Are we ready to turn to Romans chapter
11, which commentators likely say is not an
addendum, it's central to Paul's whole apostolic understanding
of the faith, that the first eight chapters
of his great book, which is the most
systematic statement of his apostolic theology, is a
preparation for 9-11, and what follows 12
-16 is the aftermath, the outworking.
Now, I beseech you to make your bodies
a living sacrifice, and then he goes on
from that to practical aspects of church life.
But the heart of the matter is 9
-11, and the capstone is 11 itself, so
we'll go verse at a time, and we'll
just interact over this and bring forth things
that are rich.
So remember that Paul is answering the question
of the Roman church, which they have very
valid human reason to ask, is God finished
with the Jew?
Is the crucifixion of their Messiah the final
event that proves their apostasy?
They have forfeited their calling, and are we
now the Israel of God?
And we take to ourselves that designation that
they are now cast out from these purposes,
having forfeited them first by the stoning of
the prophets, and now the crucifixion of their
Messiah.
That's a natural way to reckon, if your
reckoning is predicated upon deservedness.
They don't deserve, they have forfeited, they're exempt
from the promises and blessings.
It betrays a mentality that still is with
the church, and raises a natural question that
Paul now is going to answer, not only
for that generation, but for all generations.
So I say then, has God cast away
his people?
God forbid, for I also am an Israelite
of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe
of Benjamin.
God hath not cast away his people, which
he foreknew.
What, do you not know that the scriptures
says of Elijah, how he makes intercession to
God against Israel, saying, Lord, they've killed thy
prophets, they've digged down thine altars, I am
left alone and they seek my life.
But what sayeth the answer of God unto
him?
I have reserved to myself seven thousand men,
who have not bowed the knee to the
image of Baal.
Even so then, at this present time also,
there is a remnant according to the election
of grace.
And if by grace, then it is no
more of works, otherwise grace is no more
grace.
But if it be of works, then it
is no more grace, otherwise work is no
more work.
What then?
Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh
for, but the election hath obtained it, and
the rest were blinded.
According as it is written, God hath given
them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they
should not see, and ears they should not
hear, unto this day.
We can say, unto this day also.
And David saith, let their table be made
a stair, a trap, a stumbling block, and
a recompense unto them.
Let their eyes be darkened that they may
not see, and bow down their back always.
I say then, have they stumbled that they
should fall?
Well, we'll stop there and pick up verse
11 in just a moment.
Anything now in the introduction to this great
theme?
Paul's citing himself as an example that God
has not forsaken his people, because he's saved.
And if he represents a remnant, then a
remnant presages a later fulfillment.
A remnant is a first installment of a
later and greater harvest, in which he'll speak
in this chapter when he says, all Israel
shall be saved.
So he's encouraging the church not to consider
that Israel is finished.
He himself is a statement in his own
conversion, that God yet has a place.
And even though that remnant is small, even
from the time of Elijah, 7,000 that
have not bowed their knee, yet God has
preserved that remnant, and the remnant then is
always the encouragement of a later and greater
fulfillment.
So Israel has not found out which it
has sought through works, because what has come
now is grace.
The election hath obtained it, and the rest
were blinded.
But that blindness, as we're going to read,
is not a permanent and enduring disability.
It's a temporary, historic, and momentary provision, and
the genius of it is that it's a
provision for Gentiles, that he has momentarily set
aside his people.
That's what we're going to take up now
in this key 11th verse.
Have they stumbled that they should fall?
Are they permanently out of it?
This language, God forbid, in English, doesn't begin
to express the depth of Paul's emphaticness.
If language could be found to say, never
in a thousand, never in a million years,
don't ever consider that they're finished.
God forbid that the thought should even begin
to empty your mind.
No, you need to understand what they're being
momentarily set apart for is part of the
mystery, so that Gentiles who are far off
can now be brought in.
And then by their being brought in, they
will exhibit the fruit of this relationship so
as to move Israel to jealousy, so as
to extend mercy that they may obtain mercy,
and when their fullness comes in, then the
deliverer will come out of Zion and take
transgression from Jacob.
So there's a mystery now that is going
to be unfolded to which we need to
give remarkable heed because it essentially is lost
to the church in this present day.
How shall I say that?
I wish I had a dollar for every
time I've heard from a notable man of
God, men of international preaching ministries, that Romans
9-11 and especially 11 has been for
them, all their Christian ministries, long a mystery,
a conundrum they do not understand.
They're adept and incisive and insightful in many
aspects of the faith, but here, non compass
mentis.
It's a remarkable omission.
The thing that would concern me is that
I should be in such a condition and
not cry out to God?
Why don't I see this mystery?
Why don't I understand it?
But instead of that cry, they just accept
it as I don't get it.
And because they don't get it, the church
doesn't get it.
And because the church doesn't get it, it
suffers its present condition.
So verse 11, I say then, he's repeating
himself, have they stumbled?
That they should fall?
Are they permanently out of the way?
But even the word stumble indicates a momentary
maladjustment, but not a permanent condition.
God forbid, but rather through their fall, through
this momentary stumbling, salvation has come unto the
Gentiles for to provoke them to jealousy.
For if the fall of them be the
riches of the world and the diminishing of
them, the riches of the Gentiles, how much
more their fullness?
As he goes on to say later in
verse 15, for if the casting away of
them be the reconciling of the world, what
shall the receiving of them be?
But life from the dead.
So this is a great apical stratagem of
God for the redemption of Gentiles, for the
salvation of the world that somehow required the
setting aside of the nation.
Why would that be necessary?
Couldn't Jews have received the Messiah and communicated
the knowledge of him to the Gentile world
and fulfilled their destiny that way?
Would the Gentile world have received this message
from a nation that had not first experienced
a deep setting aside itself and a subsequent
return?
Would they have just looked upon it as
Jews doing their thing and trying to bring
us into their narrow Hebraic faith?
The remarkable thing in the labors of Paul
is that you never hear from the Corinthians
or Thessalonians that he's trying to indoctrinate them
into some narrow and provincial tribal deity known
only to the Jews.
That would be a piece of chauvinism.
That's a piece of racial and ethnic pride
trying to recruit people into your ballpark.
So something had to happen to free the
Gentile world to consider the message of the
Messiah not coming from Jews who are seeking
their spiritual scalp, but as a grace from
God that even required the setting side of
the Jews in order to permit their entry.
Are you following me?
We have to understand the minds of men
that God would go this far.
So what am I suggesting and it's just
a suggestion because it's no way articulated, but
we need to ask why the setting aside?
Why the momentary stumbling and falling?
For Paul says it's by that in verse
11 that salvation has come to the Gentiles.
Is that to imply that that salvation could
not have come except that there would have
been this momentary setting aside of the nation
except for, say, Bremen?
And I'm suggesting yes, probably that's true.
That if the nation had just gone along,
received the Messiah, and then commended their faith
to the Gentiles, it would have been a
kind of statement of a chauvinistic kind of
racial ethnic pride trying to recruit Gentiles into
their faith.
And it probably would have been rejected.
So God has opened the door in another
way by first setting them aside and then
in bringing them in, he will make them
the key for Israel's own subsequent restoration.
There's a reciprocal relationship birthed for the first
time between Israel and the church without which
neither one can come into its full destiny.
We're dependent the one upon the other in
the genius of God, which you need to
appreciate because what two peoples have been at
a greater and more ancient enmity than Jews
and Gentiles?
You needed to meet my mother when she
would spit out the word the goyim, the
goyim, them, the other.
It's so deep when we're talking all the
way back through her London childhood and cute
memories that either she fabricates or were real,
but an anger, hatred even.
For God to make the one the agent
for the other is a remarkable statement of
grace and the mystery of God in his
ultimate purposes.
So dwell on that key 11th verse.
It's the pulsating nub in order to be
going off and on like a light.
Have they stumbled, they should fall, God forbid.
Don't ever consider that.
But rather through their fall or because of
their fall, salvation has come unto the Gentiles
and then this punchline, for to or so
as to provoke them to jealousy.
This is so Pauline.
Just where you think the statement should end
and the period should be fixed, he adds
one further phrase and that one further phrase
turns the world upside down.
Now he's giving the reason, the genius of
God and the stratagem of the setting aside
so that Gentiles should come in, not that
they should come in for the purpose of
receiving and enjoying the benefit of their salvation
alone, but that it will serve a purpose
for Israel itself.
So as to provoke them to jealousy raises
the great question, what can Gentiles ever do
or perform that will move a proud ethnic
religious Jewish people to a jealousy of a
kind to consider the gospel they would otherwise
have repudiated or dismissed.
