42. Romans 11

[Music] well i believe we will uh get started we're a little a skeleton crew this morning but i have some miserable competition in that book sale all the students are in there buying books you know so the elect of israel have made it here i appreciate that here you are and i probably have a few others uh come trickling in as we go but we'll go ahead and get started this morning we've had two weeks off so uh nice to see you and be back here we are as you know this morning coming to romans chapter 11. so if you've been in the class you know that we're working our way through uh the book of romans which itself is part of a broader series we've been doing through all of paul's letters taking those letters in chronological sequence we're now at about the year 57 58 when paul is in corinth and writing this most complete most comprehensive delineation of the christian gospel that we have in the bible uh the remarkable book of romans so we're working our way through as i'm timing it out we should be finished with romans just about the end of the church school year uh so we'll have of course a summer break and then come back in the fall and be picking up uh with the rest of paul's letters most of what the rest of which are short and so we should be able to move through those and probably be finished with this series right around christmas time so it'll be about two years now we've been working on this but uh romans chapter 11 is the third chapter of a three chapter discussion uh paul probably doesn't appreciate that we've divided it into three chapters he thinks it's one great discussion but for convenience we have it in three chapters uh and all of these chapters are devoted to a discussion of one great issue which was a very thorny issue in the first century uh and continues to some degree to be a question right down to the present day and that is how do we understand the relationship between the christian church which of course in history has been mostly gentile and the jewish nation the jewish people and uh this is by far the most important discussion in the bible on that subject not the only uh conversation but certainly the most complete and uh so it's essential for us really to understand it it's a controversial question now and even more so then uh in the first century this was a question that almost well in some cases led to bloodshed it was so uh controversial paul has approached now the conversation from two perspectives so we've seen first of all as it were in chapter nine heaven's perspective and there the emphasis is on god's sovereignty the question was uh how is it that israel has failed of its critical moment to recognize messiah this train wreck you might say in the first century in which these people who were the most likely to recognize messiah missed it indeed murdered him and became the greatest enemies of the gospel throughout the ensuing years how could that possibly have happened was it that god's word had failed that was the issue that paul raised and of course paul's answer which is the new testament response is that uh you know god is the one sovereign in history and in fact they are not all true israel simply because they are descended from biological israel romans 9 6 well if they're not true israel by being born into the family of israel then how is it that a person is a true jew we might ask paul and his answer is in a straightforward way is that one must be reborn as it were a jew that's not paul's term of course we get that from the book of john but i think he had that in mind you have to be a child of the promise and you become a child of the promise by virtue of god's sovereign choice and with respect to jacob and esau paul says it was before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad just so god's purpose in the election might stand it was said to her the older will serve the younger the older is going to be the servant of the one who will be the true seed of abraham as it were uh and of course that provokes objections so we've looked at them some people might say that's not fair paul says that's right it's not fair the fair is not the issue here it's a matter of mercy this is not a question of whether god is being judged he'll always be at least just with us but here it's a matter of who becomes the beneficiary of those lavish benefits that none of us deserve and at that point paul's in quotes you know god speaking to moses to say i'll have mercy on whom i want on whom i want he adds i hearten uh that's the that's the hard message that's the strong message of chapter nine someone might say well doesn't that deprive us of a moral responsibility and paul says kind of in a very shocking response shut your mouth you know it's a it's kind of that uh sort of response to what he perceives as an impudent kind of irreverent uh mentality do you think god is really so crippled that he cannot accomplish what he wants in history if god is going to ordain our free choices don't you think he can do that he's god we can't explain how but the fact that we can't explain it is no uh argument that god cannot do it that's that's chapter nine that's the great chapter on god's sovereignty chapter 10 on the other hand gives us the as a war human side of it and the emphasis there is the gospel because notwithstanding everything the chapter 9 tells us we still are called to preach the gospel to the world and to say to everybody we meet if you confess with your mouth jesus is lord and if you believe in your heart that god raised him from the dead you will be saved in other