Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
We are looking, we're going to jump into where we left off last
week. We are looking at the subject of
where is Israel in the economy of God?
Where is Israel and God's purposes in the present hour?
And so we want to continue to look at that.
We're looking at Romans 9 through 11.
And some of you may think like, Pastor, I'm just trying to make
it through the week. What do I care?
You need to care. It's in the Word and it's
important for us to know. And so we're going to look at
this subject, Romans 9 through 11.
Father, we ask in these few minutes that you would anoint us
to learn to teach Lord, that you would equip us with an
understanding from your word in Jesus name, Amen.
Turn with me to Chapter 9, Chapter 9, verse one.
I am speaking the truth in Christ.
I am not lying. My conscience bears witness in
the Holy Spirit. So Paul says he he enlists Jesus
to validate his sincerity and then enlists the Spirit.
He said, I'm speaking the truth in Christ.
I'm not lying. My conscience bears witness in
the Holy Spirit that what I have great sorrow and unceasing
anguish in my heart. So Paul's walking around with
the continual pain in his heart. And what's that pain in regards
to? For I could wish that I myself
were a cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my
brothers, my kinsman according to the flesh.
And so Paul is addressing this problem, this theological
dilemma that he's come to the book of Romans, glorious book.
It's Paul's dissertation on our salvation.
Romans one through 8 is awesome, but it leaves this burning
question, what about Israel? And so he's he's he, he begins
to bear his soul as which is interesting.
He's the apostle to the Gentiles.
The grace of God on him is to reach the Gentile world.
But yet Paul says he's literally giving his life for that.
But he said I would give my eternal soul to see my
countrymen come back, come to the Lord.
And so Paul is carrying this burden.
And it's Paul Romans Chapter 11. He begins to tell us that this
is a mystery there. This is a mystery that needs to
be unlocked. And that's that's a very keyword
for Paul and Pauline theology. A mystery is something that's
hidden that God hides and that we're to it's the glory of kings
to search out a matter. It's the glory of God to hide,
conceal a matter. It's the glory of kings to
search it out. God wants us to look into these
things and there's this mystery around Israel.
And so this is what Paul's going to get at.
So he says, he says for they are the Israelite, they are
Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the
covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises.
To them belong the patriarchs from their race according to the
flesh is the Christ who is over all, who is God over all,
blessed forever, Amen. And so Paul is laying the
groundwork and saying, listen, we have an indebtedness to the
Jewish people. The Jewish people are those
through whom God brought salvation to us.
And that's a very significant thing.
There needs to be a an appreciation and an honor that
we carry in our heart. And we could look and say, well,
yeah, you know, God chose them. And that's don't give honor
where honors do. God used them to bring the
gospel to us. But so this creates a problem.
And so Paul says this. Look at verse 6.
But it is not as though the word of God has failed.
Why does Paul say that? Because what he's saying is,
listen, all these great things we just unpacked in Romans one
through 8. Now I'm grieved because the
Jewish people through which God chose to bring salvation to the
world have largely rejected the gospel that came through them.
And so it it begs the question, did God's word, did God's
promise to the Jewish people, fail?
What gives? If they were the ones through
whom it came, why have they by and large rejected it as the
Jewish people? And that's the burning question.
And so Paul is going to unpack a mystery here.
And this next few verses is the first volley in that, you know,
it's the first step. He he shares a principle with us
that begins to give explanation to why this is.
Now let me pause there. I told the first service, I'm
going to give you the end from the beginning, OK?
Usually if you're a good preacher, good teacher, you're
going to culminate and you're going to land and you're going
to give this big crescendo at the end.
This is what it is. And I'm going to give you the
crescendo now because some of you are going to feel a little
bit of anxiety where I go with this.
And so I just want to settle that now.
There are three theologies, 2 primary ones about the nature of
Israel and the economy of God and the present age.
Okay, there's two theologies there and there's there's
variations underneath these two umbrellas.
The first one is covenant theology.
