Paul's Great Sorrow and Grief for Israel

It's a real blessing to be back with you all this morning. Let's go ahead and see who. Some of you I don't know yet. Most of you I have made your acquaintance, but... We've been involved with Holly Hills from a long distance for quite a while now, I guess, a few years now.

And so it's a blessing to be back with you in person and be able to open God's word with you this morning. Our last visit here was August 20th last summer, which is about 10 months ago, and I asked the question, why am I here? Yeah, you remember. The Lord, as I was preparing this and thinking about this message and being here again, the Lord really impressed that upon me, again, the significance of His timing in all things.

And so I can't help but kind of have the same thoughts in mind this morning, that the Lord has each of us where we are right now, even this morning in being here for very specific purposes. He is working out specific things in your life individually and in mine. And though none of us knows where we will be tomorrow or or next week or next year, this morning the Lord has us right where we are. He's seen fit that you be here this morning. the fact that you are here means that the Lord has something for you this morning. And he wants to teach you something. And so, as we study through these verses together this morning, it could be different, specific things for each one of you, but there is something that he wants to speak to you through his word individually this morning.

So, with that in mind, let's pray. Heavenly Father, We thank you that you are the one who is at work in each one of our lives. You are the one that has brought us together here this morning to learn of you. And Lord, so we just pray that as we spend time in your word, that our focus would be on you and who you are and what you've communicated and what you have to teach us. And ultimately, Lord, that our eyes would be turned to your son, Jesus Christ, and who he is, and his character, and his love. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So we are at a, what I've called a critical juncture. Now, we pulled up this, Alyssa impressively found this sign for me, because I said, you know that road sign, important intersection ahead, can you find a picture of that?

And then I realized as we put it on here, that looks very Canadian. Would the McCulley's agree with that? That looks like a road in Canada. Do you guys have the same road sign down here? I've never seen it. Anyone seen it? Other than the McCulley's? This is actually a fairly common sign, as you can see, on some of the quieter roads, although this one's paved, so it must be a fairly main road. But as you're driving along in Canada, it's relaxing and quiet, there's no traffic, and you might get lulled into the feeling that there's no other vehicles out there anywhere, and all of a sudden there's a crossroad where there may or may not be traffic, and so they warn you, remember, there are other cars in existence, and so, you might want to just check the crossroad.

But anyway, we've come in Chapter 9 to a critical juncture in the text, and we need to be alerted to that. We need to have our eyes open and see what's going on here. And Mike already dealt with this last week in terms of the transition between Chapter 8 and Chapter 9. So we won't belabor that this morning. But we want to be reminded of why we have this transition here as we get into Chapter 9. So interestingly, last summer, on August 20th, I had the opportunity to introduce Romans 6. And now here we are at the next juncture, between 8 and 9.

And my message last summer was entitled, Our Union with Christ, God's Great Plan and Purpose for the Church. And then through Romans 6, 7, and 8, Paul lays out this most fundamental truth of Christianity, the fact of our eternal union with Jesus Christ.

And everything that God is doing and will do through the church is wrapped up in the central reality of our living union with Jesus Christ. There's nothing more fundamental to who you are as a Christian. That is the core of it. And now for the last 10 months, while I've been away, Mike, Roger, and Andrew have been teaching through these three chapters.

And to just give the briefest of summaries, we could say that chapter six, Paul introduces our union with Christ and what that means. And it means that we are dead to everything of the old Adam nature, everything that's wrapped up in that. We've died to that and we are in union with Jesus Christ. Chapter seven, Paul teaches us what this means about our relationship to the law. We are dead to the law.

It has no authority over you as a Christian any longer. And then in chapter eight, we are free from condemnation in Christ Jesus. Still the same topic. Our union with Christ frees us from condemnation and nothing will ever separate you from Jesus Christ.

And this chapter also contains the promise that the Father is constantly working out every detail of our lives to conform us to the likeness of his Son. So, by now, these three chapters are familiar to us, but when Paul first taught these truths, it was earth-shaking news. This was brand new revelation.

By the time Paul had written this, he'd taught it before, but But the book of Romans is, as I see it, Paul's introduction to Christianity. Remember, he never had the opportunity to visit Rome in person, and so he sent them the letter as if this was kind of his first message to them. And so he's laying out the fundamentals. And so this is new stuff. This is brand new revelation.