words the problem of coming to faith is not way up on top of a mountain that's impossible to scale or way out across an ocean that's impossible to swim it is right next to you paul says it's in your mouth it's in your heart you have as jonathan edwards said that natural ability you can do it you are able to confess with your mouth you are able to believe in your heart and everyone that calls on the name of the lord will be saved that's the wide open appeal of the gospel so the reason that people don't believe is not that they are unable to believe it is that they are unwilling to believe it's not outside the capacity of our human uh faculties but it is outside our moral capacity we don't want to believe you see and for that we are held accountable we have hard hearts we have a hateful disposition paul would say toward god and so we don't come because we won't come not because we can't come don't say it's up on top of the mountain or across the ocean it's right next to you and so that's the that's the foot side of it the gospel is for everybody there's nothing in the election that limits the gospel the sweepest to the whole world go into all the world and preach the gospel at the same time i know that if anyone actually comes if anyone actually responds in a heartfelt faithful embracing of the gospel that that was not only the consequence of preaching the gospel it was also the consequence of god changing their heart and he raises that question with respect to israel why didn't israel believe was it that they didn't hear the gospel paul says well certainly they did the greatest preacher in history happened to spend uh his uh the ministry there jesus of nazareth you know confirming his message with miracles no they got the gospel they got the message they understood it but paul concludes the entire discussion by saying all day long i've held off my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people the gospel came to them god's arms were stretched out as it were but their own hard hearts kept them from recognizing and responding and if we read all of this together we have to come to the conclusion the reason their hearts remain hard and obstinate was because well god gave them the gospel there was not grace in the heart to enable them morally to embrace it god hadn't chosen them to be blunt at that point and they become the great stand the great expression as it were in history of the fact that not just they but we are utterly dependent on mercy to be enabled as it were morally to embrace the gospel now if we've heard all that correctly then we might come we might ask the question well then what was god's ultimate purpose for israel has he cast them off you know i'd be the question which in fact is the very issue that paul raises beginning in chapter 11. so with nine and 10 in view we come now to chapter 11 and we'll try to hustle through and make it through this chapter in the time we have uh and paul now is going to raise two questions uh and we'll look at those right after we have a word of prayer so let's just pray and we'll get underway a father we once again come before you humbly acknowledging that it's only as you open the eyes and open the ears of our hearts that we are able to actually come to terms with these great truths that are spelled out for us here in sacred writ we know that we have a natural antipathy to these things that it doesn't pay us much by the way of compliment and yet we also were confronted with the fact that by your grace you are our creator you are the one who has brought us into being and enabled us in every juncture to do all that we do and that for all of that we can only acknowledge uh that it is your mercy your goodness that brings us here this morning to once again examine these truths we ask your blessing on our time together now in the name of christ amen uh coming then now to chapter 11 verse 1. there's two two questions uh the first one is in verse one in which paul asks has god rejected his people you see and you can see why paul would ask that question if we heard what he said in chapter nine if we've caught what he said in chapter 10 it would be natural enough to ask the question now well then if god didn't give them mercy to believe has god simply abandoned them so that's the first question he's going to answer in the negative he's going to say certainly not certainly god hasn't abandoned his people he's hung on to them by means of what he'll call a remnant nevertheless there is a very deep sense in which they did stumble dramatically in the first century and that leads into the second question in verse 11 have they stumbled so as to fall do we infer from the fact that they stumbled there in the first century that they're actually going to pass ultimately into oblivion as it were in terms of the pages of history cease to be an identifiable people it's very interesting paul is asking this question in the first century we have two thousand years of history to think about that you know but paul doesn't have the luxury of seeing uh that necessarily by historical standards although he may have certainly seen it by uh divine revelation but we'll see how he answers it in any event so back to the first question chapter 11 verse 1. i ask them is god rejected his people paul says no certainly not has god rejected in other words the jewish nation that had been uh all through history steeped in this great tradition preparing the day for the coming of messiah but then when he finally came they rejected messiah as god therefore rejected them by no means paul's answer is