Paul does not tell us.
What I would have given for an asterisk,
a footnote at the bottom of the page,
how to move them to jealousy, he doesn't
tell us.
So what do you think?
Because the church and God and Israel is
yet waiting for this fulfillment.
We have a destiny, saints.
We have a calling and if you have
not considered that your salvation has a purpose
for you beyond yourself, you've not considered it.
And until you've considered that, your salvation is
not complete because the thing that will save
you utterly is it being called to the
destiny of another people outside yourself.
There's something about us even in the church
that is so egocentric, me, me, my mind,
my fellowship, my ministry, my blah blah blah.
What can God give so powerful as to
break the orbit of egocentrism even of a
spiritual and religious kind?
Israel is that something.
An object for our consideration which we ourselves
would never have chosen and a difficult object
because he says, in the same chapter, they
are the enemies of the gospel for your
sake.
I'm not giving you Apache people, they're not
a pushover.
I'm giving you the most obstinate, the most
operant, they've caused me fits, they're stiff-necked
from the beginning right to the last, but
this is your baby and you're the one
to move them to jealousy.
And he doesn't tell us how.
Well you need to know that the first
time I ever preached this, after a 14
month sabbatical silence, and the whole history here
of Ben Israel where the Lord cut down,
shut down the community for three years and
that's when I was put in a seminary
and the Lord began to open the mystery
of Israel.
And in the 14th month of that, I
was forbidden to speak publicly.
I got an invitation from Sacramento, California on
the telephone, Archidon me, I'm pastor so and
so, we have been praying here that God
wants you to speak to us a seminar
on Israel and the church in the last
days.
Which was exactly the phrase that had come
into my heart after the opening of an
understanding of that subject in that period of
time.
So I went to California 10 days in
advance, fasting and prayer, and we commenced that
seminar.
People paid to attend.
They had this, the tape recorders to catch
every word.
And not being a teacher, the prophetic man
who brings the back of envelopes and scraps
of paper and lays it out there and
somehow something's got to come together, I began.
And the first message, I raised this question,
why what means shall the church move Israel
to jealousy?
And I never answered it.
Went on for six messages after which the
pastor said it was a historic occasion.
Went to bed Saturday night, Sunday morning is
the final message, not yet having answered the
question.
And at three o'clock in the morning,
as I'm fond of saying, not 259 and
301, exactly at three, I lurched out of
bed with a jump, God gave me a
word, martyrdom.
And my final message was the church that
will move Israel to jealousy is a martyr
church.
And it's implied, martyr for their sake.
So Paul doesn't spell it out, but as
we come closer to the end of the
age and see the realities that are converging,
this is a very reasonable word to imply.
But the key, the issue is the church
is the key to Israel's deliverance and salvation.
By what we exhibit, it moves them to
jealousy, by the mercy that they will obtain
through our mercy, by the fullest which God
waits for us to come.
So the chapter, the whole chapter, as we
shall see, puts the premium not on Israel,
for Israel will be reduced to complete ineptitude,
inner, beyond and beside itself for anything out
of itself.
Why is that important?
Because what is the Jew but the statement
of human self-sufficiency?
And that self-sufficiency has got to be
reduced to nil, N-I-L, zero, no
capacity whatsoever, down and out, dry bones.
And unless someone else addressed those bones, those
bones remain eternally, millennia dead.
But what does he say?
What shall the return be but life from
the dead?
But what affects that return, not Israel itself,
the church, but a church of what kind?
An ultimate kind and a martyr kind.
And I don't know that this is the
occasion to launch into a discussion of martyrdom,
but we have it on tape.
I often say martyrdom is not a way
to die, it's a way to live.
It's a mode of being.
It's not just a statement of a final
moment.
It's a statement of all your moments, that
the true believing life is a continually surrendered,
martyred life that is not being lived for
itself but for others.
So, if the four of them be the
riches of the world, why is it the
riches of the world?
Because the Gentiles have now been invited in.
And the diminishing then the riches of the
Gentiles, how much more their fullness?
For I speak to you Gentiles, and as
much as I am the apostle to the
Gentiles, I magnify my office, if by any
means I may provoke to emulation them which
are of my flesh, and might save some
of them.
