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Let us begin our study by reading in the Epistle to the Romans once more, and chapter uh eleven. The Epistle to the Romans, chapter eleven and verse seven. What then? That which Israel seeketh for, that he obtained not, but the election obtained it, and the rest were hardened. According as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, unto this very day.
And David saith, let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompense unto them. Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their back all way. I say then, did they stumble that they might fall? God forbid. But by their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now, if their fall is the riches of the world, and their loss the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fullness?
But I speak to you that are Gentiles, in as much then as I am an apostle of the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry. If by any means I may provoke to jealousy them that are my flesh and may save some of them. For if the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead? Verse thirty: For as you in time past were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their disobedience, even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now obtain mercy.
For God has shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past tracing out. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counselor, or who hath first given to him, and it shall again be recompensed unto him? For of him, and through him, and unto him are all things. To him be the glory forever.
Amen. In these three brief studies of the Epistle to the Romans here of a Sunday morning, we have been thinking together of the sorrow and of the problem that constantly weighed on the heart of the Apostle Paul. His sorrow because the majority of his Jewish fellow nationals had rejected the Lord Jesus and were persisting in their rejection of him. Therefore, there came daily upon the heart of the apostle an incessant sorrow as he thought of what must inevitably be the outcome for the individuals who rejected Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
But in addition to the sorrow we discovered last week, he had a problem. The call of Abraham, the formation of the Jewish nation, the glorious revelation of God on Mount Sinai, the wonder of the building of the tabernacle, the incredible reality that the transcendent Lord should come and dwell among men in that tabernacle of the Jewish nation. The wonderful promises of God, and with all God's divine purpose that through that weak little nation Israel, one day the Lord Messiah should be born and the savior of the world.
If that was God's plan, then there was an obvious problem superficially taken. If that nation Israel, raised up of God as the beginnings of his pro- program of redemption, should now be rejecting the very Messiah? Telling themselves and telling the world that they did not need any such Messiah. They did not need the atoning death of Jesus Christ. Telling the world that Jesus was not a Messiah, but in fact a blasphemer and an imposter. If the very nation raised up of God to be the witness to God in this world, and in particular the witness to the Gentiles, was thus rejecting the Lord Jesus.
There was a problem, namely to know what had become of God's great plan of redemption. For if the very plan of redemption had gone wrong and broken down, what hope could anybody have of any of God's promises for the future redemption of the world. Last week in our study Sunday morning, we concentrated on the answer to the problem, which I may briefly remind you went like this. That God's God's plan had certainly not broken down. Evidence was that it was running true to type.
For right from the very beginning of Abram's posterity, there had always been observable two groups. Some of Abram's seed chosen of God to carry on the privileged role of witnesses to the coming Messiah. And others of Abram's role, uh, of Abram's seed not so chosen, and often living in contradiction to God and to his plan. And therefore, the fact that in Paul's day there were still observable two groups within Judaism.
The one group faithful to the word of God, faithful to the Messiah, welcoming the Messiah with open arms and preaching him to the Gentiles, and another group of Abram's seed hostile to the Messiah and virtually apostate to God. This, though sorrowful, was nothing to be wondered at. Israel was running true to her history. The very fact that there was still a group faithful to God, loyal to the Messiah, carrying on Israel's distinctive role of testimony to the Gentiles.
This was evidence enough that God's plan had not come to grief. God's plan was proceeding as always and would triumph. And then we saw last week another part of the answer to the problem. To contemplate Israel, the majority of them rejecting the Messiah, and now hardening in their hearts, and coming perilously near to apostasy and destruction. Raised the question in Paul's mind, whose fault was it?
Was it that God, in the arbitrary exercise of his divine authority, had simply excluded the majority of Israel, willy-nilly excluded them from his plans and purposes? And Paul gives a horrified answer. No, of course not, to that question. Any one of them could have been a vessel of mercy in God's hand. All day long, said Paul, in fact, God stood stretching out his hands to the nation, pleading with the nation to come, pleading with Jerusalem to allow her chicks to come and nestle under the wings of Messiah and be saved.
And Israel stood back and argued and were disobedient. They refused to be vessels of mercy. What they wanted to be was vessels that could parade their ability to keep God's law, parade their merit, struck in front of the Gentiles as men and women that were so of a superior race, that had kept God's law, and thank God they weren't sinners like the Gentiles. Vessels are like that, if God would have had them, would have been in abundance. When God called for vessels of mercy, men and women that were broken, acknowledging the defeat of sin, acknowledging that their merit was altogether inadequate and could not save them, acknowledging that if ever they were to be saved, they must come and be saved just like those sinners of the Gentiles.