Covenant theology says that there is the there's one
covenant God. God had a covenant with Israel.
Now we have become as the church, the Israel of God, and
God has done with Israel as a nation, as a people, the ethnic
Jew, He's done, He's washed his hands and it is largely
irrelevant to even talk about them other than in history.
That's covenant theology. And now there's very variations
of that, but that's pretty much it's got, you know, Israel can
be studied as history, but not prophecy because God's done.
That's covenant theology. The other one is dispensational
theology, and this under this one, this one, by the way,
covenant theology is where people talk about replacement
theology. Anybody ever heard that term
replacement theology, that the church has replaced Israel?
So God's done. Then you have dispensational
theology, and this is where people get into one expression
of that would be dual covenant theology, that God had a
covenant with Israel and he's got a covenant with the church
and God is dealing with the church now.
But when the church is raptured out, that's when he kicks in and
begins to deal with with Israel. That's one expression of dual
covenant. That's not the view everybody
has. I know I'm painting with a wide
brush and some of you are wanting to say, wait, pastor,
that's not what I believe. OK, this.
So there's the dual covenant. If you were just to read Romans
9 and Galatians and Ephesians chapter 2, you could really get
into covenant theology and replacement theory.
You, you know, replacement theology if that's all you read.
But when you get to Romans 11, we see that God still has a
purpose for Israel. And so how does all this fit
together? So there's, there's truth to
covenant theology and there's truth to that God is operating
right now amongst these two people groups.
What does that look like? And that's the mystery that
Paul's going to unpack. OK, so I, I'm not, I don't
believe in dual covenant and I don't believe in replacement
theology. I believe there is there, there
is one covenant. We've been grafted into the
tree, which is Israel. They have been cut off.
Those who have persisted in their unbelief have been cut
off, but God is going to graft them back in.
That's where we're going with this.
And I want to show you from the word if we have time, but I, I
just want to kind of dial down the anxiety so that you know
where I'm going. OK, All right, So look at what
he says here. So this he's going to unpack
this mystery. What's the deal with Israel in
this hour of human history? And this is the first step in
explaining this mystery because there's all these promises to
Abraham's children. There's all these promises and
and then we look and think, well, wait a minute, we're
enjoying the gospel and they're not what gives?
So Paul tells us, look at what he says verse 6.
But it is not as though the word of God has failed.
Why? 4 Not all who are descended from
Israel belong to Israel, and not all our children, not all are
children of Abraham because they are his offspring.
What he's saying is this, He said God's promise to Israel has
not failed because and what he does is he reinterprets Israel
from the word of God. And So what Paul tells us is
that not all who are children ethnically, biologically,
genetically from Abraham are children of Abraham according to
God's perspective. And not everybody who is a child
of Abraham from God's perspective is ethnically
related to Abraham because the Gentiles have been grafted in.
Well, how does that work? Paul talks about this in
Galatians and he this, let me tell you, this is a radical
statement, OK, When Paul says this Galatians, if this is
radical, Galatians is a slap in the face.
I mean, it'll wake you up. Paul actually says that there.
He talks about there's 2 covenants, 2 mountains, there's
Mount Sinai and, and, and he says that the law that was
given, he said Abraham had two children, there was Isaac and
there was Ishmael, right? Isaac or Ishmael rather, was
Abraham trying to fulfill his promises on his own.
So he couldn't have a baby with Sarah.
So he took his, his servant Hagar unto himself and he had a
child through her and that is Ishmael.
Ishmael is a sign of trying to accomplish God's purposes
through the flesh. Isaac is the child of promise.
It took a miracle for Isaac to be birthed.
And and Paul says, I would propose to you that those
unbelieving Jewish people, those who do not accept Jesus as our
Messiah, are actually an expression of Ishmael and not
Isaac. That is shocking that he said
that, but what he's telling us is that there from God's
perspective, it's a matter of the heart.
