Please join me in Romans 8 35 I will be reading through chapter 9 verse 5 who shall separate us from the Lord of Christ shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword as it is written For your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. I am speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit. that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenant, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. Let us rejoice in these words from our Lord God Almighty. As you come to Romans chapter 9 this morning, Will you pray with me that God would be with us, that He would speak to us, that He would open His Word to us, and that He would make it clear to us, that He would help me to make it clear, to be able to say what He would have me to say today? Let's just pray. Father, as we come before this great passage of Scripture where You declare to us through the words that the Apostle Paul wrote but that You inspired, that Your Holy Spirit breathed out, and that are therefore infallible and inerrant. As we come to these words that say things that are hard sometimes for us, Father, we pray that You would teach us by Your Spirit not only what they mean, but their beauty, and their glory, and their majesty. Father, I pray that You would be with us today, that You would be with me, that You would make my mind clear, and that You would help us to honor Your Word, and most importantly, Father, to honor You as You have revealed Yourself in Your Word. And so may the result of our time in this chapter over the next weeks be a heightened understanding of You. But Father, more importantly, so much more importantly, an absolutely amplified love for You, and devotion to You, and sense of wonder and awe because of the great God who You are. So speak to us, Father, from Your Word, I pray, in Jesus' name, Amen. A couple weeks ago, when Chris was preaching out of the book of James, he told us this anecdote about studying the Bible and marking passages that we have trouble with, with green ink I think, and then we go back to those passages and work over and over them and try to gain an understanding of them, try to gain a grasp of them, and invariably, if we still have trouble with them, then we come either to the conclusion that we genuinely don't get what God is saying, we genuinely don't understand it, so we keep it underlined in green, or we have to switch pens and mark it with a red pen, which meant, remember, that it's not that we don't understand it, we do understand it, we just don't like what it says. So, welcome to Romans 9, which if you study your Bible that way, may well be covered in red or green ink. A lot of people get confused by this chapter. A lot of people have a lot of trouble understanding what it is that Paul is teaching here. What it is that Paul is revealing here. A lot of people understand it. They get it. They know what's being taught. It's clear to them. but they have a lot of trouble accepting it. In fact, I was just talking a few weeks ago with a really, really good friend of mine down at the conference I was at. He's a pastor. He's been a pastor for 30 years or so. And he confessed to me that when he first became a pastor, that the first book he preached through was the book of Romans, and he told me that he was having a great time preaching it, and it was really wonderful, and it was really resonating in his soul and in everybody's souls all the way up through chapter 8. But then when he got to chapter 9, he said, I had to take a little break. And I said, what, like your people were struggling with this chapter and so you took a little break? And he said, no, I was struggling with the chapter. So I took a little break. I said, well, like a few weeks to kind of brush up and study up and read some commentaries and try to figure out what it was saying. He said, no, I took three years. Well, I came to terms with Romans 9. He admitted that when he first started preaching, he understood. He'd done the work. He'd done the exegetical work. He'd read the commentaries. He'd read the theologies. He understood what it is that Paul is clearly saying and clearly teaching and clearly revealing in this chapter, but he didn't like it. He didn't like it. And he found himself in the position of not being able to teach it. because he couldn't teach it differently than what Paul wrote here. That's actually what a lot of people do. They don't like what Paul's saying, so they take and they twist the whole chapter to say something else. And my friend knew in his conscience that he couldn't do that. He knew that if he was going to preach Romans 9, he was going to have to preach what he knew Paul was very clearly saying here, but he couldn't because deep down in his heart, he couldn't accept what Paul was very clearly saying. And it took the Holy Spirit three years to work on his heart. It took the Holy Spirit three years to radically transform His entire understanding of God, and of man, and of sin, and of salvation, so that not only could He accept God's Word here, He could embrace it and He could rejoice in it. And so, again, as we come to this chapter, let me beseech you and implore you to