When God called for men and women who, being saved by the mercy of God and the merit of Messiah, would go out to the Gentiles, confessing their own sin and pointing to the mercies of God through Jesus Christ. And Israel as a whole refused. They would not have the mercy. They would not have salvation by grace. How can you be a vessel of mercy if you won't have mercy, but cling to your merit? And so we saw the second part to the answer of the answer to the problem.
God's plan had not gone adrift. It wasn't God's fault that the majority in Israel were not now vessels of mercy. But if that solved Paul's problem, it didn't end its, his sorrow. Nor should it end ours. Those Israelites who were living in opposition to God and in rejection of the Savior, they were real men and women.
They were Paul's fellow nationals. He loved every single one of them with a love so intense that he would, if it had done any use, he would have ceded his own salvation that they might be saved. Just to think of them in their early days. Oh, what days there had been in Israel. When the very glory of God had descended and come and dwelt in that tabernacle so that the priests could here stand for the wonder and the glory of it. When God's great victories through Israel filled the world with the knowledge of the wonder of God.
All those lovely days when Aaron, in his gorgeous robes, took the golden vessels into the sanctuary. And Elijah led the nation back in repentance to God. Oh, what stirring days they had been. And to see them now... rejecting their Messiah and trembling on the very brink of apostasy and disaster. How could it do anything but fill Paul's heart with incessant sorrow?
It was not only unspeakably sad in itself, but if I have discerned right the exhortations that Paul delivers in this chapter to his fellow Gentile believers in Rome, then the sorrow, unspeakably sad in itself, was in danger of being added to by thoughtless believers. You see, Romans, as we know from their poets, like the poet Juvenal, Romans didn't really like Jews. They despised them and their little prayer houses.
They despised what to their Gentile way of thinking was an absurdity and a disgrace. The ritual of circumcision. They were odd fish in the i- in the eyes of Gentiles, keeping their Sabbath and all their laws of taboo as to what you could eat and what you couldn't eat. Gentiles in general and Romans in particular, they didn't like Jews. And of course, some of the early Christians had been obliged to suffer when militant Jews had raised riots in this city and that, all around the Roman Empire, raised riots against the Christians and tried to get the authorities to come and ban Christianity.
Many Gentiles would have suffered as a result. The danger would be that these Gentiles getting converted, becoming Christians, would begin to feel themselves superior to the Jews, and dismiss the Jews as a complete failure and come to the view that God had abandoned them forever. Though Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles, the thought that any Christian would thus come to despise Israel would be grievous indeed.
What would dear old Paul have said if he'd lived to see Europe, Christendom, with its theories of theology, that there is no future for Israel. What would Paul have said if he'd lived to see Christendom, the leader in anti-Semitic persecution? My former colleague, Professor Smallwood of the University here, in her inaugural lecture, pointed out that it wasn't the pagan Roman authorities that persecuted the Jews.
Indeed, the Romans, from Julius Caesar onward for many centuries, passed special legislation to protect the Jews, much as the Romans didn't like Jews, but in their fair-minded them, fair-mindedness, they passed special legislation and constantly renewed it to protect the Jews. It was Christendom that persecuted the Jews. When at last the church joined up with the state, then the so-called Christian church used its influence with the state and little by little by little brought in restrictive legislation and eventually outright persecution of the Jew, offering as excuse that the Jews were God murderers.
And all for the sorry history. How shall we not this morning hang our heads in shame as being members of Ch- of a Christendom that down the centuries in all kinds of countries has shed oceans of Jewish blood? Not only has this been a recent phenomenon in Europe, signs are now in some countries that anti-Semitism is rearing once more its ugly head. Imagine, if you would, how Paul would have felt if he saw the result of his preaching to the Gentiles, such behavior on the part of Christendom.
How then will Paul assuage his sorrow? Here in this chapter eleven, let us briefly run over it as we watch Paul in this wonderful experience. We watch Paul allowing God himself to come and pour balm into the sorrow of his heart. And first, in answer to the question, has God then cast away his people? Has he cast them off?
