Where It All Ends

Well, they asked me to start off the services on Wednesday night and Sunday night saying this is September the 15th, 2013, and I'm doing Romans 11 beginning with verse 25. So when they do the tapes, they don't always come to the service, so I can be sure that they get all that on there, so that's done. Romans 11 beginning with verse 25, I talked about verse 25 before, but this is a section of conclusion, verse 25 through verse 32, Romans 11, 25. So verse 25 through 32 is sort of a conclusion to all from chapter 1 through chapter 11. So this is a pretty important section because it's summarizing so much of what Paul has been talking about. He's talked about all from the sin of Adam all the way through what God has been doing to the redemptive work of Christ. In verse 25 he says, I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of Gentiles has come in. And when he uses the word mystery, he's talking about something that is only evident or clear when God reveals it, not talking about something that you have to figure out. He uses the idea that God has the answers or the information and he's revealing this mystery to us. And so he's talking about the secret that God has given him, about what God is doing. And the experience that he's, what he's learned from God is that Israel has experienced a hardening until the full number of Gentiles were entered the kingdom of heaven. What he's talking about is all the story of Israel's history from Abraham up to this point. He's found that when God worked in all of this, but when he sent the Messiah, suddenly there was a resistance on the part of Israel to accept the Messiah. He sees this as God hardening Israel's heart toward the Messiah, toward Christ, toward Jesus. So that what God has done is made Israel's heart hard. He says he's experienced a hardening in part, and he doesn't, he doesn't mean part of Israel has been hardened, but all of Israel has been partially hard toward Christ. And some, of course, have turned their back on him, have not accepted him at all. And he sees this as God's great scheme. He starts out talking about Adam's sin in the early parts of this book, and then he talks about Abraham's faith, and then he talks about the fact that the Jewish people had come to rely on good works as a means by which they would come to know salvation. And he sees this as a misunderstanding of the nature of what God was trying to get them to do. We are so sensitive to work salvation that we turn our backs away from some of the demands that God makes about us. And Paul, I think we get a lot of this from the scripture and what we see happening with the Jewish people. And Paul is talking about the Jews who are so determined to keep all of the law and made a big issue of the law that whenever they saw Christ come and his message and his treatment of the law, they were hardened about this. Instead of opening their eyes to the freedom that he was trying to teach them, they closed their hearts and their minds toward what he had to say. But he's talking about this partially hardening. Some of the people of Israel were hardened, all were partially hardened, so that there was a work of God he saw in this. He saw this as something God was doing in this great scheme of salvation history. Now when you're working through the story, you start out with Adam and Eve and we talk about all the great figures in history, what you're going to see, what Paul is talking about now is where this all ends up. We see in Israel's work a mystery, he said, a secret, a plan that God is doing. He has taken Israel and hardened them to allow the Gentiles to enter the kingdom of heaven until the full number of the Gentiles enter the kingdom or come into God's kingdom. He doesn't indicate that all the Gentiles are going to do this, but this is a period of time like there's a limit to it. There's a time in which God will say, okay, the end is here. So he sees this as a revelation God's given to him. God has said, in the course of history, as the Jews became arrogant about the law and became consistent on what they were doing, I hardened their heart. So when Christ came, they resisted this. Now their resistance has allowed in this process, the kingdom to be open to the Gentiles. So now the Gentiles are opening their hearts to God and all across the world, Gentiles are responding to the gospel message. The God is at work in all of this. That's what his point is. In verse 26, he comes to the next step in this mystery that he's learned. And so all Israel will be saved as it is written. The deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. The conclusion that Paul comes to in this great mystery is that God is not finished with Israel. He still has plans for them. All Israel will be saved. That's God's intention. Now you'll remember, maybe you do or don't, but in chapter 10 of the book of Romans, Paul started with verse 1 saying, Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for all Israelites is that they might be saved. He's echoing that same idea. The prayer that he has is what God's intention is. God is not through with Israel. In his great plan about what is going to happen, all the story of the Old Testament, all the things that were talked about, and even the coming of Christ, God's intention is that Israel is still a part of his great plan. So God's intention is to make that take place. Now he quotes here a passage from the Old Testament. The deliverer will come from Zion. And this passage is found in Isaiah, but Paul is quoting it, it appears, not from the passage that Isaiah was talking about. He's now talking about the second coming of Christ. The deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. Here he seems to think that what God is going to do is to send Christ back, and when Christ returns, the Jews will suddenly understand the great mistake that they've made. Now this appears as if it is a second method by which the Jews will come to know Christ, but I think what Paul may be doing is remembering his own personal encounter with Christ. He was not at all open to what he'd heard about Jesus until