The Remnant: God Screens or Cleans

Romans 11:5

Sermon transcript by Rev. Ernest 0’Neill

It seems in America often to differ, so I need to ask the question: What was the top sport in your
high school? In Ireland it was rugby. Even though yours was an American school and mine was an Irish
school, I’m sure the beginning of the academic year saw exactly the same thing happen. At the first
rugby practice everyone turned out. Everybody! The fat ones, the thin ones, the skinny ones, the
unathletic ones, the ones who could see, the ones who couldn’t see! On that first Wednesday, every
body wanted to be a rugby player! We came in hordes for the first practice.

The next week, at the second practice, those of us who couldn’t find our rugby boots or who didn’t
like playing in the rain, decided to stay in study hail and do our homework assignments. Then the
next week, at the next practice, those of us who didn’t like the Saturday morning calisthenics opted
for the chess club, and we didn’t turn up either! So, bit by bit, the numbers diminished until
eventually there were left only those who really wanted to play rugby so badly that they were
prepared to put up with the discomfort and the self-discipline that was necessary. Of course, those
of us who wanted the glory and the self-gratification of being rugby players found ourselves in
other sports.

What was left, therefore, was a mere remnant of the great hordes of us that turned out at the
beginning. You might call it a remnant. It was just a little piece of cloth that was left compared
with the original coat that made up the freshman class.(cid:9)

Now, loved ones, that’s what God is speaking about in the verse we’re studying today. It’s Romans
11:5: “So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.” And God is obviously
referring first of all to the preceding verse: “But what is God’s reply to him? {That’s Elijah} ‘I
have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’”

So in 860 B.C. all the Israelites had followed Ahab their king in worshipping Baal, except for seven
thousand people who were prepared to pay the price of continuing to worship God himself – a little
group that was left that was willing to pay the price of loving and obeying God. You remember that
Paul referred to the same thing in the whole of chapter 10 of Romans, where he points out that it is
not the national Jews that are really God’s people.

Of course, many of us misunderstand that. Many of us have a great misunderstanding today. We think
it’s all the national Jews that are God’s people. Paul with the whole of Chapter 10 in Romans points
out that it is not all the physical descendants of Abraham that are God’s true people. It’s only a
small, small group. It’s the spiritual descendants of Abraham, who trust God as Abraham did. They
are really God’s people.

Those are two examples of God saving a remnant out of a huge mass of people. And loved ones, that’s
the way God deals with us all down through history. He deals with us according to this principle of
the remnant.

Why does he? It involves a tremendous loss and waste of people, doesn’t it? Why does God deal with

us according to this remnant principle?

For the same reason as our coaches and teachers at school did. They knew that we’re like them. We’re
primarily selfish people. We’re always looking out for something for ourselves. We’re always taking
opportunities to develop fully — such as you might get in a game like rugby or football or baseball
— and turning them into opportunities for self-glory and self-gratification. The only way they find
out which of us really want to do a thing, is to get us to do it bit-by-bit ourselves – until
gradually our own selfish love simply eliminates us from the group.

I know that it is a little different in that often coaches and political leaders will make use of
the sheer intensity of some of our egotism to get us to make tremendous self-sacrifices in order to
attain some self-serving success. In that sense, the human analogy breaks down in regard to God.
Yet, generally speaking, the analogy is the same.

God uses the principle of the remnant for the same reason as every coach and every teacher – all of
us who have presented something to selfish people have used that principle. First we know they
misunderstand what we’re asking them to do. It is only after some time of taking part in it that
they really see what it involves. So it is with God. He has to deal with that selfish perversion
within us, that always wants to use the opportunity for self-glory and self-gratification that his
invitation seems to mean to us.

In other words, God has said to us from the beginning of time, “Do you want to be like my Son Jesus
and live with us together in a universe of infinite love?” And we have tended to answer, “Yes! Yes,
we do!” With Adam we tend to say, “Yes, we want to be like your Son Jesus — as long as we can be
like him in our own way and by our own strength.”

And then God comes back to us and says, “No, you have it wrong! Only if you are willing to trust me
for my strength like my child Abraham did – only then will you be able to become like my Son Jesus
and live in the land that I have given to Abraham.” But we look at the benefit that it will be to
us, and we grab at that and say, “Yes, we would love to live in that land that you are giving to
Abraham — as long as we can live in it by our own strength and in our own way.”

Then God comes back to us through Moses and says, “No, if you are going to be like my Son, and live
with us together in a universe of infinite love, then you have to live in this land that I have
given you, trusting me and obeying me. If you trust and obey me you will live like these ten laws
describe — as these Ten Commandments describe you. That’s the person you will be.”

We tend again and again to try to cut the thing to our own pattern, and we say, “Yes! We’ll obey
those laws. We want to obey those laws as long as we can obey them outwardly, and in our own hearts
we can trust our own strength and have our own way.” What God then does is he exiles us with the
rest of the Israelites and sends us off to Assyria and Babylon, away from any outward temples or
outward forms of worship.

