WEEK 9 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS ROMANS 11:1-36

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1 WEEK 9 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS ROMANS 11:1-36 1

2 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS - ROMANS 11: :1-36 The rejection of the Jews is not total and is not final. 11:1-10 Though God has rejected the greater part of the Jewish nation, He has not cast away His people (i.e., His elect), those whom He foreknew. 11:1-6 Paul has been shown grace, as has a remnant that was chosen by grace. Paul offers four arguments to demonstrate that God has not rejected Israel: 11:1 Paul points out that he himself is a Jew 11:2 God has elected Jews and foreordained to bring Jews to faith in Him 11:2-4 There has always been a faithful remnant in Israel 11:5-6 There is always the grace of God who preserves a remnant 2

3 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS - ROMANS 11: :7-10 Those of Israel who were not chosen by grace, who were not numbered among His elect, God hardened and blinded. 11:7 Paul reminds us that not all who are descended from Israel are Israel 11:8 Paul is saying that Moses warned Israel in his day that their rebellion resulted in God giving them spiritual blindness. 11: Darkening of their eyes is punishment for a self-righteous spirit. Rejection of God leads to rejection from God. Many people today reject the gospel because it seems to 3 weaken the need for moral effort.

4 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS - ROMANS 11:1-36 God, in hardening certain individuals abandons sinners to their own corrupt nature. When God hardens an individual, He is not forcing a good person, who wants to do right, to do evil, but is punishing a sinner by giving him up to sin. Haldane, Romans: God does not punish without an existing cause in the guilty. Condemnation supposes positive criminality. Men are in themselves sinful, and commit sin voluntarily; and for their punishment, they are hardened, and finally perish in their sins, and their destruction is the execution of a just sentence of God against sin. God knows what men left to their own inclinations will do; and as to those who are finally condemned, He determines to abandon them to their depraved inclinations, and hardens them in their rebellion 4 against Him.

5 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS - ROMANS 11: :11-32 The rejection of the Jews as to time is not final. 11:11-24 The re-inclusion of the Jews, as God s people, is both a desirable and probable event. 11:11-16 The temporary reject of the Jews was designed to bring salvation to the Gentiles to the world. Paul sets out three stages that Israel will go through with regard to the gospel of Jesus In the first stage (11:11-12), Israel transgressed, but it brought salvation to the Gentiles. In the second stage (11:11), the Gentiles make Israel envious. In the third stage sometime in the future there will be a time of greater riches (11:12) and acceptance (11:15) when all Israel 5 will be saved (11:25-27)

6 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS - ROMANS 11: :17-22 The Gentiles can t boast of their inclusion because they stand fast only through faith. Throughout Romans, Paul s whole argument about the Jews is: Though they were the chosen people, they began to think they were the choice people. They became confident they were in, no matter how they lived because they were Abraham s descendants. That is not the case, so Paul is telling the Gentiles not to fall into the same trap! He exhorts them to continue in God s kindness. 6

7 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS - ROMANS 11: :23-24 The Jews can and will be grafted back into the olive tree if they do not persist in their unbelief. 11:25-32 God has, in fact, determined to graft the Jews back into their own olive tree at a future time. But this grafting back in will not take place until the full number of the Gentiles have come in, then God will show mercy to Israel as a nation (i.e., to the Jews living in that day). 11:25-26a When the full number of the Gentiles have been grafted into God s people, national Israel will be saved. Israel s hardness is not permanent. 11:28-32 The greater number of the Jews are now enemies of God, but as regards God s election, the nation 7 is beloved and will yet be shown mercy.

8 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS - ROMANS 11:1-36 (1) The origin, history and future state of Physical Israel: The nation had its beginning with the call of Abraham They continued through Old Testament times as God s special people, though many of them were not saved. With the rejection of Jesus as God s Christ, Israel was itself rejected by God. The rejected nation was scattered among the other nations of the world, but will in the future be shown mercy by God and brought to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. 8

9 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS - ROMANS 11:1-36 (2) The identify of Spiritual Israel Abraham was the father of a faith nation as well as of physical Israel. This faith nation is composed of the true people of God of all who are saved regardless of their racial descent. This spiritual nation was contained within physical Israel during Old Testament times and was made up almost entirely of Jews. Since the coming of Christ and the establishment of the New Covent, this faith nation has been contained within the visible or professing church and is made up almost entirely of Gentiles. When the full number of the Gentiles have been brought into spiritual Israel, God will graft physical Israel into 9 the spiritual nation and this save the Jews living in that day.

