Please turn again in the Bible to the book of Romans, chapter 11. The book of Romans, chapter 11. You can find it on page 947. Romans 11, a passage that has occasioned much discussion and disagreement. is give it your full attention as I read from verse 11 to verse 36. Romans 11, reading from 11 to 36. Please give your attention to the Word of God. 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, and as much 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. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, Do not be arrogant toward the branches, if you are. Remember, it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in. That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief. But you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God. Severity towards those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in His kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, How much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree? Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way, all Israel will be saved, as it is written, the Deliverer will come from Zion. He will banish ungodliness from Jacob, And this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins." As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient. in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and how inscrutable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him, that He might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. Years ago, I met a very impressive Jewish man, secular heavy hitter at the coffee shop. And he said, what always bothered me about Judaism was the exclusiveness of it. I remember meeting another Jewish man, this one more religious. But he also said, you know, Genesis starts off so broad, but the farther you go through the Hebrew scriptures, the narrower it gets. So these two men, rather different men, men of a similar age, our neighbors here, educated men. What bothers us, they say, as Jews is the exclusiveness of this religion that we have started off life sort of a part of. And you know what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 10? Jesus sent out his apostles and he said to his apostles, do not go to the Gentiles and enter no villages of the Samaritans, but go only to the lost sheep of Israel. Now this seems very strange. Didn't God create the whole earth? Shouldn't he be mindful of all of us? We have here in Romans 11.25 the mention of a mystery. And the mystery is this, that Jesus the Messiah, when he came, he began a three-part process of salvation for the world. Now let us see if we can see those three parts, first in verses 11 and 12. Through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, If their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? You'll notice that their here must refer to Israel, because the contrast is Gentiles. Now if you didn't see three parts there, let's look again at verse 15. If their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? Or again, three parts in verses 25 and 26. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in and in this way all Israel will be saved. Or once more in verse 30 and 31. Just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, So they too have been disobedient, in order that by the mercy shown to you they may receive mercy." So Jesus began a three-part process of salvation to cover the rest of world history until he comes again. And we already see this in Jesus. Jesus, during his career on earth, told his apostles When he sent them out, do not go to the Gentiles. Enter no village of the Samaritans. Go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In fact, when a Canaanite woman came to him, he actually said, it is not right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. But then, after his resurrection, he said to his apostles, now all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations." You might as well say all Gentiles. And for the third part, Jesus said something quite enigmatic. He said, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you under my arms as a mother hen gathers her chicks, but you were not willing. You will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Now that ending there is a little enigmatic. And so the Apostle Paul, being farther on in redemptive history, the Apostle Paul standing after the resurrection and pouring out of the Spirit, he can say, now, phase one, there is a time of Jewish unbelief in Jesus. Not total, not final, but considerable. And God has used this time of unbelief in Israel to send the gospel out, all the more, to the Gentiles. Phase two. But he's saying, at the end of time, there will be a return back of the gospel to Israel, leading to a much more widespread faith within those who are ethnically Jewish. These are the three phases that we saw in verse 11 and 12, in verse 15, in verse 25, 26, and in verses 30 and 31. Now, I should alert you that there are disagreements on this way of reading the chapter. And these disagreements are legitimate disagreements among brothers. This is not to be a test of orthodoxy. Some of the very best commentators are on different sides of how to read this chapter. If you're not seeing how to read it any other way, I'll tell you how to read it any other way. Some people focus mainly on verses 25 and 26, And they notice that it says, and in this way, it doesn't say and then, it says and in this way. And then it says all Israel will be saved. But sometimes the Apostle Paul can say Israel and mean the church. Sometimes Paul can say Israel and mean all of God's people who believe in Jesus. So if you want to say that's what he means here, then this is simply saying that when the Gentiles come in, then you have the Jews who believe and the Gentiles who believe, and that is it. Nothing further is anticipated. Again, some of the best commentators, not all of them, but a few of them, take this point of view. I disagree because of what I've already showed you. I think we see the same thing over and over again in verses 11 and 12, and