remember that this is God's Word. This isn't human literature. This is the sovereignly breathed out Word of God. This is what He has revealed. This is what He has spoken. These are the words that have been breathed out through the Apostle Paul, and that are living, and that are active, and that are sharper than any two-edged sword, and that are infallible, and that are inerrant, and that are therefore imminently and abundantly profitable for us in every single way. God's Word. And because this is what this is, it's God saying, as My people who need to know the Gospel, as My people who need to know Me, as My people who need to rest confident in My promises, this is what you need to know, people. Know that this is what God is saying. And so we have got to resist the impulse to ignore the passages that we don't understand. We say, ah, those are dry books. Those are hard places. Those are deep waters. I'm not going to go to those places in God's Word. I'm not going to read them. I'm not going to study them. I'm not going to seek to understand them because they're obscure to me. There's better stuff in Scripture. All Scripture is God-breathed and all Scripture is therefore profitable. Resist the impulse to ignore the passages that you don't understand. And resist the impulse to neglect the passages that you don't like. Because there are things that God says in His Word that are hard. And our flesh says, I can't accept that. But God has revealed it. All of it. The whole counsel of God in the Word is revealed for our good. And so if it's hard to understand, that's okay. Just don't neglect it. Just don't cast it off because it's hard to understand. It's okay. It really is if it's hard to understand. And even if you understand it, but find in your heart that it's hard to accept, that's okay. It really is. Just don't reject it outright. Just don't say, I know what God is saying, but I will not accept it and I will cast His Word aside from me in this place. Don't say that. But if you're saying, I know God said it, but I'm struggling with it. This is hard for me to come to terms with. And so I'm going to keep praying and I'm going to keep seeking God's help and I'm going to keep seeking the Spirit's blessing in my heart to lead me into this truth. That's ok. That's okay if it takes you a week or a month or a year or five or ten years. It's okay. So long as you're kneeling humbly before this Almighty, awesome, sovereign, loving God and feasting on the richness of His Word and worshiping Him for the awesome God that He reveals Himself to be. Now, Romans 9. This is why I had Chuck read. from verses 35 to the end of chapter 38, and then the first five verses of Romans 9. Because if you really want to understand what's being proclaimed, what's being taught, what's being revealed, what it means in Romans chapter 9, then the key is this, and it's really easy. You're not going to have trouble understanding this. You're going to lay hold of this and go, wow, that was really basic. The key to unlocking the one true, genuine meaning of Paul's words here in Romans 9 is this. The key is that Romans 9 comes after Romans 8. That's it. If you know that, if you get that, if you grasp that, it's not so hard, right? Then you will understand what Paul means here. Romans 9 comes after Romans 8. And what I mean really by that is that Romans 9, and not only 9, but Romans 9, 10, and 11, these three chapters are connected to Romans 8. They don't just come after it, they follow it. They proceed from it in logical progression of thought that Paul is driving at here. And you might think, well, of course they do. It's obvious to you. Of course they're connected. But see, not everyone gets that. And not everyone accepts that. Not everyone agrees with that. In fact, there are a number of scholars and commentators who argue that Romans 9 marks a very fundamental and radical divergence from Romans 1-8. Paul's on a whole new heading here. This has got nothing to do with any of what he said before. It's what they teach and what they write. They say that in chapters 1-8, Paul was talking about salvation and justification and grace and love and reconciliation to God, but in chapter 9, all of that's done and he comes to this screeching, sudden, abrupt stop. He hits a brick wall and he takes up an entirely new and different subject. That's what they teach. Here's just one example. A.M. Hunter. Paul very likely composed this section of Scripture. He means Romans 9-11. Those three chapters. Paul very likely composed this section earlier than he wrote the rest of Romans. And he wrote it as a wholly separate discussion of an entirely different question. It is self-contained and it may be read without any reference to the rest of the letter whatsoever. And let me just say that there are not words strong enough to express what absolute hogwash that is. It's ridiculous. Paul, before he wrote the book of Romans, wrote this other little pamphlet to talk about a totally separate issue, and somehow it got shoved into the middle of this letter by some editor down the road, and so we should read it without any reference whatsoever to the rest of the life. It's nonsense. It's