Please turn one more time in your Bible to the book of Romans, at chapter 10, verse 19. The book of Romans, which you can find towards the back of the book, on page 946. I'm going to read from Romans 10, 19, as far as chapter 11, verse 16. Reading from Romans 10.19 as far as 11.16, please give your attention to the Word of God. But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation. With a foolish nation I will make you angry. Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I have been found by those who did not seek me. I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me. But of Israel, he says, all day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people. I ask then, has God rejected his people? By no means, for I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left and they seek my life. But what is God's reply to him? I have kept for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. 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 and 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 that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever." So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means. Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now, if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump. And if the root is holy, so are the branches. Now, what is it that we are reading? We are reading the Bible. The Bible, which was written over 1,400 years by a multitude of different people. It's even written in three different languages, Hebrew, Greek, and a little Aramaic. This is what makes the Bible so different from the Koran or the Book of Mormon. It is written over centuries by all these different people in different cultures, and they write in different ways. And you can read it, and after a while, you know, oh, this sounds like Isaiah, or this sounds like Paul. And yet, what holds it together is that you can tell there's one God being spoken of. In fact, there's one God who is speaking. And that is what holds the Bible together, the one God who is spoken of and who speaks to us in the Bible. Now, in this big Bible, we have read several passages from the Old Testament because they were then quoted in the New Testament. And we are wanting to see how this very big and very diverse book holds together. And so you'll notice this book is called Romans. It is not written by a Roman. As you can tell, it is written by somebody who is calling himself a Jew. That is, it is written by the Apostle Paul. The whole New Testament comes after Jesus comes, is crucified and resurrected. And the New Testament has four books that tell you right about Jesus, what he said, what he did. We call them the four Gospels. And then after one book that gives you the history of what happens next, the acts of his apostles, his messengers, then you have a whole series of letters written by those apostles, by those messengers. And here you have the first and perhaps most important of all those letters. Here you have the letter that revolutionized Germany when Martin Luther came to understand what it meant. And through Germany, Europe, and frankly, through Europe, the world. In fact, England and America were both revolutionized when John Wesley read the book of Romans and came to a deeper understanding of it. So we have here the message of Jesus. Why was it so important? Let Jesus be who he was and do what he did. The book of Romans lays that out for us. Now, you'll notice, of course, that we picked up at the end of chapter 10 and read half of chapter 11, which is to say, we're not at the beginning of Romans. We're not at the end of Romans. We've picked up right in the middle of this great book of Romans. So what has been said so far? Well, most of the first three chapters are devoted to showing us our problem. Our problem is that God made us, and He made us upright, and we have sought out many schemes. It shows us that we have a problem with our fundamental relationship, which is not with your mother, nor with your husband or wife. Your most fundamental relationship is the one that you are constantly in, and that is the one with your Creator. And it is our sin that messes up that relationship. And so he spends the beginning of the book showing that everybody has this problem. Whether you're a Gentile, that is not Jewish, or whether you are Jewish, you still have a problem in that relationship with God. And then he spends the next few chapters showing how Jesus is the answer to that. How through Jesus the sin is forgiven, and we are brought in, and we are actually in Jesus in a certain way. And so as Jesus died to sin and lives forever, So we are to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to righteousness. And at the end of chapter 8, he went on to say, for those who truly trust and believe in Jesus, we don't have to be afraid of anything, because we are secure in his hand forever. Neither death nor life, nor angels nor powers, nor anything can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So that's where the Book of Romans was at the end of chapter 8. But, several powerful objections could be made. And so as you can tell by the way the book is written, it's not just saying the good news, it's also dealing with objections. That's what makes it complicated. And