Paul begins with a question in verse seven, where he asks, what then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see, ears that would not hear, down to this very day. And David says, Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. Let their eyes be darkened so they cannot see and bend their backs forward. Would you bow with me in a word of prayer? Father, as we open your word, we pray, Lord, you'd open our hearts. Father, I know we're gonna be looking at truths that are deep even maybe in some ways unfathomable to our human minds. But Lord, You can enlighten our minds to understand and apply these truths. Pray You would do that. Help us as we humbly come before You. We thank You for speaking to us. Thank You, Lord, for Your Word. In Christ's name, amen. So he's been called Old Blue Eyes. Or he's been called the Chairman of the Board. He's part of what was called the Rat Pack. And some of you still don't know who I'm talking about. His name is Frank Sinatra. You still don't know who I'm talking about. But, you know, Sinatra goes back another generation. And he came, he sang, many of the hits, you know, New York, New York, some of those hits. But a signature song that he sang that was written for Frank Sinatra was My Way. In fact, I've labeled My Way as the Adam's Anthem because that's really what it is. It's Adam's Anthem. It's one that's very common. It's one that we can identify with. It has a triumphal sound to it, and even for some, a triumphal message. But let me read you a line out of the song. And now the end is near, so I face the final curtain. My friend, I'll say that it's clear. I'll state my case, of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full, I've traveled each and every highway, and more and more and more than this, I did what? I did it my way. And that's the heart of the song. I went through this life, I'm facing the end, and the whole time I did it my way. As memorable as the song might be to us, and as singable and appealing and triumphal as it might sound, This is a song that you do not want to be singing on the last day of your life. This is a song you don't want to sing right before the final curtain comes and you look the Lord Jesus Christ as your judge right in the face. Sadly, at that point, it'll be too late. When you discover doing it my way was the wrong way. Doing it your way fell short. Not only will you find it falling short, but it will actually lead, as we're going to see, to greater condemnation. We're going to see this very clearly as we look at the verses 7 through 10 in Romans chapter 11. See clearly as we look back to Israel. We're in that section of Scripture where Paul is trying to answer the question very clearly and graphically. What about Israel? What about them? They're your people. They received your promises. They're your covenant people. And now when the Messiah has come, they reject the Messiah and they're lost. Has God's promises failed? Has God failed? What's wrong? What happened to Israel? And he's been answering that question for us starting around nine and all the way through 11. I mean, after all, they were very religious people. Where did they miss out? Well, they missed out because they were doing it their way instead of God's way. You know, they'd been blessed by what? They had the prophets, they had the law of God, they'd been given a sacrificial system, the promise of the Messiah. I mean, they had it all. And yet, they wanted to do it their way rather than God's way. The result was they fell short. So the question is, does that mean that God failed? I mean, he had great promises for the Jews, and now many of them are lost. And we saw before the answer is no, God did not fail. What happened was they failed to seek righteousness according to God's way. They were seeking righteousness their own way. And so when it came to ethnic Israel, the physical seed of Abraham, the descendants, They basically rejected the Messiah when he came. Paul's out preaching the gospel all around Asia Minor. And many of the Jews, if not most of the Jews, were rejecting the gospel, rejecting the Messiah. They rejected the promised Messiah. They did not put their trust in him. They chose to do it their own way and rather than accepting his sacrificial work on their behalf, They said, we'll take over and we'll do it our way. And we're gonna keep the law. We're gonna keep the rules. We're gonna keep the regulations. And we're gonna do all of that to earn our righteousness with you and our right standing. We saw before there's still a remnant, a small group of Jews that God chose and saved. So there always was that remnant. Paul would put himself amongst that remnant of the Jew and some of the apostles that were saved. So that takes us to verse seven. That's where we're gonna kinda begin our exploration of what about the Jews? Verse seven says, what then? It's a question. Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. Now the what then is like, I would call it like a spiritual carabiner. You know, you're taking it back and you're gonna connect it to something that has come before. And the question is what? What's he linking into verse seven from the past? In light of all that I've mentioned up to this point about the Jews, Here's a summary. I'm gonna put it all together for you in just one short verse. And so he brings together much of his teaching here. He summarizes it in verse seven. That's why seven is just packed with truth. I mean, the whole message, the whole sermon is verse seven. And we're gonna see the rest of it, just kind of an illustration or examples backing up the message. Now, what I want us to see is verse seven is about, Ethnic Israel, it's about national Israel. It's not about the spiritual Israel, but the ethnic Israel. And there's three truths that are found in verse seven. We're gonna look at them. And they all relate to the Jews. The first one is, God rejects the self-righteous Jews. Although that's true of all. God gives righteousness to his elect. And the third is God punishes the remainder. You see all three of those in this verse. Really, God's plan for the Jews is summed up there. You have most of the Jews, related to Abraham, sought God by their own righteousness and are lost. But then there were some elect Jews who obtained righteousness, And then he asks the question, what about the rest of them? What about the ones that aren't chosen by God? What about the ones that aren't elect? And he deals with them as well. And so he's gonna mention all three of them here. God rejects the self-righteous. Israel has failed to obtain righteousness. They were seeking it. The very thing they were seeking, they failed to obtain. How frustrating. I mean, to be seeking after God, and to be seeking after righteousness, and to do so passionately, and not to obtain it? But they were doing it their way, that's the problem, rather than God's way. And they were doing it by works, and by effort, and by merit. And they slavishly tried to keep the law that God had given them. They slavishly tried to keep the Sabbath. We're gonna see in a minute how slavishly they did that. Temple sacrifice, passionately pursuing every way to God that he has in his scripture, but doing it their way. Trying to earn righteousness with God. And what did they receive for that, for all that labor? Paul says nothing. They did not receive what they sought after. Why? Because they refused to obtain the righteousness God's way. In fact, the more you try, here's a lesson in the middle of this, the more you try to do religion, the more you try to please God, the more you try to work in a way that's going to make him happy and pleased and pat you on the back eternally, is really a recipe for failure. You're going to fail, just like the Jews did, and fall short. You know, Paul might have been thinking, as we've seen going through Romans, he does this from time to time, trying to think what the objection might be of the hearer or the reader of his book, or this particular book on Romans. And he might be thinking something like this as he writes verse seven. Now, wait a minute, Paul. Let's get this straight. You're saying that God's people, the people that he loved, that he gave promises to, that he entered into covenant with, are you saying that those people are lost? And of course the answer is yes. And he's hearing the objection, but wait a minute, how could that be? How could that be? And it doesn't add up logically or scripturally. And I think what we're going to see is he's going to answer that by showing us. There's quotes right out of the Old Testament quoting this. This is true. This has always been taught this way. This is not a new teaching. And so you need to hear from those who've gone before the prophets of God. You know, a remnant, those who did their best, those who who sweat, those who work, are lost? Yeah. That's what he's saying. You know, it's kind of like me, you know, occasionally I'll get on my recumbent bike more than probably not as much as I should, but when I'm on my recumbent bike, I mean, you know, I've got speed, I've got distance, I've got, I know all that's going on electronically in this bike and I set it for 40 minutes and I go for 40 minutes and I get it up to around 10, 12 miles an hour. That's kind of my, my normal. And when I'm done, I'm out of breath, I got worked up a sweat, and I looked at my bike, and it's right where I left it. It was like, you know, just sitting there, spinning the wheels, but going nowhere. All electronically, it said I was. And that's how the spiritual life is for many who are trying to work their way to God. They're busy. They're spinning. They're working. It's hard. It's laborious. They think they're faithful. And yet they're spiritually going nowhere as it comes to entering into a right relationship with God. I mean, Isaiah is very clear. He looks down on those who are trying to earn their own righteousness. And he says in 64, we have all become like one who is unclean. And all our righteous deeds, okay, think about that. All of our righteous deeds, all of our morality, all of our religiosity, Anything we do in those realms or any other realm is like a polluted garment. That's what God thinks of them. That's why we go nowhere. They don't bring us any closer to God. Some of you here today might be resting on your spiritual progress by what you do. But if you look in your heart of hearts, you realize you've pretty much have done it your way up to this point in time. And you see, you might even think, you know, I think I've done enough. And if today is the final curtain, if today is the day I'm going to see God face to face, that I think I've done enough to balance the scales, to push it forward, that I will be accepted by God. I've been trying to be a good Christian. I've been trying to live a moral life. I've been trying to go to church. I've been trying to do all the things that God would be happy with. Surely it must be enough. And what this passage clearly tells us and warns us about, you're going to fall short. It's not enough. Think about this. Some of you who might be thinking, I've lived a good life, I've done it my way, I've gone