[SPEAKER_00]: We are in Romans chapter 11 you can head there now Romans chapter 11
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been working our way through all this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's deep and wide.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you feel overwhelmed a little bit by the material, get in line, we're all there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I pray that even as I'm laying this out, it'll be a foundation for future aha moments in the high moments of God and seeing his glory and how he works is truly mysterious.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to read right away, Romans the section.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's starting in verse 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: Romans chapter 11, verse 11, down to 16, here it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I ask, says Paul, did they stumble in order that they may fall and stalking about his fellow Israelites?
[SPEAKER_00]: His fellow countrymen, by no means.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentile, so as to make Israel jealous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if their trespass means riches to the world, and if their failure means riches to the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm speaking to you Gentiles in as much as I am in a apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save Sonoma, some of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: For if their rejection means reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?
[SPEAKER_00]: If the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if the root is holy, so are the branches.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have some things to understand here, don't we?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me back up and just ask this question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why are the Jews as an ethnic group in the news so much?
[SPEAKER_00]: And why is anti-Semitism on the rise today?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why are there so many conspiracy theories surrounding the Jews?
[SPEAKER_00]: The intensity in the news, abs and flows, but it's always present.
[SPEAKER_00]: What other ethnic group can you think of?
[SPEAKER_00]: Has more enduring conspiracy theories surrounding them and hatred toward them?
[SPEAKER_00]: More than the Jews.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nick Fuentes, this is a name that some of us are getting to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all know him because of his appalling praise for Adolf Hitler and his doubts about the Holocaust.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't know who Nick is, Nick is this young political influencer galvanizing young men these days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Conspiracy theories have always been in, have always regarded their Jews have always encouraged anti-Semitism for centuries.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the oldest one is called the blood libel conspiracy where the Jews have been accused of killing Christians in order to use their blood in some kind of religious ritual.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this arose from the 12th century, 1112th century, along with accusations that the Jews were poisoning the wells of Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, of course, at the same time where the crusades were happening to free the Holy Lands and all of this created a renewed hatred and persecution of the Jews.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there's another one that's probably more known, and that's the international Jewish conspiracy, probably goes by other names, but it's a belief that there's a clandestine group of Jews controlling all world events and all world banks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you hear that one?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Nazis used it to justify all their atrocities.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to get rid of the Jews because of this, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be skeptical, since they have been the easiest target long throughout history.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be very skeptical of all of these kind of conspiracies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do they get targeted so much with this kind of thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's an easy answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Messiah was Jewish, and they killed him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even in that moment, they said in response to Pilots washing of his hands in Matthew 2725, his blood be upon us and upon our children, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul, even in this chapter says, Romans chapter 11 verse 28, as regards to the gospel, they Jews are enemies for your sake.
[SPEAKER_00]: As regard to election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, but even if they are enemies of the gospel, the Lord told us what to do with enemies, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We are to love them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are to do good toward them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are to pray for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are to bless them, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And besides all this, God's heart is still tender toward them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you go hold on, John.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought last week,
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you just implied last week that Israel's future was hopeless.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me review what I said last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: The true offspring of Abraham and thus the recipient of the promise made to Abraham back in Genesis 12 is Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Galatians chapter three.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by extension, everyone who lays hold of Christ by faith whether Jew or Gentile
[SPEAKER_00]: You say, well, then, has the church replaced Israel?
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say, well, yes and no, the church is the fulfillment of God's plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Has God rejected his people?
[SPEAKER_00]: No says Paul, I'm a Jew and I've been elected.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm part of the true Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has always protected his own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is Israel's future hopeless?
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is pointin' but one of my outline, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is Israel's future hopeless as my title, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Pointin' of one, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Gentiles benefit for now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see that in the text, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, verse 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I asked, did they stumble in order that they might fall?
[SPEAKER_00]: By no means, rather, through that trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if their trespass means riches to the world, what will their failure mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: And riches to the Gentiles, how much more would their full inclusion mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember that verse 1 of chapter 11 it says, I asked then has God rejected his people and he says by no means, okay, and Israel's failure was total, that was the question back in verse 1, this one is slightly different, is Israel's failure final, permanent,
[SPEAKER_00]: There are hardness of heart benefits, the gentiles for now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you saw that in the passage I read, but even go further down, verse 19, then you will say branches were broken off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the natural branches were the Jews in that illustration.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get into that next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that I, a Gentile, might be grafted in, he says that is true, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a hardness of heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: It benefits the Gentiles, verse 25.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do be wise on your own side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: A partial hardening has come up on Israel, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Remnant remains, but a partial hardening upon Israel and tell the fullness of the Gentiles have come in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you see that,
[SPEAKER_00]: Benefit comes to the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I do find it ironic that God would send Paul as the missionary to the Gentiles and not Peter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter stays in Jerusalem, Paul is sent to the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember what he was before his conversion.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was pure Israel and proud of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Educated in the strictest standards of Pharisees, zealous of all things Jewish, even at the point of persecuting Christians because they dared to claim that Jesus was the Messiah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Paul is a refined instrument toward Judaism.
