Romans No.25 Is God finished with the Jew?

If you can't see the overhead, this is number 28. We'll stand and sing while others are gathering. At your feet we fall, mighty risen Lord, as we come before your throne to worship you.

By your Spirit's power, you now draw our hearts, as we stand before your throne. At your feet we fall, mighty risen Lord, as we come before your throne to worship you. By your Spirit's power, you now draw our hearts, and we hear your voice in triumph, ringing clear.

I am here that liveth, that liveth and was dead. Behold, I am alive forevermore. There we see you stand, mighty risen Lord, clothed in garments pure and holy, shining bright.

Eyes of flashing fire, feet like burnished bronze, and the sound of many waters is your voice. I am here that liveth, that liveth and was dead. Behold, I am alive forevermore.

Like the shining sun in its noonday bright, eyes that face was mocked, now you're glorified, and your words, like a two-edged sword, have mighty power. I am here that liveth, that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore.

How lovely are, how lovely are. This is a song that finds its initial inspiration in the passage of Scripture that we were looking at the other week. Let's sing it again, shall we? It's 176, if you can't see the overhead.

How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news. You may not have looked at your feet recently, but if you bring good news, then you have good, nice-looking feet. How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, good news, revealing peace, announcing news of happiness.

A God reigns, a God reigns, a God reigns, a God reigns, a God reigns, a God reigns. You watchmen lift your voices joyfully as one shout for your King, your King. See eye to eye the Lord restoring Zion.

Your God reigns, your God reigns, a God reigns. Now look at this fourth verse. The composer of the song makes us address the earth, which has some scriptural justification.

Yes, it's part of God's creation, of course. Ends of the earth see the salvation of your God, Jesus his Lord. We were praying much earlier on today about the fact that the earth does belong to the Lord, and God's not through with the earth.

The heaven and earth will one day pass away, but pass away to be rejuvenated. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. We're in sort of mind-boggling concepts, which are not easy to describe.

It's hard to estimate all that God is going to do. But I like to sing these sort of hymns and just imagine the glory of God in parts of the world where I see very little evidence of it. Some of the poverty-stricken areas of Africa, the great difficulties that they have in Pakistan and Bangladesh, areas that have not opened to the gospel of Jesus.

Let's envisage them, not just with a third-world bias, as spiritual poverty is not in Europe, in our own country, maybe in our own town, or certainly in our own town. So as we're singing these familiar words, let your mind go out to these areas where you want to see the glory of God, a manifest power of God releasing itself in our world. Let's pray to that end.

Let's pray for the people in Iran. Let's pray for that Ayatollah, that God will either take him or change him. And let's pray for everyone who has influence over another, who sometimes uses that influence to harm.

Ends of the earth, see the salvation of your God. Jesus is Lord. Ends of the earth, see the salvation of your God.

Jesus is Lord, is Lord. Before the nations, He has been His holy arm. Your God reigns.

So I'll leave it to the men sitting at the back. Or the women with initiative. Why should I be so chauvinist to suggest that only the men have initiative? To open the door if necessary.

Chapter 11. Can I say just before we start that tape rolling that I'm going to republish these notes on Sunday. There are one or two small errors.

It was my fault. I was working at a fair pace today. And there are just one or two fiddling little things that are annoying me, nothing very significant.

But we'll pull off some different copies on Sunday. And so you can get another edition on Sunday if you like. But we are going to be working our way through the notes that I've handed out to you this evening.

And we turn to the Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 11 for the 26th study, entitled, slightly revised from what was in our church bulletin, Is God Finished with the Jew? Is God Through with the Jew? Well, let's read Chapter 11, see what Paul has to say in the first 16 verses. I ask then, did God reject his people by no means? I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people whom he foreknew.

Don't you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah? How he appealed to God against Israel, Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me. And what was God's answer to him? I have reserved for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

So too, at the present time, there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer by works. If it were, grace would no longer be grace.

What then? What Israel sought so earnestly, it did not obtain, but the elect did. The others were hardened, as it is written. God gave them a spirit of stupor.

God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see, and ears so they could not hear, to this very day. And David says, May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever.

Again I ask, did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all. Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring? I am talking to you, Gentiles.

Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry, in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy. If the root is holy, so are the branches.

Well, we break our reading there, and then next time I'm privileged to address you from this chapter. I'll take it up from the 17th verse. This is one of the most difficult chapters in the whole of the Bible, and the first half is perhaps of the two parts slightly easier.

When Napoleon was asked if he could in two words give some justification for his belief in God, he said, yes, the Jew, the Jew. Now, whether you agree with him or not, that that gives evidence for the existence of God. One point that he was, I think, subtly making, I don't see how you can argue with, and that is that the existence of the Jew is really a phenomena or a phenomenon that is inexplicable or virtually so outside the supernatural preservation of God.

The Jewish race are a remarkable race. There has hardly ever been, in fact, I think you could say that there has never been a race that has been so persecuted, a race that has been so harassed in history, and yet a race that has given to the world more brilliant people than has the Jewish nation. Martin Luther, alas, to his discredit, and there's a lot to his credit, was one of the many people in history who have said some rather savage things about the Jews, and he, from what he felt, was a biblical platform.

The Catholic Church has very often been critical of the Jews, and I'm not sure to this day whether the Sea of Rome actually recognizes Israel as a nation in its own right. If it does, it's only recently done so. So we come to ask a question that has more than just theological interest this evening.

Is God finished with the Jew? Because there have certainly been a lot of people in history who wanted to finish with the Jew themselves. And there are certain verses in this epistle that Powell writes to the Romans that seems to indicate that God indeed might be finished with the Jew. Let me take you to a couple of them.

Let's go to Romans chapter 2 and verse 29, or rather verses 28 and 29, where Paul redefines what a Jew actually is. A man is not a Jew, Romans 2, 28, a man is not a Jew if he only is one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart by the spirit, not by the written code.

Such a man's praise, the word Jew, actually gives the flavor of the Hebrew word praise. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God. You see the implication there, that a true Jew is not one who is ethnically related to Abraham.

Let me give you another example where Paul is somewhat provocative in his teaching on a similar line. Let's keep on to the 4th chapter and the 16th verse, shall we? 4th chapter, verse 16, Paul's referring to the faith of Abraham and the benefits of that faith, and who really is a true descendant of Abraham. Therefore the promise comes by faith, so it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring, not only to those who are of the law.

Those are Jews who have received the law, the Jewish nation, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations.

He is the father in the sight of God in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. So here Paul is arguing that Abraham is the father, not just of ethnic Jews, literal Jews, but he's the father of all who evidence a similar faith to the faith of Abraham. So you see how germane, how necessary is my question.

Is God finished with the Jew, the ethnic Jew? The Hebrew that is generally understood by that word, is God no longer interested in him? Now let's look at a couple of difficult concepts from Scripture. You take our Lord Jesus, when in John's Gospel he's referring to the great emblem of the Jewish nation. I refer to, I'm mentioning the vine.

Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches. If you'd gone to the temple in Jerusalem in the days of Jesus, you'd have seen emblazoned across the outer gates of the temple, the sculpture of the vine. And the vine, if you like, was the badge, the flag of the nation.

Now God had great purposes for the nation of Israel of old. Not so. They were a very gifted community of people.

You only have I known of all the nations of the world. And their symbol was the vine, the fruitful vine. And Jesus says, now he's speaking of himself to his disciples, I am the vine, you are the branches.

As though, to quote Campbell Morgan, at that particular point, our Lord Jesus, having been rejected by his people, generally speaking, is now rejecting them and saying, not in historic Israel, but amongst those who admit to my declaration of the gospel, you will carry through the purposes of God into this world. I am the vine. You, the handful of men, 11 true men, multiplied on the day of Pentecost, multiplied further throughout the acts of the apostles, you who acknowledge who I am, you are the branches.

You will trail around the world and fulfill what God had in store to do originally through ethnic Jews. Strong teaching, yet the conclusion is very difficult to offset that Campbell Morgan makes. It's put perhaps even more precisely by our Lord Jesus when reference is made in Matthew's gospel, the 21st chapter and the 43rd verse, to him in the name of God passing the kingdom on to others who are more worthy of the kingdom than were the ancient people of God, ethnic Israelites.

Now, add to those little comments, and you can work through my argument again by going through my notes. That's why I sweat over these notes and try and distill them into a reasonable precis so that you can look them up further if they're of any help to you. You can add to these particular arguments the references that you get in the New Testament to Israel no longer being the literal descendants of Abraham, but being the folk who have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.

When Paul writes to the Galatians, he calls the Galatians the Israel of God. When the apostle Peter quotes from Hosea from the Old Testament writings, and he describes the New Testament children of God, he says, you are a royal priesthood. You are a holy nation.