i myself am an israelite a descendant of abraham a member of the tribe of benjamin there's at least one exception to the rule paul says there's at least one jewish man who does believe you see paul born of the tribe of benjamin born into a jewish family a hebrew of the hebrews uh actually the ring leader of the hostility to the christian church the one who was in fact on his way to damascus to reel in christian people and take them to jerusalem under chains and in prison and kill them there this is the man that's speaking now and says you know i am one possessed of faith there's been one heart that's changed and so you can't say that god's rejected his people wholesale uh maybe it's only a bare minority that have truly come to faith but that's certainly more than nothing uh by no means i'm an israelite god has not rejected his people paul says whom he foreknew this nation that he had uh singled out as the priestly nation throughout the centuries preceding uh this nation which had been the very trustees of the oracles of god this nation which had been the nation by which christ himself had been born this nation that states in hosea you of all the families of the earth have i known this nation had certainly not been rejected therefore as an ethnic people uh these that god had as it were for known in all of those ways uh paul says this is the way god always works god always tends to hang on to this great visible community by means of a much smaller invisible community and notice what he says in verse three do you not know what the scripture says of elijah how he pleads with god against israel lord they've killed your prophets they've demolished your altars and i alone left and they're seeking my life now you know the story of course of elijah fresh from his great victory on mount carmel in which he'd defeated the prophets of baal and vindicated yahweh as the true god of israel is now running for his life south 40 days and 40 nights from israel straight down to what's called midian modern-day saudi arabia winds up there at what's called the mountain of god mount horeb possibly the very mountain where moses received the ten commandments hiding in a cave running for his life because of that phoenician woman who was married to ahab the king of israel who had said god do so and more to me if i don't make you like one of those prophets by tomorrow and elijah of course terrified flees for his life god comes to him there in that cave elijah what are you doing here it's matter with you you know and elijah gives this response so famous lord they've killed your prophets they've torn down your altars i'm the only one left in all of israel that believes and they're out for my neck you know and there's poor elijah quivering there in the corner of the cave and god has a response to him which paul gives us in verse four but what is the divine reply to him quote i have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to bail elijah i have kept for myself seven thousand you're one of them it's not that these are the most virtuous or intelligent or enlightened people it's not that they have the most natural giftedness or the best education they are simply those people that i have been pleased to reserve to myself and for that reason they have not bowed the need to bail and why do you think you're the only guy holding up your end of the boat here but it's not true i'm the one who's keeping not only your faith but all of their faiths alive i'm the one who's reserved this and this remnant is the is that small as it were tether or leash by whom and for whom god preserves the entire nation god preserves all of them for the sake of that tiny remnant those seven thousand that hadn't bowed the need to baal now paul says that's the way it was in the days of elijah he's implying that was the way it was in many cases throughout the history of israel and he says to us expressly that was the situation in the first century uh so in verse five at the same time or at the present time as well there's a remnant chosen by grace there's a remnant it's chosen by grace it's again not the most enlightened people those talented it's those who are chosen by grace god has mercy on whom he wants he has compassion on whom he pleases at this time paul is saying in effect there in israel in the first century there were those that minority that remnant chosen by grace and just to remind us he says you know if it's of grace it's not of works otherwise grace wouldn't be grace if it's grace it's grace if god's chosen these people by grace then it doesn't mean he's chosen them based on their works or based on their virtue it's not anything particularly distinctive in them that is warranted that god would choose them he's had mercy on whom he wants now it's a bare minority we might wish there had been more we might think you know god could have included many more but he didn't and as god he wasn't bound to and we can be grateful and should be grateful instead that there were any as paul is saying but one thing is clear that those seven thousand as it were who were uh embracing the gospel in the days of paul were doing so because of god's grace in their lives so what do we conclude verse seven israel failed to obtain what it was seeking revisiting a theme he raised back in uh the first part of chapter 10 [Music] israel had a zeal for god but it wasn't informed by a true knowledge of god they pursued it as if it were by works you recall all of that back there he's returning to that now israel had pursued as it were righteousness by the law but they hadn't