The Rest Were Hardened - Part 2

What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The believers obtained it, and the rest refused to believe. That's the way we write it. And we write it that way because that's true. Biblically true, but that's not what this text says. And so when I come to a text like this as a pastor, preaching my way through a book like Romans, I say, what am I supposed to do with this? And I'll tell you what I feel, that the bottom line feeling, I have other feelings above the bottom line. Get pushed aside. The bottom line feeling is God loves Bethlehem Baptist Church and the people who come here. God inspired Paul to reveal this sentence to us. Therefore, it's good for us. That's my bottom line feeling. Whatever else I may feel, that's the bottom. God inspired the Bible. This is in the Bible. God means therefore for me to read this. Therefore, it's good for me to read it. Now, I don't know whether I'm going to continue with this next Sunday or not. I'm up in the air. But if I continue next Sunday, what I'm going to do is come back and talk about some of the issues surrounding what it means to be a fallible, sinful, finite knower. Like me and you. We know things that are revealed to us in the Bible. But we are sinful and we're finite. We're fallible. And therefore, we can make hash of a lot of true things that are revealed to us as sinners and fallible and finite. What then are we to do as knowers of truth that is sometimes complex and hard and offensive? I'll work with that a little bit next week with you if the Lord so leads. I have three questions to ask of this sentence. One, what is hardening? Two, when did it happen? Three, what's the basis of it? That's today's message. Number one, what is hardening? What's this hardening? Now, the explanation and the answer for all three of these come in the following verses, 8 through 10. They are all quotations from the Old Testament. Isaiah 29:10, Deuteronomy 29:4, and Psalm 69, 22 to 23. You don't need to look those up. I'll try to go slow enough so that you can ponder them along the way. Let me read these verses and you be answering in your own minds, if you can, the questions. What is it? When did it happen? And what's the basis for it, this hardening? Because that's why these verses are here. Paul has just said the explanation of the rest is they were hardened. Verse 8, as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day. And David says, now he quotes the Psalm 69, which is a psalm of cursing and sometimes called the imprecatory psalms, where curses are called down. David says, let their table become a snare and a trap. He's talking about Israel. Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see and bend their backs forever. So, what's the answer to the first question? What is hardening? Well, I think verse 8 is pretty plain. God gave them a spirit of stupor, that is a spirit of numbness, insensitivity, and the result was being spiritually blind and deaf, eyes that would not see, ears that would not hear. So, they were physically able to see and physically able to hear, but when they heard about God, when they heard about spiritual things, they heard them as foolishness. They were deaf to beauty, deaf to reality. All they heard with their physical ears and their natural mind was, that's stupid. That's not nearly as much fun as TV. It's not nearly as cool as sports, etc, etc, etc. That's what the mind did. Now, in verse 9, he quotes Psalm 69 to unpack this further, and there's some very interesting things here. I hope you'll listen carefully to. Psalm 69, Paul takes to be fulfilled in the life of Jesus. In other words, the things that David spoke about his enemies, Paul sees as the Son of David, Jesus Christ, experiencing from his enemies. You can see that in at least three ways. For example, zeal for your house has consumed me. Psalm 69, 9, which Jesus applied to himself, or the disciples applied to him in John 12, John 2, verse 12, when he cleansed the temple. He quoted, they quoted, that Psalm as applying to Jesus. Or, the second part of that verse, 69, 9, the reproaches of those who reproached you have fallen on me. And Paul quotes that in Romans 15, 3, as applying to Jesus. It was David saying that it was experienced, his experience. Or, just before these verses that he quotes, they gave me poison for my food and my thirst. They gave me sour wine to drink. Luke 23, 36 applies that to Jesus on the cross, as they gave sour wine to Jesus. So, as the biblical writers looked at Psalm 69, with all of its cursings being called down, they stepped back and they saw David as a type of the Son of David to come, and they saw how he was being treated so badly, and how, in the name of God, he was saying, judgment will come upon those who are doing that. Now, Jesus is fulfilling, he's filling up that original experience in his experience, and those curses then wind up in verse 9 and 10, in relationship to Israel surrounding the Son of David. So, let's see what they say. Verse 9, David says, Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block, and a retribution for them. Now, what do you think table stands for here? What's the point of talking about a table becoming a stumbling block? How do you stumble over your dining room table? How do you... How does your dining room table become a trap for you? Any ideas? Well, here's mine, and I'm not alone in this. I think sitting around a table with a meal on it is simply a picture of absolute normalcy. A lot of good things on the table, food, pleasures about to happen as you get ready to eat, fellowship around the table. And this text is saying, Hardening, hardening will involve the...