so one obvious objection is, Mr. Paul, sir, You said in chapter 8 that we are secure forever because God has made promises to hold us. Didn't God promise the Israelites that He would hold them forever? But are they held forever? I don't see most Jews believing in Jesus, and you said that was essential. So, excuse me, Mr. Paul, sir, what about the Jews? Now this question is not just important if you are Jewish. It's not just important if you care about Jews. Although he's trying to tell you that we all should. It's important because it's a question about God and how his promises work. And so that affects us. If we believe in God, if we're holding on to his promises, we need to know how the promises work. And so chapters 9, 10, and 11 are all on this important topic. Well, what about God and the Old Testament? What about God and Jews? How do God's promises work in practice? Can we look at the Jews and find out, what are you doing, God, with the Jewish people? And so that is what's going on. That is the big picture. So chapters 9, 10, and 11 are about, what about God and the Jews? And we pick up at the end of chapter 10, you'll notice with a very powerful picture. He's quoting from Isaiah, because he's constantly quoting the Old Testament here, to say this is what the Hebrew scriptures say. And he enters this powerful picture of God saying, all day long, I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people, which in context means Israel. All day long, God says, I have stretched out my hands to disobedient Israel. Let's pause for a second and let that powerful picture sink in. What a striking picture of God with his hands out and of people turning their backs or not coming or not responding. Now, that's not the whole picture. We've just read Romans chapter 9. In Romans 9 it's very clear God is in charge. God chose Jacob and rejected Esau. God makes some vessels for honorable use, he means people, and he makes some vessels for dishonorable use. So it's not as if the picture is of a helpless God, like a helpless grandfather in a wheelchair who can't catch up to his grandkids. That's not the picture. And on chapter 10, we just read, I will make you jealous, which is to say that God has intentions and purposes that he is pursuing. So the whole picture is not of God stretching out his hands, but that's part of the picture. Part of our understanding of God should be God stretches out his hands to all of us. It says in a couple letters later, I implore you, be reconciled to God. That's directed to everybody. So that is part of our mental picture of God, should be the open-handed embrace extended to every person, including to his people Israel. And so at the end of chapter 10, the question obviously is, OK, so where is this story going for Israel? Has God rejected his people? And it could have sounded that way. Some of those quotations from the Hebrew scriptures are pretty strong. But he says, no. Has God rejected his people? No. Which means that we always have to be careful with drawing inferences from what God has said. Gotta be careful with that. Okay? Particularly in this part of the Bible. Okay? God has chosen his own elect. Oh, so that means I don't have to do anything. Wrong inference. God has his elect. So I don't have to say anything to anybody. Wrong inference. Chapter 10. How will they believe if they have not heard? How will they hear if nobody talks? So you have to be very careful drawing inferences when we're talking about what God is up to. Because as he says in Isaiah, his ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts. You need to be cautious to be very careful. OK, what exactly did you say? Let's not run on too far in front of you. He says, has God rejected his people? No. And his first bit of evidence is himself. He says, I myself am an Israelite. a member of the tribe of Benjamin. That is to say, I know I'm an Israelite. We've got the records. We know our genealogy. We can trace back to Benjamin. We know who we are. I know, my family, that we are Israelites. Now, he could have said all the apostles, because all the apostles were Jewish. He could have pointed to the whole Christian church back in Israel, because there were churches in Jerusalem and all through Judea and Galilee. He could have said, you know, there's churches back there that are all Jewish. He could have pointed to a number of churches throughout Greece and Turkey that had a good number of Jews in the church. But he starts with himself, I think, for two reasons. One, so that everybody constantly remembers who it is speaking to them. It is Paul. the former persecutor of the church, who was now advancing the church. Paul, who had been a zealous Pharisee, but God had spoken to him in a flash, and it changed him in a moment. If you hear about the Damascus Road experience, that's Paul. Paul had the Damascus Road experience, and now it's a phrase used for someone who has a complete change of heart. He's the original, complete change of heart. So he begins with himself as a way of saying, remember who is speaking to you. And then his second bit of evidence that God is not rejecting his people is to say, remember what God said to Elijah. Elijah had appealed to God against Israel. You might remember, you guys got to read