So much so Psalm 73, if you guys can put up Psalm 73, verse one,
it it, this is not a new thing. It was a radical thing, but it's
not a new thing. We have threads of this Psalm
731-GO back to verse one. Truly God is good to Israel, to
those who are pure in heart. In that little verse, the
psalmist reinterprets what Israel is and what he does.
So in Romans he is reinterpreting Israel, and in
this verse he's reducing Israel and saying, listen, a true
Israelite is one who is pure in heart.
It's not about externals, it's about internals so much so that
when Jesus in John chapter 1, remember he when he meant
Nathaniel. That's why I named my youngest
Nathaniel because of that verse. It's a great verse.
He's back there down his head. I love what it says about
Nathaniel. Jesus meets Nathaniel and he
said, behold, a true Israelite and who is without guile.
He's playing off of this verse. He's re quoting that verse in
just a little different way. What he's saying is a true
Israelite. It's not insignificant that
Jesus didn't just say hey you're an Israelite.
He said you're a true Israelite, insinuating there are false
Israelites. From God's perspective, the
Israel Israelite, the Jew, the the one who is the child of
Abraham, the child of promise is one who was one in the heart and
not merely externals. And so you can see where people
would get into replacement theology if that's all we've
studied. And it's from these texts that
people say, well, the church is the Israel of God and God has
done with Israel. The first part of that is true.
The church is the Israel of God because we've been grafted in,
but God has not done with the nation of Israel.
We're going to look at that. There's, there's tracks for
that. It's very important for us to
understand because it gives us insight on how we need to pray.
So we have this same dynamic today.
There are people who think, well, yeah, I go to church, I'm
a child of God, my mom and dad raised me in church.
I'm saved. And I would tell you not so
fast, because true salvation is a salvation of the heart.
It's not externals. It's not being born into the
right family or just going to church that might help you.
You might be a little more moral, you might be more
disciplined, you might have help with your marriage, but it
doesn't guarantee you heaven. You must be born again.
You've got to be saved. You've got to have a
relationship with the Lord. It's you've got to be
transformed in your heart. God has no grandchildren.
He just has first generation sons and daughters.
You don't get in because of your parents.
Whether you're a Jew or a Gentile.
We have to have a relationship. So the true Israelite is the one
who is pure in heart. We've been transformed
internally at a heart level. I, I, I remember my, my little
brother, my little bald headed brother, Christopher.
We were raised in a good home. My mom and dad are believers.
My dad was a pastor Christopher. He was baptized in the Spirit at
six years old, walking with the Lord.
But by the time he got to junior high, he became quite the little
Rascal. He was getting in a lot of
trouble and just messing around and things didn't get into drugs
like his older brothers, but he was, he was heading in the wrong
direction. And one day he and his buddies
were talking and they were talking about theoretically
about Christianity and eternity and God and all that.
And one of his buddies piped up and said, you know, Christopher,
I don't know about all that God stuff in Jesus and heaven, but I
know this, that if there's a heaven, you ain't going there.
And it kind of rocked him, stepped him back because at all
this time he was assuming why I'm raising a Christian home.
I'm I'm going to heaven, you know, I go to church, I'm a
Christian. I was born into this thing.
And God used the accusation, probably the accurate assessment
of a unsaved friend who said that to him.
He didn't have this. This guy didn't even his
theology figured out, but he said to him, I know one thing,
you ain't a Christian. If whatever a Christian is, you
ain't one of them. And it caused Christopher to
really begin to search his heart, ending up getting saved.
And from that time on, from junior high on, he meant he just
went after God with his whole heart.
He'd spend hours, literally hours a day.
He was kind of a freaky little kid, you know, freak of super
nature. I can say he's my brother.
But there was a real touch of God in his life.
But he spent hours with the Lord every day for years.
But what happened is he had to realize I don't get into heaven
because my mom and dad are going.
So this principle applies to the Jew as well as the Gentile that
the true Israelite. So what Paul says is you're not,
you're not the part of the Israel of God.
