of Romans chapter 11. It's been about a month and a half since we looked at this epistle. And so I felt like I wanted to get back into it this morning. We took a break for a few things, our communion service and visitors coming and traveling and different things like that. And so I want to get back into this and I'm really struck by the fact that as we've been preaching through this talking about Israel and the future of Israel and those kinds of things that amazingly it has come up in the news lately and it is interesting how it does from time to time and things that we've been discussing here and preaching about have popped up. I've seen several online discussions in recent days with the things going on between Israel and Iran and the Hamas, et cetera, that have brought this question up again. Is God done with Israel? Is God finished with Israel as a nation? Is he going to yet do a work amongst them? And in our study here in Romans, of course, we've been looking for some time at this, using as the theme verse Romans 1, 16 and 17, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it's the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believeth to the Jew first, remember that, and also to the Gentile. For therein in the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed, from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. That theme is carried its way all the way through. And that's no less true in chapters nine, 10, and 11, where the apostle now begins to deal with the question, what about Israel? This nation that had had all the advantages of belief and faith and the covenants and the promises of Abraham and the heritage, and yea, even the very bloodline of the Lord Jesus Christ came through the nation of Israel. And yet when the apostle Paul took pen in hand or dictated to his scribe, however he did it, what was contained here in these three chapters, Israel was at a very fallen state, had rejected their Messiah. And it appeared that for the most part, and it does even get to this day, that most of them have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ. And much of what has gone on in the interim and the intervening centuries between Paul's day and our day has come about because of that rejection of Jesus Christ. However, when we get over here into chapter 11, the apostle Paul begins to speak with some real hope with regard to Israel. And this is the crux of what it is that we're looking at. In fact, in chapter 11 in verse one, Paul asks this question, has God cast away his people? He said, God forbid, I know that God's not done with Israel because I'm an Israelite. I'm of the seed of Abraham. I'm of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew. And he goes on and he begins to explain it. And our last message on this was focused around chapter 11 and verse 22, in which we took the command here and the directive to behold the goodness and severity of God. Now, this morning, in order to get back into this, in order to get ourselves back up to speed, up to snuff, so to speak, as we like to say here in the South, what I want to do is something similar to a game we used to play when I was a kid. We called it Jump the Creek, and it worked great if you had a creek, but if you didn't have a creek, you could be innovative. You could come up with a plan. We happened to have at our yard a driveway that went over so far and then dropped off a foot or two and it made the perfect launching off point where you get way back and get a running start and you push off that ledge and get see as far as you could get and then we'd put a stick down to see to mark our place. Well, that's kind of what I'm going to do this morning in this message because it has been over a month since we've looked at this. What I want to do is is go back a few feet and get a running start And then I want to just kind of land my feet on the other side of where we bought where we've not yet been and kind of just get going so that next week, Lord willing, we can come back and take it up. So one thing I promise you, I will not be extremely lengthy this morning. So maybe you could say praise the Lord for that. But be that as it may, I hope that it is also useful because I'm not up here just to take up time I want to make good use of our time and make good use of the effort that we put into this. For instance, I'm going to go back to verse 16 and going to use that as the jumping off place to kind of get into it and then kind of work my way. And hopefully by the time I'm finished, we'll have at least landed our feet on verse 25 this morning, setting the stage for what is yet to come in what Paul had to say about what God was doing in Israel. what God had yet to do. I want to just begin reading at verse 16. For if the first fruit be holy, the lump is also holy. And if the root be holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou being a wild olive tree, work graft in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree, boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, the branches were broken off that I might be graft in. Well, because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear. For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed, lest he also spare not thee. Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God, on them which fail severity, but toward the goodness, if thou continue in his goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree, which is wild by nature, and wert graft contrary to nature into a good olive tree, How much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graft into their own olive tree? For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits, that blindness in part is happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And I'll stop reading for right now at that verse. But let me just go back and briefly and quickly review some things with you that look toward the faith and the hope that the apostle Paul will express here in this chapter, and which will later bring him to the verse from which we've taken our title, where he said in verse 33, oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. And that's a principle that we certainly at least touched on this morning in the book of Job, did we not? That God has the bigger picture. Whatever we see going on in the world stage, whether people agree with it or not, whether they think it's right or not, whether they think this is the proper course of action, whether Israel is this or whether Israel is that, we do know that we have a God in heaven who has the bigger picture. He has the end goal in mind. He has set himself to accomplish that goal. And in his heart and in his mind, it is already as good as accomplished because God never sets out to do anything that he does not accomplish. He already has it in mind. In fact, the Bible tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ is the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. That tells us that nobody upon this earth that is saved was saved without God's knowledge, without God's plan. Nobody was saved by accident. It was not just a throwing something against the wall and hoping that it stuck. When God set out to save his people, he saved his people. And although at this point in time, not all have yet come home to salvation in Christ, our God we know is like the Canadian Mounties. He always gets his man. He always gets what he goes after and he always accomplishes his will. And so it is in keeping with the will of God that we are looking at these things this morning and bearing in mind that the current situation on the world scene notwithstanding, God will accomplish what he set out to do, and he will accomplish the salvation of his people. Now, let me just remind you of this, that in this chapter, the Apostle Paul does not tell you and me what's going to happen to Israel on a national scene as far as politically and whether they'll be in their own land and this and that. That's not what this chapter is contained about. What the Apostle Paul is taken up with here is the salvation, the spiritual salvation of his own native people. those that were of like kindred to him physically, the descendants of Abraham. And Paul had expressed it already in chapter nine, where he said, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness that I have great heaviness, continual sorrow in my heart, for I could wish myself or a curse from Christ for my kinsmen according to the flesh. Chapter 10, verse one, he said, my heart's desire Prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved, you see. Now, is it important how Israel stands upon the world scene? Absolutely. Is it important that they get a fair shake among the nations around them? Absolutely. But that was not the heart of the Apostle Paul's desire here. His heart was that they might be saved. Because here's the fact, and this is true whether you be American or Israel, Israeli. You could live in a country that is free and yet die in your sins and go to hell for eternity. You could live in an environment that was altogether favorable and was altogether for your good physically and earthly and temporally speaking. And yet, if you leave this world without knowing Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the remission of sins, then you are lost for all of eternity, and you will never regain that. And so the worst thing that could happen to Israel is not them being put out of their land, are not getting a fair shake among the nations of the world. The worst thing that could happen to Israel, yea, the worst thing that could happen to America is for us to go on in our sins without Christ, not knowing him in the free pardon of sin, not trusting him, not believing on his grace and die in our sins and be eternally lost, you see. And so that's the heartbeat of the apostle Paul. And that's what we do not need to lose sight of here as we look at this chapter. Now, by speaking of the hope that the apostle had for Israel and for their future salvation, there in verse 16, Paul laid down a principle, and this is largely going to be reviewed. And he brought us back to Exodus chapter 23, where God gave the commands for the firstfruits offering. After Israel had gone into the promised land, the Lord said, I want you to bring the first fruits of your offering. That is the first thing that you have gathered when your crops begin to produce. And I want you to present that to the Lord and give that as an offering to God. And what they are saying by that is this, that these first fruits represent God's bounty to us. And we give them back to us, to our God from us. Because we know and acknowledge that he has blessed us. And if this first fruit is holy, then the whole offering is holy. The whole field is holy. Our field belongs to God. You know, that's what we as believers are supposed to be saying, is it not? Not only do we come on Sunday morning and we write out our time check and we put it in the offering. The apostle Paul said, I'm not looking for your money. What God wants is you. And when God has you, he's got your money. and you're not as worried about hanging on to it because the same God that's got the money also has you and he's gonna take care of you, you see. And that's the idea. Israel was making their statement of faith and the apostle Paul used that and he said, if the first fruit is holy, the lump is holy. And not only is he talking about the first fruit there, he also is looking back and this is what they would literally do is they would make their bread, they would bring a portion of that dough They would lift it up before God and say, Lord, you're the source of our bread. Just as this first fruit is holy, the entire lump of our bread is holy. God, you give us our daily bread. And they acknowledge that. And that's the principle that the apostle