[SPEAKER_00]: yet sent by God to gather Gentile believers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Paul embraces that assignment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, for 13, I'm an apostle to the Gentiles and I magnify my ministry in order to bring my fellow countrymen to being saved through jealousy,
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was the heart of God for the nations to hear the gospel, the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the Gentiles, you could easily translate the nations and often that word does get translated that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was always the heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: You think back to Genesis 12 verse 3, the one we've been referring to, it says, in you Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like this funneling out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fluting out all the way to the end of the world was to go that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Isaiah 49.6, is it too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, to bring back the preserved Israel, I will make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were to be a testimony to the all the way to the ends of the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when it comes to the New Testament,
[SPEAKER_00]: saying in Matthew chapter 8.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he's seeing hardness of heart starting to take effect.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I tell you, many will come from the East and West and recline at the table of Abraham.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk about the nations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Table of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom, Jews, will be thrown into the outer darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not all, remnant are true to him, Paul's part of that remnant, but even you can see that God is gonna shift and pivot toward the nations after Paul talks about election, okay, in Romans chapter 9.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, we went through that section, we get to the end of that section and he is saying that that election includes both Jew and Gentile and then he quotes Josea, chapter one and two.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about Hosea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hosea was a prophet who was supposed to marry a prostitute.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was going to be a living illustration for the people of Israel, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: That because Israel was like that prostitute, always going off to other men and not being true to their God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is being illustrated.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even in that passage in Hosea one and two says, Israel, you're not my people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it says, but I'm gonna make you my people again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's Paul, okay, quoting Hosea, which the first audience was only Jew.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is using it for the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about that, he's saying, those who are not my people, the Gentiles, I will call my people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's astounding.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's including the Gentiles as his people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then also remember, Jam, I'm gonna get, we're gonna go all the way over the New Testament, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Acts chapter 15.
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember what happens in Acts chapter 15?
[SPEAKER_00]: The counsel, the Jerusalem Council, is meeting together because they're seeing this wave of Gentiles being converted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that they're receiving the same Holy Spirit filling as the Jews.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back at Pentecost, it's like, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: God is not making a distinction between Jew and Gentile.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are we to make of that?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the Jerusalem Council.
[SPEAKER_00]: You remember what the conclusion was?
[SPEAKER_00]: James the leader of the council, quotes, Amus 9, Amus 9, 11 and 12.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, which says, after this, I will return.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is God's say, I will return.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will rebuild its ruin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will restore it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what the significance of them quoting that?
[SPEAKER_00]: It means that the restored house of Israel's
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the kingdom promises in the Old Testament that we talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now they include in that Gentiles through Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Israel's future is not hopeless, but the hardness of heart of the Jews give opportunity for the Gentiles to receive salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Paul is saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: and think about the persecution that immediately happened after the death of Christ, after the Resurrection, after the Pentecost, when drugs of people, thousands of people were coming to faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Persecution came.
[SPEAKER_00]: pushed along by this guy named Saul.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was helping out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The flame went from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when Paul got converted, he helped push it all the way out to the ends of the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, that's, that is God's heart and it's moving to the ends of the earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: But is Israel's future hopeless?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the Gentiles benefit now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, no it's not hopeless.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is provoking them to save them.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is provoking the Jews in order to save them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is wild, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I asked, verse 11, did they stumble in order to fall by no means rather through the trespass, their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as to make Israel jealous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm speaking to you, Gentiles in as much as I'm an apostle to the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm magnified by my ministry in order that somehow I would make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: God works in mysterious ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does he not?
[SPEAKER_00]: The message of the gospel, again, was always designed to reach the nations.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the way God goes about it, you just shake your head like, man, God, your ways are beyond me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, he says to us, like, I'm gonna start with you as you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna start with you as you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna spread very slowly until the coming of the Messiah, they're gonna reject the Messiah in large.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna pivot toward the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Gentiles are gonna come in.
[SPEAKER_00]: to want to come to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is trying to make Israel jealous in order to save them.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it says.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul first mentions that in Romans chapter 10, and he's quoting Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 3221.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what it says in Deuteronomy 3221.
[SPEAKER_00]: They, the Jews,
[SPEAKER_00]: God is speaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have made me jealous with what is no God.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have provoked me to anger with their idols.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I will make them jealous with those who are no people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk about the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Israel who had all of the privileges, they were set aside as God's people, they would turn to other gods to serve them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Making God jealous so he in turn is bringing then the nations to make them jealous to turn back to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the question is why use jealousy?