to church, I've been moral, I've tried to do the right things. God surely will accept me. First of all, let me ask you to, if you'll be willing to line your life up with a Jew during Paul's day. I'm not even gonna have you line up with Christ. Just line up with a Jew during Paul's day. You know, he's, well, I've been baptized and I go to church pretty much every Sunday. Well, think about the Jews going with their offering and their blood sacrifices and faithful to all of the feasts and festivals of their religion. The Jews would out pray you any day of the week. They prayed three times a day. Not at a meal, but they prayed, set aside three times during the day to pray. And so you say, In their prayers, they would exceed you in their religion. What about the offering box back there? Well, I put something in the offering box every week, and if you're like me and Mary, when we became brand new Christians, we'd put $5 in and walk out the door. Some of the Jews during Paul's day, they were so meticulous in their tithes, They were tithing down to the very seeds that were in their herb, what, drawer, cabinet, I don't know, but in their herbs. Can you imagine taking little seeds and breaking, oh, here's one out of 10, and tithing it to God? They were meticulous. Line that up against your giving to God. Or think about the Sabbath day, a day that God has set aside and praise the Lord you're here and you're in the house of God and you're hearing the word of God. But don't pat yourself on the back too strong on that one if you have yet to come to Christ on his terms. The Jews were so, so meticulous on keeping the fourth commandment that they actually counted the steps that they could walk or not walk on the Sabbath day. without having it considered work. Line your life up alongside of a good Jew. They didn't have TV. They didn't have adultery and movies and all the things that we consume and watch in our culture today. In fact, even the word adultery, you would take an adulterer out and stone them. You wouldn't laugh at their jokes on television. They wouldn't even speak the name of God. You don't speak the name of God. You don't even write the name of God. And so what you do is, today, how often are those who think they're doing pretty good, are quick to take the Lord's name in vain, take the Lord's name loosely and use it very loosely in conversation, or jokingly, or using it as a profanity. You know, Matthew 5.20 says, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, the Jews of Paul's day, you'll never enter the kingdom of God. So I'm not even measuring our life alongside of Christ perfection, but a life alongside of a very religious Jew, most of us fall short. And what Paul's going to tell us is they fell short. And if they fell short, you know, you have fallen short. And so this takes us, if the very religious cannot obtain righteousness, who can? And this takes us to the second point, or the second group that's mentioned in verse seven. God gives righteousness to the elect Jews. They, the elect, have obtained righteousness. See, it's not those who did it my way who obtain righteousness, it's those who did it God's way. The elect have obtained it. Now, remember back in Romans 9 when we were there, we were talking about how it was that God had not abandoned the Jews. Actually, there's a spiritual seed, and the spiritual seed includes now, get surprised, the Gentiles who God has elected for salvation, many of the Gentiles. Can you imagine when they heard that? I mean, they were scoundrels, they were dogs. Now God is, I'm hearing that God's elected them and made them be part of spiritual Israel. That was the plan that we saw back in Romans 9. So the elect in Romans 9, here's what I want us to see. The elect in Romans 9, I don't believe are the same as the elect in Romans chapter 11. There's two different groupings there, and I want us to see that distinction. When you go to, for example, when you go to Romans 9, 30 through 31, that's the closing of Romans 9, Paul writes, what shall we say then? The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it. That is a righteousness that is by faith. But Israel, who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching the law. But, the elect did. The elect did. And so, I think what you have here in 9 is you have Israel, you have the Jews, and you have them working their way to heaven, and then we see that God has an elect. It's spiritual Israel. And now He's chosen before the foundation of the world, Gentiles. to be a part of Israel. This is a wonderful truth. But when we come to 11 over here, it's different. I don't think he's talking about Gentiles in Romans 11. I think all through verse 7, he's speaking of Jews. You can follow that contextually as you go through it. And so it's Jews that are working their way to God and not obtaining righteousness. And it's Jews It's Jews who are elect and have obtained righteousness. And then he asked the question, well, what about the rest? And that's the rest we're gonna see at the bottom of verse seven. So the elect here, I believe, is the elect Jews. Not a lot, but elect Jews that God has chosen before the foundation of the world. They have obtained righteousness. And these would be people like the apostle Paul, or these would be people like any one of the, many of the apostles. They obtained righteousness. And Paul went around Asia Minor preaching and then he went to the synagogues and there were those who got saved. It wasn't like every Jew never trusted in Christ. But the mass group of ethnic Israel did not come to Christ. It