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Perhaps the most perplexing tradition
in the history of Christianity to try
and understand
is why
much if not the majority
of the church sincerely believes
that God has rejected Israel
as his chosen people and replaced them
with Gentile Christians.
From a biblical standpoint
Israel is the focus of God's plan of
redemption old and new Testaments
therefore such a view simply cannot be
supported.
Because just the opposite
is stated time and time again in no
uncertain language thus the source of
the dysfunction
defaults to man-made Christian
doctrines, agenda-driven theology,
political considerations
and a healthy helping of anti-Jewish
bigotry.
Now bigotry and hate is always wrong no
matter who it's directed at.
Bigotry is sinful
because it violates God's fundamental
commandment to love your neighbor as
yourself.
However, to harbor a prejudice and even
a hatred towards the Jewish people
that bears a far greater consequence.
Temporally and eternally.
Because God has set this particular
people apart
from all others in the history as of the
world
as specially loved
by him.
Specially protected as well.
Now warning after warning God issues to
Gentiles for treating his people badly
and for trying to take from them what he
has given to them
as a permanent inheritance over the
centuries that taking
usually manifested itself in the seizing
of Israel's land.
But an even worse thievery
is when Gentile Christians attempt to
take the Jews spiritual heritage away
from them.
And that is precisely
what replacement theology known as
supersessionism in the theology circles
that's what it does. Now I've spoken to
countless Christian laypeople and
pastors
about replacement theology and
interestingly I don't think I've ever
heard of one of them owning up to it.
Not one.
Many will readily explain, well, yeah,
Jews killed Christ or that the Jews
rejected Jesus so God rejected them.
And that's usually followed up by
explaining that the reason
that the Old Testament is no longer
relevant is because it concerns Israel.
And Israel is God's people of the past.
The New Testament elects the church
and that's God's new people of the
present and the future.
Bottom line
all Christians don't hate Israel but
Israel's lost their place
in salvation history. They're just
worthy of scorn and suspicion.
And God has turned his special favor to
Gentile Christians in this era. Among
some
they believe that Israel has also lost
its right to the promised land.
Now anyone hearing this
that holds such a world view
needs to listen very carefully
to Romans chapter 11.
And I hope it leads to repentance.
But I want to be clear
the entire New Testament
supports Israel as God's continuing
chosen people. So even if Romans 11
didn't exist
any bigotry against the Jewish people or
any notion
that election as God's own has been
transferred
to some other people is still refuted
within the various books of the New
Testament. What makes Romans 11 so
important
for Judeo-Christianity is that Paul sums
up and explains the how and the why
of God's plan of redemption.
Which uses the Jews
as mightily in their disobedience
as God does in their obedience.
It's an amazing thing.
Thus
the overriding message of the book of
Romans at least up through chapter 12
is stated forcefully and without
ambiguity in verse two of chapter 11.
God has not repudiated his people whom
he chose in advance.
Our proper understanding of this
principle of Israel's central role in
salvation history is crucial to our
faith.
It's crucial to our personal destiny on
two levels.
First of all, because God continues to
keep Israel and the Jewish people as his
set-apart people and land.
If we as believers then set ourselves
against them
we set ourselves into direct
confrontation with the God of Israel.
And it's unthinkable that a Christian
should do such a thing.
And second, if the Lord's character is
that he can categorically deny
numerous times that he would ever cast
aside his people Israel but then do it
anyway
then as a Christian all of our hope and
security just went down the drain right
along with the Jews.
It means that we can trust Christ for
the moment
but clearly God can change his mind
and pull the rug out from underneath us,
the rug of salvation, any time in the
future.
Why wouldn't he?
According to Christianity he's done it
before.
What prevents him from doing it again?
Fortunately, none of this is the case.
I mean such a slanderous contention is
but the result of wrong-minded Christian
dogma and Gentile bigotry against Jews.
Somehow or another Paul saw this coming.
And he tried to warn the Gentiles
involved, stop and think.
Stop and think about this.
He says, examine your motives, examine
your rationale.
Well, let's reread the first several
verses of Romans chapter 11 to start our
study today.
Open your Bibles to Romans chapter 11.
If you have a complete Jewish Bible it's
page 1414.
We're going to read the first 12 verses.
In that case
I say
isn't it that God has repudiated his
people?
Heaven forbid.