For if their casting over them be the
reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving
of them be but life from the dead?
The implications of Israel's return is immeasurable.
This can be contemplated in many ways.
It's a people coming into their destiny and
calling.
It's a nation of priests that enlightened the
world, actually functioning in such a way as
to bless all the families of the earth.
Because only the priest can teach the people
the difference between the sacred and the profane.
And until they teach it, the world continues
to become increasingly profane.
That one factor alone will be life from
the dead.
If the blessings that we have received from
Jews in their unsaved condition out of the
realms of medicine, science, physics, Einstein, we can
mention the geniuses of the 20th century have
been to so great a part beyond their
number in the population Jewish, what will the
blessing be to mankind in their redeemed state,
in the fulfillment of their calling to mankind?
Jews are not intended for themselves but for
the nations.
But to bring them to that destiny is
the task of the church.
Why do you think it is that Paul
was made the apostle to the Gentiles?
Isn't that a fluky thing?
That God takes a fisherman, Peter, and makes
him the apostle to the circumcision and takes
the great student of the rabbi Gamaliel and
all of his rabbinical knowledge would be an
ace for the circumcision and makes him the
apostle to the Gentiles.
What a role reversal.
But there's a significance in this that we
need to understand.
What do you think?
Why was Paul made the apostle to the
Gentiles?
And he says, if you see in me
a man out of time, I'm a foretaste,
my whole conversion is a statement of God's
intention for the nation.
My apostolic role pictures Israel's apostolate to the
nations.
If the nation has a role to the
nations, then I have a role to the
Gentiles presently.
And what a role Paul had.
And what a devotion the Gentile believers had
taught him that there's nothing more touching than
to read again Paul's call to the elders
of Ephesus when he tells them you'll see
my face no more.
And they meet with him and they bow
down and pray on the beach and hang
on his neck and weep that they will
see his face no more.
And he reviews with them, you know what
I've been to you, night and day with
tears from public place, from house to house.
I never withheld the whole counsel of God.
I never exploited you.
I never drew from you.
Paul is such a statement of what Israel
will be to the nations.
He's a model already of the millennial future.
So can you picture a day in which
Gentiles will be hanging on the necks of
Jews?
Well, we read that Gentiles will hang on
the skirt of Jews and say, take us
to your God for you know him.
The Gentiles of 10 nations will clutch the
skirt of a Jew.
That Jews will be such a blessing who
today are such a, what's the word, irritant
and a threat of vexation to the peace
of the world.
One day will be purest blessing to the
nations, which was God's intention ever from the
first.
We can't say enough for Paul.
I don't know who I want to meet
in heaven more, but what he represents, what
he is in himself for me to live
as Christ, that remarkable apostolic career and saying
who is sufficient for these things and being
to the church, being to his own people,
suffering the bodily things and scars that he
did for the faith and being entrusted with
the mysteries of the faith as a great
steward because he's less than the least of
all saints.
And Paul is not just being deferential and
polite here.
He heartily truly believes he's less than the
least of all saints.
He's deserving of nothing.
He was a murderer and persecutor.
Anything that comes to him is purest grace
for which he'll always be grateful.
So we're indebted to the dear man for
communicating the insight that he is exclusively his.
For if the first fruits be holy, verse
16, the lump is also holy and if
the root be holy so are the branches.
If some of the branches be broken off
and you being a wild olive tree were
grafted in among them and with them partakest
of the root and fatness of the olive
tree, boast not against the branches, but if
you boast, you bear not the root, but
the root thee.
And you'll say then the branches were broken
off that I might be grafted in.
Okay, but because of unbelief they were broken
off and you stand by faith, be not
high minded, but fear.
For if God spared not the natural branches,
take heed lest he also spare not thee.
Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God
on them which fell severely, but toward thee
goodness.
If you continue in his goodness, otherwise thou
also shall be cut off.
And they also if they abide not still
in unbelief shall be grafted in for God
is able to graft them in again.
For if you were cut off out of
the olive tree which is wild by nature
and were grafted contrary to nature into a
good olive tree, how much more shall these
which be the natural branches be grafted into
their own olive tree?
This is a remarkable analogy, is that the
word?
Symbolic way of expressing this mystery that is
uniquely Pauline, using natural and organic things.
You Gentiles were wild branches, you were incapable
of fruit.