The church had been born, had come into existence in Acts 2, the day of Pentecost, right? But for some time, there was very little understanding of what the church really was. It was kind of fuzzy for a while, maybe very fuzzy, until the Damascus Road and the Lord took Paul out into the wilderness and trained him for three years. And this is what the church is. This is my plan and program for the church.

And the church had to be taught what it meant to be the church. And Paul was the one commissioned by Christ to reveal that. what Paul often calls the mystery. In Colossians 127, he defines the mystery as Christ in you, the hope of glory. Like I said, the most fundamental thing about the church is Christ in you, that union that we have with Christ. And that's the most simple way to define the church. And we need to understand that it's completely unique from God's eternal plan for the nation of Israel. Church and Israel have, there's related things, but the church and Israel are very distinct.

When we hear the word mystery, there are a lot of believers who hear that and say, ah, you see, this stuff's all a big mystery. We can't possibly understand it. So they don't really try. And most of you probably know this, but the word mystery in Greek doesn't mean mysterious. It means unshrouded or unveiled. So this is a brand new dimension in God's plan that was never before revealed.

And it's critical that we understand this doctrine because it's only on the basis of this doctrine of what the Church is that we will ever be fruitful and that we will ever grow as believers. So we have to be firmly convinced of our union with Christ. So that was the big bombshell doctrine that Paul was bringing in his day.

However, we have to remember that for ethnic Jews, I'm going to use that term a bit this morning. We'll kind of define it as we go along a little bit. For these ethnic Jews who'd been raised in the Old Testament their whole life, this new revelation left some big question marks. And I think it's a little bit like trying to pack the trunk of the van to come down to the States for two months. Now, this doesn't look anything like the back of our van, really.

Ours was way fuller than that. I'm sure you've all done this, especially if you have a few kids, right? There are X number of pieces of baggage, each one has its own particular size and shape, and you work at fitting everything, and my brother says there's a good Dude Perfect video on Tetris trunk packing, I haven't seen it, but it's like a game of Tetris, right? And just when you think you've got everything in place and there isn't, any possible room for one more piece of luggage, someone comes out to the garage, right, with another, one last arm load of bags, and you look at them and say, well, it won't fit. It doesn't fit. The trunk is full. Nevertheless, you start to unpack the trunk and start all over again.

And I think that's sort of what it was going on with the Jewish people in the first century church. They'd come out of the system of Judaism, which had been working on understanding the Old Testament and interpreting it for hundreds of years, and they developed a system in which they felt they had every piece of doctrine in place. Okay, so they had their trunk and they felt like everything fit. They understood God's plan and program. And all of a sudden, this is dropped in their lap.

So there's a principle of hermeneutics at play here that I think they were trying to apply in the same way that we should also apply when we study scripture. As Bible students, we should expect that all Scripture fits together perfectly into a logical whole. There's no piece of Scripture that's like, oh, well, we just don't deal with that one because it doesn't fit our system. If we're going to be Bible-believing Christians, every piece fits, and we need to learn how Scripture fits together. And so that's what the Jewish people had been trying to do. And they've been doing that for a very long time. And then along came John the Baptist and followed by Jesus. We need to understand what their ministry was.

They came to the nation Israel as prophets, speaking on behalf of God the Father, but John and Jesus didn't actually bring any new baggage to the trunk. Their message had to do only with the things already revealed in the Old Testament. Their message was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They were calling Israel back to everything that the Old Testament scriptures had already said. And we can keep the analogy going here. John and Jesus were showing Israel that they hadn't done a very good job of packing the trunk.

There were all sorts of things in there that didn't belong, extra things that the Jews had added to their theological system that distorted their understanding of what God had actually revealed. Ultimately, we know that Israel rejected Jesus and his message.

There were a small handful that believed. But after Acts 2, when the church began, there were thousands of Jews accepting Christ. And we read about that in the book of Acts. And we have to remember that these baby believers only knew the Old Testament scriptures. They'd accepted Jesus as their savior, as their messiah, but they had no real concept of the church as distinct from Israel.

And then along comes Paul. And he's the one who has the arm load of new luggage, so to speak. These facts about the church. And And that is the doctrine that we've been through for the last year, beginning in Romans 5, 12, up through 8, 39. And these Jewish Christians now are like, wait a second, Paul, that doesn't fit. That doesn't fit our trunk. It doesn't fit our system.