I myself am a son of Israel from the
seed of Avraham, of the tribe of
Benjamin.
God's not repudiated his people
whom he chooses in his whom he chose in
advance. Or don't you know what the
Tanakh says about Eliyahu, Elijah?
He pleads with God against Israel.
Adonai, they have killed your prophets,
they've torn down your altars. I'm the
only one left.
Now they want to kill me, too.
But what is God's answer to him?
I've kept for myself 7,000 men who have
not dealt not knelt down to Baal.
It's the same way in the present age.
There is a remnant chosen by grace. Now
if it's by grace it is accordingly not
based on legalistic works.
If it were otherwise grace would no
longer be grace.
What follows is that Israel has not
attained the goal for which she's
striving. The ones chosen have obtained
it but the rest have been made
stone-like just as the Tanakh says.
God has given them a spirit of dullness,
eyes that do not see, ears that do not
hear right down to this present day.
And David says, let their dining table
become for them a snare and a trap, a
pitfall and a punishment. Let their eyes
be darkened so that they can't see with
their backs bent continually.
Well, in that case
I say
isn't it that they have stumbled with
the result that they have permanently
fallen away?
Heaven forbid.
Quite the contrary.
It is by means of their stumbling that
deliverance has come to the Gentiles in
order to provoke them to jealousy.
And moreover
if their stumbling is bringing riches to
the world
that is if Israel's being placed
temporarily in a condition less favored
than that of the Gentiles to bring in
bringing riches to the latter
how much greater the riches
will how much greater riches will Israel
in its fullness bring them?
Now, while in a few minutes we're going
to
back up
to the beginning of this chapter, I want
to take you
first of all to verse 11. I want you to
take special notice of that verse
because it explains the why
behind God allowing the Jews to stumble
over the rock, Yeshua.
The why
of what God chooses
is only rarely addressed in the Bible.
It was by means
of the Jews stumbling that the Gentiles
were delivered.
Saved.
Ironically, however,
the why
for delivering the Gentiles was to
provoke Israel to jealousy
so that they would be saved.
So, the entire endeavor is rather
circular.
It starts out
as for Israel's benefit, and when Israel
shunned it, God used another people who
would benefit
but who would also bring that benefit of
a saving righteousness and Messiah right
back to Israel and thus achieves
God's goal of saving all Israel.
As I was contemplating this mind-numbing
reality in its many facets,
one thing kept eating at me.
The connection
between Christians
and making Jews jealous escapes me.
What exactly have Christians done over
the centuries since Paul wrote this
letter that would make Jews jealous of
our faith?
What would make Christianity an
attractive choice for Jews?
Recently, I stumbled across something
that
David Stern wrote in his New Testament
commentary that addressed this exact
issue.
It's as close
to a rant as it is to a level-headed
examination, I think, of the issue
but it struck a chord deep within me.
So, I want to
share parts of it with you because I
can't possibly
match the eloquence or I think the
passion
since David Stern is himself a Messianic
Jew.
A Jew who against all odds
accepted his Messiah.
I'm going to be quoting so as not to do
violence to what he has to say. Here we
go.
Is there anything about Gentile
Christians that would make non-Messianic
Jews jealous of them?
Throughout most of the last 2,000 years,
the church, to its great shame, not only
has not provoked the Jews to jealousy
but it has in engendered repugnance and
fear.
So that the Jewish people, instead of
being drawn to love their Jewish
Messiah, Yeshua,
have usually come to hate or ignore him
remaining convinced that their
non-Messianic Judaism or secularism or
agnosticism is superior to Christianity.
If this seems like a harsh judgment
then let us hear of which Christians
Jews are expected to be jealous. Is it
the Christians who trapped Jews in their
synagogues and burned them alive?
How about of the Christians who forced
Jews to hear conversionary sermons
against their will and then expelled
them from the country, those who didn't
respond?
Or of the Christians who invented the
blood libel that Jews murder a Christian
child and use his blood in their
Passover matzah?
Or of the Christians who remained silent
while 6 million Jews perished in the
Holocaust?
Of the Christians that support
Palestinian organizations whose
terrorists kill and maim Israeli Jewish
children? Of Greek Orthodox Archbishop
Capucci
convicted of gunrunning for those same
Palestinian terrorist organizations?