sodded by faith and so they failed to attain it but he says the elect obtained it because of course god enabled them by his grace the rest paul says bluntly were hardened why was it that israel who had all of a human this uh you know preparation to recognize messiah didn't see him if there were ever you know ever a people in the history of the planet who by every natural human inclination should have spotted messiah it was those people and they didn't how do we account for that paul says the elect obtained it the rest were hardened now we might think that that was just paul's new testament kind of novelty you know a view like that but he wants us to understand that's the way god always works in history and quoting the old testament he says verse 8 god gave them a sluggish spirit eyes that would not see ears that would not hear down to the very day down to that very day david quoting from the psalms says let their table become a snare and a trap a stumbling block and a retribution for them let their eyes be darkened so they cannot see let their backs be bent forever this is old testament paul says this is the scriptures from which you want to find hope and i'm simply pointing out that even there it's clear enough that god is the one who opens eyes and god is the one who closed his eyes god is the one you see who is sovereign all these matters of history and before we begin you know getting too riled up about uh uh you know the circumstances of life and history and so on we best keep in mind that god is the one who is in fact uh the the the great designer the great architect of all of history so the first question was has god rejected this jewish people answer no but his way of hanging on to them is through this thin tether this leash called the remnant and it's by means of them and for them that god keeps on to the entire keeps it hangs on to the entire nation i sometimes wonder if that's uh the story with america you know that there's uh a little remnant for which the entire nation is preserved maybe it's through the presbyterian church i don't know we've done an awful lot of ghastly things lately in my opinion but maybe for the sake of a remnant he hangs on to it i think there's a kind of remnant theology in other words that runs through a lot of what god does that for the sake of a bare minority he preserves the great overarching visible structures uh of of history and of our experience i don't know i'm just speculating but certainly in terms of the first century and israel that's exactly what paul says now that raises an even more intriguing question then and that's kind of the how long question how long would god preserve this people was it just a first century thing and then god would sort of let them pass into you know the kind of disperse themselves among the peoples of the world or would god preserve this jewish nation down through history now again remember paul's asking this in the first century he hasn't seen all the history books you know that we've read uh so it's a remarkable thing to see paul entertaining that question now in the first century uh what about the longevity of this nation of israel how long will they survive uh throughout the pages of uh ensuing history and so paul asks it have they stumbled verse 11 so as to fall is the stumbling over the stumbling block that god laid in zion in the first century intended calculated ultimately to lead to their fall as it were that they would just be lost as a nation as a definable group see paul could have answered this either way uh but obviously his question he doesn't leave it ambiguous he says by no means and those three words in other words are saying that paul is teaching us here that this jewish nation would not pass off the pages of history but would somehow or other be preserved for whatever reasons down through the history of the world you see which is quite a remarkable thing i think you have to agree because israel was just one more ancient near eastern tribal group you know there were many that had a dignity virtually equal to israel's but all the rest of them are gone i mean when was the last time you had lunch and it was served to you by a moabite you know or when was the last time that you bought a house from an ammonite or uh you had some dealings with a hittite every one of us in this room has had some dealings with an israelite you know they're still out there uh and even more remarkable than that they've been out there for two thousand years without a homeland now of course in recent years since 1948 there is a homeland such as it is you know if you survive there but uh uh pretty embattled but for 2 000 years here is this people dispersed among the nations of the world able to maintain itself that's virtually a miracle of history i mean think about what if somebody from a space craft came down and um you know picked up all of us americans 300 million of us and just picked us up and distributed us around the world africa asia china europe you know and we're just kind of sprinkled out there and left to thin for ourselves for let's say 500 years and then they come back 500 years do you think you'd be able to find an identifiable american it wouldn't happen i don't know that we'd survive two or three generations we have a certain degree of a sense of identity as americans and yet do you think it would sustain us for hundreds and hundreds of years and yet somehow these people oddly enough all through history have been able to maintain a distinct identity it's really quite a remarkable thing you have to say just from a purely