Don't boast now that you've been grafted into
another tree, because your boasting is unbecoming and
will even void the benefit that would otherwise
be yours by the receiving of the sap
that rises from its root, because your lack
of humility and gratitude will nullify the benefit
of being grafted in.
Nowhere do I find scriptures that support that
statement.
I'm going out on my own limb, but
I feel pretty confident about this, that unless
we are grateful recipients for being grafted into
another tree, we do not receive its benefit.
In the same way that a wife who
is only nominal in her submission to her
husband will not receive the benefit that flows
to her through the head, and that's why
we see independent entities living under the same
roof.
So to receive the benefit of what this
organic connection from the head to the body,
from the root to the branches, requires an
attitude of humility and gratitude, that we who
were wild and cut off have now been
privileged to be placed into the one tree,
which is the redemptive planting of God.
It may not be outwardly an attractive tree,
it's gnarled, it's gone through quite a history,
and it's despised in the world, but we're
privileged to find a place in its branches
by their being broken off.
So if we have been grafted in being
wild, what's the prospect of them being grafted
in having first been broken off?
If he can graft in a wild branch,
how much more can he graft in the
natural branch?
So that my first service of God pastor
was astounded at my progress.
I took notes like they were going out
of style, the first six months, every word
out of his mouth, and after that I
was off.
He had never seen a convert more readily
soak up the faith than I.
It was not that I have some particular
ability, but I was a statement of the
natural branch being grafted into its own root
and sucking up what was natural to me.
And maybe for that reason the Jewish believers
have less resistance to the Holy Spirit, the
gifts of the Spirit, the baptisms of the
Spirit than other believers.
It seems to be a more natural mode
of being for us.
So it's something about the natural branch being
grafted into its own root.
But Paul says, don't boast against them, but
rather fear.
Contemplate the goodness and the severity of God.
Goodness toward you, but severity toward them.
And I believe that the absence or the
loss of fear in the church, which is
a distinguishing factor that is becoming to the
church, is altogether the absence of this acknowledgment.
We do not fear God because we have
not recognized his severity toward Israel.
When we see how far will God with
his own, because what has it meant for
us to be broken up off of our
own tree?
What has it meant for us to be
set aside for two thousand years?
What mishap, what mischief, what great catastrophes of
history from the Spanish Inquisition to the Holocaust
have befallen us in the new America, the
new Spain.
We were burned at the stake in Mexico
City in the 1500s as Jews.
Wherever we have gone, we've been persecuted.
We've been knocked from pillar to post.
We've suffered for the want of the blood
of Messiah.
They're covering the protection.
They're keeping power.
We have been open and vulnerable to every
oppressive thing calculated for our disaster.
It has cost the Jewish people plenty to
be cut off from their own tree, to
be set aside.
That's the severity of God.
It was judgment, deserved judgment, but we need
to recognize and not be offended by the
severity of God.
That his judgments are always redemptive.
They're never vindictive.
It's never a God who's out of sorts
and taking advantage, not a rub of salt
into an open wound.
It's a severity in proportion to justice, to
righteousness, calculated finally toward a repentance and a
return.
But for us to fail to see the
severity of God and to dismiss the Holocaust
as a historical accident, an aberration of history,
the rise of a character by the name
of Hitler, and not to see God's hand
in the suffering of the Jewish people, and
what it has cost us to be set
aside, is not to see God.
To see God in judgment is to see
God in full.
There's something about it that makes us uncomfortable
because how do we reconcile a God who
is severe, a God who judges, with a
God whom we know also to be merciful,
kind, and loving?
Is he contradicting himself?
Or are his judgments compatible with his mercies?
And in the last analysis, if you see
deeply enough, you can even say his judgments
are his mercies.
So the issue of Israel, again, is the
issue of God.
And the Church suffers from an inadequate knowledge
of God, an inadequate awe of God, an
inadequate reverence, because it has not noted what
Paul is here specifying, the severity and the
goodness of God.
Don't major on his goodness alone, and exclude
his severity, because when they crucified Jesus, they
had to gamble for his tunic, his garment,
because it was without a seam.
It could not be parceled in part.
There were no parts, it's all continuous, and
so is God himself.
And that's the God that we need to
know, celebrate, worship, and love.
And when you love his judgments, it's ultimate
love.
