God is Not Through with the Jews! Romans 11:11-16 God’s not through with the Jews and that’s good news for you, and me! If He were then the Holy Spirit couldn’t bring to us that glorious truth taken from the mountaintop of revelation in Romans 8:28-39, “All things work together for the good of those who are the called…, and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” Paul will close this whole section of divine revelation concerning His mind and heart toward the Jews with, “For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” (11:29) He is not through with the Jews! The Jews are not just a people of history; they are a people of theology. The true and the living God’s theology. That’s why Paul is taking three chapters to discuss them. If they have been completely and finally rejected and blinded by God, then nothing is secure. He gave such outstanding promises and gifts to them: the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the service of God, the promises, the Christ (9:4-5). God either cannot or will not keep His promises and in the end something may yet separate us from His love in Christ. How can we live in such uncertainty and fear? Well, we don’t have to because God is not through with the Jews. God made a covenant with Israel and they became His people. If He was through with them He would be defaulting on His promises and denying His power. His character and reputation are wrapped up in the Jews. Can or will God keep His promises to them? And if He can’t or won’t to them, what about us? If God cast them away, will He do that to me? To us? What makes this theology is, what happens to God’s people says something about Him. Our own children say a lot about us. Ever seen little brats misbehaving in the grocery store and you want to go up and slap … the parents?! It certainly looks like God has rejected them. That’s why Paul asked the question. They rejected their Messiah and have been under divine judgment ever since. Anti-Semitism has reigned supreme throughout the world for 2000 years. And for longer Satan has tried to exterminate them. From Haman to Hitler, they have been made to suffer like no other people. But Satan hasn’t been successful. They are still around. And now they have their homeland back. And they’re still around, not because they are smart and strong, but solely because God is not through with them. He has preserved them. He has a future for them. That’s what Romans 9-11 is all about, especially chapter 11. Paul answers two questions in this chapter. Verse one asks, “Has God cast away His people?” He answers with the emphatic negative. “Certainly not!” Abort that thought! The strongest negative possible. No! No! A thousand times no! Though they have been blinded in part, they have not been rejected. And their blindness is not total and not permanent or final either. He categorically states it in v.2, “God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.” He proves this by stating two things: He is a Jew and has not been blinded. He was blinded physically when he was saved, but his eyes were opened big time. There is a believing minority, a remnant, who today are saved Jews. But then not only is there a remnant, there are the rest who will be saved. Paul pictures for us a time of restoration of the Jewish people to faith in the living God and His Messiah. Verse 11 gives us the second question, “Have they stumbled that they should fall?” They fell alright, but did they fall beyond recovery. Again we have the same strong negative, “Certainly not!” Don’t even think about it. Their transgression has taken a good turn. Not for them, but for the Gentiles. God took the occasion of their sin and used it to convert the Gentiles. This is not something that God just picked up and decided to do when He saw the Jews fall. No, He planned it from the beginning. The first event (blinding of the Jews) took place with a view to the second (salvation of Gentiles). Jesus refused the crown of the common people and purposely provoked the ire of the Pharisees for that very reason. God had foretold these things hundreds of years before (11:7-10). The fall of Israel brought about the salvation of the Gentiles, which would hopefully be used to provoke them to jealousy. Even modern day Jews marvel at how much we Gentile Christians know about their religion and heritage. We know much more than most of them do. We study the Old Testament and go to great lengths to know the story of their father (Abraham) and all their genealogical roots, together with the Law of Moses and the words of their prophets, their ceremonies and teachings. This knowledge is intended to inspire the Jews to learn more, and hopefully to see that Christians are simply living out the faith of their Jewish fathers. We have inherited the promises and not them. Hopefully they will look at us and want to get into their roots and thus discover the Christ of the New Testament, who fills the pages of their Bible. v.12 is where the first statement of Israel’s restoration as a nation in its fullness is mentioned. If the trespass/fall of the Jews meant (spiritual) riches for the world (the opening of the door of salvation to the Gentiles) how much more will their fullness; how much more will their total restoration mean for the world. This fullness spoken of here is Paul’s was of saying what he will elaborate on for the rest of the chapter. There is such a thing as “the fullness of the Gentiles” (v.25) and there is such a thing as the fullness of the Jews (v.12). Some of them are now being saved (the remnant, v.14), but all of them shall be saved (the rest, v.26). The question is asked, how will they be saved? The answer is, they will be saved the same way anybody has ever been saved – by faith in the Christ and His work as a sacrifice for sin and His resurrection from the dead. There has never been a salvation apart from that. The Old Testament people were saved by faith in the One who was to come; New Testament people were saved by faith in the One who has already come. The just shall live by faith is the way it’s always been and always will be. Some people think the Jews will be saved by their own covenant, differently from the way Gentiles are saved, but that is