And Paul says, yes it does. Let me show you. And he starts to unpack their trunk for them. And by the time Paul is done, he has everything from Genesis to Revelation in the trunk and nothing is missing, nothing is left out. Paul doesn't get rid of anything previously revealed in scripture. He doesn't have to. Okay, the revelation of the church, the body of Christ dovetails perfectly with everything that God has previously revealed to Israel and about Israel and his plan for them. Everything in the Bible from cover to cover is a complete whole.

Okay, so we need to kind of have that picture, that concept in our mind as we move into 9, 10, 11. Though the church wasn't revealed until much later in history, like I said, it fits perfectly with everything that God has said about and to Israel. But for hundreds of years, unfortunately, the church at large has thrown Israel in the trash, honestly, in order to make their theological system work. And it's been a tragically anti-Semitic tendency in the church. And I believe if the church had been paying attention to Romans 9 through 11, that all could be avoided. It doesn't have to be that way. And I really think as we see anti-Semitism rising and raising its ugly head again today, we need to study these chapters diligently.

We need to understand how the church is to think about Israel. So our first point today that's key is that the church has not altered or undone God's plan for Israel. The church has not altered or undone God's plan for Israel. We can only say that if we know that they're distinct, because the church is very different than Israel. If they're the same thing, then God's plan has changed, and we've got to change and pull things out of place and distort things that were said and promised to Israel. But Paul is gonna take these next three chapters to unpack this and explain this to us. So we said everything that God is doing with the church fits perfectly with his plan for Israel.

In fact, we're gonna see in chapter 11 that the church plays a critical role in actually causing Israel one day to turn to their Savior. Not until the end of the tribulation period, the 70th week of Daniel, will that happen. But in chapter 11, verse 11, we see that the church is being used by God actually to reach Israel.

And hopefully by the time that we've studied these chapters and we've grasped them together, we have a deeper appreciation for the Father's wisdom and knowledge. And we can say with Paul, oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways. So by the time we see the distinction and the contrast and we see what God is doing, Okay, we're not too bad there. With both the Church and Israel, we'll grasp in a new way the depth of God's infinite wisdom. Never fully, of course, but we're not infinite, but we'll have a greater grasp of it.

And I think that if we see these truths the way that Paul saw them, then I think we'll be filled with the same kind of love that Paul had for the unsaved and particularly unsaved Israel. So let's look at today's verses and let's talk about the love that Paul had. So if you don't have your Bible open already, turn to Romans chapter nine. I know we've read it already together.

We're just gonna kind of work through phrase by phrase. I'm gonna be working out of the NASB. That's been my regular text. Courtney's not, and he's giving me the, show of hands, who uses the NASB? Okay, okay, I'm in good company. So, I apologize if that's not your translation, but we'll try to work together on this.

So Paul makes a very bold claim in these verses this morning. Paul has just finished saying that it is impossible for us to be separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And now he turns around and says that he could wish to be separated from Christ for the sake of his brethren. And that claim will kind of be our main focus this morning. But before we get to it, we need to look at the way that Paul introduces his claim in verse 1. However, before we get to verse 1, I actually want to jump to the very end and tackle the phrase at the end of verse 3 so that we get properly oriented to who Paul is talking about here. We ask the question, who are Paul's brethren, his kinsmen, according to the flesh?

Now, this is probably fairly obvious to most of us, but we do wanna be clear on this. If we can identify who this is, then we'll have our minds properly oriented along the way. And of course, our verses this morning cut off right before he begins to describe them and outline them. And that'll be next week's material. But I don't want to take for granted here that we know who Paul is talking about.

Like I said, there's too much confusion today over Israel and the church just to breeze by this. I had a friend, a fellow who worked for us once, tell me, he loved to talk about theology, but he said, you know, Miles, the church is Israel. And I just kind of, I don't know how I'm going to respond to this guy right now, because there's a lot of baggage in that. But that kind of thinking has horrible consequences, maybe not immediately apparent, but it has horrible, tragic consequences, both for the church and for Israel.