the key verse twice. What are you doing here, Elijah? Elijah says, Lord, they have torn down your altars and killed your prophets and broken your covenant, and I alone am left, and they're trying to kill me. He says it twice with exactly the same words. It's like it's his witness against his people. And he's gone to Mount Sinai, where the covenant had first been made. He's gone there to say, God, it's over. Your people have rejected your covenants. That's why it's such a powerful place to go. Elijah had gone back to Mount Sinai to say, you can scratch this one and start over again or something. I don't know, God, but I'm out. And as we read, God had said to him, yes, there's going to be judgment. Go anoint these three people. They'll carry out judgment. And you sound like you're done. So among the guys you're anointing is your successor. We'll start the process of phasing you out. But then he ends with, yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all those who are not worshipping this bloodthirsty idol, all those who are not worshipping Baal. And we go back to 2 Kings and read through and see that. Yes, and so Paul says, the way it worked then is similar to how it is working now, except I am not appealing against Israel at all. I'm appealing for Israel. as Isaiah did, as Moses did, as David did, and I'm feeling for Israel. And I know that as God preserved the remnants then, so he says that's how it is now. The remnant is not just Paul, it is all the people I mentioned before. He's saying as God preserved the remnants after Israel's failure to respond to the great miracle of fire, that's with Elijah, So God is preserving a remnant in their day. And the book comes from about 58 AD, by the way. So God is preserving remnants in their day, those who are responding to God's great miracle of Jesus Christ. Now, why does a remnant remain? Why were there 7,000 in Israel who didn't bow to Baal? Why were there a good chunk of Jews who did believe in Jesus? Why is there an ongoing remnant in Germany that still believes in Jesus? Why is there an ongoing remnant in Greece that believes in Jesus? Why is there a remnant anywhere? Is it because some people are tougher than others? Some people are purer than others? Is it because some people are more religious than others? He says, so too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. Chosen by grace. He says, don't forget Romans chapter 9, that God ultimately is behind everyone's faith, or everyone's lack of faith. Don't forget ultimately that God chose Jacob over Esau before they were born. Don't forget that a remnant is not to be proud, but to be humble. Because we've been chosen. And chosen on what basis? Well, he finds that important to spell out. Chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, for grace would not be grace. He's saying if there is a remnant, it's not because they deserved it. It's not because they earned it. It's not because they were tougher or of better stuff. It's because God chose to show his glory in them. We need to remember that. Because pride and contempt are not a sin that you get to uproot once in your life. Pride and contempt are a sin you have to uproot annually. Nah, that's too long. Pride and contempt are a sin you have to uproot monthly. Nah, that's probably too long. Pride and contempt are a sin that you must uproot daily. Because it comes back at least that fast. At least daily, you're back at some level, to finding someone that you can be contemptuous of. And so, he constantly comes back to chosen by grace. Let's remember what grace means. It means not on the basis of works, otherwise it's not grace. When he says grace, he means not what you did, not what you earned, not what you deserved, but on the basis of God's kindness to you. And what should a preacher do when God is kind to them? A preacher should say, yes, thank you. Should say yes to God's yes. Yes to God's grace. Yes, trust to God's trustworthiness. So he says, God has not rejected Israel. Where does that leave us? Well, verses 7 to 10, it leaves us, as always, with God's word proving true. He says here, Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. He speaks here of three entities, but they're not separate. There's one whole and two parts. Israel, the elect within Israel, and the hardened within Israel. One whole in two parts with undefined proportions. Israel as a whole, you have to say, has not found peace with God, because Israel as a whole has not accepted Jesus as Messiah. That is, a majority have not, the establishment has not. A good sizable minority has, the elect, but not the majority. How could this be? He begins to quote the Hebrew Scriptures. And he quotes all three portions of the Hebrew Scriptures to prove his point. Because this is a hard point. He's saying God hardened the majority of Israel. And they might want to say, wait a minute, God hardens Pharaoh, sure, but he doesn't harden, among his own people, Israel. So to prove his point, he goes to three different places. He goes to Isaiah 29, I think it's at verse 10, for God gave them a spirit of stupor. Now, as we read Isaiah 29, it went on to hope. It went on to a change. It went on to, the deaf will hear, the blind will see. But first, first there's deafness. That's the