If you're genetically from the lineage of Abraham, do you have
a relationship with the Jewish Messiah?
Because there's only one door. No man comes to the Father but
by me, Jesus said, as the Jewish Messiah, all men have to come
through me as the door to be reconciled to the Father, Jew or
Gentile. And once in there is neither Jew
nor Gentile, female or male. We are one body.
And so he reduces Israel or reinterprets Israel as that the
Israel of the heart. And so Paul gets this revelation
because he's he's in agony. He's grieved about his his
countrymen and he's praying and God shows him.
And it to me, it's so fascinating.
It's not Peter who carries this revelation.
It's not James or one of the other writers.
It was Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles that God opened up an
understanding about Israel. And so he begins to unpack this.
So he goes on this. He says, look at verse verse 7
and not all children of Abraham are because of their offspring,
but through Isaac shall your offspring be named.
This means that this means that it is not the children of the
flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the
promise are counted as offspring.
And it was saying that it's the child by faith.
And Paul uses this analogy throughout his theology that
Isaac represents the children by faith, the miracle child.
The only way in is through faith.
Ishmael represents the child of the flesh trying to work it out
on her own. So then he says God's purpose.
Look at verse 11, though they are not yet born, hadn't done
nothing either good or bad in order that God's purpose of
election might continue. We talked about this last week
that the children of Israel, Israel is God's chosen people.
But what does that mean? Chosen people doesn't mean that
it's dealing with the biblical concept.
We just read here God's purpose and election.
The the theological phrase or word is election.
What does election mean? Some people think of election if
if you elect 1, you have to reject others.
That doctrine did not come into the early church until
Augustine. Prior to Augustine, virtually
all the church fathers interpreted Romans 9 through 11
as an expression of free will, not of God.
You know, duck, duck, damn, you know, we're going to choose one
for hell and the others for for eternity.
That's not how this was interpreted.
Augustine brought that into the church later on.
And so election really is synonymous, nearly synonymous,
if not actually synonymous with the idea of the chosen people or
what how we use it called, you know, someone's called.
But here's the thing, you can be called of God.
And what that means is so let me put it this way, election is not
God saying I elect you and I reject you.
It's I elect you so that through you I can bless everyone else.
It's not a matter of electing and rejecting, it's electing for
blessing that I will bless you and through you bless the
others. But you can persist in unbelief
and God, if you have a call of God on your life, God will still
use you. You just get to choose how
you're going to be used. When you're used, God will use
you as an example of either what happens when you harden your
heart or when you walk in faith. And Israel has hardened their
heart. By and large, the Jewish people
have hardened their heart. And that's not me.
That's not some external sociological assessment of their
acceptance of Jesus. That's from the word itself.
And so it says that God in the sense has reinforced their
decision. OK.
And he uses Pharaoh as an example in the hardening of the
heart. We need to understand even when
Pharaoh, when it says he hardened his heart, you know,
God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Anybody ever had a problem with
that phrase? You know, like what in the world
you do with that? Amen.
I'm not the only at least one, just you and me.
Yeah, I struggled to that. Well, if you look at the text,
it says Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his
heart.
And then it says, and God hardened Pharaoh's heart.
God says, OK, I will reinforce your decision so I see us, Lewis
said. And heaven, there's only two
kinds of people. There's those that said God,
your will be done, and there's those that God said your will be
done. That's why in the language of
Paul, in this passage, it says that they can be grafted back in
if they do not persist in unbelief because they did not
submit to righteousness. That struck me years ago, like
40 years ago, I was reading this passage and it stood out to me.
Persist in unbelief and submit to righteousness.
I'm thinking I, I, I would do that exactly the opposite.
I would say you persist in righteousness.
Oh, I submitted to unbelief like, oh, unbelief came over me
and I submitted to it, but I'm persisting in righteousness.
That's not the language of Paul. Paul said the effort is you're,
you're persisting in your unbelief.