So we want to be clear on who Paul's talking about here. So he says, first he calls them my brethren. And the Greek word there is adelphos. And probably many of you are familiar with that. But it is the same word commonly, more commonly used for fellow Christians. However, Paul has what we could say perhaps two different sets of brethren, Israel and the Church. In fact, if you do a search on that word in Romans, 12 times Paul addresses his Christian audience as brethren, and then another six times in the letter he uses the term brother in reference to Christians.

But this one time in chapter 9 verse 3, Paul uses the term brethren in reference to his physical descent. And he clarifies that by describing them in verse 3 as his kinsmen according to the flesh. Okay, so this is not his Christian brethren. These are his brethren, kinsmen according to the flesh.

Now, according to the flesh is actually a fairly common phrase in the New Testament if you do a search on that phrase. And in some cases, according to the flesh means according to the sin nature. And we've seen that talk if you check Romans 8-12. You'll see that phrase used as a reference to walking according to the sin nature. But actually, in most cases, or most places in the New Testament, this expression simply speaks of the earthly, physical aspect of man without reference to the sin nature necessarily. So in fact, if you look just down a few verses at verse 5, Paul says that Christ is, quote, from the Jews, according to the flesh. So this expression, in that case, certainly can't have anything to do with sin, right? It simply refers to Jesus' physical human nature.

So here, I believe that Paul is not identifying himself with the Jews in any other way than his own physical ethnicity. So, the Jews, we could say, are Paul's earthly brethren, but the Church, the body of Christ, are Paul's heavenly brethren. Israel is earthly in citizenship, while the Church is heavenly in citizenship. And though Paul, like all of us who are believers in Christ, though Paul has been crucified to everything earthly, he's still able to recognize Israel as brethren in the physical sense. So Paul's talking about ethnic Israel, the term I used earlier. Those people who are physically descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And it's important to see that This Israel that Paul is referring to is unsaved. In fact, everyone today who is a Jew, who has not accepted Christ, who is not in the church, is unsaved, right? Since Acts 2, anyone who was born a physical Jew, who has not accepted Christ as their savior, they're not saved. Being a Jew doesn't get you in into eternity. There's no eternal salvation attached to physical descent from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So we wanna keep that context clearly in view as we begin into chapter nine, as we go through this verse here. The church and Israel are two very different things, and Paul is talking about his Jewish brethren who have not accepted Christ, who are unsaved Jews.

So going back to verse one now at the beginning, Paul says, I'm telling the truth in Christ. Now, almost every single translation rearranges the word order from the Greek to make this read smoothly in the English. The Greek begins with the word truth, aletheia. And that means that that's emphatic. This is where Paul wants to place the emphasis. So we could translate this, and it wouldn't read it smoothly, of course, but we could say, truth, I am speaking in Christ. So that's the emphasis. And Zodiates defined Aletheia as follows, the unveiled reality lying at the basis of and agreeing with appearance. Okay? So, So something that we can't necessarily see, but it's laying at the basis of appearance.

And so Paul is actually here unveiling to us the truth that is hidden in his heart. The focus of Paul here is on the fact that this is the truth. This is the truth. But not only is this the truth, Paul also says that he is speaking the truth in Christ. And this gets to what Jim was saying when he was reading the scripture this morning. And what does it mean to speak in Christ?

For one thing, we know that the Christian is always in Christ. That's our position. We don't leave that position. We are always in Christ. But we should also be aware that as a believer, we can either be walking in fellowship with Christ or not at any given moment. We get asked the question, can Christ lie? And as an obvious answer, it's a rhetorical question, of course not. Isaiah 53 9 in prophecy says, nor was there any deceit found in his mouth. There was no deceit in Christ. He cannot lie.

So if Paul is not speaking this in Christ, then his claim that he's about to give rests on his own character, his own ability to be truthful. But if Paul is speaking these words in Christ, then the trustworthiness of his claim rests on the character of Christ as trustworthy. So not resting his claim on his trustworthiness, which would be fallible, but resting this claim, the truthfulness of this claim on Christ, who is the truth. And Paul refuses to rest this claim on his own character. He is adamant that the trustworthiness of this claim is found in Christ's character. We're gonna say a little bit more about that in Christ in a minute, but for now let's leave it at that. And then Paul adds the phrase here, I am not lying. And you kind of ask the question, Paul, you just said you're telling the truth, are you just being redundant? Is this just kind of multiplying words?