pure, unadulterated, absolute nonsense. But a lot of people believe that. A lot of people teach that. Or something like that. And the reason they do that is because that's the way that they can make Romans 9 to say something other than what it says. And mean something other than what it means. That's the way that they can argue that what Paul says here has nothing at all whatsoever to do with the way in which God saves sinners. That's not what Romans 9 is about. It's got nothing to do with salvation. But make no mistake, it's not because they don't understand the text that they treat it that way. The text is plenty clear. The connection between chapters 8 and 9 is plenty clear. It's perfectly obvious. And this theory that they're disconnected doesn't come from misunderstanding the text. It comes from not liking the text. Romans 9 comes after and naturally follows the train of thought that Romans 8 left us with. That's the whole, obvious, simple key to understanding what Paul is revealing here. In Romans 8, what did Paul say? What did Paul proclaim? There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Therefore, because of everything that had been written before, from declaring the whole world to be in sin in chapters 1-3, to providing and proving that justification comes by grace, through faith alone, apart from works in chapters 4 and 5, to proclaiming that in Christ Jesus, all who believe have been raised up to newness of life with Jesus Christ in chapter 6, to reminding us that the sin that is in us remains in us and wages war against the Holy Spirit and the new nature in us in chapter 7. To all of those powerful words at the end of chapter 7 where Paul looks in his own sin as this newly created believer and cries out, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Even though sin remains, I am saved from that sin. I am saved from its penalty. I am being saved from its power by the love and the grace and the resurrection strength of Jesus Christ. Even though I hate what I do and I do what I hate, Christ's blood is enough for me. And so, therefore, There is now no condemnation in Christ. No one can bring a charge against Me, because Jesus Christ died and rose for Me. No one can take a stand against Me, because the Almighty Sovereign God Himself stands for Me. God the Father foreknew Me, and predestined Me, and called Me, and justified Me, and glorified Me, and He sent His Son in human flesh to do what the law could never do, to do what I could never do. And Father and Son sent the Holy Spirit and He lives in me. And He makes my heart a temple and He unites me to the risen Christ. And He intercedes for me with groanings too deep for words. And He causes my resurrected soul to cry out, Abba, Father, I love You. I need You. I want You. There's no one and nothing that I desire more than You. And all of that is conquering my cowering, trembling spirit of slavish fear. and causing in its place to rest in me and reside in me a deep, abiding, growing, yearning love for God that fills my heart and fills my soul and fills my life and dominates and defines my desires and drives me to kill sin and to live for His righteousness and holiness and His glory and His pleasure. Triune God has done all of this, has been the whole point. His purposes can't possibly fail has been the entire point. There's nothing and there's no one who can ever possibly interfere or hinder or thwart His plan to redeem me by His sovereign and omnipotent and unbreakable love. And so I can say with Paul, I can cry out with Paul, I can sing, I can rejoice, and I can shout to the heavens with Paul that nothing Neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation, nothing will ever be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus my Lord. Amen? Christians? Now, Romans 9-1, after all of that, see, right on the heels of all of that, Paul moves on, doesn't miss a beat. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Straight from that into this. Straight from that into, I'm speaking the truth. I'm not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. You say, what? Well, wait a minute, Paul. We were rolling through Romans 8 with praise on our lips. What's with the sorrow? After all that hope, after all that great, joyous, gospel love, Paul's full of sorrow? And the connection between 8 and 9 is this little statement that he makes. He says, yes, it's true. I'm not lying to you. In light of all of that gospel love, my heart is broken. Even after basking in all of this lavish grace in Jesus Christ, my heart is in agony. It's full of great sorrow and unceasing anguish. But why? I mean, what is there possibly? What is there possibly that could send Paul's heart from those heights of ecstasy in Christ to this unceasing anguish? Anguish is the Greek word adiune, and it means a deep physical anguish that is literally like a burning feeling. Paul says, it's burning inside of me. This great, painful sorrow is burning inside of me and it won't stop. It is literally unceasing. It's always there. It's always with me. What caused it? It's this, v. 3. He says, for I wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, Do