first line, from the prophets, God gave them the spirit of stupor. Then the part about eyes that don't see and ears that don't hear, that's all over the place. That's in Isaiah, that's in Jeremiah, that's in Ezekiel, but this wording's probably from Moses in Deuteronomy 29.4. Now, as you read Deuteronomy 29 and 30, again, it goes on to hope. God has not given you, he says to Israel, not given you a heart to believe, but, chapter 30, he will circumcise your heart. It goes on to hope. But first, there is blindness. And so then he goes in and he quotes from Psalm 69. Now, David wrote Psalm 69. And David had many foreign enemies. And this is certainly quite a call for destruction of the enemies. And so you might say, well, wait a minute. When David talks this way, let the table become a snare and a trap, surely he's talking about his foreign enemies, the Philistines or the Syrians or the Ammonites. But you have to remember David's most bitter enemies were his own king Saul and his own son Absalom. So there's nothing in David to say that this has to be foreign enemies. He had it worse from those close at hand. And so the New Testament quotes Psalm 69 a lot. We don't sing it very often. It's a fairly unhappy psalm. But the New Testament quotes it and applies it to Jesus' sufferings. So when Jesus cleaned out the temple, the Apostles realized that in Psalm 69 it says, zeal for your house has consumed me. Zeal for your house, God's temple. When his own brothers were not believing in him, well the Apostles saw in Psalm 69, it says, I have become a stranger to my mother's sons. When he was on the cross and said, I thirst, and they gave him vinegar. Well, that's right in Psalm 69. For my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink. And so the apostles began to take directions from Psalm 69. What should we do about Judas Iscariot, having gone off and killed himself? Well, in Psalm 69, it says, let another take his office. So they appointed a new 12th apostle. And so here you have, again, it says, as David called for vengeance on his enemies, So it happens to the enemies of the son of David, Jesus Christ. So it says that David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, and their eyes be darkened. He says, yes, and again, this is what is happening to his people Israel. But where are we up to? Has God rejected his people? He has already said it's not total, there's a remnant. In the beginning of verse 11, he also says, and there's more to say. We are not done yet. Verse 11, I asked, did they, that is Israel, stumble in order to fall? You all grasp the picture. You stumble, but you, oh, I didn't fall down. Or you stumble and fall. Of course, when you fall, you should get up. But sometimes you don't fall, and that's the end of it. You fall, and you can't get up. He says, did they stumble so as to fall and not get up? And again, he says, no. He says, rather, through their trespass, Israel's trespass. Salvation has come to the Gentiles. You better stop right there. How'd that work? Well, first of all, if the high priests had not rejected Jesus and taken him to the Romans, he wouldn't have died, and there'd be no salvation to proclaim. But secondly, when those same high priests began to persecute the first church in Jerusalem, they went everywhere preaching the word. And not only that, but when Paul and Barnabas would go to a new city, they would begin preaching about Jesus in the synagogue. And they would stay in the synagogue until they got kicked out of the synagogue. And then they would go to the Gentiles. And fourthly, even within the Christian church, there were many Jewish Christians who came in who believed Jesus is the Messiah, but did not understand that the food laws were gone. And so there was no reason to tell Gentile Christians, you don't need to tell them to forego pork, because the food laws were temporary. That was an ongoing barrier in the early church, as we'll see in chapter 14. So at first, through Jewish trespass, the gospel goes out to the Gentiles. It goes on to say, but this was to make Israel Jealous. Now, what do you mean by jealous? He's picking up the word from verse 19. That's why we started reading it. Chapter 10, verse 19, was from Deuteronomy, in which Moses says, speaking for God, I will make you jealous to those who are not a nation. And Paul takes hold of that. Paul says, that's me. I'm part of that. When Barnabas and I went and spoke in the synagogue in Antioch and Dissidia, it says that people were so excited about what they heard the first week in synagogue, and there were Gentiles there, that the second week the whole city came to synagogue. And the crowds were believing what Paul and Barnabas spoke. And the leaders of the synagogue were jealous and contradicted. We've been telling these pagans about the true God for years. You come in here and win the whole city in two weeks." They were jealous. Paul says, yes, that's me. But God has a positive purpose in that jealousy. The positive purpose is to lead to a reconsideration of Jesus. So he goes on there to say, He says, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles. But that's not the end of the story for Israel. It's to make Israel jealous. Now, if their trespass means riches for the world, how much more