But if you've ever dealt with the sin nature, anyone dealt with the sin nature before? Then you know very well that you can tell the truth and still be deceptive, okay? Especially if you've raised kids, right? Truthfulness is much more than simply telling the truth. Truthfulness is the absence of deception. And there are a number of ways, anyone ever done business dealings as well? There are a number of ways to tell the truth and still be deceptive, are there not? For instance, I may tell you something that's true, but withhold certain specifics about that truth. So if you ask, have you done your chores yet? And I answer, I sure have, but I neglect to mention that It was a week ago that I did my chores last, then I'm being deceptive, right? But it's easy to do. We get that somewhat regularly.

Another way that we can be deceptive is to state the truth in an exaggerated form that leads you beyond the truth. So now on that point, there's perhaps a fine line between hyperbole and exaggeration for the sake of deception. Sometimes in the language we use, hyperbole, this is for Nick, I could say, I ate a truckload of poutine, okay? Nick thinks poutine is the only thing we eat in Canada. But I can say that, and it's obvious hyperbole. I didn't eat a literal truckload.

That's obvious, and I'm not intending to deceive you. I'm intending to exaggerate the point for emphasis. But there's a fine line there between using exaggeration to be deceptive. And I think, in part, Paul adds the words, I am not lying, because he's expressing the fact that he's in no way being deceptive. He's not leaving anything out here. He's not exaggerating in any way or misleading in any way.

Because it could be tempting, honestly, to take what Paul says in verse three as hyperbole, an overstatement of the facts for emphasis. But I really think that with verse one, it's really impossible to take verse three as anything but the explicit truth. Paul genuinely desired that he could be accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of his Jewish brethren. We'll talk in a minute about when he desired that, but in any case, he's stating that as a fact. It's not an over-exaggeration.

And then Paul adds the words, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit. I liked Wiest's translation of that. He says, my conscience bearing joint testimony with me in the Holy Spirit. There's that prefix on testimony that makes it a co-testimony or joint testimony, kind of the same as we see our co-seeding with Christ, our co-crucifixion with Christ, that same prefix exists here. So our conscience is co-testifying along, or sorry, Paul's conscience is co-testifying along with himself. Now the conscience can be a little bit tricky to define, but we can note, A few basic things about the conscience. We won't get into the scripture where we can support this, but a few things that we can pick up from scripture.

First of all, everyone has a conscience, believer and unbeliever. We all come with a conscience. The second point is that the conscience is not always right. Think for instance of the, thinking of our topic here of Israel, you can think of the thousands of impassioned protesters opposing Israel and defending a terrorist organization today. Their conscience defends their actions. They do that with a clear conscience because they're deceived. So the conscience can be wrong.

Point number three, the believer is said to have a cleansed or purified conscience. And that would be part of our position in Christ. We have a cleansed conscience, Hebrews 9, 14, and 10, 22. A fourth point is that the conscience will always function according to a given system of values, either godly, biblical, or ungodly, unbiblical.

And the last point is that the role of the conscience, I think as God designed, is to alert us to things that are contrary to our values or what we hold to be true, is to alert us to things that are not right. Earlier in Romans, Paul explained that the unbeliever's conscience is bearing witness to them of their own sinfulness. And that's so that they can never stand before God and say, God, I didn't know. It wasn't clear to me that I was a sinner.

But Romans 2.15 says, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or defending them. That's actually the exact same grammar there, except that it's in the plural. So their conscience bearing witness. So there, the unbeliever's conscience bears witness to them that they indeed are guilty before God.

Here, Paul's conscience in the Holy Spirit, mind you, so we could say that would be the renewed conscience in Christ, is bearing testimony of the fact that these words are true. In other words, if Paul were lying, his conscience would be bothering him, but he's not. And so he has a clear conscience before the Lord.

We talked this morning at Sunday school a bit about Paul's conscience. It wasn't just when he was a believer that he sought to have a clear conscience. His whole life as a legal Jew was lived with a clear conscience before God. He always sought to live with a clear conscience according to the law, and now as a Christian, according to the Holy Spirit.

So Paul's saying that not only am I saying this word with my mouth, but my conscience verifies that this is truly what is in my heart. So if we want to look at what is in, sorry, we want to look at what is in Paul's heart, because that's what his conscience is bearing witness to.

