Can God Be Trusted?

A sermon preached from Romans 11:1–10 by Ps Phil Hunt

Click here to listen to the sermon.

It is good to be home. I missed all of you, and I am deeply grateful for the leadership God has given us here at Kitwe Church. My wife is still away and will be back in about another week — we covet your prayers. The funeral for her parents was a sad occasion. It is sobering to stand at a graveside and see two coffins side by side. But the Word of God was faithfully proclaimed. Thank you for your prayers. Many unbelieving relatives were present and heard the gospel. This weekend my wife is spending time with some of those relatives, seeking to speak with them further about Christ, and I know she would appreciate your continued prayers.

Please take your Bibles and turn to Romans chapter eleven.

While you find your place, a reminder to members of our church: next week is our Fifth Sunday Fellowship. We will meet here in the church hall in the afternoon for a time of fellowship and refreshments together. We have two things planned. First, a presentation with a breakdown of the way forward with the church construction project, and a discussion of the next steps in organizing our Nehemiah team. Second, we will have a Q&A session. We would like to receive your questions in advance, so please begin thinking about them. Questions on anything are welcome — Scripture, things we have been preaching through, questions about Kitwe Church and how we are organized. We will remind you again next Sunday morning. Do make every plan to be here.

Introduction: The Question Before Us

I want to speak to you this morning on this subject: Can God be trusted?

Have you ever come to a point in your life — under the weight of difficulty, pressure, or your own repeated failure — where you have wondered whether God has given up on you? That may be how you feel this morning. You may be overwhelmed by a sense of your own sin and your inability to meet God’s standard.

That is, in fact, precisely the question Paul anticipates. In chapter 10, verse 21, God has held out his hands all day long to a disobedient and contrary people — and they have again rebelled and rejected him. So now the question becomes urgent: has God rejected his people? Has he grown so weary of their rebellion, their rejection, their failure, that he has finally decided: enough is enough, I am done with them, I will no longer honour my promises to Abraham? Perhaps you are here this morning wondering the same thing about yourself. Has God given up on you? Has he changed his mind and cancelled his promises to you?

This question cuts to the very nature and character of God. The reliability of God, the trustworthiness of all his promises, his very Word — everything rests upon the answer. For if God has rejected his people, then he cannot be trusted, and the rest of his Word is meaningless. If God fails at one point of his promise, at one point of his nature and character, then everything else falls with it.

As a nation, Israel has rejected Christ as Messiah. In doing so, they have turned their back on the grace God extended to them through Christ. The question Paul has been working through in chapters 9, 10, and 11 is this: has the Word of God failed? In chapter 9, verse 6, he asks that very question — and answers it with a resounding no. The Word of God has not failed, because it was addressed to a subset of Israel defined not by blood but by divine election. God’s promise was always about a called people within the biological line of Israel.

Paul has already answered two of the three great questions arising from this. First: has God’s Word failed because Israel rejected their Messiah while Gentiles are now receiving salvation? No — because God’s redemptive purposes were never determined by ethnic descent. Second: if that is true, is there injustice with God? Absolutely not — God’s freedom in election is grounded in his mercy, not man’s merit. God does not choose us because he sees something inherently superior in us, as though we rise like cream to the top. He chooses us in sovereign mercy.

And if that is so, Paul anticipated the objection in chapter 9, verse 19: then why does God still find fault? Paul answered that sovereign election does not remove human responsibility. These are two truths that sit side by side in the eternal wisdom of God — equally true, neither cancelling the other. And Paul reframed that objection: does the clay have the right to cross-examine the potter about the wisdom of what he has made?

Now we come to the third great question, which our text addresses this morning: has God rejected his people? I want to show you three things from this passage that establish why God can be trusted.

One: God Has Not Rejected His People (v. 1)

Look at verse 1: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!”