you hear what Paul is saying? Do you see the connection? He's saying that now that He, by the grace and the power of Jesus Christ, now that He has been redeemed, now that He has been justified and given new life in Christ, now that He has drunk so deeply of the living waters of God's love in Christ Jesus, and tasted so sweetly of the true food of the saving grace of Jesus Christ, now He realizes how much His kinsmen are missing. Now he realizes that his brothers, according to the flesh, he means ethnic Jewish countrymen of his, now he realizes how lost they are in their unbelief. Because they don't know Christ. Because they don't trust Christ. Because they don't throw themselves on Christ as their Messiah. Instead, when He came to them, they nailed Him to a cross. He came unto His own, and His own knew Him not. They crucified Him. They killed Him. They completely rejected Him. And thereby, they completely rejected the Gospel that He came to deliver. And Paul's heart is broken over that. Look down at verse 31 of chapter 9. He says, what shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it? That is a righteousness that is by faith? But that Israel, who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching that law? Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it was based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone as it is written, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame." What is Paul saying in those verses? He's saying that Jesus Christ is the righteousness that the law in the Old Testament was pointing to, and they missed it. The law in the Old Testament is showing you Jesus because otherwise there is no hope of righteousness. He is the righteousness. And they said, no, no, the righteousness is what I'm doing by keeping the law. They didn't trust. They didn't believe. They worked instead. The Gentiles saw it. They believed in Christ. And they were justified by faith and God imputed the righteousness of Christ to them through faith, but Israel stumbled over Christ. Israel, the nation as a whole, didn't believe in Christ because they didn't think they needed Christ. I don't need Him to be my righteousness. I've got the law. And as long as I do what the law says, what do I need somebody else's righteousness for? Just let me get back to work here. And I can make this happen. I can pull this off. They thought that their righteousness and their good works and their law-keeping was what was going to get them to God. They were self-righteous and so they failed to attain what the law was pointing to. And instead, they stumbled over Christ. They didn't embrace Him. And then look over at chapter 10 and verse 2. Just flip the page. And look at what Paul says there about the nation of Israel. He says, I bear witness they have a zeal for God, but it's not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." What does he mean there? What does he say in there? He means that as a whole, the nation of Israel missed the entire point and meaning of the law as it was revealed by God in the Old Testament, and because they did that, they missed the entire point and meaning of Messiah. They had no idea what Messiah had come to do, and so when He came to do it, they said, no, you're supposed to be doing this. And He said, no, I'm coming to do this. And they said, well, that's offensive, and that doesn't help my self-esteem at all, and so I'm going to nail you to a tree. The law was supposed to convict them of their sin. The law was supposed to show them, because they would fail over and over and over. The law that they stood up and said, all that the Lord has commanded us, we will do. And God went, yeah, right. Just wait. was supposed to show them how sinful their hearts were so that they would know their great need of a Savior, who was God Himself, Emmanuel. It was supposed to lead them as unrighteous sinners to Christ so that He would be their righteousness through faith, not a righteousness that they obtained through works. So here's how v. 4 of chapter 10 should read. Maybe you have a translation that reads more like this. But it should read this way. If you read it this way, then Paul's meaning is going to make sense to you. It should say, for the goal of the law, if your translation says what mine does, if it says at the end of the law, that's ok, so long as you understand that the word end doesn't mean that it stops, doesn't mean that it ceases. It's the Greek word telos, which means the goal. The goal of the law is Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes. That's what verse 4 says in Greek, and what it should say and ought to say, and I hope it means to you in English. The goal of the law is Christ for righteousness. to everyone who believes. That's what the law is pointing at. That's what the law is ending up at. That's where if you followed the law according to the Old Testament, in humility before God, you would end up saying, man, I've been trying and I've been working and I've been striving and I've been doing it all along. It's just sin after sin after sin after sin after sin. And instead of stumbling over Christ in self-righteousness, you would smash into