Romans 11_11-15： How Should Christians View Jews？ PART 1 with Dale Partridge
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Summary
Pastor Ken reads Romans 11:11-15, and argues that God has not cast off the Jews, but rather has preserved a remnant of them. What does this mean for the future of the church? And what does it mean for God's plan for the Jewish people?
Transcript
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Good morning, Saints. This morning I'm going to be reading the text for this
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morning's sermon, so if you would please stand with me and open your Bibles to
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Romans chapter 11. I'll be reading verses 11 through 15 this morning.
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So I ask, did they stumble in order that they may fall? By no means. Rather,
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Through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.
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Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for
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the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?
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Inasmuch, then, as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry.
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In order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.
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For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?
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And I am excited to continue this series of Romans 11.
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And I believe we'll get to the bottom of it here shortly.
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I think that this passage of Scripture is glorious.
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Now, yeah, we could say that every passage of Scripture is glorious.
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But I say that because at the end of this chapter
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is the second longest doxology in the entire New Testament.
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Now, the first longest is the doxology at the end of Romans.
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To Paul, the words of this chapter deserve some sort of unique weight of praise.
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We have to understand, why is there such a massive praise at the end of this chapter?
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If we were to walk through this chapter in a dull, kind of darkened understanding of
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this text and not arrive at the same degree of praise that Paul does, that would be strange.
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Now, if you've been with us for some time, you know that Paul is answering the question,
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if God had only saved a remnant of ethnic Israel, what is God's future plan for the Jews?
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It's essentially what's trying to be addressed in this passage of scripture.
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Where do they fit in on the grand plan of redemption?
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I just want to back up for a moment just to remind you,
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chapter 8 told us that God causes all things to work together for good.
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For those who are called according to his purpose,
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we know that God is sovereign over salvation through election.
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chapter 9 told us that god's sovereign election is why only a remnant of israel was saved not
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all of them were elect chapter 10 told us that those jews who were not elected rejected christ
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and the gospel and pursued a righteousness by legalism or by works now here in chapter 11
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the pressing question becomes, at this point, has God just totally cast off
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ethnic Israel? Like, are they not even to be considered anything in the future of
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the church? And this is a significant question, because if God had categorically
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Now, ultimately, God's integrity is on the line,
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Were these promises given to every single person
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Was it just if you were born an Israelite of Abraham?
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circumcision is that guaranteed that these promises were made to you
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and the answer is no because we saw that in chapter 9
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paul says that not all who are descended from israel are of israel essentially
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well i'll even say this if you look back to your bible look back to 11
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2 so chapter romans chapter 11 verse 2 paul also said this phrase god has not rejected his people
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You can go back and listen to those previous sermons.
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But he qualifies this because he wants us to know
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that his promises are not made entirely to ethnic Israel,
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that he foreknew before the foundation of the world.
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Paul deals with potential misconceptions around the Jews,
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demonstrating that God has not cast off Israel,
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but has actually preserved a remnant, the true Israel, for himself.
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And he relates it to the idea of Elijah and Elijah's day.
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And God says, no, I have reserved for myself 7,000.
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Very similar time to a first century Jew who's sitting there going,
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I'm a believer. Has God totally cast off Israel? Because I feel like I'm the only one.
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Paul says no. Now last week in verses 7 through 10, we addressed the question,
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why only a remnant? Why did God only save a remnant? Why did he harden his people? Why did
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he spiritually blind his people, as he said? Why did they stumble over the stumbling stone?
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Now, as we're going to see today, this answer includes multiple reasons. The first one was
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from last week is something that should cause us all to pause with a little bit of reverence,
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because the answer was, he did this because he was hardening, he did this hardening because it
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It was a covenant judgment for their unfaithfulness to their God.
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God blinded the majority of His people toward the Messiah because of their covenant unfaithfulness.
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Now, as covenant members of the true Israel, I believe that the true Israel is all Jews,
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elect Jews and elect Gentiles, all in one body, the Church of Christ, is the true Israel.
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This should be instructive to us. And here's why. God has changed, certainly, the sealing
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of the covenant from the blood of animals to the blood of Christ. We know that.
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But God has not changed the mechanics of how covenant theology is administered.
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It's still with blood. It's still with the priest. It's still with the temple.
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And sadly, many Christians think that God no longer brings covenant judgments on his
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It's a mistake to think that way, that God's not bringing upon his covenant people, the
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true Israel covenant lawsuits, that we have broken our faithfulness to our God.
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We need to recognize that the persecution, the struggles of the church facing today,
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like in the Old Testament, are often tied to covenant unfaithfulness.