he encountered the risen Christ in his own journey. His idea seems to be that Christ will come from the Zion on high to the earth, and when he does return, then everything will change. The Jews will suddenly realize that he is the Messiah. It's not like he's thinking that they're going to leave Judaism and become a follower of Christ. What he's thinking they're going to do is to see that Jesus really was the fulfillment of all that they had hoped for and planned for, just as Paul did when he encountered the living Christ on the road to Damascus. When they see Christ return, suddenly their minds will be changed and their hearts will no longer be hardened, for they will see Christ as he really is instead of the false picture they had of who he was. And he will turn their godlessness away from Jacob. He's using the word godless to mean that they were focused not on God, but instead had cut out Jesus and they were no longer open to what he was trying to do. He will come from heaven, and in his act of appearing to them, he will turn away their rejection of Christ as the messenger of God and as of God himself, and this idea will be removed. Yes? It's a word that's used to describe Israel. Jacob and Israel sometimes are used interchangeably in the Bible to describe what we would call the religious group of Jews. The word Jew was sometimes used by other people to describe them, but they chose to use the term Israel and Jacob for themselves, reflecting back on their ancestors and their descendants of that ancestor. And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins. You know, I didn't realize this, but I read it in a book and looked it up to see this was true. Paul never spends much time in any of his writings talking about forgiveness of sin. In fact, he talks about taking away their sins here, but there are only two references in all of Paul's writings to forgiveness of sin. It was not a big issue for Paul. He talked about other things in a more important way than forgiveness of sin, and it's a relationship with Christ that he focused on primarily, but here he talks about that. And this is my covenant with them, my contract with them, and what he's pointing back to is the covenant he made with Abraham. This covenant I made with Abraham and renewed with all the other people coming along is the promise that I will never forget. I made a promise to Abraham, and that promise, no matter how much it might not seem present, will come to pass. And in the last day, Paul felt that God had given him this message to say that then the covenant of God will still be in effect. This is my covenant with them, when I take away their sin, the sin of unbelief in Christ, the sin of resistance to him, so that they will receive finally this message. This is Paul's vision about what's going to happen. For him, at the last day when Christ returns, there will be a sudden change in what the Jews, in their reaction to Christ. Now, this is a great change for the Jewish people who are in the church are reading this. The Jewish people believed that because they were these chosen people, and because they had access to God, that in the last days, the final days, when the end of the earth would come, that the Gentiles would finally come to their senses and come in great hordes to Jerusalem to worship God. And their hope was that all of the Gentile world would come to accept Yahweh God, and would come to the temple, to the holy city, and there affirm their obedience and submission to God. Now, Paul completely turns this around. The Gentiles have come to Christ, and in the last days, see the Jews thought, we are now the people of God, and then all the Gentiles will be attracted to God in the last days. He says now, the Jews have been hardened in their heart and have resisted Christ, and they have, and the Gentiles have accepted him. So in the last day, when Christ comes, it will be the Jews who come flocking to Christ. This would have been probably a distressing insight to the Jews who were in the church at Rome, which Paul was writing to, because it was a complete reversal of what they thought was in store for human history. Paul says, this is the mystery that God has given me, that the Jews still are in God's plan, but it's reversed from the way they thought it would take place. For you have been called as Gentiles to be servants of Christ, and in that last day, they will come in great numbers to acknowledge and accept what you have come to know. Verse 28, as far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account. As far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs. See, Paul is still discussing everything that he's been talking about up to now, this great distance between Christ and his coming and the Jews. And here he makes this sort of parallel statement. As far as the gospel, that is, the preaching of Christ is concerned, they are enemies on your account, on account of the Gentiles, he means. Now you have accepted Christ, and he's writing to the church at Rome where there are Jews and Gentiles, Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in the church. As far as the message of Christ is concerned, they are enemies of Christ, or the gospel, and on your account, because of you, because of what you've done, because of how this has worked out. But as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs. They have resisted the gospel, on that side, their resistance to God, but God has not forgotten the fact that he's made a promise of election to them. I have chosen you as my people. So as far as that's concerned, because of the promise God made to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all those early forefathers, because of that, God still is going to keep the promise that he made. I have placed my hand on you, and you belong to me. So he uses this sort of parallel statement to describe what's taking place. The gospel, the preaching of Christ, has caused them to be enemies of God. Election, God's choice of them, has made them loved because of the promise that God has made to the patriarchs. So they're still in God's plan. For God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. Now he's talking about these gifts in maybe chapter 9, verse 4, where he's talking about Israel, the people of Israel. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons, theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship, and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised. He can also be talking about the spiritual gifts that come in addition to these, the gifts that were given through history and the spiritual gifts. These gifts are a part of what God has done, and it belongs to them. They've received them. His gifts and his call, the two things, cannot be revoked. They will never be turned back. God has made them to them. The patriarchs are their heritage forever. All these things that happened to them in their history will be a part of their history. And the fact that God chose Abraham and chose the people of Israel will not be negated. Now what's important for us to understand, we stand in this tradition, you see. We stand in the same tradition Abraham's our father, too. The promise that God makes to those that are his children will not be taken away. He's not talking about here there's going to be two strands of people in the kingdom. There's only going to be one. All of us trace our heritage back to Abraham and all these things that have been given, for they're a part of our heritage, too. We read the Old Testament. We think it has meaning for us. It has value for us. What's going to happen is that the Jewish people who have been resistant to Christ will suddenly see the same connection that we see, the connection between the Old Testament and the ministry and mission of Christ. And in this one single stream, all of that we'll see are the actions of God that cannot be reversed. Now for us, it means that the promises made to us, you can count on. For example, in the church when it says that God is going to establish the church on faith and the gates of hell will not be able to stop it, we can count all these promises as a part of what God has said to us is going to come true. So when you read back to the promises given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and those that Christ gave to us, we can count on the fact that no matter how difficult it might seem, these things will come to pass. You are talking about workers. We pray that workers will be sent, that God will send workers into the harvest. God has told us that this is an effective way to begin to find the people we need for the things we need to do. All these promises we hold on to because in spite of the fact that the Jewish people turned their back on Christ, He never stopped keeping His promise. That's how powerful and valuable this is for us. For God's gifts, what He has given to us in the past, and His call, this election cannot be revoked. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that you too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. He's writing in this passage a sort of complicated way by which He's describing what He's talked about above. You who at one time were disobedient to God, the Gentiles, they were living apart from the message of God all this time. You were disobedient, but now in this new era, the preaching of Christ, you have received the mercy of God. The Jewish people felt that they were specific objects of God's mercy. Now He's saying it's been expanded to those people who were at one time disobedient but now have accepted Christ, they have received His mercy. You've received this as the result of Israel's disobedience. Now Israel would not say that they were disobedient. They would say that the works of the law that they were keeping made them obedient. So what Paul is saying is your dependence upon the law and circumcision have taken you outside of the faith of Abraham that was a saving faith for him. His trust in God made him a follower of God. It was counted to him as righteousness. Now Paul's argument all the way in these earlier chapters about the fact that they had taken the external things like circumcision and the works of the law as depending on them for their salvation. So they were disobedient to God. It's a strange insight to see that the people who counted themselves most obedient to God, Paul now calls disobedient to God. Can you think how a Christian might be in a position where they think they're obedient to God when in reality they're disobedient to Him? You think of someone who reads the Bible, here's what it has to say, and thinks that by being baptized disobedience will get them to heaven and they leave aside faith. Their obedience to what they think God wants leads them to be disobedient. Their dependence on their works, being good about all these things and legalistic about everything that they're doing, leads them to be obedient to all these things of Scripture but they're dependent on those for salvation so in their obedience to Scripture they could become disobedient because they're not living in faith but they're earning this. That's what he's talking about. Christians can do the same thing. We can count on the wrong things for our salvation. Why do you think you're going to heaven? Well I'm better than most people I know. Why do you think you're going to heaven? Well I pay my bills, I'm good to my family, and I'm better than most of the people I know. Your good deeds that you're doing can make you disobedient to God because you're depending on the wrong thing for your salvation. This is what he's talking about with the Jews. It's a great problem for all of us to make sure that our motives and our goals are the same as what Christ taught us we should have. So he says you who are at one time disobedient to God now receive mercy as a result of the Jews' disobedience. Now Paul has talked about already that in the disobedience of the Jews to receive Christ this opened the message of salvation to the Gentiles. So when they didn't open their lives to Christ God called Paul and others to proclaim this message to all the world. So their disobedience led Christ to do this. So they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now