There we are forced to develop a private inner life of trust and obedience with him alone. But the
group that is left at that point is much smaller than the large group of us that totally
misunderstood what God meant at the beginning. Now brothers and sisters, that’s why God is always
dealing with us according to the principle of the remnant.

He’s always correcting our misconceptions and our misapprehensions of what it is meant to be like

Jesus. He is always correcting it and trying to make clear to us what it means. You could say that
God is always involved in a screening process. He is always involved in giving us a great invitation
and then clarifying for us what that invitation involves. Each time he clarifies — it is tragic —
he has to screen some of us out — or rather, some of us screen ourselves out. And that’s why, in a
sense, God is always involved in screening and cleaning what is left.

He said to Adam at the beginning, “I’ll give you freedom to choose!” But really only a small group
— in Noah’s family — actually chose to trust God. And then God took only one of that small family,
Abraham, and he opened out to him the possibility of trusting in such a way that he would obey. And
so out of Abraham came a nation. Out of all the nations of the world, God cut out this little
remnant and started to try to train them to be like his Son.

You and I know that gradually they became a self-righteous nation, and we need to see that is still
what they are. Now God has taken and used one of them, his Son, who was a Jew, to beget individuals
of all different kinds of nations who will trust him and love him and submit to him simply because
he is God.

So that is what God has been doing down through history. The verse we are studying today says: “So
too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.” (Romans 11:5) That’s the terrible
truth – that here in this room there is a remnant. And we’re all being foolish people and naive
optimists if we don’t see that. There is a remnant in this room — and in every group of people that
are meeting all over the nation today –who are interested in God. In each one of them there is a
remnant. There is a group of people who really do want God.

Now, don’t you agree the “Jesus Movement” {a movement of people interested in Jesus and Christianity
in the 1960’s and 1970’s} was exciting? It was exciting. None of us ever gave anybody a ride without
witnessing about Jesus to them. They were just great days, in many ways. And the Jesus Movement was
a great move that had something of God in it.

But don’t you agree? There were large numbers of people caught up in the Jesus movement who didn’t
know or didn’t care much about Jesus himself. Out of that Jesus Movement there was a great mass of
people who were simply hedonistic self-seekers who liked the excitement of it and who thought that
it was some kind of answer and meaning for life. But as the Jesus Movement slipped away, so they
slipped away.

Now, loved ones, let’s not be silly. Exactly the same thing will happen today. There is a
charismatic movement or an evangelical popularity today {in 1979}. There are huge masses of people
who are following after the crowd. They are really camp followers. They think they want God, but
really what they want is the good things they see in God. They don’t want God himself, and they
don’t want to pay the price of getting God.

They are following and they are enthusiastic. They’re going to church and they think there is
nothing like this “born again” stuff. They’re all for it, but in their own hearts they have never
dealt with whether they want God or not in their own personal lives forever. When this popular
religion stuff fades away here in America, they themselves will fade like “snow off a ditch”. They
will just disappear.

It’s the same among us. It really is, and I don’t say it because I don’t like you or love you. I
love you! I just know that there are loved ones who will come here because it is not a bad place! It

is a nice atmosphere that God has created, isn’t it? You do really feel that we’re honest with each
other, and that there is love among us. It is a nice place to come, and you do meet lots of good
people. There are lots of us who are young and dynamic and alive.

It is pleasant to be here. And you might even find a marriage partner if you come here, or you might
get a social circle that will really make life more pleasant. But do you see? There will come a day
when all of us who have come for those ulterior motives will just fade away. There will just be a
remnant of us who really do want God with all our hearts.

Now, I wonder, are you thinking, “What is the factor that determines whether I will be part of the
remnant, or whether I will be part of the great mass that will be reprobate and lost?” A very simple
factor. God knew when he invited us to come and be like his Son Jesus, and to live with them forever
in the universe of infinite love — that the only way that we would ever become like Jesus is if we
could be recreated by him somehow. And he knew we could only be recreated if we were prepared to
allow all that we are to be destroyed. Right there, that’s the factor!

There is a really pathetic, sad story in the New Testament where you will see very plainly that it
is this business of being merged into Jesus’ death that is the great separator between the remnant
and the mass of the reprobate. If you want to be like Jesus — are you willing to be destroyed with
him and raised with him? Are you willing to be merged absolutely in him? That’s always the factor
that separates the men from the boys — that separates the remnant from the reprobate. It’s always
that issue of identification with Jesus in his death and resurrection.

Loved ones, I’ll point you to the story. It is pathetic and yet, so often, we in our kind of popular
religion are involved in it.

It was the piece that some of the critics of Christianity in the first century got hold of and said,
“Oh, these people are cannibals – from the way they talk! They talk about eating a man.” Of course
what Jesus is emphasizing by that is, “Are you really ready to be utterly identified with me? Are
you ready to die with me to the things I died to — popularity and comfort and all the rest of it?”