was a small group, a small remnant who were chosen before the foundation of the world. They obtained it. And they obtained it by doing it God's way rather than their own. Romans 9.16 says, so then it depends not on the human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. And so where does forgiveness come from? Well, it's not by your self-determination, it's not by you and what you did and how much you, I repent and I believe and I, I, I, I, but it's all of God who shows mercy. The elect, he says, ordained it. They had the elect received it. They received what they didn't earn because they were chosen before they had done anything good or anything bad before the foundation of the world. They were simply chosen by the sovereign good pleasure of God himself. And these would be Jews that God chose. And every one of them received righteousness. They would have faith in Christ and receive righteousness. So do you see the three groups, the three groups in verse seven? First group are the Jews that are what? trying to earn salvation, earn righteousness because of their self-righteousness and they're not. And then secondly, you see the group that the elect are. And then the question after that would be, what about those who aren't elect? What about them? What about the rest? What about the rest of the Jews who God did not elect? we're gonna see that God hardens the remainder. Three groups. One doesn't obtain righteousness, the second does. The third, those who didn't obtain righteousness, they're hardened, the rest are left out. The rest. And that's a vast amount of Jews that are not elect, that were trying to do it their way instead of God's way. The rest were hardened. That's an interesting word, hardened. Depending on your translations, I know some of you have different translations of Bibles. If you have a King James Version, I think your translation is blinded. Yours is blinded. The ESV, NIV, NASB, all are hardened. Literally, the word means to become stone-like. It's like a callus where you kind of lose feeling and unable to to feel because of a hardness of growth. This is the only time in the New Testament where this word appears. Hardened. He hardened them. The context is one of visual blindness. We're going to see as you look down to the examples. You might think of a cataract that grows on the eye and you can't see out at all very well. That kind of blindness. The Septuagint, you'll see this word used in the Septuagint Now the Greek translation of the Old Testament, in Job 17, it says, My eye has grown dim. That's how it's translated there, from vexation. And all my members are like a shadow. So you get the idea of the eyesight and not able to see. Those who were chosen found righteousness. The rest were hardened. The rest were hardened. And these are words for judgment. It wasn't like they got hard in their eyes and blinded. This is judicial blindness that God has put in their eye. This is an act of God operating on them. You know, I was thinking it's kind of like the magicians I watch on TV once in a while. You know, they always have the trick where they put the sleeping mask over the eyes and something over the head so they can't see anything. You know, it's that kind of blindness. Can't see. You can see, but you can't see. That's what hardening is. And Paul's hearing some thinking that maybe this is hard, hard to understand. And it is. Why would he harden his people? So what does he do? He quotes from the Old Testament. He's going to give us several verses from the Old Testament to show, this is nothing new. This is no surprise. This was spoken of by the prophets of old. And that's why in verse eight, he then transitions to, as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear, down to this very day. And what he's doing there in verse eight is he's combining two Old Testament prophecies into one verse. He's combining Deuteronomy 29.4 and Isaiah 29.2, and he's combining these two truths together to show us this is clearly taught in the Old Testament, in the Old Covenant. God prophesied this. My people will not see. and my people will not hear. They're gonna have a spirit of stupor, a moral dullness. The word stupor there is a word that we get the word anesthetic from. I heard that Dr. Lowe was here last week. And those of you know Dr. Lowe, he's an anesthesiologist. And he knows what it means to give you a shot that'll make you very dull. We're talking about moral dullness here. I remember I had surgery once, and by the way, if you ever have surgery, ask for Dr. Lowe. He comes in and he prays with you before surgery. It's really, what a blessing to have a brother there with you. But I remember, you're all ready to go into the operating room, and you're laying there, and he looks at you and he says, by the way, Don, I'm gonna give you two shots. Okay. I'm gonna give you a shot right now. And he says, here's what I want you to do. Think about this. He says, we're going to start wheeling you down on the way to the operating room. Now, I want you to see if you can remember. I'm telling you this now. See if you can remember the doors you go through into the operating room. And then see if you can remember what's the last thing that I said to you. And it was kind of an interesting thing, because I'm really fighting, okay, I'm gonna figure this out, I'm gonna watch the doors, I'm gonna listen to the words. But there is a point where, okay, I'm in a stupor. I can see, my eyes were open, but I couldn't really see, because I don't remember what I saw. And I remember that my ears were open, he was talking to me, but they were dull. They were in a stupor too, and I could not hear. And this is a little bit of a description of what happens to the Jews who were not chosen, who did not come God's way. We see that they are there now. They're hardened. They're in a stupor. And I'll tell you, it affects their whole being. The will is dead. Try to get off that table, that gurney, and run away from the opera. I don't want to do this. No, you can't move. You're going. Emotions cold, indifferent. Eyes, yeah, they're open. You can walk around as an unbeliever, but you can't see the glory of God. You can't see and witness all that God has done on your behalf. You're blind to spiritual truth. And your ears cannot hear, and the gospel goes out, and it's simple. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. It's so simple that you can't understand it. Your ears will not hear. And this was a spiritual stupor that came over ethnic Israel, those whom God did not choose. I remember when I was living out in Vacaville, as a matter of fact, I went out with our church and knocking on doors and witnessing to people. It was exciting. This one young man, he's about 11, 12 years old, he said, you gotta meet my dad, he's Jew. And I said, great, I can't wait to talk to him. So we went over to his house and we talked to his dad. And I thought, oh, Lord, this is gonna be so exciting. I'm gonna open up the Bible to Isaiah chapter what? 53, that's what I did, Isaiah 53. And I said, when he sees Isaiah 53, this guy is gonna be on his knees, trusting in Christ as a Savior and Lord, and it's gonna be glorious. And I opened up, I said, can I share something with you? Let me just read to you from Isaiah 53, verse four. Surely he has bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was a chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. And I couldn't no longer get to the end of that passage. I said, I want to say, listen, do you hear it? Do you hear who Isaiah is talking about? His wounds are healed. He's healing our wounds and his side is pierced. Who is this? And then the first thing out of his mouth, he says, the Messiah. And I was already going, yay. He says when he comes, He couldn't see it. Couldn't see that I was talking about Christ. He was blinded. He was in a stupor. What I thought was so clear to him was absolutely meaningless. He was a Jew who was still under a stupor, blind and deaf. This blank look on his face, couldn't hear, couldn't understand spiritual truth, stupefied. And by the way, it continues down to today as well. I believe this carries over to anyone who is rejecting Christ and is outside the pale of grace and not trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's true of anyone here today who's not a Christian. There is a blindness, there is a stupor, there is a deafness that comes over the heart. It's real. I've seen it. Let me give you an example. I've been preaching the gospel for 40 plus or minus years, and I can say this. It's the same gospel, it hasn't changed. By grace, through faith, the work of Christ alone, substitutionary death, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. Repent of your sins, believe in Christ. It's not of words, it's not of merit, it's all of God, it's a gift of God, it's a gift of God, it's grace. And that's the same message I've preached all those years, and yet I'll go up and ask someone, are you saved? And they say, yeah, I am. Well, tell me about it. Well, I did it my way. I'm doing it my way. And I've given God my religious best. And what comes back by default is a work answer. Now why is that? Why is a message of grace and faith that is so simple that the youngest child can understand that, but when it comes to the mind of one whose heart is darkened in unbelief and is unable to hear things in the right spiritual way, why is it they're a rejection of the simplicity of the gospel? And the answer is it's because they're blind. And what they need is a work of God's grace. You need the eye-opening work of the Holy Spirit, the ear-unplugging work of God Himself, so that you can hear, and so you can see, so you can repent, so you can believe and understand and be saved. He goes on and says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. And here Paul's quoting from Psalm 69. It's interesting, Psalm 69, anybody know what Psalm 69 should trigger in your mind? What kind of a psalm is that? Well, verse 21 will tell us it's a messianic psalm. It tells us about Jesus. But here's the irony, verse 22, it's an imprecatory psalm. He's calling down judgment and wrath, David is, on his enemies. Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block, a retribution to them. And now he's taking an imprecatory prayer found in the psalm and prophetically applying it to God's people who are blinded. Not the enemies of God's people, but to God's people. Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see and bend their back forever. This is an imprecatory prayer of David. See those enemies? God take care of them, bring curses upon them, let their table become a trap, let their eyes be darkened, blind them, stoop them over, let them be hunchbacks, and yet that's the very quote he's using to say what's gonna happen to the Jewish people. Let their table, that's interesting. Let their table become a snare and a trap. What's the imagery there? You know, the table is always given to us as a place of blessing, of grace. We spread the table when people come over and visit us. We're spreading out a meal, our love for others. It's very symbolic of blessing, of God giving grace. And so when God gives you a table that's full of rich things to eat, he says, let that table for the Jews become a snare and a trap. A table is a place of blessing. Common grace, it's God's common grace is blessing to us. And let those blessings of life become a trap and a snare to them. A trap like a mousetrap that will come down upon them. What a place to be as an unbeliever, where all the common good graces of God are being reversed and turned into snares and traps for you. That's the description we have of unbelieving Jews. There's a phrase that we use, turn the tables on you. That's kind of like what we have here. It's a prayer to let God turn the tables on you. Here's a table of blessing. We're going to flip it around. Now it's a table of cursing to you. The rich are blessed by God with riches. But watch out, they can be for the unbelieving. They can be a springboard. It can be a trap. It can be a snare. It's actually used against you in your unbelief. They can choke out your riches. There was a study done in Denmark about the suicide rate between the rich and the poor recently. And it was a smaller study. It only involved 811 people that had committed suicide. And then they rated the people by their income level. And of course, you know, the highest level was the rich. And what was interesting is that as their income went down on the scale, the suicide rate fell off. In other words, God can take to the unbeliever a very common blessed grace and flip it and reverse it in such a way that it actually becomes a curse or a trap. I realized this when Mary and I sometimes like to watch things like America's Got Talent or The Voice, you know, those talent shows. And whenever a young guy or gal comes on, it's about 16 years old, you know, and has a beautiful voice and sings and, you know, it's just going to capture the hearts of the judges and they're going to be voted on. They're probably going to go on forward. I always think this, may they not go too far. Because you know what, if they go out and they become number one on America's Got Talent, and they go out and become a big pop star or something, what's going to happen to their life? Is it going to be a grace that turns into a curse or a blessing? This happens all the time. Sometimes we succumb to success because that's a judgment of God on those who remain in unbelief. Don't become like many of the popular singers. Some you know and some you don't. Where the table was turned on them. Whitney Houston. These all died of drug overdoses, by the way. These happy people that are successful. Whitney Houston died at 48. Tom Petty, 66. Sid Vicious, age 21. Elvis, age 42. Amy Winehouse, age 27. Coolio. I know who Coolio is. Age 59. And you can add to that list. It just goes on and on and on. You know, what do they all have in common? They had success. They had money. They had fame. And what had happened, it all was turned on them. The tables were turned in such a way that they all entered into a really early tragic death. And I just finished watching the two series movies on The Temptations. By the way, that's a group that used to sing back in the day. And The Temptations. But I didn't realize it was a tragic story. I didn't realize what happened to those guys, there were five guys in that singing group, my girl, that was their big hit. But what happened to them? You get off the interview, wow, they wanted success so bad and they got it. But God didn't turn the tables on them. And in a heart of unbelief, it actually became a place of judgment. This is true for us, we have to realize that. This is one of the truths that flows out of living in a free nation. We have freedom of religion here. We have the Bible preached and taught everywhere. On TV, on the radio. There's two or three stations right here in Cody. The gospel light's going out. And yet we have a nation that's turning their back. And they're darkened in unbelief. And out of that blessing can come cursing. Greater condemnation. And so riches, We have those today choking out so many. How about our young people dying of fentanyl, drunkenness, materialism, idolatry, all the things that flow from the blessings that come to us as Americans. Verse 10 says, let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see and bend their backs forever. Again, these are words of judgment upon the unbelieving Jews. The eye is a blessing. Have you ever given thanks to God for your eyesight that you can see? Or do you take it for granted? What a blessing that is. I mean, to be able to look at the mountains and look at the sky and look at the clouds in the sky and realize what a glorious God has made all of this as it comes through our eyesight. You can see flowers and children and grandchildren and smiling faces. See the beauty of your spouse every day. But your understanding, you see, it gets dulled and you can't see those things through spiritual eyes and recognize the blessing they are from a good God. And so God then turns the table and it becomes a place of judgment. You won't see, you won't understand. That's where we are as a people. How else do you explain a society today where if you ask someone who is actually being considered for the Supreme Court of the United States, cannot explain what a woman is. What is that? I mean, go back 10, 15, 20 years ago. Ask somebody, do you know what a man is? Yes. Do you know what a woman is? Yes. I'll give you a crude, kind of a cryptic definition. But when supposedly the smartest people in the country, who've been blessed by all that we've been blessed by, cannot look at a man or a woman and give