Is the nation of Israel, as the nation of Israel, finished forever? And the answer is, of course, a divine and categorical no, God has not cast off his people. Only I ask you to notice what the verse is saying, and who is the Israel that is being commented upon. When Paul asks, has God cast away his people whom he foreknew? He is not talking, is he, of the elect, that election within the election, the godly of Israel, Martha, Mary, Lazarus, Simeon, Anna, Paul, and those who, being the elect of God, are loyal to Messiah.
To ask whether God had cast off that part of Israel would be a nonsensical question, would it not? Of course God hasn't cast off Martha and Mary and Simeon and Anna and all the rest of godly Israel. That isn't the question. The question is the nation as a whole, the majority of which exists now still in unbelief and rejection of the Messiah. Has God cast off that whole nation that once he chose as the vehicle of his purpose? And the answer is no, of course not. There is a future for Israel, qua Israel.
And how will Paul know? Well, in the first place, he says, ladies and gentlemen, I am an Israelite anyway. So what? Ah, says Paul, perhaps you haven't seen the implication of this fact that there is still in this day a remnant of Israel that is a believing remnant. Don't you perceive what the implication is? To help us perceive it, Paul takes our minds back to a story in Old Testament at a critical time in Israel's existence, when the nation came as near total apostasy as it was possible for that nation to come.
It was in the time of Elijah, you remember, and Jezebel, with all her color scheme, had, uh, prevailed upon her husband Ahab to go over to the worship of Baal, until it was a dangerous and certainly an unpopular thing to be a worshipper of the true God Jehovah. The whole nation nearly had gone over to the worship of Baal and all its silly idolatries. God, we read, had made his protest and his glorious gospel appeal to the nation, as in his name Elijah had assembled Mount Carmel and demonstrated who is the true God.
The God that answers by fire, let him be God, said Elijah. A God that's a real God. A God that can provide a real sacrifice. A God that can bring back the people's heart and convert them. He has a sacrifice big enough to save them. That day, God gave his great demonstration on Mount Carmel as the fire descended and accepted and consumed the sacrifice on behalf of Israel. And the nation's heart was in part turned back to God.
Ha, not Jezebel. In spite of the demonstration of the fire from heaven upon the sacrifice, spite of the den- demonstration of the abundant rain that came upon the thirsty and starved ground. Jezebel persisted in her deliberate defiance and would have had Elijah's head from his shoulders hadn't Elijah fled. Leaving Carmel, he'd gone to Horeb. Leaving the mountain of sacrifice and atonement, Elijah had gone to the range of the law of Sinai and of Horeb, and taking his stand on the mountain of the law, had implored the very judgments of God against that apostate nation, and Jethabel in particular.
Now, what can God do? When people have wandered off into their idolatries. What can he do when he's offered them a sacrifice through which they may be reconciled? And abundance of rain to soften their hearts as well as their ground and bring them a spiritual harvest. What can God do when in spite of it they reject him? Now hear the heart of God, will you? His great prophet goes and stands on the mountain of the law and pleads the judgments of God against guilty Israel.
And there comes the still small voice, much misunderstood. For the still small voice didn't speak words of Psalm twenty three. It announced the most devastating judgment that Israel up to date had ever seen. A judgment that fell upon Israel through Syria, through Hadad, in the days of Ahab's sons and grandsons, till the whole of Ahab's house was wiped out.
You can't toy with God. If you won't have his salvation, and the nation must know his judgment. Are true. But that's only part of the story. When Elijah, in his deep pessimism, started to bewail before God, oh God, they've killed your prophets, and I, I only am left. Oh, don't talk nonsense, says God, you only left nonsense, Elijah, my man. I have reserved seven thousand who have not and will not bow the knee to Baal, and already in Israel is there the community that shall spell the revival of Israel and her restoration.
Oh, thank God it wasn't the end of Israel. Those seven thousand men, a round number to be sure, who hadn't bowed the knee, they were the earnest, the promise, the guarantee from God that that nation would have a future, and so indeed it did, as we know historically. Oh, what great days there came of revival under Elisha, of revival under Hezekiah, of revival under Josiah. No, it wasn't the end. And the remnant of seven thousand were the earnest of greater things.
As God cast away his people Israel, says Paul. Ah, they too have gone to their idolatries, thinking to be saved by the works of their own hand and their own merit. And God Almighty has staged before them such a thing that the Mount Carmel fades, does it not? Ah, for Mount Calvary. When in the eyes of Israel, in their heart, he sin and rejection of his son, in that very moment, God sent down the fire from heaven that accepted the sacrifice, if so be that through him Israel might be brought back.