then verse 15, and then verse 25 and 26, and then verse 30 and 31. So I say, yes, 25 and 26 by themselves are ambiguous, but not in the context of the other three. But I also say, what does Israel mean in these chapters? Here he's been talking about his grief that his countrymen do not believe. Notice at the beginning of chapter 9, the anguish in his heart for his kinsmen according to the flesh." So throughout these chapters, he's been talking about ethnic Israel. And finally, at the end of this chapter, you'll notice he is exalting and glorifying God, whereas a couple of chapters before, he'd been grieving at the beginning of chapter 9. What turns his anguish into rejoicing? I would think it would be the way I've described it, the way he describes it here. He can rejoice as he looks forward to the future faith and prosperity of his people. So let's turn now. How will this future period of Jewish belief occur? Well, in the future, there will be widespread faith among Jewish people in Jesus, the Messiah, as their Savior. Faith in Jesus is as much necessary for Jews as it is for Gentiles. That is pretty much the point of this entire book. That the gospel is for all the way of salvation, it is to the Jew first and also to the Greek. The whole book has been saying that you cannot become righteous before God by keeping the law. He doesn't just mean for Gentiles, he means for Jews as well. And so here, he says there is one olive tree, and you need to be in the olive tree, and if you've been broken out of the olive tree, you need to be grafted back into the olive tree, and you will be if you do not continue in unbelief. It means you have to believe. What does he mean when he says believe? He means to believe in Jesus. And so, in the future, we anticipate seeing widespread belief in Jesus. Now, I'm using the word widespread to say not total. Within God's corporate election of the people, you always see his individual election, his secret election, calling some individuals and passing by others. We already saw that back in Romans 9. He calls Abraham and his descendants, and they're all in his visible people Israel. But within Israel, he calls Jacob and not Esau and so on. So there are a subset. And all the way through the Old Testament, it was open to Gentiles. We're just not especially being sought after. So it is now. Now God chooses some from every nation. All of us know, however, God has not chosen all of our nation. We would wish that he had, but he has not called all of our nations, any of us, but he calls some from every nation. And the church, of course, remains open to the Jews and has a steady stream of Jews believing. But this seems to be saying that in the end, there will again be God working faith in a larger portion of Israel. Not universal, but widespread. Now, what we might want to know is when. For when, you can look at verse 15. If their rejection, the present state of things, means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? That would seem to be near the very end of time. Or verse 25b, a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. That will presumably be near the end of time, when the fullness of Gentiles has come in, and then all Israel will be saved. So we anticipate a great time of Jewish conversion. You might say a revival of faith in Jesus among the Jewish people to occur close to the end of time. Now, some of you might want to know, are there signs of that now? We were in Israel about 16 months ago, and I ran into a Christian in front of the YMCA, and he told me that when he at first began handing out Hebrew New Testaments, only 3 out of 10 people would take it. Now, he says, 7 out of 10 people take it. And I said, well, that's good, but there are a lot of steps between taking a Bible and reading a Bible, another step from reading it to understanding it, and a final step from understanding it to believing it. We don't see signs of this just yet. Nonetheless, there is and always has been a steady stream of Jewish people coming to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. So then, what we have here in Romans 11 is the revelation of this mystery, a three-part process, of which we are simultaneously in parts one and two, and we look forward to part three. Now, there's more here for us to see. One is to say that God has won people through the ages. We struggle to articulate how to relate Israel and the Church. Jesus, very deliberately, chose 12 apostles. He didn't choose 11 or 14. He chose 12. And this, of course, is to make us think of Jacob's 12 children and the 12 tribes of Israel. Jesus also said, I am the vine and you are the branches. You must abide in me to bear much fruit. He said, if you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me. Jesus said, before Abraham was, I am. So Jesus very much makes himself the central figure of world history and of our faith. Does the church then replace Israel? Well, the people of God is now called the church. whereas the people of God were called Israel. And the laws that kept Israel separate, laws of circumcision and food and so on, are no longer in effect for God's people. So in this way, the Church replaces Israel. But the trouble with saying the Church replaces Israel is a couple of difficulties. First of all, it makes it sound as if Jews are not allowed in the Church. And of course, the Church is open to all who profess in Jesus Christ. Secondly, we run into this image of the olive tree. We don't have olive trees around here. They're not the biggest of trees, but they were in the ancient world probably the most valuable. For us, olives are little extra things you put out for special meals for the kids to say they don't like. But for them, the olive was huge, because they'd crush it and they'd get olive oil out of it. And they'd use the olive oil for everything. They'd use the olive oil for light in the dark. You put a little pool of it, you get a wick in it, you light it up. If you don't know about that, Ask Duran, he does it at camp all the time. They'd use olive oil for light at