Chapter 11 Paul addresses the concern: Is God done with Israel, Has He cast them aside? Is there still a literal purpose to be fulfilled through the Jews?
Every December, especially in these last years, the promotion of at least two holidays occurs, Christmas and Hannukkah. What are the Jews celebrating? A celebration of the cleansing of the temple for the ultimate coming of the Messiah. Strange in the month we celebrate the birth of the Messiah they blindly celebrate their preparation for His coming.
Even to our day the focus of the world is constantly upon Israel. Almost 100% of Bible prophecy is related to Israel. Jerusalem to this day is the spiritual center of the world. There will never be peace in the world until there is peace in Jerusalem.
Zechariah said that in the last day Jerusalem would be a ‘burdensome stone’ to all the nations of the world.
What is God doing? Where are we on the prophetic clock? Watch the Jews & Jerusalem.
THREE DIVISIONS IN THIS MORNINGS TEXT:
1. 3 Proofs the Jews have not been rejected by God
2. 2 Peoples the Jews have become
3. 1 Purpose God has ordained for the Jews
1. 3 PROOFS THE JEWS HAVE NOT BEEN REJECTED BY GOD (1) I say then, God has not rejected His people has He? May it never be!(strongest negative)
a. PAUL: For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
1) In every one of his letters Paul marvels at the grace of God. He must have often looked around at the blindness of the Jews and realize that ‘but for the grace of God there go I’. Ever stop in the midst of the idiocy of a lost world: people defend abortion, defend offensive lifestyles, promote immorality, defend arguments that leave God out of creation of man, even argue there is no God, and say thank you Lord that you opened my eyes to a world they still refuse to see.
2) Paul’s conversion illustrates the dramatic way the Jews will ultimately turn around as a people. 1 Cor 15:8 ‘a man born out of due time’. His life was a demonstration of how strong unbelief and rebellion can be and yet the glory of God can change them.
Zech 12: 8-11 In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the one who is feeble among them will be like David(smallest guy like hulk hogan), and the house of David will be like God, like the angel of the Lord before them. And in that day I will destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.(Arab’s should memorize) I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, THE SPIRIT OF GRACE and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced (Jesus speaking thru Zechariah): and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son,(power of realizing what they have been doing all along to the Messiah, ‘I am Jesus Whom thou are persecuting’) and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. In that day t here will be great mourning in Jerusalem,(nation will come together to the reality that Paul knew now)
b. PEOPLE OF GOD: (2) God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew.
1) Remnant God sustains throughout history.
a) PAST: Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? ‘Lord, they have killed Your prophets, they have torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life’. But what is the divine response to him? ‘I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knew to Baal’.
(1) Elijah suffered from what plagues many of us: he looked at the circumstances and discounted God’s power. Prophets killed, places of worship attacked, God’s people feeling alone: LIMITED PERSPECTIVE OF MAN. Elijah lived under a government that had become totally anit-God and yet God surprised him when He said, ‘I have kept for Myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal’.
(2) It is never as bad as it looks and God is never as weak as He seems
b) PRESENT: (5) In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a REMNANT according to God’s gracious choice.
(1) God chose through Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob and so on to have a people who would be His instrument in speaking to and reaching out thru to the rest of the world. God’s Word to God’s Messiah all came through them. God is not through with them so He is sustaining them with a believing remnant.
Amazing people in spite of their blindness which helps to sustain them in a hostile world: very religious in ritual sense, very concerned about the purity of their people, very gifted as a people. In the last 25 years, although 4/10 to 1% of worlds population, they have 25% to 1/3 of the nobel prize winners: Bayer aspirin, polio vacine, novacain. History revolves around six Jews: Moses, Paul, Marx, Frued, Einstein, and JESUS. Imagine in the last days when the Jews turn back to God 144,000 Apostle Pauls on the march during the tribulation.
c) PLAN OF GOD: (6) But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.
(1) Two unmixable principles: Grace & Works. God was working through grace with Israel therefore their works or lack of did not compromise His plan.