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Why are we having this election between these two candidates?
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Why have we been judged as a nation, slaughtering babies, allowing homosexuality to run rampant?
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divorce on the rise. Are these not connected to some sort of covenant judgment by God
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for the church's unfaithfulness? I'll tell you what, I did not grow up in a generation
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that spoke against these things. The generation before us very rarely spoke out against these
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truths and it's why they are so rampant today. And if we don't speak about these truths,
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All we're doing is kicking the can down the road, and we're leaving the fight to our children
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And we're also leaving the curse of a society that is so corrupt and broken, in love with
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Are we going to learn from the covenant judgments and disciplines of the Lord through repentance
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now today we encounter something remarkable in this text
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once again we see god's absolute sovereignty over his people we're going to see that
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you cannot go through romans chapter 8 chapter 9 chapter 10 chapter 11 and still reject the
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doctrines of grace aka calvinism whatever you want to call it god is clearly sovereign it's like
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in so many different dimensions that you see through these passages of Scripture.
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Specifically, we're going to see today how God can use even covenant judgments,
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even human disobedience, to bring about blessings and accomplish His redemptive purposes.
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In other words, we're going to see how God can use punishment and sin to bring about
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God causes all things, that includes bad things, to work together for good.
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It's already been told to us, but we're going to see it play out here.
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Again, I want to just give you a quick outline of Romans before we dive in.
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Romans chapter 11, number 1 through 10, the focus is on the fact that ethnic Israel's
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The section we're in right now, which is 11 through 32, is that ethnic Israel's rejection
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and verses 33 to 36 are Paul's great doxology. Now, let's just read verse 11, just get into it.
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It says, I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? Question mark.
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May it never be, but their transgression, but by their transgression, salvation has come to the
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Gentiles, to make them jealous, to make the Jews jealous. All right. So I'm just going to pick a
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bone real quick because sometimes pastors, well, I'm not going to say pastor. Sometimes people in
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the church, not in our church, church at large, criticize pastors for being so meticulous with
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grammar. You know, ah, going into the Greek, going into the Hebrew, you know, they'll say things like
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just communicate the general principle that, you know, the outline theme. Don't go so deep
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into the theological weeds. That's most of America, by the way. But here, Paul explicitly
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makes a distinction between the scripture mentioning stumbling and how it's different
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from falling. Okay, that is a very tight distinction. Stumbling implies a trip or a kind of a temporary
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setback. Falling implies a complete collapse or failure. This is the kind of distinction that
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Paul is catching here in prophecy. So when Jesus says, not an iota, not a dot, is going to pass
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away, yeah, God cares about punctuation marks, truly. I remember in seminary, they would teach
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just that. God cares about punctuation marks. Put it in the wrong space and you get a different
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meaning. And it's important. So to answer Paul's question, no, ethnic Israel is not categorically
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eliminated. It's not. This is important because it emphasizes that their hardening had a purpose
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and it offers a future hope for Israel, ethnic Israel.
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which we're going to talk about here in a minute.
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The first section we know is about Israel's fall was not total.
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Now we know this section is that it's about not being final.
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And for the next several verses, he's going to tell us why it's not final.
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So the first reason is listed in the second half of verse 11.
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It says, but by their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make them, the Jews, jealous.
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yes God is judging them yes God has blinded them and hardened their hearts against Christ and yes
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God has only preserved in ethnic Israel a remnant of elect Jews but here Paul affirms
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this kind of great thesis it's Romans 8 28 we've said it a couple times God causes all things to
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together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose he's going to
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reaffirm his thesis that's the thesis of these next chapters of 8 9 10 and 11. and he's essentially
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saying even ethnic israel's judgments have been worked together for good even this extreme reality
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that God is spiritually blinded. His people, his national people will be worked together for good.
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That's how sovereign God is. And this brings up a great topic most Christians do not understand.
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When the Bible says that God is sovereign, it does not mean that God is only sovereign over
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that which is good. It means that God is also sovereign over that which is bad and evil.
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Now we know this to be true. Why? Because we're not blind Bible interpreters.
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Is God sovereign over the fall of man? Certainly. It says that Christ was crucified before the
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foundation of the world? Was God not sovereign over the flood of Noah? Was God not sovereign
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over the bloody wars of the Old Testament? Was God not sovereign of the boils on Job's skin
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and the death of his children? He was. Was God not sovereign over the leprosy of Naaman,
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the adultery of David, the physical blindness of the beggar in John 9.3?
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Was God not sovereign over the spiritual blindness of the Jews?
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Was God not sovereign over the crucifixion of Christ?
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God's not sovereign just over that which is good.