the cross and say, oh, that's why He's here. Because I don't have righteousness. Because I'm a sinner. And all my best deeds are filthy rags. And I can't do it. And I keep trying. And I'm wretched, wretched, wretched. He is my righteousness. The goal of the law is Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes. That's Paul's whole point there in v. 4 of chapter 10. The goal of the law, the goal that it was given in order to accomplish was Christ for righteousness, not works for righteousness. See, that's not why God gave the law in the Old Testament. He didn't give it so that you could do works for righteousness and earn merit before God. He gave it to prove to us how sinful we are so that we would be totally unable to find the righteousness that God requires anywhere except in Christ on the cross. The goal of the law is Christ for righteousness to all who believe, but see, that's what Israel as a nation, as a whole, that's what they miss. And so they were striving and seeking to establish their own righteousness by their own work. instead of accepting the gift of God's righteousness that is provided by Christ through faith. And this is why Paul is so absolutely overcome with sorrow and with anguish, because the Israelites, the ethnic Jewish people, his own countrymen, his own brethren, his own kinsmen, had rejected the only one who could ever possibly save them from God's wrath and from the curse of the law. that rejected Him. In Galatians 3, Paul says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. So you see the point? Christ became our curse. Christ became our sin. And Christ became our righteousness. But they wouldn't accept Him and so they end up with nothing. and what they retain is the curse. You see the source of Paul's grief? They've rejected Christ. You see the source of his anguish? He came to redeem you from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for you, but you rejected Him and so you remain cursed. You're cut off from Christ. And Paul says, my heart is absolutely in agony because of it, and so he desperately wishes that he could change it. He is so desperate that his Jewish countrymen would repent and turn to Christ and accept redemption from the curse of the law that Paul goes so far, back in chapter 9 now, he goes so far. in the turmoil of his sorrow and his anguish, as to say in verse 3, that if somehow, if it were at all possible in God's economy and in the world that God has created, that if somehow He could do this, He would. If somehow He could become accursed for them so that they could become saved and receive all of the things that He is so joyfully rejoicing in in chapter 8, then He would do it. for I wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers." That's how Paul feels about Israel, about the nation as a whole, about his Jewish kinsmen. He's literally standing there as if on the threshold of hell and the brink of damnation, ready, if it were possible, to literally throw himself in for all of eternity. if it would spare them being accursed and enduring that eternity of God's wrath themselves. Now, here's the point of verses 1-5, and it is the point of the entire chapter of Romans 9, coming on the heels of Romans 8. Paul has just culminated the first half of the book of Romans unpacking and preaching reveling in this great Gospel of God's grace in Christ Jesus. All of it coming to this great climactic crescendo in chapter 8. This great undeserved, unmerited, unconditional, unbreakable love of God in Christ Jesus. That love that we've just got done being convinced can never, ever, Fail. Why? Because it's anchored to the sovereign, omnipotent purposes and promises and work of God, right? We all rejoice in that. We all say amen to that. We all confess that in our hearts we are assured that there is no condemnation in Christ because all of the work of salvation is purposed and promised and finished and guaranteed by the faithfulness of God Himself. So it can't possibly fail, right? So, any first century Jewish person who grew up studying the Old Testament and putting their eternal hope in the promises of God that everywhere through the Old Testament are made to Israel, so they would say, fine Paul, It's an indomitable love. It's a sure hope that you're proclaiming because it's anchored to the faithfulness of God. But how are we supposed to trust that God's saving new covenant promises won't ever fail if His promised chosen people of old covenant Israel are now accursed and cut off? Do you understand the dilemma? This is what Romans 9 is all about. Verse 3 says that Israel is accursed and cut off. And verse 6, which we'll take up next week, answers the inevitable question of whether or not the fact that Israel is accursed and cut off means that God's Word to Israel, God's promise to Israel has failed. Doesn't it mean that, Paul? God promised this to us, and now we don't get it anymore. Now we don't have it, so God's Word must have failed. Right, Paul? And if God's Word failed there, how can we trust it here? That's the big question. Has God's Word failed? Because you know what? If it has, If God's Word and God's promise to Old Covenant Israel has