Paul knew that if both Jew and Gentile were to trust in Jesus, they must be assured that God keeps his promises. His answer is emphatic: absolutely not, by no means, impossible. And his first proof is his own existence. He continues: “For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.” Paul was not a convert to Judaism from the outside. He was himself a blood descendant of Abraham. The same Paul who, in Acts chapter 8, had aggressively tortured and fought against everyone who believed in Jesus as Messiah — a fanatical, Jesus-hating Jew — was met by Jesus on the road to Damascus in Acts chapter 9, chosen, transformed, and turned into an ardent lover and servant of the one he had been persecuting. The persecutor became the apostle. Paul himself is living proof that God has not abandoned his Jewish people.

But to understand the full weight of this assurance, we need to go back to the beginning. Please turn to Genesis chapter 12.

In Genesis 12, verses 2 and 3, we find the first statement of what we call the Abrahamic Covenant — the promise God made to Abraham while he was still in Haran:

“I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Now turn to chapter 13, verse 14. After Abraham entered the land of Canaan, God repeated and expanded the promise:

“Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”

The offspring Paul has clearly shown us includes both Jew and Gentile — all who are elected by grace and believe in Jesus Christ. God promised Abraham both a people and a land.

Now turn to chapter 15. Here the covenant is not merely repeated — it is ratified by an unconditional oath. In verse 1, God says to Abraham: “Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” Abraham asks in verse 8: “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” And God’s answer is to instruct him to bring a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.

Abraham, as a Chaldean, understood immediately what this meant. This was the ancient cultural rite for ratifying a blood covenant between two parties — a covenant so solemn that it could not be broken without the shedding of blood. Abraham slaughtered each animal, divided the carcasses in half, and laid the halves opposite each other on the ground. Then he waited. He waited for the other party to arrive so that together they could walk between the pieces — the two parties signifying by that act the weight of the covenant: should either party break it, they would forfeit their life.

He drove off the birds of prey that came circling. And he waited. All day long. Until the sun began to set. And then, verse 12: “As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.” This was no ordinary nightfall. This was the shadow of the Almighty drawing near. And while Abraham lay there in that deep sleep, God spoke to him of what lay ahead for his descendants — four hundred years of slavery, followed by deliverance.

Then verse 17: “When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram.”

Do you see what happened? Abraham was asleep. God passed between the pieces alone. This was not a mutual agreement between two parties of equal standing. God bound himself — by himself. He staked his own name and nature on the fulfillment of this word. He walked between those slaughtered animals and said, in effect: if I fail to keep this promise, let what happened to these animals happen to me. The God of the universe put his own integrity on the line, unilaterally, unconditionally, while the other party lay sleeping.

Had God now rejected that covenant? That is Paul’s question. And the answer, grounded in who God is, is: impossible. Listen to how the rest of Scripture speaks of this:

1 Samuel 12:22: “The Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.”

Psalm 89:31–35: “If they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips. Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David.”

Psalm 105:8: “He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac.”

God had promised to redeem Israel, to establish her as a kingdom, to bless all nations of the world through her, culminating in the coming of the Messiah. And this promise was not for Israel alone — as Paul made clear at the very opening of this letter in Romans 1:16, the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Here, then, is the implication for us. Your standing before God does not rest on your performance. It rests on his promise. The security of your faith is not as strong as your faithfulness — it is as strong as his. Paul is not simply giving a Hebrew history lesson. He is not merely reassuring nervous Jewish believers of their ethnic heritage. He is establishing something far more foundational: the God who made an unconditional covenant with Abraham and kept it through centuries of Israel’s rebellion is the same God who has made promises to you in Christ. He will keep those too.

The same faithfulness that reached down and apprehended a murderous persecutor on the road to Damascus is the same faithfulness that is at work in your life right now. God will not abandon you. Not because you are worthy, but because he is faithful.

Two: God Has Reserved a Remnant (vv. 2–6)

Look at verse 2: “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” And verse 5: “So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.”

This word “foreknew” is a word of intimacy. It speaks not merely of prior knowledge but of a relationship characterized by devotion and love. God’s foreknowing of who would be saved is inseparable from his predestining of who would be saved. And grace — not merit — is the reason a remnant exists at all.

God always has a remnant. Verses 3 and 4 recall the prophet Elijah, who came before God in despair at the brook Cherith: “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” And what did God say? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” Seven thousand — unknown to Elijah, invisible to the nation, but known to God and kept by God.

When Nebuchadnezzar swept into the land, destroyed Jerusalem, and carried the people captive to Babylon, Daniel chapter 1 records at least four young men who remained faithful to their God: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. A remnant of four in the courts of a pagan empire.

When you come to Acts chapter 2, Peter preaches at Pentecost and three thousand people believe. By chapter 4, another five thousand have been saved. By chapter 5, verse 14, a multitude believed — perhaps as many as twenty thousand Jewish believers in Jesus as Messiah in Jerusalem alone.

And in the book of Revelation, chapter 7, verses 1 through 11, during the great tribulation, God seals 144,000 from every tribe of Israel — Jews protected from the Antichrist and preserved as witnesses for Jesus the Messiah.

There is a remnant in Kitwe today. Those who have come to faith in Jesus Christ through grace alone — not relying on their own good works or human effort to merit forgiveness or secure their place in heaven.

Paul is not merely saying that grace is generous. He is saying that grace is unconditional. The moment you introduce human merit into the equation — the moment the existence of the remnant is explained by their goodness, their seeking, their striving — grace ceases to be grace and becomes a reward. The reason there were seven thousand in Elijah’s day was not that they were morally superior to their neighbours. It was because God kept them for himself. The reason there are believers in Kitwe this morning is not that you are more spiritually inclined than the person beside you. It is because God, in sovereign mercy, in amazing grace, chose to open your eyes and incline your heart to believe in him.

Grace does not merely respond to history. Grace governs history. Israel’s rebellion did not interrupt the programme of God. It was absorbed into God’s programme. The hardening of the majority made way for the inclusion of the Gentiles, which in turn will provoke Israel to jealousy, which will lead from life to death — as Paul will unfold as we move through the rest of chapter 11.

How will God fulfil his remaining promises? The same way he always has: by grace, through instruments of his own choosing, on a timetable of his own design, always in keeping with his character as a God who cannot be untrue to himself.

Three: God Has Hardened Those Who Rejected Grace (vv. 7–10)

Verse 7: “What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.”

Those who reject Jesus are rejected by Jesus. When Israel rejected the Messiah, it was not a surprise to God — it was part of his overall plan of redemption. And yet Israel rejected their Messiah freely, willingly, and gladly, out of their own rebellious choice. Here again are those two truths running side by side. Paul never resolves this tension. He simply lets it stand: God is sovereign; man is responsible. God commands all people everywhere to repent. All who come to him will be received. Those who refuse will be judged. And God is active in mercy, taking the initiative to pour out grace upon rebels of his choosing.

But those who reject Jesus are not only rejected by him — our text says they are also hardened by him. This is a sober word. Verse 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.” And from Psalm 69: “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.”

This hardening is not random or unjust. The word rendered “stupor” in verse 8 is a deep, piercing numbness — like the dull heaviness of someone in a very deep sleep. In its verb form, it means to be pierced or stunned to the point of being incapable of response. It describes someone who is exposed to light, to sound, to truth — and registers none of it. The bright sun shines in their eyes and does not register. The loud proclamation of grace rings in their ears and they hear nothing. This is not merely a failure to understand theological arguments. It is a comprehensive inability to perceive spiritual reality.

And who does this? God. This hardening speaks of being hardened by an outside power. And notice: these were people of privilege. The table — a word drawn from Psalm 69 and echoing Psalm 23:5 (“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”) — speaks of God’s covenant fellowship, his provision, his blessing, the security of having God himself present with his people. These blessings were given as a path leading to Christ. But for those who refused to walk that path, the blessings became a snare — a trap that caught them by surprise, a device that held them once caught, a stumbling block mid-journey, and ultimately a retribution, the just consequence of what they had chosen.