The verse that I’m referring to is John 6:53: “So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats
my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh
is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.”

Then you see in the next verse the identification: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides
in me and I in him.” And then here is the pathetic verse, verse 66: “After this many of his
disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.”

If you don’t know yourself well enough now so that these verses don’t surprise you, at least see
that this is you and me today. Whenever we see the cross that has the great “I” there, and has a
cross across that “I” – as soon as God’s will crosses our wills — for our futures, or our marriage
plans, or our popularity contests — as soon as that takes place — we are among the disciples who
no longer go about with Jesus.

It will be the same among us here this morning. A lot of us like the Christian fellowship. We like
the excitement. We like the idea of something that is progressive and moving forward. What we don’t

realize is, the life that we see around us here and any real life that you touch in the loved one
beside you — comes because that loved one has died to that. If you sense any love or joy or peace
in the person beside you this morning — it’s because that loved one has died to the need for any
love or any joy or any peace.

I don’t know if you know much about the operation here, but it is a success story. Even in just
money alone, it is amazing what God has done through all of the people here {establishing several
successful businesses}. But do you realize that it is built on blood? On people’s life blood.

There are young men and women here who have made unbelievable sacrifices. They have died to comfort
and a plan for their own careers in order to make this beauty possible. We tend as human beings
always to look at the glittery stuff and look at the stuff that we would like, and then to try to
get it without paying the price. That’s what determines the remnant and that’s what determines the
reprobate.

Now, here’s the last thing I felt God wanted me to share. There is a remnant within each one of us
personally. Each one of us here is like an onion. We have layers. God is peeling layer after layer
after layer away — to get at the remnant inside.

That’s what that verse means — that we are earthen vessels and we have a treasure inside the
earthen vessel. {Paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 4:7} God is involved in your own life, in the trials
and the difficulties that you are having — in the decisions you are making moment by moment. He is
involved in peeling away the layers of what you think is the real you.

He is endeavoring to get to the inside of your heart, “the ground of your heart”, the place where
you will submit to Jesus by naked obedience because he is the Son of your Maker. Not because he
gives you joy! Not because he gives you peace! Not because he saves you from your sins! Not because
you’ll go to heaven! Not because you’ll have a good life here on earth! Not because he gives you
abundant life! But there is a ground of your heart inside that is the only real worship that God
wants. That is the worship that comes from a will that is utterly obedient to Jesus, simply because
you know he is the Son of your Creator. God is peeling away all the layers to get to that remnant
inside you.

So, loved ones, the question is, will you stay with him long enough for him to get to that inner
heart? We are tired, all of us, of the phrase “the me generation” — but we know that it’s true. We
know that we have been brought up to do what feels good, to do what makes us happy — and that is
satanic. The old puritan idea — that if it hurts, it’s good for you — was equally satanic. But
we’ve gone the other way. We’ve gone the way of happiness, happiness, happiness. And we’ll be a
massive group — of happy people going to hell. And when we get there, we’ll make it miserable.

The question is, will you stay with God long enough for him to get to that remnant that is really
you?

So don’t be afraid of being honest with yourself. That’s what I did. If I saw something of
selfishness, I went at it with a hammer! I didn’t care if it happened to end up being my thumb or
part of me that was dear to me. I went at it as hard as I could – to nail it to that dear cross. We
need to be ruthless and honest with ourselves. It isn’t a question of, do you want God? Any of us in
our right mind wants God! It’s not the wanting — it’s the willing.

Are you willing to have God live forever in your life? That involves experiencing this side of
Calvary — the crucifixion side — in order to experience the other side of Calvary – the
resurrection side. I would just remind you that there is no resurrection without a death. There is
no resurrection without a crucifixion. There is no real happiness without a death to happiness.
There is no real joy without a death to joy. There is no real love without a death to everything but
God himself and just wanting his will. That’s what God is after. And that remnant God can trust
forever.

I pray that all of us here will be in that remnant. But we won’t. Some of us here are still after
something for ourselves. And yet God will draw us until the end of our lives because he is so
loving. I would ask you to respond to him and be real.

Let us pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for giving us the opportunity to share truth together in these
days. We see, Lord, it is a hedonistic world. Lord, we do like to be happy and we enjoy water skiing
and fun, but we do see the place is overwhelmed by the search for happiness and pleasure, so that
we’ll do anything. We’ll sell our own souls to the devil to get it. Lord, we see that that’s not
right.

Lord, we thank you for allowing us to share truth together this morning. Father, we see this
principle of the remnant by which you deal with us. We see it working even in our own personal life.
Lord, we would commit ourselves now – whatever the cost – to identification to Jesus in his death
and resurrection, as much as is necessary, until you can get to the ground of our hearts — to the
place where we can honestly say: we obey you as our God, and we love you as our Savior. Lord we give
ourselves to your for this purpose. In Jesus’ name. Amen.