2. 2 PEOPLES THE JEWS HAVE BECOME: (7) What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened.(blinded)
Amazed that two people could be raised in same household, by same parents, in same town, go to same school, experience much of same life and yet one be so different from the other. The Jews all be religious and seeking God yet some obtained and some became enemies of the gospel. Latter half of 1800s there was a small man with a huge voice, Edwin Thomas. He began acting at 15 doing Richard III, Hamlet for 100 consecutive nights. Acted in both London & America. Edwin had two brothers: John & Junius who were also actors. The three did Julius Caesar together in which John took on the role of Brutus. Two years later John would entered another theater in 1865, Ford’s theater, and fired a bullet into the head of Abraham Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth. Edwin was never the same as he retired in shame from brothers crime. A twist of fate brought him back to the stage. In a New Jersey train station a well dressed young man was pressed by the crowd and fell between the platform and a moving train. Edwin locked his leg around a rail reached out and rescued the young man. The young man look and immediately recognized Edwin. Weeks later a letter from Ulysses S. Grant came thanking Edwin for saving the life of a child of an American hero, Abraham Lincoln. He had saved Robert Todd Lincoln. Two brothers so different.
a) God uses every life for His purpose. Those who rejected the truth in unbelief God chose to use in His plan as well.
1) 10:21 ‘All day long I have stretched My hands out to a disobedient and obstinant people’. JN 1:11 He came to His own and those who were His own would not receive Him.
When you hear truth it is very important that you do something about it or it brings a judgement. One is that you will lose your capacity to recognize truth.
(8) Just as it is written, ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor , eyes
to see not and ears to hear not, down to this very day.’ (9) And
David says, ‘Let their table become a snare and a trap, and a
Stumbling block and a retribution to them. (10) Let their eyes be
Darkened to see not, and bend their backs forever.(stiffen to God
2) Quote from Psalms 69:22 is used by Paul to show that the very feasts and celebrations God gave them would be allowed by God to drive them father away from the truth. Numbness(stupor)
Pagans hold feasts and invite their god but the God of the Bible invites His people to His feasts. We come to the Lord’s Supper by His invitation.
These feasts were designed to lead them to Christ
But instead, in their blindness, they would keep them
From Jesus. They trusted in the rituals instead of
Messiah the rituals and feasts pointed towards.
3. 1 PURPOSE GOD HAS ORDAINED FOR THE JEWS: (11) I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be!
a) God’s purpose for blessing the world through the Jews has never waivered. In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
1) Gentiles blessed by their unbelief: But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles to make them jealous. Paul’s pattern was to always come to a new city and begin in a synagogue and then if rejected minister to the Gentiles. Consistent pattern make him realize God had called him as an Apostle to the Gentiles.
Scene in heaven: how manys Jews saved? Good week God, had seven trust in their Messiah. Gentiles? Not as good as usual God, in last hour we have had only 35,245. (10:19-20)
(a) Your life is meant to make the Jew jealous of your relationship with God. Does it? Is the average church a place the Jew would walk into and say I am really missing it!
2) Blessed by their future: (12) Now if their transgression is riches for the world and their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be! If this is what is possible with Gentiles alone just imagine if Jews and Gentiles alike are working for the purposes of God.
Tulsa area floods: people coming together to fight rising water. Republicans next to democrats, Catholics next to Pentecostals, blacks next to whites. Put aside minor differences for a greater purpose. Church has the greatest purpose ever given in the life of this world and people outside see many fellowship as a bunch of grippers and fussers when we should be standing shoulder to shoulder to accomplish the task we have been given. What is my purpose and have I allowed it to be stolen from me. Serving? But bitterness keeps me from, Witnessing? Sin keeps me from
(13) but I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, (14) if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them.(what they see among Gentiles move them to belief) (15) For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world,(both Jew and Gentile together) what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?
• Ezekiel 37 Valley of dry bones, ‘can these bones live’ One day the Jews will turn back to God. Daniel 9 describes it as the 70th week, the Seven Year Tribulation described in the Book of Revelation.
• They missed the light. Bible says the church is filled with Wheat and Tares. There is a Baptist Remnant of true believers mixed among a throng of man who call themselves by the same religious name. Which are you?