But the church's shame is not only in
not having taken a stand consistently
repudiating every one of these and other
horrors committed against the Jews but
it actually having authorized and
encouraged some of them.
There is no way of silencing every
individual who misuses the name of
Messiah falsely claiming his authority
for their evil deeds.
But there is a way for a community to
withdraw its approval and fellowship
from such people and to condemn them
publicly.
Instead
through much of its history, the church
has done the exact opposite.
Of this Jews are to be jealous?
Nevertheless, there is another side.
See, the point is not to cite merciful
deeds done for the Jews in Christ's name
to balance the ledger. That's no
consolation at all.
Rather, it is that Gentile Christians
should understand Paul's words to
provoke them to jealousy as a command
or at least as a challenge.
Non-Messianic Jews ought to be able to
look at saved Gentiles in the church and
see them
see in them such a wonderful change
from their former selves.
See such holy lives.
Such dignified, godly, peaceful,
peace-bringing, honorable, ethical,
joyful, and humble people
that they become jealous and want for
themselves, too, whatever it is that
makes these Gentiles different and
special.
That's pretty good, isn't it?
But boy, what an indictment.
Dr. Stern
said a lot more.
But I think this captures the essence
and the intent of it quite well.
See, handing Jews a Christian tract
this is not peace-loving.
Nor does it make them jealous.
Treating Israel and their enemies
evenhandedly
does not make them jealous for Christ.
This highlights the great importance of
us
whom the Holy Spirit has graciously
given the truth and an unexplainable
love and concern for the Jewish people
standing up
against wrong doctrine in the church
especially as it concerns Israel and the
Jews.
Sadly, there are many hearing my voice
that have because of the many wrongs
done by the church that Dr. Stern Dr.
Stern spoke of
given up
even calling themselves Christians
because of what that name has come to
represent.
But they have in no way given up on
Christ.
Only the organizations
that purport to speak for him.
And in so doing do great harm to the
true body of Messiah and to God's
purpose to save all Israel.
So, so what should we do?
Folks
silence is the great enemy. Silence.
It's one thing to be silent
as was Yeshua
when we are being personally persecuted
or wronged.
It is quite another to be silent at the
pain and injustice being done to others.
And while it's impossible
to speak or act against all the
injustice and pain in this world because
the expanse of it is just overwhelming
we can stand up.
We can stand up to what is happening
before our very eyes.
That which is in our own backyards and
that which God says to pay special
attention.
What happens in our own backyards varies
greatly
community by community but that which
God says to pay special attention to, it
does not.
We are to pray for the peace of
Jerusalem.
We are to stand with Israel and his
people
because we're commanded [clears throat]
to do so.
They are and they remain God's people.
But we're not to only stand with
we're to stand against.
We are to stand against those who
support Israel's enemies even if they
sincerely believe they are doing the
Christian thing when they do so.
One of the best examples of this
in our day
is the Christ at the Checkpoint Ministry
in Israel.
It is pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist.
It's a Christian ministry supported by
some of America's best-known pastors.
And chief among these is the highly
regarded John Piper
of the Bethlehem Baptist Church in
Minneapolis.
God gives me no choice
but to stand against the charter of
Christ at the checkpoint and against
John Piper's agenda and the agendas of
all those who identify with this
ministry that dares to misuse Christ's
name in order to defame, slander, and
harm Yeshua's own people for the sake
of a politically correct human concept
of fairness and mercy for Israel's
enemies.
At the foundation of this ministry is a
common belief that God is done with
Israel.
And that the church is God's new chosen
people. And since Palestinians are
Gentiles, some of them Christians,
they have at least as much right to the
land of Israel as the Jews.
Well, now that we've discussed the
seriousness of just what is at stake
in our understanding of the place
of Israel in modern times, let's return
to the top of chapter 11.
Take a look at the top of chapter 11.
Paul in verse two leans on the prophet
Elijah
to help him prove his point
that God did not reject Israel due to
their unfaithfulness to him.
Paul picks a passage
from 1 Kings 19
that speaks of a time when Elijah was on
the run from wicked Queen Jezebel.
Now, this happens after the Mount Carmel
incident.
When Elijah had a confrontation with the
Baal worshipers and many of the Baal
worshipers who were loyal to Jezebel
were killed. Well, he fled all the way
to Horeb, the mountain of God,
the same mountain
where Moses had the burning bush
experience.