historical vantage point it is quite a remarkable thing now i'm very much aware that some especially in the conservative christian evangelical camp you know make probably more out of this than they ought to and they want to have a whole end-time scheme as you're aware of rapture and tribulation and antichrist and so on please don't misunderstand what i'm saying now and confuse it with that i've been frank with you many times before i'm not a dispensationalist i don't subscribe to that whole eschatological scheme i'm familiar with it but i don't embrace it uh but at the same time you have to allow that there's something very odd about the fact that god has preserved this people throughout history uh and that's what paul seems to be entertaining here and so you know i don't want to go too far the other direction there certainly has to be at least a recognition of that very interesting and really intriguing point that paul himself seems to be uh predicting even here have they stumbled so as to fall certainly not but through their stumbling paul says salvation has come to the gentiles so as to make israel jealous now the jealous part i'll talk about a little bit later in the in verse 13 but notice that it was the stumbling of israel that sent the gospel to the gentiles it was the repudiation of the gospel in jerusalem that sent christian people to the four points of the compass and luke tells us in the book of acts everywhere they go they're preaching the gospel paul himself would repeatedly go first to the synagogue preaching to the jewish people some would believe most wouldn't and paul again and again in the book of acts is reported to have said the gospel had to come first to you the jews now i turn to the gentiles again and again it was almost as if the gospel ricocheted off of these jewish people and went catapulted as it were to the gentiles you see that's really the story of the book of acts and in some ways that's what paul is simply giving us a theological uh description of here and he says now very intriguingly verse 12 if they're stumbling means riches for the world and if their defeat means riches for the gentiles how much more will their full inclusion mean what does that mean the greek word there is play roma how much more will their fullness mean commentators as you can probably imagine go a lot of different directions on this but i think the sanest most facially acceptable view is that paul is saying here in a sense this hardness of heart that has come on the nation of israel these jewish people has had the effect of pushing the gospel to the gentiles away from those who would normally have been the first converts but that at some place or time in history there will be a a great change of heart many christian you know theologians down through history have maintained that at some time in history this great jewish people preserved miraculously century after century will in some great massive sweeping awakening come to christ uh that that's certainly implied here i think paul almost says it explicitly i wouldn't quite put it that strongly but it certainly is very uh heavily implied by what he's declaring here um verse 13 i'm speaking to you gentiles paul says in as much as i'm the apostle to the gentiles i glorify my ministry in order to make my own people jealous and thus save some of them paul is the apostle to the gentiles you know that during the famine visit in 44 a.d he visited jerusalem he met with the leaders of the church the pillars of whom were uh peter james and john he met with the other apostles briefly he says in the book of galatians that they recognized that he had been given a ministry to the gentiles they on the other hand had given a ministry to the jewish people and so paul throughout his career had been focused on the gentiles called himself the apostle of the gentiles and of course that was a very a controversial way to designate himself almost as if he was trying to pick a fight with his jewish kinsmen and he went out and made a big deal out of the fact that he was the apostle to the gentiles he glorified his ministry as the apostle of the gentiles knowing every time he said that it was rubbing salt in the wound you know of his jewish countrymen and so on every time they heard that word gentile they flinched they had a kind of negative uh almost you know just gut reaction that was uh that was uh hostile to that idea and paul says you know here's my hidden agenda here's the reason i'm doing this because i'm trying to provoke them i'm trying to make them mad you see he says i go around and i tell these gentile people if you will simply come to christ by faith you who are far off are going to be made fellow members of the commonwealth of israel you can call abraham your father you can consider yourself to be a seed of abraham a member in good standing of the nation of israel by mere faith those are fighting words the jewish people didn't like to hear that you see that made them mad and paul wanted to make them mad you know sometimes you can finally win a person by making them mad enough they get so furious that they finally see it you know you ever had that paul wanted to do that with these people now he knew it would only happen by god's grace but he was going to do everything in his power to get them so riled up over this issue that maybe by god's grace their eyes would be open and so he was trying to provoke them to jealousy just so there might be some chance that they would recognize finally at last the truth of the gospel and some of them be saved because he says if their