[SPEAKER_00]: to provoke them to salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: When God can soften and harden a heart whenever he chooses, why jealousy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do it that way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you know some of the passages that we've gone through in Romans chapter 9 verse 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or verse 18.
[SPEAKER_00]: of chapter nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then he has mercy on whom every will and he hardens whoever he will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why use jealousy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that the long way around?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can he just immediately do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but you will find that God uses means.
[SPEAKER_00]: He uses second-dairy means, probably, to work out as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I mean by that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well,
[SPEAKER_00]: God doesn't just directly come and speak to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's using secondary means by the preaching of the gospel, by people going to share their faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: All those things are second, he's using us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's using secondary means.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the trap of many young Calvinists, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna use this term.
[SPEAKER_00]: Calvinist is people who believe in election and predestination.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe in those.
[SPEAKER_00]: So probably makes me a Calvinist.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the trap of many young Calvinists,
[SPEAKER_00]: They fall into hyper Calvinism and hyper Calvinism, you didn't know that was even a thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hyper Calvinism is the elimination of secondary means.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're thinking, well, God's gonna do what he's gonna do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't need to share my faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't need to send any missionaries.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need to pray, you see how it goes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in one sense, in the pier of sense, yeah, God could go around us and directly he is not limited by us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God commands and commissions us to go throughout Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: He uses secondary means.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you get all in your head about God's election and predestination, you might just say, well, it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't need to hone my skills of preaching or witnessing or anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because God's going to do what He's going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really need to pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's going to do what He's going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see how it goes?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, God commands us to do those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may not be able to work all of that out in your mind, but please don't go into hyper Calvinism.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not honoring to Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has used means, that's how he's gonna go about doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's gonna get glory by using instruments like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's really, I mean, God uses secondary means through a complex world of evangelism, and that's the point of chapter 10 verse 14, isn't how shall they call upon him who have they not believed?
[SPEAKER_00]: And how are they to believe in him whom they have never heard and how are they gonna hear without preaching, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's using God uses jealousy, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's using some kind of means to push these guys toward salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Jews today see Gentile Christians earnestly studying the Old Testament, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Rejoicing in their Messiah, the Lord has planned to make them jealous because of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, instead of harboring hatred toward the Jews, we should join God in making them jealous.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go, how would that be?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, when you interact with them,
[SPEAKER_00]: You tell them how much you love the Scriptures, how much you love their Messiah and how much he has changed your life because the Messiah has become your Savior.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's in part how we can join God in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is Israel's future hopeless?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but the Gentiles are benefiting from it and God is provoking the Jews and order to save them one more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there, is there future hopeless?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, number three, God is planning a future in gathering.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is planning a future in gathering.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, through the trespass, verse 11, through the trespass, salvation is coming to Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as to make them jealous, now if they're trespass,
[SPEAKER_00]: means richest for the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like God pivoting to really reach the Gentiles, it really has bring, brought riches to the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: What would their full, and their failure means richest to the Gentiles?
[SPEAKER_00]: How much more will their full inclusion mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: If a few remnants, I mean, bring in this income, in gathering of Gentiles, what about their full in gathering?
[SPEAKER_00]: You see how he's just kind of teasing this out?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm speaking to the Gentiles, and as much as I'm going to pause the Gentiles, I'm magnify my ministry in order to make them my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save them.
[SPEAKER_00]: For if their rejection means reconciliation of the world,
[SPEAKER_00]: What will their acceptance mean, but life from the dead?
[SPEAKER_00]: If dough offered as first fruit is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what is the point of making juice jealous?
[SPEAKER_00]: A full inclusion rather than a remnant.
[SPEAKER_00]: To save some of the heart, to bring about their acceptance rather than rejection.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just this trending, it's crescendoing through this chapter, Paul is strongly hinting of a larger, in-gathering of ethnic Jews.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you see that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, can you see it crescendo throughout?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's hard not to see it, because presently there is a remnant that proves God has not rejected his own people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor is Israel's failure final.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something is coming that is greater than the present situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when you get a sense of.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Paul, in chapter 11 verse 25 and 26, he says, so I don't want you to be unaware of this mystery brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: A partial hardening is come upon Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in this way, all Israel will be saved as it is written in these quoting Isaiah 59, the deliver will come from Zion.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will banish all and godliness from Jacob.
[SPEAKER_00]: another name for Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's clear from the flow of the passage that some kind of engathering a mass conversion is being spoken of here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But others,
[SPEAKER_00]: would see Romans chapter 9, verses 6 and 7, as the controlling verse for the whole section of chapter 9 through 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go, well, what was that verse about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what it says.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember Paul is wrestling with not many Jews coming and he's going the only way he can resolve it is to say, not all who descend from Abraham really are the true Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what it says.