patently absurd, as the whole Bible testifies. Why did the apostles suffer so much unless the Jews were saved by the only Name by which men must be saved (Acts 4:12)? It flies in the face of the whole Bible to think the present or future Jew will be saved by any other covenant than the covenant of grace founded on the blood of the Lamb of God. So, how will they be saved? The Scripture says as in a day. Paul gives us a hint when he refers to himself as one born out of due time and as a pattern of salvation. When you read that you have to think back to when Paul was saved. He was on the road to Damascus and Jesus paid a special visit to earth in His glorified body. He showed up to Saul shining like the noonday sun, blinding him and striking him down to the ground, speaking to him out of His glory. That is the only time Jesus has appeared on this earth since He ascended in Acts one. I believe the pattern Paul spoke of was referring to the Jews. One day Jesus will come again to planet earth and He will return in the brightness of His coming. (2Thes.2:8) And every eye shall see Him, and they also who pierced Him. In that moment, the Jews will, like Paul in his day out of season, believe. The day of their fullness will come. You might argue, that is hardly being saved by faith. But it’s the way Paul was saved and he spent the rest of his life preaching the exclusiveness of salvation by grace through faith. It was in that moment in the presence of the glorified Jesus that he believed and was justified. So shall it be with Israel. A nation will be born in a day and so all Israel will be saved. In v.13-14 Paul magnifies his own ministry to the Gentiles. “I am an apostle to the Gentiles. I magnify my ministry.” He would do anything to reach anyone, but discovered by the Spirit and the Word that he had been sent by God to reach the Gentiles. (Good thing for us that he was.) A more industrious missionary there has never been. He turned the world upside down by walking all over the Roman world preaching Christ Jesus and Him crucified. And then when he couldn’t walk he conquered the world writing letters from a prison cell. In Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles he sought to bring the Jews to faith in Christ by provoking them to envy: “if by any means I may save some of them.” Read of Paul’s zeal in 1Cor.9:19-22, “Though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew that I might win Jews. I have become all things to all men that I might by all means save some.” By all means save some; that was Paul’s heart. Would that we all had his heart. (By all means legitimate, of course. God does not use fleshy methods to do His work.) Paul’s work was basically futile as far as the whole nation was concerned; they were blinded. But he knew there was an elect and there would be a believing minority, and so he tirelessly preached the gospel to the Gentiles hoping to provoke the Jews to envy and faith in what their fathers believed. In verse 15 we have other expressions of the full restoration of the Jews. They had been cast away (as a nation) and that had resulted in the conversion of the Gentiles in wholesale numbers. So what would happen in the day of “their acceptance?” More, much more. “Much more their fullness,” he writes.” Notice he doesn’t say their acceptance of Him. The fullness of restored Israel is called their acceptance, reversing their temporary and partial rejection. If God used the rejection of the Jews to enrich the Gentiles, what would their acceptance be but exceedingly great riches? Their acceptance would be life from the dead. To see a vivid picture of this go to Ezekiel 37, where the prophet is shown a valley of many very dry bones. He is asked by God if these bones could live. Zeke didn’t know, but he knew that God knew. They not only could live, but they did live. As the prophet preached the bones came together, the flesh came on those bones and then breathe came into them and they stood a mighty great army. Then God says, “These bones are the whole house of Israel.” God will bring Israel back from the dead. (He’s good about that sort of thing, you know.) They will be born when they see Jesus! Verse 16 closes out this section with a couple of images from the Old Testament. (Remember, these people had no New Testament Scriptures. Paul was writing it at this very time!) He pictures the restoration and the completion of the salvation of the nation of Israel with two metaphors: the first fruits and the olive tree. “If the first fruit is holy, the lump is also holy.” The Jews were given a ritual to celebrate and worship God in their harvest. When the very first sheaves of grain began to ripen in the fields they were to take them before the priest and he was to do a very cool thing. He was to wave them before the Lord. (Nothing boring about worshiping God.) The grain they were waving was a portent of the full harvest. Paul’s point is, if there is a remnant being saved now, it just indicates that the rest are coming in. The first fruits are an indication of the rest of the harvest. And so all Israel will be saved. The first fruits prove it. They would then take that grain and make bread. Paul sees the first fruits of a remnant of Jews now being saved as representative of all of Israel that would one day follow. “When a representative piece is concentrated to God, the whole belongs to Him. So when the first converts believe, the conversion of the rest can be expected to follow. As the Jewish patriarchs belong to God by covenant, so do their descendants who are included in the covenant.” (Stott, Romans) The second picture is of the olive tree, which is always a picture of Israel in Scripture (Jer.11:16-17; Hosea 14:4-6). The root is the patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the fathers of the faith are the root of the Jews. And if the root is holy, so are the branches. The branches are the complete tree. What good are roots without branches? Without fruit? The branches are the full-blown nation of Israel which will be saved. Paul will deal more with this olive tree metaphor in the following verses.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 19:54:45 +0000
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