failed, then you and I have absolutely no foundation whatsoever to stand on in hoping in and rejoicing in and trusting in God's promise to save us by the love of Jesus Christ. Now don't worry, because verse 6 says very clearly that it's not as though the Word of God has failed. And he goes on to give the reason why the Word of God hasn't failed. Even though ethnic Israel is accursed, and the rest of the chapter, everything else that Paul proclaims here is in service to that one great truth. All that he says in chapter 9 about election. Everything that he says in chapter 9 about God's absolute sovereignty in saving some and not saving others. Everything that he says about God loving Jacob and hating Esau. Everything that he says about God predestining some to be vessels of wrath and others to be vessels of glory. All of that, see? is Paul's great, grand, glorious, entirely God-centered proof that God's Word has not, cannot, will not ever fail. That's what Romans 9 is all about. And all of it, God's unfailing faithfulness, God's absolute sovereignty, the question of Israel, are everlasting hope. All of it comes back to the unshakable foundation of Jesus Christ. He's the answer for everything. He's the fulfillment of everything. He's the hope of everything. Look at what Paul says about Israel here. You'll see it. Before I even say it, I'm sure that you'll see it. Look at what Paul says about Israel here in verses 4 and 5. He means ethnic Israel. They're His kinsmen according to the flesh, His brothers. He's talking about the earthly nation of Israel, the physical, blood-related descendants of Abraham, of which He is one. He's Jewish. They're accursed, though, verse 3 says. They're cut off from Christ. They've rejected Him as their righteousness. They've put their eternal confidence in their own law-keeping and good works, and so Paul's heart is broken for them, and the great tragedy of their spiritual condition is amplified all the more by the great contrast between this accursed cutting off of them and the great privileges that they once enjoyed. as God's old covenant people. Look what he says, they're Israelites. And to them belongs the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship and the promises. And to them belong the patriarchs. And from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed all forever. Amen. If ever there was a nation of people, if ever there was an extended family upon the earth who had been privileged and who had been blessed and who had been lavished with God's love and goodness, it was Israel and they threw it all away. Look at these privileges. They're Israelites, Paul says. They're descendants of Abraham. They're offspring and children of the one person on the earth to whom God promised an eternal kingdom. And now they're cut off. Now they're accursed. They're the ones to whom belongs adoption. They were chosen out of all of the nations of the earth. They were chosen by God. They were His special covenant people from among all of the peoples of the earth. And now, they're cut off from Him. To them belonged the glory, the Shekinah glory of the presence of God dwelling in their midst and the Holy of Holies in the temple. And even beyond that, the great promise of the prophets that one day the whole earth would be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. That was what belonged to them. And to them belonged the covenants and the law and the worship. He means the temple worship services and the promises. All of God's promises to Abraham and his descendants. All of the temple services. All of God being in the midst of His people and mediating and giving grace to and atoning for their sin and communing with them. All of that was theirs. to lend along the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the forefathers of the faith and the promises of the nation and of the kingdom, all of Abraham's offspring, all those blessed in him are now cut off. It's tragic, Paul is saying. What honor Israel had. What awesome, unparalleled blessing and privilege Israel had. And capping it all off from their race according to the flesh is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. And yet they rejected Him and despised Him and crucified Him. And so they're accursed and they're cut off and they're lost and they're condemned. Because Christ, see, is everything. And without Christ, there is nothing. The point of verses 4 and 5 and that list of privileges for national Israel, the point of all of it is this, that if you don't trust Christ, then you lose everything, but if you do trust Him, then you gain it all. I mean, look at that list again through the lens of Christ and realize it's all found in Him. It's all fulfilled in Him. And apart from Him, it's all lost. Because Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of everything that God promised, everything that God did, everything that it meant to be a descendant of Abraham and a child of Israel. They're Israelites, right? The blood descendants of Abraham. But Paul proclaims in Galatians 3 and verse 7 that it's not the people who have Abraham's blood in their veins who are his real children. He says