[SPEAKER_00]: belong to Israel and not all the children of Abraham because they are offspring, but through Isaac, shall your offspring be named.
[SPEAKER_00]: They use this to interpret now, chapter 11, verse 26, to mean that the full number of the remnant.
[SPEAKER_00]: In that view, all Israel be saved simply means this
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to think about that a little bit, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: In response, Fred Zasple and James Hamilton, they're theologians, they assert.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's point is not that the remnant will continue until completion a point that would hardly deserve extended argument.
[SPEAKER_00]: This point is that Israel would be grafted in again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's affirmation in verse 25, that Israel's present failure is only partial and temporary and dissipates the same reversal from partial hardness to all Israel saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now let me touch on verse 16 and we'll have to wait until next week because it becomes then an extended illustration.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 16 is talking about the first fruits, so a dough offered in first fruits and then it's talking about root and branch, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: First fruit speak of an offering to God from the first produce of the ground as a way of giving thanks and offering dependence upon the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you had a crop, the first thing, first fruit that's coming, you're gonna give to the Lord as an offering.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what first fruit is all about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, in the illustration, you got to understand, holy, you don't want to let that walk on all fours and mean more than it should.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holy simply means set apart for divine purposes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does not mean saving belief, because Paul has already made that statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not all Israel are the true Israel, even though the chosen nation, not everybody within Israel
[SPEAKER_00]: So, first fruits, it doesn't mean salvation, that first lump, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Most likely, the dough of first fruits refers to Jewish patriarchs and the whole lump is real.
[SPEAKER_00]: In addition, the root refers to patriarchs and the branches refer to is real again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, when I was reading it, I was like the lumped first lump of the dough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking, okay, that's the remnant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the full dough, or whatever the thing is, that's all is real, but the extended illustration it'll be root.
[SPEAKER_00]: and branch.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes more sense to say the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point?
[SPEAKER_00]: Holiness in part means holiness of the whole.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what it means.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is not finished with Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will reverse the hardness of their heart for the sake
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it will mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll get into this again next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: The listen to Charles Hodge.
[SPEAKER_00]: theologian, the restoration of Jews of the Jews, which will accompany by such beneficial results of the whole world, is to be expected because of their special relationship to God as his chosen people.
[SPEAKER_00]: God and selecting the Jewish patriarchs had their descendants in mind as well and included the Jews as a people should they should be specially devoted to himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you okay, John?
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: How is this square with what you said about the church last week?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you say that the church has replaced Israel?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I said that Christ is the fulfillment of all the promises made to Abraham back in Genesis 12 and that those connected to Christ
[SPEAKER_00]: form the new people of God with their Jew or Gentile.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants His people connected to their Messiah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much so that in the future, there's going to be an in-gathering.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, God loves His nation, but He chose, and wants to save them through Jesus, through Jesus the Messiah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at it, and verse 28 through 33.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, there's more to it than that, but we'll just read that.
[SPEAKER_00]: As regards to the gospel, they, the Jews, are enemies for your sake.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as regard to election, they are beloved for the sake of the forefathers, for the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable.
[SPEAKER_00]: For just as you were at one time disobedient to God, Gentiles, and now receive mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: They may also may now receive mercy.
[SPEAKER_00]: For God has consigned all to disobedience that He may have mercy on all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Paul has mouth drops, and he says, oh, the depth and riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot there, and we'll get into it more next week, but let me just leave you with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's ways are mysterious and beyond our comprehension at times.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we get to glimpse in to how He is moving nations and influencing things to bring about the fullest glory possible when He returns.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, we can see that right now in our own lives, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, yes, all about the nations in the world and the governments and all these things are going on, but he loves us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's involved in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, God has been working in your life, orchestrating people, and events to bring you to this moment in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christian or unbeliever, because he loves you.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's more for you of God to trust, to rely upon and enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like next testimony.
[SPEAKER_00]: come out from all of that stuff, come and find your deepest need in Jesus Christ, repent of going everywhere else and having every other God except the one true God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be done with it, turn the Bible calls that repentance, but He's brought you to this moment
[SPEAKER_00]: God has done all of that because He loves you and He's calling you to come and believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants to humble you so that He can help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christian, you can go to every other thing and He may let you so that you get to the point where you are so empty and so vacuous within you are just so dead on the inside
[SPEAKER_00]: to humble you so that he can then help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because then you'll look up, just like the prodigal son, you finally are eating of, you know, the pig stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you go, what am I doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: I pray that you get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christian and unbeliever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pray that you get there quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Waste no more time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come to Jesus.