To love God in his judgments is to
love him in his righteousness, and to see
that even in his judgment, it's not a
cruel and vindictive God, but that his judgment
always has ultimately a great and redemptive end.
He's not abusing his power just for the
enjoyment thereof.
And what does it say?
That in all of our trial, all of
our affliction, he also is afflicted.
He's not standing aloof, watching what falls upon
his people.
He's with them, and that's why Jesus wept
at Jerusalem on the way to the cross.
He knew what was ahead for the Jewish
people in their history, having missed the day
of their visitation, and what it would cost.
But he's been with them in their expulsion.
You need to read about the Spanish Inquisition.
I forgot how short a period, 30 days?
I forgot, maybe a few months or less,
where Jews had to either convert to Catholicism
or pick up and leave.
Having lived for centuries in Spain, having been
established, having been a viable part of the
whole Spanish civilization, uprooted and cast off, who
knows where, into North Africa, into Portugal, where,
even after a short time, they would be
expelled there, into the New World, where they'd
be burned at the stake in Mexico City
and places in the southwest of America.
It's heart-rending.
It's an ache.
It's an agony.
It's a long travail, the severity of God.
It's a moot question to ask whether we
can move Jews to jealousy without exhibiting the
fruit that can only come through the operation
of the sap that issues from the root
of this tree.
You're not following me?
Unless you're consciously and gratefully grafted in and
partake of the fat and the substance of
the root, which is the life of God,
how can you be fruit-bearing?
And it's that this fruit that moves Jews
to jealousy, because it's fruit of a distinctive
kind, and from a branch that hithertofore has
never borne fruit.
It's been fruitless, being wild.
Now it exhibits and issues in a fruit
that can only be the result of a
special substance that flows out of the root
of this tree, which is nothing less nor
other than the life of God itself.
And I'm saying, unless we are gratefully grafted
in, we cannot partake of that substance.
We're in technically, but the sap doesn't come
to us because it's a proportion to a
faith, which is humility and gratitude.
So God is reconciling all of these historic
entities and differences in the whole symbolism of
this tree.
And that if he was able to graft
you in, who by every reckoning are wild,
how much more can he graft his own
natural people again into their own tree?
And when he does, what will it be?
Nothing less than life from the dead.
Isn't it just like God to get at
Gentile pride and say, you can never be
what you ought independent of that tree.
I know you want to be an independent
entity, a church in and of itself, accomplishing
great deeds.
But unless you're grafted into that particular tree,
that loathsome and repulsive thing that you want
to avoid, there's no prospect for fulfillment.
I'm nailing you.
You want to be independent and find your
own fulfillment independent of them.
But I'm saying, no, you'll find it in
them and with them, or you'll not find
it at all.
Eat your heart out.
This is my genius.
This is my design.
So make peace with it and receive it
with gratitude.
However ugly that tree is, however much you
would avoid it, it is the one rooted,
planted thing in which my life flows.
We need to contemplate, what is the root
of antagonism of the Jew against Jesus that
required his death?
What was the offense?
What did he represent that they found so
threatening that there would be no answer but
to extirpate it, to remove his life?
You need to consider that.
I'll just throw this out for a teaser.
I don't think that I can myself on
the spot explicate it.
The root of antagonism against Jesus is the
threat to self-righteousness that he's introducing an
alternative to a Judaism by which one's salvation
is affected by one's own effort, one's own
conduct, one's own being.
Now it's the grace by which everything is
given and you receive by faith in which
you cannot boast for even that is a
gift.
Can you believe that men would be so
antagonized to be robbed of the prospect of
self-righteousness that they will kill to retain
it?
That I believe is at the nub of
the antagonism against Christ, and it's a nub
that remains to this day.
That the deep need for men to establish
themselves by their own rectitude, their own behavior,
their own conduct in which they could boast
is at the very heart of the matter.
It's necessary for the nation that one man
die.
The charge of blasphemy was a legal claim.
I'm getting at the thing that is under
the surface.
The depth of the antagonism is that the
basis for self-realization, self-righteousness is itso
facto removed by the advent of Christ in
a grace of salvation freely given by faith
which is not of yourself.
Well that's an insult, what about me?
And men will die and kill to be
self-righteous and in killing reveal that their
self-righteousness is ultimate fraud.
So now we get to the heart of
this great chapter.