will their full inclusion mean? That is to say, he's saying that Isaiah passage went through blindness to sight. The Deuteronomy passage went from a hard heart to a new heart. The exile led to a return. And so he is saying there is a time when many Jews will believe in Jesus the Messiah. Their full inclusion. He then begins to pivot at verse 13 to Gentiles. He says, I'm speaking to you Gentiles. He says, I'm the apostle to the Gentiles. Because that's what Jesus told me to do. But not because I'm a renegade who doesn't care about my fellow Jews. On the contrary, he says, the whole time I'm preaching to Gentiles, I have an eye on the Jews. The whole time I want Gentiles to believe, I want the Jews to be jealous and reconsider Jesus and belief. He's letting us know how much he loves his own people, even while it's obvious that he loves other people. He makes it very clear. I love the Gentiles. I endure beatings at their hands. I also love the Jews, from whom Paul also endured beatings at their hands. He said, but I continue, so that by all means I may save some. And as his goal was to see not only Gentiles, but also Jews believe, notice how he encourages us to have the same goal. He says, if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? Or verse 15. If their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, that is, people believing in Jesus Christ, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? That would seem to be the resurrection and the end of all things. Notice, he's trying to get Gentiles, who were all too prone to being anti-Jewish, even in the Church, he was trying to get Gentiles to say, you know, it's not a zero-sum game here. You ought to want to see Jews believe because that will be a blessing to you too. What will their inclusion mean but life from the dead? And so his message here is to us that while for a time a partial hardening has come in among Israel, I'm quoting a verse later on, there will be a time when many Jews come and believe in Jesus and that will be a blessing for all of us. We should, therefore, want it. The Westminster Directory for Worship, in describing what should be prayed for, said, we ought to pray for the propagation of the gospel and kingdom of Christ to go to all nations, for the conversion of the Jews and the fullness of the Gentiles. Now, why do you have to say Jews and Gentiles separate? You don't have to, but it does because it's separated here. And so our directory, imitating the first, says, our intercession ought to be for the spread of the gospel and the kingdom of Christ to all the nations of the world, for the conversion of Jews and Gentiles, and the hastening of the second coming. I'm going to have a lot more to say next week, because the second half of the chapter goes on. The second half of the chapter talks about the olive tree. It has this powerful olive tree picture of what God's doing through the centuries, of how to relate Jews and Israel and the church and so on. We're going to get into that next week. But already today, we can see this. We ought to pray for our Jewish neighbors. And we ought to have conversations with our Jewish neighbors. I remember the time I got a phone call. I think he was at work. Her boss had a question. Why circumcision? I was not anticipating this question while she was at a computer programming job. And I did my best with it. Reminded me of my grandmother, who had many Jewish co-workers in New York City, and used to be able to explain the biblical backgrounds to her Jewish colleagues for many of their Jewish traditions. Lots of praying to have open lines of communication with your Jewish neighbors. Got to be able to say, you know, we agree on 1,000 pages. Let's talk about how it ends. Because that's an interesting way of putting it, I think. We agree on 1,000 pages. Yes, the Hebrew scriptures go all the way up to here. It's most of the book, actually. We agree on a thousand pages. Let's talk about the rest. Yes, it's an interesting point here in Romans chapter 11. And I've had to kind of adjust some of the ways that I've been thinking and speaking on this. I don't think I've had it quite right. It's good to go through Romans 11. So let us bear that in mind. The conversions are coming, and let us pray for them. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that your ways are higher than our ways. And we thank you that in wrath, you remember mercy. We thank you that such has been the situation in our own lives, that in your wrath against our sins, you've remembered mercy and called us to faith. And so, Lord, we pray. We pray not only that Your Gospel will go to the ends of the earth, but we pray also that it would circle back to the middle, to circle back to the beginning, that Your Word may be known in Israel and among the Jewish people all throughout the world. And, Lord, we pray also that whether we consider ourselves to be a small remnant or part of a great crowd, that in either case you would remember that those who are meek are blessed by you, those who are perfectly courteous to all, those who always are ready to give a reason for the hope that is in them with gentleness and respect. So help us, Lord, to live like this and to be like this. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.