night. They'd use it for cooking, both to grease the pan, flavor the food. They'd use it to put in their hair, make themselves smell better and feel cleaner. For them, the olive tree was crucial. And olive trees can be very, very old. There's a picture of me and my sister as little kids and an olive tree there in Greece. This olive tree is old. You can just tell by looking at it. It's centuries old. The olive tree is a very valuable thing in the ancient world, a very old thing. And we also have in this passage a mention of grafting. Now grafting is one of those things that people in an agricultural society know about, and the rest of us have skin graft? No. Okay, so it's nothing to do medically with what's done with bodies today. It turns out that you may have an apple tree, maybe it grows lots of apples and they taste terrible. And so you can cut off branches from this apple tree, the yucky apple tree. And then you can get a branch fresh off a nice tasting apple tree. And if you do it just right, and you stick it in the place, and you tie it on good at the right time of year, they may actually join. And you may get an apple tree now where you have the yucky apples, but lots of them. And now you have this branch that is still bearing the good tasty ones. Only if you do it just right, maybe you can get a lot of the good tasting ones. In other words, grafting is something they've known about for a couple thousand years. It's an agricultural technique whereby you take a branch or something off of one plant and you tie it in and it starts to grow together with another one and you do it for some advantage that you hope to get as you put them together. Now Israel had been compared to an olive tree back in Jeremiah. And we've sung in Psalm 80 a comparison of Israel with a vine. And I've mentioned Jesus comparing himself to a vine. And so here we have a comparison of God's people to an olive tree, in which the root, it would appear, is the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Israel of old. And the natural branches, you could say, are people who are descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. that would fit with the growing tree image of a family growing through the centuries. An old tree, and the different branches that are up above the trunk of the ancestors. But then he says, some branches have been broken off this tree, and others have been grafted in. What is he talking about? Well, he says they're broken off because of a lack of faith. A faith in Jesus Christ. of faith in Jesus, who is, you could say, the other possible meaning of root here. We must draw our strength from Jesus, the root. And then he says, and all the yous in this paragraph are singular yous, so it's not a yaw, but it's a you, and a you, and a you, and a you. He says, and if you, although a wild olive shoot by nature, have been grafted in, He's using this as a picture of Gentiles coming into God's people. Now, the point is that it's not that God has turned to the Gentiles and washed away his work with Jewish people. Not at all. The picture is you have a Jewish tree, and I and you and everyone else here who's a Gentile believer, we've been grafted into, you could say, a Jewish tree. As Jesus said, salvation is from the Jews. Now, the numbers give a different impression. Even if every Jew had believed in Jesus, we Gentiles so outnumber the Jews, and always have, that within the church, as soon as there's a big Gentile influx, it looks like it's Gentiles. There's just a couple of Jews in there. If they all believed, it'd just be a couple of them, compared to how many Gentiles there are. And so it's very easy to say, ah, once God worked with Israel, but now he works with Gentiles. And there's a grain of truth to that. He's talking about a partial hardening here. But that gives you the wrong impression, as if God crumples up the paper and throws it in the trash can. No, no, no, no, no. There is a tree growing. And some branches are broken off, but not all of them. And then other branches are grafted in. It's a very different kind of picture. So he's saying there is one tree. Because God is one God, with one Son, Jesus Christ, to be the Savior of the one people, to come to him in one way, by faith. What I am saying is that a very noisy branch of Protestantism is wrong. And that noisy branch goes by the long, awkward word, dispensationalism. And if you want more later, I can give you more later. It's taking me quite a while to get my head around it. The dispensationalism. There was once a very popular study Bible called the Schofield Bible. The Schofield Bible's notes will teach you dispensational theology. The Left Behind series, if you watch it or read it, you're getting a particular dispensational, well, it's inspired by dispensational theology and a particular imagining of how it could work out. If you see bumper stickers about raptures and so on, that's what we're talking about. The Bible colleges, such as Cairn, used to be, at least, dispensational institutions. Dispensationalists describe God as having two peoples and two plans of salvation, and that is contradicted by the one olive tree in this chapter, and by the word that Jews must be grafted in if they do not continue in unbelief. So what then is the future for Jews? It is to be grafted back in. for those who do not continue in unbelief. In other words, we have to speak very carefully. God has one people. And yet, you could say Israel has a continuing existence and importance. You see that in verses 28 and 29. As regards election, they are beloved for the sake of the forefathers, for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. It is God is sovereign in electing to faith. God will be faithful to Abraham and call many of his descendants back to faith. He will graft them in again. Some people, of course, always want to take hold of the parable and beat it to death. And so they say, does Paul know about grafting? Do you really graft the wild into a cultivated? And others say, yes, he does. The ancients did that. You're going too far with the farming illustration. He's taking the grafting picture and he's making what he wants out of it, and you're not to get lost in whether he knows anything about grafting or not. He's starting with the basic picture of it and making what he wants out of it. So then, we have a requirement that there be Jews, when Gentiles have believed, so that the Jews can then believe. They cannot be obliterated ahead of time. They must exist. Now, what is the upshot here? What is he trying to say to us? I think, as far as I know, we are all Gentile believers here today. What is he saying to us? Well, first of all, he's talking to us. You notice that? Verse 13, now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Thank you. That was very clear. And that applies to, I think, every one of us here today. And he goes on, then, verses 17 to 24. Again, the you, the you, that would be us. We are the you. It's a singular you. We are individually this you that he is addressing as he goes on. And he says, you Gentiles are not to boast against the Jews. Speaking to a Jewish friend, he said, you know, this is so prophetic. When Paul wrote this, there were a lot more Jews in the world than there were Christians. In fact, when he wrote this, there may still have been more Jewish Christians in total than Gentile Christians. Although, who knows? That would have been close to maybe a turning point on that question. But he's writing for seeing a day when there's going to be many more Christians than Jews and many more Gentile Christians than Jewish Christians. And so looking forward to that, he says, now, don't boast against the Jewish Christians in the church with you. and don't boast against the Jews who have not yet been brought to faith." You notice how rhetorically he tamps down our pride. He describes two kinds of olive tree, the cultivated ones and the wild ones. Now guess which one you wanted to own back then? You wanted the cultivated one because you got good olives off of it. The wild ones are going to need a lot of work to get it to where it was useful to you. And you'll notice rhetorically, he has compared all of us Gentiles to the wild one. And he can do so with good historical purpose. Who's God been cultivating? Who's God been sending prophets to? God's been cultivating Israel. He's getting somewhere with Israel. Now, you Gentiles are not to exalt yourselves against the cultivated olive tree. You notice he does that in two phases. He says, do not be arrogant against the Jewish past. It's the root that supports you. You're in their house. They have kept the Old Testament. They have copied it for you. They received it, and they have copied it, and they will keep copying it for you so that you can have it. You're in their house. Don't be arrogant against them. Then he says, don't be arrogant against the other branches. And I think it fits either the branches that are broken off, that is Jews who do not believe in Jesus, or the other branches that are in the tree next to you, that would be Jewish Christians, don't be arrogant against either set of them. Because why were the branches cut off? You will say, so that I could be grafted in. He says, well, you have been grafted in. But they were only cut off where their unbelief. It wasn't only about you. There was enough space for both. There's plenty of space. They were broken off where their unbelief. And so if you become proud, you begin to sound like a Pharisee. You begin to imagine it's something about you, not something about the root that supports you. And then you will be broken off, as you do not continue in faith, but you continue in arrogance. You see, what you ought to do is remember God's judgment. If He did not spare a natural branch, why would He spare an adopted branch, or a grafted-in branch, or a wild olive shoot? And you'll notice that this chapter has obviously been sorely neglected through centuries of atrocious Christian anti-Semitism. Some might want to say anti-Semitism is not quite the right word. I'm not sure that the distinction between race and religion in this case makes much difference. There's been an atrocious anti-Jewish sentiment, however you want to call it. Paul here seems to already, perhaps, have a sniff of it. And he's trying to head it off. And unfortunately, he did not. And so we have to admit that the Christian record towards the Jews has been very, very bad up until, oh, about, say, 1945. Very bad record. And unfortunately, we can't say that's just the less pious members who are guilty of this. Unfortunately, Chrysostom, when he wanted to encourage his congregation not to take part in Jewish feasts, did not content himself with saying, you don't need to do that now. He keeps scoring on the Jews as a way to motivate not being part of that. And so it went on for centuries, down to when Martin Luther spoke so poorly that the Nazis could collect Martin Luther's most inflammatory statements and print them up as a way of softening up opposition to the Holocaust. We must guard our hearts. We're not to get stuck in verse 28a. As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. Yeah, that describes Paul's moment. That describes Paul's moment when, in fact, in many persecutions, the Jews were leading in persecution, angry at this revolutionary, inflammatory message that the Messiah was crucified by the high priests. Yes, at that time, there was a fair amount of Jewish hostility to the gospel. If we're not to get stuck in verse 28a, we can look at 28b. As regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. Whom God loves, we also ought to love. We ought to understand the three-part process of history that he's unfolded here. Yes, you know, hating Jews violates the gospel. Back in chapter 3, verse 27, having unfolded the gospel, having said, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift that is in Jesus Christ, he then says, where is boasting? It is excluded. And when he comes in this chapter to the word arrogant, that's the same word boasting. I wish they translated it the same way. Where is boasting? It is excluded. So do not boast against others as if we have accomplished something when Jesus is the one who has accomplished our salvation for us. Pride in ourselves is ruled out by the gospel. So how much more pride against those who are of the seed of David according to the flesh? So the Christian response then to this revealed mystery should be fear and peace and faith and exaltation. Fear. He says in verse 25, don't be wise in your own eyes. Verse 18, he says, and don't be arrogant. Don't boast. He says, note the severity of God. It is not that we are to be paranoid or have endless anxiety. Jesus gives us rest. It is rather that holy fear that is described in Proverbs, the fear of the Lord. is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord that guards us against pride. When we find that pride welling up within us, as it does at least 10 times a day, it is the fear of the Lord that should restrain us. So our response to this mystery ought to be first fear, and then peace. God has a plan. God is working out His plan. He has called us into His plan to believe in Jesus Christ. God will take care of his own olive tree. We ought to have peace. And I want to point out something to you that is exceedingly subtle, but I found rather interesting. Notice that quotation in verses 26 and 27 about the deliverer will come from Zion. He will banish ungodliness from Jacob. That is what's called a composite quotation. which is to say it's mostly Isaiah 59, 20, and 21, but he sprinkled a little Isaiah 27, 9 in, a little Psalm 14, 7, and maybe a little Jeremiah 31. All right? You pull them all together, he's saying this is the summary of all these different places. This is the sum of the message of all of them. Now back in chapter 3, when he had been beating down our pride to say that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, He had that big string of quotations in Romans 3, 10 to 18. Big string. I think it's seven different places. And the two long quotations are from Psalm 14 and Isaiah 59. He begins the long quotation from Psalm 14 there, and then towards the end, he has a long quotation from Isaiah 59. So that's way back there. We're all sinners. Psalm 14, Isaiah 59. But here, as he's talking about the salvation that's come, he again quotes Isaiah 59 with a little sprinkling of wording from Psalm 14, from the end of those chapters, to say, yes, remember, those chapters talked about our universal sinfulness, but they moved towards salvation. And so does his book. It begins with quoting that universal sinfulness, but now he is quoting about our salvation. Because the image of the tree is an image of salvation. So we're to have peace with God. That great human dilemma that's described, our sinfulness, described at the beginning of the book. We have peace with God, thanks to what He has done, as described here in the middle and towards the end of the book. We're to have peace in Jesus Christ. And we're to have faith that God is just, that God is merciful." Now, for a long time, Israel was God's chosen people. He sent his prophets to them. But what about the rest of us? It says here, well, God has called a partial hardening on Israel, so as to send the gospel to the Gentiles. He's shown us mercy now. Well, what about them? He's saying, in the end, God has shut up all under disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. We are to see the wideness of God's mercy. And we are to see how he operates. But in the end, you could say he balances it out. That God is merciful to all. And so lastly, we are to exalt in God's wisdom and power. You'll notice here from verse 33 to verse 36 a rather extended praise of God, an extended doxology. And that can be very useful to us. Mothers have been taught how to pray, pray acts, pray adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. And you say, OK, I know what confession and thanksgiving are. And when you tell me what supplication means, I can do that. But how do I pray adoration for God? I try to do the acronym, and I zoom through the A, because I don't really know how to do it. We just get to the C. Well, here we have words for the A, for how to adore and praise God. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. We have these words here. And he brings out these words in response to the dilemma that's been bothering him since chapter 9. And he winds up these three chapters with this doxology. But he also is winding up all 11 chapters. This book is broken in two big halves. First, how we are saved. And secondly, how we are to live. And right here, he winds up how we are saved. And beginning next week, we get to, how then shall we live? That's been touched on a little bit. But the main section of it begins next week. It begins with chapter 12. And so he winds up. And consider how God has saved you. You ought to praise Him. You should not simply rush on to say, what should I do? Until you realize, well, the first thing I should do is to praise. So guard your hearts with a holy fear, and rest in faith. And exult in the mercy of God. who has shut up all the disobedience that He may have mercy on all. What a marvelous God and a marvelous plan that He has. Let us pray to Him. Heavenly Father, we thank You that Your ways are beyond our ways and that Your thoughts are deeper than our thoughts. And to help us, Lord, with patience to wait upon You And to seek understanding in your word, we may have peace with you and peace in your way. We thank you for your providence that has led to us wild olive shoots being grafted into your great tree of salvation. And so, Lord, we pray for all those outside this tree, whether Gentile or Jewish, that you in mercy would reach to them and that you would graft them in. or graft them in again. And Lord, we pray that we would not be a stumbling block to any, but that You would so work in our lives, that Your goodness, Your truth, and Your light would shine through us, and that we would, in a sense, light their way to You. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.