it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. Whether you're Jewish, whether you're Gentile, whether you're Greek, male, female, slave or free, whatever, it doesn't matter. All that matters is if you have the faith of Abraham in your heart. And if you do, then you are his child. Why? Why am I called Abraham's child? Because I have faith like Abraham. because Galatians 3 goes on to say in verse 16 that when God made the promise to Abraham and his offspring, here's how Paul says it, under the inspiration of the Spirit, the promises of God were made to Abraham and his offspring, and it does not say offsprings referring to many, but referring to one. And to your offspring the promises of God was made. Who is the offspring? Who is Christ? Christ is the offspring. Christ is the true Israel. Christ is the true offspring of Abraham. And verse 29 of Galatians 3 ties it all up. If you are Christ's, whether you're Jewish, whether you're Gentile, whatever race, nationality, whatever gender, whatever, whatever social status, whatever, if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring and heirs according to the promise. And Christ has found everything. And apart from Christ, everything is lost. It's not the people who have Abraham's blood in their veins that are his true children. It's the people who have his faith in their hearts. Faith in Christ. Faith in the true offspring. Faith in the true Israel. Faith in the one true One in whom all of the promises of God were fulfilled and are, yes, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1. Christ in whom all who believe are adopted as sons of God. Paul just got done articulating that over and over again in Romans 8. Christ, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen is what? His glory and His grace and His gospel and His life and His love are so infinite and awesome and priceless that Paul says in Romans 8 that all of the sufferings of this present time aren't even worth comparing to that glory. You thought Israel had glory in the Old Testament. Look what the true Israel brings in terms of the glory of God. It's all in Christ. Christ who is the mediator of a new covenant, Hebrews 12. Christ in whom all of the promises of God are yes. 2 Corinthians 1 verse 20. Christ who is the righteousness of God that is the goal of the law. Romans 10 verse 4. And Christ who is the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament temple worship. Our Passover Lamb. Sacrificed for our sin. Our Great High Priest. Our temple. John 2 verse 19. Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. And He was speaking, verse 21 says, about the temple of His body. I'm your new covenant temple, Christ says. Everything that Ezekiel saw at the end of his vision is Me, Christ says. The place of perfect, undefiled sacrifice. The place with walls so high that wickedness could never come in and corrupt and destroy the atoning work of God on behalf of His people. It's Me, Christ says. All that the worship of the Old Covenant Temple was is exemplified and perfected and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Our sins are forgiven. We have full unfettered access to God in Him. You see? all that they were, all that they had as Israelites, Christ exemplified and epitomized and fulfilled and perfected and gave by free grace through faith apart from works. And yet, He came unto His own to do all of that of His own, received Him not. And in rejecting Him, they lost everything. No more temple. No more worship. No more promises. No more salvation. No more descendants. No more covenants. It's all gone. Because all of it's in Christ. If you reject Him, you lose it all. And you get none of it without Him. Apart from Him, all men perish under the curse of the law, but in Him we are redeemed from the curse of the law because He became a curse for us." And I believe this about these verses. that they are a great anchor of our hope. They are not dreadful verses that are to be feared. They are not confusing verses that are to be avoided and relegated to the back burner or the top dusty shelf of our bookcase. They are not the verses that the bookmarkers in your Bible should never touch. These verses are an anchor for our hope because they point out to us and convince us that only in Christ are all of the promises of God fulfilled, and they are fulfilled in Him in absolute, infinite, and perfect, and all-satisfying measure. And aside from that, aside from fixing our confidence on Christ and nothing else, and in addition to filling us with great abiding life, transforming hope and joy and passion and love for Jesus because of what He has done to make us children of the promise. Here's what these verses need to do in your heart. Here's what these verses need to produce in your heart. Not just that love of Christ. I hope they do. But they also need to produce some sense of what Paul felt in his heart. toward His unbelieving countrymen. That means this. That means we need to pray that the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ wouldn't be received by the people of Jesus Christ selfishly. Thank God that He spared me from hell. Now, I'm going to live a good life, and