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And we know that Jesus is even sovereign over the wind and the waves.
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Peter says, I think it's Peter, who is this man?
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and for that reason we can rightly say that every deadly tornado and tsunami has been sovereignly
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permitted by the will of god christians we do not believe in dualism this is a very stupid doctrine
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that's alive and well in our generation dualism where there's kind of this ongoing cosmic battle
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and victory alternates between them on the day.
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He may not do anything unless God has permitted it
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And so the devil is held in check by the power of God
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All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
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Nothing can come to pass without the permission of God.
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around God's sovereignty and man's responsibility
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and I've done several sermons talking about these realities that you can go back and listen to.
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I can't address them all here. How is this connected to our passage in Romans?
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Well, Paul is showing us how God uses even tragedy, even disobedience,
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even judgment to bring about his people's greatest blessing for his greatest glory.
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quote, God wills evil in the sense that he is willing to allow it to occur.
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But it is a crucial distinction to make that God does not delight in evil as evil.
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Rather, he ordains that evil to exist for the good that he will bring out of it.
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That is exactly the type of situation that we are discussing here in 11 through 12.
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And by the way, I know the sermon was supposed to go through 15 or verse 16.
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We're only going to get through 11 and 12 today.
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God ordained and used their rejecting of the gospel
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to cause an international collecting of the Gentiles
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God has caused their rejecting of the gospel
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to cause an international collecting of the Gentiles.
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and all these people are going to come to Christ.
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God ordained and used the Jews' rejecting of the gospel
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And this international, this is what makes it even more amazing,
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this international collecting of the Gentiles,
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God will use for the ethnic provoking of the Jews.
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the Jews reject Christ, sends him out to the Gentiles.
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The Gentiles come in mass, provoking at some point in the future,
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And you can start to see when you think about it,
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oh, for all things are from him and through him and to him.
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You can see that who can understand the riches and knowledge and deepness and greatness of God.
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Who works in ways that are higher than our ways.
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As high as heavens are above the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, says the Lord.
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There's no way that I'm coming up with that plan.
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That is such a outside, upside down economic shift of the way that I think.
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It's the up is down and the down is up and the last is first and the first is last and the weak is strong and the strong is weak.
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It's an amazing way that God is redeeming his elect.
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And so we're going to see that ethnic Israel's remnant is not final.
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the nation of israel won't always reject christ as they did
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when this book of romans was written or as they do today
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and the next verse paul asks a profound rhetorical question in verse 12 and it's for the gentiles
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it's for us to consider he says in verse 12 now if their transgression is riches for the world
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how much more will their fullness or fulfillment be?
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It's like if their bad is good and their weakness is strength,
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It's an amazing way to think about the redemptive plan of God.
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In other words, if through, pay attention, this is important, if through the remnant of ethnic Israel, including the 12 apostles, there has been such an immense blessing to the world, there's like 2 billion Christians in the world.
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there has been such an immense blessing to the world
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how much greater will the blessing be to the Gentiles
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and I'm going to say the fullness of the elect of the nation of Israel
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That's my theological brain dinging right there.
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This is big because Paul just prophesied something that's very important to the American church,
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Paul just prophesied that a great number of elect Jews will in the future come to Christ.
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In fact, I think they hate Christ more than almost any other religion.
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The Muslims appreciate Christ far more than Talmudic Judaism appreciates Christ.
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over how Christians and Americans should view Israel and the Jews.
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There's a movement of Christian anti-Semites,
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Now, there's always been conflict between Christians and Jews.
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it's a thing. You can look throughout church history. There's all types of historical records
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on this. One of those historical records is written by our very own reformed Martin Luther,
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okay? Martin Luther is a great and godly man, but has said some really intense things
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about the Jews. I'm going to read one of them to you. He says, quote,
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First, their synagogue should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered
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or spread over with dirt, so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it.
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And this ought to be done for the honor of God and of Christianity, in order that God
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may see that we are Christians. Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed,
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For they perpetuate the same things there that they do in their synagogues.
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For this reason, they ought to be put under one roof or in a stable like gypsies in order
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that they may realize that they are not masters in our land, as they boast, but miserable
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captives as they complain incessantly before God with bitter wailing.
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Rather, we allow them to live freely in our midst
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despite their murderous, thieving, and lying nature, end quote.
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There are some true statements in there, but there's mostly bad,
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and there's some unchrist-like realities that are mixed in with some true realities.
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True realities is that you go, yeah, there's synagogues.
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But in the Old Testament, what does God say to do to people that worship a false god?
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Well, it's to tear down their idols in their high places.
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So you can see that there's a remnant of truth in there, but the vast majority of how that
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is handled is not correct, not biblical and not Christ-like.
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And so Gentile Christians having a correct view of the Jews is actually very important.
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And this is why Paul is saying this and getting into this passage and the following week's
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Many people believe that Jews and Christians worship the same God.
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Like you'll never see people using a Judeo-Christian worldview as a phrase prior to 1945.
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Now, again, these statements are, is there some truth to them?
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And I think it's important to have some distinctions.
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Jesus said that God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
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Now, we know that John 14, 6, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me.
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1 John 2, 23 says, no one who denies the Son has the Father.
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Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also, end quote.
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So the Jews deny the Son, and therefore, they do not have the Father.
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So yes, they worship, but everybody worships.
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Okay, everybody worships, but their worship is not worship to Yahweh.
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there's only one way to worship Yahweh, and that is through Christ.
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Now, at the very least, because there's, you know, some strong arguments out there.
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At the very least, if you want to say that there's a theological argument that they do worship Yahweh,
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at the very least, it's not received by Yahweh.
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Romans 10.2 says, they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
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And so where their worship is going is nowhere.
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the Jews worship a God that rejects Christ. The Jews worship a God who hates Christ.
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These are real factual statements. Imagine someone trying to reach a particular mountaintop,
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but they refuse to take the only path that leads there. Okay? You're standing at a mountain.
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They want to reach the mountaintop. They refuse to take the only path that leads to the top.
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and possibly the same mountain as the Christians,
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because Jesus is the only path to the Father.
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is wicked pagan idolatry. When you start to look into it, study it, it's amazing how antichrist
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it is and how legalistic it is and how totally confused it is to the scriptures. And yes,
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we should hate it. We should hate it in a way that we hate Hinduism and Islam and all the other
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things because they are false paths to God. We can all agree on that. We shouldn't feel
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that we have some sort of connected brotherhood like, oh, you know what? It's not so bad for
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the Jews. I'm like, no, they reject Christ. It is very bad for the Jews. Without Christ,
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you're going to hell. And so you have to, in one lens, see that truth.
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and in the other lens, another truth, which we'll talk about in a second.
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Now, what Paul is trying to convey to the Gentiles is this.
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If the hardening of the Jews has already resulted in the salvation of billions of Gentiles,
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imagine the glorious outcome when the Jews experience a revival and turn to Christ.
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this is kind of touching on this other side during seminary i had to read some jewish scholars to
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understand some of the contextual realities of the old testament i read some writings of rabbis
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their comprehension in some ways of the old testament is really rich very robust
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thinking in a way that's hard for an american to think
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I expect that if millions of Jews came to Christ,
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I think they would have a systematic understanding
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They would grasp it in a way and have the historical reality connected in a way that would bless many Gentile Christians in ways that we can't understand really at this time.
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One thing that I thought about is this prophecy of a future revival of Jews requires something.
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It requires the remarkable survival of Jews, of Israel.
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God's preservation of the Jewish people is actually fascinating.
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to maintain their cultural identity in the world.
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It was a phrase that Jews use around the world.
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you know, next year in Jerusalem, next year in Jerusalem.
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you know, next year in Germany, next year in Germany.
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No, people lose their heritage in the new country that they join.
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China, India, Greece, they've all had longstanding cultural histories,
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but none have withstood the time and the adversity like the Jews have.
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their multi-generational staying power, it's really miraculous. And it's actually helpful
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for the Gentiles. Why? Because their survival is living proof of a future gospel prophecy.
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Like, they're still there. In fact, if they weren't there, I'd be really struggling to
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figure out how this prophecy would pull together. But there's an identified group of people that
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God says will be a revival at some point in the future.
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I think the central point, as I close here, is setting up to essentially make this.
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Gentile Christians are not to have any special animosity toward Jews, but rather pity, okay?
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thing. We're to have animosity, frustration towards evil. But to hate the Jews is not,
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I believe, what Paul is saying. I believe Paul is saying, have pity on them.
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And so, yes, Gentile Christians are to hate the Jews' rejection of Christ.
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Yes, they are to pray and work for the Jews' reception of Christ.
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It's a good thing to go into Islamic nations and Hindu nations and Jewish nations
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Truly, our desire should be to fulfill God's will, which is what?
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We're actually called to provoke them to jealousy.
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We should want to display our knowledge of the scriptures,
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our covenant peace with God, by grace, through faith in Christ.
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Ultimately, they should see the substance of the promises made to them in us.
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that were made to them and their scriptures in us.
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Father, we thank you for your wondrous, incredible ways.
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And Lord, that you would bring about a revival,
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