He's not referring to his own kith and kin. He's referring to all who have trusted the Lord Jesus as a result of his preaching and the preaching of his contemporaries. You can find time and time again in the New Testament the writers delving into the Old Testament, taking out descriptive concepts of Israel and applying those concepts to the church in the New Testament.

So one is hovering on the conclusion, hovering on the conclusion, that the kingdom of God has been transferred from ethnic Israel, from ethnic Jews, to the church of Jesus Christ. And through the church of Jesus Christ, God will fulfill his purposes on the earth. And as I say, I find it very hard to reject that argument, though some have attempted it.

So we come back then to this point. Has God therefore no purpose at all now for the Jew, the ethnic Jew, the literal descendant of Abraham? Is God, to put it pithily, through with the Jew? The answer is no. It's got to be, hasn't it? Because the apostle Paul makes it clear by twice, with a negative and with a positive, making the point that God still retains interest in the Jews, his own people.

Verse 1, I ask then, did God reject his people? By no means. I am an Israelite myself. Verse 2, God did not reject his people whom he foreknew.

Don't you know what the scripture says? And so forth. Paul is a tantalizing man sometimes when he argues. You think that you've sort of anticipated what he's going to say.

You don't feel that he can say anything else but what your own presupposition is at that point. And then you discover, like they used to say in the north of England of Harold Wilson, when you've closed your eyes, he was in the different corner of the boxing ring from where you thought he was going to get to. Well, perhaps that wasn't a very good analogy.

But nonetheless, you see the point that the apostle Paul can sometimes surprise us. And he declares that God is not through with the Jews. In other words, though he is arguing that the promises that God made to Abraham are going to be realized on a far more international scale than just the readership of the Old Testament might have imagined.

Nonetheless, despite that, God still has an interest in a concern for his ancient people. There are those within Israel, ethnic Israel, who are still very much bound up within the plan of God for this world. When I was a lad, many years ago now, walking through the marketplaces of that great city which anyone with any sense would like to be born in, Sheffield, yes, you were right.

You anticipated my argument. I didn't go into another part of the ring. We go through the market.

But what was I saying? I forgot my point now. We were going through the marketplace and we didn't have an awful amount of money. Well, we didn't.

My brother and I didn't have anything. But my mum and dad, it was just after the war, and my mum would always be out for a bargain. And when the house needed new curtains, well, she couldn't afford the good curtains in sort of upper class shops, so she would go and she'd look for the remnants.

And today you can get the same, can't you? If you go to market, you get the remnants. You get the bargains. And here is the apostle, and he's making reference to the word remnant.

And he puts it, first of all, in an Old Testament context. You'll see how he links all this up in a moment or two. He's going to take you, you see, from the, where are we, the third verse, is it? Yes, from the third verse through to the sixth.

He's going to take you into an Old Testament period when the Jews have largely, as alas they recurrently did, they have largely rejected the teachings of God. And a great reformer, if you like the Billy Graham of his day, a man by the name of Elijah with tremendous passion and enthusiasm went up and down the country calling people to, well, if not get up out of their seats, certainly to come back to the God of their forefathers. And Elijah was having a rough time in as much as not many people were responding to his appeal.

Do you recall how on one occasion in depression, and aren't you glad that the Bible's honest about Elijah? I am. I can identify with Elijah because I've done an Elijah many a time. Monday was a case in point.

Filled with depression, he comes to the point, he comes to the invalid conclusion, I am the only one left. They're trying to kill me. And verse four says, God's speaking, you've got it wrong, Elijah.

There are 7,000 people who have not bowed the knee to Baal. You're not the only one. There are these 7,000 Israelites who are still in the covenant that I made with Abraham.

In effect, they are examples of the remnant. The remnant. Not in terms of leftovers that don't matter, but actually the only people that really do matter as far as Abraham's descendants are concerned at the time of Elijah, because these are the folk who are holding true to the faith of Abraham and Moses and so forth.

Now the apostle says, as there was a remnant in those days, so at the time of my preaching, going up and down the streets of the cities of Asia Minor, so too at the present time there is a remnant, a remnant of Jews chosen by grace. So God can't be through with His people. Paul always backs off, and we're going to have to analyze this more next time, backs off from saying that simply because a man is a Jew, he will be saved.

And he certainly won't offer any other mode of salvation to anyone, be they Jew and Gentile, apart from the cross of our Lord Jesus. But the apostle is making it plain that as Elijah was surrounded by, though he didn't appreciate it, 7,000 true men and women, so at the time of Paul writing, despite the obduracy, the hardness of the heart of Jewish people, largely when they heard the gospel, there were still some whose eyes were opened, whose ears were sensitive to the word of grace spoken by the apostles. You see, you can overplay, can't you, the negative reaction of the Jews to the early proclamation of the gospel.