But first we need to answer the question, Before we move on from this verse, why is Paul so adamant that he is telling the truth in these verses? And there may be more to this than what I have here briefly, but in part, I think that it's because what Paul claims is so unthinkable that we wouldn't believe him otherwise. What he's about to say is just impossible to receive if he wasn't totally adamant that this is the truth. But I think that Paul also has to be emphatic about this because it's not only unthinkable what he's about to say, it's also impossible.

It's an impossible desire to have unless it is sourced entirely in the person and nature of Jesus Christ. Actually, there's two ways in which it's impossible. First of all, it's impossible to be separated from Christ. It's also impossible to have that kind of a love in your heart out of the flesh.

So this is where we come back to those words in Christ. I said earlier that Paul is resting the truthfulness of his claim on the character of Christ, but I think that Paul is also telling us that that the grief and sorrow which are in his heart are sourced in the character of Christ. That's where, again, that's where Jim nailed it. The love that Paul has, the grief and sorrow that he have that are based on his love for Israel is sourced in Christ's character. So there's, this is nothing less than the life of Christ in Paul on display. Okay, so it's important for us to see this. that Paul is expressing, he's giving an outward expression of the heart, the life of Jesus Christ toward the lost, and particularly for unsaved Israel. So let's take a look now at Paul's claim in verses 2 and 3.

He says, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. Now the words translated by the NASB there, great sorrow and unceasing grief, are translated in a variety of ways, and almost every translation shows some different words, so I thought I'd put a few of them up there to get the flavor of this.

The Amplified version had bitter grief and incessant anguish. The King James has great heaviness and continual sorrow. You see how varied it is, but you get the flavor. Darby translated this great grief and uninterrupted pain. And then, Wiest, in his typical expanded style, a consuming grief, a great one, and intense anguish without a let-up. So, we've got the flavor for that. It's a very deep and gut-wrenching kind of a sorrow. And we want to notice the word unceasing there, or incessant, or without a let up. Paul indicates that this was not a momentary sorrow or something that he had experienced at some time in the past. It was going on when he wrote this in the present.

And that lines up with our verb, have. And Roger brought up the root word of have. Here is a me. And it's an essence. It's a state of state of being verb. It tells us something about the essence of the subject. Jesus loved to use ego, a me, I am. And kind of a, a lightly veiled reference to his deity, I am. And this is the same word as am, Amy, is estin.

So it tells us something about the nature of a thing, in this case, the nature of the reality that's in Paul's heart. And estin is the present tense indicative form of emi, which means that when Paul wrote these words, he was still experiencing this sorrow. This was a present tense, which means continual in the present time, ongoing in the present time, right? It would be a wordy translation, but we could probably translate this, I exist in a continual state of having great sorrow and unceasing grief. I think that's what Paul is expressing there. This is currently in his heart as he's writing this.

And we want to notice where the sorrow exists. He says, in my heart. which of course, the heart, again, perhaps a little bit, one of those things is a little bit hard to define, but at least in part, it's the aspect of us that can experience feelings like sorrow, okay? And God designed us in this way actually as a parallel to who he is. God experiences feelings, and we do as a reflection of Him. And there's nothing wrong, inherently, with feelings, right? The only question is, what is the role of our feelings?

And this is something that is so important. I hate to pick on young people, but I would say, especially for our young people today, Because there's so much confusion on the issue of our feelings and what their role is in our lives because there's been so much, I'll just call it propaganda, satanic propaganda, for decades now that we should follow our feelings. You know, what's in your heart? Follow your heart.

And our feelings are not to guide our thinking or our actions. Our feelings are a God-given response mechanism. Our feelings are to be directed, or they are directed, by the way that we think about things. And if we have an incorrect or unbiblical framework of thinking, then our feelings can be completely out to lunch. So contrary to that message, that propaganda, do not follow your feelings. We could make that a hashtag on a new Disney movie or something, I don't know.

Feelings, feelings are not what we should base our decisions on, okay? What we think should be based on the word of God alone, and how we feel will flow out of a proper way of thinking. And if our thinking is consistent with God's word, then we will find that our feelings are also consistent with God's feelings. If we have the mind of God, then we respond the way that God responds emotionally to things.