Paul lays down. And then he inserts here a premise in the latter part of verse 16. If the root is holy, so are the branches. And although he doesn't use the word tree right here in this verse, he does in the next. If the root of the tree is holy, so are the branches. And that's the premise that Paul gets off the principle, just like the first fruit is holy, the lump is holy, that if the root of the tree is holy then the branches and what it produces are holy is holy and then Paul moves into a proposition and I'm going to cover these pretty quickly but hopefully enough to at least remind you of what we've talked about and to bring you back to understanding. The proposition is this, and he takes that principle of the tree and the root and the branches. And he says this, if some of the branches be broken off and thou being a wild olive tree work graft in among them and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the tree. So what Paul is doing is he's moving right into this and he's saying, that the olive tree, the cultivated olive tree that God brought up is a picture of Israel. It's a picture of Israel, how God called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees. He revealed himself to him. He made himself known to his children, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, and to the children of Israel, even in bringing them out of Egypt. God cultivated that tree. God planted that tree. God nourished that tree and brought it along. And his particular special favor was on the olive tree known as Israel. But then he said this, Israel came to a place where they rejected their Messiah. Even after centuries of having looked toward that promise of Jesus coming along. And when he did come along, they looked at him. And as Isaiah said, they said, there's no beauty in him that we should desire him. There's nothing favorable about him. He's not what we expected. And so rather than embracing their king, rather than bowing to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and saying, he is God's Messiah, he is the ultimate plan of salvation for our lives, they said, we want no part of him. And they said, his blood be on us and upon our children. And so here we see the branches of the olive tree being broken off. But praise God, this is what Paul brought out. And again, we've already looked at this. And so I'm trying to just allude to it without reteaching it this morning. Did you know that God, having broken off some of those natural branches through their unbelief, it made room for you and me as Gentiles who were outside of that covenant of grace, outside of the covenant of Abraham. We were outside of that until God went out there into the forest and found a wild olive branch. He took that wild olive branch and he grafted it into salvation. Now remember, and keep our eye on this ball, that when we're speaking about Israel in this context, we're speaking about both a natural and a spiritual seed. We're speaking about God's promises to Abraham, because Abraham was the head of the Jewish clan, the Jewish race, because God had made him a Hebrew and had brought forth out of him Isaac and Jacob and their sons, et cetera. And God worked that in a powerful, powerful way. But also we're told earlier on in Romans that who are the true spiritual seed of Abraham? Those that emulate his faith. those that follow the faith of Abraham. And when we look at Abraham, the Bible says that he believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. So you and I, that believe God for salvation. God counts our faith for righteousness, and we're counted as the spiritual seed of Abraham because of that. And so we must never lose sight of that fact. So God went out here to the forest, so to speak, to the wild olive branch, and he took some of us Gentiles, and he placed us into the covenant of promise and faith. and obedience to Abraham. So that when you get over to Galatians chapter three, the apostle basically says that your seed is Christ and all that are in Christ. If you're in Christ, then you are Abraham's seed by faith. You see, I can lay hold of the same faith in God that Abraham laid hold of. and therefore I am related to Abraham by adoption through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a powerful, powerful truth that is. And so this is what the Apostle Paul proposes, that God took these wild olive branches and then grafted them in. And then in verse 18, he gives us what we call a precept. In other words, if you see that some of the natural branches had been cut off in order to make room for you, the wild olive branches to be placed in, don't get high minded about that. Don't any of us ever look at the nation of Israel and say, they blew it, didn't they? They blew it, didn't they? Well, it's by grace that we're grafted in. God didn't owe us anything. He could have put every one of us in hell. And so it's by grace that we're grafted in. And so the apostle says, don't get high minded. Don't boast against the branches because you're not bearing the root. Oh yes, right now the gospel has flourished in the Gentile world much more than the Jewish world. But that's not to our credit, that's to God's credit. And it's because God allowed that the fall of Israel would mean that the gospel went throughout the world. And all those Israelites that thought that salvation was only a Jewish thing are now seeing salvation in the Gentile world. And you know what the Apostle Paul had said, do you remember this? God is gonna use that to provoke them to jealousy. As they see the favor and the blessing of God, God will use that to provoke them to jealousy so that they will be stirred up and so that they will then turn and behold the goodness of God and the mercy of God and get right with God. So the apostle says, don't get boastful. Don't boast against the branches. Verse 19, thou won't say then the branches were broken off that I might be grafted