Then there came that marvelous experience, that holy rain, that deluge, as on the day of Pentecost, the very windows of heaven were opened and the Holy Spirit was poured down, offering guilty Israel forgiveness of even this their trespass and salvation by grace. And Israel won't have it. Oh, what shall become of them? Some of them, yes, have found salvation. But says Paul, with tears choking his, his voice and his pen, a pen spluttering on the page.
The rest were hardened, all for their pain and sorrow that must inevitably come. And then comes the assuagement of his sorrow. But gentlemen, he says, it's not the end. It's not the end. For I too am an Israelite and a God that has had mercy on me is by that very act giving us an earnest of what yet shall be. The seven thousand now that have not yielded to Baal, that have accepted the Messiah, these are but the first fruits of a coming harvest.
And if the first fruit be holy, says Paul, borrowing his language from his fe- his priests in the temple. If the first fruits be holy, the whole lump is holy, and one day shall be God's. Not only then are we to be sure that there will be a future for Israel, Israel as a whole, all Israel shall be saved. But now, now will you the wisdom of God, the ways of God, how he will bring salvation out of disaster.
For, says Paul, the gospel has come to the Gentiles through the Jews' disobedience, through their falling, through their stumbling. The gospel has come to the Gentiles and has proved the enrichment of the Gentiles, the riches of the world, the very reconciliation of the world. And it is doing that so that in the end, under God's good strategy, one day the Jews shall be moved to jealousy, to see what they have missed, and God will use their very jealousy to bring them to repentance and to faith.
But let it be clear in our mind what we mean when we read that Israel has stumbled, and thus the gospel has gone to the Gentile. It isn't merely, is it, that when the apostles went forth, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, that the Jews rejected them and often stoned them, so that the apostles then said, all right, if you won't have the gospel, we go to the Gentiles then. That is true. But there is a deeper point at issue. Israel stumbled, says Paul. Alas, they did. They stumbled at the stone of stumbling.
Jesus Christ, our Lord. They thought they were going to welcome a Messiah who should make them the head of the nation, and then the Messiah came and began to talk to them about their sin, about the way they had come short for all their Phariseeism. They had come short of the standard of God. They were miserable sinners. Israel didn't like it. And they objected. And they stumbled at the stone. They neither wanted his message that called them to repentance, nor would they have forgiveness at his hand.
And religious though they were, they took him and nailed him to a tree. Oh, what a stumbling it was. How can you describe a nation chosen by God, so religious in its a- in its attitude and full of zeal for religion? How will you describe it that they should take God's own son, their savior, and put him on a tree? What a stumbling. And yet, what a marvelous thing that's been for us Gentiles, hasn't it?
For from that moment there started out of Judaism an evangelization such as Judaism had never seen all down the centuries. There started out of Jerusalem a little trickle first, and then a river. It has come to be a vast ocean of evangelization. Why so? Ah, because now at last, with Messiah crucified, Judaism had a gospel message to preach. Before that day, they preached law, and it was useful. It didn't make them very good evangelists.
I have to confess that law wouldn't make me a very good evangelist either. You never need fear. I shall not come knocking on your door when you open it. There will be standing I with a Bible in my hand and saying, it's time you started to keep the law. You sinful Gentile, you. I shan't come. Like that? Why not? Well, I shall be almightily afraid that when you have listened to me, you'll point the finger at me and say, who are you to tell me that I ought to keep the law and that I am a sinner? What about yourself, old fellow? Ah, but you might find me round your door one day, and when you open it, I come to tell you I've got some news for you.
I'm a sinner, you know, more than you think. I have news for you that God's own son has come and died for me. And if he'd die for me, he'd die for you. And if he'd save me by the death of his son, he'd save you, that's most certain. It was that that lay behind the great evangelization that broke out of Jerusalem from the day of Pentecost onwards, so that the very murder of Jesus Christ becomes in God's hand the sacrifice of reconciliation.
And I even find profit by looking at Israel. It's a hard thing to learn, isn't it, that religion itself can be anti-God. You'll see it in Israel. Men and women intensely religious. Like Saul of Tarsus, trying to raise up merit before God, and in their very hearts, enemies of God and his son. How this world has been shown the inadequacy of religion, and being shown it, have been pointed to him who in whom alone there is salvation.