Now, in reality,
however, he was running from God and
from the mission that God had given to
him as his prophet.
Not surprisingly, God finds him.
And Elijah proceeds to complain
how unfaithful, how rebellious these
Israelites are.
So rebellious that they now want to kill
Elijah.
But God counters
that despite the bulk of Israel being
unfaithful, he has kept for himself
several thousand
loyal worshipers. Let's read some of the
passage Paul is using.
In 1 Kings 19:8-10,
he got up and ate and drank and on the
strength of that meal he traveled 40
days and nights until he reached Horeb,
the mountain of God. And there he went
into a cave and he spent the night. And
then the word of Adonai came to him and
he said to him, "What are you doing
here, Elijah?"
And he answered, "Well, I've been very
zealous for Adonai, the God of armies,
because the people of Israel have
abandoned your covenant, they've broken
down your altars, killed your prophets
with the sword. Now, I'm the only one
left
and they're coming after me to kill me,
too."
1 Kings 19:13-14,
when Elijah heard it, he covered his
face with his cloak and he stepped out
and he stood at the entrance to the cave
and then a voice came to him and said,
"What are you doing here, Elijah?"
And he answered, "I've been very zealous
for Adonai, the God of armies, because
the people of Israel abandoned your
covenant, broken down your altars, and
killed your prophets with the sword.
Now, I'm the only one left and they're
after me to kill me, too."
1 Kings 19:18,
God says to him, "Still, I will spare
7,000 in Israel, every knee that hasn't
bent down before Baal, every mouth that
has not kissed him."
See, Paul's words
are not
an exact quote from this passage in 1
Kings.
But it's close enough that we know where
it came from.
The point of it is that Elijah had
pretty well decided he was the only
faithful person
to God left in Israel.
But God responds by saying he is going
to maintain a remnant of Israel who
remains properly loyal to him.
And when God speaks of 7,000
as the size of the remnant, clearly this
is a round number.
And
and and the number seven
is meant as symbolic of being complete
and perfect.
Now, in the Bible, when a multiplier
like 10 or 100 or 1,000 is added to the
number seven, it means that God is
indicating something
of of
uh divine influence and purpose.
Here it means that despite the defection
of most of Israel to the pagan worship
sponsored by Queen Jezebel, God still
has a number,
substantial number,
of Israelites who remain faithful to
him.
Now, the bottom line for Paul is
yes, as the straw man alleges,
Israel has been unfaithful to God,
especially by rejecting his Messiah.
But just as with Elijah, that that
doesn't mean God is rejecting his chosen
people as a result.
God doesn't base his decisions upon the
actions of humans.
He bases it on his own sovereign will
and grace.
In fact, the maintaining of a remnant
is a sort of sign from God's contin- for
his continuing faithfulness to Israel.
Thus, the remnant of faithful
from out of Israel that God saved for
himself during the time of Elijah is to
be compared
to the remnant of Christ believers
that God has saved for himself from
among Israel about 68 AD.
Paul's time.
The number 7,000 is not to indicate
that 7,000 is an exact number or really
even an approximation.
It's an open number. It's a
representative number.
The actual number of those who bow down
before Messiah Yeshua will be the result
not of human merit,
but of God's mercy and grace.
Therefore, since it is not merit, but
grace,
that determines who is
and who is not a true seed of Abraham,
then self-effort
plays no role in who is chosen and who's
not.
Now, interestingly,
we see Paul try to weave his complex and
and challenging teaching together
by essentially using the same question
in verse seven that he asked back in
Romans 9:30.
In 9 Romans 9:30 and 31,
we read, "So, what are we to say?
This, that Gentiles, even though they
weren't striving for righteousness, have
obtained righteousness, but it is a
righteousness grounded in trusting.
However, Israel, even though they kept
pursuing a Torah that offers
righteousness, didn't reach what the
Torah offers."
Here in verse seven,
Paul turns the question
of 9:30 and 31 into a statement.
The statement is, "What follows then is
that Israel has not attained the goal
for which she's striving. The ones
chosen have attained it, but the rest
have been made stone-like."
What we can't get around
is that once again we have this
mysterious paradigm appear,
which declares that those who don't
decide for Christ do so because on the
one hand,
because of their own decisions, they
have missed the goal of the law of
Moses,
that's to obtain a righteousness based
on trust.
But on the other hand,
God has caused a divine hardening to
occur in them.