Having been set up by Paul, you see
the logic as it's being unfolded to fit
us now for the punchline, verse 25, for
I would not brethren you should be ignorant
of this mystery, lest you should be wise
in your own conceit, that blindness in part
is happened to Israel until the fullness of
the Gentiles be come in, and so all
Israel shall be saved as it is written,
there shall come out of Zion the deliverer
shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this
is my covenant with them, when I shall
take away their sins.
As concerning the gospel they are the enemies
for your sake, but as touching the election
they are beloved for the father's sakes, for
the gifts and callings of God, are without
repentance for it, and you in times past
have not believed God, yet have now obtained
mercy through their unbelief, even so have these
also now not believed that through your mercy
they also may obtain mercy, for God has
concluded them all in unbelief that he might
have mercy upon all.
It's almost impossible to break into any single
verse of Paul, like the one verse flows
into the next, it's like a continuum of
a divine logic that insinuates itself in Paul's
statements.
It's remarkable, it's beyond prose, it's beyond any
conventional use of language, it's a man luxuriating
in the revelation of God and finding expression
by the spirit to instruct the church of
all ages in the heart of this mystery
that all Israel shall be saved as it
is written, but because it is written it's
incumbent upon God to perform it, because if
he cannot perform what is written, if he
cannot perform what he has covenanted, how is
he God?
So the church ought to have the greatest
jealousy for the fulfillment of what Paul is
now speaking, not only for Israel's sake but
more especially for God's sake, that he is
God, that he honors what is written, he
honors the covenant that he has spoken, and
that Israel is the test of that divinity
and that faithfulness, and we should not be
ignorant of this mystery lest we become wise
in our conceit.
Well, I believe what Paul warned has fallen.
If anything characterizes the church today, it's the
absence of the fear of God and the
marked characteristic of a hubris of pride, a
presumption that has taken many forms, not the
least of which is kingdom now.
Doesn't have to wait for the king's coming,
the church itself will establish the kingdom, the
church itself will take over the institutions of
society and so on and so forth, when
it can't even fight its way out of
a paper bag, its own houses are demoralized,
and yet it talks about the presumption of
being itself the kingdom.
So exactly what Paul warned has befallen us,
because the only thing that would have prevented
this kind of presumption and pride is the
humility of being tempered by the subject of
Israel itself.
Something comes into the believer and into the
church of a tempering kind when it recognizes
the mystery of the severity and the goodness
of God.
And if that is lacking, then we will
necessarily slip into forms of presumption and arrogance,
which the Jews have historically, I call the
church, the arrogant kingdom.
Is that something?
That far from revealing the nature of the
lamb, Jews have seen as the arrogant kingdom,
because we have exhibited the very pride of
which Paul said would befall us if we
will remain ignorant of this mystery.
The mystery is calculated for our good, is
given to us to temper us, to hallow
the church, to bring dimensions of a modifying
kind without which the church becomes disfigured.
That's the mystery is so potent in itself,
that it alone has the power to bring
this modifying and modifying influence to pass for
the church.
But if it's absent, we will necessarily suffer
the pride that Paul foretells.
And in fact, it's not an excessive question
to raise to what degree is in fact
the church cut now?
To what degree have those branches either been
broken off or allowed to remain, but to
remain only as a stick, still a dead
stick, still a wild stick, still not fruit
bearing.
And his condition is so pathetic, it doesn't
even know it.
So if that's the lamentable condition of the
church, how is it to be remedied by
coming back into the appropriation of the mystery
and the things that are set forth here?
And how will the church obtain this?
Who brings that message?
Is it going to come from its own
pastors who are gainsayers and have their own
careers to pursue?
It's got to come from someone outside them.
It's got to come from a prophetic voice
that brings and communicates the mystery of this
faith.
So the question is, where are such men?
How are they being groomed?
And who's receiving them?
May be the real key issue of our
hour.
The formation of prophetic and apostolic men to
whom alone are given the credentials and the
authority to communicate mystery.
A teacher cannot do it.
Once it's broken, once the foundational thing is
conveyed by men of that kind, then the
teacher can come and draw out the implications
for the church of that locality and what
they have been given.
But he himself cannot bring the foundational word.
It must come from foundational men.
So we're back again to the question of
true and false apostles and prophets, which is
probably the great question of our hour.
And count on it that the true men
will be denounced as false and the faulties
will be celebrated as true.