a definition, and you're applying for the Supreme Court, there's a blindness that's there. There's a stupor that comes over your mind. You're not thinking straight. And that's what we see all around us today. The eyes that can't see the glory of God are being choked up by pornography on the internet. And perhaps this is where you find yourself today. Your eyes, you're here, you can see, but spiritually, they're blind. You're hearing, your ears, yeah, you can hear what I'm saying, but it's not making sense, and so, in that level, it's deafness, spiritually. You don't hear words. that makes sense. Sometimes you don't even hear your own words that come out of your mouth. You don't hear the profanity, the lace speech of profanity coming out of your own lips to degregate the very God that created you. But here's the interesting thing is whatever blindness and stupor we have while we're alive, still on earth, I believe on Judgment Day, are going to be gone. Because when you see Jesus face to face as your judge, you're going to know it. When he says, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, you're going to hear it. And so at that point, all the stupor and all the blindness and all the deafness is gone. And the reality of doing it your own way is going to become, whoa, what did I do? What did I do with this life? He adds one last curse here, he says, and bend their backs forever. By the way, that's, in Greek, that's even strange. Strange talk, it's strange language. What does Paul mean when he says they'll bend their back, this is the Jews, forever? Well, you might think of a hunchback, someone who's hunched over, someone who's weighted down by sin, someone who's looking down at the ground because they can't look up because they've been bent over by sin all their life, And so they walk around in fear and trembling, knowing what lies ahead. So as we close this morning, let me just close by asking the question that Paul opened up with at the very beginning of verse seven, when he says, well, what then? Let's close with that question, what then? What then? What can we say about proudly doing it our own way? Or what then, what can we say about, I'm giving it my best? Your best shot is not enough. Doing it your way is always the wrong way. There's only one way, and that's God's way. You'll always fall short, you'll never be forgiven, and you will never enter the kingdom of God your way. Because God instead is hardening hearts. He's blinding. He's giving deafness. So many are bent over with the weight of sin in their life, not finding the very thing they're seeking after. So you say, well, Don, if my best isn't good enough, what is good enough? Well, maybe that's the wrong question to ask. Maybe it isn't what is good enough, but maybe who is good enough. Who is good enough? See, there's hope in that question. Who is good enough? You're not good enough, but God is. And you're not good enough, but His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ is. And this is where the word grace comes in, because this is where God gives us what we cannot do ourselves. And so I wanna just want you to hear this. What do we need? Grace. What do we need? Grace. What do we need? Grace. What do we need? Grace. We need more grace. We need to understand grace. We need to embrace grace. That's one word we should know. And if we profess faith in Christ, we need to realize that any salvation we have has come as a gift from God alone. There's nothing we could do trying to do it our way. Christ did it. What did He do? He kept the law perfectly. He was righteous. Perfectly righteous. He sacrificially laid His life down on a cross. He took the very crushing blows of His heavenly Father that you and I deserved in eternity upon Himself. And He did that from a heart of love. It becomes yours as an act of grace. And then he realizes why with blind eyes and deaf ears you can't hear and just come and believe and repent. He gives you life. And he opens your heart and your eyes to see. And so he seems so beautiful and so compelling, you come to Christ. And that's what I would call you to do, should God be doing that work of grace in your heart, to come to Christ. Come to Christ today. Stop doing it your way. There's only one way that's gonna bring you to the point of righteousness, right standing with God, and that is through His way, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, again, we thank you. Lord, there's much here that, with depth, it's hard to fully understand. Lord, we're speaking of a people that you, entered into covenant with, people that you, at a point in time, you made promises to, and yet you made promises and gave them so much, the Jews, to be a descendant of Abraham, thinking that all would be right between them and yourself. Oh Lord, we all want to muck things up spiritually doing things our way, trying to balance the scales on our side so we'll end up on the favorable side with You. God, forgive us for that. Convict us of that sin. Help us to see, Father, the need to simply look to You, the bestower of grace, the giver of Your Son, the lover of the souls of Your people, the one who graciously brings life where there's death, The one who opens eyes to see and ears to hear, oh Lord, help us see Christ. And may anyone here today without him be brought, drawn to bow their knee and their heart through faith in Jesus Christ alone. And for those of us who love him, who experience such saving grace, we're glad that we can worship you and thank you forever for that work you've done for us. We praise you in Jesus' name, amen.