Once again,
the principles of free will and
predestination collide
because they seemingly are opposite. You
know, and it feels as though we must
decide
on which one of them we're going to
accept and which one we're going to
reject as a proper doctrine for us.
Now, I'm going to comment just briefly
that this rather standard
Christian characterization of free will
set in opposition
to predestination is an error.
I think to turn this issue into a debate
over whether it is either
human free will or
divine predestination that determines
humans' decisions and outcomes is akin
to the analogy I drew a few lessons ago
that asked us to choose which is more
important and impactful to our lives,
food to eat or air to breathe.
The reality is life cannot be sustained
without both. Each has their critical
role to play.
And depending on the situation,
certainly one may play a more dominant
role than the other for a time.
Yet in the end, both are indispensable.
And both food and air have definite
impacts on life, usually simultaneously.
In the end, the Bible shows us
that the human experience
is a joint venture
between God's predestination
and man's free will.
It's not an either/or proposition.
Where that line is drawn between the
two, I do not know.
How much influence one has at any given
time over the other one varies.
We do not have to choose
between predestination and free will. We
just have to be aware of the existence
of both and know we have control over
the one, but not the other.
Now, if that concept bothers you a bit,
good. That means you're paying
attention.
Evangelical Christianity as it exists in
modern times is the result
of Western cultural influence that
values democracy and individuality above
all else.
So, it can seem unfair
to Westerners that God could offer us a
choice
and then harden us
such that our choice is essentially
channeled towards sin
and therefore we fail.
And then at some point we pay a penalty
for it.
In other words,
in a certain sense choice
could be seen as somewhat of an
illusion.
But there is good news in all this.
However the hardening occurred, even for
the hardened, that's not God's final
word on the matter.
Change and redemption are still
possible.
Why is that?
Because according to Paul,
whether we are part of the chosen or
we're part of the hardened,
we all come from a place of meriting
eternal death.
We all come
from that same point
of sin in need.
Paul said in Romans 3:23, "For all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of
God."
See, the chosen
were not better people,
not less sinful than the hardened.
The only way out of this dilemma for
anyone is God's grace.
No attempt,
no action in trying to balance the
ledger
on our part matters.
God doesn't grade on a curve.
So, his grace is available to all.
From the worst of us to the best of us.
But the other side of this coin is
that since Paul is specifically talking
about the Jewish people at this time,
the chosen versus the hardened,
then we must come to grips that with
this reality
that it is because
of the hardened Jews
that salvation was even offered
to the pagan Gentiles.
I mean, the undeniable inference all
throughout Romans is that if,
hypothetically,
the majority of Jews had accepted Christ
instead of rejecting him,
then under what circumstances or when or
even if
salvation would come to Gentiles, it
would have been a very different
scenario.
So, Christians even owe the Jews who
refused
to accept Messiah a debt of gratitude.
It is because of their being hardened
that God turned to the Gentiles in the
first place.
Now, I know what I just told you about
what Paul just said
might be pretty hard to swallow.
You know, Paul was quite aware
about difficult a concept he is asked
the Jewish people and us
to accept. I mean, after all, he is a
Jew as well.
So, of course, what does he do? He backs
it all up with Holy Scripture.
And before we read these scripture
passage, I want you to notice something
quite interesting.
The Jews structure the Bible, the
Tanakh, we call it the Old Testament,
as consisting of three sections.
The Torah, the writings, and the
prophets.
So, it's not by accident
that Paul chooses scripture passage from
each of these three sections
to prove his case.
The first passage is verse 8
from Romans chapter 11, and the first
part of verse 8 is from the prophets,
specifically Isaiah 29.
While the second part of verse 8 is from
the Torah,
Deuteronomy 29.
The second passage is verse 9 and it is
from the writings,
Psalm 69.
And as has been our been our custom,
let's look at those passages as written
in the Old Testament.
In Isaiah 29
1 through 11, we read this.
"Woe to Ariel,
the city where David encamped. Celebrate
the feast for a few more years, but then
I will bring trouble to Ariel.
There will be mourning and moaning as
she becomes truly an Ariel for me.
I will encamp all around you. I will
besiege you with towers and mount siege
works against you.
Prostrate, you will speak from the
ground. Your words will be stifled by
the dust. Your voice will sound like a
ghost in the ground. Your words like
squeaks in the dust.