So it's a real internal struggle of great
moment and consequence for the church.
Just as Paul does not tell us in
detail what it takes to move them to
jealousy, he doesn't tell us in detail what
it means for the fullness of Gentiles to
become men.
We can only surmise it means dimensions of
an ultimate spiritual kind.
And can those dimensions be fulfilled without the
embrace of this mystery and the identification with
people and the willingness to share in their
suffering and even in their judgments?
That when a church itself voluntarily embraces that
identification and suffering, that is the fullness.
So it's remarkable what he leaves unsaid and
allows us to draw out from the heart
of God and the implications by the spirit.
But that word fullness must imply a taking
to ourselves the destiny, the calling of Israel,
their suffering, their shame of their last days,
apostasy, their expulsion.
But when that identification is true in us
who have no reason to embrace it because
it's entirely voluntary, then the deliverer will come
out of Zion.
The Lord knows when the conditions have been
fulfilled.
He's waiting for something in the church.
And so therefore the deliverer shall come out
of Zion when?
When the fullness of the Gentiles become men.
It's not going to be a fullness that's
cheaply obtained without suffering.
In fact, it's just fair to expect it
will be obtained through suffering.
And so whereas there are people who will
volunteer, make themselves candidates for suffering in order
to obtain a fullness by which the deliverance
comes out of Zion and saves Israel from
their sins.
It's not to be expected.
It confounds or contradicts any natural reckoning of
what can be expected by man.
But it's a testimony that a people, Gentiles,
have come into such a union with God
as to share his heart, his mind, his
very constitution and makeup that that fullness is
the fullness of the Lord himself now expressed
in the body by a people who have
voluntarily submitted themselves as candidates from suffering to
obtain it.
Priests who have no requirement to do so.
They could have played church for the rest
of their days and have their Sunday services
and their programs.
No, they put themselves in a place of
a special vulnerability.
They announce to the Lord and make clear
to the powers of darkness.
We're willing for this fullness, whatever the cost
to ourselves, whatever the sacrifice, whatever the suffering.
That very thing, that very announcement causes such
a fear in the powers of darkness as
to violently shake their whole kingdom of darkness.
That there's a people in the earth willing
to suffer for suffering is the antithesis of
the spirit of the world and the mentality
of the powers is the avoidance of suffering.
It's the pursuit of pleasure, self-aggrandizement, me,
me, me, for people to turn their back
on that false wisdom and basis for life
and to embrace the cross, which is suffering
for another sake so that the deliverer can
come out of Zion through transgression from Jacob,
according to the covenants made with them.
That Gentiles will do this for Jews, it's
unheard of.
Why would they?
There's no natural reason to expect it or
to request it.
That they are willing voluntarily to do so
is itself a mystery and an ultimate statement
of the redemptive work of God, who has
taken a people off the donkey and made
them to sit with the princes of this
people.
He's given them their mind, his mind, his
heart, his what he is in himself has
become what they are in themselves.
And because they are that, they are not
only the key to Israel's redemption, they are
the bride for the bridegroom, because such a
bride is appropriate for the bridegroom and for
which the Lord waits to have a bride
adorned for the bridegroom, means a companion fit
for the king.
And so by the process of our identification
with Israel and the suffering to which we
make ourselves candidate, that final fullness can be
formed by which the mystery of Israel is
fulfilled, but also our graduation as the bride
of Christ eternally.
So all of the mysteries are comprehended at
the end, but the modus vivendi, the means
by which they are obtained is the crisis
of Israel as it is presented to the
church, which may be the reason why the
church is ignorant of the mystery, because they
sense it means suffering.
This is not something for the coffee table
clutch that you can show yourself clever and
you know the mystery of Israel.
To open yourself to the mystery is to
make yourself a candidate for its fulfillment through
your suffering.
So you're wise to avoid it and well
I don't understand, I don't want to understand,
but it's the statement of ultimate devotion to
the Lord.
Why?
Because this chapter ends for of him and
through him and to him are all things
to whom be glory forever.
We're willing for this offering because nothing else
will glorify the Lord forever than the fulfillment
of the mystery of Israel.
And because we're jealous for that eternal glory
and know that it will not be obtained
in any other way except through the fulfillment
of this mystery, we're making ourselves in the
last days candidates for that fullness.