Their very privilege did not soften their hearts. The protection, the feeding, the blessing of God’s own presence among his people — all of it became the thing that confirmed them in unbelief when the Messiah arrived. Paul calls it a spirit of stupor. But we must be clear: this is not a bolt from the blue falling arbitrarily on unsuspecting people. It is the judicial seal that God places upon a heart that has already chosen, repeatedly and wilfully, to turn away from the light. God does not darken eyes that are straining to see. He darkens eyes that have already closed themselves against his grace.

Paul is drawing a straight line back to chapter 9, verse 32: they stumbled over Christ because they were pursuing righteousness as though it were by works — seeking a righteousness of their own making rather than the righteousness that comes from God by faith. Unwilling to acknowledge that they had no righteousness to offer, unwilling to throw themselves upon the righteous sacrifice of God, they refused to submit to the righteousness of God and instead pursued their own methods of being right with him.

And some of us are in exactly that place this morning. You have spent decades seeking to establish your own righteousness — hoping that the sum of your decisions, your kindnesses, your religious activities will be weighed in the balance and that your good will outweigh your bad; that God, being a God of love, will somehow let you in. That is what Paul is warning against. The New Testament is clear, and the words of Hebrews 3:15 press upon us: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

The Spirit of God is active here this morning. The gospel is being proclaimed. The offer of salvation is real. But the human heart is capable of calcification — of hearing the gospel again and again, suppressing its claims again and again, and becoming increasingly dull to it. The truths that once moved you no longer move you. The gospel that once humbled you no longer humbles you. Beware. The very means of grace — the Word preached, the gospel proclaimed, the Spirit moving — can become a snare to those who sit under them repeatedly without response. The table of God’s provision, treated as routine and familiar, becomes the thing that confirms their condemnation.

But this truth also cuts the other way, and it is a guarantee of gospel advance. The hardening of Israel was not the end of God’s purpose — it was instrumental to his purpose. Verse 11 will tell us: through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles. The same divine governance that confirms the unrepentant in their rejection is the governance that ensures the gospel will reach every people and nation that God has purposed to save. For the believer, this means you can go and proclaim the gospel with gladness, boldness, and confidence. You are not trying to overcome a resistance stronger than God. You are participating in a mission whose outcome is already secured. Some will be hardened — and even that is in God’s hands. Others will be gathered in — and that too is by his grace alone. Your task is faithfulness. The results belong to him.

Conclusion: Can God Be Trusted?

So what is the point of all this? God can be trusted. His faithfulness is not contingent upon your faithfulness. His election is not based on your merit. His purposes are not thwarted by your failure. His promises are not cancelled by your sin. This is not a God who tries to save. He is a God who does save, who has saved, and who will save all whom he has purposed to save — in every nation, in every generation — until the last one has been gathered in, and the Son receives the full reward of his suffering.

There are two kinds of people in this room this morning, and the text speaks directly to both.

If you are a believer in Jesus, your response is to trust. Trust God’s faithfulness with your own soul. You are not held in grace by the strength of your grip — you are held by his grip. Your security rests on his integrity. Let that produce in you a deep, settled, unshakable gratitude that expresses itself in a life of joy and obedience.

If you are not yet a believer in Jesus, your response is this: do not harden your heart today. The spirit of stupor does not announce its arrival. But you are here this morning. The Spirit of God is here. He is active. The gospel is being proclaimed. The offer is open. God is holding out his hand to you right now.

Can God be trusted? Yes. Completely. Finally. Without reserve. Trust him now.

Closing Prayer

Father, through your Spirit, open blind eyes to see the truth. Open deaf ears to hear the sweet, still voice of your loving call: Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. We thank you that you have assured us that all who come to you, you will never cast out. You will never reject your people. For those of us going through troubling circumstances, for those who have been battling temptation and sin, for those who have been doubting your faithfulness and wondering if you will come through — O God, restore to us the faith to trust in you, for indeed you can be trusted. Bring the lost to saving faith. Encourage the saints, that we may serve you with joy and obedience. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.