rejection that is their rejection of the gospel reconciled the world how much more would their acceptance of the gospel as it were be something like life from the dead he says if the first if the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy the whole batch is holy alluding to the old testament sacramental meal of the first fruits etc of this lump of dough but then he shifts the metaphor to the one that's more famous and if the root is holy then the branches are holy as well and this becomes the great image he uses here of the olive tree you know the olive tree uh the olive tree has been the subject of some discussion i think the the best uh thought is that what paul means i think facially and it makes the most sense and it's probably correct that the olive tree that paul has in mind is the visible jewish nation the visible jewish nation populated by people who are both believers and not believers you see the visible community can have both kinds of people in it we're here this morning in sunday school as a visible community uh expressing a community of faith but it's perfectly possible that in this group this morning may be people who don't actually possess faith in their hearts i can't tell by looking you all look wonderful you know but who knows you don't know about me i don't know about you it's an invisible aspect of our life of faith augustine talks about the visible church and the invisible church it's very likely the olive tree here is the visible people of god visible israel down through history set apart sanctified as it were by the patriarchs themselves a nation called out as a distinct nation priestly nation but not necessarily populated 100 percent by people every one of whom was a person of faith so that's probably the picture now if that's true then it makes some sense what paul says verse 17 he says now some of the branches were broken off and you a wild olive chute were grafted in and share the rich root of the olive tree don't boast over the branches that were broken off this is paul addressing a little bit of anti-semitism even in the first century church you see because you've got gentile people who come into this great israel this great visible israel and they are very much aware that many of the jewish people who would have been there by birth and by nature have been cut off and it brings a little bit of pride in the gentile heart you see i'm in look at those lousy bums out there you know unbelievers and they had a kind of disparaging attitude a kind of condescending disdain for israel the jewish nation that seemed to have so abysmally missed the truth of the gospel and paul's warning these gentiles now wait a minute you're grafted into this great visible olive tree don't start getting cocky here that's a very hazardous path to walk he says uh you know verse verse 18 do not boast over the branches if you do boast he says remember that uh it's not you that support the root but the root that supports you you were grafted into this great heritage they were born there now they may not have come to true and genuine faith sadly enough but they were actually born into that rich heritage you've come in from the outside you're a wild jungle bread all the branch you see that's been plugged in now uh to that so you better be very cautious before you get too cocky paul's warning is verse 19 you may say well hey branches were broken off so that i could be grafted in doesn't that make me something pretty special you know i a gentile brought in made a member of the commonwealth of israel and look at those others they were cut they had to remove make some space so that i could be here that would be the mentality that paul's addressing a kind of arrogant conceit associated with being a member now of this covenant community through faith and paul says okay i'll grant the point verse 20. branches were removed so that you could be grafted in they were broken off because of their unbelief you stand only by means of faith and of course when paul says by means of faith that is essentially the same thing as saying by sheer mercy you are in that olive tree by sheer unmitigated mercy nothing you deserve nothing for which you can take any ultimate credit nothing that's a tribute to your virtue or any of the sort you are there by sheer faith they were broken off because of their unbelief and you only are there by god's mercy and so paul says same verse do not become proud but stand in awe because in fact if god didn't spare the natural branches who by all accounts were the ones that should have been there then he won't spare you either you see this is this is a a great lesson that's much broader than this precise point faith is characteristically humble uh faith and arrogance are incompatible like oil and water uh it is an oxymoron to say you could be proud of your faith there is no such thing because faith by the very nature of the case is our recognition that we live by sheer mercy alone getting every moment of the day gifts from god that we don't deserve and for which we can take no credit that we are the ones who have been simply the recipients of god's lavishing grace upon us and the last thing in the world that we could possibly be rationally in such an unders uh such a scheme would be proud well where's room for pride in that as paul raised the question back in chapter 3 verse 26 where then is boasting it's excluded he says by works no but by a law of faith faith excludes it well here you've got people grafted into the into the jewish heritage as it were who are then proud of it and paul says