If you read through Acts chapter 6, you'll discover in the seventh verse that many priests at Jerusalem became Christians. It's a most interesting scripture, that. You might have thought that there were very few converts, but the converts were fairly large in number, and some very influential.

Many priests became Christians. And you discover that when Paul was moving around Asia Minor, though he was largely rejected by Jews, there were Jews who responded. In other words, he was discovering, as did Elijah, that not only in Palestine, but wherever the diaspora was, that was the scattering of the Jews around the world, wherever there were pockets, enclaves of Jews, when the gospel was preached, some of these people would make response.

There is a remnant. Therefore, God cannot be through completely with the nation by any means. But it will be on the basis of them responding to the gospel of the Lord Jesus.

There's no other way. Not the labor of my hands can fulfill thy law's demands. Verse six, If by grace, then it is no longer by works.

If it were grace, would no longer be grace. This remnant are saved on the same basis as Gentiles. Well then, says the apostle, verse seven, considering the problem of the larger number of the Jewish people who have not accepted and who remain stubborn and resistant the purposes of God in Old Testament times as well as in Paul's days, what of these people? Well, the apostle declares they failed.

They failed to obtain what they sought earnestly because the way that they were going about trying to gain salvation was utterly inappropriate. They were trying to do it by their own works and it's impossible by works. They were trying to do it by setting aside what God had revealed to them in terms of a moral change in their own hearts.

They were concerned about the cosmetic aspects of religion, the sacrifices that were brought, the ritual in the temple and so on and so forth. But they resisted. They resisted God's plea for them to be concerned about the circumcision of their hearts and their kindliness to the poor and so on and so forth.

And this resistance which is typified in the resistance that Pharaoh showed to God in the overtures of Moses, this resistance God takes and takes until the time comes when He hardens even Jewish people. And here are two illustrations of that. One from the prophet Isaiah in the eighth verse and the other from the psalmist David who predicts that of their people there are a number, a large number who having resisted what God revealed they themselves find themselves to be in a position outside of salvation.

God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see. Verse 9 May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. Very somber passages of Scripture are they not.

But that somber passage of Scripture is followed happily by something that is much more encouraging. The apostle in the eleventh verse goes on to tell us, however, that this condition that the Jewish people have fallen into though there are the exceptions there is the remnant this condition need not necessarily be final. Look at verse 11.

Again I ask, did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? The possibility here is of the retrieval of many Jews as far as God's purposes are concerned in the gospel. Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all. Rather, says the apostle, and here he's going on one of his tangents if you find preachers going on tangents they've got biblical justification.

Rather, says the apostle, though they have shown such hardness of heart to what God has been saying in the Old Testament and indeed in the gospel of Christ through the New Testament that in one sense has brought out the valuable spin-off brought about the valuable spin-off that salvation has come to the Gentiles. You remember it's the practice of the apostle Paul to go to the Jew first in the synagogues and when the Jews won't listen to him he then turns to the Gentiles. And because of the hardness of the heart of the Jews Gentiles are brought in with the possibility of them being saved as they have been as the apostle has been arguing in the 10th chapter in fairly large numbers.

Because of their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. Now here is the apostle with great enthusiasm with great hope anticipating that when the Gentiles or when the Jews see Gentiles enter into gospel blessing and God entering into a relationship with them that makes them very, very spiritually rich people it will prompt, it will provoke envy on their part and make them reconsider their own hardness and rejection of what God has been trying to say to them. Look at verse 12.

If their transgression means riches for the world that is the unbelieving the unbelieving nature of the Jews their transgression means that the gospel has gone to the Gentiles who can be enriched as a result their loss means riches for the Gentiles how much greater riches will their fullness bring? What does he mean by that? Well it seems to me that what he is saying in this word fullness is that he is looking forward to a time when Jewish people will largely respond to the gospel of the Lord Jesus. They rejected it on first hearing but the day will come when the remnant will increase in number when there will be more and more Jewish people who will acknowledge what God has been saying to the world through our Lord Jesus. Now you see how Paul is far from being a pessimist let me try to recover his argument a little and to praise him.

