to refer to Christ. The psalm says, "They gave
me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to
drink" (69:21), and Luke 23:36 applies this to Jesus as he was
offered sour wine on the cross.

So Paul reads the curses of this psalm as divine judgment,
spoken by God through David, about the nation of Israel, especially
as they rejected the final Son of David when he came, Jesus
Christ.

Verse 9: "And David says, 'Let their table become a snare and a
trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them.'" The table
here is the table where they are eating. It probably represents
bountiful food and the pleasure of eating. In other words, it
probably stands for the simple, ordinary, good things of life. So I
take this to mean that their hardness of heart includes the misuse
of food and other gifts of God. These good things, given by God,
become a stumbling block and a trap. I assume that means that they
fall in love with these things. The pleasure that they get in
things replaces the pleasure they should have in God. And so their
physical appetites—for food or sex or aesthetic pleasure
—deaden their spiritual appetites and they lose all desire
for God.

Verse 10: "Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see,
and bend their backs forever." Again hardening is explained as
blindness, as it was in verse 8. Then he says, God's hardening
means, "Bend their backs forever." Probably the picture of a bent
back is a picture of carrying a heavy load - doing hard work. This
is almost the opposite of a table of pleasures becoming a trap. But
that is exactly the way we oscillate back and forth when we are
hardened against God. We express our idolatry either by preferring
food or sex or aesthetic pleasures to God, or by constructing a
morality that makes our work, not God's grace, the basis of our
religion and our life. So "bend their backs forever" means give
them up to their self-made and self-exalting works-religion.

That's what hardening is: spiritual numbness, blindness,
deafness, and the turning of God's good gifts into God-replacing
pleasures, and God's law into self-reliant labor.

When Did This Hardening Happen?

The answer is seen in the words "to this very day" in verse 8.
"God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears
that would not hear, down to this very day." In other words, this
hardening that is happening in Paul's generation to those who are
not the remnant has been happening a long time. Paul gets this from
Deuteronomy 29:4. "To this day the LORD has not given you
a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear." Moses said
that 1400 years before Paul. And Paul says it is still true.

To Moses' day and to Paul's day the hardening remains. And you
can see how long it will remain in Romans 11:25, "Lest you be wise
in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery,
brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the
fullness of the Gentiles has come in."

This must imply that the hardening is not merely in the hands of
man, because there is a planned end for
it. The hardening will last
"until the full number of the Gentiles comes in." So God has
appointed it, and God will remove it at the time he has appointed.
And we should be like Paul in Romans 10:1, "Brothers, my heart's
desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved." In
other words, we should be praying that the hardening be removed and
that the veil be lifted (2 Corinthians 3:14)—that a remnant
be saved now and that one day soon the remnant will expand to
include all Israel.

What Is the Basis for This Hardening?

Verse 7: "What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was
seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened." I
tried to show last week from verses 5 and 6 that election is
entirely by grace. It is not owing to anything in the remnant that
explains why they are chosen for salvation.

The non-chosen—those who are hardened—are not passed
over because they are worse. And the chosen are not chosen because
they are better. Otherwise grace would not be grace. I was not
rescued from my unbelief because I am better than any Jewish person
or Gentile person. If you think you were, you nullify the grace of
God. We were rescued from unbelief by sovereign grace alone.

In view of this, how shall we describe the basis of hardening?
We must describe it in two ways, one way to stress the freedom of
God, and the other way to stress the guilt and accountability of
man.

First, in the act of hardening God is free and is not ultimately
constrained by any act or any condition of man outside himself. We
saw from Romans 9, on this very issue, that God's glory depends on
his freedom never to be ultimately dependent on the will of man for
the choices he makes. So Paul quotes God in Romans 9:15, "I will
have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom
I have compassion." And he concludes, "So then it depends not on
human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. . . 18 So then
he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he
wills." His aim was to stress God's freedom.

That's the first thing we must say about the basis of hardening.
God is not finally constrained by human willing. We do not provide
the ultimate, decisive causes for the actions of God. God does.

But just as important is the second way of describing the basis
of hardening. Look at one important word we skipped over in verse
9: "David says, 'Let their table become a snare and a trap, a
stumbling block and a retribution for them." The word
"retribution" implies that punishment of wrong is involved,
somewhere along the way, in the hardening. The point is they
deserved the snare and trap and stumbling that they experienced.
Which means we must really reckon with true guilt and true
accountability. You see it in Romans 11:20. Paul describes the
non-remnant like this: "They were broken off because of their
unbelief, but you stand fast through faith." Here he stresses human
responsibility.

So this is what we believe. This is what we see in the Bible.
God is sovereign; man is a responsible moral agent. God is free and
never ultimately determined by forces or actions or wills outside
himself. On the other hand, we are morally responsible. We are
really guilty for our sinfulness and really deserving of
retribution and punishment.

Therefore, we sum up God's hardening work like this: God so
arranges all reality, in his unsearchable wisdom, so that many
indeed experience ongoing rebellion and hardness against God; but
he does this, mysteriously, in such a way that he is never unjust
or blameworthy in what comes to pass, and we never cease to be
morally accountable.

When he draws us to himself and opens our eyes so that we
believe in him and trust him and love him and treasure him, it is
owing to nothing in us, and we should be the humblest, most
patient, kind, loving, tenderhearted, forgiving, courageous people
on the earth. God has made us his own, and it was grace and grace
alone that did it. And when he passes over others and leaves them
to become hard and rebellious and unbelieving, he does them no
injustice. We are as deserving of judgment as they. And it is
sheer, undeserved grace that we stand justified in faith.

Oh, that God might grant us to make our calling and our election
sure (2 Peter 1:10) by the way we love all peoples. Remember, no
one can give God a compelling reason why he should be excluded from
God's elect. Let us then join Paul in a passionate pursuit to pray
and witness and love and win as many as we can by the grace of
God.