in. Well, because of unbelief, they were broken off. And thou standest by faith, be not high-minded, but fear, for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed, lest he also spare not thee. And so we are told here, we are given a precept, don't get high-minded. Don't think that you and I are something else because salvation has come to us as Gentiles. When we look at, how God harshly dealt with the Jewish people because of their rejection of Christ. It ought to cause us rather to humble ourselves in the dust and thank God that any of us are saved at all by the grace of God. And then I got into what he called the proceed. In other words, what came forth from that? Verse 22, this was our last message. Behold the goodness and the severity of God. You and I are challenged here to to put on our glasses, so to speak, and to maybe take out our binoculars or our telescope and to look intently at the goodness and at the severity of God. And here are two truths that we brought out to you. One is that God is good. Can you say amen to that this morning? God indeed is good. And God is good in mercy and God is good in grace. And he gives favor to people who repent of their sins, but also understand that God is also severe. And that is the soul that sinneth, it shall die. The nation that forgets God shall be turned into hell. The apostle brought out here and he said that when we look at how Israel was cut off in their unbelief, those branches taken off and taken out of the way and the Gentiles brought in, we see God's goodness toward the Gentiles, but we see severity and judgment toward the unbeliever. And this is a twofold truth that you and I need to understand is all the way through the scriptures that the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is indeed death. When God appeared to Adam and Eve there in the Garden of Eden, He said, don't eat that fruit on that tree, for in the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die. And guess what? When they ate of the fruit on that tree, they indeed did die. And it set death in motion throughout the world. But praise God also for the mercy of God. The second half of Romans 6.23 says, The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so the apostle Paul points out that these traits are definitely in the scriptures and he develops them here in chapter 11 and verse 22, as he says, behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God on them, which fail severity. but on, but toward the goodness, if you continue in his goodness, otherwise thou also shall be cut off. You see? And so the apostle Paul says, if you and I are truly recipients of the grace of God, you know what it's going to do? It's going to make a difference in your life. It's going to change you. It's going to make you what God would have you to be. When you and I come to Christ, we do not come bringing all of our baggage of sin with us and say, all right, God, here I am with all my sin. Just get used to me the way I am. Accept me as I am. No, we come to Christ as we are. Yes. But when we come, he changes us. He makes a work in our lives. If you and I are still in the old habits of sin that we were in before we made our profession of faith, then that means that we're not truly born again. We have not truly experienced the grace of God. And so therefore, what we see here, when he talks about continuing in his goodness, he's talking about the fact that real grace becomes active in my life. and change is brought about because God is at work in me, you see. And that's the whole idea here. So we behold the goodness and the severity of God in these verses of scripture. And then I want to get into just something new real quickly here, and then we'll be finished in short order. Look at verse 23, the apostle Paul After laying those principles down in verse 23, he says this, they also, speaking about Israel, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. And in this verse, what he does is he's going back to his whole olive tree illustration. He's showing that the natural branches were cut out. In other words, those that rejected Jesus, God said, cutting you out, you have no more part. And then he took and gathered the wild olive branches and he put them in to the faith of Abraham and he allowed us to come in and to receive the faith of Abraham. But notice that Paul says, if those wild olive or those natural olive branches that were cut out, if they turn and they begin to trust in Christ and they begin to believe God for his way of salvation, watch it, God's able to pick those branches up. put them back in, you see. And if I don't say anything else that's significant this morning, that's it right there. God is able, even as Israel in our day, spiritually speaking, lays in shambles and unbelief, God is able to pick those branches up and to graft them back in. And this is the hope that the Apostle Paul begins to express here, and which will continue through the end of this chapter, that God is able yet to do a great work among Israel. And I believe when he is speaking of Israel here, he's speaking not in a spiritual sense so much as he is saying, God is able to save the natural descendants of Abraham. And we're told in these verses and in the verses that follow that evidently you and I can expect at some point for God to do a work, spiritually speaking, among the natural descendants of Abraham, those Jews, those Israeli people at this point scattered throughout the world, most of them, but if they abide not still in unbelief that God is able to graft them in again. Notice verse 24, for if thou were cut out of the olive tree, which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree, how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graft into their own olive tree? So in other words, what the apostle is saying here is it is more natural to expect that God would put those branches back in than the fact that