But if you yield to righteousness, I surrendered, it
overwhelms you. The righteousness of God, the
yieldedness is on righteousness. And, and so there's a stubborn
persistence in unbelief. But if they do not, God will
graft them back in. But God will reinforce.
There comes a point at which God says, OK, you will be done.
So is this an irreparable rejection of their Messiah?
That's the question and it's right here in this passage.
We'll look at it. So Oh my goodness, we've got 5
minutes left. All right, so God's purpose of
election. So election is a selection by
God to use a one person to bless the many.
And that's that's a high honor. It's a glorious thing to have a
call of God on your life. And there's a sense in which
we're all called, but there are nations and people that God will
call especially to reach the many through and understand that
when that happens, God's going to use you regardless.
I loved how Tisa said it. She said I wasn't tempted to
give up. And then she, what else am I
going to do? My hands are glued to the plow.
But she was tempted to back off and not take risks.
And if that happens, then we become a message to the masses
of what happens when someone with a call of God on their life
doesn't go for it. God's going to use us.
Our life becomes a message. There's so much in that we we
don't have time to get into. Look at turn with me to Chapter
11. Yeah, so verse 1, he says.
I asked then, has God rejected his people?
By no means, Paul says, For I myself am an Israelite, a
descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.
God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
So Paul is introducing this subject.
Jump down to verse 11. I apologize for rushing so much.
You really need to get into these passages for yourself.
I'm not just trying to skip over problem versus we just don't
have the time. And this is where I want to get
this morning verse 1111. So I ask, did they stumble and
order that they might fall? Did God ordain them to stumble
so they would fall and he could reject them?
By no means. Rather, through their trespass,
salvation has come to the Gentiles.
He's saying that God chose him. And God told Abraham, Abraham,
I'm going to bless you, and through you, you being blessed,
you'll bless the nations of the earth.
You're going to be a father of many nations.
That's the covenant of Abraham. He's going to bless him and
through him bless others when when the children of Israel,
they can walk in that and you and I as believers in Jesus
Christ, the door into the covenant that God made with
Abraham. It's all through Paul's writings
that we have been grafted in. We enjoy the blessing of
Abraham. That's what we're enjoying here,
even though we're largely disconnected from our Jewish
roots. And, and, and I'll just tell you
that there's, there's Jewish theology and all of this is good
as a lesson. But when you, when people begin
to study Jewish roots so that they can then begin to feel
obligated to come back under the law, that is contrary to the New
Testament. We're not under the law, that is
Ishmael. That's what Paul says.
Paul attributes that belief system to trying to work it on
in your own. He even says because there were
Judaizers that were going to be circumcised so they could be
right with God because that's what the law mandated.
And Paul says that this bluntly, if you are circumcised, Christ
is of no effect to you. Christ is useless to you because
you have already stepped on a path.
I'm going to try to work this out on my own works and I would
add good luck with that. It's only by faith in Christ.
But when we come into faith, the blessing, the covenant, the
relationship that we enjoy is the blessing of Abraham.
And so the picture is that the Jewish people had these, what he
said in nine. They have the covenants, the
promises, the patriarchs, all these wonderful things.
And they tripped and they're, they spilled the bowl of these
gems, all these things. And we as the Gentiles, then
therefore we're able to come in and we picked them up and we
have them. But Paul says, listen, I carry
around in my heart a continual anguish.
That's what he said. I'm continually in anguish that
my countrymen would realize what they've given up.
Jesus himself looked over Jerusalem and you can hear the
pain in his heart. He said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
I longed to take you on to myself as a mother, hand with
her chicks and protect you, but you would not.
You've missed the hour of your visitation.
If for no other reason, we should enter into the anguish of
Jesus over this thing. Paul, who's pointing out to us,
listen, we are the beneficiaries.
God chose them. Through them came all these
riches that they've rejected and we're to incite jealousy in the
heart. We have a vested interest in
them coming back in and getting their inheritance.
So this is where Paul is going and he says, did they stumble so
that they could never, you know, that they might fall, but by no
means rather that the trespass by their trespass salvation has
come to the Gentiles so as to make Israel jealous.