have received mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. So they too have now become disobedient, the Jews, in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. Remember he talked about the fact that God was going to bless the Gentiles and at the time that they came that this blessing of the Gentiles would cause a jealousy to arise in the Jews so that the mercy given to the Gentiles would cause the Jews then to be jealous of what was taking and they then would become open to the gospel that they might have. Paul is using this in a rather complex way to get at the point he wants to make. So they too have now become disobedient in order that they too, the Jews, have become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. When they see the mercy God's extended to you then they will turn around and accept the message of Christ and receive the same thing that you have seen. It is God's plan to bring Israel back into this place. Verse 32 sums this whole chapter 1 through 11 up in this one sentence. For God has bound all men over to disobedience. Remember when he talked about from chapter 1 on through about Adam and Eve and their sin and came to the conclusion in chapter 3 that all have sinned and have the power of sin gripped their life. There is none righteous. No one's righteous at all. This conclusion, God has bound all men over to disobedience. All of us. He's turned us loose so that sin can control our life so that he might have mercy on them all. And then he starts talking about in the earlier chapters of Romans how Abraham was faithful to him and has counted to him his righteousness and how this great stream of Abraham's faith has reached out to us so that in this disobedience, this sinful nature we have, all of this has come to us so that God could have mercy on all of us. This is his conclusion as to how this first 11 chapters takes place. Then he turns to a song, the doxology. On the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Paul didn't talk about the riches of knowledge and wisdom of God very much in the book of Romans. He has to talk about it a lot when he gets to the Corinthian church because they're so caught up in their wisdom and their own ideas about what's right and wrong. But here he turns our attention to the fact that in this convoluted way, God has from the very beginning called the Jewish people. Then when they turned their back on him, he opened the door to the Gentiles. And now that the Gentiles have responded, it's going to cause the Jewish people to be jealous of the Gentiles and now receive Christ. Who in the world, he's saying, can figure this deal out? Look at what God has done. The wisdom and the knowledge of God. How can you explain this? How unsearchable are his judgments? We can't sit down and figure out election. When you sit down and talk to people about that, you have a hundred ideas and nobody can explain it. It's beyond our human capacity to understand all the things of the scripture. How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing. Have you ever sat down sometimes and tried to figure out what God is doing in your own life? And you think you know, and then all of a sudden it doesn't seem to work that way. You think you've got this figured out, and all of a sudden some other thing happens to you. Paul experienced it too. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? The first verse, chapter 33, is sort of a paraphrase from the book of Job. Verse 34 is sort of a reference to Isaiah. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him? Does he owe me anything? From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. Paul ends this discussion about sin, election, and salvation by saying it's simply bigger than any of us can ever figure out. And all we can do is stand back and be in awe of God, his wisdom, and his judgment. The mind of God is beyond what we can do. No one can explain it. We don't find any time in which we can make God do anything. God doesn't owe anyone anything. We can't do good deeds to make him save us. We can't even have faith to make him save us. No one is ever in a position where God has a debt to us. It's always the other way around. For from him and through him and to him are all things. And to him be glory forever and ever. Amen. So Paul ends this discussion by pointing to the mystery of God. God has revealed to me what's taking place. But it's above and beyond anything that I can explain to you how he's done this. And in the end, we'll all be astonished at what we see because God's plans are far, far bigger than anyone can figure out. It's a word of caution. When you find people that seem to know all the things about the end of the world, be careful. No one's ever able to figure that stuff out. If you find people that have all the answers to all these spiritual and theological questions, be careful. No one ever knows the mind of God that way. Why? He wants us to trust him. You just do day by day what I tell you to do. And I will guarantee you that when the time comes, everything will be in place. You don't have to know God's mind nor his wisdom. You just have to be faithful day by day to do what he tells you because he's beyond what we can do. And we trust him because he is that way. Let's pray. Sometimes it seems hopeless, fruitless, God, to try to figure out what the Bible means even because your wisdom is above and beyond anything that we can ever figure out. But we know this, that your love and your care for us is easy for us to figure out. You know what we ought to do and you give it to us in your Word and your Spirit guides us. Give us the passion day by day to do what we know this day you want us to do. For we know step by step and obedience to you will lead us exactly where we need to be and everything that you plan for us will take place and everything you promised will be fulfilled. In the name of Christ we ask for that kind of faith. Amen. 11 here, 11 in the children's class, 11 and a half. I don't know if she's ever figured out how we do this. I don't know. I think she just thinks if a person feels led to do it. I don't know.