he would come out into the woods and find us and put us in. Amen. And so that's what he's saying. How much more is God able to graft them in again? And so this is evidently the plan of God. At some point, we don't know exactly when, would God that it were today even, that God would graft those branches back in and would yet stir up Israel to receive her king. But alas, it appears that there will come times of great distress and great pressing and great persecution and great tribulation before that actually takes place. The time of Jacob's trouble in which they will go through the experiences of trouble that will boil them down and will press them even like the olives are pressed to get the oil out of them. Israel will be pressed and compressed brought down low before they will finally look up and acknowledge that Jesus Christ is their Lord and King. But God is able, is he not? Have you ever known anybody that God couldn't save? No, God can save who he wants and God can save who he will. And so the apostle is holding out hope here that the Lord God is able to save even if they turn. And isn't it amazing that as you trace history, there have been accounts of people of God that has saved Gentile people who loved the souls of Israelite people and witnessed to them for Christ and they came to salvation. And there are groups like the one that we, what is the word I'm trying to say, support, that are interested in reaching out to the Israeli people and letting them know that Jesus Christ is Messiah, taking them back to the word of God and saying, Jesus Christ died for you to bring you to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, Paul held out great hope of their return to God. One writer suggested that Paul's reference to it here is a mystery, suggesting it in a prophetical sense. And if you wanted to write these verses down, 1 Corinthians 2, 7, and 10, 1 Corinthians 15, 51, and Romans 16, 25, all talk about the mystery. And when the Bible uses the word mystery here, It's speaking about that which was known only to God, but that now God has made known to us by the gospel. You see, the church is a mystery. Salvation of the Gentiles is a mystery. God has many mysteries that he himself alone knows. But when we speak about mysteries in this sense, it is that which God brings about through the working of the gospel. And so Paul states here, look at verse 25, I would not rather that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits that blindness in part is happened unto Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. This is where I want to land my feet this morning. Paul says that God evidently has a plan to reach back into that Israeli people and bring out a people for his name. to bring them to salvation. But it is going to be after the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. You see this parentheses that we're living in. God has reached into the Gentile nation and is saving non-Jewish people and has been doing so for a couple of millennia now. But at some point, the apostle is holding out hope that this blindness of heart that Israel has been in the midst of for all these years will yet be broken as God begins to now reveal his truth to the Israeli people once again. And I want to just give you a couple of verses and then I'll be finished this morning that Paul actually quotes from here in chapter chapter 11, verse 26 and 27. He quotes here and he says, and so all Israel shall be saved as it is written. They shall come out of Zion to deliver and turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant unto them when I shall take away their sin. So Paul is quoting here from Isaiah 59. If you want to hold your place here, we'll turn over to Isaiah 59. Isaiah chapter 59 and look at verses 20 and 21. Now the apostle Paul, you remember, was a Bible teacher. He used the Old Testament and he preached Christ and he preached the will of God and the mysteries of God through the Old Testament. Watch what he's actually quoting from this in Romans 11, 26 and 27, Isaiah 59, 20 and 21. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion. and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord. My spirit that is upon thee and my words which I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever. Also turn back to Isaiah 27 in verse nine. Isaiah 27 and verse nine. By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged. This is all the fruit to take away his sin when he make it all the stones as the altar is chalk stones that are beaten and Sunder the groves and the images shall not stand up. Uh, Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah chapter 31, look at verses 31 through 34. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them out by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they break, although I I wasn't husband unto them, saith the Lord, but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. And so God is making known here, and the Apostle Paul is bringing out that God indeed has a future plan, a plan that will come to pass, a plan that will be revealed, whereby Israel will be saved. And Lord willing, we'll pick that up the next time, but I just wanted to bring us back up to that point this morning to remind us of what we've been looking at And the fact that God evidently, by the profession of the Apostle Paul and by the teaching of the Apostle Paul, has not written off Israel and has not said, I'm finished with them. He evidently has a plan. And you and I can go to the bank and trust that God indeed knows exactly what he is doing. Amen. Father, I thank you for the word today. I thank you for the strength and the help too. Proclaim it today. I pray that you would cause it to find its root in its home in our hearts. And may we place our faith entirely in the providence of God and the mercy of God. Make your way known and use us, I pray, as a gospel witness. In Jesus' name, amen.