So what about Paul's feelings here? Is he right to feel the way that he does? Because Paul is responding very emotionally to Israel's rejection of Christ. But he's not allowing his emotions to lead him. His emotions are a deeply felt response to the truth. And emotions are a wonderful thing. Life would be very dull, very bland without emotions. They are a wonderful thing. But Paul's not allowing his emotions to motivate him or to drive him here. They are simply a response to the truth. And frankly, I think that Paul's feelings are completely consistent with God's heart on this point for sure.

So we see that Jesus expressed his own deep sorrow for Israel. As he approached Jerusalem, you'll remember this, in the week leading up to his crucifixion, Luke tells us that Jesus saw the city and wept over it. It says when he approached Jerusalem, he wept over the city, okay? Not the city, but the people in the city, right? He wept for those Jews who were about to reject him and crucify him.

And Matthew records for us these words of Jesus. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, again, the people, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. And so you see a deep feeling, a deep love for Israel, for lost Israel. And those feelings are born out of his love. And we must never forget that God loves the sinner. He weeps over the lost. And I had to ask myself, do I? Do I share that? Now, we're gonna come back to that question at the end, but keep that in your mind.

So what does Paul mean by verse three? where he says, for I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. Now, we've already dealt with the last half of that, who Paul's brethren are. We said he's talking about ethnic Israel, but what does Paul mean by wishing to be accursed from Christ?

Now, first of all, I think that the opening phrase in the NESB perhaps obscures the meaning a bit. Who am I to comment on their translation? But I feel that it's a little bit difficult to get our heads around. But on studying it, I think we can open that up a little bit more.

The word wish, this is probably part of my problem, maybe I'm too young. Apparently, according to JD, I was doing the math, he said he's 38 today, that means I'm 27. I guess I'm pretty, so my age, I've got a younger dialect of English, but the word wish in English maybe doesn't communicate what it used to. We hear wish and we think of throwing pennies in a wishing well or making a wish before blowing out our birthday candles, right? Something almost superstitious, sort of just an empty hope, well, I wish. But wish here should be thought of more in the sense of, I think, an earnest desire.

And actually, sorry, the Greek word is actually the word for prayer, eukamai. means to pray. It's used seven times in the New Testament, and everywhere else it's always used in a way that indicates a request to God, a prayer. So my inclination is to take this as a prayer that Paul actually prayed. Weymouth translates it that way, and the NASB puts that as a footnote, so I got some backup on that, but that's kind of the way I take it. And then we have the words, I could. And that kind of makes us feel like this is sort of maybe a potential prayer of Paul.

But the word there is in the imperfect tense and the indicative mood. So, of course, the indicative mood tells us that this is a fact. This is a certainty. This is not a maybe, this is a fact. And the imperfect voice tells us that this was something going on in past time, continuously in past time. I see Roger nodding his head, so I think I'm right on that.

And so I think the best translation is, for I have prayed continually in past time. Again, a little bit wordy, but I think that helps us to see. So we get the idea that Paul, no longer prayed this prayer, but that he had prayed it for some time in the past. We don't know how long and we don't know when in his Christian life, we know it was in his Christian life because he wouldn't have prayed this before, but when Paul prayed this. And so this was a prayer that he had prayed, he had asked God for this, he no longer is, but the emotion that is linked to that has not gone away. His feeling toward Israel remains the same. His prayers for them have changed. But nonetheless, he did pray this. So what is his prayer?

He says, that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ. So I want us to see here the connection between the end of chapter 8 and this, which I mentioned earlier, but this isn't a random shift in topic. Like I said, Paul has just finished saying that it's impossible for us to be separated from Christ, and now he says, you know, there was a time in my Christian life when I actually prayed to be separated from Christ. And now the NASB has inserted that word separated as an interpretive help. And it is, though it's not there in the Greek.

A lot of other translations would just have accursed from Christ, which is a direct translation. But accursed is the Greek word anathema. And frankly, the most Probably the most direct way of translating that word into English would be eternally damned. That's what it means to be anathema, okay?

And why would Paul pray such a thing? Why would he pray this? Why would he be asking to be separated from Christ for eternity? And the reason is the reason that he is, for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh. In other words, Paul was saying, If I could forfeit my eternal union with Christ in exchange for the salvation of Israel, I would gladly do it. I would gladly do it. That's how deep his love was for the nation of Israel. And like we said earlier, it's not an exaggeration. That's why Paul has been so careful to tell us that he is speaking the truth.

