Why don’t they get it? Maybe you have family members or close friends who don’t believe in Jesus. You’ve tried and tried to explain the gospel to them, but they’re just not interested – they just don’t want to hear it. Why can’t they see what you see?

This was Paul’s experience. After all, the Jewish people of His time were His kinsmen, people he knew and loved. Time and time again, he went into their synagogues and told them how Jesus fulfilled so many Old Testament prophecies. But no matter how carefully he explained the real meaning of the Scriptures to them, many of them refused to listen. If Jesus really was their Messiah, they didn’t want Him.

So, how was Paul to understand the promises that God had made to Abraham, promises to be the God of his descendants? Well, in the first place, he remembered that this wasn’t the first time in the history of God’s people that many of them had turned away from God. After all, many years earlier, the prophet Elijah had performed many amazing miracles. But regardless of the truth and power of his preaching, many of his listeners had preferred to worship Baal rather than to worship God. Elijah had become so discouraged about it that he wanted to die.

But God reminded Elijah and Paul that no matter how many of His people turned away from Him, there were many others that remained faithful. That was certainly true in Paul’s time. He himself was Jewish, as were all the apostles. The Book of Acts says that thousands, multitudes of the Jewish people of his time had become followers of Christ. So God was in fact keeping His covenant promise to Abraham. God had not rejected His Old Testament people out of hand.

But Paul also understood that those who had come to believe in Christ had done so because of God’s grace. It was God Who had opened their eyes to see Jesus. It was God Who had opened their ears to believe the words of the gospel that they had heard. God had saved Paul, and Paul was confident that God would save others in the same way.

And God is still the One Who comes to sinners like us and our loved ones, drawing us to Himself and making us His own. So don’t give up on those who don’t yet trust in Christ. Keep praying for them and keep pointing to Jesus, just as Paul did. After all, God used Paul to save many of his kinsmen – maybe He’ll use you in the same way, in His time.

Romans 11:1-6 (NASB)

I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
2 God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?
3 “Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, they have torn down Thine altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.”
4 But what is the divine response to him? “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”
5 In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice.
6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.