But your many foes will become like fine
powder, the horde of tyrants like
blowing chaff. And it's going to happen
very suddenly.
You will be visited by Adonai Zevaot
with thunder and earthquakes and loud
noises and whirlwinds, tempests, flaming
firestorms. And then all the nations
fighting Ariel, everyone at war with
her, the ramparts around her, the people
that trouble her will fade
like a dream,
like a vision in the night.
It will be like a hungry man
dreaming he's eating.
But when he wakes up, his stomach is
empty.
Or like a thirsty man dreaming he's
drinking.
But when he wakes up, he is dry and
exhausted. It will be like this for the
horde of all nations fighting against
Mount Zion.
If you make yourselves stupid, you'll
stay stupid.
If you blind yourselves, you'll stay
blind.
You are drunk, but not from wine.
You're staggering, not from strong
liquor. For Adonai has poured over you a
spirit of lethargy.
He has closed your eyes, that is, the
prophets.
Covered your heads, that is, the seers.
For you, this whole prophetic vision
has become like the message in a sealed
up scroll.
When one gives it to someone who can
read and says, "Please read this." He
answers, "I can't.
It's sealed."
See, the idea is
that what has happened to Israel
and not recognized their Messiah is due
to them having become spiritually
insensitive.
God sent his prophets
to tell Israel how to recognize their
Messiah.
Yet God has also given
Israel a spirit
of spiritual lethargy because of their
unfaithfulness.
So, even though Messiah is right there
before their eyes in the scriptures,
they can't see it.
They've been blinded to it.
Notice that Israel's failures and their
inability to recognize their Messiah
even from the prophecies of their own
prophets and their seers is caused by
two things. First,
their own free will in their
disobedience.
And second, God's divine hardening of
them by sending them a a
stupor
that will not allow them to see the
truth even if they want to.
So here we have that mysterious paradigm
show up again. Only this time it's in
Isaiah.
Human free will
versus God's divine intervention that
causes us to not be able
to choose wisely.
And as we see here in Isaiah 29, both
causes were involved in Israel becoming
blind to God's purposes and to his
Messiah.
Deuteronomy 29 is essentially more of
the same. Deuteronomy 29:1-3, then Moshe
summoned all Israel and said to them,
"You saw everything Adonai did before
your eyes
in the land of Egypt to the Pharaoh, to
all his servants, to all his land, the
great testings which you saw with your
own eyes,
and the signs and those great wonders.
Nevertheless,
to this day Adonai has not given you a
heart to understand,
eyes to see or ears to hear."
So on the one hand,
by their own free will,
Israel chose
to ignore
everything God did for them that they
personally saw and witnessed.
On the other hand,
part of the reason that this was so
is because God didn't give Israel a
heart, meaning a mind,
to understand or the ability to discern.
And then in verse 9, we have King David
speaking from the past in Psalm 69 when
he says, "Let their table become for
them a snare and a trap, a pitfall and a
punishment. Let their eyes be darkened
so that they can't see with their backs
bent continually." Now for the sake of
time we're not going to go to Psalms 69
and read the surrounding verses, so I'm
just going to fill you in on the
important points.
First of all,
the way Paul has quoted this passage is
the way it appears in the Septuagint.
That is that's the Greek translation of
the Hebrew Bible.
So once again, we have validation that
Paul preferred
the use of the Greek Bible
as opposed to the original Hebrew
version. This would make sense.
He was operating in the diaspora
where the most common language even
among Jews
was Greek.
The second point is that Psalm 69 is
about is about the oppression
that King David found himself under
whereby his enemies within and without
are trying every way possible to kill
him.
He admits
that most of this is his fault
because he's been sinful.
And in fact, the mention of the dining
table
is because literally
an attempt to assassinate him by
poisoning his food had happened.
So who whoever it was who tried to
poison him, David hopes their own dining
table becomes a place of danger
instead of a place of
peace and table fellowship.
The mention of their eyes being
darkened,
this means that David hopes that his
enemies can't discern and their backs
bent continually means that his enemies
might become slaves under forced labor.
Paul is interpreting
Psalm 69 in the Remez
method of interpretation. That is it
means what it says on the one hand,
it also contains a deeper underlying
meaning on the other.
Christians might call this allegory, but
it is not quite the same thing.