whoa hold the phone you know if you're in there based on your own pride then you're as susceptible to being cut out of that tree as they were it's arrogance that cut them off and arrogance in you is going to lead to the same uh outcome here you see uh so paul says you you better stand in awe you better note both the kindness and the severity of god severity toward those who've fallen kindness toward you critical phrase provided you continue by means of his kindness in with the dative there in greek continue by means of his kind how are you continuing in this great olive tree by what means are you persisting in this community is it by faith or is it based on your own arrogant attitude toward those who were cut off in the first century there were many people that joined the christian church in name only there was a great apostasy later in history you know john and first john tells us that they went out from us and thus it was shown they were never of us the christian church had many people in it for a time who were just that was just the kind of the the the newest thing you see the latest fad joined this church there wasn't true faith in their hearts and eventually under the pressure of persecution they wilted they left and paul is writing to the romans and saying you better be very careful here if you are coming to church every sunday really proud of the fact that you're in the church and those jewish people aren't and you're viewing them with a kind of you know cocky conceited disdain then watch out because this is god cut them off he can cut you off you're not there by faith you see how are you continuing in this that's the force a very strong language very strong warning on paul's part uh even then by the same token he says verse 23 even those of israel if they do not persist and unbelief will be grafted in because god is able to graft them and again for you of uh uh for if you have been cut out from what by nature was a wild olive tree grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their same olive tree now if lynn otto were here i don't think he is he's a master horticulturalist he'd just be rolling his eyes paul you know his horticulture is weak we all know that but he's not that's not the point yeah you know so we're not trying to learn lessons about grafting branches we're trying to learn lessons about theology and he's using and stretching now his uh illustration to get the point over to us we have become members of the commonwealth of israel i think most of us may be all of us i don't know but certainly most of us in this room are gentiles we are given warrant in the new testament standard to call abraham our father to say we are true israel to be counted as members of the commonwealth of israel but we should never ever ever think for a moment that that gives us some sort of warrant for a kind of condescending dismissal of this jewish nation the god who throughout history is preserved for some significant reason and uh and certainly uh you know we should be giving uh that people the highest kind of respect and regard that doesn't mean they're not a proper mission field christian people properly preached the gospel to ethnic jews as much as ethnic anybody they're a proper you know place for ministry a proper mission field but in no way is there any warrant here for some kind of anti-semitism which certainly has unfortunately characterized certain chapters of christian history much to our embarrassment in chagrin paul doesn't give us room for that and in fact militates i think vigorously against it in these texts okay just uh we won't quite finish this when we come close the most intriguing and difficult statement in the chapter comes up almost immediately verse 25 so that you may not claim to be wiser than you are brothers and sisters i want you to understand this mystery paul says here's something that has been pretty much uh you know obscure but i want you to get the point i want you to be clear about it writing basically the gentiles now he says a hardening has come up on part of israel and it's going to remain there he says in effect until the full number of the gentiles has come in and this has given rise to a whole understanding that in a sense the bulk of christian history has been largely demographically speaking a gentile history the jewish people by and large have not been the conspicuous members of the christian church there have always been some there's always always been a bear minority a remnant but never a colossal majority ever throughout you know two thousand years of christian history that's been the case uh paul paul wants them to understand that there is in a sense a full number of gentiles that must come in and i believe that that's where we are in history we're seeing gentile people come into the church and now this statement and so all israel will be saved as it is written out of zion will come a deliverer he will banish ungodliness from jacob this is my covenant with them when i take away their sins now of course the the language that just kind of sets us reeling here is what does that mean all israel will be saved the word so and so all israel will be saved is the greek word hutos which means thus or by this means just so in other words and of course the way the means whereby all israel will be saved is by means of christ he is the deliverer that comes out of zion he's the one that will take away uh you know our sins etc with the covenant that's made with him so the the senses it's a it's a reference to that quote from the old testament but what does it mean to say