Home
Bible Study ©
Established
November 2008
Rightly
Dividing the Word of Truth
(2
Timothy 2:15)
This
is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to
be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 1Timothy 2:3-4
Romans by the Book Lesson
89
Welcome to HBS a
place I often refer to as Bible study-lite.
By this I mean to say here there are no schedules to keep, there are no
materials to purchase, no Bible verses to memorize, no unnecessary stress
brought on by imminent quizzes, and no testing on the subject matter. You study at your own pace and in the safety
and comfort of your home or office…easy peasy.
Back in the day, my classroom students never imagined it could be this effortless. I gain from this exchange as well, but I lose
some assets too. I don’t get to see
your smiling faces regularly, we’re missing the opportunity to develop
relationships, and I have no idea if you’re “getting it.” But it is what it is.
Last
week we looked carefully at Romans 11:1-6 and primarily verses 2-5 which cover
the principal of the remnant of
Israel. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. During the time of Paul’s writing and
even at this time in history a remnant exists
according to God’s gracious choice.
In
Paul’s day the majority of the Israelites rejected Jesus Christ as their
Messiah. However, a substantial number
of Jews accepted Paul’s Gospel and were saved by faith. In verse one Paul compared
himself to Elijah; effectively saying he too was a member of the faithful remnant. He may have also included himself in this
analogy because like Elijah he endured persecution from his countrymen. We also learned that throughout history God
has chosen to work through His faithful remnant. Here are some examples:
- Noah – Noah’s family was a faithful remnant supernaturally preserved through a divine deluge on the basis of divine grace (Genesis 7:23)
- Abraham – From out of all the people on this planet God sovereignly and graciously chose Abram with whom to make an unprecedented covenant (Genesis 12:1-3)
- Lot – Lot’s family was a faithful remnant supernaturally preserved through a divine disaster on the basis of His grace (Genesis 19:29)
- Isaac – Abraham had two sons, but only one was sovereignly and graciously chosen as the child of the promise (Genesis 17:19)
- Jacob – Isaac had twin sons, but only one was sovereignly and graciously chosen as the child of the promise (Genesis 28:13-15)
- A remnant of Israel was sovereignly preserved from divine judgment following the young nation’s apostasy at Mt Sinai (Exodus 32)
- Caleb and Joshua were the only members of the Exodus generation to enter the land of promise, following divine judgment (Numbers 14:38)
- Elijah was reminded that the Lord had sovereignly and graciously preserved 7,000 Israelites who had not bowed a knee to Baal (1 Kings 19:18)
- Upon the divine judgment of Assyrian conquest of Israel, the Lord sovereignly and graciously preserved a remnant from the northern tribes (Ezekiel 37:19)
- Upon the divine judgment of Babylonian exile, the Lord sovereignly and graciously preserved a remnant from the southern tribes and oversaw their return to their land (Zechariah 8:5)
- During the divine catastrophic judgment of the Tribulation, the Lord will sovereignly and graciously preserve a remnant (Revelation 7:4).
Let’s
begin. Please open your Bible at Romans
11:7.
Romans 11
7: What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained,
but those who were chosen (Greek translation = Ekloge) obtained it (Paul
is referring to both Jew and Gentile for now there is no difference – 1
Corinthians 12:13), and the rest were hardened;
The
Greek word for “blinded” and “hardened” is: Poroo
meaning – to cover with thick skin, to harden by covering with a callus; to make the heart dull, to grow hard, and
to lose understanding.
We
understand from our study of Romans 9-10 that Paul greatly desired to
communicate the Gospel to his kinsmen. We
know too from the Book of Acts that our Apostle Paul always preached God’s good
news to the Jews first for this is what God intended him to do (Acts
9:15). God would give His people every
opportunity to be saved individually by His grace, and God would prove through
the historical accounts in the book of Acts that the majority of the Jews would
remain firm in their unbelief. So, this
book stands as an everlasting report validating the “partial blindness” or
“hardened hearts” (Poroo) that has
come upon national Israel.
Therefore,
Israel was set aside for a time after
the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7) and God is now working in this parenthetical
era called the Grace Age where He is filling up the Body of Christ (His Church)
with both Gentiles and Jews. Before this
the LORD God worked primarily with the nation of Israel corporately with some
gentile exceptions but now God is working primarily with individual gentiles and
some Jewish exceptions.
There
is no longer such a thing as corporate redemption such as we find in the book
of Exodus and as this pertains to God’s covenant relationship with Israel. Under God’s Old Covenant He blessed or cursed
a people according to their birth (Deuteronomy 27-28). Under the New Covenant, God deals only with
people according to the “new birth” or as individuals. And
this thought takes us back to Romans 11:1, where Paul states, “God has not rejected His people…For I too
am an (individual) Israelite… (saved
by grace)
Paul
began his first missionary journey with the pronouncement of “blindness” on a magician and false prophet. Paul came
across a man named Barjesus in
Paphos, a coastal city in the southwest of Cyprus. He was a Jew, but not a
believing Jew. With this account God
gives us a clear picture of the “partial blindness” that happened to national
Israel which Paul speaks of in Romans 11.
Please
turn to the book of Acts at chapter 13. I
suggest you begin reading at verse 1 for your learning. For the sake of time we’ll start at verse 11.