Now here listen to this. If their trespass means riches
for the world, if they're stumbling and they're falling
and their their rejection of the gospel resulted in riches for
us, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how
much more will their full inclusion mean?
So he's prophesying about a time when they're going to be swept
back in to the Kingdom. Now make no mistake about it,
the only way they're going to be swept back in the Kingdom,
they're Jewish Messiah, our Messiah.
They're Jew, our Jewish Messiah already told him no man comes to
the Father, but by me. I am the door.
I am the way, I am the truth. I am the life.
Nobody can come to the Father but by me.
They've got to come through the Messiah, just like you and I
did. But what he's saying is if it
was a blessing to us that they were cut off as a branch, that's
what he goes into later, then how much more when they're
grafted back in? What's that going to mean?
If it meant salvation that they were cut off, then when they're
grafted back in, it's literally life, it's eternal life to us.
It's going to be a great blessing.
So if for no other reason that you pray for the salvation of
the Jewish people, do it from a selfish perspective.
It's going to be great when they come back in there's, I don't
know what that means, what Paul's getting at.
I don't fully understand what he's saying, but he's saying,
hey, it's going to be a huge upgrade for all of us in
Ephesians where it talks about the 1 Newman, both Jew and
Gentile in Christ, the Puritan scholars, the the Puritans, that
era of human history, that was a high watermark of biblical
scholarship. And many of them believe those
verses in Ephesians were not just teachings, but they were in
actuality a prophecy of a coming influx, a great harvest among
the Jews, something that we're still looking forward to.
And based upon this verse, I would have to agree with them
that there's going to come a day.
Well, let's look here. Let's let Paul say it.
You can believe him. Look at look at verse 25.
Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be
unaware of this mystery. This is where Paul says this is
a mystery. Guys, add to that that Paul,
according to Peter, is hard to understand.
Brothers, a partial hardening. It's partial, not full, has come
upon Israel until so it's temporary and not permanent.
It's partial and temporary, not full and permanent.
A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness
of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will
be saved. So there's coming a day, he
says, that there's going to come a time where that's going to
lift. There's this period where the
fullness of the Gentiles come in.
I don't fully understand. We don't know what does the
fullness of the Gentiles? When does that mean, you know,
what's the number? We don't know, but we're to pray
for the peace of Jerusalem and we're pray for the Jewish
people. We pick up the burden that was
in Jesus heart as he looked at Jerusalem and Paul's heart as he
grieved for his people. And Paul gives us motivation to
do so because he says when this happens, it's like life from the
dead for the church. We are not complete as New
Testament believers until the Jewish people begin to cry out
for their Messiah when they recognize who He is.
Jesus said you will not welcome me again until you say, blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Speaking to the Jewish leaders, the Jewish people themselves
have to welcome their Messiah, and so does God still have
planned for Israel? Absolutely, according to Romans
11. If I only had Romans 9, I could
be replacement theology. You are the Israel of God
because God has grafted you into that tree.
There's one tree. It's God's chosen people.
And we have been included by faith and grace, not because of
anything we did and not because of our bloodline, but because
Jesus made room for us, but he longs to make room for the
Jewish people. And you and I need to pray in
that regard. Now, listen, what this does not
mean is that you sign off. You, you have, you're obligated
to sign off on everything that the Jewish people do that
everything that their government does.
I would caution you, be careful where you get your information
because the, the media, they can't do anything right.
And there is a lot of propaganda out there if there's ever a time
in human history where the people of God need discernment,
not just in regard to the Jewish government, our own government
and all the governments of the world.
We need discernment. But that doesn't mean just
because we believe they're God's chosen people doesn't mean I got
to sign off and say, oh, everything they do is good.
They get a pass. No more than me being a child of
God gets a pass on everything. Hopefully you love me enough to
call me on things. OK, that's another sermon, so go
ahead stand. Thanks for listening to our
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