all israel well there's three views and i'm going to give you all three then i'm going to tell you the right answer and uh that's where we'll leave it uh the first one is called jewish universalism there are some who hold it they tend to be on the liberal wing of the church and they tend to also subscribe to gentile universalism and find a proof for both from this text namely that every last single solitary jewish person will be saved simply because they are born jewish you see now i'd like to think that the problem i have with it is that you'd have to redo a whole lot of the rest of paul's writings to make that quite fit universalism as appealing as it may be as sentimentally attractive as it may be is extremely hard to justify with any integrity from the full corpus of biblical statements if this is all we had to go on then we could certainly make a case but the rest of the new testament paul's writings in particular uh would certainly leave us with some doubt about universalism so while that's an option we're going to call that foul ball number one strike one the next view which is a little bit more appealing but i think still problematic is that what paul means by all israel is all true israel will be saved because of course he's used israel in that sense on occasion in this entire discussion especially chapter nine verse six not all true israel are descended from ethnic israel you see now that there are some people that have embraced that uh some pretty good scholars actually again i have to say i think that one doesn't fly uh and the reason is because it involves paul here in a very unexpected change of meaning he's been talking for the last several verses about the jews and the gentiles as an ethnic description and if he were to arbitrarily at this moment all of a sudden substitute a different meaning for israel and mean true israel you see he's given us no notice of that and at least uh hermeneutically speaking or in terms of principles of interpretation it would be unexpected for paul to kind of change the game like that without giving us some warrant in the context that he was so doing it certainly loses the entire force of the text that he's making about ethnic israel to to view it that way so i'm going to call that the second foul ball although there are those who embrace that the third major view of this text there's some minor ones with the third major view the one that i believe is correct is all israel is paul speaking slightly hyperbolically not meaning every last single solitary person born a jew in all of history but simply in concert with what he's been saying all through this chapter predicting that there will be a time in history when we will see as a matter of historical phenomena a massive number of jewish people identifiably jewish people coming to faith in christ coming into the christian church or you might say being grafted back in to their own rich olive tree the great visible community of faith i don't believe we've seen that yet in history i don't think there's any chapter of history that i'm aware of where we've seen anything like that in fact the opposite has been the case but uh it does seem and many have taken the view and it's persuasive to me that at some point paul is at least saying here there will come a time when a huge number of uh jewish people will in fact as it were awakened to the truth of christ and embrace as their messiah and indeed as the messiah of all the ages and all the world of the lord jesus christ we can pray to that end i would love to think it might happen in my lifetime to be frank with you i kind of doubt it but uh it may be you know next year it may be ten thousand years from now but somehow or other it seems that paul is actually putting his imprimatur on that view and many christian thinkers in history uh and certainly in the present time have uh taken that uh perspective thank you all you've been uh a great audience appreciate it nice to have you back after our two-week break we'll press on uh chapter two well let me get one more comment and then we'll pray chapter 12 is a wonderful paradigm shift kind of in romans where we move from as my wife would say technicalia to practicalia and she likes practicalia and so i hope that she'll come back next week and i hope you will too because uh we're going to move to some very very practical matters of christian life and practice uh as paul begins to wrap up and complete his uh thoughts here in the book of romans so let's uh let's have a word of prayer and we'll be dismissed a father we are grateful that you give us this wonderful light by which we understand not only matters of faith but certainly matters of history we pray that we would be those who are filled with a heartfelt earnest desire to reach out to everybody you bring within our uh life without across our path with the gospel of christ that we can say with uh great earnestness to anyone whoever calls on the name of the lord will be saved and that knowing as they do so they will indeed be embraced in the covenant of your grace we thank you for that we thank you that we ourselves are those who have been the undeserving beneficiaries of your mercy we thank you for the reminder of these things this morning and ask your blessing on us now as we go our various ways in the name of christ amen [Music] you

Channel: Bruce Gore

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Keywords: Romans 11, Romans, Bruce Gore, New Testament, Apostle Paul

Id: yiDH9ApC_PE

Length: 50min 40sec (3040 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020