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11 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL ISRAEL AND THEIR RELATION TO DIVINE COVENANTS - ROMANS 11: :33-36 Paul ascribes praise to God, Who is the Originator, Director and End of all things. Four things we can learn about our own worship from Paul s example in 11:33-36: There should be no worship without truth. There should be no teaching or study of truth without worship. Doctrines that exalt God lead to the greatest joy. We do not need to understand everything to praise the God who does. 11

12 PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM ROMANS 11: :7,8 Men should feel and acknowledge that they are in the hands of God; that, as sinners, they have forfeited all claim to His favour, and lost the power to obtain it. To act perseveringly as though either of these truths were not so, is to set ourselves in opposition to God and His plan of mercy, and is the very course to provoke Him to send on us the spirit of slumber. - Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Charles Hodge, Page

13 PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM ROMANS 11: :7-10 When God hardens an individual, He is not forcing a good person, who wants to do right, to do evil, but is punishing a sinner by giving him up to sin. God does not punish without an existing cause in the guilty. Condemnation supposes positive criminality. Men are in themselves sinful, and commit sin voluntarily; and for their punishment, they are hardened, and finally perish in their sins, and their destruction is the execution of a just sentence of God against sin... God knows what men left to their own inclinations will do; and as to those who are finally condemned, He determines to abandon them to their depraved inclinations, and hardens them in their rebellion against Him. Haldane, Romans, page

14 PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM ROMANS 11: :9,10 -- Men are commonly ruined by things in which they put their trust or take most delight. The whole Mosaic system, with its rites and ceremonies, was the ground of confidence and boasting to the Jews and it was the cause of their destruction. So, in our day, those who take refuge in some ecclesiastical organization instead of Christ, will find what they expected would prove their salvation, to be their ruin. - Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Charles Hodge, Page

15 PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM ROMANS 11: :19-24 The destiny of our children and our children s children is suspended in a great measure, on our fidelity. God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him. What words of woe for unborn thousands, were those. His blood be on us and on our children! As the Jews of the present age are suffering the consequences of the unbelief of their fathers, and the nominal Christians of the Eastern churches suffer for the apostacy of previous generations, so will our children perish, if we, for our unbelief as a church and nation, are cast off from God. - Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Charles Hodge, Page

16 PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM ROMANS 11: :17-22 The Jewish nation was God s olive tree. They were all the people of God in a typical sense, and the greater part of God s true people had been chosen out of them; but now, by their unbelief, some of the branches were broken off from the tree... and among, or rather instead of, those that were broken off, the Gentiles, who were a wild olive, having had no place in the good olive tree, are now made the children of Abraham by faith in Christ Jesus. They were grafted into the good olive tree, whose root Abraham was, and were made partakers of his distinguished privileges... Whenever Gentile Christians feel a disposition to boast with respect to the Jews, let them remember not only that the Jews were first the people of God, but that the first Christians were also Jews. The Jews received no advantage from the Gentiles; but, on the contrary, the Gentiles have received much from the Jews, from whom the Gospel sounded out its first preachers being Jews, and of whom even Christ Himself, as concerning the flesh, came. The Gentile believers become the children of Abraham, and all the blessings they enjoy are in virtue of that relation. Haldane, Romans, Pages 537,

17 PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM ROMANS 11: :33-36 The reason why man can lay God under no obligation is, that God is Himself all and in all, the source, the means and the end. By Him all things are; through His power, wisdom and goodness, all things are directed and governed; and to Him, as their last end, all things tend... God is the source, the constantly working cause, and the end of all things... When PAUL ASKS, Who hath first given to God? The answer is, no one, for of Him, through Him, and to Him are all things. It is for the display of His character everything exists, and is directed, as the highest and noblest of all possible objects. Creatures are as nothing, less than vanity and nothing in comparison with God. Human knowledge, power, and virtue, are mere glimmering reflections from the brightness of the divine glory. That system of religion, therefore, is best in accordance with the character of God, the nature of man, and the end of the universe, in which all things are of, through, and to God; and which most effectually leads men to say, Not unto us, but unto Thy Name be all the Glory! - Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Charles Hodge, Page 379,

18 PRACTICAL LESSONS FROM ROMANS 11:1-36 The leading principle of all is, that God is the source of all good; that in fallen man there is neither merit nor ability; that salvation, consequently, is all of grace, as well sanctification as pardon, as well election as eternal glory. For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things; to whom be glory for ever. Amen. - Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Charles Hodge, Page