Acts 13
11: “Now behold the hand of the Lord is upon you,
and you will be blind (Poroo)
and not see the sun for a time.” And immediately a mist and a darkness fell
upon him, and he went about seeking those who would lead him by the hand.
Now
flip back to the book of Romans, chapter 11, at verse 25.
Romans 11
25: For I do not
want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery – so that you will
not be wise in your own estimation – that a partial hardening (Poroo) has happened to Israel until (when you see the word “until”
in the text it relates to prophecy; it means God intends to do something in the
future. Here Scripture links the word
“until” with the future event) the fullness
of the Gentiles has come in;
When
the fullness of the Gentiles has come in,
the partial hardening (blindness) that
has happened to national Israel will be lifted. God’s Church will be raptured and sometime
after this event a 7-year peace treaty will be signed between the anti-christ
and the nation of Israel which triggers God’s prophetic time clock and Daniel’s
70th week. From that moment
on only 7 years of human history remain.
(Daniel 9:24-27).
If
you’ve read Acts 7, Acts 13:11, and Romans 9:25 carefully, and then consider conscientiously
all that God has done for national Israel, the “blindness” or “partial
hardening” the Bible texts speaks of is not so much a spiritual blindness as it
is Judicial Blindness imposed on Israel for her persistent rebellion and
unbelief.
Let’s
go to verse 8.
8: just as it is
written, “GOD GAVE THEM A SPIRIT OF STUPOR, (and) EYES TO SEE NOT AND EARS TO HEAR NOT, DOWN
TO THIS VERY DAY.” (Isaiah 6:9, 29,)
9: And David says, LET
THEIR TABLE BECOME A SNARE AND A TRAP, AND A STUMBLING BLOCK AND A
RETRIBUTION TO THEM. (Psalm 69:22)
10: (God can say,) “LET THEIR EYES BE DARKENED TO SEE NOT, AND
BEND THEIR BACKS FOREVER.” (Psalms
69:23)
Here
a spirit of stupor has been referred
to as: “an attitude of deadness towards spiritual things. Scripture has given us a word picture of men
who have gathered together, sitting around comfortably (no worries), at a
banquet; and it’s their very sense of comfort and safety that has brought about
their ruin! Their defenses are down and
the enemy has come in. The Jews security
rested in the idea of being God’s chosen people; a great privilege indeed. Scripture reveals that they even ate
with Jehovah (Exodus 24:11, 12; Leviticus 6:16, 7:18), but this false sense of
security, this national pride, caused them to stumble. This leads us right
into verse 11.
11: I say then,
they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them (what) jealous.
The
book of Psalms is much more than beautiful songs, poetry, and prose it also
contains quite a bit of prophecy and Psalms 69 is an example of this
truth.
Psalms
69 predicts the stumbling of Israel:
Psalms
69:8a – predicts the Jews would reject the Messiah
Psalms
69:8b – predicts the Messiah’s brothers would disbelieve Him
Israel
has not been rejected by God. Mark Twain
once said of Israel, “All things are
mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” Scripture holds the answer: The
LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in
whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be
praised, And I am saved from my enemies.
(Psalms 18:2-3)
Our
Apostle Paul saw the risen Lord Jesus Christ while on his way to Damascus (Acts
9:3-5). He visited in the heavenly
realms hearing and seeing things beyond our imagination which were unspeakable
(2 Corinthians 12:2-4). Paul faithfully
interpreted and preached Jesus Christ’s words during the remaining years of his
life. In his missionary journeys he
revealed God’s mysteries to us. Our
understanding of the church and its mission comes from Paul’s teachings. Thus when Paul says in Romans 11:2 God has not rejected His people whom He
foreknew we may accept this statement with the same authority and certainty
as though God Himself delivered it.
The
O.T. Scriptures ring out loud and clear on this topic as well. Please turn to Jeremiah 31:35. Here the LORD God speaks of the ordinances of
the sun, moon, stars, and the waves of the sea as fixed orders set by Him; then in verses 36-37 we have
this: “If this fixed order departs From before Me,” declares the LORD, “Then
the offspring of Israel also will cease From being a nation before Me
forever.” Thus says the LORD, “If the
heavens above can be measured And the foundations of earth searched out below,
Then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel For all that they have
done,” declared the LORD.
If
you saw the moon in the evening sky last night, the North Star holding its
celestial position, or if by chance you happened to look up this morning in the
eastern sky and saw the sun rise then you know that the nation of Israel
remains firmly fixed as God’s firstborn of the nations.
The
reason for this may not be so obvious but God’s plan is always working; it’s
never on hold. The salvation of the
nations, morally and physically, and the continuation of the human race on the
earth depends on the preservation and continuance of the Jews as a Race (Acts
15:13-18; Romans 11:1-5, 11, 12, 15, 17, 23-27).
I’ll
take this thought one step further because Scripture does. The present degenerate condition of this
planet and its inhabitants is owing to the fact that the Jews have lost their
savior, as the salt its saltiness, and until the
Jews recover their Savior this world will sink further and further into a
degenerated state until Divine intervention is called for (Zechariah 12;
14:1-11; Matthew 5:13; Revelation 19:11-20:6).
(To
be continued)
©
Copyright 2011
GJ
Heitzman’s Ministry
All
Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment