Lesson 47b
Romans 11:11-18 · Mike Doyle · Feb 2, 2020
Romans (2018-21), No. 99
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926191742789

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

You get through question six? You got all the way through it? Okay. So let's just maybe try to bring it up to speed. We're working ourselves through Romans chapter 11, 11 through 18. I think I'm going to read them so it puts it in perspective. I say then, They did not stumble so as to fall, did they? And what that means is they did stumble, but they didn't fall. It's like you going down the steps and missing a step. You stumble, but you don't fall. Which means that the stumbling they did didn't permanently put them outside the realm of God's grace.

May it never be, but by their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make them jealous. With the Jews doing what they did by rejecting the Messiah, the salvation, the grace provision now moves to the Gentiles. And it's done for the purpose of making the Jews jealous so that they would return. Now if their transgression is the richest for the world and their failure is the richest for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be?

But I'm speaking to you who are Gentiles in as much Then as I am an apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry. If somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them, for their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?

If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is holy. If the root is holy, the branches are too. But if some of the branches were broken off, you being a wild olive or grafted in among them, became partakers of them of the rich root of the olive tree. Don't be arrogant towards the branches. But if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root who supports you.

So you get to question seven. How do you answer the question proposed in verse 15, which is, For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? For in view of that fact that their repudiation results in the world's reconciliation, what will the receiving of them result in if not in life from among the dead? Kind of a complicated question, right? So let's unpack it a little bit. In that verse, for if they're rejected. And the first thing we want to look at is if. And Paul uses the if throughout his argument here.

But this if is of not of a hypothetical condition, but of a fulfilled condition. You understand the difference? This is not an if of hypothetically, if this were to happen, then that would be the result. He says, no, we could use the word since here. a fulfilled condition. He's not arguing on the basis of a hypothesis but on the basis of facts. Do you get that? That's the first piece of that.

So, like I said, we could translate it, sense or in view of the fact. So, 15 we could say, for in view of the fact, their rejection is the reconciliation of the world. That's a fact. The casting away of Israel, the nation, refers to the act of God setting Israel aside temporarily as a channel through which to bring the good news of salvation to the world. Now that's what you've got to keep in mind.

What was the whole purpose of Israel? Why was there even an Israel? Why did God do that? I mean, why didn't He just keep working with all the nations of the world? go to a specific group of people, starting with Abraham? It kind of needed a counterculture of people who would be God's people led by Him and have the rules to keep, etc. They would have the rules to keep, but you notice the Jews were, the nation was in existence for 1500 years before, before they got the Mosaic Law. So what were they living under? Conscience. No, they were living under grace. Right? They were supposed to walk by faith and to trust God. That's what they were supposed to do.

And by doing that, they would be an example to the rest of the world of how God deals with people if you believe Him. If you do walk by faith, Abraham in Genesis is a great example of that. He is the primary example of that. Not that he didn't mess up, because he did a lot, but he certainly was a man of faith. And so is Isaac.

And God made a bunch of promises to the nation of Israel, but for the purpose of demonstrating this principle of faith to the entire world but it was to be resonant within Israel and people would notice it now you know it's interesting in the Old Testament everybody around Israel knew that they weren't anybody to mess with I mean even when Abraham only had a few hundred people living with him in the promised land and the rest of it was occupied by the Canaanites and other people Everybody knew that Abraham's God was nobody to be messing with, and that Abraham was a special man. There was something about him that everybody that lived around there knew about him, to the point where some of these kings would come and make deals with him because they didn't want to get on the wrong side of his God, or him. What strikes me about that is that Abraham has a reputation. And the Jews were to have, as they grew as a nation, they were to have a reputation amongst the world. And the reputation was to be that they are God's special people and through them reconciliation would be offered to the whole world. But you had to go through them to do it. But they were supposed to live in such a way that they demonstrated that they were God's chosen people, but that the door was open through them for you to come in.

How'd they do with that? They screwed it up. And one of the biggest screws of it is that they went to God and said, give us some rules. He said, OK. Oh, then we want a king, too. And God said, what's wrong with me? We want an earthly king.

The point that Paul is going to make here is that that premise is still in play. The Jewish nation, which God made a lot of promises to, has been set aside temporarily. He's not dealing with the earth any longer through the nation of Israel. Now there's a lot of dispute about that, but I think these verses are pretty clear. So now what is he doing? Number one, he doesn't have a nation that he's working with. He's not working with Italians, right? He's not working with Americans. He works through individuals, and he works through the body of Christ. And in the body of Christ, there's no nationality.

You understand that? We're heavenly. And what are we doing? He's calling out a bride for his son. That's the primary thing. But what is the influence that we're to have on the world? Salt and light. We're supposed to be salt and light. In other words, hey world, we walk with the Lord and here's who He is and here's how He does things. And here's how He functions.

And that letter I read a couple of weeks ago about that mission. The guy that lived in the village wrote back to the church that was supporting the missionary and said, hey, send us a missionary family. We want the family. It'd be nice if the guy could do something, but that's not why we're asking. We want a Christian family in our village so that we can watch how they work.

How do they function? How do they operate? We want to watch them. We want to see what it's like for the wife to be submissive to her husband. We want to see what it's like that everybody in that family is submissive to the Lord. We want to see a Christian man who loves the Lord and loves his wife and leads. and children that are obeying, and not only that, they're not grinding about it. They're living underground. We want to see that in action.

You think they're the only ones that want to see that? I think we forget a lot of times that just the way we live is a witness to those who are in the sphere of our influence. Just the way you do things, the way you conduct your ordinary business, the way you interact with your family, the way that you deal with crisis, the way that you deal with trials, that the life of the Lord Jesus would be manifested.

So here comes this discussion now about God has set aside Israel, a nation, and now He's dealing with individuals and He refers to them as what? Who does Paul refer to them as? He doesn't refer to them as the church, does he? How does he refer to them?

Gentiles. Gentiles. Individual Gentiles. So God has acted and he set aside Israel temporarily. He now is dealing, he brings the church in and the church has assumed Now you could say we're the B team. We have assumed we've gone into the game now and we're part of what God is doing in terms of salvation in the world. But it's different. The salvation and the message has nothing to do with Judaism anymore. It has to do with a direct personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior through the Gospel. And that process is designed to bring Israel back into fellowship because they get jealous. Have you ever known a Jew that's jealous of you? Have you ever known a Jewish person that's jealous of you? No. You haven't, have you? I wonder why?

Is God messing with our minds here? It does seem like somehow His will should have been fulfilled by now. We don't know. Yeah, it's interesting that there's a direct ministry to the Gentiles today through the Holy Spirit, right? And that ministry is to the Gentiles, which is everybody who isn't a Jew, okay, it doesn't matter what nationality you are, for what reason? We're to be the heralds of salvation. we're to demonstrate to the world salvation from the God who made you is here and we're the ones who are carrying the message what kind of a job are we doing? and notice what God did to Israel in 70 AD what did he do? he destroys the temple why did he do that? why did he destroy the temple? to fulfill prophecy for one thing. Yeah, but there was a reason he did it. He just doesn't say, I want to prophesy, and then he fulfills it. Why did he do it? They said, we shall not have this man to rule over us. We won't.

There's a couple of things at play here. One, it shows the scattering of the nation of Israel. Now they don't have a central location. It's like in our country, if somehow you woke up tomorrow morning and Washington, D.C. wasn't there anymore. Where would you go? So you're saying it's like the Tower of Babel. It's a focal point of who the Jews were. So the Temple gets taken down by the Romans, right?

Now, if you're a Jew, you have no place to sacrifice. I used to ask Zeb Pomerantz, my guy across the street, well, how do you deal with your sins if you don't have a place to sacrifice? And his answer was, well, we just ask for forgiveness and we get it. We have the Day of Atonement. And I said, well, where's the animal of atonement?

I'm sure that the ordinances in Greenwood Village wouldn't let you be sacrificing sheep up there. But they've, you know, maneuvered their way around that. So now, the job of presenting to the world reconciliation through Christ is the Gentiles job. Now notice it's the Gentiles that this is going to. Paul uses the word Gentile here rather than church. Jews set aside dealing with Gentiles.

That doesn't mean that he, if a Jew today believes, he becomes a member of the body of Christ. But through the acceptance of the gospel message, the unsaved are reconciled to God in the sense that their attitude of unbelief and hatred is turned into one of trust and love.

What I find interesting in the world is that the attitude of unbelief and hatred is, if you're not a believer, that's really underneath. I don't trust God. Matter of fact, if I could get the veneer off, I'd probably hate him. I certainly don't trust him. As a believer, what the Spirit of God is doing is taking us down the road of where we will trust Him and we do love Him because we know Him. That begins to show up in our life. And the ultimate end is for Jews to see what's happening and become jealous and say, wait a minute, we screwed this up and God has gone to the Gentiles.

But we did too, because we didn't win over very many Jews. No. Well, I don't think this really happens until the Messiah comes back. Do you agree? I mean, there are Jews that are being saved today, but when he comes back in the Mount of Olives, Israel is going to be saved. We talked about how many. Maybe we could say there will be life from among the dead. By the way, the rekindling of the Jewish nation will be as a nation, not individuals. A nation. The nation will be saved by God's grace alone. A spiritually dead nation will be brought back to life. Isn't that interesting? I think that's really cool that God's going to do that. Any questions about that? That kind of gets down into the weeds. We're going to stay in the weeds for a while. Question 8.

In verse 16, if the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is holy, and if the root is holy, the branches are holy. The question is, who are the firstfruits, who is the lump, who is the root, and who are the branches? Okay? Who are the firstfruits? Believing Israel of the old days. Believing Israel of the original? The firstfruits How do I say this? Jeremiah 2, 2, and 3 says, we went after me in the wilderness. Israel was the holiness unto Jehovah, the firstfruits of his increase. So when you say the firstfruits were the Israel back in the day, that's who the firstfruits are. Because they were the first ones to be saved. Then who's the lump? Isn't that the whole Israel? All of Israel? All of Israel. Think about what this verse is. You read this verse and you think, who is he talking about?

And I think it's important that we kind of get this straight. The lump is the whole of the Israel of God. as talked about in Galatians chapter 6 which we're doing in the main service that is Israel in God's sight is an always beloved nation though now the saved remnant according to the election of grace comes out from that nation into a risen heavenly Christ into a higher calling where there is neither Jew nor Gentile So are we talking about Jews only? What are we talking about, the lump? Who is the lump? It's not just Jews. Are you talking about A, who is the first prince? Are you still talking about that? No, I went to the lump. What? I went to the lump. Oh, you did. Okay. I'm sorry, I just don't hear everything. That's alright. I gotta speak up, right? I'm sorry. So, uh, In Galatians we talk about Abraham being the father of what? He's the father of the nation of Israel, right? Is that the only father he is? Is he your father? Is he your father, Abraham? No. Is he or not? Thanks, I'm a father of faith. There you go. He's the father of the faithful. He's the father of the faithful.

Now, again I'm trying to keep this in perspective. The Gentile is placed upon the root, not upon the trunk, nor upon the branches. He became neither a Jew nor of Israel. Blessing, however, has been promised through Abraham to all the families of the earth. Through Abraham. Okay? So Abraham turns out to be the root.

So the first fruits are the first believing Jews. The lump is the Israel of God. What is the Israel of God? Is it just Israel? Is it the remnant? Or does it include all those who are believers? The Israel of God is the body of Christ. It's everyone who is saved. And the root of that is Abraham, because he's the father of the faithful. Can I say that Abraham is my father? Can I say that legitimately? Well, Abraham wasn't even a Jew, was he? No, he was just a guy. And God put promises in him, and he said, look, through you I'm going to bless the whole world.

So you're the root. I'm putting all of my promises in you. And you're also going to have a seed. There will be lots of seeds. First there will be your nation, but then there will be I mean, if you look at the genealogy in either concubines or other wives that Abraham had, he had a lot of descendants, a lot of them. And so it spreads. But there's also a spiritual root. And that's us. And that's Abraham. Faith, faith, faith. That's what he's talking about here. You OK with that? Or are you confused?

Now, who are the natural branches? Who are the natural branches? Jews. Why? Because they are the first ones that took advantage of the root. Right? They're the first ones to believe. Well, they were the first offspring from the root. The first ones, yeah, connected. You can't say that they the tree is the Jewish nation but rather it is those who are partaking of the divine blessing from Abraham through Christ. They were the first ones to do it. Right? Okay. So we can say most of the Jews were thus, because of unbelief, broken off. Those Jews who believed, as we know, by the election of grace came to partake of the heavenly calling of the church, the assembly of God, the Ekklesia, the church.

Again, when that assembly is taken away to heaven, what are we talking about there? The rapture. So here we go, we're out of here, let's say the rapture happens this afternoon. Every Christian on the planet goes, not here anymore, and the Holy Spirit resident within the body of believers, He's gone too. Because He goes with us, right? Or we go with Him, is a better way to put it. What's left? What do you have here now? You've got a mess. But who is left?

God doesn't, as we have found out, He doesn't abandon the Jewish nation. But when He takes the church out of here, Who does he go back and start dealing with? The Jewish nation. There are believers in the Jewish nation then after the rapture who will believe and he'll begin to work again back through them to those who are sons of Abraham who qualify as branches who are associated with the root and the lump. Believers. I think when the rapture happens that a lot of Jewish people are going to get saved that very day by God's grace.

And he will begin to work back through Israel again. Not going to be a fun place to be for the next seven years, but that's what he's going to do. Because the church is not here anymore. And if he hasn't abandoned humanity, and he hasn't abandoned Israel, this is where they come back in.

So I'm rapturing saved Jews. Well, yeah, but be careful. Up until the very instant of the rapture, if you believe, you're in the body of Christ, whether you're Jew or Gentile. But the minute the church goes, that's why I said I think an awful lot of Jews will get saved that very day. I mean, think about it. If the church went today, a third of the crowd at the Super Bowl wouldn't be there.

Well, maybe 10%. I don't know. Yeah, I was going to say, a third seems very... You know. When you say, say, like if the rapture happens and then they believe... After the rapture happens? Yeah. Let's say the rapture happened at 9.42 a.m. February 2nd, 2020. That's a minute from now. And at 943, Zev Pomerantz, my old buddy, believes in the Lord Jesus.

Where does he go? He's still here. So now, what is his status before a holy God now? What is he? Is he saved? Yes. To what? He's not a member of the body of Christ. They're not here anymore. He's not indwelled by the Holy Spirit. He might be. He might be. But he's not in Christ. That's the difference. He's not a member of the Bride. Where's the Bride? So the Jews after that period, are all the promises to Abraham true for them? Do those pick up again? Sure. Absolutely. And they become the vehicle through which God begins to deal with the world.

Now, for the first three and a half years, I don't think they're all that visible. You know, because there's prosperity, things look really good, and the Antichrist is here, and he hasn't been revealed yet as the dog he's going to be. But once he goes in the temple and declares himself to be God, duck. Because now the bowls of wrath are opened up and they are promulgated all over the earth. The three and a half years of destruction that's going to go on here, it's hard to imagine.

But through all of that now, God is going to be dealing with the earth through the nation of Israel, through the prophets, and there are two prophets, that are evangelists that end up getting killed. Their bodies lay in the street for, I don't know, two or three days, then they get up. You know, stuff like that's going to happen. But it'll always be through a Jew now. It won't be through Gentiles. It'll be through the Jews. They're being grafted back in. But how do you get...

If you're alive tomorrow, The rapture happened today. And you believe that Jesus is the, if you're a Jew, the Messiah, if you're a Gentile, that He's the Savior. What's your status before God? Who are you? You're not a member of the church. What are you?

Member of the nation of Israel. Do I become a Jew? Yeah. I'm a son of Abraham. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm Jewish, though. See, I think when we're dealing nationally, I'll put it this way, there will be Jews who believe, there will also be Gentiles who believe, but they don't become Jews just because they believe. They're still the Gentile nations. You see that? Well, the Gentiles that believed in the Old Testament didn't become Jews either. No, they didn't. Unless they were proselytes, got into the Jewish nation. information about salvation came through the Jewish nation. It didn't come from any place else. It only came through the Jewish nation. And that's the way it will be again. That's the way it will be again. They will be saved saints. We can say that about them.

But you can't say that the same qualifications of being in Christ today, that all of the earthly distinctions go away. Jew, Gentile, bond-free, cultural, you know, barbarian, Scythian, Irish, Italian, whatever. All that all comes back in now. You have the Jewish nation, sons of Abraham, of his seed, and then you have the Gentile nations, that believe and become the spiritual sons of Abraham, but not members of the body of Christ.

Okay with that? But the Jews are grafted back in now. So, they were the natural branches, the nation were the natural branches that were set aside, now they're getting grafted back in. Okay? They'll be saved Gentiles. So what's the point here? What is Paul trying to say? He's saying that God isn't through with the Jews yet. He set them aside, but He's not done. Now, verse 17.

But as some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them, and became a partaker with them of the root rich root of the olive tree. Some of the branches were broken off, being a wild olive, were grafted back in. Who are these people? Who's the you here? If some of the branches were broken off and you, who's the you? Gentiles. Gentiles. That's who he's talking to. Gentiles. They have been set in the place of blessing from Abraham. You see that? They've been put in the place of blessing that they weren't in before. Okay?

It doesn't mean that all the Gentiles are in the body of Christ, for it is not of that body as such that Paul is here speaking, but of Gentiles as having been put into the place of divine blessing where Israel once stood. In other words, Israel was always, until they were set aside, in the place of blessing. Now they're set aside. All of Gentile-dom, I like that term, now come in and they are now the objects of God's blessing. Everybody who is not a Jew is now in the position that the Jews used to be in.

The blessing is going to come to them. It doesn't mean they receive it, but it's coming to them now. and that says the words of some of the branches mean that any whole tribe of Israel would be wholly lost for all twelve tribes appear in Ezekiel in the millennial kingdom all of them do so we don't have a lost tribe of Israel that somehow got snuffed out but the word you is generic of Gentiles but of course it's addressed to individuals those are the Gentiles who will hear The warning here is addressed not to the brethren in Christ, but to the Gentiles.

You understand that? He's not warning the church. He's sending a warning out to all the Gentiles in all the world. All of them. You are in the place of blessing now. Receive the blessing. See that? So how does he propagate that message? Through the church. That's how he does it. missionaries, you and I, believers, in our sphere of influence where we live, that's the message. But in verse 18 he gives us a warning. Watch the warning. Do not be arrogant toward the branches. But if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root but the root that supports you.

I think a lot of us Christians, let me put it this way, few of us believe and understand that we're beneficiaries of those promises which God lodged in Abraham as the root of the promise. The promise was lodged in Abraham, that's where it came from. That's where the first promise was made. All of those promises we Gentiles inherit when we're in Christ. Every one of them. Every one of them.

But in Galatians 3.7 it says, They that are of faith, the same are the sons of Abraham. Who are they? All the Gentiles that believe. And the Jews who believe. But before the setting aside of Israel No Gentile believed unless they somehow found their way to a Jew who explained information to them and they said, oh, I want some of that.

You know who the best example in the New Testament is? It's Cornelius. He was hanging around with those Jews for a long time before what we call the Gentile Pentecost. He prayed to God. He understood the Jewish system. He was probably holier and more righteous than 99% of the Jews in Israel. Because he wanted the truth. So God visited him and Peter goes over there and here comes this Pentecost situation for the Gentiles that Peter has just floored. It dawns on him God intends to save the Gentiles.

That was new information. He goes back to Jerusalem and says, hey fellas, God's going to save the Gentiles. You know what they said? Nah, really? And he said, yeah, he did to them the same thing he did to us on the day of Pentecost. He's going to save those Gentiles. It was a big surprise to him.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is the blessing of Abraham and Christ Jesus coming upon the Gentiles. Because we are in Christ, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit. That's the only reason you have it. You didn't deserve it. You were a beneficiary of what was promised in Abraham all those many centuries ago. But there's a danger here. That we Gentiles with glory over the Jewish branches forget that you and forget that you The root supports you, it's not the other way around. You don't support anything. You're being supported. You're being held up. And Abraham was that root. Was that the second buzzer? It was the second buzzer? No. Abraham was the root, the vessel of promise, and we who are in Christ are his children. That's all I got.

We get to leave early. Do you think it was a brave thing that Peter, I mean, just to go to the Jewish people and say, the Gentiles are in, doesn't it seem like a brave thing? Because that bunch of Jewish guys would go, come on. Oh, sure. And here's the problem that Paul's addressing here. Don't you Gentiles get too cocky about what's going on with you and start acting like the Jews acted, that they had it all.

You're in because of God's grace and His blessing only. You're not the root. You're the branch. And so you can't artificially take credit for anything. You see, that's the warning he's telling them. If God set aside the Jews because they got arrogant, don't you get arrogant? Not that you would be set aside, because once you're in Christ, but you certainly would, you'd get in that position, you'd lose the blessing, the fellowship. So let's close. Father, how we thank you for your grace. We thank you that you're careful to explain to us how your grace comes towards us as Gentiles, and we're thankful for that. And we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.