I'm going to honor Christ, and I'm going to come to church, and I'm going to minister, but it's all primarily about what God has done for me. We need to pray that the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ would not sit in our hearts like undigested dessert. We need to pray that we aren't just filled up with all of the richness of salvation and justification and union with Christ and reconciliation with God like a big, rich pie. only then to flop down on the couch and sit there rubbing our spiritual bellies and saying, I'm so satisfied in Christ, I'm going to take a nap. People are perishing out there. They're driving by on the highway. You see them every day at work. They live in the house next door to you. They are family members of yours and they are accursed and they are cut off from Christ and they need the Gospel. They need the power of God and the salvation. They need your heart to be full of sorrow and unceasing anguish. That they have rejected everything that God has lavished upon you. and that everything that you have experienced in terms of the great, unbreakable love of Christ is something that they know nothing of, needs to break your heart for them. Look at what Paul says over in chapter 10. He says, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how will they hear without someone preaching? And how are they able to preach unless they are sent? And because it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Good News. Do you hear what Paul is saying there? It means this and nothing short of this. How many people? How many people in the world that is full of billions of people, how many people, according to Paul in Romans 10, will be saved apart from hearing the Gospel preached? Zero people will be saved apart from hearing the Gospel preached and believing. And you and I have been delivered from this eternal wrath of God. You don't have to fear it anymore. You don't have to worry about the condemnation anymore. But they live under the curse every day. And if they die today, they meet their Maker. And that is it. Are our hearts full of sorrow? And are our hearts full of anguish? Because there are people, image-bearing people out there. People that we know and people that we love are actively rejecting Christ, who because of His great love for His people became a curse for us. And so they're cut off from Him. They're accursed. They're headed for an eternity of condemnation. Do you grieve for them? If you don't, you've got to pray, God, help me grieve for them. God, help me sense the sweetness of this Gospel so much that I would be desperate to share it with them. Do you feel sorrow? Do you feel anguish? Or do you feel righteous indignation? Look at those sinners out there. Partying it up, and living it up, and breathing God's air, but cursing His glory. Nothing to do with them. Your heart, my heart, our hearts ought to be full of anguish. When we rejoice over the Gospel of God's love to us, we also have to grieve over those who have rejected that love. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6.10 that his ministry was one of constantly being sorrowful and yet always rejoicing. Is that your experience? Sometimes we're pretty good at the rejoicing. I hope God gives us the godly sorrow to bring the Gospel to the dying world. Paul's heart is so desperately grieved that he literally says, I wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for their sake. Paul says, you know, if God would let me do it, if it were in the way that He designed this world to work, I would walk up and say, if you let me jump in so that they can all come out, I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll cast myself in to eternal condemnation to spare them. Is that not what Christ did for you? He cast Himself down. He took the curse. He became the curse for you. And so may the love of Christ dwell richly in our hearts. And may that be our mind and our heart and our attitude in Him also, that we would love desperately this world and preach the Gospel unashamedly to them, that they might be saved. Father, may Your Word not confuse us. And may Your Spirit, in leading and guiding us into all truth, not only help us to understand, but help us to embrace and help us to rejoice in the great God-centered truth of Your sovereign love for the people that You sent Your Son to die for. And Father, may that love be poured out afresh on our hearts this morning in such rich lavishness that we would hate our sin so much, and we would hate our selfishness so much, and we would forsake ourselves so much, and seek Your glory so much, that our lives would become devoted to the one purpose that You left us here on this earth to fulfill, which is the purpose of making disciples for Your glory. And so, Father, make us disciples who make disciples that make disciples, in order that Your kingdom may grow and Your glory may spread to the ends of the earth and cover this earth as the water covers the sea. We know we need You for this. We know Your Spirit wants this. We know Your Word is powerful unto this. And so, Father, use us, mold us, make us, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.