I thank my brother Jew. I have a delightful friend in this city who allows me to be his friend. He is a Jew. And sometimes he comes to me and he says, David, you know, how will you explain it as a Christian? What about Hitler? Where was God, he says, David, where was God? When Hitler was gassing six million of my fellow Jews, where was your God? And you taught your Sunday school children that it was the wicked Jews that crucified Jesus. You sowed the seeds of anti-Semitism in their heart. And I have to say, Otto, my good friend Otto, I apologize for Christendom.
I hang my head with shame. But Otto, I want you to know, Otto, who it was that murdered Jesus Christ. It was my sin, Otto. I it was that crucified him. And I say, Otto, yes, you too, didn't you? In your sin, you crucified him. And we stand, Jew and Gentile, at the foot of that cross, both of us guilty.
Thank you, Otto, I say. Thank you for showing me who was really responsible for the death of Jesus. My unregenerate heart, as well as yours. Therefore, as we hear these things, we shall heed got Paul's warning, shall we not, to us Gentiles. Don't you boast, will you? Don't you boast.
Don't you even proudly say, well, we hope one day lots of Jews will get converted and enter the church. You've got it the wrong way round. The nation of Israel was witnessing to the true God when you and your parents were running around this country painted blue, bowing down to all sorts of animistic horrors. If not you bears the root, the root bears you. Don't let us boast as Christendom over the Jew. Count up how many spiritual treasures have come to you, even through the word of God, apart from the pen of Jews.
And what's more, says Paul, don't you get arrogant either. You say the wicked Jews were broken off. They once were a testimony for God in the world, a beautiful olive tree, and some of the branches were broken off that I might be incorporated in. You be careful, says Paul. Let's reecho it. Careful Christendom. The Jews, Jewish nation down the centuries proved a mixed bag. There were those that were faithful to God, and there there were those that were unfaithful, and Christendom hasn't proved any better, has it? For there have been in times and are now men who, in the name of the church, men who in the name of God, deny the incarnation, deny the virgin birth, deny the literal resurrection.
And one poor man who gets much time on BBC denies there's even a God, and he does it in the name of Christianity. And if when Judaism was unfaithful to her Messiah, God put them aside, and they ceased to be a testimony for God in the world. Be careful, Christendom. For you, if you go on in your modernism and your blatant unbelief and denial of the fundamentals of the faith, you too, Christendom, will be cut off. And God, for he can do it, will restore Israel to her position as the leading witness for God in the world.
Don't be conceited then, will you? Learn this, that if the largely Gentile Christendom is allowed to be the major witness for God in the world, it is because Israel as a whole has been hardened. The nation misbehaved. That's no cause for us getting uppish and feeling proud. What is more, they're only hardened for a time. When the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, they shall be restored. Oh, what days of rejoicing they will be.
Oh, what a God we have. This world is not going to peter out like some old firework that got too wet and didn't manage to burn and just went out with a whimper. If Israel's departure led to vast millions of Gentiles being converted, the very riches of the world, oh, what shall it be when Israel is restored? Let it dwell on your imagination. It shall be a veritable life from the dead. Oh, our world hasn't half seen yet what God Almighty in his mercy shall do. You say, why doesn't he do it now?
If he's got a plan for it, he could do it. Why does he keep Israel waiting until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in? All right, you do it better if you can, sir. You save Israel yourself if you can. Perhaps you haven't seen what the difficulty is. You can't save anybody until they have come to see themselves sinners, to see themselves unbelievers, to see themselves disobedient. And Israel won't come there yet. She clings to her righteousness. And because she believes that there is one God, she classes herself as a believer, when all the time she isn't, is she?
Like Saul of Tarsus, he would have said he was a believer until he met Jesus Christ, and then he discovered that he was a horrible unbeliever. And for all I know, there's somebody sitting here today, and you would class yourself as a believer. You believe that there's a God, but you're not saved yet. Why not? You're not prepared to admit that you're a sinner and disobedient and deserve to perish. And so you've never come to Jesus Christ personally to be forgiven and to be justified. You're not saved. And for all you call yourself a believer, you're lying absolutely athwart the purposes of God for salvation.
You are disobedient. When will God save you? Well, he'll have to wait, won't he? Until he can bring you to realize your disobedience and sinnesship. And the moment you come there and call upon Jesus Christ, that moment God will save you.