Now the foundational point Paul is
making
is that those Jews who were hardened and
became stone-like in their inability
to recognize the true goal and intent of
the Torah and the reality of the advent
of Messiah Yeshua,
it's partly their own doing
and it's partly God's doing.
So after making essentially the same
point from all three sections of the
Bible,
Paul now uses his straw man, his
imaginary debate opponent,
to frame a question
in verse 11 that he figures his readers,
mostly Jews,
since the last few chapters have been
aimed directly at them,
he figures what what they're bound to be
thinking now
since he said all this. I mean after
all, this scathing indictment
that Paul has issued against
non-believing Jews, the vast majority of
Jews, whether they live in the holy land
or out in the diaspora, oh it's been
damning.
So the straw man says
in verse 11, "Well then in this case, I
say,
isn't it that they have stumbled with
the result they've permanently fallen
away?"
Logical question.
Paul has just envisioned
his second
of two possible outcomes,
both bad,
for the Jewish non-believers. The first
was in the opening verse of this
chapter.
Verse 1, "In that case, I say, hasn't
God repudiated his people?"
See, what's being implied here is a
direct action of God to reject his
people
for their lack of faith
by rejecting his son Yeshua. Now in
verse 11, "In that case, I say, isn't it
they have stumbled with with the result
that they've permanently fallen away?"
It's not God taking any action.
Rather, it's the people.
It's the people themselves
who have fallen away from God's mercy
as a natural consequence of their
refusal to accept Messiah.
So Paul is saying to his straw man,
"Heaven forbid."
That's his typical rabbinical answer.
"Heaven forbid," he says to the straw
man on both accounts.
So he's saying to the straw man, "Look,
just give it up.
There is no circumstance that you can
think of
whereby God's chosen people are going to
be rejected and abandoned
even if by all human standards they sure
deserve to be."
Mostly this is because God elected them
long before they were ever a people.
And since this election is in the form
of a divine promise,
such such an election is not revocable
for any reason.
Now we come full circle
back to where we started today.
Verse 11 in its entirety says this,
"In that case, I say,
isn't it that they have stumbled with
the result that they have permanently
fallen away?"
Heaven forbid, quite the contrary.
It is by means of their stumbling
that the deliverance has come to the
Gentiles in order
to provoke them to jealousy.
After refuting in every possible way
the notion that those Jews, the hardened
ones, the stone-like ones,
who have rejected Yeshua have also been
rejected by the Father
or
because they stumbled, they are now
permanently spiritually disabled
without the possibility of redemption,
Paul explains why it all works this way.
This is all part of God's plan
and it came from his, God's,
foreknowledge.
It was by means
of those Jews who refused God's mercy
that God first turned his attention to
Gentiles. But God delivered the Gentiles
for a purpose.
And the purpose
for Gentiles,
meaning believing Gentiles,
is to cause the hardened Jews to become
jealous and want what they have,
a saving righteousness
through Messiah Yeshua.
A righteousness not earned,
but rather freely given.
A righteousness that comes by trust, not
by works and deeds.
Bottom line,
these non-believing Jews are not
excluded forever,
whether it's
God's doing or their own,
and God has a plan to get them back
in his favor. And that plan is
Gentiles.
How we doing?
Uh quite amazingly,
Israel's great sin,
I don't just think about this.
Israel's great sin is really just the
beginning of a great process
that began 2,000 years before Paul was
born.
And in the end,
it brings blessing back to Israel.
And in the middle of this process
lies the Gentiles.
Who also get blessed.
As unfathomable as it may seem,
it is because of Israel's redemption and
their unfaithfulness the salvation has
come for Gentiles.
And it is because of the salvation of
Gentiles the God's original target,
his chosen people Israel, will be saved.
Why this strange convoluted pathway
to redemption and restoration?
Why take this route?
Dangerous, full of detours, just
littered with potholes.
Because there was a promise made
two millennial millennia earlier that
God fully intended to fulfill because he
always keeps his promises.
Genesis 12:1-3.
Now Adonai said to Avram,
"Get yourself out of your country, away
from your kinsman, away from your
father's house. Go to the land that I'll
show you. I will make of you a great
nation. I will bless you. I will make
your name great and you are to be a
blessing. I will bless those who bless
you,
but I will curse those who curse you.
And by all by you all the families of
the earth will be blessed."
We will continue in Romans 11 next time.
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