He is saying that as far as the kingdom of God is concerned it is no longer to be identified with the Old Testament people of God it has been passed over you can identify it now in some degree it anticipates the church of the living Christ and Gentiles in great numbers are members of that church but also within the church there are Jews a remnant God still has interest in his people and Paul sees that remnant swelling in number to a great proportion of Jewish folk. Now we have never seen the fulfillment of Paul's wish he is going to tell us a little bit more about it in the second half of this chapter. This is the reason you see why I would argue that we should always as Gentile people be very concerned about getting the gospel to the Jew praying for the Jew working for the evangelization of the Jew whatever the Jew did or did not do in terms of responding to the gospel that God offered to them it was still directed to the Jew first it still is so if you never pray for the Jews if you never pray for the diaspora the ethnic descendants of Abraham around the world then your prayer life is faulty you should be very concerned for the evangelization of the ethnic race of Abraham so Paul and he will draw his argument to a conclusion from the 13th verse Paul does some straight talking, doesn't he? and he addresses his remarks, of course, to the Gentiles twice Paul has told us about his great concern that the Jews, his people, shall be one for the Lord the 9th chapter, the 1st verse uniquely, he says I could wish myself, verse 3 I could wish myself accursed and cut off for Christ for the sake of my brothers the 1st verse of the 10th chapter brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved he may be an apostle to the Gentiles but he's an ethnic descendant of Abraham and he's concerned for his own kith and kin and so he tells us speaking to the Gentiles but declaring his own heart where he's at personally in his own understanding of his nation and his concern for his nation I am talking to you Gentiles inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them what's he saying there? well, I'm hoping that as my influence amongst Gentiles increases as more and more churches are founded as more and more Gentiles acknowledge who God is and enjoy saving blessing my own people will become envious my own people will see the results of what I, an insignificant Jew, am achieving and as a result of that they will rethink the gospel message addressed to them in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them he doesn't say all of them save some of them and then he repeats what we saw him say in the twelfth verse if their rejection is a reconciliation of the world if through their dismissal of the gospel offer that has gone to the Gentiles and enabled them to be reconciled to the Father through the Son what will their acceptance be? let's imagine it, says Paul imagine my dream has come true that Jewish people in their thousands have responded to the gospel my, he says, it would be such a magnificent miracle it would have the quality of being a resurrection act if their rejection is a reconciliation of the world what will their acceptance be but life from the dead he believes that that will happen and so he, in the final verse goes into the kitchen and into the garden and he gives us a couple of metaphors mixes them a little bit in his delightful way and leaves us to sort out what the main point that he's trying to emphasize if the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy then the whole batch is holy if the root is holy so are the branches what does he mean? we'd have to go back to Abraham Abraham was the first Jew the first one to walk in covenant relationship with the Lord in that sense, Abraham was a holy man the first part of the dough in that sense, Abraham was the root the root of the nation, the spiritual nation who received, Abraham received the accolade the friend of God now amongst that remnant of Abraham there's always been the holy dough there's always been the holy branches God has taken great delight in these people who have remained true to the ancestral convictions of Abraham he's gloried in that he's gloried in his true ancient people and if some of those branches trespassing on verse 17 in our next study if some of those branches have been broken off the possibility is that they could be restored if some of the dough never really achieved what God wanted it to achieve in terms of the holiness and the faithfulness of Abraham the possibility is the recovery of the position of Jewish people through the stimulus of the Holy Spirit and through their concerns to put their trust in the Lord Jesus so what I'm arguing, my friends and I'll try and justify my points even further next week is this God has not rejected his ancient people the gospel message still applies to them it needs to be put out it needs to be distributed broadly it needs to be watered with our prayers and with our tears though they fail God God has not failed them and he's entrusted to spiritual Israel the likes of you and me the responsibility of taking the gospel back to the literal sons of Abraham and we can anticipate before the great and glorious return of Jesus a massive conversion movement on the part of God's ancient people to that end you and I must work and pray let's pray right now number five we'll not cut any verses let's sing it all and let's stand and sing the God of Abraham praise who reigns enthroned above ancient of everlasting days and God of love Jehovah great I am by earth and heaven confessed and bless the sacred name forever blessed the God of Abraham praise at whose supreme command from earth I rise and seek the joys at his right hand forsake its wisdom fame and portion make my children himself a swan I on his oath depend I shall on eagle's wings abhorn to him a sin I shall behold his face I shall his parador and sing the wonders of his grace forever the Lord our king the Lord our righteousness triumphant or the world and sin the prince and sacred heights his kingdom he maintains and glorious with his saints in light forever triumphant halls give thanks to God on high the son and holy ghost they ever good and my heavenly the the