Now, we might ask the question, well, was that a misguided prayer? You know, looking at the fact that it's an impossibility, Paul, you can never be separated from Christ. It might be tempting to shake your heads and say, Paul, what a foolish prayer. But I think that misses the point. At the time that Paul prayed this prayer, We don't know. We don't know if he fully grasped the impossibility of his separation from Christ, you know, depending on when he prayed this prayer.

But whatever the case, I think that what led Paul to pray this prayer was the life of Christ at work in him, like we said earlier. And as we said, Paul's great sorrow and unceasing grief were identical to Christ's sorrow over unsaved Israel. And what Paul prayed for is actually very similar to what Jesus went through on the cross for the sake of all mankind. And we see that in Philippians 2, where we've been studying in Sunday school, where he says, have this attitude or this thinking in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And what did the death of the cross involve for Jesus Christ?

Separation, separation from God the Father. When Jesus said on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He was expressing the real pain of being personally separated from God the Father. Somehow in a finite window of time on the cross, Jesus was enduring the eternal separation from God that we deserved. Jesus became sin for us. And bearing our sin, He became anathema to God the Father. He became a curse for us. And Jesus was willing to go through separation from God the Father so that you could be saved.

You personally, individually. He went through that separation. And Paul shared this same heart for the lost. Now, keep in mind, not because it was in his own nature, okay? We don't wanna put Paul on a pedestal. He's not our idol, okay? Paul had this same nature because the life of Christ is his life. As he says, it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

So, in closing now, I want to come back to the question I posed earlier. And I left it hanging because as I studied this, this was, this was... you know, bothering me, I guess, in a way. Do I have this same burden for the lost? And it's a very searching question, and it would be very easy to turn this into an attempt to seek in myself to find this love, to find this nature.

You know, as I read this passage and prepared for this message, I found that I couldn't. I couldn't sympathize with Paul's words. I couldn't sympathize with Paul's prayer or his deep sorrow. I had to admit that I don't have this kind of compassion to the lost. And as I came to that realization, it was very easy to begin to feel guilty about my lack of love. And I began to ask, how can I get that same burden for the loss that Paul had? How can I try to get it? Should I pray to have it? And so I've been wrestling with these questions. And it'd be very easy to take this message at this point and turn it into a message about how we ought to strive and work to have this kind of love for the unsaved. And that'd be a very typical guilt-tripping message. But guilt trips can only stimulate the flesh. A guilt trip is only good for stimulating the old man.

And so under grace, we have to come to realize that If this love for the lost is sourced in the character of Christ, then we have to stop looking for it in ourselves. We have to stop looking for this love in ourselves. When I see my own callousness towards the unsaved, I'm looking at the old man. I'm looking at my sinful flesh. If I don't have this same attitude expressed in me, it only shows my lack of acquaintance with Jesus Christ and who He is. If I have anything of a genuine love for the lost, it's coming from Christ, not from me.

So we aren't going to think like this, we aren't gonna think like Paul through trying to do it. So let's not try. Let's not try to work up our own love for the lost. It's a good starting point to realize that we don't have this character in ourselves. But that's not to motivate us to try to get it out of ourselves.

We need to look to Jesus. We need to keep our eyes fixed on Him, fixed on who He is. And as we focus our eyes on Christ, as we're conformed to His likeness, His love will compel us. We won't have to try to love the unsaved. Instead, we will find it impossible not to love them. And Paul writes to the Corinthians, for the love of Christ compels us. having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died. And he died for all so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf. His life is our life. His love is our love. Thank God.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the love that is yours for all those who are lost, particularly here in this passage for unsaved Israel. But Lord, that love extends to every person who is right now outside the body of Christ, who is eternally lost. unless they hear and accept the gospel message, the fact that your son died in their place on the cross and rose again. Lord, we pray that you would hear us. each of us would continue to keep our eyes fixed on your son, Jesus Christ, and that as we do, his love, his compassion would be flowing out through us to all those who are around us so that they might have their eyes opened to the saving grace that is extended in Christ Jesus. Lord, we thank you that that is your work to do. That's your work to do through us. And so we pray that we would rest in that and we would submit ourselves to that work as those who belong to you, as those who are Christ's, that his love for the lost would become ours and that he would be glorified in all of that. In his name we pray, amen.